Portal:Ancient Greece

Ancient Greece (Ancient Greek: Ἑλλάς, romanized: Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (c. 600 AD), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and communities. Prior to the Roman period, most of these regions were officially unified only once under the Kingdom of Macedon from 338 to 323 BC. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period.

Three centuries after the decline of Mycenaean Greece during the Bronze Age collapse, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical Greece, from the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and which included the Golden Age of Athens and the Peloponnesian War. The unification of Greece by Macedon under Philip II and subsequent conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great spread Hellenistic civilization across the Middle East. The Hellenistic period is considered to have ended in 30 BC, when the last Hellenistic kingdom, Ptolemaic Egypt, was annexed by the Roman Republic.

Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a powerful influence on ancient Rome, which carried a version of it throughout the Mediterranean and much of Europe. For this reason, Classical Greece is generally considered the cradle of Western civilization, the seminal culture from which the modern West derives many of its founding archetypes and ideas in politics, philosophy, science, and art. (Full article...)

Hermes Ingenui (Vatican Museums), Roman copy of the second century BC after a Greek original of the 5th century BC. Hermes has a kerykeion (caduceus), kithara, petasos (round hat) and a traveler's cloak.

Hermes (/ˈhɜːrmiːz/; Ancient Greek: Ἑρμῆς) is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion and mythology considered the herald of the gods. He is also widely considered the protector of human heralds, travelers, thieves, merchants, and orators. He is able to move quickly and freely between the worlds of the mortal and the divine aided by his winged sandals. Hermes plays the role of the psychopomp or "soul guide"—a conductor of souls into the afterlife.

In myth, Hermes functions as the emissary and messenger of the gods, and is often presented as the son of Zeus and Maia, the Pleiad. He is regarded as "the divine trickster", about which the Homeric Hymn to Hermes offers the most well-known account. (Full article...)

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View of the bouleuterion in Dodona

Dodona (/doʊˈdoʊnə/; Doric Greek: Δωδώνα, romanized: Dōdṓnā, Ionic and Attic Greek: Δωδώνη, Dōdṓnē) in Epirus in northwestern Greece was the oldest Hellenic oracle, possibly dating to the 2nd millennium BCE according to Herodotus. The earliest accounts in Homer describe Dodona as an oracle of Zeus. Situated in a remote region away from the main Greek poleis, it was considered second only to the Oracle of Delphi in prestige.

Aristotle considered the region around Dodona to have been part of Hellas and the region where the Hellenes originated. The oracle was first under the control of the Thesprotians before it passed into the hands of the Molossians. It remained an important religious sanctuary until the rise of Christianity during the Late Roman era. (Full article...)

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...that Crete, although now Greek, had its own civilization well before Ancient Greece in the Minoan culture?

...that Philip II of Macedon was killed at the hands of one of his own bodyguards in Aegae, Pausanias of Orestis, and then the assassin was killed by some of the other bodyguards?

...that Tsakonian Greek, a dialect of Greek that is found on the Peloponnese, is actually descended from the Dorians?

Speculative portrait by William Faithorne

Lucian of Samosata (Λουκιανὸς ὁ Σαμοσατεύς, c. 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with which he frequently ridiculed superstition, religious practices, and belief in the paranormal. Although his native language was probably Syriac, all of his extant works are written entirely in ancient Greek (mostly in the Attic Greek dialect popular during the Second Sophistic period).

Everything that is known about Lucian's life comes from his own writings, which are often difficult to interpret because of his extensive use of sarcasm. According to his oration The Dream, he was the son of a lower middle class family from the city of Samosata along the banks of the Euphrates in the remote Roman province of Syria. As a young man, he was apprenticed to his uncle to become a sculptor, but, after a failed attempt at sculpting, he ran away to pursue an education in Ionia. He may have become a travelling lecturer and visited universities throughout the Roman Empire. After acquiring fame and wealth through his teaching, Lucian finally settled down in Athens for a decade, during which he wrote most of his extant works. In his fifties, he may have been appointed as a highly paid government official in Egypt, after which point he disappears from the historical record. (Full article...)

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Pericles Alcibiades Archimedes Aspasia Demosthenes Epaminondas Hippocrates Theramenes Thrasybulus Homer Cleisthenes Menander Eratosthenes Epictetus Zeno of Citium Hesiod Euclid Plato Pythagoras Aristotle Socrates Alexander the Great Aesop Solon Aristarchus of Samos Sophocles Pindar Thales of Miletus

The following are images from various Ancient Greece-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Ruins of the Temple of Apollo within the polis of Ancient Corinth, built c. 540 BC, with the Acrocorinth (the city's acropolis) seen in the background (from Archaic Greece)
Image 2Finds from an early geometric Cremation Burial of a pregnant wealthy woman, from the N.W. of the Areopagus, about 850 BC, Ancient Agora Museum (Athens); exhibit 14–16: broad gold finger rings; exhibit 17–19: gold finger rings; 20: pair of gold earrings with trapezoid endings (from Greek Dark Ages)
Image 3Ancient Greek colonies in the archaic period (from Ancient Greece)
Image 4The ancient Theatre of Epidaurus, 4th century BC (from Ancient Greece)
Image 5The Delian League immediately before the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC (from Ancient Greece)
Image 6Inheritance law, part of the Gortyn code, Crete, fragment of the 11th column. Limestone, 5th century BC (from Ancient Greece)
Image 7A scene from the Iliad: Hypnos and Thanatos carrying the body of Sarpedon from the battlefield of Troy; detail from an Attic white-ground lekythos, c. 440 BC (from Ancient Greece)
Image 8Map of the Late Bronze Age collapse (c. 1200 BC) in the Eastern Mediterranean (from Greek Dark Ages)
Image 9The Victorious Youth (c. 310 BC) is a rare, water-preserved bronze sculpture from ancient Greece. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 10The Vix Krater, an imported Greek wine-mixing bronze vessel found in the Hallstatt/La Tène grave of the "Lady of Vix", Burgundy, France, c. 500 BC (from Archaic Greece)
Image 11The carved busts of four ancient Greek philosophers, on display in the British Museum. From left to right: Socrates, Antisthenes, Chrysippus, and Epicurus. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 12The gymnasium and palaestra at Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympic games. The archaic period conventionally dates from the first Olympiad. (from Archaic Greece)
Image 13The major Hellenistic realms included the Diadochi kingdoms:
  Kingdom of Ptolemy I Soter
  Kingdom of Cassander
  Kingdom of Lysimachus
  Kingdom of Seleucus I Nicator
  Epirus
Also shown on the map:
  Greek colonies
  Carthage (non-Greek)
  Rome (non-Greek)

The orange areas were often in dispute after 281 BC. The Attalid dynasty occupied some of this area. Not shown: Indo-Greek Kingdom. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 14Marble bust of Pericles with a Corinthian helmet, Roman copy of a Greek original, Museo Chiaramonti, Vatican Museums; Pericles was a key populist political figure in the development of the radical Athenian democracy. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 15An Ancient Greek pair of terracotta boots. Early geometric period cremation burial of a woman, 900 BC. Ancient Agora Museum in Athens. (from Greek Dark Ages)
Image 16The Parthenon, a temple dedicated to Athena, located on the Acropolis in Athens, is one of the most representative symbols of the culture and sophistication of the ancient Greeks. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 17Events of the first phases of the Greco-Persian Wars (from Ancient Greece)
Image 18Greek hoplite and Persian warrior depicted fighting, on an ancient kylix, 5th century BC (from Ancient Greece)
Image 19The remains of the Temple of Apollo at Corinth, the first Greek temple to be built in stone. (from Archaic Greece)
Image 20The Temple of Concordia, Valle dei Templi, Magna Graecia, in present-day Italy (from Archaic Greece)
Image 21Early Athenian coin, depicting the head of Athena on the obverse and her owl on the reverse – 5th century BC (from Ancient Greece)
Image 22Dipylon Vase of the late Geometric period, or the beginning of the Archaic period, c. 750 BC. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 23Alexander Mosaic, National Archaeological Museum, Naples (from Ancient Greece)
Image 24Geometric-style box in the shape of a barn. On display in the Ancient Agora Museum in Athens, housed in the Stoa of Attalus. From early geometric cremation burial of a wealthy pregnant woman, 850 BC. (from Greek Dark Ages)
Image 25Homer, author of the earliest surviving Greek literature (from Archaic Greece)
Image 26Ancient Greek colonies in the archaic period (from Archaic Greece)
Image 27The Temple of Hera at Selinunte, Sicily (from Ancient Greece)
Image 28The lawgiver Solon reformed the Athenian constitution, which led to significant developments in Greece (from Archaic Greece)
Image 29Major regions of mainland ancient Greece and adjacent "barbarian" lands (from Ancient Greece)
Image 30The Antikythera mechanism was an analog computer from 150 to 100 BC designed to calculate the positions of astronomical objects. (from Ancient Greece)
Image 31Mosaic from Pompeii depicting Plato's Academy (from Ancient Greece)
Image 32The Temple of Concordia, Valle dei Templi, Magna Graecia, present-day Italy (from Ancient Greece)
Image 33Gravestone of a woman with her slave child-attendant, c. 100 BC (from Ancient Greece)
Image 34Mount Olympus, home of the Twelve Olympians (from Ancient Greece)

Photo credit:Badseed

The Panathinaiko or Panathenaic Stadium, also known as the Kallimarmaro (Καλλιμάρμαρο, i.e. the "beautifully marbled") in Athens is the only major stadium in the world built entirely of white marble (from Mount Penteli).