Ancient Greece

*Ancient Greece'*, also known as **Hellas**, was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the end of the Greek Dark Ages in 800 BC to the end of antiquity circa 600 AD. Ancient Greece began with the division of Greece into feuding city-states, which were divided between the native Ionians of Athens, Chalcis, and Anatolia, the Dorians of the Peloponnese and Boeotia, the Achaeans in the interior of the Peloponnese, and the Aeolians of Thebes, Thessaly, Mytilene, and Pergamon. These Greek city-states shared a common Hellenic culture which included religion (including the pilgrimage to Delphi), language, and Panhellenic sporting events such as the Isthmian Games and the Olympic Games. Overpopulation on the Greek mainland and the lack of enough arable land to sustain the Greek population led to widespread Greek colonization across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, leading to the formation of the wider Greek world.

By the 6th century BC, at the end of "Archaic Greece" and near the start of "Classical Greece", Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Thebes had emerged as the four most powerful city-states, bringing the surrounding rural areas and small towns under their control. Athens became a center of democracy, the arts, and philosophy, producing great talents such as Pericles, Socrates, and Plato; meanwhile, Sparta became known for its militaristic structure and for its indomitable army. From 480 to 404 BC, the "Golden Age of Athens" saw the flourishing of art, philosophy, commerce, and architecture, with Greece's most famous temple - the Parthenon - being built at the directive of Pericles himself. The city-states of Greece defended their independence from the mighty Persian Empire in the Greco-Persian Wars of the early 5th century BC, while the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia (Sicily and southern Italy) fought a series of inconclusive "Sicilian Wars" with Carthage from 580 BC to 265 BC. The constant infighting between the Greek city-states would prevent Greece from forming a united front against several major invasions, including those of Macedon the mid-4th century BC, Epirus in the early 3rd century BC, and the Roman Republic in the early 2nd century BC.

Greek political independence ended in 146 BC with the Third Macedonian War and the completion of Rome's conquest of Greece, but Greek culture survived and flourished under Roman rule, having spread as far as the Indian Subcontinent, Central Asia, and North Africa under Alexander the Great and his successors. Even under the Roman Empire from 27 BC onwards, the eastern half of the Empire was predominantly Greek in culture, and the Hellenic pantheon was translated into the Roman pantheon: Zeus was Jupiter, Poseidon was Neptune, Hades was Pluto, etc. The prevalence of Greco-Roman pagan culture in the Mediterranean was brought to an end in 380 AD with the Edict of Thessalonica, by which Emperor Theodosius I established Christianity as the state religion and began a large-scale persecution of paganism. He demolished Greek temples, banned the Panhellenic Games, and ensured that the Roman elite was dominated by fellow Christians.

Ancient Greek astronomy, technology, philosophy, and culture were largely either destroyed, replaced, or assimilated by the new Christian culture, and it was not until the rise of Islam in the 7th century AD that Greco-Roman texts, scientific and mathematic formulas, and other sources of knowledge were translated into Arabic and preserved. Ancient Greek practices such as polygamy, pederasty (and homosexuality in general), naked sports, democracy, and idolizing the human body either vanished or were driven underground. For centuries, Europe fell into the "Dark Ages" of the early Middle Ages, but, starting in the early 14th century, a revival of Greco-Roman culture started in Italy and blossomed into a pan-European phenomenon during the late 15th and 16th centuries as the "Renaissance". Today, Ancient Greek values such as democracy, philosophy, sports, humanism, and art have been fully revived in modernized forms, greatly influencing modern European and North American culture.