Definition
Ancient Greece was a civilization centered on the Greek peninsula and the islands and coasts of the Aegean Sea, flourishing especially in the centuries around 800 to 300 BCE. It was not a single unified country but a patchwork of independent city-states, each with its own government, customs, and ambitions.
Although the Greeks were politically divided, they shared a common language, religion, and culture. From this world came achievements — in philosophy, science, drama, art, and politics — that profoundly shaped later Western civilization.
Why it matters
How it works
Greece's mountainous, fragmented landscape encouraged the growth of separate, self-governing city-states such as Athens and Sparta. These poleis competed and sometimes cooperated, experimenting with different forms of government — monarchy, oligarchy, tyranny, and, in Athens, democracy.
Rivalry and warfare ran through Greek history, including conflict with the Persian Empire and the long struggle between Athens and Sparta. Eventually the city-states fell under the control of Macedon, but the conquests of Alexander the Great then carried Greek language and ideas across a vast region, beginning the era known as the Hellenistic age.