ancient greece topics for research

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Introduction & Top Questions

The post-Mycenaean period and Lefkandi

The Olympic Games
Overseas projects
The beginnings of the polis
The sources
Bacchiadae and Eupatridae
Symposia and gymnasia
Formal relationships
The Lelantine War
The decline of the aristocracy
Changes in warfare
The early tyrannies
The distinctiveness of Sparta
The helot factor
The Peloponnesian League
The distinctiveness of Athens
The Peisistratid tyranny
The reforms of Cleisthenes
Intermarriage between the great houses
Poetry and art
International influences
The Ionian revolt
Economic factors
Political factors
Athenian support of Ionia
Sparta’s foreign relations
The role of Cleomenes
The Battle of Marathon
The appointment of archons
The system of ostracism
Greek preparations for war
Greek alliances
Thermopylae
The fortification of Athens
The ambition of Pausanias
Paying tribute to Athens
Strains on Greek unity
Cimon’s actions
Athens’s moves against other Greeks
Athens’s moves northward
Sparta’s responses
Legal reforms
Political reforms
The rejection of Cimon
Friction between Athens and Corinth
The subjugation of Aegina
The scale of Athenian ambition
Sparta’s resistance
Peace with Persia
Economic sources of resentment
Political and legal sources of resentment
The Euboean revolt
Greek communities in Italy and Sicily
Sparta’s role
Continuing strife
Mytilene and Plataea
Speculation and unease
Spartan calls for peace
Cleon’s influence
Spartan recovery
Entanglement with Persia
Harsh treatment of Melos
The Sicilian disaster
The second phase of the war, 413–404
The effect of the Persian Wars on philosophy
The rise of democracy
Hippocrates and the fluidity of genres
Greek tragedy
The liturgy system
Military technology
Dionysius I of Syracuse
The Corinthian War
The King’s Peace
Spartan adventures
The Second Athenian Confederacy
Theban expansion
Athens and Thebes
The rise of Macedon
Macedonian supremacy in Greece
Alexander and the Greeks
Alexander in Egypt
To the Persian Gates
The conquest of Bactria and the Indus valley
The final phase
Historical writings
Architecture and sculpture
Social and commercial exchanges
Organized settlements

Is ancient Greece a country?

Was ancient greece a democracy, why is ancient greece important.

What is the ancient name of Sparta?
What did Plato do?

Plato (left) and Aristotle, detail from School of Athens, fresco by Raphael, 1508-11; in the Stanza della Segnatura, the Vatican. Plato points to the heavens and the realm of Forms, Aristotle to the earth and the realm of things.

ancient Greek civilization

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Humanities LibreTexts - Ancient Greece
PBS LearningMedia - Emergence of Cities and the Prophecies of Oracles | The Greeks
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PBS LearningMedia - Ancient Math & Music
PBS LearningMedia - The Rise of Alexander the Great
PBS LearningMedia - The Birth of Democracy | The Greeks
Open Library Publishing Platform - The Development of Western Thought 1 - City States and Ancient Greece
Khan Academy - Classical Greek culture
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PBS LearningMedia - Greek Guide to Greatness: Religion | The Greeks
Boise State Pressbooks - Ancient Greece
Ancient History Encyclopedia - Ancient Greece, Eurasia
ancient Greece - Children's Encyclopedia (Ages 8-11)
ancient Greece - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)
Table Of Contents

No, ancient Greece was a civilization. The Greeks had cultural traits, a religion , and a language in common, though they spoke many dialects. The basic political unit was the city-state . Conflict between city-states was common, but they were capable of banding together against a common enemy, as they did during the Persian Wars (492–449 BCE). Powerful city-states such as Athens and Sparta exerted influence beyond their borders but never controlled the entire Greek-speaking world.

Where was ancient Greece located?

Ancient Greek civilization was concentrated in what is today Greece and along the western coast of Turkey . However, ancient Greek colonists established cities all around the Mediterranean and along the coast of the Black Sea .

Each ancient Greek city-state had its own government. Common forms of government included tyranny and oligarchy . In 507 BCE, under the leadership of Cleisthenes , the citizens of Athens began to develop a system of popular rule that they called democracy , which would last nearly two centuries. In their governing body, the Assembly ( Ecclesia ), all adult male citizens, perhaps 10 to 15 percent of the total population, were eligible to vote.

When did ancient Greece start and end?

Ancient Greek civilization flourished from the period following Mycenaean civilization, which ended about 1200 BCE, to the death of Alexander the Great , in 323 BCE. By that time, Greek cultural influence had spread around the Mediterranean and, through Alexander the Great’s campaign of conquest, as far afield as India.

The political, philosophical, artistic, and scientific achievements of ancient Greek civilization formed a legacy with unparalleled influence on Western civilization. Greek political ideas have influenced modern forms of government, Greek pottery and sculpture have inspired artists for millennia, and Greek epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry is still read around the world.

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ancient Greek civilization , the period following Mycenaean civilization, which ended about 1200 bce , to the death of Alexander the Great , in 323 bce . It was a period of political, philosophical, artistic, and scientific achievements that formed a legacy with unparalleled influence. The larger historical period spanning from the output of ancient Greek author Homer in the 8th century bce to the decline of the Roman Empire in the 5th century ce is known as " Classical antiquity ," encompassing Greco-Roman culture , playing a major role in the Mediterranean sphere of influence and in the creation of Western civilization, and shaping areas as diverse as law , architecture , art , language , poetry , rhetoric , politics, and philosophy .

The early Archaic period

The period between the catastrophic end of the Mycenaean civilization and about 900 bce is often called a Dark Age . It was a time about which Greeks of the Classical age had confused and actually false notions. Thucydides , the great ancient historian of the 5th century bce , wrote a sketch of Greek history from the Trojan War to his own day, in which he notoriously fails, in the appropriate chapter, to signal any kind of dramatic rupture. (He does, however, speak of Greece “settling down gradually” and colonizing Italy , Sicily , and what is now western Turkey . This surely implies that Greece was settling down after something.) Thucydides does indeed display sound knowledge of the series of migrations by which Greece was resettled in the post-Mycenaean period. The most famous of these was the “ Dorian invasion ,” which the Greeks called, or connected with, the legendary “return of the descendants of Heracles .” Although much about that invasion is problematic—it left little or no archaeological trace at the point in time where tradition puts it—the problems are of no concern here. Important for the understanding of the Archaic and Classical periods, however, is the powerful belief in Dorianism as a linguistic and religious concept. Thucydides casually but significantly mentions soldiers speaking the “Doric dialect” in a narrative about ordinary military matters in the year 426. That is a surprisingly abstract way of looking at the subdivisions of the Greeks, because it would have been more natural for a 5th-century Greek to identify soldiers by home cities. Equally important to the understanding of this period is the hostility to Dorians , usually on the part of Ionians , another linguistic and religious subgroup, whose most-famous city was Athens . So extreme was this hostility that Dorians were prohibited from entering Ionian sanctuaries; extant today is a 5th-century example of such a prohibition, an inscription from the island of Paros .

Phenomena such as the tension between Dorians and Ionians that have their origins in the Dark Age are a reminder that Greek civilization did not emerge either unannounced or uncontaminated by what had gone before. The Dark Age itself is beyond the scope of this article. One is bound to notice, however, that archaeological finds tend to call into question the whole concept of a Dark Age by showing that certain features of Greek civilization once thought not to antedate about 800 bce can actually be pushed back by as much as two centuries. One example, chosen for its relevance to the emergence of the Greek city-state , or polis , will suffice . In 1981 archaeology pulled back the curtain on the “darkest” phase of all, the Protogeometric Period ( c. 1075–900 bce ), which takes its name from the geometric shapes painted on pottery . A grave, rich by the standards of any period, was uncovered at a site called Lefkandi on Euboea , the island along the eastern flank of Attica (the territory controlled by Athens). The grave, which dates to about 1000 bce , contains the (probably cremated) remains of a man and a woman. The large bronze vessel in which the man’s ashes were deposited came from Cyprus , and the gold items buried with the woman are splendid and sophisticated in their workmanship. Remains of horses were found as well; the animals had been buried with their snaffle bits. The grave was within a large collapsed house, whose form anticipates that of the Greek temples two centuries later. Previously it had been thought that those temples were one of the first manifestations of the “monumentalizing” associated with the beginnings of the city-state. Thus, that find and those made in a set of nearby cemeteries in the years before 1980 attesting further contacts between Egypt and Cyprus between 1000 and 800 bce are important evidence. They show that one corner of one island of Greece, at least, was neither impoverished nor isolated in a period usually thought to have been both. The difficulty is to know just how exceptional Lefkandi was, but in any view it has revised former ideas about what was and what was not possible at the beginning of the 1st millennium bce .

Colonization and city-state formation

The term colonization , although it may be convenient and widely used, is misleading. When applied to Archaic Greece, it should not necessarily be taken to imply the state-sponsored sending out of definite numbers of settlers, as the later Roman origin of the word implies. For one thing, it will be seen that state formation may itself be a product of the colonizing movement.

Points About Ancient Greek History

Major Topics in Ancient Greek History You Should Know

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Greece, now a country in the Aegean, was a collection of independent city-states or poleis in antiquity that we know about archaeologically from the Bronze Age on. These poleis fought among one another and against bigger external forces, especially the Persians. Eventually, they were conquered by their neighbors to the north and then later became part of the Roman Empire. After the western Roman Empire fell, the Greek-speaking area of the Empire continued until 1453, when it fell to the Turks.

The Lay of the Land - Geography of Greece

Greece, a country in southeastern Europe whose peninsula extends from the Balkans into the Mediterranean Sea, is mountainous, with many gulfs and bays. Some areas of Greece are filled with forests. Much of Greece is stony and suitable only for pasturage, but other areas are suitable for growing wheat, barley, citrus, dates, and olives.

Prehistory: Before Greek Writing

Prehistoric Greece includes that period known to us through archaeology rather than writing. The Minoans and Mycenaeans with their bullfights and labyrinths come from this period. The Homeric epics—the Iliad and the Odyssey—describe valiant heroes and kings from the prehistoric Bronze Age of Greece. After the Trojan Wars, the Greeks were shuffled around the peninsula because of invaders the Greeks called Dorians.

What Are the Letters of the Greek Alphabet?
An Introduction to the Development of the Greek Alphabet

Greek Colonies

There were two main periods of colonial expansion among the ancient Greeks. The first was in the Dark Ages when the Greeks thought the Dorians invaded. See Dark Age Migrations . The second period of colonization began in the 8th century when Greeks founded cities in southern Italy and Sicily. The Achaeans founded Sybaris was an Achaean colony perhaps founded in 720 B.C. The Achaeans also founded Croton. Corinth was the mother city of Syracuse. The territory in Italy colonized by the Greeks was known as Magna Graecia (Great Greece). Greeks also settled colonies northward up to the Black (or Euxine) Sea.

Greeks set up colonies for many reasons, including trade and to provide land for the landless. They held close ties to the mother city.

The Social Groups of Early Athens

Early Athens had the household or oikos as its basic unit. There were also progressively larger groups, genos, phratry, and tribe. Three phratries formed a tribe (or phylai) headed by a tribal king. The earliest known function of the tribes was military. They were corporate bodies with their own priests and officials, as well as military and administrative units. There were four original tribes in Athens.

Archaic Greece
Classical Greece

The Acropolis - Athens' Fortified Hilltop

The civic life of ancient Athens was in the agora, like the Romans' forum. The Acropolis housed the temple of the patron goddess Athena, and had, since early times, been a protected area. Long walls extending to the harbor prevented the Athenians from starving in case they were besieged.

Democracy Evolves in Athens

Originally kings ruled the Greek states, but as they urbanized, the kings were replaced by a rule by the nobles, an oligarchy. In Sparta, the kings remained, possibly because they didn't have too much power since the power was split in 2, but elsewhere the kings were replaced.

Land Shortage was among the precipitating factors leading to the rise of democracy in Athens. So was the rise of the non-equestrian army. Cylon and Draco helped create a uniform law code for all Athenians that furthered the progress to democracy. Then came the poet-politician Solon , who set up a constitution, followed by Cleisthenes , who had to iron out the problems Solon left behind, and in the process increased from 4 to 10 the number of tribes.

Sparta - The Military Polis

Sparta started with small city-states (poleis) and tribal kings, like Athens, but it developed differently. It forced the native population on the neighboring land to work for the Spartans, and it maintained kings alongside an aristocratic oligarchy. The fact that it had two kings may have been what saved the institution since each king could have prevented the other from becoming too abusive of his power. Sparta was known for its lack of luxury and physically strong population. It was also known as the one place in Greece where women had some power and could own property.

The Greco-Persian Wars - Persian Wars Under Xerxes and Darius

The Persian Wars are usually dated 492-449/448 B.C. However, a conflict started between the Greek poleis in Ionia and the Persian Empire before 499 B.C. There were two mainland invasions of Greece, in 490 (under King Darius) and 480-479 B.C. (under King Xerxes). The Persian Wars ended with the Peace of Callias of 449, but by this time, and as a result of actions taken in Persian War battles, Athens had developed her own empire. Conflict mounted between the Athenians and the allies of Sparta. This conflict would lead to the Peloponnesian War.

Greeks were also involved in the conflict with the Persians when they hired on as mercenaries of King Cyrus (401-399) and Persians aided the Spartans during the Peloponnesian War.

The Peloponnesian League was an alliance of mostly the city-states of the Peloponnese led by Sparta . Formed in the 6th century, it became one of the two sides fighting during the Peloponnesian War (431-404).

The Peloponnesian War - Greek Against Greek

The Peloponnesian War (431-404) was fought between two groups of Greek allies. One was the Peloponnesian League, which had Sparta as its leader and included Corinth. The other leader was Athens who had control of the Delian League. The Athenians lost, putting an effective end to the Classical Age of Greece. Sparta dominated the Greek world.

Thucydides and Xenophon are the major contemporary sources on the Peloponnesian War.

Philip and Alexander the Great - Macedonian Conquerors of Greece

Philip II (382 - 336 B.C.) with his son Alexander the Great conquered the Greeks and expanded the empire, taking Thrace, Thebes, Syria, Phoenicia, Mesopotamia, Assyria, Egypt, and on to the Punjab, in northern India. Alexander founded possibly more than 70 cities throughout the Mediterranean region and east to India, spreading trade and the culture of the Greeks wherever he went.

When Alexander the Great died, his empire was divided into three parts: Macedonia and Greece, ruled by Antigonus, founder of the Antigonid dynasty; the Near East, ruled by Seleucus , founder of the Seleucid dynasty ; and Egypt, where the general Ptolemy started the Ptolemid dynasty. The empire was wealthy thanks to the conquered Persians. With this wealth, building and other cultural programs were established in each region

Macedonian Wars - Rome Gains Power Over Greece

Greece was at odds with Macedonia, again, and sought the help of the budding Roman Empire. It came, helped them get rid of the northern menace, but when they were called back repeatedly, their policy gradually changed and Greece became part of the Roman Empire.

Byzantine Empire - The Greek Roman Empire

The fourth-century A.D. Roman emperor Constantine established a capital city in Greece, at Constantinople or Byzantium. When the Roman Empire "fell" in the following century, only the western emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed. The Byzantine Greek-speaking part of the empire continued until it fell to the Ottoman Turks about a millennium later in 1453.