History of Greece

The history of Greece traces societies and political communities in the Greek world from prehistoric times through the modern Greek state.

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Minoan civilization: A Bronze Age civilization centered on Crete, known for palace complexes such as Knossos. Its palaces and maritime networks mark an early civilization in the Greek world.
Polis: An ancient Greek city-state and its surrounding territory, functioning as an independent political community. The polis became the basic unit of political life in much of ancient Greece.
Neolithic Greece: The period of farming communities in Greece, beginning around the seventh millennium BCE. It provides evidence for settled life before Bronze Age palace societies.
Hellenistic period: The period after Alexander the Great's conquests, when Greek culture spread across kingdoms in the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia. It extended Greek cultural influence far beyond the city-states of the classical era.
Homer: The ancient Greek poet traditionally credited with composing the Iliad and the Odyssey. The epics attributed to him became central to Greek literary and cultural memory.
Mycenaean Greece: A Bronze Age civilization centered on mainland Greece, organized around fortified palace centers. Its collapse preceded the centuries of change before the rise of the polis.
Athenian democracy: A system of direct political participation by eligible male citizens in classical Athens. It illustrates one distinctive way an ancient Greek city organized civic power.
Indo-European migrations: Movements through which Indo-European languages and populations spread across parts of Eurasia in prehistory. The origins of Greek belong to the wider history of Indo-European languages and migrations.
Roman Greece: The Greek lands under Roman rule, from Rome's conquest of mainland Greece through late antiquity. Roman rule integrated Greece into an empire while Greek culture continued to influence it.
Herodotus: An ancient Greek historian whose Histories recount the Greco-Persian Wars and related events. His work is a major ancient account of Greek conflict and the peoples around it.