Roman Greece in the context of "Ancient Greek literature"

Pausanias (/pɔːˈseɪniəs/ paw-SAY-nee-əs; Ancient Greek: Παυσανίας; c. 110 – c. 180) was a Greek traveler and geographer. He is famous for his Description of Greece (Ἑλλάδος Περιήγησις, Hēlládos Periḗgēsis), a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from his firsthand observations. Description of Greece provides crucial information for making links between classical literature and modern archaeology, which is providing evidence of the sites and cultural details he mentions although knowledge of their existence may have become lost or relegated to myth or legend.

During the Second Punic War with Carthage, Rome's earliest known annalists Quintus Fabius Pictor and Lucius Cincius Alimentus recorded history in Greek, and relied on Greek historians such as Timaeus. Roman histories were not written in Classical Latin until the 2nd century BCE with the Origines by Cato the Elder. Contemporary Greek historians such as Polybius wrote about the rise of Rome during its conquest of Greece and ascension as the primary power of the Mediterranean in the 2nd century BCE. Moving away from the annalist tradition, Roman historians of the 1st century BCE such as Sallust, Livy, and even Julius Caesar wrote their works in a much fuller narrative form. While Caesar's De Bello Gallico focused specifically on his wars in Gaul, Roman works that served as a broad universal history often placed heavy emphasis on the origin myth of the founding of Rome as a starting point. These works formed the basis of the Roman historiographic models utilized by later Imperial authors of the Principate era, such as Tacitus and Suetonius.

Greek lyric is the body of lyric poetry written in dialects of Ancient Greek.Lyric poetry is, in short, poetry to be sung accompanied by music, traditionally a lyre.It is primarily associated with the early 7th to the early 5th centuries BC, sometimes called the "Lyric Age of Greece", but continued to be written into the Hellenistic and Imperial periods.

The Battle of Corinth of 146 BC, also known as the Battle of Leucapetra or the Battle of Lefkopetra, was a decisive engagement fought between the Roman Republic and the Greek city-state of Corinth and its allies in the Achaean League. The battle marked the end of the Achaean War and the beginning of the period of Roman domination in Greek history, and is also notable for the complete and total destruction of Corinth by the Romans in its aftermath.

The Romans had moved swiftly since the war's beginning a few weeks earlier; they had destroyed the main Achaean force at Scarpheia, conquered Boeotia and then proceeded to Corinth itself. Despite the Roman successes, the Achaeans refused to surrender and gathered a final army for the defense of the League's capital of Corinth, where they engaged the Romans in battle. In a few hours of fighting, the Achaeans were soundly routed, with their troops killed, captured, or put to flight. After a few days' waiting, the Romans entered the city, and, on the orders of Mummius, set it on fire, killed all the men and enslaved all the women and children, after which the rest of Greece was subjugated by Rome.

Hellenistic Greece is the historical period of Ancient Greece following Classical Greece and between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the annexation of the classical Greek Achaean League heartlands by the Roman Republic. This culminated at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC, a crushing Roman victory in the Peloponnese that led to the destruction of Corinth and ushered in the period of Roman Greece. Hellenistic Greece's definitive end was with the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, when Octavian defeated Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony, the next year taking over Alexandria, the last great center of Hellenistic Greece.

The Hellenistic period began with the wars of the Diadochi, armed contests among the former generals of Alexander the Great to carve up his empire in Europe, Asia, and North Africa. The wars lasted until 275 BC, witnessing the fall of both the Argead and Antipatrid dynasties of Macedonia in favor of the Antigonid dynasty. The era was also marked by successive wars between the Kingdom of Macedonia, the kingdom of Epirus, the Aetolian League, Achaean League, Sparta, Rhodes, kingdom of Pergamum as well as the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires.

Hellenistic art is the art of the Hellenistic period generally taken to begin with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and end with the conquest of the Greek world by the Romans, a process well underway by 146 BC, when the Greek mainland was taken, and essentially ending in 30 BC with the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt following the Battle of Actium. A number of the best-known works of Greek sculpture belong to this period, including Laocoön and His Sons, Dying Gaul, Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. It follows the period of Classical Greek art, while the succeeding Greco-Roman art was very largely a continuation of Hellenistic trends.

The term Hellenistic refers to the expansion of Greek influence and dissemination of its ideas following the death of Alexander – the "Hellenizing" of the world, with Koine Greek as a common language. The term is a modern invention; the Hellenistic World not only included a huge area covering the whole of the Aegean Sea, rather than the Classical Greece focused on the Poleis of Athens and Sparta, but also a huge time range. In artistic terms this means that there is huge variety which is often put under the heading of "Hellenistic Art" for convenience.

Cleopatra VII, the last ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, died on either 10 or 12 August, 30 BC, in Alexandria, when she was 39 years old. According to popular belief, Cleopatra killed herself by allowing an asp (Egyptian cobra) to bite her, but according to the Roman-era writers Strabo, Plutarch, and Cassius Dio, Cleopatra poisoned herself using either a toxic ointment or by introducing the poison with a sharp implement such as a hairpin. Modern scholars debate the validity of ancient reports involving snakebites as the cause of death and whether she was murdered. Some academics hypothesize that her Roman political rival Augustus (Octavian) forced her to kill herself in a manner of her choosing. The location of Cleopatra's tomb is unknown. It was recorded that Octavian allowed for her and her husband, the Roman politician and general Mark Antony, who stabbed himself with a sword, to be buried together properly.

Cleopatra's death effectively ended the final war of the Roman Republic between the remaining triumvirs Octavian and Antony, in which Cleopatra aligned herself with Antony, father to three of her children. Antony and Cleopatra fled to Egypt following their loss at the 31 BC Battle of Actium in Roman Greece, after which Octavian invaded Egypt and defeated their forces. Committing suicide allowed her to avoid the humiliation of being paraded as a prisoner in a Roman triumph celebrating the military victories of Octavian, who would become Rome's first emperor in 27 BC and be known as Augustus. Octavian, rival heir of Julius Caesar had Cleopatra's son Caesarion (also known as Ptolemy XV) killed in Egypt but spared her children with Antony and brought them to Rome. Cleopatra's death marked the end of the Hellenistic period and Ptolemaic rule of Egypt, as well as the beginning of Roman Egypt, which became a province of the Roman Empire.