Romanization of Ancient Greek in the context of Lamia

Ancient Greece (Ancient Greek: Ἑλλάς, romanized: Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (c. 600 AD), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and communities. Prior to the Roman period, most of these regions were officially unified only once under the Kingdom of Macedon from 338 to 323 BC. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period.

Three centuries after the decline of Mycenaean Greece during the Bronze Age collapse, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical Greece, from the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and which included the Golden Age of Athens and the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. The unification of Greece by Macedon under Philip II and subsequent conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great spread Hellenistic civilization across the Middle East. The Hellenistic period is considered to have ended in 30 BC, when the last Hellenistic kingdom, Ptolemaic Egypt, was annexed by the Roman Republic.

Philip II of Macedon (Ancient Greek: Φίλιππος, romanized: Phílippos; 382 BC – October 336 BC) was the king (basileus) of Macedon from 359 BC until his death in 336 BC. The rise of Macedon, from a kingdom initially at the periphery of classical Greek affairs, to a power that came to dominate Ancient Greece in the span of less than 25 years, was largely thanks to the character and policies of Philip. He was the father of Alexander the Great and a member of the ruling Argead dynasty that founded the kingdom of the Macedonians.

Philip achieved to dominate Greece during his reign by the reformation of the Macedonian army, including the establishment of the Macedonian phalanx, the use of combined arms tactics and his extensive use of siege engines and artillery, as well as by the use of effective diplomacy and marriage alliances. After defeating the Greek city-states of Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, Philip II led the effort to establish a federation of Greek states known as the Hellenic League, with him as the elected hegemon and commander-in-chief of Greece for a planned invasion of the Achaemenid Empire. However, his assassination by a royal bodyguard, Pausanias of Orestis, led to the immediate succession of his son Alexander, who would go on to invade the Achaemenid Empire in his father's stead.

Alexander III of Macedon (Ancient Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος, romanized: Aléxandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to the throne in 336 BC at the age of 20, and spent most of his regency conducting a lengthy military campaign throughout parts of Asia and Egypt. By the age of 30, he had created one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern India. He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered to be one of history's greatest and most successful military commanders.

Alexander was tutored by Aristotle until the age of 16. In 335 BC, shortly after assuming the throne of Macedon, he launched a campaign in the Balkans and reasserted control over Thrace and parts of Illyria before marching on the city of Thebes, which was subsequently destroyed in battle. Alexander then assumed leadership of the League of Corinth, created by his father, and with his authority over all Greeks he launched a pan-Hellenic campaign to invade the Persia.

Greek (Modern Greek: ελληνικά, romanized: elliniká [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek: ἑλληνική, romanized: hellēnikḗ [helːɛːnikɛ́ː]) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to the territories that have had populations of Greeks since antiquity: Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Italy (in Calabria and Salento), southern Albania, and other regions of the Balkans, Caucasus, the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor, and the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet, which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary.

The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer, ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon. Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics.

Attica (Greek: Αττική, romanised: Attikí, Greek pronunciation: [atiˈci]; Ancient Greek: Ἀττική, romanised: Attikḗ, Ancient Greek pronunciation: [atːikɛ̌ː]), or the Attic Peninsula, is a historical region that encompasses the entire Athens metropolitan area, which consists of the city of Athens, the capital of Greece and the core city of the metropolitan area, as well as its surrounding suburban cities and towns. It is a peninsula projecting into the Aegean Sea, bordering on Boeotia to the north and Megaris to the west. The mines of Laurion were an important mining region located at Lavrio, on the southern tip of the peninsula.

The history of Attica is closely linked with that of Athens. In ancient times, Attica corresponded with the classical Athens city‑state. It was the most prominent region in Ancient Greece, specifically during the Golden Age of Athens in the classical period. Ancient Attica was divided into demoi, or municipalities, from the reform of Cleisthenes in 508/7 BC, grouped into three zones: urban (astu) in the region of Athens main town, and Piraeus (the port), coastal (paralia) along the coastline, and inland (mesogeia) in the interior.

In Greek mythology, Achilles (/əˈkɪliːz/ ə-KIL-eez) or Achilleus (Ancient Greek: Ἀχιλλεύς, romanized: Achilleús) was a hero of the Trojan War who was known as being the greatest of all the Greek warriors. The central character in Homer's Iliad, he was the son of the Nereid Thetis and Peleus, king of Phthia and famous Argonaut. Achilles was raised in Phthia along with his childhood companion Patroclus and received his education by the centaur Chiron. In the Iliad, he is presented as the commander of the mythical tribe of the Myrmidons.

Achilles's most notable feat during the Trojan War was the slaying of the Trojan prince Hector outside the gates of Troy. Although the death of Achilles is not presented in the Iliad, other sources concur that he was killed near the end of the Trojan War by Paris, who shot him with an arrow. Later legends (beginning with Statius's unfinished epic Achilleid, written in the first century CE) state that Achilles was invulnerable in all of his body except for one heel. According to that myth, when his mother Thetis dipped him in the river Styx as an infant, she held him by one of his heels, leaving it untouched by the waters and thus his only vulnerable body part.

The Iliad (/ˈɪliəd/ ; Ancient Greek: Ἰλιάς, romanized: Iliás, [iː.li.ás]; lit. '[a poem] about Ilion (Troy)') is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. Like the Odyssey, the poem is divided into 24 books and was written in dactylic hexameter. It contains 15,693 lines in its most widely accepted version. The Iliad is often regarded as the first substantial piece of European literature and is a central part of the Epic Cycle.

Set toward the end of the Trojan War, a 10-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Mycenaean Greek states, the poem depicts significant events in the war's final weeks. In particular, it traces the anger (μῆνις) of Achilles, a celebrated warrior, from a fierce quarrel between him and King Agamemnon, to the death of the Trojan prince Hector. The narrative moves between wide battleground scenes and more personal interactions.

The Odyssey (/ˈɒdɪsi/; Ancient Greek: Ὀδύσσεια, romanized: Odýsseia) is one of two major epics of ancient Greek literature attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest surviving works of literature and remains popular with modern audiences. Like the Iliad, the Odyssey is divided into 24 books. It follows the heroic king of Ithaca, Odysseus, also known by the Latin variant Ulysses, and his homecoming journey after the ten-year long Trojan War. His journey from Troy to Ithaca lasts an additional ten years, during which time he encounters many perils and all of his crewmates are killed. In Odysseus's long absence, he is presumed dead, leaving his wife Penelope and son Telemachus to contend with a group of unruly suitors competing for Penelope's hand in marriage.

The Odyssey was first composed in Homeric Greek around the 8th or 7th century BC; by the mid-6th century BC, it had become part of the Greek literary canon. In antiquity, Homer's authorship was taken as true, but contemporary scholarship predominantly assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently, as part of long oral traditions. Given widespread illiteracy, the poem was performed for an audience by an aoidos or rhapsode.

The Theogony (Ancient Greek: Θεογονία, romanized: Theogonía, lit. 'the genealogy or birth of the gods') is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogies of the Greek gods, composed c. 730–700 BC. It is written in the epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contains 1,022 lines. It is one of the most important sources for the understanding of early Greek cosmology.

Works and Days (Ancient Greek: Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι, romanized: Érga kaì Hēmérai) is a didactic poem written by ancient Greek poet Hesiod around 700 BC. It is in dactylic hexameter and contains 828 lines. At its center, the Works and Days is a farmer's almanac in which Hesiod instructs his brother Perses in the agricultural arts.

The Homeric Hymns (Ancient Greek: Ὁμηρικοὶ ὕμνοι, romanised: Homērikoì húmnoi) are a collection of thirty-three ancient Greek hymns and one epigram. The hymns praise deities of the Greek pantheon and retell mythological stories, often involving a deity's birth, their acceptance among the gods on Mount Olympus, or the establishment of their cult. In antiquity, the hymns were generally, though not universally, attributed to the poet Homer: modern scholarship has established that most date to the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, though some are more recent and the latest, the Hymn to Ares, may have been composed as late as the fifth century CE.

The Homeric Hymns share compositional similarities with the Iliad and the Odyssey, also traditionally attributed to Homer. They share the same artificial literary dialect of Greek, are composed in dactylic hexameter, and make use of short, repeated phrases known as formulae. It is unclear how far writing, as opposed to oral composition, was involved in their creation. They may initially have served as preludes to the recitation of longer poems, and have been performed, at least originally, by singers accompanying themselves on a lyre or another stringed instrument. Performances of the hymns may have taken place at sympotic banquets, religious festivals and royal courts.

The Epic Cycle (Ancient Greek: Ἐπικὸς Κύκλος, romanized: Epikòs Kýklos) was a collection of Ancient Greek epic poems, composed in dactylic hexameter and related to the story of the Trojan War, including the Cypria, the Aethiopis, the so-called Little Iliad, the Iliupersis, the Nostoi, and the Telegony. Scholars sometimes include the two Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, among the poems of the Epic Cycle, but the term is more often used to specify the non-Homeric poems as distinct from the Homeric ones.

Unlike the Iliad and the Odyssey, the cyclic epics survive only in fragments and summaries from Late Antiquity and the Byzantine period.

Ancient Greek comedy (Ancient Greek: κωμῳδία, romanized: kōmōidía) was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece; the others being tragedy and the satyr play. Greek comedy was distinguished from tragedy by its happy endings and use of comically exaggerated character archetypes, the latter feature being the origin of the modern concept of the comedy. Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods; Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the eleven extant plays of Aristophanes; Middle Comedy is largely lost and preserved only in relatively short fragments by authors such as Athenaeus of Naucratis; New Comedy is known primarily from the substantial papyrus fragments of Menander. A burlesque dramatic form that blended tragic and comic elements, known as phlyax play or hilarotragedy, developed in the Greek colonies of Magna Graecia by the late 4th century BC.

The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his Poetics (c. 335 BC) that comedy is a representation of laughable people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness which does not cause pain or disaster. C. A. Trypanis wrote that comedy is the last of the great species of poetry Greece gave to the world.

The Parthenon (/ˈpɑːrθəˌnɒn, -nən/; Ancient Greek: Παρθενών, romanized: Parthenōn [par.tʰe.nɔ̌ːn]; Greek: Παρθενώνας, romanized: Parthenónas [parθeˈnonas]) is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the goddess Athena. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of classical Greek art, and the Parthenon is considered an enduring symbol of ancient Greece, Western civilization, and democracy.

The Parthenon was built in the 5th century BC in thanksgiving for the Greek victory over the Persian invaders during the Greco-Persian Wars. Like most Greek temples, the Parthenon also served as the city treasury. Construction started in 447 BC when the Delian League was at the peak of its power. It was completed in 438 BC; work on the artwork and decorations continued until 432 BC. For a time, it served as the treasury of the Delian League, which later became the Athenian Empire.

The Acropolis of Athens (Ancient Greek: ἡ Ἀκρόπολις τῶν Ἀθηνῶν, romanized: hē Akropolis tōn Athēnōn; Modern Greek: Ακρόπολη Αθηνών, romanized: Akrópoli Athinón) is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens, Greece, and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, the most famous being the Parthenon. The word Acropolis is from Greek ἄκρον (akron) 'highest point, extremity' and πόλις (polis) 'city'. The term acropolis is generic and there are many other acropoleis in Greece. During ancient times the Acropolis of Athens was also more properly known as Cecropia, after the legendary serpent-man Cecrops, the supposed first Athenian king.

While there is evidence that the hill was inhabited as early as the 4th millennium BC, it was Pericles (c. 495–429 BC) in the fifth century BC who coordinated the construction of the buildings whose present remains are the site's most important ones, including the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike. The Parthenon and the other buildings were seriously damaged during the 1687 siege by the Venetians during the Morean War when gunpowder being stored by the Turkish rulers in the Parthenon was hit by a Venetian bombardment and exploded.

37°59′33″N 23°42′29″E / 37.99250°N 23.70806°E / 37.99250; 23.70806

The Academy (Ancient Greek: Ἀκαδημία, romanized: Akadēmia) was founded by Plato in ca. 387 BC in Athens. Aristotle studied there for twenty years (367 BC – 347 BC) before founding his own school, the Lyceum. The Academy persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a skeptical school, until coming to an end after the death of Philo of Larissa in 83 BC. Although philosophers continued to teach Plato's philosophy in Athens during the Roman era, it was not until AD 410 that a revived Academy was re-established as a center for Neoplatonism, persisting until 529 AD when it was closed down by Justinian I.

The Lyceum (Ancient Greek: Λύκειον, romanized: Lykeion) was a temple in Athens dedicated to Apollo Lyceus ("Apollo the wolf-god").

It was best known for the Peripatetic school of philosophy founded there by Aristotle in 334 BC. Aristotle fled Athens in 323 BC, and the university continued to function after his lifetime under a series of leaders until the Roman general Sulla destroyed it during his assault on Athens in 86 BC.

Socrates (/ˈsɒkrətiːz/; Ancient Greek: Σωκράτης, romanized: Sōkrátēs; c. 470 – 399 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, perhaps the first Western moral philosopher, and a major inspiration on his student Plato, who largely founded the tradition of Western philosophy. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no texts and is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of classical writers, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon. These accounts are written as dialogues, in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine a subject in the style of question and answer; they gave rise to the Socratic dialogue literary genre. Contradictory accounts of Socrates make a reconstruction of his philosophy nearly impossible, a situation known as the Socratic problem. Socrates was a polarizing figure in Athenian society. In 399 BC, he was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth. After a trial that lasted a day, he was sentenced to death. As related by Plato, he was put to death by administration of poison after refusing offers from allies to help him escape.

Plato's dialogues are among the most comprehensive accounts of Socrates to survive from antiquity. They demonstrate the Socratic approach to areas of philosophy including epistemology and ethics. The Platonic Socrates lends his name to the concept of the Socratic method, and also to Socratic irony. The Socratic method of questioning, or elenchus, takes shape in dialogue using short questions and answers, epitomized by those Platonic texts in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine various aspects of an issue or an abstract meaning, usually relating to one of the virtues, and find themselves at an impasse, unable to define what they thought they understood. Socrates frequently proclaims his ignorance, saying that he is only sure that he does not know.

Democracy (from Ancient Greek: δημοκρατία, romanized: dēmokratía, from dēmos 'people' and krátos 'rule') is a form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state. Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitive elections while more expansive or maximalist definitions link democracy to guarantees of civil liberties and human rights in addition to competitive elections.

In a direct democracy, the people have the direct authority to deliberate and decide legislation. In a representative democracy, the people choose governing officials through elections to do so. The definition of "the people" and the ways authority is shared among them or delegated by them have changed over time and at varying rates in different countries. Features of democracy often include freedom of assembly, association, personal property, freedom of religion and speech, citizenship, consent of the governed, voting rights, freedom from unwarranted governmental deprivation of the right to life and liberty, and minority rights.