Ancient Greek Civilization

Ancient Greece’s Historical Scope and Periodization

Ancient Greece refers to a culturally and linguistically connected civilization that developed around the northeastern Mediterranean. Its broad historical scope is commonly dated from the decline of Mycenaean Greece and the Greek Dark Ages in the 12th century BC to the end of classical antiquity around the 6th century AD. Although Greek communities shared religious, cultural, and linguistic traditions, they were usually organized as independent city-states and regions rather than as a single unified nation. The area was briefly unified under the Kingdom of Macedon from 338 to 323 BC, while later Greek lands came under Roman and Byzantine rule. Historians generally divide the period into the Greek Dark Ages, the Archaic period, the Classical period, the Hellenistic period, Roman Greece, and Late Antiquity. The Archaic period saw the formation of the polis, Greek colonization, and major political and cultural developments. The Classical period, conventionally dated from the Persian invasion in 480 BC to Alexander the Great’s death in 323 BC, included the rise of Athens, the Greco-Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian War, and shifting Spartan, Theban, and Macedonian power. The Hellenistic period lasted from 323 to 146 BC or, in broader usage, until the Roman annexation of Egypt in 30 BC, as Greek culture expanded across the eastern Mediterranean and Near East. Roman Greece followed the conquest of Corinth in 146 BC, and Late Antiquity culminated in the Christianization of the Greek world and the closure of the Academy of Athens in AD 529.

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Greek Dark Ages and Mycenaean Decline

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