I.

Introduction

Ancient Greece, homeland of the Greek civilization that flourished c. 800-300 bc. It spread by Greek settlement across the Mediterranean (1050-500 bc) and then across Asia to north-western India through the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century bc. Until c. 500 bc its main centres were the Greek cities on the western coast of Asia and the larger islands of the Aegean Sea; from 600 bc onward it was the mainland city of Athens that was the hub of the Greek world. In these two focal points of Greek civilization there developed democracy and philosophy, athletics, the theatre, tragedy and comedy, ideas of freedom and autonomy, and the practice of politics. Western civilization is their heir, as it is not the heir of any other ancient civilization, except (through scripture) that of the Jews.

This civilization arose within the framework of a basic social unit, the polis (literally “city”), which was not so much a town or city state as a citizen-community. It becomes accessible to us when writings survive from it, first in the epic poems of Homer (c. 8th century bc) and the religious and practical poetry of Hesiod (dating from the late 8th century bc). The polis arose in Greece in the 8th century bc and was certainly established by 735 bc. By 800-750 bc, Greeks had also invented an alphabet and begun to be literate. However, both of these fundamental changes occurred late in the history of Greek as a language and of Greek-speakers as settlers in Greece. Their earlier history goes back another 1,000 years or so, and is known only through archaeology.