c. 725 B.C.E.–c. 675 B.C.E. Homer's epic poems Iliad and Odyssey are written down. c. 700 B.C.E. Hesiod writes the Theogony and the Works and...

c. 3000 B.C.E.–c. 2000 B.C.E. Early Cycladic art develops in the Cyclades archipelago, the islands that circle Delos and neighboring islands, excluding Crete. c. 3000 B.C.E.–c. 1950...

585 B.C.E. Greek natural philosophy begins with Thales of Miletus who held that water was the underlying substance of everything in the world. c. 546B.C.E. Anaximander of Miletus (born 610 B.C.E.)...

Literature. No aspect of the legacy of Greece to later Western culture has been as influential as its literature. The words by which we describe so many literary forms—epic, hymn, didactic, drama (tragedy and comedy), lyric, history, rhetoric,...

Terms. The word science has no exact equivalent in the ancient Greek language. Instead, the Greeks generally used rather broad terms like philosophia (love of wisdom) and episteme (knowledge) to describe the investigation of nature. The sorts of things...

c. 2800 B.C.E.–c. 1100 B.C.E. During the Aegean Bronze Age, musicians and musical instruments are depicted in frescoes, on vases and seal stones, and in sculpture. Fragments of lyres, pipes, percussion instruments, and triton horns...

Terms. The first difficulty encountered in a discussion of Greek religion and philosophy from 800 to 323 B.C.E. is that there are no direct Greek equivalents for the modern notions of either philosophy or religion. There is no single Greek word for...

c. 1500 B.C.E. A small steatite (black soapstone) vase found at Hagia Traiada on Crete dated from this time period shows a harvest dance carved in relief. c. 1300 B.C.E. A small earthenware...

c. 1700 B.C.E.–c. 1450 B.C.E. In Minoan Crete of the Neopalatial Period frescoes show women wearing short jackets which left their breasts bare and a bell-shaped skirt falling from a girdle at the waist. Men, when not shown nude, wear a...

Polis. The Greeks' greatest accomplishment in the area of politics was the polis (self-governing city-state) itself. It so dominated the lives of the Greeks during the Archaic (700- 480 B.C.E.) and Classical (480-323 B.C.E.) periods that Aristotle, one...

c. 750 B.C.E. Homer composes the Iliad and Odyssey orally. c. 600 B.C.E. The form of the tragic chorus and the first satyr verses are introduced in...

Climate and Landscape. The physical environment had profound effects on Greek daily life. The type of weather and terrain dictated the needs for clothing and housing and the availability of certain types of food. A mild climate encouraged outdoor social...

c. 3000 B.C.E. The beginning of the Hellenic civilization in the Greek mainland includes the construction of some early structures for domestic and public use. c. 2000 B.C.E. The first attempts at...

Expansion. In comparison to other ancient cultures, one of the remarkable characteristics of Greek civilization is its mobility. While the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations remained largely confined to the areas near the fertile river valleys in...

The Family. In contrast to more well-documented periods of world history, sources for the family and social trends in ancient Greece are exiguous. Most of the evidence comes from literary texts, and of those, the richest material is the poetry of Homer,...

Great Migrations. Several centuries of unsettled conditions and regress followed the collapse of the Bronze Age (3000-1100 B.C.E.) civilization in Greece and the Aegean region. This so-called Dark Age (1000-800 B.C.E.) was a time of movement throughout...

Imperfect Knowledge. The state of Greek knowledge concerning world geography was poor in comparison with geographical knowledge today. Maps in ancient Greece, along with most geographical lore, were possessed only by the upper classes and, even then,...

The Indian Aryans continue their expansion on the Asian subcontinent, settling westward along the Gangetic plain. During this period the first of the Upanishads, the chief mystical and philosophical scriptures of Hinduism, are...

Era of Australopithecus, the first...

The term ancient Greece refers to the periods of Greek history in Classical Antiquity, lasting ca. 750 BC[1] (the archaic period) to 146 BC (the Roman conquest). It is generally considered to be the...