Greece Today, a nation in southeastern Europe, part of the Balkan Peninsula.

Greece Today, a nation in southeastern Europe, part of the Balkan Peninsula. This country's official name is the Hellenic Republic, and the people who live there call their country "Ellas" or "Hellas." These names reflect images of the ancient past of this part of the Mediterranean world. Greek comes from Graeci, the name the Latin-speaking people of Italy gave to colonists from across the Ionian Sea. The word Hellenic refers to the god Hellen, ancestor of the ancient peoples of the southern Balkan Peninsula and the name the people of this land gave themselves from ancient times. People have inhabited the land that is now Greece from prehistoric times. Archaeologists have discovered Stone Age farming settlements on this peninsula from as long ago as 6500 b.c. The ruins of towns and villages built during the early and middle Bronze Age (3000 to 1600 b.c.) are also quite common. Evidence from all of these sites shows that, during the Bronze Age, the people of Greece began trading extensively with neighbors on Crete and in Asia Minor and the Middle East. In the late Bronze Age (1600 to 1150 b.c.), the first true cities and small kingdoms appeared, many of them on the southern part of the peninsula, an area known as the Peloponnesus. Here and in this age, the first significant power centers of ancient Greece developed. The city of Mycenae grew into a major trading and military center on the northeastern side of the Peloponnesus, not far from the Isthmus of Corinth. Agamemnon, one of the great heroes of Greek legends, was king of this city, according to Homer's Iliad and other ancient sources. This city also gave its name to the first great age of Greece, the Mycenaean Age. Homer, the Greek poet credited with writing the Iliad and the Odyssey, lived and wrote, according to the best scholarly evidence, around 1050 to 700 b.c., a time known as the Archaic Age of Greek history. His subject matter, though, was the Mycenaean Age and the heroes and warriors of that time. The first people who worshiped the gods and goddesses that Homer wrote about lived in a time that left few if any written records, but their stories were preserved by the developing Greek culture. More than a century of archaeology has revealed much about this mythology and about the lives of the people who believed in these gods. The great Classical Age of Greece began about 490 b.c. It was separated from the Mycenaean Age by a dark age of conflict and by the Archaic Age, including the time of Homer, from 750 to 490 b.c. During the Classical age, people built great temples to the gods, poets and dramatists drew upon the myths of the Greek religion to write their great works, and artists carved statues and fashioned jewelry to commemorate the gods. The Classical Age was the height of cultural development. Greece 61 During all of its history, Greece was a collection of city-states, or small communities, rather than a nation. These communities organized around individual political ideals, but the people of this peninsula shared a great deal of culture and trade. They shared a common language and common beliefs in the great pantheon of Zeus and the Olympian Gods. Though city-states waged war with one another as well as the people of other lands around the Mediterranean, the people found it easy to travel between cities and towns to visit religious sites such as Apollo's Oracle at Delphi, and to conduct business. The Hellenistic Age followed the Classical Age. It began with the conquests of Philip III and his son Alexander the Great. This age represented the spread of Greek culture from Spain in the west to Pakistan in the east. People living in Greek colonies around the Mediterranean Sea helped spread the concepts of civilization to other people, greatly influencing the lives of people of other cultures. By the end of this period, the Romans had spread their political and military influence to this neighboring peninsula and made Greece part of the Roman Empire. The Ages of Greece Name Time period Early and mid-Bronze Ages 3000-1600 b.c. Mycenaean Age 1600-1150 b.c. Dark Ages 1150-750 b.c. Archaic Age 750-490 b.c. Classical Age 490-323 b.c. Hellenistic Age 323-30 b.c.