Pomeroy, Sarah, Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan, and Jennifer Tolbert Roberts. 2008. These reforms, attributed to Lycurgus of Sparta, were probably complete by 650 BC. To the west the coasts of Illyria, Sicily and Southern Italy were settled, followed by Southern France, Corsica, and even eastern Spain. On the one hand, the ancient Greeks had no doubt that they were "one people"; they had the same religion, same basic culture, and same language. A citizens' assembly (the Ecclesia), for the discussion of city policy, had existed since the reforms of Draco in 621 BC; all citizens were permitted to attend after the reforms of Solon (early 6th century), but the poorest citizens could not address the assembly or run for office. 
The scale and scope of warfare in ancient Greece changed dramatically as a result of the Greco-Persian Wars. It greatly widened the horizons of the Greeks and led to a steady emigration of the young and ambitious to the new Greek empires in the east. Later in the Classical period, the leagues would become fewer and larger, be dominated by one city (particularly Athens, Sparta and Thebes); and often poleis would be compelled to join under threat of war (or as part of a peace treaty). Both cities seem to have declined as a result of the long war, though Chalcis was the nominal victor. Literacy had been lost and the Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. The historical period of ancient Greece is unique in world history as the first period attested directly in comprehensive, narrative historiography, while earlier ancient history or protohistory is known from much more fragmentary documents such as annals, king lists, and pragmatic epigraphy. [9][10][11][12][13], Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato and Aristotle. Sometimes families controlled public religious functions, but this ordinarily did not give any extra power in the government. Though Thebes had won the battle, their general Epaminondas was killed, and they spent the following decades embroiled in wars with their neighbours; Athens, meanwhile, saw its second naval alliance, formed in 377, collapse in the mid-350s. In the 3rd century BC, Aristarchus of Samos was the first to suggest a heliocentric system. Athens fell under a tyranny in the second half of the 6th century BC. Herodotus is widely known as the "father of history": his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Some studies estimate that the average Greek household grew fivefold between 800 and 300 BC, indicating a large increase in average income. [37], The peace did not last, however. Girls also learned to read, write and do simple arithmetic so they could manage the household. The Hellenistic period ended with the conquest of the eastern Mediterranean world by the Roman Republic, and the annexation of the Roman province of Macedonia in Roman Greece, and later the province of Achaea during the Roman Empire. [15] Greece was divided into many small self-governing communities, a pattern largely dictated by its geography: every island, valley and plain is cut off from its neighbors by the sea or mountain ranges.[16]. [87] The Hellenistic period also saw a shift in the ways literature was consumedwhile in the archaic and classical periods literature had typically been experienced in public performance, in the Hellenistic period it was more commonly read privately. In most city-states, unlike the situation in Rome, social prominence did not allow special rights. 
The first geometrical, three-dimensional models to explain the apparent motion of the planets were developed in the 4th century BC by Eudoxus of Cnidus and Callippus of Cyzicus. It was discovered in an ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete. The Greeks developed astronomy, which they treated as a branch of mathematics, to a highly sophisticated level. For instance, in Athens, the kingship had been reduced to a hereditary, lifelong chief magistracy (archon) by c. 1050 BC; by 753 BC this had become a decennial, elected archonship; and finally by 683 BC an annually elected archonship. Ancient Greek philosophy focused on the role of reason and inquiry. [91] This innovation was especially marked in prose, with the development of the novel and a revival of prominence for display oratory both dating to this period.[91]. [44] Following the Athenian surrender, Sparta installed an oligarchic regime, the Thirty Tyrants, in Athens,[43] one of a number of Spartan-backed oligarchies which rose to power after the Peloponnesian war. It is unclear exactly how this change occurred. The education system of the wealthy ancient Greeks is also called Paideia. Helots were Messenians enslaved en masse during the Messenian Wars by the state and assigned to families where they were forced to stay. Although the First Macedonian War was inconclusive, the Romans, in typical fashion, continued to fight Macedon until it was completely absorbed into the Roman Republic (by 149 BC). 
[25], Ten years later, a second invasion was launched by Darius' son Xerxes. Modern Syracuse, Naples, Marseille and Istanbul had their beginnings as the Greek colonies Syracusae (), Neapolis (), Massalia () and Byzantion (). Archimedes in his treatise The Sand Reckoner revives Aristarchus' hypothesis that "the fixed stars and the Sun remain unmoved, while the Earth revolves about the Sun on the circumference of a circle". They were followed by Socrates, one of the first philosophers based in Athens during its golden age whose ideas, despite being known by second-hand accounts instead of writings of his own, laid the basis of Western philosophy. [14], In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages, which followed the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. The city could afford such a large fleetit had over 34,000 oarsmenbecause it owned a lot of silver mines that were worked by slaves. When this tyranny was ended, the Athenians founded the world's first democracy as a radical solution to prevent the aristocracy regaining power. They had the right to have a family and own property, subject to their master's goodwill and permission, but they had no political rights. Brock, Roger, and Stephen Hodkinson, eds. [41] Initially the Athenian position continued relatively strong, with important victories at Cyzicus in 410 and Arginusae in 406. Greek civilization from c. 1200 BC to c. 600 AD. The eventual triumph of the Greeks was achieved by alliances of city-states (the exact composition changing over time), allowing the pooling of resources and division of labor. Rapidly increasing population in the 8th and 7th centuries BC had resulted in emigration of many Greeks to form colonies in Magna Graecia (Southern Italy and Sicily), Asia Minor and further afield. [32] Athens and Sparta signed the Thirty Years' Peace in the winter of 446/5, ending the conflict. It had over 200 triremes each powered by 170 oarsmen who were seated in 3 rows on each side of the ship. Epirus stretched from the Ambracian Gulf in the south to the Ceraunian mountains and the Aoos river in the north, and consisted of Chaonia (north), Molossia (center), and Thesprotia (south). To fight the enormous armies of the Achaemenid Empire was effectively beyond the capabilities of a single city-state. The rise of Athens and Sparta as pre-eminent powers during this conflict led directly to the Peloponnesian War, which saw further development of the nature of warfare, strategy and tactics. The three types of teachings were: grammatistes for arithmetic, kitharistes for music and dancing, and Paedotribae for sports. Ancient Greek mathematics contributed many important developments to the field of mathematics, including the basic rules of geometry, the idea of formal mathematical proof, and discoveries in number theory, mathematical analysis, applied mathematics, and approached close to establishing integral calculus. [71], For most of Greek history, education was private, except in Sparta. [89], With Octavian's victory at Actium in 31 BC, Rome began to become a major centre of Greek literature, as important Greek authors such as Strabo and Dionysius of Halicarnassus came to Rome. Initially many Greek city-states seem to have been petty kingdoms; there was often a city official carrying some residual, ceremonial functions of the king (basileus), e.g., the archon basileus in Athens. [49], By 371 BC, Thebes was in the ascendancy, defeating Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra, killing the Spartan king Cleombrotus I, and invading Laconia. This inevitably reduced the potential duration of campaigns, as citizens would need to return to their own professions (especially in the case of, for example, farmers). In a system wracked with class conflict, government by a 'strongman' was often the best solution. Only wealthy families could afford a teacher. Objects inscribed with Phoenician writing may have been available in Greece from the 9th century BC, but the earliest evidence of Greek writing comes from graffiti on Greek pottery from the mid-8th century. Angus Konstam: "Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece", pp. In the northeast corner was Macedonia,[62] originally consisting Lower Macedonia and its regions, such as Elimeia, Pieria, and Orestis. His son Alexander the Great was left to fulfil his father's ambitions. Owners often promised to free slaves in the future to encourage slaves to work hard. In the West, the art of the Roman Empire was largely derived from Greek models. [101] Sacrifice was accompanied by public prayer,[102] and prayer and hymns were themselves a major part of ancient Greek religious life.[103]. People could change classes if they made more money. However, unlike later Western culture, the Ancient Greeks did not think in terms of race.[70]. Sparta and Athens promptly turned on each other, at which point Cleomenes I installed Isagoras as a pro-Spartan archon. It was fought between the important poleis (city-states) of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Eager to secure Athens' independence from Spartan control, Cleisthenes proposed a political revolution: that all citizens share power, regardless of status, making Athens a "democracy". Most were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than of many other cities. In Athens, public slaves were trained to look out for counterfeit coinage, while temple slaves acted as servants of the temple's deity and Scythian slaves were employed in Athens as a police force corralling citizens to political functions. A crucial part of a wealthy teenager's education was a mentorship with an elder, which in a few places and times may have included pederasty. In many ways, it had an important influence on modern philosophy, as well as modern science. [93] In the 2nd century BC Hipparchus of Nicea made a number of contributions, including the first measurement of precession and the compilation of the first star catalog in which he proposed the modern system of apparent magnitudes. [citation needed] The teenager learned by watching his mentor talking about politics in the agora, helping him perform his public duties, exercising with him in the gymnasium and attending symposia with him. Mainland Greece to the north, nowadays known as Central Greece, consisted of Aetolia and Acarnania in the west, Locris, Doris, and Phocis in the center, while in the east lay Boeotia, Attica, and Megaris. The schooling ended at age 18, followed by military training in the army usually for one or two years. For this reason, Classical Greece is generally considered the cradle of Western civilization, the seminal culture from which the modern West derives many of its founding archetypes and ideas in politics, philosophy, science, and art.[2][3][4]. The independence of the poleis was fiercely defended; unification was something rarely contemplated by the ancient Greeks. [79] Towards the beginning of the classical period, comedy began to developthe earliest date associated with the genre is 486 BC, when a competition for comedy became an official event at the City Dionysia in Athens, though the first preserved ancient comedy is Aristophanes' Acharnians, produced in 425. Following the Dark Ages was the Archaic Period, beginning around the 8th century BC, which saw early developments in Greek culture and society leading to the Classical Period[6] from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480BC until the death of Alexander the Great in 323BC. Greek colonies were not politically controlled by their founding cities, although they often retained religious and commercial links with them. [98] Though the Greeks of different cities and tribes worshipped similar gods, religious practices were not uniform and the gods were thought of differently in different places. The Greek colonies of Sicily, especially Syracuse, were soon drawn into prolonged conflicts with the Carthaginians. Cities tended to be located in valleys between mountains, or on coastal plains, and dominated a certain area around them. [33] In the 450s, Athens took control of Boeotia, and won victories over Aegina and Corinth. [30] During this long campaign, the Delian League gradually transformed from a defensive alliance of Greek states into an Athenian empire, as Athens' growing naval power intimidated the other league states. Owners were not allowed to beat or kill their slaves. Unlike in Rome, freedmen did not become citizens. These colonies played an important role in the spread of Greek influence throughout Europe and also aided in the establishment of long-distance trading networks between the Greek city-states, boosting the economy of ancient Greece. [24] Though heavily outnumbered, the Athenianssupported by their Plataean alliesdefeated the Persian hordes at the Battle of Marathon, and the Persian fleet turned tail. Greek art depicts musical instruments and dance. The later Hellenistic philosophy, also originating in Greece, is defined by names such as Antisthenes (cynicism), Zeno of Citium (stoicism) and Plotinus (Neoplatonism). [68], Slaves had no power or status. [82] Prose as a genre reached maturity in the classical era,[81] and the major Greek prose genresphilosophy, history, rhetoric, and dialoguedeveloped in this period. When battles occurred, they were usually set piece and intended to be decisive. Socrates' disciple Plato, who wrote The Republic and established a radical difference between ideas and the concrete world, and Plato's disciple Aristotle, who wrote extensively about nature and ethics, are also immensely influential in Western philosophy to this day. This intellectual school revolutionized medicine in ancient Greece, establishing it as a discipline distinct from other fields that it had traditionally been associated with (notably theurgy and philosophy), thus making medicine a profession.[96][97]. [40] Soon after the Athenian defeat in Syracuse, Athens' Ionian allies began to rebel against the Delian league, while Persia began to once again involve itself in Greek affairs on the Spartan side. The peculiarities of the Greek system are further evidenced by the colonies that they set up throughout the Mediterranean Sea, which, though they might count a certain Greek polis as their 'mother' (and remain sympathetic to her), were completely independent of the founding city. In the south lay the Peloponnese, consisting of the regions of Laconia (southeast), Messenia (southwest), Elis (west), Achaia (north), Korinthia (northeast), Argolis (east), and Arcadia (center). Rich and poor citizens alike were obliged to live and train as soldiers, an equality that defused social conflict. Finally, Late Antiquity refers to the period of Christianization during the later 4th to early 6th centuries AD, consummated by the closure of the Academy of Athens by Justinian I in 529.[8]. [56], The period from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 until the death of Cleopatra VII, the last Macedonian ruler of Egypt, is known as the Hellenistic period. The earliest Greek literature was poetry and was composed for performance rather than private consumption. By 600 BC chattel slavery had spread in Greece. The civilization of ancient Greece has been immensely influential on language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science, and the arts. The democratic enthusiasm of the Athenians swept out Isagoras and threw back the Spartan-led invasion to restore him. At least in the Archaic Period, the fragmentary nature of ancient Greece, with many competing city-states, increased the frequency of conflict but conversely limited the scale of warfare. Only free, land-owning, native-born men could be citizens entitled to the full protection of the law in a city-state. [35] The war turned after Athenian victories led by Cleon at Pylos and Sphakteria,[35] and Sparta sued for peace, but the Athenians rejected the proposal. Roman Greece is usually counted from the Roman victory over the Corinthians at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC to the establishment of Byzantium by Constantine as the capital of the Roman Empire in AD 330.
The scale and scope of warfare in ancient Greece changed dramatically as a result of the Greco-Persian Wars. It greatly widened the horizons of the Greeks and led to a steady emigration of the young and ambitious to the new Greek empires in the east. Later in the Classical period, the leagues would become fewer and larger, be dominated by one city (particularly Athens, Sparta and Thebes); and often poleis would be compelled to join under threat of war (or as part of a peace treaty). Both cities seem to have declined as a result of the long war, though Chalcis was the nominal victor. Literacy had been lost and the Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. The historical period of ancient Greece is unique in world history as the first period attested directly in comprehensive, narrative historiography, while earlier ancient history or protohistory is known from much more fragmentary documents such as annals, king lists, and pragmatic epigraphy. [9][10][11][12][13], Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato and Aristotle. Sometimes families controlled public religious functions, but this ordinarily did not give any extra power in the government. Though Thebes had won the battle, their general Epaminondas was killed, and they spent the following decades embroiled in wars with their neighbours; Athens, meanwhile, saw its second naval alliance, formed in 377, collapse in the mid-350s. In the 3rd century BC, Aristarchus of Samos was the first to suggest a heliocentric system. Athens fell under a tyranny in the second half of the 6th century BC. Herodotus is widely known as the "father of history": his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Some studies estimate that the average Greek household grew fivefold between 800 and 300 BC, indicating a large increase in average income. [37], The peace did not last, however. Girls also learned to read, write and do simple arithmetic so they could manage the household. The Hellenistic period ended with the conquest of the eastern Mediterranean world by the Roman Republic, and the annexation of the Roman province of Macedonia in Roman Greece, and later the province of Achaea during the Roman Empire. [15] Greece was divided into many small self-governing communities, a pattern largely dictated by its geography: every island, valley and plain is cut off from its neighbors by the sea or mountain ranges.[16]. [87] The Hellenistic period also saw a shift in the ways literature was consumedwhile in the archaic and classical periods literature had typically been experienced in public performance, in the Hellenistic period it was more commonly read privately. In most city-states, unlike the situation in Rome, social prominence did not allow special rights. The first geometrical, three-dimensional models to explain the apparent motion of the planets were developed in the 4th century BC by Eudoxus of Cnidus and Callippus of Cyzicus. It was discovered in an ancient shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete. The Greeks developed astronomy, which they treated as a branch of mathematics, to a highly sophisticated level. For instance, in Athens, the kingship had been reduced to a hereditary, lifelong chief magistracy (archon) by c. 1050 BC; by 753 BC this had become a decennial, elected archonship; and finally by 683 BC an annually elected archonship. Ancient Greek philosophy focused on the role of reason and inquiry. [91] This innovation was especially marked in prose, with the development of the novel and a revival of prominence for display oratory both dating to this period.[91]. [44] Following the Athenian surrender, Sparta installed an oligarchic regime, the Thirty Tyrants, in Athens,[43] one of a number of Spartan-backed oligarchies which rose to power after the Peloponnesian war. It is unclear exactly how this change occurred. The education system of the wealthy ancient Greeks is also called Paideia. Helots were Messenians enslaved en masse during the Messenian Wars by the state and assigned to families where they were forced to stay. Although the First Macedonian War was inconclusive, the Romans, in typical fashion, continued to fight Macedon until it was completely absorbed into the Roman Republic (by 149 BC). [25], Ten years later, a second invasion was launched by Darius' son Xerxes. Modern Syracuse, Naples, Marseille and Istanbul had their beginnings as the Greek colonies Syracusae (), Neapolis (), Massalia () and Byzantion (). Archimedes in his treatise The Sand Reckoner revives Aristarchus' hypothesis that "the fixed stars and the Sun remain unmoved, while the Earth revolves about the Sun on the circumference of a circle". They were followed by Socrates, one of the first philosophers based in Athens during its golden age whose ideas, despite being known by second-hand accounts instead of writings of his own, laid the basis of Western philosophy. [14], In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages, which followed the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. The city could afford such a large fleetit had over 34,000 oarsmenbecause it owned a lot of silver mines that were worked by slaves. When this tyranny was ended, the Athenians founded the world's first democracy as a radical solution to prevent the aristocracy regaining power. They had the right to have a family and own property, subject to their master's goodwill and permission, but they had no political rights. Brock, Roger, and Stephen Hodkinson, eds. [41] Initially the Athenian position continued relatively strong, with important victories at Cyzicus in 410 and Arginusae in 406. Greek civilization from c. 1200 BC to c. 600 AD. The eventual triumph of the Greeks was achieved by alliances of city-states (the exact composition changing over time), allowing the pooling of resources and division of labor. Rapidly increasing population in the 8th and 7th centuries BC had resulted in emigration of many Greeks to form colonies in Magna Graecia (Southern Italy and Sicily), Asia Minor and further afield. [32] Athens and Sparta signed the Thirty Years' Peace in the winter of 446/5, ending the conflict. It had over 200 triremes each powered by 170 oarsmen who were seated in 3 rows on each side of the ship. Epirus stretched from the Ambracian Gulf in the south to the Ceraunian mountains and the Aoos river in the north, and consisted of Chaonia (north), Molossia (center), and Thesprotia (south). To fight the enormous armies of the Achaemenid Empire was effectively beyond the capabilities of a single city-state. The rise of Athens and Sparta as pre-eminent powers during this conflict led directly to the Peloponnesian War, which saw further development of the nature of warfare, strategy and tactics. The three types of teachings were: grammatistes for arithmetic, kitharistes for music and dancing, and Paedotribae for sports. Ancient Greek mathematics contributed many important developments to the field of mathematics, including the basic rules of geometry, the idea of formal mathematical proof, and discoveries in number theory, mathematical analysis, applied mathematics, and approached close to establishing integral calculus. [71], For most of Greek history, education was private, except in Sparta. [89], With Octavian's victory at Actium in 31 BC, Rome began to become a major centre of Greek literature, as important Greek authors such as Strabo and Dionysius of Halicarnassus came to Rome. Initially many Greek city-states seem to have been petty kingdoms; there was often a city official carrying some residual, ceremonial functions of the king (basileus), e.g., the archon basileus in Athens. [49], By 371 BC, Thebes was in the ascendancy, defeating Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra, killing the Spartan king Cleombrotus I, and invading Laconia. This inevitably reduced the potential duration of campaigns, as citizens would need to return to their own professions (especially in the case of, for example, farmers). In a system wracked with class conflict, government by a 'strongman' was often the best solution. Only wealthy families could afford a teacher. Objects inscribed with Phoenician writing may have been available in Greece from the 9th century BC, but the earliest evidence of Greek writing comes from graffiti on Greek pottery from the mid-8th century. Angus Konstam: "Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece", pp. In the northeast corner was Macedonia,[62] originally consisting Lower Macedonia and its regions, such as Elimeia, Pieria, and Orestis. His son Alexander the Great was left to fulfil his father's ambitions. Owners often promised to free slaves in the future to encourage slaves to work hard. In the West, the art of the Roman Empire was largely derived from Greek models. [101] Sacrifice was accompanied by public prayer,[102] and prayer and hymns were themselves a major part of ancient Greek religious life.[103]. People could change classes if they made more money. However, unlike later Western culture, the Ancient Greeks did not think in terms of race.[70]. Sparta and Athens promptly turned on each other, at which point Cleomenes I installed Isagoras as a pro-Spartan archon. It was fought between the important poleis (city-states) of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Eager to secure Athens' independence from Spartan control, Cleisthenes proposed a political revolution: that all citizens share power, regardless of status, making Athens a "democracy". Most were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than of many other cities. In Athens, public slaves were trained to look out for counterfeit coinage, while temple slaves acted as servants of the temple's deity and Scythian slaves were employed in Athens as a police force corralling citizens to political functions. A crucial part of a wealthy teenager's education was a mentorship with an elder, which in a few places and times may have included pederasty. In many ways, it had an important influence on modern philosophy, as well as modern science. [93] In the 2nd century BC Hipparchus of Nicea made a number of contributions, including the first measurement of precession and the compilation of the first star catalog in which he proposed the modern system of apparent magnitudes. [citation needed] The teenager learned by watching his mentor talking about politics in the agora, helping him perform his public duties, exercising with him in the gymnasium and attending symposia with him. Mainland Greece to the north, nowadays known as Central Greece, consisted of Aetolia and Acarnania in the west, Locris, Doris, and Phocis in the center, while in the east lay Boeotia, Attica, and Megaris. The schooling ended at age 18, followed by military training in the army usually for one or two years. For this reason, Classical Greece is generally considered the cradle of Western civilization, the seminal culture from which the modern West derives many of its founding archetypes and ideas in politics, philosophy, science, and art.[2][3][4]. The independence of the poleis was fiercely defended; unification was something rarely contemplated by the ancient Greeks. [79] Towards the beginning of the classical period, comedy began to developthe earliest date associated with the genre is 486 BC, when a competition for comedy became an official event at the City Dionysia in Athens, though the first preserved ancient comedy is Aristophanes' Acharnians, produced in 425. Following the Dark Ages was the Archaic Period, beginning around the 8th century BC, which saw early developments in Greek culture and society leading to the Classical Period[6] from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480BC until the death of Alexander the Great in 323BC. Greek colonies were not politically controlled by their founding cities, although they often retained religious and commercial links with them. [98] Though the Greeks of different cities and tribes worshipped similar gods, religious practices were not uniform and the gods were thought of differently in different places. The Greek colonies of Sicily, especially Syracuse, were soon drawn into prolonged conflicts with the Carthaginians. Cities tended to be located in valleys between mountains, or on coastal plains, and dominated a certain area around them. [33] In the 450s, Athens took control of Boeotia, and won victories over Aegina and Corinth. [30] During this long campaign, the Delian League gradually transformed from a defensive alliance of Greek states into an Athenian empire, as Athens' growing naval power intimidated the other league states. Owners were not allowed to beat or kill their slaves. Unlike in Rome, freedmen did not become citizens. These colonies played an important role in the spread of Greek influence throughout Europe and also aided in the establishment of long-distance trading networks between the Greek city-states, boosting the economy of ancient Greece. [24] Though heavily outnumbered, the Athenianssupported by their Plataean alliesdefeated the Persian hordes at the Battle of Marathon, and the Persian fleet turned tail. Greek art depicts musical instruments and dance. The later Hellenistic philosophy, also originating in Greece, is defined by names such as Antisthenes (cynicism), Zeno of Citium (stoicism) and Plotinus (Neoplatonism). [68], Slaves had no power or status. [82] Prose as a genre reached maturity in the classical era,[81] and the major Greek prose genresphilosophy, history, rhetoric, and dialoguedeveloped in this period. When battles occurred, they were usually set piece and intended to be decisive. Socrates' disciple Plato, who wrote The Republic and established a radical difference between ideas and the concrete world, and Plato's disciple Aristotle, who wrote extensively about nature and ethics, are also immensely influential in Western philosophy to this day. This intellectual school revolutionized medicine in ancient Greece, establishing it as a discipline distinct from other fields that it had traditionally been associated with (notably theurgy and philosophy), thus making medicine a profession.[96][97]. [40] Soon after the Athenian defeat in Syracuse, Athens' Ionian allies began to rebel against the Delian league, while Persia began to once again involve itself in Greek affairs on the Spartan side. The peculiarities of the Greek system are further evidenced by the colonies that they set up throughout the Mediterranean Sea, which, though they might count a certain Greek polis as their 'mother' (and remain sympathetic to her), were completely independent of the founding city. In the south lay the Peloponnese, consisting of the regions of Laconia (southeast), Messenia (southwest), Elis (west), Achaia (north), Korinthia (northeast), Argolis (east), and Arcadia (center). Rich and poor citizens alike were obliged to live and train as soldiers, an equality that defused social conflict. Finally, Late Antiquity refers to the period of Christianization during the later 4th to early 6th centuries AD, consummated by the closure of the Academy of Athens by Justinian I in 529.[8]. [56], The period from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 until the death of Cleopatra VII, the last Macedonian ruler of Egypt, is known as the Hellenistic period. The earliest Greek literature was poetry and was composed for performance rather than private consumption. By 600 BC chattel slavery had spread in Greece. The civilization of ancient Greece has been immensely influential on language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science, and the arts. The democratic enthusiasm of the Athenians swept out Isagoras and threw back the Spartan-led invasion to restore him. At least in the Archaic Period, the fragmentary nature of ancient Greece, with many competing city-states, increased the frequency of conflict but conversely limited the scale of warfare. Only free, land-owning, native-born men could be citizens entitled to the full protection of the law in a city-state. [35] The war turned after Athenian victories led by Cleon at Pylos and Sphakteria,[35] and Sparta sued for peace, but the Athenians rejected the proposal. Roman Greece is usually counted from the Roman victory over the Corinthians at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC to the establishment of Byzantium by Constantine as the capital of the Roman Empire in AD 330.