OLD SCHOOLS never die, they just lose their principals

Fact file

Date: 776 BC – 323 BC

Area: Greece

When we talk about ‘Ancient Greece’, we not only refer to the modern Greece zone, but also locations of people who spoke in Greek including Cyprus, Aegean coast of Turkey, Sicily, Southern Italy, Albania, Bulgaria, Egypt, Libya, southern France, southern Spain, Catalonia, Georgia, Romania, and Ukraine.

There are no fixed or universally agreed upon dates for the beginning or the end of the Ancient Greek period. In common usage it refers to all Greek history before the Roman Empire, since we assume a lot of the Roman ideas came from Greek origins.

Greek history starts with the Greek Dark Ages (1100-800BC) where artists used geometrical schemes such as squares, circles, lines to decorate pottery.

The archaic period (800-500 BC) were years when artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff.

In the classical years (500-323BC) artists perfected the style known as ‘classical’.

In Hellenistic years that followed the conquest of Alexander (323-146BC), aspects of Classicalism expanded to Egypt and Bactria.

The first Olympic Games started in Greece in 776 BC, but many historians now extend the term back to about 1000 BC. The traditional date for the end of the Ancient Greek period is the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC.  The integration of Greece into the Roman Republic was in 146 BC.

Ancient Greece is one of the most foundational cultures of Western Civilization, and powerfully influenced the Roman Empire.  A lot of our English words are derived from ‘Greek’.  Other than language, the Greeks influence our politics, educational systems, philosophy, art and architecture, especially the Renaissance in Western Europe.

Gallery

Acropolis panorama view at night:

Greco-Bactrian coin depicting Zeus (as an eagle) being offered wine by Ganymede. A child Eros is in the foreground:

OLD SCOTS never die, but they can be kilt