Ancient Greece

This city state formed the first democracy in history and developed the cultural icons of classical Greece: the Parthenon, the Academy, government by the many, etc...

Athens

This city state was a military state centered around the training and equipping of its warriors and defeated Athens in the great war between those two centers of Greek power.

Sparta

This Greek city state led the Greeks in the war against Troy led by kings like Agamemnon and Menelaus.

Mycenae

This city state, led by king Phillip and later his well known son, conquered the other Greek city states after the devastation left over from the long war between Athens and Sparta.

Macedon

This city state was the first of what is considered the Greek civilizations, based on the island of Crete, that was eventually destroyed by the volcano Thera and later by the rise of their rivals on the Greek mainland.

Minoans

This kind of government was founded in Greece which has become the most popular form of Government in the world today.

Democracy

In the United States, we have a representative form of the government practiced in Athens, but Athens practice this form, characterized by the voting of all with voting rights on every issue brought before the government:

Direct Democracy

This is the term for those with the right to vote in Ancient Athens, and much of the world today.

Citizen

Only about 12% of the population could vote in ancient Athens. Children and women could not vote, but neither could this group of adult males.

slaves

While Athens pioneered the kind of government we largely practice today, Sparta's form of government was ruled by just two leaders, elected by a handful of elders. This form of government, rule by the few, is called what?

Oligarchy

This king from the north, tutored by the great philosopher Aristotle, led Greece to conquer Egypt and Persia and establish the largest land empire the world had yet seen.

Alexander the Great

This poet wrote down the stories of the Trojan War which had been passed down orally for generations, immortalizing such heroes as Hector, Paris, and Achilles

Homer

This Athenian thinker founded the Academy and his writings essentially founded the formal study of philosophy.

Plato

This leader was one of the great political figures of ancient Athens who gave the great "Funeral Oration" describing Athenian democracy and led Athens in their war against Sparta.

Pericles

This man is largely considered the first classical philosopher, but voted guilty of corrupting the youth of Athens and sentenced to execution.

Socrates

This is the date that ends the classical period of Greek history with the death of it's greatest general in the land of Persia

323 BC

The first Olympic games, held to honor the gods, were held on this date in Olympia, Greece.

776 BC

On this date, not long before the birth of Christ, the Roman empire officially conquered Greece.

146 BC

Solon, the founder of what would later become Athenian democracy, took power in what year?

594 BC

The Persian wars, fought against the greatest empire on earth at the time and including such battles as Marathon and Thermopylae, began in what year?

497 BC

This largest of Greek islands was home to the oldest of Greek civilizations and was written to by Paul in his letter to Titus in the Bible.

Crete

This sea borders Greece on the east and was crossed by the Greeks in the Trojan war.

Aegean Sea

This peninsula is the home of the city state of Sparta and the league of city states that bear its name in the war against Athens.

Peloponnesian Peninsula

This sea borders Greece on the West and separates Greece from Italy

Ionian Sea

These two straights must be passed to reach the Black sea when sailing from Greece or anywhere in the greater Mediterranean.

The Dardanelles and the Bosphorus (also called the Hellespont in ancient Greece)

This general who took over Egypt after the death of his king, was the cause of Egypt's last pharaoh being a descendant of the Greeks.

Ptolemy

The campaign of Alexander the Great and the many cities he founded spread this culture which caused the Greek language to become the language spoken around the western world and, therefore, the language of the New Testament.

Hellenistic culture

This Persian ruler sought to conquer Greece and was nearly defeated by 300 Spartans (plus a few thousand other greeks) at the Battle of Thermopylae despite having an army of up to 1,000,000 men (likely far less)

Xerxes

This Athenian practice was the cause for those exiled from Athens by vote and still used as a term today for those who are considered outcasts.

Ostracism

These two physical features are the main reason that Greece didn't form into one united empire until the end of the Classical period

Mountains and Islands

This is the name of the period of decline in Greek civilization after the fall of Mycenaean civilization until the establishment of Athens and Sparta in the classical period.

The Greek Dark Ages