Ancient Greece (Ancient Greek: Ἑλλάς, romanized: Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (c. 600 CE), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states (poleis) and other territories. Most of these regions were officially unified only once, for 13 years, under Alexander the Great's empire from 336 to 323 BC. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period.
Harry Turtledove uses Ancient Greece as a setting frequently in his writing. Conversely, stories set in Modern Greece are few and far between. Information about stories set in Greece after about 600 CE should go on that page.
The Koine dialect of ancient Greek was the primary means of communication in one of the alternates where the Crosstime Traffic company maintained a secret presence. Jeremy Solters knew people who learned this dialect via implants in order to travel to that timeline.[1]
In an alternate known as "Agrippan Rome", Greece remained part of the Roman Empire at the close of the 21st century. Its medicine and doctors were reckoned the best in the Empire, though they were still centuries behind the home timeline. Crosstime Traffic agent Melissa Solters did not trust them a centimeter when it came to removing her diseased appendix, and so transported home to have the job done.
Despite their common language and heritage, Hellas was divided into several autonomous city-states (poleis). After Alkibiades successfully conquered Syracuse,[2], defeated and subjugated Sparta,[3] and usurped the government of Athens,[4], he was proclaimed the leader of Hellas. His position secured, Alkibiades convinced the Hellenes to launch a war with their eternal enemy, the Persians.[5]
The Hellenic World was still recovering from the actions of Alexander the Great, over a decade after his death. Various city-states were under the control of his heirs, while others managed to retain their independence.
This article or subsection is a stub because the work is part of a larger, as-of-yet incomplete series.
The ancestral home of the centaurs was overrun by the Lapiths who believed they were entitled to take from all lesser beings simply because of their innate superiority.
Bryce Miller had become interested in Ancient Greece while still in high school. This led to his studying it in college and earning a PhD on the Hellenistic age.[6]
He eventually made his way back to California and received his PhD. Job prospects were poor for someone specializing in Ancient Greece so he made do with several different jobs including a teaching position at Junipero High School. He looked for teaching positions at various colleges. He returned to Nebraska to take a job at Wayne State College, teaching a course on Greece which included the Peloponnesian War and Melian Dialogue.
The ancient ways of Greece had been suppressed by the Christian church after the Roman Empire moved to Constantinople, but were not forgotten, due to the power of Homer's writings. Supernatural creatures such as centaurs and satyrs roamed the wilderness of Greece, and humans practiced pagan worship in the village of Lete, near Thessalonica.
In AD 597, the pagan creatures came to the aid of their Christian (and Jewish) neighbors during the great Avar siege.
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Sithonia, a cultural region in the Elabon Series, whose history is largely based on ancient Greece.
References[]
↑Gunpowder Empire, p. 9. This may be the same alternate where Alexander the Great's empire survived down the centuries, referenced elsewhere in the same novel.
