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Ancient Greece refers to the civilization belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. At the center of this time period is Classical Greece, which flourished during the 5th to 4th centuries BC, at first under Athenian leadership successfully repelling the military threat of Persian invasion. The Athenian Golden Age ends with the defeat of Athens at the hands of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC.

Classical Greece is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of Western civilization.

Literary Comment[]

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 AD 500 should go on that page.

Ancient Greece in "Counting Potsherds"[]

Yauna fell to Persia in 480 BC when Athens was decisively defeated. It then became a Persian province with Peiraieus as its capital.

Ancient Greece in Crosstime Traffic[]

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]

Ancient Greece in Gunpowder Empire[]

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, nevertheless 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.

Ancient Greece in "The Daimon"[]

DelianLeague

The Delian League, just prior to the Peloponnesian War.

Despite their common language and heritage, the Hellenes were divided in several autonomous city-states. After Alkibiades successfully conquered Syracuse,[2] Sparta,[3] and his own Athens,[4] Hellenic Greece was sufficiently unified to launch a war with its eternal enemy, Persia.[5]

Ancient Greece in Hellenic Traders[]

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.

Ancient Greece in "The Horse of Bronze"[]

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.

Ancient Greece in "Myth Manners' Guide to Greek Missology"[]

Andromeda saved Greece from the "threat" posed by the Gorgons.

Ancient Greece in Supervolcano[]

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]

Miller was at a conference at the University of Chicago giving a lecture on the Hellenstic age when the Supervolcano erupted. He was flying home at the time of the eruption but his aircraft was forced to ditch in Nebraska.

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.

Ancient Greece in Thessalonica[]

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.

See also[]

  • Greece, for Greece in more recent centuries.
  • Sithonia, a cultural region in the Elabon Series, whose history is largely based on ancient Greece.

References[]

  1. 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.
  2. See e.g.: Atlantis and Other Places, pgs. 173-175, HC.
  3. Ibid., pgs. 180-183.
  4. Ibid., pgs. 192-195.
  5. Ibid., pgs. 209-213.
  6. Eruption, pgs. 91-92, HC.
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