Ancient Greek civilization developed from around 800 BCE on the Greek peninsula, the Aegean islands, and the western coast of Asia Minor. Its mountainous terrain encouraged political fragmentation into independent city-states called poleis, which became the center of Greek political and social life. Before the classical poleis flourished, two earlier cultures had risen in the Aegean: the Minoan civilization on Crete from about 2700 to 1450 BCE, Europe's first advanced civilization, famed for the Palace of Knossos, vibrant frescoes, and a maritime trading empire that may have inspired the legend of the Minotaur; and the Mycenaean civilization on mainland Greece from about 1600 to 1100 BCE, a warrior society with massive fortifications and the Linear B script, whose conflict with Troy was later immortalized by Homer.
The two most famous poleis, Athens and Sparta, represented very different ideals. Athens established the world's first known democracy around 508 BCE, a direct system in which male citizens voted on laws in the Assembly, or Ekklesia, and officials were often chosen by lottery. Women, slaves, and foreigners were excluded. Sparta, by contrast, was a militaristic society in which boys entered military training known as the agoge at age seven, and the city maintained a unique dual-kingship system. When the Persian Empire under Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 BCE, a small force of 300 Spartans under King Leonidas, joined by several thousand Greek allies, made a legendary last stand at Thermopylae. Though defeated, their sacrifice inspired Greek resistance, and the Persians were later turned back decisively at Marathon in 490 BCE, where Athenian forces, heavily outnumbered, defeated a Persian invasion force in a victory so celebrated that legend says a messenger ran to Athens with the news, inspiring the modern marathon.
Classical Greece also produced the foundational traditions of Western philosophy. Socrates, an Athenian considered the father of Western philosophy, developed the Socratic method of questioning to pursue truth; he was executed in 399 BCE for "corrupting the youth" and impiety, leaving no writings of his own. His student Plato founded the Academy in Athens and wrote philosophical dialogues such as The Republic, which explored justice and the theory of Forms. Aristotle, Plato's student and tutor to Alexander the Great, made foundational contributions to logic, biology, ethics, politics, and metaphysics, shaping Western thought for two millennia. Greek culture also flowered in architecture, exemplified by the Parthenon, a temple to Athena built on the Acropolis between 447 and 432 BCE under the architects Ictinus and Callicrates with sculptural supervision by Phidias, and in theater, which originated in Athens at festivals honoring Dionysus and produced enduring tragic and comic playwrights such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. After Alexander the Great's death in 323 BCE, the Hellenistic Period spread Greek culture across the Mediterranean and Near East, blending it with local traditions in kingdoms such as Ptolemaic Egypt until the Roman conquest in 31 BCE.