Drama, tragedy, democracy, and chaos – of the sober and the drunken sort – were invented first by the Greeks, so they say. Art, architecture, aristocracy, and hubris were also Greek inventions. Greece is a land with perhaps two histories, two identities - the idealized identity of the history books and the hazy apparition that was its reality. For example, Zeus might have been the most respected of Greek gods, but Dionysus was perhaps the most favored. Curiously, while Dionysus is popularly represented as the god of wine and merrymaking, this ancient mythical figure has a much less talked about but no less prominent association with death and madness. Similarly, while ancient Greek art often displays all the strange calm of the terribly rational, so much of it is about either warring or drinking. Happily, though, ancient Greece was not all stark white facades and philosophy. Indeed, between the black and the white of the picture, a great deal of color enlivened the everyday existence of the ancient Greek. And not least of this color was very likely found on the great temples, which today appear washed so clean.

Ruined walls and decorative art found throughout the Aegean isles, Northwestern Anatolia, and mainland Greece reveal that Minoan culture spread to areas beyond Crete. And when the island finally met its end in the form of a tidal wave or volcanic eruption, civilization began anew at Mycenae. Like the Cretans, the Mycenaeans built up a powerful network of trade. And like the Cretans, their influence extended across the sea, and as well, they became influenced from across sea, by the Egyptians and the Persians.

Almost as testament to its greatness, some of the best known Greek legends are associated with Mycenaean civilization. As myth would have it, Mycenae was founded by Perseus, and much later Hercules set out from the land to accomplish his famous labors. On the other hand, Helen of Troy is believed by some to have lived in actuality, and a complex history of King Agamemnon’s Mycenae is told by Homer in the Iliad. In comparatively recent history, Mycenae, Tiryns, and the Trojan city have all been uncovered. After a silence of ages, their remains have had much to say to a modern world about those now legendary peoples of so long ago.

Ancient Greece was host to democracy punctuated by periodic tyranny. In the centuries following the expedition against Troy, a number of societies called Greece home. These included the Spartans, the Dorians, and the Ionians – the latter being related to the Aegean islanders. Amidst an atmosphere of alternating politics, civil war with the Spartans, and battle with the Persians, Athens grew into a prominent center of cultural activity where architects, philosophers, poets, and playwrights produced the majority of works that have come down to present day.

Macedonia keeps historical place as birth town of Alexander the Great. A known cultural tendency of the ancient Greeks was to view all non-Greeks as barbaroi, or barbarians, even if like themselves those people were civilized. By comparison, Alexander loved his culture, and held at the same time a great respect for civilizations other than his own. Because of this, Alexander would succeed in carrying Greek culture to lands as far away as India, and in creating his own legend. In many parts of the Middle East, and in the Muslim holy book, the Quran, Alexander is warmly known as Zul Kharnain, or the Two Horns, a name which refers to the helmet characteristically worn by the great conqueror.