The Greeks [antikvár]

Introduction The age of Classical Greece, the foundation of European civilization, began about the beginning of the 5th century B.C. and ended before the end of the 4th century. That is not a long time - less than 200 years - but of course it cannot be seen in isolation. Greek civilization was in existence 300 years earlier, and Greek culture in one form or another dominated the Mediterranean region for centuries afterwards; it continues to influence us today. The earliest civilization on mainland Greece was the Bronze Age civilization known as Mycenaean, after the city where the most spectacular remains were found by archaeologists in the last century. Mycenaean civilization, itself preceded by Minoan civilization in Crete, disappeared round about 1200 B.C. Its decline roughly coincided with invasion by a wilder, Greek-speaking race from the north called the Dorians. No doubt they were partly responsible for the disappearance of Mycenaean civilization, though there seem to have been other causes. The period of about four centuries that followed is known as the Dark Age, partly because records of it are few and our knowledge of the period is therefore slight. Since