History UsefulNotes / AncientGreece

* AThicketOfSpears: The Greeks are quite famous for their use of the phalanx in land battles, blocks of hoplites with a bronze shield in one hand and a spear in the other. The Macedonians under Philip and UsefulNotes/{{Alexander|TheGreat}} improved on it by creating the sarissa, a pike with a shaft eighteen feet long. His successors weren't as brilliant as he, however, and the phalanx ended up being obsoleted by the more flexible Roman maniple, which mixed spearmen with swordsmen.

!!Works set in this time period:

* Literature/TheTrojanCycle, including the Creator/{{Homer}}ic epics
** ''Literature/TheIliad''
** ''Literature/TheOdyssey''
* The ''Literature/{{Batrachomyomachia}}''

!!Works produced by Ancient Greek citizens:

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!!Works set in this time period:

[[folder:{{Anime}} & {{Manga}}]]
* ''Manga/{{Historie}}''
* So far, alluded to in ''Webcomic/HetaliaAxisPowers'' though Herakles/Greece's as yet unseen mother, Mama Greece. It's also implied that she eventually became the Byzantine Empire... only for her to die in Turkey's hands.
* ''Utae! Erinna'' by Futaba Sato
* The prologue to Creator/OsamuTezuka's ''Manga/{{Unico}}'' is set in Ancient Greece where the [[{{Unicorn}} titular unicorn protagonist]] was owned by Psyche. During a Pet Competition held in Thessilsa, Unico gets separated from Psyche by [[JerkassGods Venus]] out of jealousy. The Greek motif is carried throughout the manga and [[Anime/UnicoBlackCloudAndWhiteFeather other animated]] [[Anime/TheFantasticAdventuresOfUnico incarnations]] and its [[Manga/UnicoAwakening upcoming re-imagined manga.]]

[[folder:{{Comic Books}}]]
* ''ComicBook/ThreeHundred''
* ''ComicBook/{{Three}}'', an intentional SpiritualAntithesis to ''300''.
* ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}} at the Olympic Games''
* ''ComicBook/TheCartoonHistoryOfTheUniverse'': Volumes 5-7, at any rate.
* ComicBook/{{Democracy}}: a graphic novel depicting how, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Democracy was formed]]!
* ''ComicBook/{{Epicurus the Sage}}'' by William Messner-Loebs and Sam Kieth.
* ''ComicBook/{{Mosaik}}'' No. 218-233 sees the [[ComicBook/DieAbrafaxe Abrafaxe]] in Athens, Delphi and elsewhere on the eve of UsefulNotes/ThePeloponnesianWar. They meet Alcibiades, Socrates and Sophocles, but it is not all wine and roses - Abrax even becomes a slave and has to work building the Parthenon and in the Athenian silver mines.
* ''ComicBook/{{Erotocritos}}'', a ComicBookAdaptation of the novel of the same name, takes place in [[UsefulNotes/{{Athens}} Ancient Athens]], though the setting is so anachronical you wouldn't know it if it wasn't stated to you.

[[folder:{{Theater}}]]
* Creator/{{Aeschylus}}
** ''Theatre/TheOresteia'': ''Theatre/{{Agamemnon}}'', ''Theatre/TheLibationBearers'' and ''Theatre/{{Eumenides}}''.
* Creator/{{Aristophanes}}
** ''Theatre/TheClouds''
** ''Theatre/{{Lysistrata}}''
* Creator/{{Euripides}}
** ''Theatre/{{Medea}}''
** ''Theatre/{{Alcestis}}''
** ''Theatre/{{Bacchae}}''
** ''Theatre/{{Hippolytus}}''
** ''Theatre/TheTrojanWomen''
* Creator/{{Sophocles}}
** ''Theatre/OedipusTheKing''
** ''Theatre/OedipusAtColonus''
** ''Theatre/{{Antigone}}''
** ''Theatre/{{Ajax}}''
** ''Theatre/TheWomenOfTrachis''
** ''Theatre/{{Electra}}''
** ''Theatre/{{Philoctetes}}''
* Creator/{{Shakespeare}}

* BladeOnAStick: Hoplites' combined spears with heavy armour and shields in a tight formation to create a mass of metal which couldn't be fought head-on any other way than using one of your own and hoping it doesn't break. Hoplites largely ''were'' Greek warfare for many years before the tacticians thought about ''not'' [[HitAndRunTactics fighting them head-on]].

* ''Webcomic/{{GastroPhobia}}'' is about an [[ActionMom Amazonian single mother]] and her son and their adventures in Ancient Greece.

* The prologue to Creator/OsamuTezuka's ''Manga/{{Unico}}'' is set in Ancient Greece where the titular protagonist was owned by Psyche. During a Pet Competition held in Thessilsa, Unico gets separated from Psyche by [[JerkassGods Venus]] out of jealously. The Greek motif is carried throughout the manga and [[Anime/UnicoBlackCloudAndWhiteFeather other animated]] [[Anime/TheFantasticAdventuresOfUnico incarnations]] and its [[Manga/UnicoAwakening upcoming re-imagined manga.]]

Compare AncientEgypt, another historically prominent ancient civilization with a rich culture and mythology that lasted for millennia until the Roman conquest in 30 BC.

!!Popular tropes that feature or came around in this time period are:

* BadassArmy: '''The Spartans''' (well, according to pop culture that rose since, anyway; other cities were no slouch either).

* BiggerIsBetterInBed: Inverted to Tartarus and back. A small wang was a sign of virility, while being hung like a horse was just plain silly looking! More specifically, the Greeks valued intellect and self-control in men, and a smaller penis was taken as a symbol of such, while a larger penis meant being closer to animals and lacking self-control.

* HitAndRunTactics: The innovation of lightly-armoured skirmishers attacking from afar and retreating when the slow hoplite formations got close ended the hoplites' dominance over Greek battlefields.

!!Series set in this time period are:

[[folder:{{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]

[[folder:{{Film}}]]

[[folder:LiveActionTV]]

-->-- '''Creator/{{Pericles}}''', ''[[Creator/{{Thucydides}} Funeral Oration]]''

-->-- '''Pericles''', ''[[Creator/{{Thucydides}} Funeral Oration]]''

[[folder:{{Webcomics}}]]

!! Popular tropes that feature or came around in this time period are:

* HeManWomanHater:
** Played straight with Athenian society, which was profoundly misogynistic. One of the very few famous Athenian women was Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, Athens's most eminent statesman, and Creator/{{Socrates}} said that she taught him the art of rhetoric. Very little else about her is known for sure, because most of the men who said or wrote anything about her were repelled by the fact that she was both smart and opinionated, to the point they can't bring themselves to write further about her.[[note]]Plenty of Athenian men noted that the aforementioned Aspasia was a great conversationalist, but none of them bothered to actually write down anything she said.[[/note]]
*** Generally speaking, all of Ancient Greece was pretty misogynistic, with Creator/{{Hesiod}} and Creator/{{Aristotle}} being two extreme cases.
** Spartan society was a rare exception, as its women were allowed to inherit property and taught to read and write. Spartan girls were also fed the same food as boys and, unlike Athenian girls who were typically married off at 12 or 13, Spartan girls weren't expected to take a husband until their late teens or early 20s, making them much healthier than their Athenian counterparts. This was practical, because the Spartans were vastly outnumbered by their slaves, the helots, and they couldn't afford to throw their girls into childbirth when the risk of death at that age is so much higher than in adulthood. Spartan girls exercised, just like Spartan boys, and were encouraged to insult and humiliate the boys during their training. They had their own rites and rituals, and whereas Athenian women were dressed in heavy clothes and kept indoors, Spartan women wore light clothes and could walk around in public. They were also encouraged to develop the famous laconic wit. Plutarch published a collection of ''Sayings of Spartan Women''. There are next to no recorded sayings of Athenian women.
** The extent of misogyny among Ancient Greeks is such that as Mary Beard pointed out, women expressing any kind of agency, whether in drama such as Klytemnestra supplanting Agamemnon, Medea revenging on Jason, or mythical descriptions of the Amazons, were always referred to in masculine pronouns. Plays would refer to women as female and then convert to male the minute they acted in any way the Greeks thought unnatural, when such a thing didn't happen for male figures, even when they were bad guys.