Think of Crystal Spires and Togas, but without the crystal spires or the togas.
Home of columned temples, chiton-wearing gods, slinkily dressed goddesses, amazons, and bearded philosophers. Also home to mythic thong-wearing heroes who ride winged horses and do great deeds (all without getting either chafed
or sunburnt). The
Spartans
live here too, and they're known for their
brutal training methods, stylish
slow-motion fighting techniques and for being manly enough to charge nearly naked into battle even when outnumbered 70 to 1. And they
definitely aren't gay. Frequently
confused with
Ancient Rome by directors who
just don't care.
In fact, this picture is a
blend of two distinct periods; mythical Greece, conventionally said to end with the
Trojan War around 1000BC, and classical Greece, home to the first philosophers. The "classical Greece" period itself tends to
blend cultures that evolved and combined over the course of many centuries. Until Athens pulled the city-states together for defense against Persia, Greece didn't have a monolithic culture; it was the sum of the cultures of many independent city-states, all angling to make their patron gods the most important, and all ultimately blended together in the giant food processor of history. If you were to visit the Balkan Peninsula in, say, Pythagoras' day, you'd find that religious practices and social mores varied heavily depending on what city you were in.
Popular tropes that feature this time period are:
Series set in this time period are:
open/close all folders
Anime and Manga
- Historie
- So far, alluded to in Axis Powers Hetalia 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.
Comic Books
Film
Literature
- David Gemmell's Lion of Macedon is a retelling of Alexander the Great (or, rather, his dad).
- The Trojan Cycle, including the Homeric epics
- The Batrachomyomachia
- The Aeneid
- The Metamorphoses
- Terry Pratchett 's Pyramids and Small Gods both feature Ephebe, an Affectionate Parody of Athens and her philosophers, while Eric (as well as the videogame Discworld Noir) touches on the Trojan War.
- Gene Wolfe's Soldier Of The Mist and Soldier of Arete tell the story of a mercenary in Xerces' army who does something to offend the gods, and is cursed with forgetting everything that happens more than a day ago, but who can see the gods. Wolfe "translates" place names (for example, Sparta is "Rope", and they fought the "Great King" at "Hot Springs"), lending a sense of immediacy, and distancing the book from the familiarity of the trope.
- The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley.
- Mary Renault's mature period novels.
- Liddell and Scott Greek-English Lexicon: Decidedly Non Fiction.
- Thais of Athens is set during the classical period and the onset of Hellenism.
- Time Scout mentions Ancient Greece as the destination of a tourist gate, but only one brief scene features it and only two downtimers came through that gate.
- Over The Wine Dark Sea: Hellenistic period.
Live Action TV
Theater
Video Games
Webcomics
