section_path: History by region/Europe/Greece
section_name: Greece
paragraph_text: Greece
  
  Greece is home to the first advanced civilizations in Europe beginning with the Cycladic civilization on the islands of the Aegean Sea around 3200 BC, and the Minoan civilization in Crete (2700–1500 BC). The Minoans built large palaces decorated with frescoes and wrote in the undeciphered script known as Linear A. The Mycenaean civilization, the first distinctively Greek civilization later emerged on the mainland (1600–1100 BC), consisting of a network of palace-centered states and writing the earliest attested form of Greek with the Linear B script. The Mycenaeans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC, along with several other civilizations in the eastern Mediterranean, during the regional event known as the Late Bronze Age collapse. This ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent.
  
  The Archaic Period in Greece is generally considered to have lasted from around the 8th century BC to the invasion by Xerxes in 480 BC. This period saw the expansion of the Greek world around the Mediterranean, with the founding of Greek city-states as far afield as Sicily in the west and the Black Sea in the east. Politically, the Archaic period in Greece saw the collapse of the power of the old aristocracies, with democratic reforms in Athens and the development of Sparta's unique constitution. The end of the Archaic period also saw the rise of Athens, which would come to be a dominant power in the Classical Period, after the reforms of Solon and the tyranny of Pisistratus.
  
  The Classical Greek world was dominated throughout the 5th century BC by the major powers of Athens and Sparta. Through the Delian League, Athens was able to convert pan-hellenist sentiment and fear of the Persian threat into a powerful empire, and this, along with the conflict between Sparta and Athens culminating in the Peloponnesian War, was the major political development of the first part of the Classical period. The period in Greek history from the death of Alexander the Great until the rise of the Roman empire and its conquest of Egypt in 30 BC is known as the Hellenistic period. After Alexander's death, a series of wars between his successors eventually led to three large states being formed from parts of Alexander's conquests, each ruled by a dynasty founded by one of the successors. These were the Antigonids, the Selucids, and the Ptolemies. These three kingdoms, along with smaller kingdoms, spread Greek culture and lifestyles into Asia and Egypt. These varying states eventually were conquered by Rome or the Parthian Empire.