Ancient Greek Ancient Greek The Ancient Greek language includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BCE to the 6th century CE. It is often roughly divided into the Archaic period (9th to 6th centuries BCE), Classical period (5th and 4th centuries BCE), and Hellenistic period (Koine Greek, 3rd century BCE to the 4th century CE). It is antedated in the second millennium BCE by Mycenaean Greek and succeeded by medieval Greek. Koine is regarded as a separate historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic
Ancient Greek sculpture survive, for example the bronze Piraeus Athena (2.35 metres high, including a helmet). In Greek and Roman mythology, a "palladium" was an image of great antiquity on which the safety of a city was said to depend, especially the wooden one that Odysseus and Diomedes stole from the citadel of Troy and which was later taken to Rome by Aeneas. (The Roman story was related in Virgil's "Aeneid" and other works.) Ancient Greek sculpture Ancient Greek sculpture is the sculpture of ancient Greece. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture. At all periods there were great numbers of