Greek shipping pottery, gold, copper objects far away from their area of provenance attests to this wide-ranging network of shipping transport and trade that existed between the Greek mainland and the Greek islands . The Greeks soon came to dominate the maritime trade in the region, gradually expanding it along the shores of the Mediterranean to Egypt, Phoenicia, Asia Minor, the Black Sea, and establishing colonies. The prowess of the ancient Greek navy was primarily displayed in naval battles during the Persian wars, the Delian League era and the Peloponnesian war. In the following centuries, a large part of the sea trade
Ancient Greek verbs three tenses are used, and they distinguish aspect only, not time: The optative mood likewise uses these three tenses, but there is also a future optative, used mainly to report indirectly what would be a future indicative in direct speech. Ancient Greek has no perfect progressive or past perfect progressive. Thus, the meaning "he has been doing" is typically expressed with the present tense, and "he had been doing (earlier)" is expressed with the imperfect tense: For further information on the endings, see Ancient Greek grammar (tables). Dictionaries of Ancient Greek usually give six principal parts for any verb. For