Where was ancient Greece?

Ancient Greece was not a single unified country but a collection of independent city-states (poleis) scattered across a broad geographic area. The core of the Greek world comprised the southern Balkan Peninsula (mainland Greece), the hundreds of islands in the Aegean Sea, and the western coast of Anatolia (modern Turkey, known as Ionia).

The geography of Greece profoundly shaped its civilization. The mainland is dominated by mountains, which divided the territory into isolated valleys and coastal plains. This mountainous terrain made political unification nearly impossible and explains why Greece developed as a collection of independent city-states rather than a unified kingdom. The sea, however, connected what the mountains divided — Greece's deeply indented coastline and numerous islands made maritime trade and communication natural.

Beyond the core territory, Greek colonization from the 8th to 6th centuries BCE created a vast network of Greek-speaking communities around the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Major colonies included Syracuse in Sicily, Massalia (Marseille) in France, Cyrene in Libya, Byzantium (later Constantinople) on the Bosphorus, and numerous settlements along the Black Sea coast. These colonies maintained cultural ties to their mother cities while developing their own political and social identities.

After Alexander the Great's conquests in the 4th century BCE, the Greek world expanded dramatically. Greek-speaking cities were founded from Egypt to Afghanistan, and Greek became the lingua franca of educated elites across the Near East and Central Asia. The geographic reach of 'ancient Greece' — from the western Mediterranean to the borders of India — is far larger than the small peninsula that gave it birth.