Greeks call themselves Hellenes, and Greece Hellas; our term "Greece" derives from their Roman conquerors. From the eighth century BC, colonisation had taken Greek-speakers all over the Mediterranean, from the Black Sea, Turkey, to North Africa, Italy France and Spain, like "frogs around a pond" (Plato).By the fifth century BC Classical Greeks had organised themselves into independent citizen states (known as polis, from which comes our word "political") such as Athens, Sparta, Ephesus, Byzantion and Marseilles. Each polis had its own laws, dialect, currency and government. Strongly independent, they fought among themselves for domination, and internally over different styles of constitution (eg, tyranny, democracy, oligarchy). In the fourth …show more content…
Roman expansion east was made easier by the conquests of Alexander the Great, who introduced Greek polis style culture, administration and urban living, as far as Afghanistan.The Greek language, however, spread throughout the Mediterranean. Greek was heard in Rome probably more often than Latin. The gospel writers and St Paul knew perfectly well that they would have to write in Greek if they wanted their message to spread. Romans lapped up Greek culture – literature, history, philosophy and architecture – and by making Greek a central feature of their education system ensured that Greek achievement would be handed on to us today.By the fourth century AD it was clear that the Roman empire was becoming too large to be centrally controlled. In 324 the Roman emperor Constantine in effect split the empire into two halves, the eastern half centred on Greek Byzantium, renamed Constantinople (now Istanbul). When the Western Roman empire collapsed under the impact of Germanic invasions in the fifth century, Constantinople became the new centre of the Roman empire, known as the Byzantine empire.The collapse of the western empire led to some turmoil in the east, but the Byzantines gradually regained control over Greece until the treacherous attack on Constantinople in 1204 by the Frankish crusaders (western