Ancient Greece was a civilisation that was based around the city states of Greece, in places such as Athens and Sparta. Ancient Greece can be traced back to 800BC and continues until 146BC when the Romans took it over and Greece became part of the Roman Empire.

Ancient Greece is famous for beginning the Olympic Games (about 750BC) and for many of the world's most famous poets such as Homer. By 508BC the Ancient Greeks in Athens even developed democracy. In 472BC the Greeks invented the theatre and started to put on plays.

Greece was also home to many famous early thinkers and scientists, such as Socrates and Aristotle.

The problem was that the Greeks were always at war with each other, and with the eastern neighbours - the Persians.

In 338BC the king of a northern part of Greece called Macedonia took over the whole of Greece and brought it into a single country. His son, Alexander the Great, was able to use the power of the combined Greeks to make a huge empire. However, when Alexander died there was no leader to follow on from him, and Greece became slowly weaker, while its neighbour, Rome, became stronger.