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along the coasts of the Mediterranean and Black Seas and the transformation of
Greece into a center of the latest trends in culture.
The Archaic period (about 650-480 BC) marked the consolidation of the
social life of the polises, introduction of democracy in most cities, emergence of

the legal system (laws of Lycurgus in Sparta, Draco and Solon in the Athens),
flourishing Greek colonies in Western Minor Asia and Southern Italy, rise of
temple construction, creative reinterpretation of eastern traditions in architecture

and art, philosophy and birth of a victory in the fight against small and dispersed
Greece over the vast Achaemenid Persian empire as evidence of reweight of the
Greek (European) way of life over the barbaric world of the oriental despotism.

The clasic period (480 - 323 BC) despite the relative transience, rapid rise of
all forms of culture, which became the largest achievements in architecture and
town planning - the Athenian Acropolis with its crown jewel - the Parthenon, the

sculpture – works of Policlet, Phidias, Praksitel, Scop, Lisippa in literature and
dramatic art - tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripide, in philosophy - the
ideas of Socrate , Plato, Aristotle. The Athens became the most powerful political
center and cultural mecca of the Mediterranean world, creating a union of polises,

which included more than 200 Greek cities, but failing to prevent the confrontation
between the two models of the Hellenic culture – all these factors diluted Greece

making it a relatively easy prey for the Macedonian state.
Hellenistic period (323-30 BC) is marked by the crisis of traditional values
and simultaneous general expansion of the cultural achievements of the ancient
Greeks beyond Greece. The formation of Alexander the Macedonian state and its

successor - the Hellenistic monarchies – created for the first timein the history the
conditions for the full integration of opposite cultural traditions of the ‘West’ and
‘East’ (a kind of current globalization trends in the world development )into a

single unit. The Athens transformed into a ‘museum’ of values of the classical
world, the primary role is taken by the eastern cultural center – Alexandria (Egypt),
with its renowned library at Museyon – ‘Temple of the Muses’, Antioch, Seleucia,

Pergamon. Numerous monuments testify to the greatness and originality of the
Hellenistic culture, which even after the conquest by Rome had a noticeable impact
on the culture of invaders and led to its rise in the IIId century.

The culture of Ancient Rome also had a fairly long history. The Etruscan
culture was formed back in the IX-VIIIth centuries BC and finally dissolved in
Rome only in the first century BC, leaving behind many cultural features that
strike us as ‘purely Roman’. It was the oldest civilization in the Apennine

peninsula, the cradle of the tribe of the Latins who later turned their tiny city-state
into the greatest empire in the ancient world.

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