Ancient Greece - Legacy

Legacy

The civilization of ancient Greece has been immensely influential on language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science, and the arts. It became the Leitkultur of the Roman Empire to the point of marginalizing native Italic traditions. As Horace put it,

Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes / intulit agresti Latio (Epistulae 2.1.156f.)

"Captive Greece took captive her fierce conqueror and instilled her arts in rustic Latium."

Via the Roman Empire, Greek culture came to be foundational to Western culture in general. The Byzantine Empire inherited Classical Greek culture directly, without Latin intermediation, and the preservation of classical Greek learning in medieval Byzantine tradition further exerted strong influence on the Slavs and later on the Islamic Golden Age and the Western European Renaissance. A modern revival of Classical Greek learning took place in the Neoclassicism movement in 18th and 19th century Europe and the Americas.