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In this period statuary was put to wider uses. The great public buildings of the Classical era, such as the Parthenon in Athens, created the need for decorative statuary, particularly to fill the triangular fields of the pediments: a difficult aesthetic and technical challenge that did much to stimulate sculptural innovation. Unfortunately such sculptures survive only in fragments, the most famous of which are the Parthenon Marbles, now mostly in the British Museum.

The religion of ancient Greece is well-known in the modern western world via Greek mythology. Tales of the Greek gods and mythological heroes remain popular to this day.

However, when the Germans attempted to seize Crete in a massive attack by paratroops — with the aim of reducing the threat of a counter-offensive by Allied forces in Egypt — Allied forces, along with Cretan civilians, offered fierce resistance. Although Crete eventually fell, this delayed German plans significantly, with the result that the German invasion of the Soviet Union started fatally close to winter.

Greece has various, if not numerous, linguistic and cultural minorities. A non-comprehensive list of these would include various Roma groups, Turkish-speakers, Slavs, and Vlachs, (Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians). Numerous religious minorities exist: Muslims form the largest such minority.

Aristotle, known as Aristoteles in most languages other than English (Aristotele in Italian), (384 BC - March 7, 322 BC) has, along with Plato, the reputation of one of the two most influential philosophers in Western thought.

It is sometimes difficult to determine which ideas Pythagoras taught originally, as opposed to the ideas his followers later added. While he clearly attached great importance to geometry, classical Greek writers tended to cite Thales as the great pioneer of this science rather than Pythagoras. The later tradition of Pythagoras as the inventor of mathematics stems largely from the Roman period.

Herodotus and Thucydides are often credited with developing the modern study of history into a field worthy of philosophical and scientific pursuit.

The Ottomans ruled Greece until the early 19th century. In 1821 the Greeks rebelled and declared their independence, but did not succeed in winning it until 1829. The elites of powerful European nations saw the war of Greek independence, with its accounts of Turkish atrocities, in a romantic light (see, for example, the 1824 painting Massacre of Chios by Eugene Delacroix). Scores of non-Greeks volunteered to fight for the cause - including, for example Lord Byron - and indeed at times the Ottomans seemed on the point of almost entirely suppressing the Greek revolution but for the threatened direct military intervention of France, England or Russia. The Russian minister for foreign affairs, Ioannis Kapodistrias, himself a Greek, returned home as President of the new Republic following Greek independence. That republic disappeared when a few years later Western powers helped turn Greece into a monarchy, the first king coming from Bavaria and the second from Denmark. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, in a series of wars with the Ottomans, Greece sought to enlarge its boundaries to include the Greek-speaking population of the Ottoman Empire, slowly growing in territory and population until it reached its present configuration in 1947. In World War I Greece sided with the entente powers against a pro-German Turkey. In the war's aftermath the Powers awarded parts of Asia Minor to Greece, including the city of Smyrna (known as Izmir today) which had a large Greek population. At that time, however, the Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, overthrew the Ottoman government, organised a military assault on the Greek troops and defeated them. Immediately afterwards, hundreds of thousands of Turks then living in mainland Greek territory left for Turkey as an exchange with hundreds of thousands of Greeks living in Turkey.

Recent economic performance has been satisfying. However the challenge for policymakers now is to avoid an economic slump after the enthusiasm of the Games has gone and the EU farm subsidies get cut in 2006.

Cypriot music has many similarities to traditional Greek music, and their modern music scenes remain well-integrated. Ethnic Greeks have long been the largest ethnic group on the island.

The Greek Orthodox Church is under the protection of the State, which pays the clergy's salaries, and Orthodox Christianity is the "prevailing" religion of Greece according to the Constitution. The Greek Orthodox Church is self-governing but under the spiritual guidance of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople.