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During years of Nazi occupation thousands of Greeks died in direct combat, in concentration camps or of starvation. The occupiers murdered the greater part of the Jewish community despite efforts by the Greek Orthodox Church and many Christian Greeks to shelter Jews.The economy languished in tatters. After liberation Greece experienced an equally bitter civil war — between communists and royalists -- that lasted until 1949.

The manufacturing sector accounts for about 13% of GDP. The food industry is one of the most profitable and fastest-growing areas of manufacturing, with significant export potential. High-technology equipment production, especially for telecommunications, is also a fast-growing sector. Other important areas include textiles, building materials, machinery, transport equipment, and electrical appliances.

Out of the vague and limitless body there sprung a central mass — this earth of ours, cylindrical in shape, poised equidistant from surrounding orbs of fire, which had originally clung to it like the bark round a tree, until their continuity was severed, and they parted into several wheel-shaped and fire-filled bubbles of air.

Every Greek town of any size also had a palaestra or a gymnasium. These were essentially enclosed spaces, open to the sky and lined with shaded colonnades, used for athletic contests and exercise: they were the social centres for male citizens. Greek towns also needed at least one bouleuterion or council chamber, a large square building which served as both a meeting place for the town council (boule) and as a court house. Because the Greeks did not use arches or domes, they could not build large rooms with unsupported rooves: the bouleuterion thus had rows of internal columns to hold the roof up. No examples of these buildings survive.

The variety in Greek religion is also caused by the long history of Greece. Greek religion spans a period from Minoan and Mycenean periods to the days of Hellenistic Greece and its ultimate conquest by the Roman Empire. Religious ideas continued to develop over this time; by the time of the earliest major monument of Greek literature, the Iliad attributed to Homer, a consensus had already developed about who the major Olympian gods were. Still, changes to the canon remained possible; the Iliad seems to have been unaware of Dionysus, a god whose worship apparently spread after it was written, and who became important enough to be named one of the twelve chief Olympian gods.

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.

Greece has a mixed capitalist economy with the public sector accounting for about half of GDP. Tourism has great importance, providing a large portion of GDP and foreign exchange earnings. Greece also counts as a world leader in shipping (first in terms of ownership of boats and third by flag registration) [2] (http://www.marad.dot.gov/MARAD_statistics/Country-MFW-7-04.pdf). Greece figures prominently as a major beneficiary of EU aid, equal to about 2.4% of GNP. The export of manufactured goods, including telecommunications hardware and software, foodstuffs and fuels accounts for the rest of Greek income.

Some of the best known Hellenistic sculptures are the Winged Victory of Samothrace (2nd or 1st century BC), the statue of Aphrodite from the island of Melos known as the Venus de Milo (mid 2nd century BC), the Dying Gaul (about 230 BC), and the monumental group Laocoön and his Sons (late 1st century BC). All these statues depict Classical themes, but their treatment is far more sensuous and emotional than the austere taste of the Classical period would have allowed or its technical skills permitted.

In theatre, Aeschylus introduced the ideas of dialogue and interacting characters to playwriting. In doing so, he essentially invented "drama": his Oresteia trilogy of plays is seen as his crowning achievement. Other refiners of playwriting were Sophocles and Euripides. Aristophanes, a comic playwright, defined and shaped the idea of comedy as a theatrical form.