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The earliest works in European literary tradition are the epic poems of Homer and Hesiod. Early Greek lyric poetry, as represented by poets like Sappho and Pindar, were responsible for defining the lyric genre as it is still understood in western literature. Aesop wrote his Fables in the 6th century BC.

Most of the best known surviving Greek buildings, such as the Parthenon and the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, are Doric. The Erechtheum, next to the Parthenon, however, is Ionic. The Ionic order became dominant in the Hellenistic period, since its more decorative style suited the aesthetic of the period better than the more restrained Doric. Some of the best surviving Hellenistic buildings, such as the Library of Celsus, can be seen in Turkey, at cities such as Ephesus and Pergamum. But in the greatest of Hellenistic cities, Alexandria in Egypt, almost nothing survives.

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.

Greece was inhabited as early as the Paleolithic period and by 3000 BC had become home, in the Cycladic Islands, to a culture whose art remains among the most evocative in world history. Early in the 2nd millennium BC, the island of Crete nurtured the sophisticated maritime empire of the Minoans, whose trade reached from Egypt to Sicily. The Minoans were challenged and eventually supplanted by the Mycenaeans of the Greek mainland, who spoke a dialect of ancient Greek. Initially, Greece's mosaic of small city-states were ethnically similar. During the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires (1st century-19th century), Greece's ethnic composition became more diverse. Since independence in 1829 and an exchange of populations with Turkey in 1923, Greece has forged a national state which claims roots reaching back 3,000 years.

The basic cube or rectangle was usually flanked by colonnades (rows of columns) on either two or on all four sides. This is the format of the Parthenon. Alternatively, a cube-shaped building would have a columned portico (or pronaos in Greek) forming its entrance, as seen at the Pantheon. The Greeks understood the principles of the masonry arch but made little use of it, and did not put domes on their buildings— these refinements were left to the Romans. The Greeks roofed their buildings with timber beams covered with overlapping terra cotta (or occasionally marble) tiles.

Pythagoras was also an ethical vegetarian. According to Ovid, Pythagoras once said, "As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love" (excerpt from the book The extended circle, by Jon Wynne-Tyson).

The Muslim minority, concentrated in Thrace, was given legal status by provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 and is Greece's only officially recognized religious minority.

The 2004 Summer Olympics took place in the country of their foundation to general satisfaction.

In medicine, doctors still refer to the Hippocratic oath, instituted by Hippocrates, who is also credited with laying the foundations of medicine as a science. Galen built on Hippocrates' theory of the four humours, and his writings became the foundation of medicine in Europe and the Middle East for centuries. The Greek physicians Herophilos and Paulus Aegineta were pioneers in the study of anatomy, while Pedanius Dioscorides wrote an extensive treatise on the practice of pharmacology.

The ancient Greeks developed two primary styles (or "Classical orders"); the restrained and solid Doric and the refined and decorated Ionic. It should be noted that the Ionic style eventually evolved into the more ornate Corinthian style.

Ancient Greek art has survived most successfully in the forms of sculpture and architecture, as well as in such minor arts as coin design, pottery and gem engraving. From the Archaic period a great deal of painted pottery survives, but these remnants give a misleading impression of the range of Greek artistic expression. The Greeks, like most European cultures, regarded painting as the highest form of art. The painter Polygnotus of Thasos, who worked in the mid 5th century BC, was regarded by later Greeks in much the same way that people today regard Leonardo or Michelangelo, and his works were still being admired 600 years after his death. Today none of his works survives, not even as copies.

The most widespread public act of worship in ancient Greece was sacrifice, especially the blood sacrifice of animals. The temples of the Greek religion generally were not public gathering places where people gathered socially for collective indoor prayer; most temples were little more than boxes that held a cult idol of the deity. Rather, the temples were part slaughterhouse and part barbecue; oxen, sheep, horses, swine, dogs, various birds, and almost every kind of beast, be it fur, fish, or fowl, were offered as sacrificial victims to one deity or another, again depending chiefly on local custom. When we are told in studies of mythology that "horses are sacred to Poseidon" or roosters to Hermes, what this meant first and foremost was that these animals were customarily offered as sacrifices to those gods. Most sacrificial victims were food animals; for these, the usual practice was to offer the god the blood, bones, and hide of the victim, while the worshippers kept and ate the rest.

Votives were gifts offered to the gods by their worshippers. They were often given for benefits already conferred or in anticipation of future divine favors. Or they could be offered to propitiate the gods for crimes involving blood-guilt, impiety, or the breach of religious customs. They could be given either voluntarily or in response to demands by the cult's priesthood that the donor fulfill a religious vow or honor some religious custom.

About 80% of Greece is mountainous or hilly. Much of the country is dry and rocky; only 28% of the land is arable. Greece has mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers. Temperatures are rarely extreme, although snowfalls do occur in the mountains and occasionally even in Athens in the winter.

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