Ancient Greek

This article needs additional citations for verification. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Ancient Greek" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Ancient Greek
Ἑλληνική Hellēnikḗ
An inscription about the construction of the statue of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon, 440/439 BC
Region	eastern Mediterranean
Language family	Indo-European Hellenic Ancient Greek
Early form	Proto-Greek
Writing system	Greek alphabet
Language codes
ISO 639-2	grc
ISO 639-3	grc (includes all pre-modern stages)
Glottolog	anci1242
Map of Ancient (Homeric) Greece
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (c. 1400–1200 BC), Dark Ages (c. 1200–800 BC), the Archaic or Epic period (c. 800–500 BC), and the Classical period (c. 500–300 BC).^[1]

Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek.

From the Hellenistic period (c. 300 BC), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regarded as a separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek, and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine.