Greece

The common name for the peninsula, islands and colonies belonging to the descendants of Hellen, who was the father of all the Greeks.

The areas dominated by the Greeks varied over time but the Balkan Peninsula and the Peloponnesian Peninsula was their traditional home and, with few lapses, the Greeks ruled themselves with a fiercely independent determination which resisted any form of foreign control.

The Greek culture can be generally dated back to the end of the third century BCE Greece when the descendants of Hellen displaced the pre-historic inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula and established the language and culture we have come to call Greek.

Then as now, Greece is more properly known as Ellas.