DoriansThe Dorians (ˈdɔriənz; Δωριεῖς, Dōrieîs, singular Δωριεύς, Dōrieús) were one of the four major ethnic groups into which the Hellenes (or Greeks) of Classical Greece divided themselves (along with the Aeolians, Achaeans, and Ionians). They are almost always referred to as just "the Dorians", as they are called in the earliest literary mention of them in the Odyssey, where they already can be found inhabiting the island of Crete.
PeloponneseThe Peloponnese (ˌpɛləpəˈniːz,_-ˈniːs), Peloponnesus (ˌpɛləpəˈniːsəs; Pelopónnēsos, peloˈponisos), or Morea is a peninsula and geographic region in southern Greece. It is connected to the central part of the country by the Isthmus of Corinth land bridge which separates the Gulf of Corinth from the Saronic Gulf. From the late Middle Ages until the 19th century, the peninsula was known as the Morea (Μωρέας, Morèas), a name still in colloquial use in its demotic form (Μωριάς, Moriàs).
SpartaSparta was a prominent city-state in Laconia in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (Λακεδαίμων, Lakedaímōn), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement on the banks of the Eurotas River in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece. Given its military pre-eminence, Sparta was recognized as the leading force of the unified Greek military during the Greco-Persian Wars, in rivalry with the rising naval power of Athens.
Ancient GreekAncient 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 (1400–1200 BC), Dark Ages (1200–800 BC), the Archaic or Epic period (800–500 BC), and the Classical period (500–300 BC). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers.
Ancient GreeceAncient Greece (Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (600 AD), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and other territories. Most of these regions were officially unified only once, for 13 years, under Alexander the Great's empire from 336 to 323 BC (though this excludes a number of Greek city-states free from Alexander's jurisdiction in the western Mediterranean, around the Black Sea, Cyprus, and Cyrenaica).