Greece
country in Southeast Europe
Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeastern Europe. It occupies the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, with a population of around 10 million. With nine regions and thousands of islands, it has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean. The Ionian Sea is west of the mainland, Albania northwest, and North Macedonia and Bulgaria north. Turkey is east both by land and the Aegean Sea. The capital, Athens, is the largest Greek city, followed by Thessaloniki and Patras.
Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilisation and the birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy, Western literature, historiography, political science, major scientific and mathematical principles, theatre, and the Olympic Games. The Ancient Greeks were organised into independent city-states, or poleis (singular polis), that spanned the Mediterranean and Black seas. Philip II of Macedon united most of present-day Greece in the fourth century BC, with his son Alexander the Great conquering much of the known ancient world from the Near East to northwestern India. The subsequent Hellenistic period saw the height of Greek culture and influence in antiquity.
“Greece” enters the record as country in Southeast Europe. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Greece, country and Southeast can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Greece” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Greece, country and Southeast provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q41. VIAF identifies the subject as 131265011. The Library of Congress control number is n80046090. Authority coordinates are 38.500, 23.000. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Greece”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Greece primary sources, Greece archive and Greece research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Greece”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Greece” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.