Greece's geography did not help or enhance the development of Greece. It made their existence rather difficult for a long time.

As you can tell from the map, Greece is a peninsula, that means it is surrounded by water on three sides.

What you can not tell from the map is that 75% of Greee's land is mountainous and rocky. Not good for farming.

Because of this, Greece had to turn to the sea for survival. The majority of the Greek population is on the coasts. Living on the coast was difficult too. There are few areas on the coast that are easy to get into.

The rocky terrain made town to town travel small and very expensive. The City-states of Greece grew up independently of each other. They only united when a foreign threat had the potental of destroying all of them.

To the west of Greece is the Ionian Sea. Across from the Ionian Sea is Italy.

To the south of Greece is the Medditeranan Sea. It is very large and the Greeks didn't have to worry about foreign invaders approaching this way.

The real threat to the Greeks came from the East. The sea to their east is the Aegean Sea. Beyond the Aegean Sea is the Persian Empire. The Persians used to launch attacks from various places. (By just looking at the map you can see that the Persians did not have to travel far to attack Greece.

Lastly, Greece has thousands of islands that surround the mainland. The largest is the island of Crete, which is found directly south of Greece, just out of this picture.