Greek Culture
The culture of Greece has evolved over thousands of years, beginning in Mycenaean Greece, continuing most notably into Classical Greece, through the influence of the Roman Empire and its successor the Byzantine Empire. Other cultures and states such as the Persian Empire, and Frankish states, the Ottoman Empire, the Venetian Republic, Genoese Republic, and British Empire have also left their influence on modern Greek culture, but historians credit the Greek War of Independence with revitalising Greece and giving birth to a single entity of its multi-faceted culture.
They introduced such important literary forms as epic and lyric poetry, history, tragedy, and comedy. In their pursuit of order and proportion, the Greeks created an ideal of beauty that strongly influenced Western art.
The ancient Greek spiritual beliefs, religion, and oral tradition are all reflected and formulated through rich myths and legends that besides entertainment provided an articulation of the moral fiber of the Greek culture as it evolved through at least two thousand years.
What we call "mythology" today, was a big part of ancient Greek culture and taken as a whole it represent the bulk of what we know as Pagan religion mixed in with the ancients' heritage (the concept of "History" was born later in the 5th c. BCE). As such, it was later suppressed in favor of other religions. But it was so interwoven in Greek culture that it survived over the centuries in bits and pieces of Greek literature and art only to reemerge in the last few hundred years under the safe title "mythology".