Archimedes to Zorba with a drop of ouzo

Compiled by MARK WILSON and RICHARD ASKWITH

Put the ouzo on ice, whip up some taramasalata and dip into our big fat meze of facts about the birthplace of the world's greatest sporting event.


* There were people - or at least Neanderthals - living in Greece 700,000 years ago, on the Halkidiki peninsula of Macedonia. The first human settlements there date back to 3000BC. Greece's population is now 11 million, with almost 3.6 million people living in greater Athens.

* The Greeks are known as the founding fathers of philosophy, which is, in turn, considered a cornerstone of Western civilisation. If your education missed these out, now might be a good time to bone up on Socrates ("I know nothing except the fact of my own ignorance"), Plato ("Ignorance is the root and stem of every evil"), Heraclitus ("Nothing endures but change"), Protagoras ("Man is the measure of all things") and Aristotle ("Nature does nothing without purpose").

* Another Greek contribution to civilisation is feta cheese, which the Greeks have been making for about 6000 years. The country produces 115,000 tonnes of the stuff every year. Only cheese made in Greece is allowed to be called "feta".

* Mt Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece, was said to be the home of the Greek gods. It is more than 240km away from Olympia, the village where the Olympic Games originated in 776BC.

* The ancient Games included sports such as chariot racing, athletics and boxing - as well as singing and the arts.

* Any woman who attempted to enter the Olympic stadium during the Games would be thrown off a nearby mountain.

* The Games were eventually banned by the Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius in AD393 amid allegations of uncontrollable pagan corruption. They were revived in 1896, in Athens, by a Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin.

* Greece is the world's 15th most popular tourism destination, receiving 14 million tourists in a typical non-Olympic year.

* The first major Greek civilisation was the Mycenaean, which flourished from about 1900BC to 1100BC. The poetry of Homer and Hesiod, from which most of our knowledge of Greek mythology derives, refers to this age, although it was not actually composed until about 900BC.

* At its height, Hellenic civilisation stretched round most of the Mediterranean and - for a brief period under Alexander the Great - through Asia to the Punjab. Even now, there are about 2000 Mediterranean islands that count as part of Greece. (Despite several millennia in which to count them, the Greeks seem unable to agree on a precise total.)

* Greece exports 28 million litres of retsina a year. Nearly half of it goes to Germany.

* The Greeks also take pride in their ancient mathematicians (Euclid, Pythagoras, Archimedes) and dramatists (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides). But a high proportion of their work has been lost, much of it in the succession of fires that destroyed the Great Library at Alexandria between 47BC and AD641.

* Between 700 and 900 women are due to give birth in Athens during the Games, many of them in the maternity hospital next to the Olympic complex.

* Greece is the smallest country to host the summer Olympics since Finland in 1952.

* The famed cod roe dip taramasalata is the longest word in the English language to use no vowels other than "a".

* The Greeks invented vowels in about 800BC. Consonants had already been invented by the Phoenicians.

* Despite their reputation as philosophers and aesthetes, the Greeks traditionally excelled in the creation of ingenious military technology, including the repeating catapult (designed by Dionysius of Alexandria), burning mirrors (courtesy of Archimedes) and, in the Byzantine era, "Greek fire", an early version of napalm.

* Greek mythology is incomprehensible without a robust understanding of dysfunctional marriages. Most of the best-known myths relate to the philanderings of Zeus, not only the supreme deity but also possessed of an astonishing libido. His long-suffering wife, Hera - who was also his sister - had the unusual gift of being able to renew her virginity every year by bathing in an enchanted spring.

* The Greek tradition of plate-smashing may be a survivor of the ancient custom of ritually "killing" the ceramic vessels used for feasts commemorating the dead. But the custom is now officially discouraged. Restaurants in Greece require a licence to smash plates. And the correct way is to drop the plate gently, and flat, on to the floor. Never attempt to pick up the pieces.

* Ouzo, the Greek national drink, isn't what it used to be. Traditionally it was a distillation of the liquid resulting from doubly distilled fermented grapeskins mixed with such aromatics as ginger, cardamom, nutmeg and star-anise. Modern ouzo is usually made from pure alcohol, water, anethol and small quantities of essential oils.


* In 1920, King Alexander of Greece died after being bitten in the palace grounds by a monkey . He had been walking his dog, Fritz, which had attacked the monkey's mate.


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