Editing Peloponnese (section)

=== Classical antiquity ===
[[File:Olympia - Temple of Hera 3.jpg|thumb|The [[Temple of Hera, Olympia]]]]
In 776 BC, the first [[Ancient Olympic Games|Olympic Games]] were held at [[Olympia, Greece|Olympia]], in the western Peloponnese and this date is sometimes used to denote the beginning of the classical period of Greek antiquity. During [[classical antiquity]], the Peloponnese was at the heart of the affairs of [[ancient Greece]], possessed some of its most powerful city-states, and was the location of some of its bloodiest battles.

The major cities of [[Sparta]], [[Ancient Corinth|Corinth]], [[Argos, Peloponnese|Argos]] and [[Megalopolis, Greece|Megalopolis]] were all located on the Peloponnese, and it was the homeland of the [[Peloponnesian League]]. Soldiers from the peninsula fought in the [[Persian Wars]], and it was also the scene of the [[Peloponnesian War]] of 431–404 BC. The entire Peloponnese with the notable exception of Sparta joined Alexander's expedition against the Persian Empire.

Along with the rest of Greece, the Peloponnese fell to the expanding [[Roman Republic]] in 146 BC, when the Romans [[Battle of Corinth (146 BC)|razed the city of Corinth]] and massacred its inhabitants. The Romans created the province of [[Achaea (Roman province)|Achaea]] comprising the Peloponnese and central Greece. During the [[Roman Greece|Roman period]], the peninsula remained prosperous but became a provincial backwater, relatively cut off from the affairs of the wider [[Roman Empire|Roman world]].