A History of Magic (by Bathilda Bagshot)

Early Magical Communities: Ancient Greek and Rome: Ancient Greece

To the ancient Greeks, it was quite important that citizens honour the gods. If something abnormal or bad happened, it was usually blamed on the wrath of a certain deity, when, actually, it was a person of magical blood being less subtle than normal. Because most everything out of the ordinary was blamed on the gods, witches and wizards had an easier time blending in with the Muggle population in ancient Greece than they did in the European Middle Ages, when witch-hunts were quite popular. Not only did they blend in more easily, some wizards and witches were quite helpful to the Muggles, although that term was not then used to describe non-magic folk. For example, in 447 B.C., Perikles began to plan a magnificent building that would later be named the Parthenon. This was a temple dedicated to goddess Athena. Because it was a massive undertaking, no one was quite sure how it would be possible to build such a temple. But Perikles was of magical blood, and therefore, every night, after the workers left, he could build with magic just enough to keep alive the hope that something of this scale could be built. There are many other instances of witches and wizards helping their non-magic brethren, particularly in war. If not for magical blood, the Greeks could have very well lost the Greco-Persian Wars in the fifth century B.C. of which the famous battles of Marathon and Thermopylae are a part.

As a prisoner of the Greeks, Phillip II of Macedonia observed their military tactics. Returning to his own country, he used his newly acquired insights to strengthen Macedonia to the Greeks' peril. By the time of his death in 336 B.C. Sparta and a small colony near Byzantium were all of Greece that remained free of Macedonian rule.

Phillip II's son Alexander the Great expanded the Macedonian empire to enormous proportions, but the bickering of his sons tore the empire apart, and left the way open for Rome, which had conquered both Macedonia and Greece by 145 B.C ., to become the dominant Mediterranean and world power.