Greek civilization was an important one in the ancient Western world known as the Hellenic Civilization. We learn about Greek civilization from Homer's epics, the Iliad and Odyssey. The ancient Greeks made major contributions in fields like philosophy with thinkers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, mathematics with Archimedes and Pythagoras, medicine with Hippocrates, and theatre and history with writers like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus and Thucydides.