GREECE,an ancient geographical area, and a modern kingdom more or less corresponding thereto, situated at the south-eastern extremity of Europe and forming the most southerly portion of the Balkan Peninsula. The modern kingdom is bounded on the N. by European Turkey and on the E., S. and W. by the Aegean, Mediterranean and lonian seas. The name Graecia, which was more or less vaguely given to the ancient country by the Romans, seems not to have been employed by any native writer before Aristotle; it was apparently derived by the Romans from the Illyrians, who applied the name of an Epirote tribe to all their southern neighbors. The names Hellas, Hellenes , by which the ancient Greeks called their country and their race, and which are still employed by the modern Greeks, originally designated a small district in Phthiotis in Thessaly and its inhabitants, who gradually spread over the lands south of the Cambunian mountains. The name Hellenes was not universally applied to the Greek race until the post-Homeric epoch.