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Roman province (146 BC – 4th century AD)

From about 200 BC the Roman Republic became increasingly involved in Greek affairs and engaged in a series of wars with Macedon. Macedon's defeat at the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC signalled the end of Antigonid power. In 146 BC, Macedonia was annexed as a province by Rome, and the rest of Greece became a Roman protectorate. The process was completed in 27 BC, when emperor Augustus annexed the rest of Greece and constituted it as the senatorial province of Achaea. Despite their military superiority, the Romans admired and became heavily influenced by Greek culture.

Greek-speaking communities of the Hellenised East were instrumental in the spread of Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and Christianity's early leaders and writers were mostly Greek-speaking, though not from Greece itself. The New Testament was written in Greek, and some sections attest to the importance of churches in Greece in early Christianity. Nevertheless, much of Greece clung to paganism, and ancient Greek religious practices were still in vogue in the late 4th century AD, when they were outlawed by the Roman emperor Theodosius I in 391–392. The last recorded Olympic games were held in 393, and many temples were destroyed or damaged in the century that followed. The closure of the Neoplatonic Academy of Athens by Emperor Justinian in 529 is considered the end of antiquity, although there is evidence that the academy continued.