.... you are forgetting the Mongol Empire. One of the biggest ever. Also the Spanish empire. 

Depends what you are looking at though. Is area of land the bigges thing or is the percentage of population?

*Based on a bit of research*

Greece tends to rank as one of the most corrupt nations in Europe. Basically, all the money goes to the pooblah of the day and his pet projects. Worse, officials simply lied about the situation to keep on getting money. Combined with a low tax rate, particularly a plummeting corporate tax, and the high rate of tax evasion, there's simply not that much money. And to top it off, 20% of the labor force lacks work.

Roman culture, religion and social structure is basically the greek one. They borrowed almost everything for it. And I don't think we owe them anything, just some respect (same with any other country, but Greeks dint seem to be getting any), and they don't deserve to be called stupid by arrogant westerns, who don't know jack shit about actual economic struggle and poverty but yet constantly bitch and whine about it.

And democracy is far superior to dictatorship or theocracy, there's no doubt there

Greeks influenced Romans no doubt but they are the ones that actually stayed around for a while unlike the Mongols or the Empire of Alexander the Great.

Here are all the retirement ages pre/post-1998. Getting a pension in your 50s applies only to some special categories (mothers with underaged childrens for example) and those aren't full pensions at all.

http://www.glk.gr/syntaxeis/syntaxiodothsh/proypo9eseis/dhmosioi_ypallhloi.htm#4

Yes this 'reputation' usually applied to the public sector over here, and in some cases it was true, because they 'promised' positions to their voters, leading to excess 'workers' in the public sector.All of us -not- working for the public sector uses to say that too.But you know what, it's not entirely true.At least not at the two places that had to do with the public sector where I had the chance to work for some months as part of some programs i nthe past.They were working alright.So i guess it's not that true in the end.But it depends on where you work at too of course.In any case people don't lie around even if they want too.Or else they won't have the means to survive.Before joining the euro,things were way better.The Drachmas kept getting devalued,but right now it's like it's been devalued 10fold since then!And they keep raising prices,slashing wages,closing businesses,taking our money through ridiculous taxes e.t.c..I don't really think this thing will keep going for much longer.I mean what more is there to lose?I surprised people down there haven't goten in there and wasted them yet to take back our nation.Whatever is going to happen will probably happen before the year ends anyway...

Greece is also well know for being a country where people do not pay taxes.

No, they're not only for the public sector.

By the way, many people here can't really understand what those austerity measures mean to Greek people.

The basic salary is being cut down to around 500€, and a decent place to live in costs around 300€/month. You are left with 200€ to pay all the bills and do the basic shopping. That's just impossible. I know that the former generations did a horrible job of handling the money here and that they didn't pay taxes and I understand that the other countries demand those measures to give us the loans but seriously, it's no use.

With such a low salary, people won't be able to buy anything, so the market will be dead here and how are we gonna reduce the debt exactly? Businesses are closing left and right here and it's only gonna get worse. We really are doomed. How could we not be? They keep cutting the salaries, and they keep raising the price of goods so it's impossible to actually live, or for many people to even survive. All I know is that people from all over the world keep dissing us, but they could also try sympathising a bit since, you know, we're still human beings in need of help.

@lordmandeep, that could also be because if we pay the hilariously enormous taxes we have, we won't be able to even buy food. The tax system here is crap, rich people pay just a tiny bit more than the middle-class whereas the taxes should be proportional to the salary.

Wierd that people don't remember/know why Greece ran out of money.

It's all because Greece wanted to join the euro zone. At the turn of the century a lot of creative accounting was used by the greek government in which the actual debt was written off or exempt from publication for official statistics. This allowed Greece get their inflation, debt to gdp ratios etc down to levels to which they could apply for the euro currency.

The offset of the taken measures was that the debts weren't gone, more like postponed for some 8 to 10 years. In the meanwhile Greece had to fund massive infrastructure investments, the olympics, all this costed extra money that was obtained through raising debt.

When the crisis kicked in it was one hell of a tough break for Greece because that's when the concealed debts from earlier started kicking in again. Combined with the already tragic situation in europe at the time, the debts of Greece ballooned to disastrous sizes only to get even worse because of the ever worsening credit ratings for Greece.

But ironically, what really put the massive hurt on Greece, was how over inflated everything was before the crisis.
Prices, wages, pentions, costs of doing business, all these were the highest in Europe while the economy was nowhere near the first 7. This lead to a massive retraction of investments and businesses from foreign countries leaving Greece with even less money. If this had not happened Greece might have not been in such a bad situation now.

So now, the grand finale. Obviously any country stuck in such a situation would have defaulted on their debts and depreciated their currency to levels that would reflect the actual state of the economy. Sadly Greece can't do that with the Euro. Of course they can go back to their old currency, but that's where the shit-storm is hiding.

If Greece drops Euro, then any country within Europe will drop the currency at the first sight of trouble (Spain, Portugal,maybe even Italy), effectively plunging Europe and potentially the whole world into total financial chaos.

And that's when we'll have the great depression of the 21st century.

THIS! 

Also, what yanamaster said is also true.

Contiguous means connected. 

That rules out the British because they are a naval empire, and the romans because Turkey split their empire in two (and the British section doesn't count)