Both Greece and Rome are Mediterranean countries, similar enough latitudinally for both to grow wine and olives. However, their terrains were quite different. The ancient Greek city-states were separated from each other by hilly countryside and all were near the water. Rome was inland, on one side of the Tiber River, but the Italic tribes (in the boot-shaped peninsula that is now Italy) did not have the natural hilly borders to keep them out of Rome.
In Italy, around Naples, Mt. Vesuvius produced fertile land by blanketing the soil with tephra which aged into rich soil. There were also two nearby mountain ranges to the north (Alps) and east (Apennine).
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Art
Greek art is considered superior to the "merely" imitative or decorative Roman art; indeed much art we think of as Greek is actually a Roman copy of a Greek original. It is often pointed out that the goal of the classical Greek sculptors was to produce an ideal art form, whereas the goal of Roman artists was to produce realistic portraits, often for decoration. This is an obvious oversimplification.
Not all Roman art imitated the Greek forms and not all Greek art looks terribly realistic or impractical. Much Greek art adorned utilitarian objects, just as Roman art adorned the living spaces. Greek art is divided into the Mycenaean, geometric, archaic, and Hellenistic periods, in addition to its acme in the Classical period. During the Hellenistic period, there was demand for copies of earlier art, and so it too can be described as imitative.
We typically associate sculptures like the Venus de Milo with Greece, and mosaics and frescoes (wall paintings) with Rome. Of course, the masters of both cultures worked on various mediums beyond these. Greek pottery, for instance, was a popular import in Italy.
