Greece: Quick History | Corinth: A Dream on Earth | Who Am I
"Greece" Microsoft (R) Encarta.
Copyright (c) 1993 Microsoft Corporation.
Copyright (c) 1993 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation.
Introduction
The Greek peninsula has been culturally linked with the Aegean Islands and the west coast of Asia Minor since
the Neolithic Age. The many natural harbors along the coasts of Greece and the multiplicity of close-lying
islands led to the development of a homogeneous, maritime civilization. But cultural homogeneity did not induce
political unity. Mountain ranges and deep valleys cut the peninsula into small economic and political units, each
little larger than a city with its surrounding territory.
Prehistoric Period
Archaeological evidence indicates that a primitive Mediterranean people, closely akin to the races of northern
Africa, inhabited the southern Aegean area as far back as the Neolithic Age, before 4000 bc. The evidence shows
a cultural progression from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, which in the area of Greece commenced about 3000 bc.
Beginning in the 3d millennium bc the prehistoric Aegean civilization progressed to an extremely high level. The
Bronze Age civilization in the Aegean was divided into two main cultures, each of which passed through several
phases and subdivisions. One, centered on the island of Crete, only 400 mi northwest of Egypt and directly on
the sea routes to the ancient countries of the Middle East, is called Minoan (from minos, the generic name for
the Cretan kings). The other culture, called Helladic, flourished contemporaneously on mainland Greece, particularly
in the Peloponnesus. Its greatest centers were at Mycenae, Tiryns (near present N�vplion), and Pylos. Cretan
culture and trade dominated the Mediterranean until after 1500 bc, when leadership passed to the mainland Greeks.
During the late 3d millennium bc began a series of invasions by tribes from the north who spoke an Indo-European
language. Evidence exists that the northerners originally inhabited the basin of the Danube River in southeast
Europe. The most prominent of the early invaders, who were to be called the Achaeans, had, in all probability,
been forced to migrate by other invaders. They overran southern Greece and established themselves on the Peloponnesus.
According to some scholars, a second tribe, the Ionians, settled chiefly in Attica, east-central Greece, and the
Cyclades, where they were assimilated to a great degree with the Helladic people. The Aeolians, a third, rather
vaguely defined tribe, originally settled in Thessaly.
Ancient Greece
Gradually, in the last period (circa 1500-1200 bc) of Bronze Age Greece, the mainland absorbed the civilization
of Crete. By 1400 bc the Achaeans were in possession of the island itself, and soon afterward they became dominant
on the mainland, notably in the region around Mycenae. Although this city has given its name to the Achaean
ascendancy because of the extensive archaeological investigations of its ruins, other city-kingdoms were of
great, if not equal, importance. The Trojan War, described by Homer in the Iliad, began about, or shortly after,
1200 bc and was probably one of a series of wars waged during the 13th and 12th centuries bc. It may have been
connected with the last and most important of the invasions from the north, which occurred at a similar time and
brought the Iron Age to Greece. The Dorians left their mountainous home in Epirus and pushed their way down to the
Peloponnesus and Crete, using iron weapons to conquer or expel the previous inhabitants of those regions. The invading
Dorians overthrew the Achaean kings and settled, principally, in the southern and eastern part of the peninsula. Sparta
and Corinth became the chief Dorian cities. Many of the Achaeans took refuge in northern Peloponnesus, a district
afterward called Achaea. Others resisted the Dorians bitterly, and after being subjugated were made serfs and called
helots. Refugees from the Peloponnesus fled to their kin in Attica and the island of Euboea, but they later migrated,
as did the Aeolians, to the coast of Asia Minor. In the centuries after 1200 bc the increased colonization of the Asia
Minor coast, first by refugees from the Dorians and then by the Dorians themselves, made the area a political and
cultural part of Greece. Three great confederacies were established by each of the Greek ethnic divisions. The
northern part of the coast of Asia Minor and the island of Lesbos constituted the Aeolian confederacy. The Ionian
confederacy occupied the middle district, called Ionia, and the islands of Chios and Samos. A Doric confederacy was
established in the south and on the islands of Rhodes and Kos. Several centuries later (750-550 bc) a rapid population
increase and a consequent shortage of food, the rise of trade and industry, and other conditions led to another great
colonizing movement. Colonies were established in places as widely separated as the eastern coast of the Black Sea
and what is now Marseille, France, and included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula.
The latter was so thickly inhabited by Greeks that the area became known as Magna Graecia (Latin, �Greater Greece�).
The Hellenic Period
After the conclusion of the great migrations in the Aegean, the Greeks developed a proud racial consciousness.
They called themselves Hellenes, originally the name, according to Homer, of a small tribe living south of Thessaly.
The term Greeks, used by later foreign peoples, was derived from Graecia, the Latin name for a small Hellenic tribe
of Epirus, presumably the Hellenes with whom the Romans first had dealings. Out of the mythology that became the basis
of an intricate religion, the Hellenes developed a genealogy that traced their ancestry to semidivine heroes.
Although the small Hellenic states maintained their autonomy, they pursued a common course of political development.
In the pre-Hellenic period the tribal chiefs of invading tribes became the kings of the territories they conquered.
These monarchies were slowly replaced, between 800 and 650 bc, by oligarchies of aristrocrats, as the noble families
acquired land, the measure of wealth and power. About 650 bc many of the Hellenic oligarchies were themselves
overthrown by wealthy commoners or disgruntled aristocrats, called tyrants. The rise of the tyrants was due mainly
to economic conditions. Popular discontent under the aristocracies had become a major political factor because of
the increasing enslavement of landless peasants; colonization and trade in the 8th and 7th centuries bc hastened
the development of a prosperous merchant class, which took advantage of the mounting discontent to demand a share
of power with the aristrocrats in the city-states.
Age of Tyrants
The age of the Greek tyrants (circa 650-500 bc) was notable for advances made in Hellenic civilization. The title
of tyrant connoted that political power had been illegally seized, rather than that it was abused. Generally, the
tyrants, such as Periander (died 585 bc) of Corinth, Gelon of Syracuse, and Polycrates (reigned about 535-522 bc)
of Samos, were wise and popular rulers. Trade and industry flourished. In the wake of political and economic strength
came a flowering of Hellenic culture, especially in Ionia, where Greek philosophy began with the speculations of
Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. The development of cultural pursuits common to all the Hellenic cities was
one of the factors that united ancient Greece, despite the political separation of the various states. Another
factor was the Greek language, the many dialects of which were readily understandable in any part of the country
or any colony. The third factor was the Greek religion, which held the Hellenes together, and the sanctuary of
Delphi, with its oracle, became the greatest national shrine. As a corollary to their religion, the Greeks held
four national festivals, called games�the Olympian, Isthmian, Pythian, and Nemean. The Olympian games were
considered so important that many Greeks dated their historical reckoning from the first Olympiad (the 4-year
period between sessions at the Olympian games) held in 776 bc. Related to religion, at least in origin, was the
Amphictyonic League, an organization of Hellenic tribes that was established for the protection and administration
of shrines.
From Monarchy to Democracy
Some unification of the city-states took place. Between the 8th and 6th centuries bc, Athens and Sparta became
the two dominant cities of Greece. Each of these great states united its weaker neighbors into a league or
confederacy under its control. Sparta, a completely militarized and aristocratic state, established its leadership
mainly by conquest, and kept its subject states under strict rule. The unification of Attica was, however, carried
on by mutual and peaceful agreement under the leadership of Athens, and the inhabitants of smaller cities were given
Athenian citizenship. The hereditary kingship of Athens was abolished in 683 bc by the nobles, or Eupatridae, who
ruled Athens until the mid-6th century bc. The Eupatridae retained complete authority by their supreme power to
dispense justice, often in an arbitrary fashion. In 621 bc the statesman Draco (flourished 7th century bc) codified
and published the Athenian law, thereby limiting the judiciary power of the nobles. A second major blow to the
hereditary power of the Eupatridae was the code of the Athenian statesman and legislator Solon in 594 bc, which
reformed the Draconian code and gave citizenship to the lower classes. During the wise and enlightened rule
(560-527 bc) of the tyrant Pisistratus, the forms of government began to take on elements of democracy. Hippias
and Hipparchus (555-514 bc), sons of Pisistratus, inherited their father's power, but they were considerably more
despotic. Hippias, who survived Hipparchus, was expelled by a popular uprising in 510 bc. In the resulting political
strife, the supporters of democracy, under the great statesman Cleisthenes, won a complete victory, and a new
constitution, based on democratic principles, took effect about 502 bc. The beginning of democratic rule was
the dawn of the greatest period of Athenian history. Agriculture and commerce flourished. Moreover, the center
of artistic and intellectual endeavor, until that time situated in the cities of the Asia Minor coast, was rapidly
transferred to thriving Athens.
The Persian Wars
The Greek colonies in Asia Minor had been conquered by Croesus, king of Lydia, in the early part of his reign
(560-546 bc) and brought into the Lydian Empire. Croesus was a mild ruler, sympathetic to the Hellenes, and an
ally of Sparta; the economic, political, and intellectual life of the colonies was greatly stimulated by Lydian
rule. In 546 bc Croesus was overthrown by Cyrus the Great, king of Persia. Except for the island of Samos, which
ably defended itself, the Greek cities in Asia and the coastal islands became part of the Persian Empire.
In 499 bc Ionia, assisted by Athens and Eretria, revolted against Persia. The rebels were, at first, successful,
and King Darius I of Persia swore to avenge himself. He put down the revolt in 493 bc and, after sacking Miletus,
reestablished his absolute control over Ionia. A year later Mardonius (died 479 bc), the king's son-in law, led a
great Persian fleet to exact vengeance from Greece, but most of the ships were wrecked off Mount Athos. At the same
time, Darius sent heralds to Greece, requiring tokens of submission from all the Greek city-states. Although most
of the smaller states acquiesced, Sparta and Athens refused, and slew the Persian heralds as a gesture of defiance.
Darius, enraged by the Greek insult as well as by the fate of his fleet, prepared a second expedition, which set
sail in 490 bc. After destroying Eretria, the Persian army proceeded to the plain of Marathon near Athens. The
Athenian leaders sent to Sparta for aid, but the message arrived during a religious festival, which prevented
the Spartans from leaving. Nevertheless, the Athenian army, under Miltiades, won an overwhelming victory over a
Persian force three times as large, and the Persians withdrew.
Darius immediately began to ready a third expedition; his son, Xerxes I, who succeeded him in 486 bc, brought
together one of the largest armies in ancient history. In 481 bc the Persians crossed the Hellespont strait over
a bridge of boats and marched southward. The Greeks made their first stand in 480 bc at Thermopylae, where the
Spartan leader Leonidas I and several thousand soldiers heroically defended the narrow pass. A treacherous Greek
showed the Persians another path which enabled the invaders to enter the pass from the rear. Leonidas permitted
most of his men to withdraw, but he and a force of 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians resisted to the end and were
annihilated. The Persians then proceeded to Athens, capturing and burning the abandoned city. Meanwhile, the Persian
fleet pursued the Greek fleet to Salamis, an island in the Gulf of Aegina (now known as the Saronic Gulf) near Athens.
In the naval battle that ensued, fewer than 400 Greek vessels, under the Athenian general and statesman Themistocles,
defeated 1200 Persian vessels. Xerxes, who had watched the battle from a golden throne on a hill overlooking the harbor
of Salamis, fled to Asia. In the following year, 479 bc, the remainder of the Persian forces in Greece were overwhelmed
at Plataea, and the invaders were finally driven out.
The Ascendancy of Athens
As a result of its brilliant leadership in the Persian wars, Athens became the most influential state in Greece.
Moreover, the wars had demonstrated the increasing importance of seapower, for the naval battle of Salamis had
been the decisive engagement. Sparta, hitherto the greatest military power in Greece because of its army, lost
its prestige to the Athenian fleet. In 478 bc a large number of Greek states formed a voluntary alliance, the
Delian League, to drive the Persians from the Greek cities and coastal islands of Asia Minor. Athens, as a
matter of course, headed the alliance. The victories of the league, then under the Athenian general Cimon,
resulted (476-466 bc) in the liberation of the Asia Minor coast from Persia. Athens, however, began to exert
its power over the other members of the league to such an extent that they became its subjects rather than its
allies. The Athenians exacted tribute from their erstwhile confederates, and, when Naxos attempted to withdraw
from the league, the fortifications of that city were razed.
The period of Athenian domination during the 5th century bc has become known as the golden age of Athens. Under
Pericles, who became leader of the popular party and head of the state in 460 bc, the city attained its greatest
splendor. The constitution, reformed to further internal democracy, contained provisions such as payment for jury
service, thereby permitting even the poorest citizens to serve. Pericles was determined to make Athens the most
beautiful city in the world.
The Parthenon, the Erechtheum, the Propylaea, and other great buildings were constructed. Greek drama reached its
greatest expression with the plays of such dramatists as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comedy writer
Aristophanes. Thucydides and Herodotus, an Ionian, became famous historians, and the cultivation of intellect in
Periclean Athens made the city famous as an artistic and cultural center.
The Peloponnesian War
Despite the excellent internal condition of the city, the foreign policy of Athens proved its undoing. The
members of the Delian League were discontented and chafed under Athenian rule. Sparta, moreover, was envious
of Athenian prosperity. A league between the cities of the Peloponnesus had existed since about 550 bc, under
the domination of Sparta, and the Peloponnesian League began to oppose Athens actively. In 431 bc the inevitable
clash between Athens and Sparta occurred. It was precipitated by Athenian aid to Corcyra during a dispute between
Corcyra and Corinth, an ally of Sparta. Known as the Peloponnesian War, the struggle between the two great
confederacies lasted until 404 bc and resulted in establishing Spartan supremacy in Greece. At the conclusion of
the war, Sparta sponsored an oligarchy, known as the Thirty Tyrants, to rule Athens. Similar ruling bodies were
established in the cities and islands of Asia Minor. Spartan rule soon showed itself as even harsher and more
oppressive than that of Athens. In 403 bc the Athenians under Thrasybulus (died 388 bc) revolted, expelled the
Spartan garrison that had supported the oligarchs, and restored their democracy and independence. Other Greek
cities consistently rebelled against the hegemony of Sparta.
Shifting Alliances
The Greek states began, individually, to seek aid from their traditional enemy, Persia. In 399 bc the marauding
activities of Persia on the Asia Minor coast led Sparta to send an army there. Although the Spartan army met with
some success, it was forced to return in 395 bc to oppose a coalition of Argos, Athens, Corinth, and Thebes. The
resulting conflict, known as the Corinthian War, continued, mainly as small-scale warfare, until 387 bc, when
Sparta, allying itself with Persia, imposed the Peace of Antalcidas on its unwilling subject states. By the terms
of the Persian-Spartan settlement, the entire west coast of Asia Minor was ceded to Persia, and the city-states of
Greece were made autonomous. Despite this agreement, Sparta in 382 bc invaded Thebes and captured the city of
Olynthus in the north. The Theban general Pelopidas, supported by Athens, led an uprising three years later and
expelled the Spartan occupation force. War between Sparta and Athens in alliance with Thebes was resumed, ending
with the Battle of Leuctra, in 371 bc, in which the Thebans, led by Epaminondas, so completely defeated their
enemies that Spartan domination came to an end. Thebes, by virtue of its victory, became the leading Greek state.
The other states resented its leadership, and the ascendancy of Thebes inaugurated an unhappy period of civil unrest
and economic misery resulting from internecine strife. Athens, in particular, refused to submit to Theban supremacy
and in 369 bc became an ally of Sparta. At best insecure, the Theban hegemony was dependent principally on the
brilliant leadership of Epaminondas, and when he was killed in the Battle of Mantinea in 362 bc, Thebes again
became just another state among many.
Macedonian Supremacy
During this period of strife in Greece, Macedonia, the northern neighbor of Greece, was initiating a policy of
expansion that was destined to make it one of the greatest world powers in ancient history. The Macedonians, a
people akin to the Hellenes, had been consistently sympathetic to Greece. Philip II, who became king of Macedonia
in 359 bc, was a great admirer of Greek civilization, but he was well aware of its greatest weakness, the lack of
political unity. Directly after he came to the throne, Philip annexed the Greek colonies on the coast of Macedonia
and Thrace and determined to make himself master of the peninsula. Astute political craft and the force of Macedonian
arms helped Philip to realize his ambitions, despite the opposition of many prominent Greek statesmen led by
Demosthenes. By 338 bc, he was sufficiently powerful to call a congress of the Greek states, which acknowledged
Macedonian supremacy in the peninsula and appointed Philip commander in chief of the Greek forces. A year later,
a second congress declared war on Persia, the traditional enemy. Philip began at once to prepare for an Asian
campaign, but he was assassinated in 336 bc. His son, Alexander, who was then 20 years old, succeeded him.
In 334 bc Alexander set out to invade Persia. During the next ten years, his conquests extended Greek influence
as well as the Greek civilization and language throughout a Macedonian empire that ranged as far east as northern
India and as far south and west as Egypt. By the time of Alexander's death in 323 bc, the culture of Greece had
spread through most of the ancient world.
Hellenistic Period
Following the death of Alexander, the Macedonian generals began to partition his vast empire among themselves.
The disagreements arising from this division resulted in a series of wars form 322 to 275 bc, many of which took
place in Greece. Thus, one of the characteristics of the Hellenistic period, which lasted from the death of
Alexander until the acquisition of Greece as a Roman province in 146 bc, was the deterioration of the Greek
city-states as political entities and the gradual decline of Greek political independence as a whole.
Nevertheless, the Hellenistic period was marked by the triumph of Greece as the fountainhead of culture, and
its way of life was adopted, as a result of Alexander's conquests, throughout most of the ancient world.
The Diadochi
Of the kingdoms established by the generals of Alexander, called the Diadochi (Greek diadochos, �successor�),
the most important were Syria under the Seleucid dynasty, and Egypt under the rule of the Ptolemies. The capital
of Ptolemaic Egypt, Alexandria, which had been founded by Alexander in 332 bc, developed into a center of Greek
learning rivaling and occasionally surpassing Athens. Every part of the Hellenistic world devoted itself to the
cultivation of art and intellect. Such men as the mathematicians Euclid and Archimedes, the philosophers Epicurus
and Zeno, and the poets Apollonius of Rhodes and Theocritus were characteristic of the age. So strongly was Hellenistic
culture implanted that it became one of the most important elements in early Christianity.
In 290 bc the city-states of central Greece began to join the Aetolian League, a powerful military confederation
that had originally been organized during the reign of Philip II by the cities of Aetolia for their mutual benefit
and protection. A second and similar organization, known as the Achaean League, became, in 280 bc, the supreme
confederation of the cities in the northern Peloponnesus. Later other cities joined. Both alliances dedicated
themselves to saving Greece from domination by the kingdom of Macedonia. The Achaean League became much more
powerful than its rival and tried to acquire control of all Greece. Led by the statesman and general Aratus of
Sicyon (271-213 bc), the league began a conflict with Sparta, which had joined neither alliance. In the war
between the Achaeans and Sparta, the league was at first defeated, and forgoing its primary purpose, called on
Macedonia for military aid, which was granted. The alliance then defeated Sparta, but from that time on it was
dominated by Macedonia.
Roman Interference
In 215 bc Rome began to interfere in Greek affairs. Philip V of Macedonia allied himself with Carthage against Rome,
but the Romans, acquiring the support of the Aetolian League, overcame the Macedonian forces in 206 bc and obtained a
firm foothold in Greece. Rome, aided by both leagues, again defeated Philip in 197 bc, and Macedonia, completely
subjugated, agreed to a peace with Rome by which the independence of Greece was recognized. The Greeks found that
they had exchanged one master for another. In a last desperate attempt to free themselves, the members of the
Achaean League resisted the demands that Rome made on it in 149 bc. The resulting war ended with the destruction
of Corinth by Roman legions in 146 bc. The leagues were abolished and Greece passed completely into the power of
Rome, which united Macedonia and Greece to form the Roman province of Macedonia.
Roman and Medieval Greece
For 60 years after 146 bc, Greece was competently administered by Rome. Some cities, such as Athens and Sparta,
even retained their free status. In 88 bc, when Mithridates VI Eupator, king of Pontus, began a campaign of
conquest in Roman-controlled territories, however, many cities of Greece supported the Asian monarch because
he had promised to help them regain their independence. Roman legions under Lucius Cornelius Sulla forced
Mithridates out of Greece and crushed the rebellion, sacking Athens in 86 bc and Thebes a year later. Roman
punishment of all the rebellious cities was heavy, and the campaigns fought on Greek soil left central Greece
in ruins. As a result, the country began to disintegrate economically. Athens remained a center of philosophy
and learning, but its commerce became almost nonexistent. About 22 bc Augustus, the first Roman emperor,
separated Greece from Macedonia and made the former a province called Achaea.
Greek Renaissance
Under the Roman Empire, in the first centuries of the Christian era, a Greek renaissance took place, particularly
during the reign of the emperor Hadrian. With his contemporary, the wealthy Greek scholar Herodes Atticus, Hadrian
beautified Athens and restored many of the ruined cities. In the middle of the 3d century ad, however, this rebirth
was checked by the Goths, who in 267-68 overran the peninsula, captured Athens, and laid waste the cities of Argos,
Corinth, and Sparta.
After 395 the Roman Empire was ruled by two coemperors, one in the Latin West and the other in the Hellenic East.
By the 6th century a successor empire, known as the Byzantine, had evolved in the East. It included all of Greece
and the Aegean region and was characterized by a mixture of Hellenic culture, Oriental influences from the Middle
East, and Christianity.
Duchy of Athens
In the 13th century the ambition of the Frankish leaders of the Fourth Crusade interrupted the continuity of
Byzantine rule. Constantinople fell to the Crusaders in 1204, and the conquerors, after sacking the Byzantine
capital, established the Latin Empire of the East. They divided the Greek peninsula into feudal fiefs, of which
the most prominent was the duchy of Athens. The Latin Empire fell in 1261, when Constantinople was reconquered by
the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus. During the next two centuries, the duchy of Athens was controlled
successively by French, Spanish, and Italian rulers. In the 14th century the court of Athens was one of the most
brilliant feudal courts of Europe.
Ottoman Domination
In 1453 Muhammad II, sultan of Turkey, captured Constantinople and then turned his attention to the Peloponnesus
and Attica; by 1460 these parts of Greece had been incorporated into the Ottoman Empire.
During the next two centuries the Turks drove the Venetians and other alien powers from the few remaining outposts
they held on the coast of Greece and in the Greek islands. The process was finished with the Turkish capture of
Crete in 1669. For a brief period (1699-1718) Venice regained control of the Peloponnesus, but otherwise Greece
remained under firm Ottoman domination until the 19th century.
Although Turkish rule was in many ways costly to the Greek people and in its later stages came to be corrupt and
even brutal, it was not as draconian during its first centuries as has often been stated. Some Greeks had a
relatively privileged position within the empire. The Greek patriarch was the political as well as the spiritual
head of all the Orthodox, and many Phanariots�so called after the Greek quarter of Constantinople�held influential
positions as Ottoman administrators and political advisers.
Link to Quick History II
"Greece," Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1993 Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1993 Funk &
Wagnall's Corporation.