Encyclopedia
Ancient Greece is the period in
Greek history which lasted for around one thousand years and ended with the rise of
Christianity. It is considered by most historians to be the foundational culture of
Western Civilization. Greek culture was a powerful influence in the
Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of
Europe.
The civilization of the ancient Greeks has been immensely influential on the language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science, and arts, fuelling the
Renaissance in Western Europe and again resurgent during various
neo-Classical revivals in
18th and
19th century Europe and the
Americas.
"Ancient Greece" is the term used to describe the Greek-speaking world in ancient times. It refers not only to the
geographical peninsula of modern
Greece, but also to areas of culture that were settled in ancient times by Greeks:
Cyprus and the Aegean islands, the
Aegean coast of
Anatolia ,
Sicily and southern
Italy , and the scattered Greek settlements on the coasts of
Colchis,
Illyria,
Thrace,
Egypt,
Cyrenaica, southern
Gaul, east and northeast of the
Iberian peninsula,
Iberia and
Taurica.
Chronology
There are no fixed or universally agreed upon dates for the beginning or the end of the Ancient Greek period. In common usage it refers to all Greek history before the
Roman Empire, but historians use the term more precisely. Some writers include the periods of the Greek-speaking
Mycenaean civilization that collapsed about 1150 BC, though most would argue that the influential
Minoan was so different from later Greek cultures that it should be classed separately.
In the modern Greek school-books, "ancient times" is a period of about 900 years, from the catastrophe of
Mycenae until the conquest of the country by the
Romans that is divided in four periods, based on styles of art as much as culture and politics. The historical line starts with Greek Dark Ages . In this period artists use geometrical schemes such as squares, circles, lines to decorate
amphoras and other pottery. The archaic period represents those years when the artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff, hieratic poses with the dreamlike "archaic smile". In the
classical period artists perfected the style that since has been taken as exemplary: "classical", such as the
Parthenon. In the
Hellenistic years that followed the conquests of
Alexander , also known as
Alexandrian, aspects of Hellenic civilization expanded to Egypt and
Bactria.
Traditionally, the Ancient Greek period was taken to begin with the date of the first
Olympic Games in 776 BC, but many historians now extend the term back to about 1000 BC. The traditional date for the end of the Ancient Greek period is the death of
Alexander the Great in 323 BC. The following period is classed
Hellenistic or the integration of Greece into the
Roman Republic in 146 BC.
These dates are historians' conventions and some writers treat the Ancient Greek civilization as a continuum running until the advent of
Christianity in the
3rd century.
Origins
The Greeks are believed to have migrated southward into the Balkan peninsula in several waves beginning in the late 3rd millennium BC, the last being the Dorian invasion. Proto-Greek is assumed to date to some time between the 23rd and 17th centuries BC. The period from 1600 BC to about 1100 BC is described in
History of Mycenaean Greece known for the reign of
King Agamemnon and the wars against Troy as narrated in the epics of
Homer. The period from 1100 BC to the 8th century BC is a "Dark Age" from which no primary texts survive, and only scant archaeological evidence remains. Secondary and tertiary texts such as
Herodotus'
Histories, Pausanias'
Description of Greece, Diodorus'
Bibliotheca, and
Jerome's
Chronicon contain brief chronologies and king lists for this period. The history of Ancient Greece is often taken to end with the reign of
Alexander the Great, who died in 323 BC. Subsequent events are described in
Hellenistic Greece.
Any history of Ancient Greece requires a cautionary note on sources. Those Greek historians and political writers whose works have survived, notably
Herodotus,
Thucydides,
Xenophon,
Demosthenes,
Plato and
Aristotle, were mostly either
Athenian or pro-Athenian. That is why we know far more about the history and politics of Athens than of any other city, and why we know almost nothing about some cities' histories. These writers, furthermore, concentrate almost wholly on political, military and diplomatic history, and ignore economic and social history. All histories of Ancient Greece have to contend with these limits in their sources.
The rise of Hellas
In the 8th century BC Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization. Literacy had been lost and the Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks created the
Greek alphabet, most likely by modifying the
Phoenician. From about 800 BC written records begin to appear. Greece was divided into many small self-governing communities, a pattern dictated by Greek geography, where every island, valley and plain is cut off from its neighbours by the sea or mountain ranges.
As Greece progressed economically, its population grew beyond the capacity of its limited
arable land . From about 750 BC the Greeks began 250 years of expansion, settling colonies in all directions. To the east, the
Aegean coast of
Asia Minor was colonized first, followed by
Cyprus and the coasts of
Thrace, the
Sea of Marmara and south coast of the
Black Sea. Eventually Greek colonization reached as far north-east as present day
Ukraine. To the west the coasts of
Illyria,
Sicily and southern
Italy were settled, followed by the south coast of France,
Corsica, and even northeastern
Spain. Greek colonies were also founded in
Egypt and
Libya. Modern
Syracuse,
Naples,
Marseille and
Istanbul had their beginnings as the Greek colonies Syracusa, Neapolis, Massilia and Byzantium.
By the 6th century BC the Greek world had become a cultural and linguistic area much larger than the geographical area of present Greece. Greek colonies were not politically controlled by their founding cities, although they often retained religious and commercial links with them. The Greeks both at home and abroad organized themselves into independent communities, and the city became the basic unit of Greek government.
In this period a huge economic development occurred in Greece and its overseas colonies, with the growth of commerce and manufacture. There also was a large improvement in the living standards of the population. Some studies estimate that the average size of the Greek household, in the period from 800 BC to 300 BC, increased five times, which indicates a large increase in the average income of the population.
By the economic height of Ancient Greece, in the 4th century BC, Greece was the most advanced economy in the world. According to some economic historians, it was one of the most advanced pre industrial economies. This is demonstrated by the average daily wage of the Greek worker, it was, in terms of grain , more than 4 times the average daily wage of the Egyptian .
Social and political conflict
The Greek cities were originally monarchies, although many of them were very small and the term "King" for their rulers is misleadingly grand. In a country always short of farmland, power rested with a small class of landowners, who formed a warrior aristocracy fighting frequent petty inter-city wars over land and rapidly ousting the monarchy. About this time the rise of a mercantile class introduced class conflict into the larger cities. From 650 BC onwards, the aristocracies had to fight not to be overthrown and replaced by populist leaders called
tyrants , a word which did not necessarily have the modern meaning of oppressive dictators.
By the 6th century BC several cities had emerged as dominant in Greek affairs:
Athens,
Sparta,
Corinth, and Thebes. Each of them had brought the surrounding rural areas and smaller towns under their control, and Athens and Corinth had become major maritime and mercantile powers as well. Athens and Sparta developed a rivalry that dominated Greek politics for generations.
In Sparta, the landed aristocracy retained their power, and the constitution of Lycurgus entrenched their power and gave Sparta a permanent militarist regime under a dual monarchy. Sparta dominated the other cities of the
Peloponnese, with the sole exceptions of
Argus and
Achaia.
In Athens, by contrast, the monarchy was abolished in 683 BC, and reforms of
Solon established a moderate system of aristocratic government. The aristocrats were followed by the tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons, who made the city a great naval and commercial power. When the Pisistratids were overthrown, Cleisthenes established the world's first
democracy , with power being held by an assembly of all the male citizens. But it must be remembered that only a minority of the male inhabitants were citizens, excluding slaves, freedmen and non-Athenians.
The Persian Wars
In
Ionia the Greek cities, which included great centres such as
Miletus and
Halicarnassus, were unable to maintain their independence and came under the rule of the
Persian Empire in the mid 6th century BC. In 499 BC the Greeks rose in the Ionian Revolt, and Athens and some other Greek cities went to their aid.
In 490 BC the Persian Great King,
Darius I, having suppressed the Ionian cities, sent a fleet to punish the Greeks. The Persians landed in Attica, but were defeated at the
Battle of Marathon by a Greek army led by the Athenian general Miltiades. The burial mound of the Athenian dead can still be seen at Marathon.
Ten years later Darius's successor,
Xerxes I, sent a much more powerful force by land. After being delayed by the Spartan King
Leonidas I at
Thermopylae, Xerxes advanced into Attica, where he captured and burned Athens. But the Athenians had evacuated the city by sea, and under Themistocles they defeated the Persian fleet at the
Battle of Salamis. A year later, the Greeks, under the Spartan Pausanius, defeated the Persian army at
Plataea.
The Athenian fleet then turned to chasing the Persians out of the Aegean Sea, and in 478 BC they captured Byzantium. In the course of doing so Athens enrolled all the island states and some mainland allies into an alliance, called the
Delian League because its treasury was kept on the sacred island of
Delos. The Spartans, although they had taken part in the war, withdrew into isolation after it, allowing Athens to establish unchallenged naval and commercial power.
Dominance of Athens
The Persian Wars ushered in a century of Athenian dominance of Greek affairs. Athens was the unchallenged master of the sea, and also the leading commercial power, although Corinth remained a serious rival. The leading statesman of this time was
Pericles, who used the tribute paid by the members of the Delian League to build the
Parthenon and other great monuments of classical Athens. By the mid 5th century the League had become an
Athenian Empire, symbolized by the transfer of the League's treasury from Delos to the Parthenon in 454 BC.
The wealth of Athens attracted talented people from all over Greece, and also created a wealthy leisure class who became patrons of the arts. The Athenian state also sponsored learning and the arts, particularly architecture. Athens became the centre of Greek literature, philosophy and the arts . Some of the greatest names of Western cultural and intellectual history lived in Athens during this period: the dramatists
Aeschylus,
Aristophanes,
Euripides, and
Sophocles, the philosophers
Aristotle,
Plato, and
Socrates, the historians
Herodotus,
Thucydides, and
Xenophon, the poet Simonides and the sculptor
Pheidias. The city became, in Pericles's words, "the school of Hellas".
The other Greek states at first accepted Athenian leadership in the continuing war against the Persians, but after the fall of the conservative politician
Cimon in 461 BC, Athens became an increasingly open imperialist power. After the Greek victory at the Battle of the Eurymedon in 466 BC, the Persians were no longer a threat, and some states, such as
Naxos, tried to secede from the League, but were forced to submit. The new Athenian leaders,
Pericles and Ephialtes, let relations between Athens and Sparta deteriorate, and in 458 BC war broke out. After some years of inconclusive war a 30-year peace was signed between the
Delian League and the Peloponnesian League . This coincided with the last battle between the Greeks and the Persians, a sea battle off
Salamis in
Cyprus, followed by the Peace of Callias between the Greeks and Persians.
The Peloponnesian War
In 431 BC war broke out again between Athens and Sparta and its allies. The immediate causes of the Peloponnesian War vary from account to account. However, three causes are fairly consistent among the ancient historians, namely Thucydides and Plutarch. Prior to the war, Corinth and one of its colonies,
Corcyra , got into a dispute in which Athens intervened. Soon after, Corinth and Athens argued over control of Potidaea , eventually leading to an Athenian siege of the Potidaea. Finally, Athens issued a series of economic decrees known as the "Megarian Decrees" that placed economic sanctions on the Megarian people. Athens was accused by the Peloponnesian allies of violating the Thirty Years Peace through all of the aforementioned actions, and Sparta formally declared war on Athens.
It should be noted that many historians consider these simply to be the immediate causes of the war. They would argue that the underlying cause was the growing resentment of Sparta and its allies at the dominance of Athens over Greek affairs. The war lasted 27 years, partly because Athens and Sparta found it difficult to come to grips with each other.
Sparta's initial strategy was to invade Attica, but the Athenians were able to retreat behind their walls. An outbreak of plague in the city during the siege caused heavy losses, including Pericles. At the same time the Athenian fleet landed troops in the Peloponnese, winning battles at Naupactus and Pylos . But these tactics could bring neither side a decisive victory.
After several years of inconclusive campaigning, the moderate Athenian leader Nicias concluded the Peace of Nicias .
In 418 BC, however, hostility between Sparta and the Athenian ally
Argos led to a resumption of fighting. At Mantinea Sparta defeated the combined armies of Athens and her allies. The resumption of fighting brought the war party, led by
Alcibiades, back to power in Athens. In 415 BC Alcibiades persuaded the Athenian Assembly to launch a major expedition against
Syracuse, a Peloponnesian ally in
Sicily. Though Nicias was a sceptic about the
Sicilian Expedition, he was appointed along Alcibiades to lead the expedition. Due to accusations against him, Alcibiades fled to Sparta where he persuaded Sparta to send aid to Syracuse. As a result, the expedition was a complete disaster and the whole expeditionary force was lost. Nicias was executed by his captors.
Sparta had now built a fleet to challenge Athenian naval supremacy, and had found a brilliant military leader in Lysander, who seized the strategic initiative by occupying the Hellespont, the source of Athens' grain imports. Threatened with starvation, Athens sent its last remaining fleet to confront Lysander, who decisively defeated them at
Aegospotami . The loss of her fleet threatened Athens with bankruptcy. In 404 BC Athens sued for peace, and Sparta dictated a predictably stern settlement: Athens lost her city walls, her fleet, and all of her overseas possessions. The anti-democratic party took power in Athens with Spartan support.
Spartan and Theban dominance
- Related articles: Spartan hegemony and Theban hegemony
The end of the Peloponnesian War left Sparta the master of Greece, but the narrow outlook of the Spartan warrior elite did not suit them to this role. Within a few years the democratic party regained power in Athens and other cities. In 395 BC the Spartan rulers removed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost her naval supremacy.
Athens,
Argos,
Thebes, and
Corinth, the latter two formerly Spartan allies, challenged Spartan dominance in the
Corinthian War, which ended inconclusively in 387 BC. That same year Sparta shocked Greek opinion by concluding the Treaty of Antalcidas with Persia, by which they surrendered the Greek cities of Ionia and Cyprus; thus they reversed a hundred years of Greek victories against Persia. Sparta then tried to further weaken the power of Thebes, which led to a war where Thebes formed an alliance with the old enemy, Athens.
Then the Theban generals
Epaminondas and Pelopidas won a decisive victory at
Leuctra . The result of this battle was the end of Spartan supremacy and the establishment of Theban dominance, but Athens herself recovered much of her former power because the supremacy of Thebes was short-lived. With the death of Epaminondas at Mantinea the city lost its greatest leader, and his successors blundered into an ineffectual ten-year war with Phocis. In 346 BC the Thebans appealed to
Philip II of Macedon to help them against the Phocians, thus drawing
Macedon into Greek affairs for the first time.
The rise of Macedon
The Kingdom of
Macedon was formed in the 7th century BC. They played little part in Greek politics before the 5th century BC. In the beginning of the 4th century BC, King Philip of Macedon, an ambitious man who had been educated in Thebes, wanted to play a larger role. In particular, he wanted to be accepted as the new leader of Greece in recovering the freedom of the Greek cities of Asia from Persian rule. By seizing the Greek cities of
Amphipolis, Methone and Potidaea, he gained control of the gold and silver mines of Macedonia. This gave him the resources to realize his ambitions.
Philip established Macedonian dominance over Thessaly and
Thrace, and by 348 BC he controlled everything north of
Thermopylae. He used his great wealth to bribe Greek politicians, creating a "Macedonian party" in every Greek city. His intervention in the war between Thebes and Phocis brought him great recognition, and gave him his opportunity to become a power in Greek affairs. Against him the Athenian leader
Demosthenes, in a series of famous speeches roused the Athenians to resist Philip's advance.
In 339 BC Thebes and Athens formed an alliance to resist Philip's growing influence. Philip struck first, advancing into Greece and defeating the allies at Chaeronea in 338 BC. This traditionally marks the start of the decline of the city-state institution, though they mostly survived as independent states until
Roman times.
Philip tried to win over the Athenians by flattery and gifts, but these efforts met with limited success. He organized the cities into the League of Corinth, and announced that he would lead an invasion of Persia to liberate the Greek cities and avenge the Persian invasions of the previous century. But before he could do so he was assassinated .
The conquests of Alexander
Philip was succeeded by his 20-year-old son
Alexander, who immediately set out to carry out his father's plans. When he saw that Athens had fallen, he wanted to bring back the tradition of Athens by destroying the Persian King. He travelled to Corinth where the assembled Greek cities recognized him as leader of the Greeks, then set off north to assemble his forces. The core structure of his army was the hardy Macedonian mountain-fighter, but he bolstered his numbers and diversified his army with levies from all corners of Greece. He enriched his tactics and formation with Greek strategem ranging from Theban cavalry structure to Spartan guerilla tactics. His engineering and manufacturing were largely derived of Greek origin – involving everything from Archimedal siege-weaponry to Ampipholian ship-reinforcement. But while Alexander was campaigning in Thrace, he heard that the Greek cities had rebelled. He swept south again, captured Thebes, and razed the city to the ground. He left only one building standing, the house of Pindar, a poet who had written in favour of Alexander's ancestor, Alexander the First. This acted as a symbol and warning to the Greek cities that his power could no longer be resisted, whilst reminding them he would preserve and respect their culture if they were obedient.
In 334 BC Alexander crossed into Asia, and defeated the Persians at the river
Granicus. This gave him control of the Ionian coast, and he made a triumphal procession through the liberated Greek cities. After settling affairs in
Anatolia, he advanced south through
Cilicia into
Syria, where he defeated
Darius III at
Issus . He then advanced through
Phoenicia to
Egypt, which he captured with little resistance, the Egyptians welcoming him as a liberator from Persian oppression, and the prophesized son of
Amun.
Darius was now ready to make peace and Alexander could have returned home in triumph, but Alexander was determined to conquer Persia and make himself the ruler of the world. He advanced north-east through Syria and
Mesopotamia, and defeated Darius again at
Gaugamela . Darius fled and was killed by his own followers, and Alexander found himself the master of the Persian Empire, occupying
Susa and
Persepolis without resistance.
Meanwhile the Greek cities were making renewed efforts to escape from Macedonian control. At Megalopolis in 331 BC, Alexander's regent Antipater defeated the Spartans, who had refused to join the Corinthian League or recognize Macedonian supremacy.
Alexander pressed on, advancing through what are now
Afghanistan and
Pakistan to the
Indus river valley, and by 326 BC he had reached
Punjab. He might well have advanced down the
Ganges to
Bengal had not his army, convinced they were at the end of the world, refused to go any further. Alexander reluctantly turned back, and died of a fever in
Babylon 
