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Ancient Greek Language

Ancient Greek language

Ancient Greek refers to the stage in the history of the Greek language corresponding to Classical Antiquity, which normally applies to two periods of Greek history: Archaic and Classical Greece. The Ancient era of Greek history normally includes also the Hellenistic (post-Classic) age; however, that period formally composes its own stage in the Greek Language known as Hellenistic Greek. For information on the Greek language prior to the creation of the Greek alphabet, see articles Mycenaean Greek and Proto-Greek.

Dialects of Ancient Greek

The Greek language had started shaping in local forms even before the settling of the Greek-speaking tribes into Greece, yet the actual dialectic variation took place afterwards. Throughout history the Greek language is presented in a number of dialects that did not apply on fixed geographical borders, and even if it did, those borders would be constantly altered because of the frequent migrations of the Hellenic peoples. According to its linguistic variations, the Ancient Greek language of the Archaic and Classic periods is composed by the following symbolic dialectic branches: The dialects of the pre-classical and classical period appear documented in writing beginning in the 8th century BC, and they certainly developed well before this date. The most standard formulation currently for the pre-classical and classical dialects is four or five major groups: # Northwest Greek (including Doric, and possibly Ancient Macedonian) # Aeolic (including Boeotian, Lesbian, Thessalian, and Aegean/Asiatic Aeolic subdivisions) # Attic-Ionic # Arcado-Cyprian # and possibly Pamphylian As each of the above dialectic branches is broken down to its individual dialects, each dialect can in turn be divided into countless local idioms. The information provided in the dialect-specific articles is a general linguistic description that is confined to the main characteristics of the Common form (Koine) of each dialect, without getting into detail about their numerous idiomatic variations. In that respect, the article on Doric describes the "Common" form of Doric as it is seen, e.g., in Pindar's poetry, which differs from local forms such as Laconian, Cretan, Sicilian or even Theban Doric. The Arcado-Cyprian group appears to be closest to Mycenaean Greek, and is likely its direct descendant. Northwest/Doric is the most distinct from the others. Controversy on the early history of Greek dialects generally focuses on the nature of Aeolic and Attic-Ionic—with various configurations of independent development or relations to Mycenaean or Northwest/Doric proposed. The relations between the dialects are likely obscured by significant amounts of influence on each other. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek, but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived to the present in the form of the Tsakonian and Southern Italian dialect of Modern Greek. Doric has also passed down its Aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek. By about the 7th century AD., the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek.

Sound changes

These sound changes since Proto-Greek affect most or all Ancient Greek dialects:
- Syllabic /r/, /l/ become /ro/ and /lo/ in Mycenean Greek and Aeolic Greek; otherwise /ra/ and /la/, but /ar/ and /al/ before resonants and analogously.
- Loss of /h/ from original /s/ (except initially) and of /j/.
- Loss of /w/ in many dialects (later than loss of /h/ and /j/).
- Loss of labiovelars, which were converted (mostly) into labials, sometimes into dentals or velars.
- Contraction of adjacent vowels resulting from loss of /h/ and /j/ (and, to a lesser extent, from loss of /w/); more in Attic Greek than elsewhere.
- Rise of a distinctive circumflex accent, resulting from contraction and certain other changes.
- Limitation of the accent to the last three syllables, with various further restrictions.
- Loss of /n/ before /s/ (incompletely in Cretan Greek), with compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel. Note that /w/ and /j/, when following a vowel and not preceding a vowel, combined early on with the vowel to form a diphthong and were thus not lost. The loss of /h/ and /w/ after a consonant were often accompanied by compensatory lengthening of a preceding vowel. The loss of /j/ after a consonant was accompanied by a large number of complex changes, including diphthongization of a preceding vowel or palatalization or other change to a directly preceding consonant. Some examples:
- /pj/, /bj/, /phj/ -> /pt/
- /lj/ -> /ll/
- /tj/, /thj/, /kj/, /khj/ -> /s/ when following a consonant; otherwise /tt/ (Attic), /ss/ (Ionic)
- /gj/, /dj/ -> /zd/
- /mj/, /nj/, /rj/ -> /j/ is transposed before consonant and forms a diphthong with the preceding vowel
- /wj/, /sj/ -> /j/, forming a diphthong with the preceding vowel The results of vowel contraction were complex and differed from dialect to dialect. Such contractions occur in the inflection of a number of different noun and verb classes and are among the most difficult aspects of Ancient Greek grammar. They were particularly important in the large class of contracted verbs, denominative verbs formed from nouns and adjectives ending in a vowel. (In fact, the reflex of contracted verbs in Modern Greek—i.e., the set of verbs derived from Ancient Greek contracted verbs—represents one of the two main classes of verbs in that language.)

Sounds

The pronunciation of Post-Classic Greek changed considerably from Ancient Greek, although the orthography still reflects features of the older language (see W. Sidney Allen, Vox Graeca – a guide to the pronunciation of Classical Greek). For a detailed description on the phonology changes from Ancient to Hellenistic periods of the Greek language, see the article on Koine Greek. The examples below are intended to represent Attic Greek in the 5th century BC. Although ancient pronunciation can never be reconstructed with certainty, Greek in particular is very well documented from this period, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represented.

Vowels

Short vowels

The short e (ε in Greek orthography) is shown in the table as mid close vowel , but it may have been nearer to .

	Front	Back
Close unrounded
Close rounded
Close-mid
Open

Long Vowels

The [] (ου in Greek orthography) probably changed to [] by the fourth century.

	Front	Back
Close unrounded
Close rounded
Close-mid
Open-mid
Open

Consonants

Note: [z] was an allophone of [s], used before voiced consonants, and in particular in the combination [zd] written as zeta (ζ). The [] (voiceless r) written as rho with a rough breathing () was probably an allophone of [r].

Consonant classes

There are three main classes of consonants:
- Stops. This include three subclasses: velars (k, g, kh), labials (p, b, ph), and dentals (t, d, th).
- Sonorants are m, n, l, r.
- Fricatives are s and h.

Consonant contractions

In verb conjugation, one consonant often comes up against the other. Various sandhi rules apply. Rules:
- Most basic rule: When two sounds appear next to each other, the first assimilates in voicing and aspiration to the second.
- This applies fully to stops. Fricatives assimilate only in voicing, sonorants do not assimilate.
- Before an s (future, aorist stem), velars become k, labials p, and dentals disappear.
- Before a th (aorist passive stem), velars become kh, labials ph, dentals s.
- Before an m (perfect middle first-singular, first-plural, participle), velars become g, nasal+velar becomes g, labials m, dentals and n become s, other sonants remain.

Compensatory lengthening

There are different schemes for compensatory lengthening, depending on where it happens. The differences are in whether a becomes ā or ē, and whether e and o become the closed values ei /eː/ and ou /oː/ or the open values ē /ɛː/ and ō /ɔː/.

Augment

The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least) a prefix /e-/. This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). There are two kinds of augment in Greek, syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r, however, add er). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel:
- a, ā, e, ē -> ē
- i, ī -> ī
- o, ō -> ō
- u, ū -> ū
- ai -> ēi
- ei -> ēi or ei
- oi -> ōi
- au -> ēu or au
- eu -> ēu or eu
- ou -> ou Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e -> ei. The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels. The augment is sometimes omitted in poetry (Epic Greek). The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below.

Reduplication

All forms of the perfect, pluperfect and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. There are three types of reduplication:
- Syllabic reduplication: Most verbs beginning with a single consonant, or a cluster of a stop with a sonorant, add a syllable consisting of the initial consonant followed by e. An aspirated consonant, however, reduplicates in its unaspirated equivalent: this is often referred to as Grassman's Law.
- Augment: Verbs beginning with a vowel, as well as those beginning with a cluster other than those indicated previously (and occasionally for a few other verbs) reduplicate in the same fashion as the augment. Note that this remains in all forms of the perfect, not just the indicative.
- Attic reduplication: Some verbs beginning with an a, e or o, followed by a sonorant (or occasionally d or g), reduplicate by adding a syllable consisting of the initial vowel and following consonant, and lengthening the following vowel. Hence er -> erēr, an -> anēn, ol -> olōl, ed -> edēd. This is not actually specific to Attic Greek, despite its name. This originally involved reduplicating a cluster consisting of a laryngeal and sonorant; hence h₃l -> h₃leh₃l -> olōl with normal Greek development of laryngeals. (Forms with a stop were analogous.) Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab) has the perfect stem eilēpha (not
- lelēpha) because it was originally slambanō, with perfect seslēpha, becoming eilēpha through (semi-)regular change.

Grammatical forms

Ancient Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages, is highly inflected. Ancient Greek is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. Nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative), three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). Verbs have four moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive and optative), three voices (active, middle and passive), as well as three persons (first, second and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated in four main tenses (present, aorist, perfect, and future), with a full complement of moods for each main tense, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. (The distinction of the "tenses" in moods other than the indicative is actually mostly of aspect.) In addition, indicative forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist. Infinitives and participles for all corresponding finite combinations of tense and voice, excluding the imperfect and pluperfect.

Nouns

Ancient Greek nouns have three numbers (singular, dual, and plural), three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and five cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative). The two major noun declensions are the vowel declension and the consonant declension. The vowel declension is split into the alpha-declension and the omicron-declension. There is also the minor consonant declension.

Alpha Declension

The alpha declension is predominantly, but not exclusively, feminine. Nouns belonging to the alpha declension have stems ending in alpha, short or long. In certain circumstances the alpha may change its length or become eta. In the table below of feminine nouns there are three examples: long-alpha stem (-stems), short-alpha stems (-stems), and a stems which can end in eta (-stems).

Greek language

Greek (Greek Ελληνικά, IPA – "Hellenic") is an Indo-European language with a documented history of 3,500 years. Today, it is spoken by 15 million people in Greece, Cyprus, the former Yugoslavia, particularly The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania and Turkey. There are also many Greek emigrant communities around the world, such as those in Melbourne, Australia which is the third-largest Greek-populated city in the world, after Athens and Thessaloniki. Greek has been written in the Greek alphabet, the first true alphabet, since the 9th century B.C. and before that, in Linear B and the Cypriot syllabaries. Greek literature has a long and rich tradition.

History

This article does not cover the reconstructed history of Greek prior to the use of writing. For more information, see main article on Proto-Greek language. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan Peninsula since the 2nd millennium BC. The earliest evidence of this is found in the Linear B tablets dating from 1500 BC. The later Greek alphabet (q.v.) is unrelated to Linear B, and was derived from the Phoenician alphabet (abjad); with minor modifications, it is still used today. Greek is conventionally divided into the following periods:
- Mycenean Greek: the language of the Mycenean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 16th century BC onwards.
- Classical Greek (also known as Ancient Greek): In its various dialects was the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman empire. Classical Greek fell into disuse in western Europe in the Middle Ages, but remained known in the Byzantine world, and was reintroduced to the rest of Europe with the Fall of Constantinople and Greek migration to Italy.
- Hellenistic Greek (also known as Koine Greek): The fusion of various ancient Greek dialects with Attic (the dialect of Athens) resulted in the creation of the first common Greek dialect, which gradually turned into one of the world's first international languages. Koine Greek can be initially traced within the armies and conquered territories of Alexander the Great, but after the Hellenistic colonisation of the known world, it was spoken from Egypt to the fringes of India. After the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial diglossy of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. Through Koine Greek it is also traced the origin of Christianity, as the Apostles used it to preach in Greece and the Greek-speaking world. It is also known as the Alexandrian dialect, Post-Classical Greek or even New Testament Greek (after its most famous work of literature).
- Medieval Greek: The continuation of Hellenistic Greek during medieval Greek history as the official and vernacular (if not the literary nor the ecclesiastic) language of the Byzantine Empire, and continued to be used until, and after the fall of that Empire in the 15th century. Also known as Byzantine Greek.
- Modern Greek: Stemming independently from Koine Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the late Byzantine period (as early as 11th century). Two main forms of the language have been in use since the end of the medieval Greek period: Dhimotikí (Δημοτική), the Demotic (vernacular) language, and Katharévousa (Καθαρεύουσα), an imitation of classical Greek, which was used for literary, juridic, and scientific purposes during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Demotic Greek is now the official language of the modern Greek state, and the most widely spoken by Greeks today. It has been claimed that an "educated" speaker of the modern language can understand an ancient text, but this is surely as much a function of education as of the similarity of the languages. Still, Koinē , the version of Greek used to write the New Testament and the Septuagint, is relatively easy to understand for modern speakers. Greek words have been widely borrowed into the European languages: astronomy, democracy, philosophy, thespian, etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as a basis for coinages: anthropology, photography, isomer, biomechanics etc. and form, with Latin words, the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary. See English words of Greek origin, and List of Greek words with English derivatives.

Classification

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient languages which were probably most closely related to it, Ancient Macedonian language (which may be regarded as a dialect of Greek) and Phrygian, are not well enough documented to permit detailed comparison. Among living languages, Armenian seems to be the most closely related to it.

Geographic distribution

Modern Greek is spoken by about 15 million people mainly in Greece and Cyprus. There are also Greek-speaking populations in Georgia, Ukraine, Egypt, Turkey, Albania, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Southern Italy. The language is spoken also in many other countries where Greeks have settled, including Armenia, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Official status

Greek is the official language of Greece where it is spoken by about 99.5% of the population. It is also, alongside Turkish, the official language of Cyprus. Due to the membership of Greece and Cyprus, Greek is one of the 20 official languages of the European Union.

Phonology

This section generally describes the post-Classic phonology of the Greek language. :All phonetic transcriptions in this section use the International Phonetic Alphabet

Vowel sounds

Greek has 5 vowel sounds, all phonemic:

Greek history

This article covers the Greek civilization. For the Greek language as a whole, see Greek language. For the Classical Greek language, see Ancient Greek. The History of Greece traditionally encompasses the study of the Greek people, the areas they ruled, and the territory now composing the modern state of Greece. The scope of Greek habitation and rule has varied significantly through the ages, and as a consequence the history of Greece is similarly elastic in what it includes. Each era has its own related sphere of interest. The first Greeks arrived in Europe some time before 1500 BC, and at its peak, Greek Civilization ruled everything from Greece to Egypt to the Hindu Kush mountains. Since then, large Greek minorities have remained in former Greek territories (e.g., Turkey, Italy, and Libya, Levant, etc.), and Greek Emigrants have assimilated into differing societies across the globe (e.g. North America, Australia, Northern Europe, South Africa etc.). However, today most Greeks live in the modern states of Greece (independent since 1821) and Cyprus (independent since 1960).

Aegean civilization: prehistoric Greece

The earliest civilization to appear around Greece was the Minoan civilization on the Aegean Sea; it lasted approximately from 3000 to 1450 BC . Little specific is known about the Minoans (even the name is a modern appellation, from Minos, the legendary king of Crete). They appear to have been a pre-Indo-European people; their language, known as Eteocretan, may have been written in the undeciphered Linear A script. They were primarily a mercantilist people engaged in overseas trade. Although the causes of their demise are uncertain, they were eventually invaded by the Mycenaeans from mainland Greece.

Mycenaean Greece (Bronze Age)

Mycenaeans Mycenaean Greece, also known as Bronze Age Greece, is the Late Helladic Bronze Age civilization of Ancient Greece. It lasted from the arrival of the Greeks in the Aegean around 1600 BC to the collapse of their Bronze Age civilization around 1100 BC. It is the historical setting of the epics of Homer and much other Greek mythology. The Mycenaean period takes its name from the archaeological site Mycenae in the northeastern Argolid, in the Peloponnesos of southern Greece. Athens, Pylos, Thebes, and Tiryns are also important Mycenaean sites. Mycenaean civilization was dominated by a warrior aristocracy. Around 1400 BC the Mycenaeans extended their control to Crete, center of the Minoan civilization, and adopted a form the Minoan script called Linear A to write their early form of Greek. The Mycenaean era script is called Linear B. The Mycenaeans buried their nobles in beehive tombs (tholoi), large circular burial chambers with a high vaulted roof and straight entry passage lined with stone. They often buried daggers or some other form of military equipment with the deceased. The nobility were frequently buried with gold masks, tiaras, armour, and jeweled weapons. Mycenaeans were buried in a sitting position, and some of the nobility underwent mummification. Around 1100 BC the Mycenaean civilization collapsed. Numerous cities were sacked and the region entered what historians see as a dark age. During this period Greece experienced a decline in population and literacy. The Greeks themselves have traditionally blamed this decline on an invasion by another wave of Greek people, the Dorians, although there is scant archeological evidence for this view.

Greek Dark Ages

The Greek Dark Ages (ca. 1200 BC–800 BC) refers to the period of Greek prehistory from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the Mycenaean civilization in the 11th century BC to the rise of the first Greek city-states in the 9th century BC and the epics of Homer and earliest writings in alphabetic Greek in the 8th century BC. The collapse of the Mycenaean coincided with the fall of several other large empires in the near east, most notably the Hittite and the Egyptian. The cause may be attributed to an invasion of the sea people wielding iron weapons. When the Dorians came down into Greece they also were equipped with superior iron weapons, easily dispersing the already weakened Mycenaeans. The period that follows these events is collectively known as the Greek Dark Ages. Archaeology shows a collapse of civilization in the Greek world in this period. The great palaces and cities of the Mycenaeans were destroyed or abandoned. The Greek language ceased to be written. Greek dark age pottery has simple geometric designs and lacks the figurative decoration of Mycenaean ware. The Greeks of the dark age lived in fewer and smaller settlements, suggesting mass depopulation, and foreign goods have not been found at archaeological sites, suggesting minimum international trade. Contact was also lost between foreign powers during this period, yielding little cultural progress or growth of any sort. Kings ruled throughout this period until eventually they were replaced with an aristocracy, then still later, in some areas, an aristocracy within an aristocracy—an elite of the elite. Warfare shifted from a focus on cavalry to a great emphasis on infantry. Due to its cheapness of production and local availability, iron replaced bronze as the metal of choice in the manufacturing of tools and weapons. Slowly equality grew among the different sects of people, leading to the dethronement of the various Kings and the rise of the family. Families began to reconstruct their past in attempts to link their bloodlines with heroes from the Trojan War, more specifically Heracles. While most of this was legend, some were sorted by poets of the school of Hesiod. Most of these poems are lost, though, but some famous "storywriters", as they were called, were Hecataeus of Miletus and Acusilaus of Argos. It is thought that the epics by Homer contain a certain amount of tradition preserved orally during the Dark Ages period. The historical validity of Homer's writings is vigorously disputed; see the article on Troy for a discussion. At the end of this period of stagnation the Greek civilization was engulfed in a renaissance that spread the Greek world as far as the Black Sea and Spain. Writing was relearned from the Phoenicians, eventually spreading north into Italy and the Gauls.

Ancient Greece

Gauls.]] There are no fixed or universally agreed 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 Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations, while others argue that these civilizations were so different from later Greek cultures that they should be classed separately. Traditionally, the Ancient Greek period was taken to begin with the date of the first Olympic Games in 776 BC, but most 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 as Hellenistic. Not everyone treats the Ancient and Hellenic periods as distinct, however, and some writers treat the Ancient Greek civilization as a continuum running until the advent of Christianity in the third century AD. third century Ancient Greece 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. Ancient Greek civilization has been immensely influential on the language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, art and architecture of the modern world, particularly during the Renaissance in Western Europe and again during various neo-Classical revivals in 18th and 19th century Europe and The Americas. The basic unit of politics in Ancient Greece was the polis, sometimes translated as city-state. "Politics" literally means "the things of the polis." Each city was independent, at least in theory. Some cities might be subordinate to others (a colony traditionally deferred to its mother city), some might have had governments wholly dependent upon others (the Thirty Tyrants in Athens was imposed by Sparta following the Peloponnesian War), but the titularly supreme power in each city was located within that city. This meant that when Greece went to war (e.g., against the Persian Empire), it took the form of an alliance going to war. It also gave ample opportunity for wars within Greece between different cities. Most of the Greek names known to modern readers flourished in this age. Among the poets, Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Sappho were active. Famous politicians include Themistocles, Pericles, Lysander, Epaminondas, Alcibiades, Philip II of Macedon, and his son Alexander the Great. Plato wrote, as did Aristotle, Heraclitus of Ephesus, Parmenides, Democritus, Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon. Almost all of the mathematical knowledge formalized in Euclid's Elements at the beginning of the Hellenistic period was developed in this era. Two major wars shaped the Ancient Greek world. The Persian Wars (500–448 BC) are recounted in Herodotus's Histories. Ionian Greek cities revolted from the Persian Empire and were supported by some of the mainland cities, eventually led by Athens. (The notable battles of this war include Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea.) In order to prosecute the war, and subsequently to defend Greece from further Persian attack, Athens founded the Delian League in 477 BC. Initially, each city in the League would contribute ships and soldiers to a common army, but in time Athens allowed (and then compelled) the smaller cities to contribute funds so that it could supply their quota of ships. Revolution from the League could be punished. Following military reversals against the Persians, the treasury was moved from Delos to Athens, further strengthening the latter's control over the League. The Delian League was eventually referred to pejoratively as the Athenian Empire. In 458 BC, while the Persian Wars were still ongoing, war broke out between the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League, comprising Sparta and its allies. After some inconclusive fighting, the two sides signed a peace in 447 BC. That peace, it was stipulated, was to last thirty years: instead it held only until 431 BC, with the onset of the Peloponnesian War. Our main sources concerning this war are Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War and Xenophon's Hellenica. The war began over a dispute between Corcyra and Epidamnus; the latter was a minor enough city that Thucydides has to tell his reader where it is. Corinth intervened on the Epidamnian side. Fearful lest Corinth capture the Corcyran navy (second only to the Athenian in size), Athens intervened. It prevented Corinth from landing on Corcyra at the Battle of Sybota, laid siege to Potidaea, and forbade all commerce with Corinth's closely situated ally, Megara (the Megarian decree). There was disagreement among the Greeks as to which party violated the treaty between the Delian and Peloponnesian Leagues, as Athens was technically defending a new ally. The Corinthians begged Sparta for aid. Fearing the growing might of Athens, and witnessing Athens' willingness to use it against the Megarians (the embargo would have ruined them), Sparta declared the treaty to have been violated and the Peloponnesian War began in earnest. The first stage of the war (known as the Archidamian War for the Spartan king, Archidamus II) lasted until 421 BC with the signing of the Peace of Nicias. The Athenian general Pericles recommended that his city fight a defensive war, avoiding battle against the superior land forces led by Sparta, and importing everything needful by maintaining its powerful navy: Athens would simply outlast Sparta, whose citizens feared to be out of their city for long lest the helots revolt. This strategy required that Athens endure regular sieges, and in 430 BC it was visited with an awful plague which killed appropximately a quarter of its people, including Pericles. With Pericles gone, less conservative elements gained power in the city and Athens went on the offensive. It captured 300–400 Spartan hoplites at the Battle of Pylos. This represented a significant fraction of the Spartan fighting force which the latter decided it could not afford to lose. Meanwhile, Athens had suffered humiliating defeats at Delium and Amphipolis. The Peace of Nicias concluded with Sparta recovering its hostages and Athens recovering the city of Amphipolis. Those who signed the Peace of Nicias in 421 BC swore to uphold it for fifty years. The second stage of the Peloponnesian War began in 415 BC when Athens embarked on the Sicilian Expedition to support an ally (Segesta) attacked by Syracuse and conquer Sicily. Initially, Sparta was not going to aid its ally, but Alcibiades, the Athenian general who had argued for the Sicilian Expedition, defected to the Spartan cause upon being accused of grossly impious acts and convinced them that they could not allow Athens to subjugate Syracuse. The campaign ended in disaster for the Athenians. Athens' Ionian possessions rebelled with the support of Sparta, as advised by Alcibiades. In 411 BC, an oligarchical revolt in Athens held out the chance for peace, but the Athenian navy, which remained committed to the democracy, refused to accept the change and continued fighting in Athens' name. The navy recalled Alcibiades (who had been forced to abandon the Spartan cause after reputedly seducing the wife of Agis II, a Spartan king) and made him its head. The oligarchy in Athens collapsed and Alcibiades proceeded to reconquer what had been lost. In 407 BC, Alcibiades was replaced following a minor naval defeat at the Battle of Notium. The Spartan general Lysander, having fortified his city's naval power, won victory after victory. Following the Battle of Arginusae, which Athens won but was prevented by bad weather from rescuing some of its sailors, Athens executed or exiled eight of its top naval commanders. Lysander followed with a crushing blow at the Battle of Aegospotami in 405 BC which virtually destroyed the Athenian fleet. Athens surrendered one year later, ending the Peloponnesian War. The war had left devastation in its wake. Discontent with the Spartan hegemony that followed (including the fact that it ceded Ionia and Cyprus to the Persian Empire at the conclusion of the Corinthian War (395–387 BC); see Treaty of Antalcidas) induced the Thebans to attack. Their general, Epaminondas, crushed Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC, inaugurating a period of Theban dominance in Greece. In 346 BC, unable to prevail in its ten year war with Phocis, Thebes called upon Philip II of Macedon for aid. Macedon quickly conquered the exhausted cites of Greece. The basic unit of politics from that point was the empire, and the Hellenic Age had begun.

Hellenistic Greece

empire.]] The Hellenistic period of Greek history begins with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and ends with the annexation of the Greek peninsula and islands by Rome in 146 BC. Although the establishment of Roman rule did not break the continuity of Hellenistic society and culture, which remained essentially unchanged until the advent of Christianity, it did mark the end of Greek political independence. During the Hellenistic period the importance of "Greece proper" (that is, the territory of modern Greece) within the Greek-speaking world declined sharply. The great centres of Hellenistic culture were Alexandria and Antioch, capitals of Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria respectively. (See Hellenistic civilization for the history of Greek culture outside of Greece in this period.) Athens and her allies revolted against Macedon upon hearing that Alexander had died, but was defeated within a year in the Lamian War. Meanwhile, a struggle for power broke out among Alexander's generals, which resulted in the break-up of his empire and the establishment of a number of new kingdoms (see the Wars of the Diadochi). Ptolemy was left with Egypt, Seleucus with the Levant, Mesopotamia, and points east. Control of Greece, Thrace, and Anatolia was contested, but by 298 BC the Antigonid dynasty had supplanted the Antipatrid. Macedonian control of the Greek city-states was intermittent, with a number of revolts. Athens, Rhodes, Pergamum and other Greek states retained substantial independence, and joined the Aetolian League as a means of defending it. The Achaean League, while nominally subject to the Ptolemies was in effect independent, and controlled most of southern Greece. Sparta also remained independent, but generally refused to join any league. In 267 BC Ptolemy II persuaded the Greek cities to revolt against Macedon, in what became the Chremonidean War, after the Athenian leader Chremonides. The cities were defeated and Athens lost her independence and her democratic institutions. This marked the end of Athens as a political actor, although it remained the largest, wealthiest and most cultivated city in Greece. In 225 Macedon defeated the Egyptian fleet at Cos and brought the Aegean islands, except Rhodes, under its rule as well. Sparta remained hostile to the Achaeans, and in 227 BC invaded Achaea and seized control of the League. The remaining Acheans preferred distant Macedon to nearby Sparta, and allied with the former. In 222 BC the Macedonian army defeated the Spartans and annexed their city—the first time Sparta had even been occupied by a foreign power. Philip V of Macedon was the last Greek ruler with both the talent and the opportunity to unite Greece and preserve its independence against the ever-increasing power of Rome. Under his auspices the Peace of Naupactus (217 BC) brought conflict between Macedon and the Greek leagues to an end, and at this time he controlled all of Greece except Athens, Rhodes and Pergamum. In 215 BC, however, Philip formed an alliance with Rome's enemy Carthage. Rome promptly lured the Achaean cities away from their nominal loyalty to Philip, and formed alliances with Rhodes and Pergamum, now the strongest power in Asia Minor. The First Macedonian War broke out in 212, and ended inconclusively in 205, but Macedon was now marked as an enemy of Rome. In 202 BC Rome defeated Carthage, and was free to turn her attention eastwards. In 198 the Second Macedonian War broke out for obscure reasons, but basically because Rome saw Macedon as a potential ally of the Seleucids, the greatest power in the east. Philip's allies in Greece deserted him and in 197 he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Cynoscephalae by the Roman proconsul Titus Quinctius Flaminius. Luckily for the Greeks, Flaminius was a moderate man and an admirer of Greek culture. Philip had to surrender his fleet and become a Roman ally, but was otherwise spared. At the Isthmian Games in 196, Flaminius declared all the Greek cities free, although Roman garrisons were placed at Corinth and Chalcis. But the freedom promised by Rome was an illusion. All the cities except Rhodes were enrolled in a new League which Rome ultimately controlled, and democracies were replaced by aristocratic regimes allied to Rome.

Roman Period

Militarily Greece itself declined to the point that the Romans conquered the land (168 BC onwards), though Greek culture would in turn conquer Roman life. Although the period of Roman rule in Greece is conventionally dated as starting from the sacking of Corinth by the Roman Lucius Mummius in 146 BC, Macedonia had already come under Roman control with the defeat of its king, Perseus, by the Roman Aemilius Paullus at Pydna in 168 BC. The Romans divided the region into four smaller republics, and in 146 BC Macedonia officially became a Roman province, with its capital at Thessalonica. The rest of the Greek city-states gradually and eventually paid homage to Rome ending their de jure autonomy as well. The Romans left local administration to the Greeks without making any attempt to abolish traditional political patterns. The agora in Athens continued to be the centre of civic and political life. Caracalla's decree in 212 AD, the Constitutio Antoniniana, extended citizenship outside of Italy to all free adult males in the entire Roman Empire, effectively raising provincial populations to equal status with the city of Rome itself. The importance of this decree is historical rather than political. It set the basis for integration where the economic and judicial mechanisms of the state could be applied throughout the entire Mediterranean as was once done from Latium into all of Italy. In practice of course, integration did not take place uniformly. Societies already integrated with Rome, such as Greece, were favored by this decree, in comparison with those far away, too poor or just too alien such as Britain, Palestine or Egypt. Caracalla's decree did not set in motion the processes that lead to the transfer of power from Italy and the West to Greece and the East, but rather accelerated them, setting the foundations for the rise of Greece as a major power in Europe and the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages.

Medieval Greece

The history of the Byzantine Empire is described by scholar August Heisenberg as the history "of the Roman state of the Greek nation, that turned Christian". The division of the empire into East and West and the subsequent collapse of the Western Roman Empire were developments that constantly accentuated the position of the Greeks in the empire and eventually allowed them to become identified with it altogether. The leading role of Constantinople began when Constantine the Great turned Byzantium into the new capital of the Roman Empire, henceforth to be known as Constantinople, placing the city at the centre of Hellenism a beacon for the Greeks that lasted to the modern era. The figures of Constantine the Great and Justinian dominated during 324–610. Assimilating the Roman tradition, the emperors sought to provide the basis for subsequent developments and for the formation of the Byzantine Empire. Efforts to secure the borders of the Empire and to restore the Roman territories marked the early centuries. At the same time, the definitive formation and establishment of the Orthodox doctrine, but also a series of conflicts resulting from heresies that developed within the boundaries of the empire marked the early period of Byzantine history. In the first period of the middle Byzantine era (610–867) the empire was attacked both by old enemies (Persians, Langobards, Avars and Slavs) as well as by new ones, appearing for the first time in history (Arabs, Bulgarians). The main characteristic of this period was that the enemy attacks were not localized to the border areas of the state but they were extended deep beyond, even threatening the capital itself. At the same time, these attacks lost their periodical and temporary character and became permanent settlements that transformed into new states, hostile to Byzantium. Changes were also observed in the internal structure of the empire which was dictated by both external and internal conditions. The predominance of the small free farmers, the expansion of the military estates and the development of the system of themes, brought to completion developments that had started in the previous period. Changes were noted also in the sector of administration: the administration and society had become immiscibly Greek, while the restoration of Orthodoxy after the iconoclast movement, allowed the successful resumption of missionary action among neighbouring peoples and their placement within the sphere of Byzantine cultural influence. During this period the state was geographically reduced and economically damaged, since it lost wealth-producing regions; however, it obtained greater lingual, dogmatic and cultural homogeneity. The year 1204 marks the beginning of the late Byzantine period, when probably the most important event for the Empire occurred. Constantinople was lost for the Greek people for the first time, and the empire was conquered by Latin crusaders and would be replaced by a new Latin one, for 57 years. In addition, the period of Latin occupation decisively influenced the empire's internal development, as elements of feudality entered aspects of Byzantine life. In 1261 the Greek empire was divided between the former Greek Byzantine Comnenos dynasty members (Epirus) and Palaiologos dynasty (the last dynasty until the fall of Constantinople). After the gradual weakening of the structures of the Greek Byzantine state and the reduction of its land from Turkish invasions, came the fall of the Greek Byzantine Empire, at the hands of the Ottomans, in 1453, when the Byzantine period is considered to have ended. It must be pointed out that the term "Byzantine" is a contemporary one established by historians. People used to call the Empire from the 10th century on as the Greek Empire as well as Romeo-Greek before that time; that's why Greeks call themselves sometimes as Romioi in a colloquial form. The Romeo term was used sometimes because of the legal tradition left in many aspects of the political administration of the Empire. It must be added also that many empires all around Europe had been using this term, in Addition to the Greek Byzantines, like the Carolingians, or the Heiliges Römisches Reich (Latin Sacrum Romanum Imperium) of the Germans looking themselves as the legitimate heirs of the Roman Empire.

Ottoman Rule and the Rise of Modern Greece

Ottomans When the Ottomans arrived, two Greek migrations occurred. The first migration entailed the Greek intelligentsia migrating to Western Europe and influencing the advent of the Renaissance. The second migration entailed Greeks leaving the plains of the Greek peninsula and resettling in the mountains. Greece being mostly mountainous, the Ottomans could not conquer the entire Greek peninsula since they created neither a military nor an administrative presence in the mountains. There existed many Greek mountain clans all across the peninsula and islands. The Sphakiots of Crete, the Souliots (or Souli) of Epirus, and the Mani (or Maniots) of Peloponnesus were the most resilient mountain clans throughout the Ottoman Empire. By the end of the 16th century up until the 17th century, many Greeks began to migrate from the mountains to the plains. The millet system contributed to the ethnic cohesion of Orthodox Greeks by segregating the various peoples within the Ottoman Empire based on religion. The Greek Orthodox Church, an ethno-religious institution, helped the Greeks from all geographical areas of the peninsula (i.e., mountains, plains, and islands) to preserve their ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and racial heritage during the harsh years of Ottoman rule. The Greeks living in the plains during Ottoman occupation were either Christians who dealt with the burdens of foreign rule or Crypto-Christians (Greek Muslims who were secret practitioners of the Greek Orthodox faith). Many Greeks became Crypto-Christians in order to avoid heavy taxes and at the same time express their identity by maintaining their secret ties to the Greek Orthodox Church. However, Greeks who converted to Islam and were not Crypto-Christians were deemed Turks in the eyes of Orthodox Greeks, even if they adopted no other form of Turkish culture or the Turkish language. Islam

Creation of the Modern Greek State

The Ottomans ruled Greece until the early 19th century. In 1821, the Greeks rebelled in the Greek War of Independence and declared their independence, but did not succeed until 1829. The elites of powerful European nations saw the war of Greek independence, with its accounts of Turkish atrocities, in a romantic light (see, for example, the 1824 painting Massacre of Chios by Eugène Delacroix). Scores of non-Greeks volunteered to fight for the cause—including, for example Lord Byron—and indeed at times the Ottomans seemed on the point of almost entirely suppressing the Greek revolution but for the threatened direct military intervention of France, England or Russia. The Russian minister for foreign affairs, Ioannis Kapodistrias, himself a Greek, returned home as President of the new Republic following Greek independence. That republic disappeared when a few years later Western powers helped turn Greece into a monarchy, the first king coming from Bavaria and the second from Denmark. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, in a series of wars with the Ottomans, Greece sought to enlarge its boundaries to include the ethnic Greek population of the Ottoman Empire, slowly growing in territory and population until it reached its present configuration in 1947. In World War I, Greece sided with the entente powers against Turkey and the other Central Powers. In the war's aftermath, the Great Powers awarded parts of Asia Minor to Greece, including the city of Smyrna (known as Izmir today) which had a large Greek population. At that time, however, the Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, overthrew the Ottoman government, organised a military assault on the Greek troops, and defeated them. Immediately afterwards, hundreds of thousands of Turks then living in mainland Greek territory left for Turkey as an exchange with hundreds of thousands of Greeks living in Turkey. Despite the country's numerically small and ill-equipped armed forces, Greece made a decisive contribution to the Allied efforts in World War II. At the start of the war Greece sided with the Allies and refused to give in to Italian demands. Italy invaded Greece on 28 October 1940, but Greek troops repelled the invaders after a bitter struggle (see Greco-Italian War). This marked the first Allied victory in the war. Hitler then reluctantly stepped in, primarily to secure his strategic southern flank: troops from Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Italy successfully invaded Greece, overcoming Greek, British, Australian and New Zealand units. However, when the Germans attempted to seize Crete in a massive attack by paratroops—with the aim of reducing the threat of a counter-offensive by Allied forces in Egypt—Allied forces, along with Cretan civilians, offered fierce resistance. Although Crete eventually fell, this delayed German plans significantly, with the result that the German invasion of the Soviet Union started fatally close to winter. A recent alternative view of this event is that the German troops involved in the battle of Crete were not numerous enough to have any impact on the much larger assault against the Soviet Union. During years of Nazi occupation, thousands of Greeks died in direct combat, in concentration camps or of starvation. The occupiers murdered the greater part of the Jewish community despite efforts by the Greek Orthodox Church and many Christian Greeks to shelter Jews. The economy languished. After liberation, Greece experienced an equally bitter civil war—between communists and royalists—that lasted until 1949. In the 1950s and 1960s, Greece continued to develop slowly, initially with the help of the U.S. Marshall Plans' grants and loans, and later through growth in the tourism sector. In 1967, the Greek military seized power in a coup d'état, overthrew the right-wing government of Panayiotis Kanellopoulos and established what became known as the Régime of the Colonels. The Central Intelligence Agency was suspected in involvement in the coup. The new regime in Athens was supported by the U.S.. In 1973, the régime abolished the Greek monarchy. In 1974, dictator Papadopoulos denied help to the U.S. and rumor has it that as a result the U.S., through Kissinger's efforts, initiated a second coup. Colonel Ioannides was appointed as the new head-of-state. Many hold Ioannides responsible for the coup against President Makarios of Cyprus—the coup seen as the pretext for the first wave of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974; see: the 1974 crisis between Greece and Turkey. The Cyprus events and the outcry following a bloody suppression of Athens Polytechnic uprising in Athens led to the implosion of the military régime. A charismatic exiled politician, Konstantinos Karamanlis, returned from Paris as interim prime minister and later gained re-election for two further terms at the head of the conservative Nea Dimokratia party. In 1975, following a referendum to confirm the deposition of King Constantine II, a democratic republican constitution came into force. Another previously exiled politician, Andreas Papandreou also returned and founded the socialist PASOK party, which won the elections in 1981 and dominated the country's political course for almost two decades. Since the restoration of democracy, the stability and economic prosperity of Greece have grown. Greece joined the European Union in 1981 and adopted the Euro as its currency in 2001. New infrastructure, funds from the EU and growing revenues from tourism, shipping, services, light industry and the telecommunications industry have brought Greeks an unprecedented standard of living. Tensions continue to exist between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus and the delimitation of borders in the Aegean Sea but relations have considerably thawed following successive earthquakes—first in Turkey and then in Greece—and an outpouring of sympathy and generous assistance by ordinary Greeks and Turks.

References

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- Podzuweit, Christian (1982). "Die mykenische Welt und Troja". In: B. Hänsel (ed.), Südosteuropa zwischen 1600 und 1000 v. Chr., 65-88.
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- Latacz, J. Between Troy and Homer. The so-called Dark Ages in Greece, in: Storia, Poesia e Pensiero nel Mondo antico. Studi in Onore di M. Gigante, Rome, 1994.

External links

- [http://projectsx.dartmouth.edu/classics/history/bronze_age/index.html Jeremy B. Rutter, "The Prehistoric Archaeology of the Aegean"]: chronology, history, bibliography Category:History of Greece

Classic

A classic is an item that has become a ubiquitous and unique symbol or icon of a time gone by, mainly because of its inherent quality or its representative status. Examples include:
- Classic books
- Classic cars
- Classic literature
- Classic movies
- Classic rock music
- Classic TV shows
- Classical music (disambiguation)
- Sporting events, such as horse races (see Classic Races) or one-day cycle races.

- The Classic (snooker) tournament. Classic debate the best form of debate.
- Classic (Mac OS X) is a feature of Apple's Mac OS X that allows it to run applications which have not been upgraded to run natively on the new version, and by extension is used to refer to previous versions of the Mac OS and their application environment, formerly known simply as "Toolbox." See also: Classicism, Classical.

Ancient Greece

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 Hellenic culture that were settled in ancient times by Greeks: Cyprus, the Aegean coast of Turkey (then known as Ionia), Sicily and southern Italy (known as Magna Graecia), and the scattered Greek settlements on the coasts of what are now Albania, Bulgaria, Egypt, Libya, southern France, southern Spain, Catalonia, Georgia, Romania, and Ukraine. 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 1100 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 1000 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 (1100–800 BC). In this period artists use geometrical schemes such as squares, circles, lines to decorate amphoras and other pottery. The archaic period (800–500 BC) represents those years when the artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff, hieratic poses with the dreamlike "archaic smile". In the classical years (500–323 BC) 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 (323–146 BC), 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 third century AD. Ancient Greece 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. Ancient Greek civilization has been immensely influential on the language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, art and architecture of the modern world, particularly during the Renaissance in Western Europe and again during various neo-Classical revivals in 18th and 19th century Europe and The Americas.

Origins

The Americas The Greeks are believed to have migrated southward into the Greek peninsula in several waves beginning in the late 3rd millennium BC, the last being the Dorian invasion. 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 adapted the Phoenician alphabet to Greek and 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 neighbors by the sea or mountain ranges. 800 BC. It was the greatest architectural statement of 5th century BC Greece]] As Greece recovered economically, its population grew beyond the capacity of its limited arable land, and 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 Albania, 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 Hellas had become a cultural and linguistic area much larger than the geographical area of 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 organised themselves into independent communities, and the city (polis) became the basic unit of Greek government. First Crete, then in short order the other Greek city-states, adopted the formal practice of pederasty. From its ritual roots in Indo-European prehistory, the practice was elevated to prominence, influencing pedagogy, warfare and social life, and becoming a central feature of Hellenic culture for the next thousand years.

Social and political conflict

The Greek cities were originally monarchies, although many of them were very small and the term "King" (basileus) 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 (shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC) 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 (tyrranoi), 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 (about 650 BC) 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 (500 BC), 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 modern Aegean coast of Turkey) 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.

The dominance of Athens

Delos 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, symbolised 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 leisured 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 (see Greek philosophy) and the arts (see Greek theatre). 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 (Sparta and her allies). 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 (450 BC) between the Greeks and Persians.

The Peloponnesian War

450 BC In 431 BC war broke out again between Athens and Sparta and its allies. The proximate cause was a dispute between Corinth and one of its colonies, Corcyra (modern-day Corfu), in which Athens intervened. The obviate 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 (a naval power) and Sparta (a land-based military power) 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 (429 BC) and Pylos (425 BC). 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 (421 BC). 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 skeptic 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 (405 BC). 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

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 reversing a hundred years of Greek victories against Persia. Sparta then tried to further weaken the power of Thebes, which led to a war in which Thebes allied herself with the old enemy, Athens. The Theban generals Epaminondas and Pelopidas won a decisive victory at Leuctra (371 BC). The result of this battle was the end of Spartan supremacy and the establishment of Theban dominance, but Athens also recovered much of her former power. The supremacy of Thebes was short-lived. With the death of Epaminondas at Mantinea (362 BC) the city lost its greatest leader, and his successors blundered into an unsuccessful 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 out of northern Greek tribes. They played little part in Greek politics before the beginning of the 4th century, but Philip was an ambitious man who had been educated in Thebes and 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 (352 BC) and Thrace, and by 348 BC he controlled everything north of Thermopylae. He used his great wealth to bribe Greek politicians and create a "Macedonian party" in every Greek city. His intervention in the war between Thebes and Phocis brought him recognition as a Greek leader, and gave him his opportunity to become a power in Greek affairs. But despite his sincere admiration for Athens, the Athenian leader Demosthenes, in a series of famous speeches (philippics) roused the Greek cities to resist his advance. In 339 BC Thebes, Athens, Sparta and other Greek states formed an alliance to resist Philip and expel him from the Greek cities he had occupied in the north. But Philip struck first, advancing into Greece and defeating the Greek cities at Chaeronea in 338 BC. This traditionally marks the end of the era of the Greek city-state as an independent political unit, although in fact Athens and other cities survived as independent states until Roman times. Philip tried to win over Athens by flattery and gifts, but did not really succeed. He organised 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 (336 BC).

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. He travelled to Corinth where the assembled Greek cities recognised him as leader of the Greeks, then set off north to assemble his forces. The army with which he invaded the Persian Empire was basically Macedonian, but many idealists from the Greek cities also enlisted. 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 as a warning to the Greek cities that his power could no longer be resisted. 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 (333 BC). He then advanced through Phoenicia to Egypt, which he captured with little resistance, the Egyptians welcoming him as a liberator from Persian oppression. Darius was now ready to make peace and Alexander could have returned home in triumph, but he 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 (331 BC). 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. Persepolis (as an eagle) being offered wine by Ganymede. A child Eros is in the foreground.]] 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 recognise 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 in 323 BC. Alexander's empire broke up soon after his death, but his conquests permanently changed the Greek world. Thousands of Greeks travelled with him or after him to settle in the new Greek cities he had founded as he advanced, the most important being Alexandria in Egypt. Greek-speaking kingdoms in Egypt, Syria, Iran and Bactria were established. The Hellenistic age had begun.