GREECE

PHOENICIANS DEVELOPED MINOAN CIVILIZATION ON CRETE, THEN SETTLED GREECE & MERGED WITH ARYANS DISPACED IN THE LATE BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE TO CREATE MYCENEAN CIVILIZATION

MINOAN PARTNERSHIP CULMINATED ON CRETE’S CAPITOL, KNOSSOS

Greek Civilization developed among Bronze Age people who descended from Crete’s Phoenician settlers.  An Anunnaki couple–the Minos [King] may have been the Anunnaki sage Enki, whose mate, Ninmah, made sure Crete practiced partnership of the sexes. 

5000 years ago, people from Crete’s partnership-oriented society settled in Athens, on Greece’s Attica Peninsula, where, from every direction, domination-driven Aryan refugees from the late Bronze Age Collapse joined them. To control the aggressive Greeks, the Minos invited the rulers of the Greek cities to send their young Greek kings-to- be and some princesses too to Crete, where they trained as three-person teams, each with a bull with which they created vaulting shows for their hosts. The Greek kings whose heirs were, albeit honored, hostages, whose stay in the Knossos, the Cretan Capital, insured their friendliness and continuing trade.

“On Crete where the Goddess was still supreme, there were no signs of war.” Cretans traced descent lines through women, not men. Crete, the last bastion of Ninmah’s partnership-based society, represented god as female. Even into the later Marduk/Zeus/Mycenean period in Greece, “Worship of nature pervaded everything on Crete. Priestesses of the Goddess, not priests, played the central role in rituals.” Life on Crete “was pervaded by ardent faith in Nature, the source of all creation and harmony. This led to the love of peace, a horror of tyranny, and respect for the law. People of different racial stocks worked cooperatively for the common good. There was sharing of wealth” and a high standard of living even for peasants.”

The Minoan capital and port, “Knossos, had one hundred thousand inhabitants, streets paved and drained, fronted with neat three-story houses. Exercise and sports involved both men and women. Public ceremonies, mostly religious, processions, banquets, and acrobatic displays, among them bull games in theaters and arenas. [Eisler: 30-31, 35-36, 43]

Ninmah preached sexual, ethnic, and domestic partnership. Her lands touted nonviolence, trade, and travel. Her peaceful unfortified cities lacked arms caches, armies, or slaves. People worshipped Ninmah across the Eastern Mediterranean islands in the Minoan Federation (named after the Minos, King of Crete).

Crete’s partnership society gives us a model of the belief that “government should represent the interests of the people” rather than the interests of the rulers.

The teams of Mainland Greek Royal Hostage-“Guests” vaulted at rituals High Priestess Ariadne, High Priestess of Crete, led. 

MYCENEAN GREEKS

The Dorian Greek underclass in northern Greece rebelled and dominated the Greek Myceneans at the beginning of the Bronze Age collapse, 1200 -1150 BCE.  Perhaps.  Myceneans may have been part of the sea-going pirate bands known as the People of the Sea that ravaged the Mediterranean at the time, perhaps due to climate change, drought, and massive wildfires like those we now experience due to astronomical influences. Some Myceneans settled in Cyprus.

TROY

Marduk, as Zeus, God of  Mycenaean Greeks  in Greece fought Asia Minoan Greeks at Troy in Asia Minor

Between 1300 and 1200 BCE, mainland Greeks beholden to Satan-Marduk in his Zeus persona warred not only against Goddess Cultures of Ninmah-Lilith in her many iterations but also against each other both in Europe and Asia Minor.

Troy, the richest Greek kingdom in Asia Minor, ran much of the trade between Asia and Europe.  Inanna, in her persona as Aphrodite, intended Helen, a daughter of Zeus, as wife to Paris, heir to Troy’s King Priam.  Paris, as Inanna decided, sailed to Greece to get Helen, only to see she’d been wed to Menelaus, Sparta’s King, who was visiting Crete when Paris arrived in Sparta.  

Paris kidnapped Helen and stole treasures from Sparta.  He sailed with her and his loot back to Troy.  There he convinced her to fulfill Inanna’s desire for them to marry.  Paris and the Trojans prepared for retaliation they expected from the alliance of Greek city-states to avenge Paris’ raid, kidnapping, and theft. 

Inanna, who initiated the conflict, had to deal with the fact that her son, Aeneas (whom the Trojan Anchises fathered), was a Trojan Royal and cousin of Hector, Priam’s heir and Troy’s greatest fighter.

Mainland Greeks raised a fleet allied under Menelaus’ brother, Agamemnon, Mycenae’s King, sailed to Troy’s shore and anchored and built huts there.  The Mycenaean alliance and the Trojans fought for several years.  Sometimes Trojans broke through Mycenaean lines and attacked their boats.

The Greek hero Achilles–a Hybrid Anunnaki/Earthling–pouting, quit the fight. But he returned to the battle against Troy when the Trojans killed his friend Patroclus, who had donned Achilles’ armor to lead the Greeks to again attack Troy and killed Trojan King Priam’s son Hector. Achilles dragged Hector’s body from his chariot around the walls of Troy and only gave Hector’s body to King Priam when the latter begged him.

In the battle outside the walls of Troy, Diomedes, Hybrid Greek-Anunnaki champion of the Mycenaeans, wounded Aphrodite.  Earthlings, seeing her bleed, realized that Earthlings could kill the Anunnaki.  Remember that.

The Mycenaeans built a huge hollow wooden horse on wheels.  The horse held warriors in a secret internal chamber. 

The Mycenaeans burned their huts, boarded their ships, and sailed off.  The messenger they left with the horse said it was a commemoration of their struggle.  

The horse was deliberately built to be too large to fit through Troy’s walls, so the Trojans had to pull down a section of their wall to bring the horse inside for the celebration of what the Trojans thought was their victory.  

After the Trojan victory party, when most Trojans slept, the Greeks in the horse slipped out, killed the men guarding the horse, and burned it to make a signal fire for the Mycenaean fleet to return.  The Myceneans killed everyone inside Troy’s walls but Aphrodite made sure her son Aneaus escaped.

Menelaus took Helen back to Sparta as his Queen again. [Expeditions: 1-11]

Ariadne took Theseus, the hostage from Thebes for her lover.  They planned a hostage revolt.  An astronomical event–probably Nibiru’s nearing– caused the eruption of Thera (Stromboli) and the Nile floods of Moses’ time.  In Crete, tidal waves sunk the Minoan Fleet at Knossos Harbor.  In the chaos, Ariadne, Theseus, and the Royal Mycenaean hostages overthrew the Minos and his empire and sailed away.

In the chaos of the storms, Ariadne and Theseus’ revolt succeeded. 

He abandoned her and her priestesses on the Isle of Lesbos and sailed back to Thrace.

Marduk, as Zeus, played Mycenaean Greeks vs Asia Minor Greeks at Troy.

“In 2000 BCE Crete entered the Middle Minoan period when in the civilized world the Goddess was displaced by warlike male gods. People the Anunnaki influenced still revered as [or conflated with]–Hathor and Isis in Egypt, Astarte or Ishtar [Inanna] in Babylon, or as Arina in Anatolia.” But Zeus (AKA Zeus, Marduk, Saran)-controlled areas considered Ninmah secondary–a consort or mother of more powerful male gods.  Male dominance, wars of conquest and counter-conquest gripped most of Eurasia. Once nomadic people of the steppes got bronze weapons, they took Ninmah’s domains and spread war and the influence of Marduk, in his Zeus guise, exported his influence throughout Europe and India.

 

MAINLAND GREEK KINGS DEFEAT TROY

ROME CONFLATED ITS HISTORY WITH GREECE’S

 AENEAS STAYED A YEAR IN CARTHAGE AS LOVER OF QUEEN DIDO

“In the Aeneid (by Virgil), which Julius Caesar cited to justify his apotheosis, a storm blew Aeneas to Carthage Queen Dido’s North African City.

Dido’s brother Pygmalion had murdered her husband Sychaeus. Widow Queen Dido entertained Aeneas & his crew. He dazzled her with his exploits in the Trojan War. As Dido & Aeneas connected, Iarbus, King of a nearby kingdom, who wanted Dido himself, got mad. She had refused Iarbus’ marriage proposal, she said, because she still mourned Sychaeus. But she fell for Aeneas & took him as her lover. To her subjects, her affair with Aeneas proved her disloyal to her Carthage.
Iarbus asked Zeus/Jupiter make Aeneas leave Carthage. Jupiter told Aeneas to go. Aeneas thought he couldn’t disobey Zeus’ command, so Aeneas & his men sneaked off & sailed for Italy.

Dido was burned up by Aeneas’ departure (she died in a funeral pyre she made herself).

To Dido’s subjects, Dido’s passionate love affair Aeneas compromised her loyalty to her kingdom. She had chosen love over duty to her realms & people but Aeneas honored his duty over his love for Dido. He continued on his mission: founding Rome.

Aeneas arrived on Italy’s west coast at the kingdom of the Latins, where King Latinus welcomed him & he asked for the King’s daughter, Lavinia, in marriage. But Latinus said Lavinia would marry another man & he called on the goddess Juno to help him get rid of Aeneas. War broke out between the Latins & the Trojans & Aeneas’ forces won. After winning this victory, he set up a city called Lavinium. But when Aeneas learned Dido had killed herself, & Lavinia became extremely jealous, Aeneas killed himself because he could not deal with her jealous rage.

Before AENEAS DIED HE HAD A SON NAMED SILVIUS WITH LAVINIA. SILVIUS IS CREDITED WITH ROMULUS AS THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF ROME.

MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATION ON GREEK MAINLAND

ANCIENT ATHENS
5000 years ago, people from Crete’s partnership-oriented society settled in Greece, including Athens, on Greece’s Attica Peninsula. During the Late Bronze Age Collapse Aryan refugees from the late Bronze Age Collapse joined and merged with them to create the Mycenean Civilization.

KINGS

As Athens grew and spread its influence over most of Attica’s towns, Athens’ elite developed a King and Council [Eupartiridae] of land-owning aristocrats (Areopagus) that ruled Attica until 900 BCE. The Council advised the King on whom to appoint as Archons—city officials, including Athens’ Polemarch–a military commander-in-chief.

Athens extended its rule and increased the wealth of its aristocrats at the expense of all the towns of Attica. The aristocrats preempted resources and pleasures from ordinary Athenians.  The rich got richer, and the poor got ever- poorer.  By 700 BCE, the Council faced rage from non-aristocratic Athenian citizens. 

DRACONIAN MEASURES PUNISHED PUSHY PROLES

In 621 BCE the Council appointed DRACO to draft and enforce laws to control the distressed masses.  He drafted DRACON-ian laws to control the proles. Draco’s laws meted death for any violation even trivial ones like stealing one apple.

In Draco’s laws, debt-free citizen-soldiers (Hoplites) who had military equipment and owned property valued at ten minas could vote and serve as Archon or Treasurer. Only aristocrats with unencumbered property worth at least 100 minas who had kids born in marriage and were aged ten years could vote in the Council. 

401 Council members were chosen by lot from hoplites at least 30 years of age. No one could be elected by lot more than once to serve on the council until the Council “cast the lot afresh” to include every eligible individual for the next Council when everyone had served a turn.  The Council fined a member who missed a meeting or misbehaved.  

Athens fell to ruins about 1200 BCE in the Late Bronze Age collapse and remained depressed for the next 50 years.

From 900 BCE on Athens fell into the orbit of the descendants of Phoenicians who developed Knossos in Crete.  Crete and Athens prospered.  Athens profited from its central location in the Greek world, a strong fort (the Acropolis), and sea access. The Athenian population grew to 350,000 people.

 

SOLON’S REFORMATION

SOLON led Athens win over Megara for Salamis, ruled Athens as sole lawgiver, sailed away for 10 years during when only he could repeal laws.

Around 600 BCE, the Athenian noble Solon recited poems for groups, poems that made him as popular as American President Trump was when he starred in The Art of the Deal.  Solon’s poems challenged Athenians to quit a stalemated war in the neighboring city-state Megara for Solon’s birthplace, Salamis Island.

In Athens’s public square, Solon recited–as he spoke spontaneously–90 poems that exhorted Athens to retake Salamis from Megara.  His performance (like Trump’s call to Magas to stop the U.S. Congress from Certifying Biden as U.S. President) aroused Athens to resume the battle for Salamis.  Athens’s Council sent Solon as Military Commander.  His army beat Megara & took Salamis.

Solon returned to Athens, where factions of nobles-by-birth owned the best land, ran the government, & indebted poorer landowners beyond their means to repay. The new, rich owners either let them stay on the land they had owned as serfs or sold them as slaves.  Small landowners who avoided the borrowing trap, artisans & merchants railed against the aristocrats who excluded them from participating in Athens’ government.

Solon’s defeat of Megara made the contending factions of Athens accept him as fully empowered dictator & law promulgator after Athenians smothered Draco.

 Solon canceled all debt, gave back all forfeited land, freed all enslaved Athenians & created trades & professions. He minted coins for Athens & new, uniform weights & measures. Athenian coins, olive oil & pottery, circulated throughout the commercial world of the times.

Solon wrote a new constitution that ended aristocrats’ control ordered a census of annual income, (reckoned grain, oil, & wine) & divided the citizens into four income classes. In each class, all men were equal without regard to birth.

All citizens could attend the General Assembly (Ecclesia), which became the sovereign body, legislate pass laws, elect officials, & hear appeals from court rulings. All men, except those in the poorest class might serve for a year at a time, on a Council of 400 to write the Assembly’s agenda.  Only men from the two top classes could hold the highest offices.

Solon’s new code of laws superseded Draco’s. Solon revised every statute except the law punishing murder. Finally, he decreed that only he could repeal any law he wrote for 10 years, & then left Greece to travel for 10 years, so Athens was stuck with his laws for a decade. Solon left Athens & sailed off to see the Mediterranean civilizations & even past Gibraltar.

Solon initiated forbade the enslavement of Athenian citizens as punishment for debt. His  594 BCE reforms broke up large aristocratic landholdings, ended trade restrictions, and let a prosperous urban trading class emerge. Solon divided Athenians into four classes, based on wealth and military service. He gave the poorest class–the majority of the population– political rights for the first time to vote in the Council although only the upper classes could hold political office. The Council continued with greatly reduced authority.

The new system failed to end class conflict and after twenty years of unrest Populist PEISISTRATOS overthrew Athens’ rulers and built a water tunnel along the Ilissos river that gave the city’s Agora [central gathering place] a fountain. He made Athens wealthy and powerful again, though he gave all Athens’ state offices to his kin.

Peisistratos died in 527 BCE. His son HIPPARCHUS took rule of Athens but died in 514 BCE in a fight over the affections of a young man. HIPPIAS, Hipparchus’ younger brother declared himself Dictator.

ATHENS’ CLEISTHENES, FATHER OF DEMOCRACY OUSTED SPARTAN PUPPET RULE

In 510 BCE, Spartan troops under CLEOMENES I, KING OF SPARTA, helped the Athenians overthrow Hippias and replace him with a pro-Spartan oligarchy headed by ISAGORAS.

Democratically-oriented Athenians assassinated Isagoras, brought Cleisthenes back from exile, and made him Cleisthenes their leader.  Although King Cleomenes intervened in 508 and 506 BCE to keep Isagoras ruling Athens, Athenian supporters killed Isagoras, brought Cleisthenes back from exile, and put him in charge of Athens.  Cleisthenes got the Athenian Assembly to give equal rights to all citizens (though only free men were citizens) and to make ostracism a punishment.

Cleisthenes replaced Athens’ four traditional geographically-based tribes of the Attica hinterlands with new ones grouped to replace regional alliances on the peninsula with arbitrary ones that he grouped under the names of Greek heroes so that their new groups would be arbitrary, rather than regional and menacing to Athens.  He thus blocked Athens’ neighbors from allying against Athens.  He further divided each of the new tribes into three trittys, which in turn contained one or more demes.

CLEISTHENES’ ASSEMBLY OF DEMES

Each deme elected 50 fifty members to an Assembly that ruled Athens. 

The Assembly oversaw public offices, whose incumbents won a lottery open to all citizens.

The Assembly passed laws, chose ten generals, and acted as a supreme court, except in murder and religious matters, which the old Athenian Council still handled.

Cleisthenes’ Assembly lasted 170 years until Macedon’s Philip II beat Athens and Thebes in the 338 BCE Battle of Chaeronea.

500-400 BCE GREECE’S CLASSICAL PERIOD & WARS WITH PERSIA

Aristagoras, ruler of Miletus, a city of Greek settlers on the west coast of Anatolia which Persia controlled as a province (satrap), quarreled with one of the generals of Persia’s King Darius’ generals and rebelled against Persia. The Miletus Greeks begged mainland Greeks for support against Darius. Sparta refused to help but Athens and Eritrea agreed to assist Aristagoras’ break from Persia. Athens and Eritrea sent troops and ships. They razed the city of Sardis.

Darius and his army attacked the rebels, and after 6 years of war, Persia destroyed Eritrea, enslaved its survivors, and regained control of the western Anatolian Greek settlements.

Darius sent his generals Datis and Artaphernes over the Aegean Sea, where they won the Cyclades Islands and attacked both Eretria and Athens, then sailed for Attica and landed near the town of Marathon. The Athenians and their Plataea allies, whom Athenian General Miliades commanded, rushed to Marathon and blocked the Persians’ two exits from the Plain of Marathon so the Persian cavalry could not support the Persian missile throwers on the Plain. The Athenians and Plataeans routed the Persians, and the Persian survivors ran for their ships. The Persian invasion force returned to Asia and Darius raised a huge army to invade Greece.

XERXES, DARIUS’S SUCCESSOR AS PERSIAN KING, INVADED ATTICA, BEAT THE GREEKS AT THERMOPYLAE (480 BCE), SACKED ATHENS, LOST HIS SHIPS AT SALAMIS, LEFT BROTHER-IN-LAW MARDONIUS IN THESSALY, THEN RETREATED TO PERSIA

In 480 BCE Xerxes led 350,000 men supported by 800 ships that traversed a channel he’d ordered dug across the Isthmus of Actium to Attica. The Persian army then moved up through Thrace, in today’s Balkans, and entered Greece after passing through Macedonia, one of Persia’s vassal states.

Xerxes and Mardonius, his wife’s brother, defeated the Athenians at Thermopylae and pillaged Athens. The Greeks sunk the Persian navy at Salamis, which left Xerxes without a fleet to keep his army provisioned.  Xerxes went back to Persia and left Mardonius and his army in Thessaly.

In the Battle near Plataea in 479 BCE, the Greek allies, collectively named the Delian League, killed Mardonius.  Persian survivors retreated to Lydia. Xerxes retired to Susa and Persepolis.

The Athenian fleet defeated the remnants of the Persian fleet in the Battle of Mycale near the island of Samos on the same day as Plataea, leaving the Persians unable to re-assert control of the Greek city Satrapies of Asia Minor (Ionia), which again revolted against Persians, now powerless to stop them.  The Greek fleet sailed to the Thracian Chersonese which Persia still held. The Greeks captured the cities of Sestos. In 478 BCE, the Greeks also took Byzantium [It’s Istanbul now] but Spartan general Pausanias alienated many of the Allies and Spartans ordered Pausanias home to Sparta and decided to quit the fight against Persia since the Greeks had ended the Persian invasion and freed the Greek cities of Asia Minor.

Spartan king Leotychidas said to move all the Greeks from Asia Minor to Europe to keep the Persians from attacking them again, but Xanthippus, the Athenian commander at Mycale vetoed this and said that rejected this; the Ionian cities had been Athenian colonies, and that Athenians would protect the Ionians.

Plato wrote his version of human origins; Rik Fox documents this in the video below.

PERICLES DIVERTED PELENNESIAN CITY DUES TO ATHENS; SPARTA QUIT THE LEAGUE & CHALLENGED ATHENS

Sparta and its Peloponnesian League had dominated the loose alliance of city-states that had fought against Xerxes’s invasion.

Athens called a congress on the island of Delos, and created the “Delian League to divvy up the war spoils they’d won from Persia, prepare for future Persian invasions, wreak revenge on Persia, and divvy up the turf and treasures the Greeks had won from Persia. League members could either supply fighters or pay a tax to the League’s treasury. Most members chose the tax.

Pericles, elected leader of Athens, moved the temple and treasury of the Delian League from Delos to Athens in 454 BCE. He diverted the League’s funds to Athenian purposes and in 431 BCE Spartan King Lysander quit the League.

Corinth and Megara, allies of Sparta, agitated against Athens over control of trading routes. Athens embargoed Megara in retaliation. Sparta declared war on Athens.

431-404 BCE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, WON BY SPARTA

Athens and its allies fought Sparta and Sparta’s allies (the Coalition of Peloponnesian Cities) in the Peloponnesian War. The Athenian and Spartan alliances altogether included nearly every Greek city-state on either the Athen’s side or Sparta’s. The Athenian alliance relied on its strong navy, and the Spartan alliance relied on its strong army.

The war fell into two periods, separated by a six-year truce.

Fighting broke out in 431 BCE. Pericles commanded the Athenians; Archidamus led the invading Spartan army. To thwart the Spartan army strategy–destroy the food-producing hinterland and force the Athenians beyond their walls so Spartans could destroy them–he brought the hinterlanders and their cattle and products within Athens’s walls. The Athenians had in preparation for the Spartan invasion dug a navigable canal lined with high protective walls from the city to the port of Piraeus, through which grain from Egypt for all and luxury goods from all over for the Athenian elite flowed freely to the city.

Athens’ navy blockaded trade routes to Sparta. Sparta had to ship half its soldiers home to protect Sparta and its allies from the Athenian Navy. The Spartans had to reduce their invasion force outside Athens to numbers insufficient to breach Athens’ walls.

Though plague from Egypt struck Athens in 429 and killed Pericles and much of the Athenian army, until 421 the Athenians defeated Spartan attempts to breach their walls.

In 421 both states agreed to accept the Peace of Nicias and Sparta ordered its soldiers home to harvest crops there. But the Spartans had destroyed the ability of the Athenian hinterlands to provision Athens. Athens, as a result of Spartans now lacked hinterland food contributions.

ATHENIAN RIVALS BLAMED GENERAL, ALCIBIADES FOR SACRILEGE; ALCIBIADES BETRAYED ATHENS TO SPARTA, WHICH SHELTERED HIM

Athenian nobleman Alcibiades, elected General in 417, lobbied Athens’ Assembly to ally with Argos and Mantinea, and other Peloponnesians and form an anti-Spartan alliance in the Peloponnese. The assembly rejected his proposal. Alcibiades was about to sail to Spartan waters when his enemies destroyed the stone markers that Hermes [aka Ningishzidda] had placed around the city for luck. Androcles, a political enemy of Alcibiades, used false witnesses to claim that Alcibiades sabotaged the markers. Alcibiades asked for a trial that would sentence him to die if he could not prove he didn’t perpetrate the marker destruction, but the Assembly refused a trial. In his absence, when he sailed off to Catania on Sicily, his rivals charged him with the markers’ desecration and added the charge that he had revealed the secrets of the Eleusinian Mysteries that initiated the city’s savants. Alcibiades agreed to return to his ship, but when it stopped in southern Italy, he escaped, sailed to Sparta, and begged asylum. Athens sentenced him to a death sentence in absentia.

In Sparta, Alcibiades gave the members of the Peloponnesian League critical information on Athens’ plans and weaknesses.

In Sicily, Athens’ fleet was divided into two parts. The first contingent, commanded by Alcibades’ rival Nicias, sailed to Segesta and forced it to pay the 30 talents it promised the Athenians for help against their rival Selinus, their rival city. 

The second Athenian contingent, under Lamachus, stormed Hyccara, a city allied to Selinus, and enslaved its populace.

When the Athenian army returned to Catania, the Syracusans marched to Catania. The Athenians sailed to Syracuse and fortified themselves onshore. The Athenians beat the Syracusans, though the Syracusan cavalry stopped the Athenians from chasing them. The Athenians then sailed back to Catania for the winter.

In Corinth, Spartan representatives met with Alcibiades, who now worked with Sparta. He told them that if Athens won Sicily, they’d attack Sparta and that they should send help to Syracuse and fortify Decelea near Athens. Sparta acted on Alcibiades’s advice to fortify Decelea, and the Athenian force sent to relieve it was destroyed.

In Spring 414 BCE, reinforcements– 250 cavalry, 30 mounted archers, and 300 talents of silver–arrived at Syracuse from Athens, to pay for 400 more cavalry from their Sicilian allies. The Athenians landed on the cliff above Syracuse, wiped out its defenders, and extended their wall to the sea, blockading Syracuse by land while the Athenian fleet entered and blockaded them from the sea.

Spartan general Gylippus landed at Himera and marched to Syracuse with 700 armed sailors, 1,000 hoplites, 100+ cavalry, and 1,000 resident Sicels–early Italian settlers of Sicily. The Sicilians built another counter-wall but the Athenians drove them back. The Syracusans completed their counter-wall so the Athenian wall became useless. Then the Corinthian fleet arrived and the Syracusans blockaded the port and trapped the Athenians inside. The Athenians built a walled enclosure for their sick and injured, and put everyone else on their ships for one last battle.

the Syracusans pushed the Athenian ships toward the coast. Athenian crews fled to the camp behind their wall, then fled overland, The Syracusans burned the Athenian ships on the beach, so the Athenians had no way off the island.

40,000 Athenian fleeing survivors defeated a small Syracusan force guarding the river Anapus, but Syracusan cavalry and light troops harried them.

Athenian Generals Demosthenes and Nicias became separated. Demosthenes surrendered his 6,000 troops. The rest of the Syracusans followed Nicias to the Assinarus River, where Nicias surrendered and the waiting Syracusans massacred his men.

The Sicilians held 7,000 Athenian prisoners in the stone quarries near Syracuse and killed Demosthenes and Nicias and all but Athenians, Italians, and Sicilians were sold as slaves. The Sicilians left the rest of the Athenian prisoners to die slowly of disease and starvation in the quarry. A few survivors managed to escape and brought Athens, bringing first-hand news of the disaster.

In 405, when the Athenian navy was destroyed at the Battle of Aegospotami with Persian help.

Under the blockade, Athens surrendered in 404 BCE. Its empire was dismantled, and Spartans installed Thirty Tyrants to run Athens.

30 TYRANTS’ TERROR REIGN BACKED BY SPARTA LASTED 8 MONTHS

405-404 BCE: Spartan Conquerors let CRITIAS & his 3O ATHENIAN TYRANTS rule, the city, kill SOCRATES & terrorize Athenians 8 months but THASYBULUS & Athenian refugees kill CRITIAS, overthrow the 30 & RESTART ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY

After Sparta beat Athens sunk Athens’ fleet in the 405 battle of Aegospotami & ended Peloponnesian War, Sparta’s King Lysander led the Spartan Peloponnesian League Navy to Athens to raze it. Athenians decided to surrender, give their fleet (except 12 ships) & veto power over Athenian govennance, let the city’s refugees return, & level the wall Pericles had built to stop the Spartans.

As Sparta ordered, Athens Tribal Council deadlocked (like the U.S. Congress) over whether to govern the city as a democracy or oligarchy.  Sparta intervened & appointed 30 oligarchs to write a new constitution for Athens. They ruled through THE BOULE, a council composed of 500 men, 10 of whom ruled the port city of Piraeus for them a police force of 300 men.  The Oligarchs got Spartan King Lysander to back them with a Spartan garrison in the city and Spartan bodyguards.  The Oligarchs killed thousands of Athenians and foreign residents in the city.  Only the 3,000 people could live within Athens’ walls.  Each of the 30 Tyrants could choose one foreign resident property owner, take his property and have him killed. Foreigners and Athenians fled as fugitives to Boeotia, Corinth, Argos, Chalcis, Megara, and Oropus.

Athenian exile THRASYBULUS & 70 men seized the fortress atop a hill named PHYLE north of Athens, where 100 Athenians, 300 foreigners, & 300 mercenaries joined them.

 

Although Sparta sent an armed garrison to Athens to help the 30 & their force of 3000 men, Thrasybulus and the rebels beat the Tyrants & killed Critias. Sparta withdrew its soldiers & instead negotiated a peace treaty.  Athenian refugees & prisoners could return their own possessions. The treaty let surviving Tyrants move to exile in Eleusis but Athens had them come to a settlement conference, killed them, & freed Athens from Oligarchy for 40 years.

378–362 BCE: THE BOEOTIA LEAGUE–ATHENS, CORINTH, ARGOS, BOEOTIA & THEBES–ALLIED & BEAT SPARTA

Thebes got their Locrian allies to extract tribute from towns that the Phocians claimed as their tributary. The Phocians invaded Locris. The Thebans invaded Phocia. Phocia asked Sparta for help against Thebes and Athens joined Thebes with a treaty of eternal alliance between the Athenian and Boeotian Confederacy.  Phokis and Orchomenos stayed loyal to Sparta.

Sparta got Orchomenus to mutiny against the Boeotian Confederacy but Sparta defeated the Theban forces.  But in 395 BCE Corinth, Argos, East Lokris, Thessaly, Leukas, Acarnania, Ambracia, Chalcidian Thrace, Euboea, Athamania, and Ainis joined Athens and Thebes in the fight against Sparta. They assembled and battled the Spartans.  The Spartans beat the Athenians but Thebans, Argives, and Corinthians defeated Sparta’s Peloponnesian allies.  Then Spartans killed a number of Argives, Corinthians, and Thebans as these troops returned from pursuing the defeated Peloponnesian allies. The Theban coalition army lost 2,800 soldiers, Spartans lost only 1,100. 

THE BATTLE OF CNIDUS

Athenians defeated the Spartans and sunk their fleet off the point of Cnidus in 394 BCE.  The Athenian navy sailed along the coast of Ionia and chased Spartan governors and troops from the cities of Kos, Nisyros, Telos, Chios, Mytilene, Ephesos, and Erythrae.  Spartan bases held out Abydos, and Lesbos. Rhodes, Iasos, Knidos, Ephesos, Samos, Byzantium, Kyzikos, and Lampsakos allied with Thebes against Sparta after the battle of Cnidus.

Athens’ resurgence prompted the Persians to stop backing the Boeotian League and shift Persia’s support to Sparta. The Persian side-changing made the Theban allies seek peace.

Athens’ resurgence prompted the Persians to stop backing the Boeotian League and shift Persia’s support to Sparta. The Persian side-changing made the Theban allies seek peace.

BATTLE OF CORONEA (394 BCE)

The Spartans under Agesilaus’s army returned from Asia and marched through Thessaly to Boeotia. In Boeotia, The Spartans, where it was met by an army gathered of the anti-Spartan alliance joined Agesilaus, beat the Thebans at Coronea, and returned to Sparta. 

 From 393–388 BCE, Athens and Thebes took advantage of Sparta’s preoccupation to enhance their own power in areas they had traditionally dominated and instigated pro-Athenian and pro-Democracy movements and cut off the strategic route between Peloponnesia and Egypt and thus avoiding Spartan-Egyptian collusion, and directly threatening Taenarum, the harbor of Sparta.

378–362 BCE: The BOETIAN [Athenian neighborhood] LEAGUE–Athens, Corinth, Argos, Boeotia & Thebes– Beat Sparta

In 405, when the Athenian navy was destroyed at the Battle of Aegospotami with Persian help.

Under the blockade, Athens surrendered in 404. Its empire was dismantled, & Spartans installed Thirty Tyrants to run Athens.  Sparta committed to halting the spread of democracy in Greece.

Sparta got Orchomenus to mutiny against the Boeotian Confederacy but Sparta defeated the Theban forces. 

In 395, Corinth, Argos, East Lokris, Thessaly, Leukas, Acarnania, Ambracia, Chalcidian Thrace, Euboea, Athamania, & Ainis joined Athens & Thebes in the fight against Sparta. They assembled & battled the Spartans. 

The Spartans beat the Athenians but Thebans, Argives, & Corinthians defeated Sparta’s Peloponnesian allies. 

Then Spartans killed a number of Argives, Corinthians, & Thebans as these troops returned from pursuing the defeated Peloponnesian allies. The Theban coalition army lost 2,800 soldiers, Spartans lost only 1,100. 

ATHENS’ BOETIAN LEAUGE, LED BY THEBES, DEFEATED SPARTA IN THE BATTLE OF CNIDUS

Athenians defeated the Spartans & sunk their fleet off the point of Cnidus in 394.  The Athenian navy sailed along the coast of Ionia & chased Spartan governors & troops from the cities of Kos, Nisyros, Telos, Chios, Mytilene, Ephesos, & Erythrae. 

Spartan bases held out Abydos, & Lesbos. Rhodes, Iasos, Knidos, Ephesos, Samos, Byzantium, Kyzikos & Lampsakos allied with Thebes against Sparta after the battle of Cnidus.

SPARTA BEAT THEBES IN BATTLE OF CORONEA (394)

The Spartans under Agesilaus’s army returned from Asia & marched through Thessaly to Boeotia. In Boeotia, The Spartans met an army of the anti-Spartan alliance joined Agesilaus, beat the Thebans at Coronea, & returned to Sparta. 

ATHENS & THEBES THREATENED SPARTA

 From 393–388, Athens & Thebes took advantage of Sparta’s preoccupation to enhance their own power in areas they had traditionally dominated & instigated pro-Athenian & pro-Democracy movements & cut off the strategic route between Peloponnesia & Egypt & thus avoiding Spartan-Egyptian collusion, & directly threatening Taenarum, the harbor of Sparta.

 

PERSIA SHIFTED SUPPORT FROM ATHENS TO SPARTA

In 387, Persia’s King ARTAXERXES II dictated The King’s Peace, also known as the PEACE OF ANTALCIDAS, to end the war & disband the Beoetian League.

The treaty said Persia would control all of Ionia & Sparta would enforce the treaty.  Other Greek cities would be “autonomous” & could not create alliances. Sparta would enforce peace & help Persia, at Thebes’ loss.  Sparta garrisoned soldiers in the former League cities.

But Sparta fought again in 378 which led to the destruction of Spartan hegemony at the BATTLE OF LEUCTRA in 371.

Sparta and Athens allied and defeated Thebes in the BATTLE OF MANTINEA but Athens’ resurgence prompted the Persians to stop backing the Boeotian League & shift Persia’s support to Sparta. The Persian side-changing made the Theban allies seek peace.

MACEDON CONQUERED GREECE

After the late Bronze Age Collapse of Mediterranean Civilization, Dorians–Aryans, probably of Phoenician Origin–invaded the Macedonian highlands and–with the semi-nomadic pastoralists (who may have been another tribe of Dorians who roamed the area)–became the village-dwelling, hard-drinking, wild-partying hunters who came to inhabit Macedon. 

Macedonians claimed descent from Heracles, the Greek conflation of the Sumerian/Anunnaki King Gilgamesh of Uruk [Iraq].  The Greeks, for their part, considered Heracles to be the son of Zeus, the personna of Anunnaki Prince Marduk.  

Philip II, while his elder brother PAUSANAS ruled Macedonia, his younger brother, Philip lived three years as a hostage-guest in Thebes. In Thebes, General Epaminondas taught him Theban military tactics and diplomacy.   

When Philip’s brother King PERDICCAS III ruled Macedon, died, Philip returned to Macedon as Regent for his young nephew AMYNTAS IV.  Philip took the Macedonian Crown for himself. 

Philip  used gold from Macedonian mines to buy influence and enlarge Macedonia.  He also used elongated pikes to check cavalry charges and advanced cavalry tactics to attain power over the Greek city states.  He developed phalanxes with longer pikes than other Greeks used, towers and arrow-shooting catapults to besiege fortifications. 

With the best military in all Greece, Philip subjugated the Thracians and Illyrians on Macedon’s northern borders, married an Illyrian princess and beat the Ilyrian army to secure the alliance.  He took a second wife, Olympius, from the nearby kingdom of Eperis 

In 357 BCE Philip conquered the Greek city of Antipholis in the Northern Aegean.  Control of Antipolis gave him access to the rich gold and silver of the area. Athens declared war on Macedon, but did not attack.

In Greece’s Third Sacred War (353 BCE) and beat Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BCE).  

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Philip had Aristotle tutor his legal son Alexander.  Alexander’s mother, Olympius of Epirus, said she begat Alexander with Marduk (known in Greece as Zeus). Olympius became Philip’s head wife of his seven wives.  She had an affair with Marduk in his Zeus persona; Alexander believed Marduk–not Philip–was his true father. 

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Philip defeated Athens and Thebes at Chaerone in 338 BC in which his son Alexander with his cavalry surrounded and massacred Thebans who refused surrender.

Philip founded THE LEAGUE OF CORINTH. The League elected him Hegemon and commander for the League’s plan to invade Persia.

Alexander at Chaeronea

Philip released his Athenian prisoners and controlled most of Greece. 

In 347 BCE, Philip fought the SACRED WAR.  He captured Pagasae and, at the Battle of Crocus Field, killed 6,000 Phocians and drowned 3,000 prisoners.  He was elected Archon of the Thessalian League and claimed Magnesia and Perrhaebia.  He conquered and burned Olythus in 348 BCE, dissolved the Chalcidian League, celebrated with Olympic games, conquered Thermopylae, made peace with Athens, and expanded his control to Thrace.
When Philip besieged Byzantium, Athens and Thebes declared war on Macedon.  Philip won and established the HELLENIC LEAGUE of all Greece except Sparta.

One of Philip’s bodyguards whom Olympius and Alexander had suborned killed Philip before Philip’s new son with a pure Macedonian (Cleopatra) could displace Alexander.  

Alexander’s man killed Philip’s top general as he pursued the bodyguard.  Olympius killed Cleopatra’s son and Cleopatra killed herself.

Alexander took Macedonia’s throne.  He held Delphi’s Oracle Priestess at swordpoint.  “Am I Zeus’ son?”  She confirmed him as the son of Zeus, the Greek name for Marduk-Ra.   

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Re-affirmed as Marduk’s son, Alexander, in 334 BCE,  with 32,000 infantry and 5,100 cavalry, attacked Persia.  While Darius and the Persian army quelled a rebellion in Egypt, Alexander’s army rowed across the Dardanelles to Abydos in Turkey.

The infantry formed lines that stretched for miles and faced enemies with a phalanx of 18-foot piles before the cavalry.  

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Alexander led a cavalry charge that routed the Persian army and its Greek mercenaries at Granicus.

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At Gordium, Alexander hacked with his sword into the outer strand of a knot on the oxcart shrine of King Midas.  Whoever could untie the knot would, people believed, rule Asia.  After he finally severed the outer stand, he simply unwound the rest of the knot.

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The Macedonians invaded northern Syria and left their wounded in a base at Issus and marched south to engage the Persians but Darius took Issus and cut Alexander’s army off from its supply line to Greece. Darius took the Persians over a mountain pass and killed all Greek wounded in Issus.  The Macedonians returned to Issus.  Alexander led his cavalry and defeated Darius’s army. Darius fled to Babylonia.  He left Syria, Palestine, and Egypt open for conquest by Alexander. 

The Macedonians took the Landing Platform at Baalbek; Alexander renamed it Heliopolis.  He tore the Greek city of Ephesos from the Persians, then defeated Darius at Issos.  Alexander then took  Sidon and Aleppo.  In 332 BCE he conquered Syria.

In Phoenicia, after a seven-month siege, the Greeks took the main Persian naval base at Tyre.

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Here’s how Alexander won. Tyre’s leaders killed emissaries Alexander sent to ask for a peaceful surrender.

Enraged, Alexander made his men, though under constant arrow fire from Tyrian ships,  a causeway with built-in Siege towers to connect the city to an island in the harbor that protected the city.  

Tyre sent a ship loaded with Naptha and stopped construction, killing the men building and defending the causeway.  

The Macedonians built a second causeway and brought warships from Cyprus.  When this second causeway connected to Tyre,  the Macedonian infantry attacked Tyre from the North and Alexander led forces down gangways from the ships, then through a gap in Tyre’s wall.  

When Tyre fell, the Greeks controlled the eastern Mediterranean.  They massacred 8,000 Tyrians and sold 30,000 into slavery.

Alexander reached Babylon in 331 BCE and rushed to the ziggurat temple to grasp the hands of Marduk as conquerors before he had.  But Alexander saw Marduk’s corpse preserved in oils in his ziggurat.  

Alexander won Egypt in 331 BCE, and he founded there the city of Alexandria.  

Alexander abruptly left his troops and trekked for a week over the desert to Siwa Oasis.  There, he commuted in what he thought was a private audience with the gold statue of Marduk.  Alexander asked Marduk’s statue, “Am I Zeus’ son?”  The Temple’s priest, from a hidden chamber behind the statue, confirmed Alexander as the son of Ra-Amen aka Marduk.

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In 331  BCE at Gaugamela (Iraq), Darius’ army, with bladed-wheeled chariots, attacked Alexander’s luring positions on his flanks.  The attackers left a gap in the center of their forces, between the chariots charging the Macedonian flanks.  The gap they created as they took the bait of massed Greek infantry flanks exposed the Persian center to Alexander’s light cavalry.  The Greeks killed 300,000 Persians and lost 100 men. 

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Alexander proclaimed himself the King of Asia and marched to the Persian capital, Susa, which surrendered without a fight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alexander took Persepolis, Bactria, Sogdianna and  Cyropolis.  From Persepolis, Alexander sent the gold home to Macedonia.  He let his troops rob, murder the men, rape the women.  Alexander and his drunk generals led as the Greeks burned Darius’s palace.

Alexander chased Darius to make him abdicate as Persia’s God and King.  Though Darius’ generals speared Darius and left him for dead, Alexander found him dying.  Alexander said he’d honor and exalt Darius’ kin.  In return Darius abdicated as god and king–gave the jobs to Alexander–then died.

In 329 BCE, Alexander conquered Scythia.

Macedonian soldiers, away some seven years from Greece, began agitating to return home.  Alexander purged his top general and others whom he suspected of agitation.   He made his lover Hephaestion co-commander of the army.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 329 BCE, Alexander married captive princess Roxanne.

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Alexander now ordered people to bow to him as a god.  He created a huge harem of beautiful women and enjoyed a new one each night. He killed his historian for criticizing his  hedonism, his “Persianization.”

In 327 BCE, the Macedonians invaded India. After the Hydaspes River battle in 326 BCE, Indian King Porus charged Alexander’s forces with elephants.  Alexander almost died, before his troops, of wounds.  The troops saw he lacked the invincibility he claimed he, as a god, possessed.

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“Alexander’s generals refused to continue with the invasion of the Indian subcontinent.  Alexander turned back to Asia Minor.” [Childress, 2000: 149] 

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He planned to cross the  Ganges for more conquests, but his troops mutinied, wouldn’t go further.

So Alexander sent half his army back to Susa by sea.  He took the other half of his men through the Gedrosian Desert and reached Susa in 324 BCE.

In Susa, Alexander married his senior officers to Persians.

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In 324 BCE, an assassin may have poisoned his second-in-command, Hephaestion.  Alexander hung Hephaestion’s doctor.

In 323 in Babylon, Alexander, dying of disease or poison, said he willed his empire “to the strongest”.

Alexander’s erstwhile buddy Cassander killed Alexander’s wife and mother and named himself King of Macedonia. Ptolemy took Alexander’s corpse to Egypt and there started the Ptolemaic Dynasty. [Mark, 2013].

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Alexander’s conquests

After Alexander’s died in 323 BC, wars of the Diadochi, and partitioning of Alexander’s empire, Macedonia continued to be a Greek cultural and political center in the Mediterranean region along with Ptolemaic Egypt, the Seleucid Empire, and the Attalid kingdom.

Important cities such as Pella, Pydna, and Amphipolis were involved in power struggles for control of the territory. New cities were founded, such as Thessalonica by the usurper Cassander (named after his wife Thessalonike of Macedon). Macedonia’s decline began with the Macedonian Wars and the rise of Rome as the leading Mediterranean power. At the end of the Third Macedonian War in 168 BC, the Macedonian monarchy was abolished and replaced by Roman client states. A short-lived revival of the monarchy during the Fourth Macedonian War in 150–148 BC ended with the establishment of the Roman province of Macedonia.

The Macedonian kings, who wielded absolute power and commanded state resources such as gold and silver, facilitated mining operations to mint currency, finance their armies, and, by the reign of Philip II, a Macedonian navy. Unlike the other diadochi successor states, the imperial cult fostered by Alexander was never adopted in Macedonia, yet Macedonian rulers nevertheless assumed roles as high priests of the kingdom and leading patrons of domestic and international cults of the Hellenistic religion. The authority of Macedonian kings was theoretically limited by the institution of the army, while a few municipalities within the Macedonian commonwealth enjoyed a high degree of autonomy and even had democratic governments with popular assemblies

ROME GRADUALLY ABSORBED GREECE INTO THE ROMAN EMPIRE

The Roman era began with the Corinthian defeat in the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC. However, before the Achaean War, the Roman Republic had been steadily gaining control of mainland Greece by defeating the Kingdom of Macedon in a series of conflicts known as the Macedonian Wars. The Fourth Macedonian War ended at the Battle of Pydna in 148 BC with the defeat of the Macedonian royal pretender Andriscus.

GREECE’S CHRONOLOGY

c. 6000 BCE – 2900 BCE
Neolithic Age settlements in Greece, the beginning of agriculture.

c. 3200 BCE – 1100 BCE
The Cycladic Civilization in Greece.

2300 BCE
Bronze is used in the Aegean.

2200 BCE – 1500 BCE
The Minoan Civilization flourishes on Crete, Greece. King Minos establishes the first navy in the region.

2000 BCE – 1450 BCE
Minoan civilization in Crete and the Aegean.

2000 BCE
Early Greeks settle in the Peloponnese.

1900 BCE – 1100 BCE
Mycenaean civilization in Greece and the Aegean.

1650 BCE – 1550 BCE
Eruption of Thera and consequent tidal waves, destruction of Akrotiri and other Aegean centres.

1100 BCE
Dorian peoples occupy Greece.

c. 1100 BCE
Greeks implement the use of individual tombs and graves.

c. 900 BCE
Sparta is founded.

c. 800 BCE – c. 700 BCE
Homer of Greece writes his Iliad and Odyssey.

800 BCE – 500 BCE
Greek colonization of the Mediterranean and Black Sea.

c. 800 BCE – 500 BCE
Archaic period of Greece.

c. 740 BCE – c. 433 BCE
Greek poleis or city-states establish colonies in Magna Graecia.

733 BCE
Corinth founds the colony of Syracuse in Sicily.

683 BCE – 682 BCE
List of annual archons at Athens begins.

c. 660 BCE
Pheidon is tyrant in Argos.

c. 657 BCE – 585 BCE
The Kypselidai are tyrants of Corinth.

c. 650 BCE
Sparta crushes the Messenian revolt.

650 BCE – 600 BCE
Age of law-givers in Greece.

650 BCE
Earliest large-scale Greek marble sculpture.

594 BCE – 593 BCE
In Athens the archon Solon lays the foundations for democracy.

580 BCE – 376 BCE
Carthage and Greece fight for dominance in Sicily.

c. 560 BCE
Pisistratos becomes Tyrant in Athens for the first time.

c. 550 BCE – c. 366 BCE
Peloponnesian League alliance between Sparta, Corinth, Elis and Tegea which establishes Spartan hegemony over the Peloponnese.

546 BCE – 545 BCE
Persian conquest of Ionian Greek city-states.

539 BCE
The Etruscan & Carthaginian alliance expels the Greeks from Corsica.

535 BCE – 522 BCE
Polycrates rules as tyrant of Samos.

c. 525 BCE – c. 456 BCE
Life of Greek tragedy poet Aeschylus.

522 BCE
Darius I (Darius the Great) succeeds to the throne of Persia after the death of Cambyses II.

514 BCE
Fall of the Peisistratid tyranny in Athens.

514 BCE
The tyrant of Athens Hipparchos is killed by Harmodios and Aristogeiton – the ‘tyrannicides’.

c. 508 BCE
Reforms by Cleisthenes establish democracy in Athens.

499 BCE – 493 BCE
Ionian cities rebel against Persian rule.

c. 498 BCE
Ionians and Greek allies invade and burn Sardis (the capital of Lydia).

c. 497 BCE – c. 454 BCE
Alexander I reigns as king of Macedon.

c. 495 BCE
Birth of Pericles.

492 BCE
Darius I of Persia invades Greece.

11 Sep 490 BCE
A combined force of Greek hoplites defeat the Persians at Marathon.

487 BCE – 486 BCE
Archons begin to be appointed by lot in Athens.

486 BCE
Xerxes succeeds to the throne of Persia after the death of Darius I.

c. 483 BCE
Themistocles persuades the Athenians to significantly expand their fleet, which saves them at Salamis and becomes their source of power.

480 BCE – 323 BCE
The Classical Period in Greece.

Jul 480 BCE
Xerxes I makes extensive preparations to invade mainland Greece by building depots, canals and a boat bridge across the Hellespont.

Aug 480 BCE
The indecisive battle of Artemision between the Greek and Persian fleets of Xerxes I. The Greeks withdraw to Salamis.

Aug 480 BCE
Battle of Thermopylae. 300 Spartans under King Leonidas and other Greek allies hold back the Persians led by Xerxes I for three days but are defeated.

Sep 480 BCE
Battle of Salamis where the Greek naval fleet led by Themistocles defeats the invading armada of Xerxes I of Persia.

479 BCE
Xerxes’ Persian forces are defeated by Greek forces at Plataea effectively ending Persia’s imperial ambitions in Greece.

478 BCE – 404 BCE

The Delian League in Greece was led by Athens.

478 BCE
Sparta withdraws from the alliance against Persia.

c. 469 BCE – 399 BCE
Life of Socrates.

c. 462 BCE – 458 BCE
Pericles introduces democratic institutions in Athens.

c. 460 BCE – c. 320 CE
Period of full and direct citizen democracy in Athens.

460 BCE – 445 BCE
First Peloponnesian War.

457 BCE
The hegemony of Athens over central Greece.

451 BCE
Thirty years peace between Argos and Sparta.

c. 451 BCE – c. 403 CE
Life of Athenian statesman and general Alcibiades.

449 BCE – 448 BCE
Peace between Greece and Persia.

c. 449 BCE
Peace is agreed on by Athens and Persia in the Peace of Callias.

c. 449 BCE
Ionian cities become independent from Persia under Callias.

447 BCE – 432 BCE
The construction of the Parthenon in Athens by the architects Iktinos and Kallikrates under the direction of Phidias.

446 BCE – 445 BCE
Thirty years peace between Athens and Peloponnesians.

431 BCE – 404 BCE
The 2nd Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (the Delian League and the Peloponnesian League) which involved all of Greece.

421 BCE
Peace of Nicias, a truce between the Delian and Peloponnesian Leagues.

420 BCE
Democritos develops an atomic theory of matter.

412 BCE
Sparta allies with Persia.

404 BCE
End of the Peloponnesian war, Athens defeated By Sparta at Aigospotamoi, Rule of the Thirty Tyrants in Athens.

400 BCE

Pepper is known in Greece.

400 BCE – 330 BCE
The Late Classical Period in Greece.

399 BCE
Trial and death of the philosopher Socrates, who taught in the court of the Agora.

c. 398 BCE – c. 380 BCE
Plato travels in Egypt, Cyrene, Italy, Syracuse and Sicily.

395 BCE – 386 BCE
The Corinthian Wars between Sparta and an alliance of Athens, Corinth, Argos, Boeotia and Thebes.

384 BCE – 322 BCE
Life of Aristotle.

c. 384 BCE – 322 CE
Life of Athenian statesman Demosthenes.

380 BCE
Plato founds his Academy outside of Athens.

371 BCE
Thebes, led by Epaminondas, defeats Sparta in the Battle of Leuctra.

371 BCE – 362 BCE
Thebes is the dominant city-state in Greece.

359 BCE – 336 BCE
Reign of Philip II of Macedon.

356 BCE
Third Social War in Greece.

343 BCE
King Philip II of Macedon summons Aristotle to tutor his young son Alexander (later ‘The Great’).

336 BCE – 323 BCE
Reign of Alexander the Great.

May 334 BCE
Alexander invades the Persian empire.

331 BCE

Egypt is conquered by Alexander the Great without resistance.

323 BCE – 31 BCE

Hellenistic civilization in Greece, the Mediterranean and Asia.

323 BCE – 31 BCE

The Hellenistic Age. Greek thought and culture infuses with indigenous people.

310 BCE
The assassination of Roxanne and Alexander IV, wife and son of Alexander the Great.

c. 280 BCE
Founding of the Achaean League in the Peloponnese of Greece.

c. 270 BCE
Aristarchus of Samos proposes a heliocentric world view.

168 BCE

Rome defeats Macedon at Battle of Pydna.

146 BCE
Rome sacks Corinth and dissolves the Achaean league. Greece is ruled by Rome.

88 BCE – 63 BCE
Mithridates of Pontus fights three wars to free Greece from Rome.

86 BCE
The Roman general Sulla sacks Athens and the port of Piraeus.

31 BCE
Greece was absorbed into Roman Empire.

SPARTA

GREEK MYTHOLOGY

MACEDONIA

Persia and most mainland Greek city-states supported Sparta to win the Peloponnesian War (404 BCE). Sparta extended its control to the island states of the Aegean as well.  The Spartans kept the booty from Athens and its Athens’ allies. In 402 BCE Sparta attacked Elis, a Peloponnesian League member who had disappointed Sparta during the Peloponnesian War against Athens. Corinth and Thebes refused to send troops to help Sparta against Elis.  Persia fanned opposition to Sparta with gold to Greek states to Thebes, Corinth, and Athens to induce them to refuse to join the Spartan campaign against Ionia in 398 BCE and prepare to fight Sparta.