Era Summaries of Ancient Greece

The Heroic Age     Rise of City States     Rise of Persian Empire     Persian War     Athenian Empire     Decline of Greece     Hellenistic Age     Greco-Roman Era    

The folklore and legends of the heroic age of Greece are exceedingly rich and give the most remote period of Greek History an almost mystical quality. Various authors describe it as a fairyland where all of nature, including brooks, trees, animals, and even cities was imbued with spirits. The Greeks believed that their gods shared human foibles, so stories about them were almost invariably dramas involving jealousy, posturing, revenge, drunkenness, debauchery, and misunderstandings—often humorous, and occasionally imbued with a moral applicable to human relations. Their myths and legends had many variations, some suitable for children, others more appropriate for adults.

The heroes, myths, and legends of Ancient Greece are too numerous to list, but a few general categories of the types of heroes and stories can be given. The first category of Greek myths involved the gods, or immortals, who had human forms and decidedly human personalities, but possessed enormous powers over the earth. The twelve most important gods lived on Mount Olympus, and included Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Athena, and many of the other famous Greek gods. Aside from these twelve, there were hundreds of lesser gods, nymphs, and demigods who presided over lesser entities, such as rivers, trees, poetry, music or medicine.

The second category of Greek myths involved human or semi-human heroes and a spectacular array of monsters and villains. These legends often featured heroes specific to particular towns or regions and may have been based on real historical characters, since most of the aristocratic classes in the major Greek cities claimed descent from them. Some of the most important Greek heroes were Hercules, Theseus, Perseus, and Jason, but there were many others.

The final category of Greek legends involved the famous characters of the Iliad and Odyssey, the two epic poems most closely associated with Ancient Greece. These poems recounted the story of the Trojan War, during which hundreds of warriors from mainland Greece sailed to besiege the city of Troy, located in Asia Minor near the Dardanelles. The Iliad tells the story of Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Helen, and other famous characters who participated in the ten year siege. Far from being only a battle story, however, the poem examines a great variety of philosophical issues including the meaning of fame, fate, and honor, the destructive forces of jealousy, the virtues of friendship, loyalty and patriotism, and the apparent arbitrary whims of the gods. It is generally recognized as one of the greatest masterpieces of literature and was for all purposes the "Bible" of the Ancient Greeks.

Most historians agree that the relationship between the rich world of Greek folklore and the extraordinary sophistication of the ancient Greeks was of great importance. The Greek city-states each governed themselves almost independently, so it was religion and folklore that tied the Greeks together as a civilization, and they were immensely proud of their literary heritage. Amazingly, Greek stories and poems were passed on even before the Greek alphabet was developed and writing became common. Minstrels memorized the stories, which were often in the form of poems, and traveled throughout the Greek world singing them to audiences. The most famous of these minstrels was the blind poet Homer, who is credited with composing the Iliad and Odyssey, the two most famous epic poems in the Greek world.

It is incredible that these poems, which comprise over twenty-six thousand lines of beautiful verse, were "composed" before the Greek alphabet and writing were well established. The propensity of the Ancient Greeks to memorize enormous tracts of beautiful and spiritually uplifting verse was well established at the very outset of recorded Greek history, and had a terrifically civilizing effect.

In marked contrast to the Persian Empire, which had a centralized and despotic government, the Greek cities were largely independent and self-governing, likely due to the mountainous terrain of the Greek mainland. The government of the cities was usually oligarchic, controlled by several powerful families or in some cases local tyrants, but the city-states themselves were independent of each other, and there was no Greek overlord to which all cities paid tribute. Instead of government, a common language, religion, and culture held the Greek cities together.

The two most important cities in Ancient Greece were Sparta, a military powerhouse from about 800 B.C. onwards, and Athens, which rose to prominence in the fifth century B.C. Not only were these cities very different from those cities under the sway of Eastern tyrants, but they were radically different from each other. Sparta possessed a stoic, severe, military temper, but Athens exhibited an epicurean, or artistic temperament. However, they were both vigorous examples of the Greek dedication to self-sufficiency and love of freedom.

Sparta—The city of Sparta, located in the center of the western Peloponnesian Peninsula, rose to great distinction among Greece cities after it underwent a transformation in culture under the leadership of Lycurgus in about 800 B.C. After a devastating series of wars with neighboring Messina, he convinced the Spartan nobility to give up their riches and their land, and to allow for the equal division of wealth among all Spartan citizens. He further prohibited almost all display of wealth and occupations among Spartans that would tend towards accumulation of wealth. Sparta was henceforth to be a military aristocracy, and all its citizens were engaged full time in developing the military virtues of strength, courage, and self-sacrificing dedication to country. Pedestrian matters such as tending fields, craftwork, and transporting goods were left to slaves (called helots) and neighboring tribes under Sparta's sway (called peroci). Sparta did have two kings who usually acted as generals in battle, but the state itself was led by a council of elders. Sparta recognized her heroes, but did not generally grant them political power until relatively late in life. The conditions for the reign of a long-term individual tyrant did not exist in Sparta.

Sparta did not cultivate the arts, so few relics remain. Nevertheless, its cultural influence on the rest of Greece was undeniably great—it was "greatly admired but hated." The impulse to military excellence that infused all of Greece was centered there, and Sparta embodied many other great stoic virtues as well. One of the many striking things about the city of Sparta was its stability—its government was among the least changeable in human history. During an age of constant political upheavals and conquests, Sparta, an unwalled city, was an unperturbed fortress. From the time of the Messenian War, in about 750 B.C., to the Battle of Leuctra in 371 B.C., no enemy ever marched on Sparta's soil. Even Sparta's most powerful latter-day enemies, who held sway over all of Greece long after Sparta's glory days, were content to isolate rather than conquer the famous city.

Athens—Athens’s early government was more typical of other Greek towns. Athens was the greatest city of the Ionian Greeks, who were scattered throughout the islands of the Aegean Sea and the West Coast of Asia Minor. In ancient times it had a king, but by about 600 A.D. was governed as an oligarchy. Draco and Solon were two of the early law-makers. They wrote laws that averted some of the injustice towards the lower classes, but the democratic reforms that made Athens famous in later years came about slowly over time. Although he ruled as a tyrant for many years, Pisistratus was responsible for laying much of the foundation for the Athenian democracy as well as its reputation as a cultural center, but other reformers including Cleisthenes reorganized the government to more fairly represent all classes.

Other important Greek cities in the pre-Persian War era included Thebes, to the northwest of Athens; Corinth, on the gulf of Corinth; Argos and Olympia, on the Peloponnese; and Delphi, the location of the most important oracle in Greece. In addition to the mainland cities, some important islands were Euboea, Samos, Lesbos, and Delos. There were also many Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor, such as Miletus and Halicarnassus but most of these fell under the sway of the Persian Empire. The Greeks that settled in the islands and coasts near Asia Minor were called the Ionian Greeks, and produced most of the well known philosophers, scientists, and writers of early Greek. Some well-known Ionian Greeks who lived before the Persian war include Pythagoras and Polycrates of Samos and Thales of Miletus.

The rise of Ancient Greece must be seen against the backdrop of the rest of the Mediterranean world. By the third century B.C. the Greek language and culture came to dominate the educated classes of all civilizations in the eastern Mediterranean. Prior to the "Golden Age" of classical Greece in the fifth century B.C., however, Greece was only a poor and disunited collection of city-states centered around the Aegean Sea. It was surrounded by wealthier and more powerful neighbors, in particular Lydia, Media, Babylon, and later the Persian Empire. The histories of these regions are often associated with Ancient Greece, not only because they are contemporary civilizations with which one can draw comparisons, but also because the best histories we have of them are written by Greek historians such as Herodotus and Xenophon.

The region directly east of mainland Greece (present day Turkey) was Asia Minor, or the "Near East". A number of Greek colonies were scattered along its coastline, but by 600 B.C. the family of Croesus, king of Lydia, controlled the interior mainland. Asia Minor was the home of the legendary Midas, a king of Phrygia whose touch turned all to gold. The region was well-known for large silver and gold deposits and both kings were famous for their fabulous wealth.

Directly south of Asia Minor was the Middle Eastern region, composed of modern day Syria (Assyria), Iraq (Babylon), Lebanon (Phoenicia), and Israel (Judea). In ancient times, control of this region alternated between the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Babylonian Empires. By 600 B.C., the region was primarily in control of the Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar, and Babylon was the greatest city in the region. To the east of Babylon was the empire of the Medes, which controlled most of modern day Iran and the small kingdom of Persia, which in 600 B.C. was only a vassal kingdom of Media on the Persian Gulf.

In 550 B.C., Cyrus the Great, king of Persia and grandson of the Emperor of the Medes, started a great career of conquests and brought all of the above mentioned regions under his control. The Persian kingdom arose under his leadership to become the most powerful empire the ancient world had ever seen. Cyrus died in 529 B.C. on a campaign in Scythia. After his death his son Cambyses ruled for a short time and extended his conquests into Egypt, but himself died soon after. As Cambyses died with no heir, there was considerable palace intrigue before one was settled on, but leadership eventually fell to Darius the Great. Darius suffered several rebellions during his reign including the rebellion of Babylon and the Ionian Revolt. It was due to Athens’s involvement in the Ionian Revolt that Darius determined to conquer Greece and hence launched the Greco-Persian Wars.

The kingdoms of the east varied significantly in customs, religion and livelihood from Greece. They included sea-faring kingdoms, such as Phoenicia, agricultural kingdoms, such as Phrygia, and pastoral kingdoms, such as Media, but all were tyrannical autocracies. All cities and states paid tributes to the emperor, or great king, and all city administrators served at the pleasure of an autocratic higher authority. The idea of self-governing city-states was unknown outside of the Greek colonies. Even more striking and unique to Greece was the idea of satire and open dissent toward authority figures and the idea that all citizens shared in the common culture. The Greek were self-consciously civilized, and considered their neighbors, however wealthy and powerful, to be mere slaves.

Like the Trojan War, the Greco Persian Wars were a defining moment in Greek history. The Athenians, who would dominate Greece culturally and politically through the fifth century B.C., regarded the wars against Persia as their finest moment.

The Persian Wars began when Athens agreed to come to the aid of the Greek-speaking city-states on the coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) who were in rebellion against the Persian empire. Their participation turned Persian attention to Athens, so in 490 B.C., coaxed along by some disgruntled Greek exiles, Darius the Great launched an attack against the Greek mainland. The Athenian forces were under the command of Miltiades, a general who had previously been governor of an Ionian city, and involved in the revolt against Persia. At the Battle of Marathon he urged the Athenians to attack immediately without waiting for reinforcement, even though their army was only a fraction the size of the Persians. The battle of Marathon is perhaps the single most important battle in Greek history. Had the Athenians lost, Greece would have eventually come under the control of Persia and all subsequent culture and accomplishments of the Greeks may have been lost to posterity.

The Persians did not attack Greece again for ten years, but in 481 B.C., after Darius’s son Xerxes (486-465 B.C.) became king, the Persians launched another expedition against Athens. Determined to squash the Greeks through overwhelming force, Xerxes gathered several hundred thousand infantry and six hundred ships. He demanded that the Greek city-states submit to him without resistance, and many did, including Thebes. The Athenians and Spartans, however, insulted the Persian ambassadors and vowed resistance to the end. Fortunately for all of Greece, the Athenian politician Themistocles had foreseen trouble many years ahead of time and had convinced the Athenians to begin building a navy, so that by the time of the great Persian invasion, Athens had a navy of over two hundred ships.

While Xerxes gathered his army at the Hellespont, the 31 Greek city states that had decided to resist the Persians (many of the smaller cities had already conceded defeat and refused to send armies) were fielding a united Greek army under the leadership of Sparta. Although Athens provided by far the largest fleet, a Spartan admiral led the navy, but Themistocles was very influential in all naval operations. The first great battle of the united Greeks against Xerxes’s army was at Thermopylae, a narrow pass in the north of Thessaly. It was there that the Spartan king Leonidas and three hundred Spartans held out for three days against the entire Persian army. After a lopsided battle in which thousands of Persians died, the resolute Spartans were eventually surrounded and killed to a man, and Xerxes’s army passed unopposed to Athens, which it burned to the ground.

As soon as the pass of Thermopylae was lost, the Greek fleet worked full time to evacuate Athens and its surrounding communities to local islands. They were stationed on the island of Salamis in sight of the ruins of Athens. After a fit of contentious infighting they decided to give battle to the Persians at once. The famous naval Battle of Salamis ensued, during which the Greek fleet won a dramatic and decisive victory over the much larger Persian navy. The Persian fleet was destroyed, and Xerxes returned to Persia, leaving Mardonius in charge of the conquered region. Most of the citizens in Athens retired to islands off the mainland or to the Peloponnesian Peninsula, which the Spartans had fortified in anticipation of a Persian attack. It was not until the following spring that Spartan leadership realized the Persians had no intention of meeting them at their fortified isthmus, and that in order to drive the Persians from Greek soil they would have to meet them in open battle. After considerable hesitation and delay, a terrific battle was fought at Plataea, where the Persians were defeated and killed nearly to a man.

The Persian war was remarkable for its ferocious battles, which showcased the superiority of Greek military methods, for the striking personalities involved, the democratic character of the military command, and the ability of the fractious Greeks to drop their strong divisions and unite behind a single cause. The war is a popular one to study, not only because of its striking military engagements and historical significance, but also for the great human dramas that were played out behind the scenes.

In the years following the Persian War, Athens was rebuilt and the Greek navy expanded its domination of the Aegean Sea. Further naval victories over Persia liberated several Ionian Greek colonies from the Persian yoke and increased prestige for Greece as a sea power. The formation of the Delian league, a group of Greek colonies located in the Aegean Sea and united for common defense, formalized Athenian naval domination. Although this league was nominally a confederation, it was dominated by Athens and eventually became the foundation of the Athenian Empire. Athens became very wealthy due both to its trade domination and to the inflow of tribute that was paid to Athens in return for protection from Persia.

The most important statesmen in Athens in the years immediately following the Persian war were Cimon, son of Miltiades, and Aristides. Both were involved in organizing the Delian league and rebuilding Athens, which included constructing a fortified wall around the city to protect it from future invasions. Sparta opposed building walled cities lest they fall into enemy hands, but the Athenians insisted and eventually built a great wall from Athens to the sea, wide enough to drive two chariots abreast. The Delian league tributes also funded the construction of great temples and state houses on a scale never before seen in Europe.

In 461 B.C., one of the greatest statesmen in Greek history came into power in Athens. Pericles, more than any other person, determined the character of classical Athens. He was a great patron of the arts and architecture and extended the democratic franchise to virtually all Athenian citizens. Greek theatre thrived under his leadership, and all four of the great Greek playwrights, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, lived during his thirty year reign. He made Athens the cultural center of the Mediterranean and paid pensions to philosophers, artists, sculptures, and poets to encourage their contributions. The Parthenon and many other great public buildings were built under his leadership, and the famous Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides were both his contemporaries.

Sparta, shunning luxury and empire, looked upon Athens with distrust and jealousy. As Athens became more arrogant and contemptuous of the rights of its colonies, tensions between the cities grew until finally Sparta and its allies declared war on Athens, thus beginning the Peloponnesian War. It was a futile, drawn-out affair, which lasted almost 30 years and was filled with horrendous atrocities; its only long term effect, however, was only to critically weaken and depopulate all of mainland Greece. Athens, for the most part, avoided meeting Sparta in battle on land and instead depended on its fortified walls and control of the seas for defense during the long years of siege. Ten years of battles resulted in almost no change of affairs. Finally a ceasefire was arranged, which lasted until Athens, under the influence of Alcibiades, undertook an ill-fated expedition to conquer the island of Sicily. This disastrous campaign was the turning point of the war. It destroyed Athens’s naval supremacy and greatly weakened it in its continuing struggle against Sparta. The conflict raged for ten more years until Sparta finally defeated the last remnant of Athens navy at the battle of Aegos Potami and starved the walled city into submission.

Even during the Peloponnesian war, Athens continued to produce some of its greatest geniuses. Socrates, Aristophanes, Euripides and Thucydides all lived during this period, and their writings are among the most cherished in Western civilization. Undeniably, however, the Peloponnesian war was a disaster from which Greece and Athens never fully recovered. Athens regained its reputation as a center of culture and education, but was never again politically powerful.

After Athens’s defeat at the end of the Peloponnesian War, Sparta became the undisputed first power among the Greek city-states. The Spartan general Lysander had Athens’s walls pulled down and appointed thirty loyal Spartans to run the city. These leaders, the "thirty tyrants," put many of their political opponents including Socrates to death. Plato, Socrates’s student, witnessed these oppressions, and they greatly influenced his later writings.

The period immediately following the Peloponnesian war is called the "Spartan Hegemony," because, although Sparta did not collect tribute, it allowed only governments which were friendly to Sparta to exist throughout Greece. The major figure of this time was Agesilaus, a brave and noble Spartan king who came near to freeing all the Greek colonies in Asia Minor before he was recalled to deal with a political crisis at home. While Agesilaus was fighting Persians in the east, the Spartan government had fallen into trouble. The riches and spoils from the successful wars had corrupted the leadership of Sparta as well as the general population; besides destructive intrigue and infighting there were wars with Corinth and Thebes. These problems, combined with a significantly reduced population, led to the disaster in 371 B.C. at the Battle of Leuctra. Only 33 years after they prevailed in the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans suffered a humiliating defeat against Thebes. This was the first major land battle that the Spartans had lost to another Greek state in five hundred years, and they never recovered their mystique. The spoils of victory had done more to damage Sparta in a single generation then any enemy had been able to do in half a millennium.

Thebes’s rise to being a dominant power in Greece was unprecedented. Although it was always a large and prosperous city, it had never had particularly talented military leaders until Epaminondas and Pelopidas became Theban generals. Under their leadership, Thebes achieved military predominance over most of Greece for the first time, putting a check on Sparta’s influence. The battle of Leuctra revealed Epaminondas as a first-rate military genius, and his subsequent diplomatic victories also showed his talent as a statesman. The period of Theban influence, however, did not long survive the death of Epaminondas at the Battle of Mantinea. Sparta was humiliated, Thebes was leaderless, and no great power arose to provide dominant leadership to Greece. Athens’ fortunes did eventually improve, but it never recovered its former predominance and was not prepared to resist the Macedonian threat when it did arise.

Macedonia was a semi-barbaric country north of Greece that the Greek city-states had never considered fully civilized. Philip of Macedonia, however, had spent his youth as a hostage in Thebes under the great Epaminondas. There he had learnt the best of Greek military strategies and became a great admirer of Greek culture. He ascended to the Macedonian throne in 359 and spent the early part of his reign reforming the Macedonian military, expanding his power, and promoting Greek culture. His first military dealings with Greece involved the Sacred War during which he generously defended the interests of the Oracle at Delphi against a band of marauding Phocians. Once this foothold was made, he used statesmanship and diplomacy to gain ascendency over many weaker Greek allies until Athens and Thebes, at the behest of the Athenian orator Demosthenes finally recognized the threat. When Philip finally met their combined forces in 338 at the Battle of Chaeronea, however, the Greeks were soundly thrashed and fell under the Macedonian yoke. Since Philip admired the Greeks, he granted them many freedoms, but little power. Greek culture and philosophy continued to thrive in Athens for many years afterward, but the political autonomy of mainland Greece was gone forever.

Philip of Macedonia died shortly after the battle of Chaeronea, leaving his young son Alexander the Great to the throne. The Greeks, led by Thebes, immediately tried to throw off the Macedonian garrison, but Alexander, only twenty years old at the time, put down all revolts with an iron hand. He razed Thebes to the ground, sold their citizens into slavery, and he prevented a revolution in Athens by a combination of threats and diplomacy.

Immediately after pacifying Greece, Alexander started planning for an ambitious invasion of Persia. The idea was not originally his, since his father had already laid the groundwork by building up the Macedonian army into the finest fighting force of the ancient world, and Alexander had his father’s generals to rely on. Nevertheless, Alexander’s military instincts were near genius, as his subsequent series of astounding victories against enormous Persian armies showed. Macedonia was a very poor nation, and Alexander crossed the Hellespont with only about 40,000 Greek and Macedonian soldiers. With this, he conquered an empire of around forty million people, the largest and wealthiest in the ancient world.

Alexander’s conquest of Persia is a fascinating story, but it boils down to several large-scale battles, each wherein the Macedonian forces prevailed over a vastly larger Persian host. The four great battles of Alexander’s Persian conquest were Granicus, Issus, Guagamela, and Hydaspes, which won him the Near East, Syria, Media, and Hindustan respectively. The entire conquest took only seven years and was completed before Alexander’s 30th birthday. His very youth, not another conqueror caused his downfall into dissipation. Only a few years after returning from his farthest campaign in India, he succumbed to an illness undoubtedly brought on by excessive drink.

Alexander’s conquests were enormously important both politically and culturally. After his death, there was neither any legitimate heir to inherit his empire, nor was there a single general strong enough to hold it together. The empire was therefore divided, after the twenty-year Wars of the Diadochi, between four of his generals. The main divisions early in the wars were Ptolemy I in Egypt, Seleucus in the Far East, Antigonus I in the Near East, and Antipater in Macedonia and Greece, but in the final settlement, Antipater’s descendants lost their kingdom to those of Antigonus. The kingdoms were all of the traditional despotic variety with no pretense of self-rule or democratic government.

The cultural effects of Alexander’s conquests were, therefore, much more striking and significant than his political legacy. Alexander, who had grown up with Aristotle as a tutor, believed that Greek culture was superior to any other, and did all he could to spread Greek language and learning throughout the regions he conquered. Both Alexander and his generals founded new cities based on the Greek model, with streets laid out in grids, market places, gymnasiums, theatres, council halls, and baths. Greek became the language of education and higher learning. Most of the major cities maintained libraries and schools. Many of the towns founded by the Macedonians were never more than military camps and didn’t take root, especially in the far east. Nevertheless, in the regions around the Mediterranean, Greek culture became completely dominant and prevailed until the Moslem Conquests of the seventh century.

The first contact between Roman and Greco-Macedonian powers occurred during the Pyrrhic Wars in 291 B.C., when the Greek city-states in southern Italy invited Pyrrhus, king of Epirus and the greatest general of his age, to help them resist Rome. Rome eventually overcame Pyrrhus and absorbed the Greek cities into its growing empire. It was not until the second Punic Wars that Hannibal made an alliance with Macedonia, and a Roman army was sent into Macedonian territory.

Three Roman-Macedonian Wars followed, with Rome increasing its influence over Macedonia each time. The first occurred during the second Punic War (214-205 B.C.), and the last, fought in 168 B.C., resulted in the complete overthrow of Macedonian rule over mainland Greece. About this time, several of the city-states on mainland Greece formed the Achaean league and fought a series of wars to defend their interests against Sparta, Macedonia, and Rome. In 146 B.C., because of an uprising led by the Achaean league, a Roman army invaded Greece and destroyed the city of Corinth. After this, mainland Greece was ruled as a province of the Roman Empire.

The Greek influence on Roman culture was tremendous. Even before the Roman conquest of Greece, Greek scholars and teachers were influential in Rome, since Greek was the language of learning throughout the Mediterranean. The Roman religion, art, philosophy, literature, and even grammar were heavily influenced by Greek culture. Educated Greek slaves were very expensive and sought after by aristocratic Romans families as teachers for their children. But just as in classical Greece, where there was tension and distrust between stoic Sparta and cultured Athens, the Greek influence was resisted by stoic Romans such as Cato the Censor, who feared its decadent influence.

Eventually Rome conquered most of the territory that was once part of Alexander’s Hellenistic empire, but Greek was so entrenched that it remained the language of trade and learning in the eastern Mediterranean long after Rome’s political domination of the area. It was only in the western part of the Empire, Italy, Gaul, and Britain, where Latin became the predominant language. The Greek centers of learning in the east, including Athens, Alexandria, Rhodes, Ephesus, Tarsus, and Perganum, continued to prosper under the Pax Romana and produced many of the greatest scholars of Roman times in literature, medicine, geography, astronomy, philosophy, and many others. Among them were Archimedes, one of the greatest scientists of ancient times; Plutarch, the great biographer; Eratosthenes, who correctly measured the size of the earth; Galen, who made great advances in medicine; and Hypatia, a female philosopher and teacher. In addition, Christianity thrived in the eastern empire and produced many of the most important early saints and missionaries of the time.