5000 Years of History.Wisdom. Heritage. Vision.
HELLENES AND GREEK HISTORY AT A GLANCE
Greek mythology, important dates.
c3000 – 1400 Minoan Ages — Crete supreme.
c1400 – 1100 Mycenaean Age — Mycenae and other Peloponnesian cities, inhabited by Achaeans, supreme. Sometimes called ‘Homeric Age’ because Homer, who lived much later, described it.
c1100 – 800 Dark Ages — Dorian invasion. Greeks move into Ionia. Homer perhaps lived c 900.
800 – 600 Age of Colonisation — Colonies throughout Mediterranean and Black Sea. 776, First Olympic games. Delphic oracle gains influence. Spartan system established.
600 – 500 Sixth Century — Sometimes called the ‘Age of the Tyrants.’ Peisistratus at Athens. Solon and Cleisthenes found Athenian democracy. Philosophers and poets in Ionia and the islands.
500 – 400 FIFTH CENTURY DEFEAT OF PERSIANS (490, 480-479)
ATHENIAN EMPIRE
THE PERICLEAN AGE. FULL DEMOCRACY FOR ATHENIAN CITIZENS. WRITING OF HISTORY, TRAGEDY AND COMEDY. THE PARTHENON. SCULPTURE AND POTTERY. PELOPONNESIAN WAR (431-404).
SOCRATES.
400 – 300 Fourth Century — Death of Socrates. Athens has lost her Empire, but her philosophers, orators and sculptors are famous. Greece submits to Philip of Macedon (338). Conquests of Alexander (332-323).
c30 – 146 Hellenistic Age — Alexandria more important than Athens as centre of learning. Greece becomes part of Roman Empire(146).
146 B.C. – 328 A.D. — Greece part of Roman Empire.
328 – 1453 — Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire starting with founding of Constantinople.
1453 – 1821 — Greece under Turkish rule. War of Independence begins (1821).
1832 — Greece an independent kingdom.
SOME PERSIAN KINGS
Cyrus the Great (549 – 529) — First King of Persia. Conquered Croesus.
Darius the Great (521 – 486) — “Remember the Athenians”.
Xerxes I (486 – 465) — Second invasion of Greece.
Artaxerxes II (45 – 362) — The “March-up Country”.
Darius III (336 – 330) — Last King of Persia. Defeated by Alexander.
Old Europe crumbles as barbarian waves batter civilizations. Ironically, the victory on the Mauriac Plain sealed the fate both of victor and vanquished. After his death in 453, Attila’s empire broke up not only as a result of the feuds…
Hellenistic Age is the period after Alexander’s death. Alexander drank too much on an autumn night in the year 323, or because medical science was not yet far enough advanced to cure the fever which his excesses brought on, another…
Unity, for a time and a philosopher king, of sorts, finally came to Greece from Macedon in the north. In the year 356 Alexander was born. Macedon under King Philip, Alexander’s father, was already recognised as a rising power. At…
Dionysius enjoyed culture as well as cruelty. He wrote poems, which were recited at the Olympic Games and one of many tragedies which he entered in the Athenian competitions took first prize. He invited famous authors and philosophers to his…
Damocles’ sword. Twice in Greek history the Spartans appear as heroes — when they fought under Leonidas in the pass of Thermopylae and when they marched under Xenophon from Babylon to the Black Sea. The rest of the time we…
The other author who tells us about Socrates is Xenophon. We owe him much. In addition to writing down what he remembered of conversations with Socrates, he wrote a short account of the Peloponnesian War after 411 (Thucydides only completed…
Socrates’ death occurred in the year 399 an Athenian court condemned Socrates for opposing the official religion of the state, a practice which in fact he studiously avoided and for “corrupting the youth”, which simply meant that he tried to…
Oligarchy — “rule by the few” was a form of government which Athens had not experienced since the 6th century, though it was common in many of the Greek states. This closing stage was surprisingly long. Alcibiades, having made himself…
Decelea near the border of Attica and Boeotia was fortified by the Spartans (413). The first piece of good advice which Alcibiades gave the Spartans was to send Gylippus to Syracuse. The second was this: “Restart the war; but don’t…