History of Greece

http://www.keyboard-shop.co.uk/，http://www.keyboards-shop.com/，http://www.all-keyboard.com/，The history of Greece encompasses the history of the territory of the modern state of Greece, as well as that of the Greek people and the areas they ruled historically. The scope of Greek habitation and rule has varied much through the ages, and, as a result, the history of Greece is similarly elastic in what it includes. Each era has its own related sphere of interest. HP Compaq HSTNN-105C Battery

The first (proto-) Greek-speaking tribes, known later as Mycenaeans, are generally thought to have arrived in the Greek mainland between the late 3rd and the first half of the 2nd millennium BC – probably between 1900 and 1600 BC.^[1] When the Mycenaeans invaded, the area was inhabited by various non-Greek-speaking, indigenous pre-Greek people, who practiced agriculture as they had done since the 7th millennium BC.^[2] HP Compaq HSTNN-C12C Battery

At its geographical peak, Greek civilization spread from Greece to Egypt and to the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan. Since then, Greek minorities have remained in former Greek territories (e.g., Turkey, Albania, Italy, and Libya, Levant, Armenia,Georgia, etc.), and Greek emigrants have assimilated into differing societies across the globe (e.g., North America, Australia,Northern Europe, South Africa, etc.). HP Compaq HSTNN-C66C Battery

Nowadays most Greeks live in the modern state of Greece (independent since 1821) andCyprus.

The Neolithic Revolution reached Europe by way of Greece and the Balkans, beginning in the 10th millennium BC. Some Neolithic communities in southeastern Europe, such as Sesklo in Greece, were living in heavily fortified settlements of 3,000–4,000 people. HP Compaq HSTNN-C66C-4 Battery

The Greek Neolithic era ended with the arrival of the Bronze Age from Anatolia and the Near East, by the end of the 28th century BC (early Helladic period).

In about 2100 BC, the Proto-Indo-Europeans overran the Greek peninsula from the north and east.^[3] These Indo-Europeans, known as Mycenaeans, introduced the Greek language to present-day Greece. HP Compaq HSTNN-C66C-5 Battery

One of the earliest civilizations to appear around Greece was the Minoan civilization in Crete, which lasted from about 2700 (Early Minoan) BC to 1450 BC, and the Early Helladic period on the Greek mainland from ca. 2800 BC to 2100 BC.

Little specific information is known about the Minoans (even the name is a modern appellation, from Minos, the legendary king of Crete).^[4] HP Compaq HSTNN-C67C Battery

They have been characterized as a pre-Indo-European people, apparently the linguistic ancestors of the Eteo-Cretan speakers of Classical Antiquity, their language being encoded in the undeciphered Linear A script. They were primarily a mercantile people engaged in overseas trade, taking advantage of their land's rich natural resources. HP Compaq HSTNN-C67C-4 Battery

Timber was then an abundant natural resource that was commercially exploited and exported to nearby lands such as Cyprus, Syria, Egypt and the Aegean Islands.^[4] During the Early Bronze Age (3300 BC through 2100 BC), the Minoan Civilization on the island of Crete held great promise for the future.^[5] HP Compaq HSTNN-C67C-5 Battery

The Mycenaean Greeks invaded Crete and adopted much of the Minoan culture they found on Crete.^[6] The Minoan civilization which preceded the Mycenaean civilization on Crete was revealed to the modern world by Sir Arthur Evans in 1900, when he purchased and then began excavating a site at Knossus. HP Compaq HSTNN-DB05 Battery

The Proto-Greeks are assumed to have arrived in the Greek peninsula during the late 3rd to early 2nd millennium BC.^[7] The migration of the Ionians and Aeolians resulted in Mycenaean Greece by the 16th century BC.^[8][9] The transition from pre-Greek to Greek culture appears to have been rather gradual. HP Compaq HSTNN-DB06 Battery

Some archaeologists have pointed to evidence that there was a significant amount of continuity of prehistoric economic, architectural, and social structures, suggesting that the transition between the Neolithic, Helladic and early Greek cultures may have continued without major rifts in social texture.^[10] HP Compaq HSTNN-DB0E Battery

On Crete, however, the Mycenean invasion of around 1400 BC spelled the end of the Minoan civilization.Mycenaean 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. HP Compaq HSTNN-DB11 Battery

It is the historical setting of the epics of Homer and of most Greek mythology. The Mycenaean period takes its name from the archaeological site Mycenae in the northeastern Argolid, in thePeloponnesos of southern Greece. Athens, Pylos, Thebes, and Tiryns are also important Mycenaean sites. HP Compaq HSTNN-DB16 Battery

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 of the Minoan script calledLinear A to write their early form of Greek. The Mycenaean era script is called Linear B. HP Compaq HSTNN-DB28 Battery

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 often buried with gold masks, tiaras, armour, and jeweled weapons. HP Compaq HSTNN-DB29 Battery

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-DB67 Battery

The Greeks themselves have traditionally blamed this decline on an invasion by another wave of Greek people, the Dorians, although there is scant archaeological evidence for this view.

The Greek Dark Ages (ca. 1100 BC–800 BC) refers to the period of Greek history from the presumed Dorian invasion and end of the HP Compaq HSTNN-FB05 Battery

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-FB18 Battery

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-FB51 Battery

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-FB52 Battery

Slowly equality grew among the different sects of people, leading to the dethronement of the various Kings and the rise of the family.

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-I04C Battery

Writing was relearned from the Phoenicians, eventually spreading north into Italy and the Gauls.

Ancient Greece was an ancient civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity (ca. 600 AD). HP Compaq HSTNN-I12C Battery

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 Mycenaeancivilizations, while others argue that these civilizations were so different from later Greek cultures that they should be classed separately. HP Compaq HSTNN-I39C Battery

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 period that follows is classed as Hellenistic. HP Compaq HSTNN-I40C Battery

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 3rd century AD.

Ancient Greece is considered by most historians to be the foundational culture of Western Civilization. HP Compaq HSTNN-I44C Battery

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-I44C-A Battery

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 Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. From about the 9th century BC, written records begin to appear.^[11] HP Compaq HSTNN-I44C-B Battery

Greece was divided into many small self-governing communities, a pattern largely dictated by Greek geography, where every island, valley and plain is cut off from its neighbours by the sea or mountain ranges.^[12]

The Archaic period can be understood as the Orientalizing period, when Greece was at the fringe, but not under the sway, of the budding Neo-Assyrian Empire. HP Compaq HSTNN-I45C Battery

Greece adopted significant amounts of cultural elements from the Orient, in art as well as in religion and mythology. Archaeologically, Archaic Greece is marked by Geometric pottery.

The basic unit of politics in Ancient Greece was the polis, sometimes translated as city-state. "Politics" literally means "the things of the polis". HP Compaq HSTNN-I45C-A Battery

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-I45C-B Battery

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.

Two major wars shaped the Classical Greek world. HP Compaq HSTNN-I48C-A Battery

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 byAthens. The notable battles of this war include Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea.) HP Compaq HSTNN-I48C-B Battery

To prosecute the war and then 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. HP Compaq HSTNN-I49C Battery

Secession 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. HP Compaq HSTNN-I50C-B Battery

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-I54C Battery

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. Corinth intervened on the Epidamnian side. Fearful lest Corinth capture the Corcyran navy (second only to the Athenian in size), Athens intervened. HP Compaq HSTNN-I64C-5 Battery

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-I65C-5 Battery

The Corinthians turned to 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, HP Compaq HSTNN-IB05 Battery

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-IB08 Battery

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 that killed about a quarter of its people, including Pericles. With Pericles gone, HP Compaq HSTNNIB12 Battery

less conservative elements gained power in the city and Athens went on the offensive. It captured 300–400 Spartan hoplites at theBattle 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. HP Compaq HSTNN-IB16 Battery

The Peace of Nicias concluded with Sparta recovering its hostages and Athens recovering the city ofAmphipolis.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 to conquer Sicily. HP Compaq HSTNN-IB18 Battery

Initially, Sparta was reluctant, 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. HP Compaq HSTNN-IB28 Battery

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-IB51 Battery

The navy recalled Alcibiades (who had been forced to abandon the Spartan cause after reputedly seducing the wife ofAgis II, a Spartan king) and made him its head. The oligarchy in Athens collapsed and Alcibiades reconquered what had been lost.

In 407 BC, Alcibiades was replaced following a minor naval defeat at the Battle of Notium. HP Compaq HSTNN-IB52 Battery

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 almost destroyed the Athenian fleet. HP Compaq HSTNN-IB55 Battery

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-IB62 Battery

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 forced the city states into being united by the League of Corinth which led to the conquering of the Persian Empire and the Hellenistic Age had begun. HP Compaq HSTNN-LB05 Battery

The Hellenistic period of Greek history begins with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and ends with the annexationof 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. HP Compaq HSTNN-LB08 Battery

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. (See Hellenistic civilization for the history of Greek culture outside Greece in this period.) HP Compaq HSTNN-LB0E Battery

Athens and her allies revolted against Macedon upon hearing that Alexander had died, but were defeated within a year in theLamian 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). HP Compaq HSTNN-LB11 Battery

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 city-states was intermittent, with a number of revolts. HP Compaq HSTNN-LB51 Battery

Athens, Rhodes, Pergamum and other Greek states retained substantial independence, and joined the Aetolian League as a means of defending it and restoring democracy in their states, where as they saw Macedon as a tyrannical kingdom because of the fact they had not adopted democracy. HP Compaq HSTNN-LB52 Battery

TheAchaean 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. HP Compaq HSTNN-MB05 Battery

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 BC Macedon defeated the Egyptian fleet at Cos and brought the Aegean islands, except Rhodes, under its rule as well. HP Compaq HSTNN-OB06 Battery

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 ever been occupied by a different state. HP Compaq HSTNN-OB52 Battery

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-OB62 Battery

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 BC, and ended inconclusively in 205 BC, but Macedon was now marked as an enemy of Rome. HP Compaq HSTNN-UB05 Battery

In 202 BC, Rome defeated Carthage, and was free to turn her attention eastwards. In 198 BC, the Second Macedonian War broke out because Rome saw Macedon as a potential ally of the Seleucid Empire, the greatest power in the east. Philip's allies in Greece deserted him and in 197 BC he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Cynoscephalae by the Roman proconsul Titus Quinctius Flaminius. HP Compaq HSTNN-UB11 Battery

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 BC, Flaminius declared all the Greek cities free, although Roman garrisons were placed at Corinth and Chalcis. HP Compaq HSTNN-UB18 Battery

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 aristocratic constitutions were favoured and actively promoted.

Militarily, Greece itself declined to the point that the Romans conquered the land (168 BC onwards), HP Compaq HSTNN-UB68 Battery

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. HP Compaq HSTNN-UB69 Battery