Ancient Greece, Rise and Fall: Ancient Worlds and Civilizations, #6

By A.J. Carmichael

The Greek Empire's Territory in the year 478 BC, was geographically dominated by two peninsulas. Italy splits Europe into the eastern and western half, while Greece consists of two large peninsulas that extend from Europe into the Mediterranean. Separating the eastern region. The Greek world consisted of mainland Greece, the islands off its west coast, and the Aegean Sea, which separated mainland Greece from Asia Minor and was confined to the east by the coast of Asia Minor, the coast of Thrace, and the island of Crete. Mountains separate the Greek mainland into several, mostly minor, livable zones, while sea inlets split it into northern and central Greece and the Peloponnese, which are connected by the Corinth Isthmus. Egypt and the Near East developed advanced civilizations earlier than the northern and western regions. The most notable Greek colonies were in the south and east, and there was a tendency to seek interaction with and embrace the south and east cultures.

The earliest sophisticated civilizations emerged in the Greek area during the bronze period. During the second millennium, the Minoan culture in Crete, the Cycladic culture in the Aegean, and the Mycenaean culture on the mainland all existed; starting about 1400, the Mycenaeans influenced Crete and the Cyclades. The Mycenaeans spoke Greek, but the Minoans spoke a different language, and no Cycladic writing remained. This was the location of heroic stories in ancient Greek literature. Large kingdoms supported life, centered on opulent palaces, and were governed by bureaucratic governments. During an era of calamity and population upheavals whose reasons are unclear, this planet vanished between 1200 and 1000 BCE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AJ CARMICHAEL
• Release date: Jan 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215351116

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Tavoularis Travel, my driver Dardanus Xenakis, I hope I never have to sit in the car with you again! But sincerest gratitude for getting me to the places alive.  For advice whilst in the Greek islands Uriana  Zografos I am indebted.

INTRODUCTION

The Greek Empire's Territory in the year 478 BC, was geographically dominated by two peninsulas. Italy splits Europe into the eastern and western half, while Greece consists of two large peninsulas that extend from Europe into the Mediterranean. Separating the eastern region. The Greek world consisted of mainland Greece, the islands off its west coast, and the Aegean Sea, which separated mainland Greece from Asia Minor and was confined to the east by the coast of Asia Minor, the coast of Thrace, and the island of Crete. Mountains separate the Greek mainland into several, mostly minor, livable zones, while sea inlets split it into northern and central Greece and the Peloponnese, which are connected by the Corinth Isthmus. Egypt and the Near East developed advanced civilizations earlier than the northern and western regions. The most notable Greek colonies were in the south and east, and there was a tendency to seek interaction with and embrace the south and east cultures.

The earliest sophisticated civilizations emerged in the Greek area during the bronze period. During the second millennium, the Minoan culture in Crete, the Cycladic culture in the Aegean, and the Mycenaean culture on the mainland all existed; starting about 1400, the Mycenaeans influenced Crete and the Cyclades. The Mycenaeans spoke Greek, but the Minoans spoke a different language, and no Cycladic writing remained. This was the location of heroic stories in ancient Greek literature. Large kingdoms supported life, centered on opulent palaces, and were governed by bureaucratic governments. During an era of calamity and population upheavals whose reasons are unclear, this planet vanished between 1200 and 1000 BCE. According to legend, the Dorians, a distinct branch of the Greeks, arrived from the north and drove the indigenous inhabitants of Asia Minor's islands and coast to flee. It is now believed that there was never an event worthy of the moniker Dorian Invasion. On the other hand, the Dorians were relatively recent arrivals in the Peloponnese, and the Greeks migrated from the mainland to the islands and coast of Asia Minor, with the Aeolians and Ionians leading the way about 1000 B.C. and the Dorians following shortly afterward.

Thucydides described Greece's progression from its earliest and most essential stage to its apex in the fifth Century. Modern researchers have envisioned a desolate time between the collapse of bronze-age civilizations and the so-called archaic era, which lasted from 800 to 500 B.C. Dark in the sense that we know less about it than we do about the epochs before and following it, and its population and level of civilization were less. Even though the dark ages seem less dismal in each of these ways than they did fifty years ago, there is some truth to this statement. By the year 800, the comeback was well started, but unlike the Bronze Age, several small, independent communities emerged. Typically, these societies were poleis, or city-states, comprised of a town and surrounding countryside striving for extreme independence. If these cities were formerly ruled by kings, they were not powerful monarchs like those of Asia but rather notable aristocrats like Homer. However, kings were quickly supplanted by officials who were mainly selected yearly from the aristocracy of families that had survived the dark ages and possessed most of the good land.

Increasing wealth created new difficulties. Communities reached a point where the population seemed too huge to endure a run of difficult years, or in comparison to the previous generation, as the population continued to increase over time, this time not rapidly but considerably. The Greeks expanded their trade with one another and the rest of the world by importing goods that were insufficiently accessible locally. In addition, they began establishing colonies in strategic locations around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea to get the goods they wanted to import, as well as places where folks who were under pressure at home might start again and produce their own food. Even though they had family and religious ties to their mother states and the mother states strove to maintain authority over the colonies, most became independent entities.

As a result of this procedure, the need for political change increased. In a commercial culture, it was simpler for some individuals to become wealthy and others to fall into poverty than in agriculturally self-sufficient communities. Those who had amassed more riches found it easier to conceptualize themselves about the established aristocracy. On the other hand, the notion of the citizen farmer remained popular, and many people in various states continued to own property and rely at least partially on the harvest of their land. Coinage, which is useful as a medium of exchange and a means of measuring and storing non-landed wealth, was not invented until the sixth Century, and it was in the second half of the fifth Century that we first encountered a monetary economy in which the average citizen is likely to own coins and regularly engage in monetary transactions. Cities came to rely on heavy infantry known as hoplites, organized into phalanxes whose success depended on the cohesion of the entire body rather than the skill of individual stars, to make everyone who could afford the equipment and fight in the phalanx feel equally important to their city. The alphabet, a roughly twenty-letter system, was created so locals could read and write laws, which were then made available to the public. This change may have been just as crucial to aristocrats worried that one of their own may stray as it was to lower-class citizens initially concerned about rough treatment by the aristocracy. There may have been violence between people of several Peloponnesian cities who were considered to belong to distinct racial groupings, such as the Dorians. And there would have been ambitious or resentful individuals within or beyond the aristocracy who considered they had not performed well enough to deserve to gain power when their time came.

Authoritarian regimes rose to prominence in the seventh and sixth centuries by relying on groups of disgruntled people and whatever local causes of discontent existed. Tyrants lacked a formal position with clearly defined duties; some governed autocratically, while others used the existing system; some ruled cruelly, while others reigned tenderly (it is only with Plato and Aristotle in the fourth Century that a tyrant was automatically seen as a cruel autocrat). The aristocracy hated tyrants because they were forced to live under their power alongside the commoners. By the end of the sixth Century, most countries had regimes that guaranteed fundamental political rights to anybody wealthy enough to fight as a hoplite, as well as pseudo-kinship organizations through which the aristocracy ruled the populace in some regions. As the primary roots of anger were resolved or forgotten, and the tyrant's dominance became a new source of discontent, tyrannical regimes often lasted little more than two or three generations.

In the fifth Century, two cities that had experienced atypical growth and risen to prominence started competing for domination in Greece. In the southern Peloponnese, Sparta had two rulers owing to the inevitable amalgamation of adjacent cities. It maintained these rulers throughout the classical era and beyond, but most of their power was assigned to an annually chosen council of five ephors. By the seventh Century, it gained absolute authority over Laconia, transforming some residents into peri oikoi and others into helots. In the late eighth and early seventh centuries, it extended westward into Messenia, establishing peri oikoi and helots from its population, and eventually came to rule a territory of around 2,400 square miles = 6,100 square kilometers. Except for Taras in Italy, it might create colonies abroad to house anyone deemed unsuitable for a portion of the seized territory at home.

After the first wave of conquests in Messenia, tensions likely erupted in the early seventh Century, leading to the formation of the Lycurgus society. To maintain unity and dominance over the peri oikoi and helots, the Spartan aristocracy reached an agreement with the populace: politically, the Gerousia and assembly were given defined roles in the administration of the state; economically, the conquered land and the helots to work it were distributed to the populace; and socially, the existence of the lower orders made a full-time military life for the populace both possible and necessary. This was a success because Sparta avoided tyranny, flourished into Greece's most powerful state, and was acclaimed internationally for its orderly way of life.

Sparta unsuccessfully sought to invade Arcadia in the sixth Century, and by the middle of the Century, Sparta's objective had shifted: rather than aiming to be a Dorian invader, Sparta aimed to be a Greek leader by forming alliances with other kingdoms to tie them to it. By the end of the Century, almost all Peloponnesian nations had joined Sparta in the Peloponnesian League, an organization for foreign affairs in which members were required to accept majority rulings and consult on collective action.

Initially, Sparta's culture was akin to that of its neighbors; but due to the conquest of Messenia, the necessity to govern the subject people, and maybe the failure to capture Arcadia, austerity came to be seen as a virtue in Sparta. Sparta participated in fewer renovations than other towns, choosing to become more austere. However, when Sparta and Athens started competing in the fifth Century, each city was keen to demonstrate its uniqueness. Permanently abandoned was one of the first neighborhoods of Athens to recover from the Middle Ages. It, like Sparta, did not need to establish colonies to expand into Attica; the other inhabitants of the area became Athenian citizens rather than being subject to an Athenians-led governing body. However, Peloponnesian towns overtook Athens during the ninth and eighth centuries. In the sixth Century, Athens gained importance. Cylon's failed effort to create a dictatorship in the late seventh Century led to Draco's introduction of written restrictions. In 594/3, Solon endeavored to mediate between the wealthy and the poor. He freed a class of dependent peasants, made wealth the only qualification for office, allowing a broader range of wealthy men to challenge the landed aristocrats, formalized the decision-making process by establishing a new council to prepare the business for the citizens' assembly, revised the laws, and altered the judicial procedures to make it simpler for the underdogs to obtain justice. His compromise, however, fell short of what the dissatisfied desired and exceeded what the affluent elite dreaded. After two prior attempts, from 546 to 5 to 511/0, Athens surrendered to Pisistratus's legitimate and sparing rule and his sons. Athens flourished in the sixth Century, choosing commerce rather than pursuing independence, and became the world's top producer of exquisite pottery.

When the Alcmaeonid family, who sometimes worked with and sometimes fought the tyrants, placed pressure on Sparta to act, the tyranny ended. Cleisthenes' victory (and a dispute with Sparta) resulted from a conflict between the Alcmaeonid Cleisthenes and another aristocrat: Cleisthenes provided the Athenians with a new, locally-based articulation of the citizen body, in ten tribes, thirty trityls, and 139 demes; this replaced the previous organizations as the basis of Athens' public life so that it could compete with Spar In the 480s, he also introduced the practice of ostracism, wherein the people would honorably expel an individual for 10 years without holding him accountable for a transgression. The Greeks realized what differentiated them from the barbarians as they were increasingly exposed to the outside world throughout the archaic period. The brilliant barbarians who ruled the Greeks in the east and south impacted them the most. Outside of the Greek seaside cities in western Asia Minor. Cyrus II of Persia, who began as a minor ruler to the east of the Persian Gulf, conquered the Medes to his north in 550 (with the assistance of Babylon to his west, though he was to conquer Babylon as well in 539), Croesus of Lydia in 546, and with him, the Asiatic Greeks; the nearby islands may have made a token submission at this point, but they were actually subjugated between c.520 and 515. During most of the archaic era, the Lydians dominated the Asiatic Greeks, whose capital was Sardis. Despite their otherworldly look, they were kind and contributed to Greek temples.

Egypt, a component of the Greek world, was conquered by the Persians between 525 and 522 B.C. due to the presence of Greek entrepreneurs and soldiers there since the seventh Century. Despite a strong start, the Greeks were defeated when they refused to cooperate, and the Persians dispatched massive forces. During the Ionian Revolt against Persia in 498-493, Miletus in Asia Minor led the Asiatic Greeks and asked mainland Greece for assistance. Athens, who likely already considered itself the mother city of the Ionian Greeks in the Aegean and Asia Minor, and Eretria in Euboea sent aid. Sparta, which had officially prohibited Cyrus from injuring the Asiatic Greeks but taken no action against him, declined to intercede. Under the appearance of retaliation, the Persians may continue their approach against Athens and Eretria for assaulting Greece. In 492 B.C., after its ships were lost off the coast of Mount Athos, an expedition dispatched into Thrace as the first salvo of a northern assault on Greece was forced to turn back. In 490, the Persians assaulted Naxos and Eretria by sailing across the Cyclades, but they were quickly destroyed by the Athenians at Marathon in northern Attica. Not all Greeks banded together in 480 to oppose the massive invasion of the northern Aegean by King Xerxes. Sparta spearheaded the resistance, while Athens supplied more than half of the Greek fleet with newly built ships financed by the profits from its silver mines. The Persians advanced successfully through Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly; brave but unsuccessful efforts were made to stop them on land at Thermopylae and at sea at Artemisia, but they were ultimately annihilated by the Greek navy in the strait between Attica and the island of Salamis. Following this, the Persian fleet and most of their forces retreated. In 479, the Greek navy invaded Asia Minor and defeated the Persians there. At the same time, the Persian army was defeated at Plataea. Even though Greece had been rescued, the Greeks must have anticipated that the Persians would soon return and be much more eager for vengeance.

From 478 to 323 BCE, the Greeks excelled in literature, philosophy, and the arts across ancient Greece. Politically, it is the time in which the notion of democracy emerged as the conclusion of what had been evolving from the archaic era. There was also much thinking and debate over how nations should be governed and how people and governments should conduct themselves. Sparta and Athens may have coexisted for a while, but as Athens became more robust, it became difficult for them to coexist. Sparta, a traditional, land-based, oligarchy-supporting, and more self-aware uncultured power grew farther and more apart from Athens, a progressive, democratic, and cultured maritime state. Consequently, Sparta and its allies fought to diminish Athens' influence during the Peloponnesian War (431–404). They succeeded, but only with the assistance of Persia, a former adversary that desired to recover control of the Greeks of Asia Minor.

During the first forty years of the Fourth Century, Sparta, Athens, and a more ambitious Thebes desired a Greece in which no power was strong enough to threaten Persia and where peace reigned so that Greek warriors might fight for Persia in its western provinces. 50 years after the Persian Wars, Sparta withdrew to the Peloponnese, while Athens led the ongoing conflict with Persia and ultimately transformed the Delian League into an Athenian state. Then, after the Peloponnesian War, it recovered remarkably. The Persians ultimately regained the Asiatic Greeks in 387/6, and after being decisively beaten by Thebes in 371 B.C., Sparta remained optimistic about regaining her previous greatness. However, the development of Macedon, a kingdom on Greece's northern border, altered the course of Greek history. Between 359 and 336, Philip II established Macedon as a formidable force by bringing almost the whole of mainland Greece under his grasp. Between 336 to 323, Alexander the Great utilized Macedonian and League armies to overthrow the Persian kingdom and assimilate it into a larger Greek domain.

The introduction of printing in the fourteenth century A.D. altered historians' access to documented evidence; at least one copy of every work produced survives someplace. Only a tiny fraction of the ancient world's literature has survived, and there must be a great deal more that we are unaware of. By ancient criteria, however, we understand the world of classical Greece. Three individuals created the centuries-old chronicles that have been handed down for generations. Herodotus, the first extant Western professional historian, wrote a history that concluded with the Persian Wars at the beginning of the fifth Century. He provides a continuous chronicle from 500 to 479, with some material on earlier history, a substantial amount on the second half of the sixth Century, and a few allusions to events up to 430. Written in the last quarter of the fifth Century, Thucydides' account of the Peloponnesian War offers a brief recap of events starting in 478. Even though he survived after the war ended, his tale suddenly ends with the fall of 411, even though he lived beyond the conflict's conclusion. Xenophon, a historian who thrived in the early fourth century and picked up where Thucydides left off, was one of the historians who purposefully picked up where Thucydides left off. His Hellenica covers the years 411 to 362. The Athenian Constitution is a relatively recent historical document. It was composed between 330 and 320 B.C. at Aristotle's school using various now-lost sources, including Athens' local history.

The Library of History by Diodorus Siculus was composed between 60 and 30, but only the era from 478 through the end of the fourth Century has survived. It was based on sources from the fourth Century that no longer exist, primarily an Asiatic Greek, Ephorus, for this period; for 431-411, it ultimately relies on Thucydides, but after that, it provides an account that is independent of Xenophon and derived from trustworthy sources and therefore deserves consideration. Plutarch's Parallel Lives of Famous Greeks and Romans, written about 100 AD, contains biographies of several notable figures from the fifth and fourth centuries. Alexander the Great's career also spawned several tales, but none that have survived are older than Diodorus'.

Additionally, other types of literature are useful to historians. Athens' fifth-century drama is significant, with comedies created in and after 420 BCE and tragedies written throughout the Century. Around 420 and 320 B.C., a massive corpus of material was produced when many judicial declarations and assembly speeches were documented and transmitted. Some speeches, most notably those of Isocrates, were