Ancient Greece () was an ancient civilization existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity (), comprising a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and regions, primarily centered in the northeastern area of the Mediterranean Sea. Prior to the Roman period, most of this area was officially unified only once, from 338 to 323 BC under the Kingdom of Macedon. In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period.
Scholars mark Ancient Greece as beginning with Mycenaean Greece, which declined during the Bronze Age collapse . Three centuries later, Greek urban city-states, or poleis, began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and Greek colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the intellectual flourishing of the Classical period of Ancient Greece, from the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, which included the Golden Age of Athens, the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, the short-lived Spartan and Theban hegemonies, the creation of the Hellenic league led by Philip II of Macedon and the subsequent conquest of Persia's Achaemenid Empire by his son Alexander the Great. Alexander's territorial conquests led to the spread of Greek culture into Northern Africa and Western Asia: the Hellenistic period, ending , when the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, centred in Alexandria, was annexed by Rome.
Classical Greek culture, especially Greek philosophy, had a powerful influence on Ancient Rome, which propagated variants of it throughout the Mediterranean and much of Europe. For this reason, Classical Greece is generally considered the cradle of Western civilization, the seminal culture from which the modern West derives many of its founding archetypes and ideas in politics, philosophy, science, and art.
Chronology
Classical antiquity in the Mediterranean region is commonly considered to have begun in the 8th century BC (around the time of the earliest recorded poetry of Homer) and ended in the 6th century AD.
Classical antiquity in Greece was preceded by the Greek Dark Ages (), archaeologically characterised by the protogeometric and geometric styles of designs on pottery. Following the Dark Ages was the Archaic period, beginning around the 8th century BC, which saw early developments in Greek culture and society leading to the Classical period from the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC until the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. The Classical period is characterized by a "classical" style, i.e. one which was considered exemplary by later observers, most famously in the Parthenon of Athens. Politically, the Classical period was dominated by Athens and the Delian League during the 5th century, but displaced by Spartan hegemony during the early 4th century BC, before power shifted to Thebes and the Boeotian League and finally to the League of Corinth led by Macedon. This period was shaped by the Greco-Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian War, and the Rise of Macedon.
Following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period (323–146 BC), during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near East from the death of Alexander until the Roman conquest. Roman Greece is usually counted from the Roman victory over the Corinthians at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC to the establishment of Byzantium by Constantine as the capital of the Roman Empire in 330 AD. Finally, Late Antiquity refers to the period of Christianization during the later 4th to early 6th centuries AD, consummated by the closure of the Academy of Athens by Justinian I in 529.
Historiography
The historical period of ancient Greece is unique in world history as the first period attested directly in comprehensive, narrative historiography, while earlier ancient history or protohistory is known from much more fragmentary documents such as annals, king lists, and pragmatic epigraphy.
Herodotus is widely known as the "father of history": his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Written between the 450s and 420s BC, Herodotus' work reaches about a century into the past, discussing 6th-century BC historical figures such as Darius I of Persia, Cambyses II and Psamtik III, and alluding to some 8th-century BC persons such as Candaules. The accuracy of Herodotus' works is debated.
Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato and Aristotle. Most were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than of many other cities. Their scope is further limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, ignoring economic and social history.
History
Archaic period
The archaic period, lasting approximately from 800 to 500 BC, saw the culmination of political and social developments which had begun in the Greek Dark Age, with the polis (city-state) becoming the most important unit of political organisation in Greece. The absence of powerful states in Greece after the collapse of Mycenaean power, and the geography of Greece, where many settlements were separated from their neighbours by mountainous terrain, encouraged the development of small independent city-states. Several Greek states saw tyrants rise to power in this period, most famously at Corinth from 657 BC. The period also saw the founding of Greek colonies around the Mediterranean, with Euboean settlements at Al-Mina in the east as early as 800 BC, and Ischia in the west by 775. Increasing contact with non-Greek peoples in this period, especially in the Near East, inspired developments in art and architecture, the adoption of coinage, and the development of the Greek alphabet.
Athens developed its democratic system over the course of the archaic period. Already in the 7th century, the right of all citizen men to attend the assembly appears to have been established. After a failed coup led by Cylon of Athens around 636 BC, Draco was appointed to establish a code of laws in 621. This failed to reduce the political tension between the poor and the elites, and in 594 Solon was given the authority to enact another set of reforms, which attempted to balance the power of the rich and the poor. In the middle of the 6th century, Pisistratus established himself as a tyrant, and after his death in 527 his son Hippias inherited his position; by the end of the 6th century he had been overthrown, and Cleisthenes carried out further democratising reforms.
In Sparta, a political system with two kings, a council of elders, and five ephors developed over the course of the 8th and 7th centuries. According to Spartan tradition, this constitution was established by the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus. Over the course of the First Messenian War and Second Messenian War, Sparta subjugated the neighbouring region of Messenia, enserfing the population.
In the 6th century, Greek city-states began to develop formal relationships with one another, where previously individual rulers had relied on personal relationships with the elites of other cities. Towards the end of the Archaic period, Sparta began to build a series of alliances, the Peloponnesian League, with cities including Corinth, Elis, and Megara, isolating Messenia and reinforcing Sparta's position against Argos, the other major power in the Peloponnese. Other alliances in the 6th century included those between Elis and Heraea in the Peloponnese; and between the Greek colony Sybaris in southern Italy, its allies, and the Serdaioi.
Classical Greece
In 499 BC, the Ionian city-states under Persian rule rebelled against their Persian-supported tyrant rulers. Supported by troops sent from Athens and Eretria, they advanced as far as Sardis and burnt the city before being driven back by a Persian counterattack. The revolt continued until 494, when the rebelling Ionians were defeated. Darius did not forget that Athens had assisted the Ionian revolt, and in 490 he assembled an armada to retaliate. Though heavily outnumbered, the Athenians—supported by their Plataean allies—defeated the Persian hordes at the Battle of Marathon, and the Persian fleet turned tail.
Ten years later, a second invasion was launched by Darius' son Xerxes. The city-states of northern and central Greece submitted to the Persian forces without resistance, but a coalition of 31 Greek city-states, including Athens and Sparta, determined to resist the Persian invaders. At the same time, Greek Sicily was invaded by a Carthaginian force. In 480 BC, the first major battle of the invasion was fought at Thermopylae, where a small rearguard of Greeks, led by three hundred Spartans, held a crucial pass guarding the heart of Greece for several days; at the same time Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse, defeated the Carthaginian invasion at the Battle of Himera.
The Persians were decisively defeated at sea by a primarily Athenian naval force at the Battle of Salamis, and on land in 479 BC at the Battle of Plataea. The alliance against Persia continued, initially led by the Spartan Pausanias but from 477 by Athens, and by 460 Persia had been driven out of the Aegean. During this long campaign, the Delian League gradually transformed from a defensive alliance of Greek states into an Athenian empire, as Athens' growing naval power intimidated the other league states. Athens ended its campaigns against Persia in 450, after a disastrous defeat in Egypt in 454, and the death of Cimon in action against the Persians on Cyprus in 450.
As the Athenian fight against the Persian empire waned, conflict grew between Athens and Sparta. Suspicious of the increasing Athenian power funded by the Delian League, Sparta offered aid to reluctant members of the League to rebel against Athenian domination. These tensions were exacerbated in 462 BC when Athens sent a force to aid Sparta in overcoming a helot revolt, but this aid was rejected by the Spartans. In the 450s, Athens took control of Boeotia, and won victories over Aegina and Corinth. However, Athens failed to win a decisive victory, and in 447 lost Boeotia again. Athens and Sparta signed the Thirty Years' Peace in the winter of 446/445, ending the conflict.
Despite the treaty, Athenian relations with Sparta declined again in the 430s, and in 431 BC the Peloponnesian War began. The first phase of the war saw a series of fruitless annual invasions of Attica by Sparta, while Athens successfully fought the Corinthian empire in northwest Greece and defended its own empire, despite a plague which killed the leading Athenian statesman Pericles. The war turned after Athenian victories led by Cleon at Pylos and Sphakteria, and Sparta sued for peace, but the Athenians rejected the proposal. The Athenian failure to regain control of Boeotia at Delium and Brasidas' successes in northern Greece in 424 improved Sparta's position after Sphakteria. After the deaths of Cleon and Brasidas, the strongest proponents of war on each side, a peace treaty was negotiated in 421 by the Athenian general Nicias.