Misplaced Pages

#184815

146-486: In Ancient Greece , the title or rank was held by a number of officers in the armies of several but not all city-states , with Sparta being a notable exception. In Classical Athens , there were ten taxiarchs, one for each of the city's tribes ( phylai ), a subordinate to the respective strategos . The term first appears in use in the Byzantine army in the late 6th-century Strategikon of emperor Maurice , where it

292-509: A diarchy . This meant that Sparta had two kings ruling concurrently throughout its entire history. The two kingships were both hereditary, vested in the Agiad dynasty and the Eurypontid dynasty. According to legend, the respective hereditary lines of these two dynasties sprang from Eurysthenes and Procles , twin descendants of Hercules . They were said to have conquered Sparta two generations after

438-536: A 'strongman' was often the best solution. Athens fell under a tyranny in the second half of the 6th century BC. When this tyranny was ended, the Athenians founded the world's first democracy as a radical solution to prevent the aristocracy regaining power. A citizens' assembly (the Ecclesia ), for the discussion of city policy, had existed since the reforms of Draco in 621 BC; all citizens were permitted to attend after

584-547: A NATO Code OF-6. The rank was introduced in the Greek military by Royal Decree on 5 June 1946, and the insignia instituted later in the same year. It is superior to a Syntagmatarchis ( Colonel ) and inferior to an Ypostratigos ( Major General ). The rank's insignia consists of a flaming grenade (replacing the crown borne under the Greek monarchy ), a crossed sword and baton device and a six-pointed star. A Taxiarchos typically serves as

730-417: 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

876-633: A chief advisor to the Spartans and began to counsel them on the best way to defeat his native land. Alcibiades persuaded the Spartans to begin building a real navy for the first time—large enough to challenge the Athenian superiority at sea. Additionally, Alcibiades persuaded the Spartans to ally themselves with their traditional foes—the Persians. As noted below, Alcibiades soon found himself in controversy in Sparta when he

1022-495: 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

1168-596: A council of elders (the Gerousia ) and magistrates specifically appointed to watch over the kings (the Ephors ). Only free, land-owning, native born men could be citizens entitled to the full protection of the law in a city-state. In most city-states, unlike the situation in Rome , social prominence did not allow special rights. Sometimes families controlled public religious functions, but this ordinarily did not give any extra power in

1314-514: A decisive victory, and in 447 lost Boeotia again. Athens and Sparta signed the Thirty Years' Peace in the winter of 446/5, 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

1460-436: A group of city-states allied themselves to defend Greece, the vast majority of poleis remained neutral, and after the Persian defeat, the allies quickly returned to infighting. Thus, the major peculiarities of the ancient Greek political system were its fragmented nature (and that this does not particularly seem to have tribal origin), and the particular focus on urban centers within otherwise tiny states. The peculiarities of

1606-460: A hegemony, they decided after 403 BC not to support the directives that he had made. Agesilaus came to power by accident at the start of the 4th century BC. This accidental accession meant that, unlike the other Spartan kings, he had the advantage of a Spartan education. The Spartans at this date discovered a conspiracy against the laws of the city conducted by Cinadon and as a result concluded there were too many dangerous worldly elements at work in

SECTION 10

#1732870114185

1752-526: A job but to become an effective citizen. Girls also learned to read, write and do simple arithmetic so they could manage the household. They almost never received education after childhood. Classical Greece Classical Greece was a period of around 200 years (the 5th and 4th centuries BC) in Ancient Greece , marked by much of the eastern Aegean and northern regions of Greek culture (such as Ionia and Macedonia ) gaining increased autonomy from

1898-463: A major power without regaining its former glory. This empire was powerful but short-lived. In 405 BC, the Spartans were masters of all—of Athens' allies and of Athens itself—and their power was undivided. By the end of the century, they could not even defend their own city. As noted above, in 400 BC, Agesilaus became king of Sparta. The subject of how to reorganize the Athenian Empire as part of

2044-573: A much more powerful force of 300,000 by land, with 1,207 ships in support, across a double pontoon bridge over the Hellespont . This army took Thrace, before descending on Thessaly and Boeotia, whilst the Persian navy skirted the coast and resupplied the ground troops. The Greek fleet, meanwhile, dashed to block Cape Artemision . After being delayed by Leonidas I , the Spartan king of the Agiad Dynasty, at

2190-477: A number of island cities benefiting from Athens' maritime protection), and other states outside this Athenian Empire. The sources denounce this Athenian supremacy (or hegemony ) as smothering and disadvantageous. After 403 BC, things became more complicated, with a number of cities trying to create similar empires over others, all of which proved short-lived. The first of these turnarounds was managed by Athens as early as 390 BC, allowing it to re-establish itself as

2336-577: A number of victories. For most of the first years of his reign, Agesilaus had been engaged in a war against Persia in the Aegean Sea and in Asia Minor. In 394 BC, the Spartan authorities ordered Agesilaus to return to mainland Greece. While Agesilaus had a large part of the Spartan Army in Asia Minor, the Spartan forces protecting the homeland had been attacked by a coalition of forces led by Corinth. At

2482-509: A powerful influence on the later Roman Empire . Part of the broader era of classical antiquity , the classical Greek era ended after Philip II 's unification of most of the Greek world against the common enemy of the Persian Empire, which was conquered within 13 years during the wars of Alexander the Great , Philip's son. In the context of the art, architecture, and culture of Ancient Greece ,

2628-696: A result of Epaminondas ' liberation of Messenia from Spartan rule, the helot system there came to an end and the helots won their freedom. However, it did continue to persist in Laconia until the 2nd century BC. For most of Greek history, education was private, except in Sparta. During the Hellenistic period, some city-states established public schools . Only wealthy families could afford a teacher. Boys learned how to read, write and quote literature. They also learned to sing and play one musical instrument and were trained as athletes for military service. They studied not for

2774-509: A sceptic about the Sicilian Expedition , he was appointed along with Alcibiades to lead the expedition. However, unlike the expedition against Melos, the citizens of Athens were deeply divided over Alcibiades' proposal for an expedition to far-off Sicily. In June 415 BC, on the very eve of the departure of the Athenian fleet for Sicily, a band of vandals in Athens defaced the many statues of

2920-516: A special type of slaves called helots . Helots were Messenians enslaved en masse during the Messenian Wars by the state and assigned to families where they were forced to stay. Helots raised food and did household chores so that women could concentrate on raising strong children while men could devote their time to training as hoplites . Their masters treated them harshly, and helots revolted against their masters several times. In 370/69 BC, as

3066-465: A war in which Thebes allied with its old enemy Athens. Then the Theban generals Epaminondas and Pelopidas won a decisive victory at Leuctra (371 BC). The result of this battle was the end of Spartan supremacy and the establishment of Theban dominance, but Athens herself recovered much of her former power because the supremacy of Thebes was short-lived. With the death of Epaminondas at Mantinea (362 BC)

SECTION 20

#1732870114185

3212-690: A war with the Roman Republic in the late 3rd century. Although the First Macedonian War was inconclusive, the Romans, in typical fashion, continued to fight Macedon until it was completely absorbed into the Roman Republic (by 149 BC). In the east, the unwieldy Seleucid Empire gradually disintegrated, although a rump survived until 64 BC, whilst the Ptolemaic Kingdom continued in Egypt until 30 BC when it too

3358-621: A year, the Thirty had been overthrown. The first half of the fourth century saw the major Greek states attempt to dominate the mainland; none were successful, and their resulting weakness led to a power vacuum which would eventually be filled by Macedon under Philip II and then Alexander the Great. In the immediate aftermath of the Peloponnesian war, Sparta attempted to extend their own power, leading Argos, Athens, Corinth, and Thebes to join against them. Aiming to prevent any single Greek state gaining

3504-664: Is known as the Peloponnesian League. However, unlike the Hellenic League and the Delian League, this league was not a response to any external threat, Persian or otherwise: it was unabashedly an instrument of Spartan policy aimed at Sparta's security and Spartan dominance over the Peloponnese peninsula. The term "Peloponnesian League" is a misnomer. It was not really a "league" at all. Nor was it really "Peloponnesian". There

3650-399: Is mountainous, and as a result, ancient Greece consisted of many smaller regions, each with its own dialect, cultural peculiarities, and identity. Regionalism and regional conflicts were prominent features of ancient Greece. Cities tended to be located in valleys between mountains, or on coastal plains, and dominated a certain area around them. In the south lay the Peloponnese , consisting of

3796-432: Is reserved for the commander of the elite Optimatoi mercenary corps. In the 10th-century, the term was revived and refers to the commander of one of the new type of infantry brigade ( taxiarchia ), composed of 500 heavy infantry, 300 archers and 200 light infantry. On account of their numerical size, these units were also known as chiliarchia , and their commander correspondingly as chiliarchos , and are also equated to

3942-426: Is unclear exactly how this change occurred. For instance, in Athens, the kingship had been reduced to a hereditary, lifelong chief magistracy ( archon ) by c. 1050 BC; by 753 BC this had become a decennial, elected archonship; and finally by 683 BC an annually elected archonship. Through each stage, more power would have been transferred to the aristocracy as a whole, and away from a single individual. Inevitably,

4088-440: 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

4234-698: 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. The historical period of ancient Greece

4380-419: 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. The archaic period, lasting from approximately 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

4526-727: The Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical Greece , from the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and which included the Golden Age of Athens and the Peloponnesian War . The unification of Greece by Macedon under Philip II and subsequent conquest of the Achaemenid Empire by Alexander the Great spread Hellenistic civilization across

Taxiarch - Misplaced Pages Continue

4672-656: The Archaic period , the Greek population grew beyond the capacity of the limited arable land of Greece proper, resulting in the large-scale establishment of colonies elsewhere: according to one estimate, the population of the widening area of Greek settlement increased roughly tenfold from 800 BC to 400 BC, from 800,000 to as many as 7 + 1 ⁄ 2 -10 million. This was not simply for trade, but also to found settlements. These Greek colonies were not, as Roman colonies were, dependent on their mother-city, but were independent city-states in their own right. Greeks settled outside of Greece in two distinct ways. The first

4818-571: The Battle of Aegospotami , and began to blockade Athens' harbour; driven by hunger, Athens sued for peace, agreeing to surrender their fleet and join the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League. Following the Athenian surrender, Sparta installed an oligarchic regime, the Thirty Tyrants , in Athens, one of a number of Spartan-backed oligarchies which rose to power after the Peloponnesian war. Spartan predominance did not last: after only

4964-455: The Battle of Coronea , Agesilaus and his Spartan Army defeated a Theban force. During the war, Corinth drew support from a coalition of traditional Spartan enemies—Argos, Athens and Thebes. However, when the war descended into guerilla tactics, Sparta decided that it could not fight on two fronts and so chose to ally with Persia. The long Corinthian War finally ended with the Peace of Antalcidas or

5110-475: The Battle of Thermopylae (a battle made famous by the 300 Spartans who faced the entire Persian army), Xerxes advanced into Attica, and captured and burned Athens. The subsequent Battle of Artemisium resulted in the capture of Euboea , bringing most of mainland Greece north of the Isthmus of Corinth under Persian control. However, the Athenians had evacuated the city of Athens by sea before Thermopylae, and under

5256-653: 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 and Middle East from the death of Alexander until the Roman conquest. Roman Greece

5402-656: The Classical period corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries BC (the most common dates being the fall of the last Athenian tyrant in 510 BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC). The Classical period in this sense follows the Greek Dark Ages and Archaic period and is in turn succeeded by the Hellenistic period . This century is essentially studied from the Athenian outlook because Athens has left us more narratives, plays, and other written works than any of

5548-498: The Cypriot National Guard . Ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( Ancient Greek : Ἑλλάς , romanized :  Hellás ) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( c.  600 AD ), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and other territories. Prior to

5694-513: 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

5840-424: The Delian League , led by Athens, and the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta. The Delian League grew out of the need to present a unified front of all Greek city-states against Persian aggression. In 481 BC, Greek city-states, including Sparta, met in the first of a series of "congresses" that strove to unify all the Greek city-states against the danger of another Persian invasion. The coalition that emerged from

5986-430: The Delian League , so named because its treasury was kept on the sacred island of Delos . The Spartans, although they had taken part in the war, withdrew into isolation afterwards, allowing Athens to establish unchallenged naval and commercial power. In 431 BC war broke out between Athens and Sparta . The war was a struggle not merely between two city-states but rather between two coalitions, or leagues of city-states:

Taxiarch - Misplaced Pages Continue

6132-661: The Ionian Revolt of 500 BC, the event that provoked the Persian invasion of 492 BC. The Persians were defeated in 490 BC. A second Persian attempt , in 481–479 BC, failed as well, despite having overrun much of modern-day Greece (north of the Isthmus of Corinth ) at a crucial point during the war following the Battle of Thermopylae and the Battle of Artemisium . The Delian League then formed, under Athenian hegemony and as Athens' instrument. Athens' successes caused several revolts among

6278-546: The King's Peace , in which the "Great King" of Persia, Artaxerxes II , pronounced a "treaty" of peace between the various city-states of Greece which broke up all "leagues" of city-states on Greek mainland and in the islands of the Aegean Sea . Although this was looked upon as "independence" for some city-states, the effect of the unilateral "treaty" was highly favourable to the interests of the Persian Empire. The Corinthian War revealed

6424-710: The Paeonians due north, the Thracians to the northeast, and the Illyrians , with whom the Macedonians were frequently in conflict, to the northwest. Chalcidice was settled early on by southern Greek colonists and was considered part of the Greek world, while from the late 2nd millennium BC substantial Greek settlement also occurred on the eastern shores of the Aegean , in Anatolia . During

6570-474: The Persian Empire in the mid-6th century BC. In 499 BC that region's Greeks rose in the Ionian Revolt , and Athens and some other Greek cities sent aid, but were quickly forced to back down after defeat in 494 BC at the Battle of Lade . Asia Minor returned to Persian control. In 492 BC, the Persian general Mardonius led a campaign through Thrace and Macedonia . He was victorious and again subjugated

6716-533: The Persian Empire ; the peak flourishing of democratic Athens ; the First and Second Peloponnesian Wars ; the Spartan and then Theban hegemonies ; and the expansion of Macedonia under Philip II . Much of the early defining mathematics, science, artistic thought ( architecture , sculpture), theatre , literature , philosophy , and politics of Western civilization derives from this period of Greek history , which had

6862-634: The Roman period , most of these regions were officially unified once under the Kingdom of Macedon from 338 to 323 BC. In Western history , the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period. Three centuries after the decline of Mycenaean Greece during the Bronze Age Collapse , Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in

7008-478: The Trojan War . In 510 BC, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow their king, the tyrant Hippias , son of Peisistratos . Cleomenes I , king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy headed by Isagoras . But his rival Cleisthenes , with the support of the middle class and aided by pro-democracy citizens, took over. Cleomenes intervened in 508 and 506 BC, but could not stop Cleisthenes, now supported by

7154-557: The military party, led by Alcibiades . Thus, in 415 BC, Alcibiades found support within the Athenian Assembly for his position when he urged that Athens launch a major expedition against Syracuse , a Peloponnesian ally in Sicily , Magna Graecia . Segesta, a town in Sicily, had requested Athenian assistance in their war with another Sicilian town—the town of Selinus. Although Nicias was

7300-449: The poleis grouped themselves into leagues, membership of which was in a constant state of flux. Later in the Classical period, the leagues would become fewer and larger, be dominated by one city (particularly Athens , Sparta and Thebes ); and often poleis would be compelled to join under threat of war (or as part of a peace treaty). Even after Philip II of Macedon conquered the heartlands of ancient Greece, he did not attempt to annex

7446-460: The 146 BC conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. Macedonia became a Roman province while southern Greece came under the surveillance of Macedonia's prefect ; however, some Greek poleis managed to maintain a partial independence and avoid taxation. The Aegean Islands were added to this territory in 133 BC. Athens and other Greek cities revolted in 88 BC, and the peninsula was crushed by

SECTION 50

#1732870114185

7592-577: The 400 to overthrow democracy in Samos failed. Alcibiades was immediately made an admiral ( navarch ) in the Athenian navy. Later, due to democratic pressures, the 400 were replaced by a broader oligarchy called "the 5000". Alcibiades did not immediately return to Athens. In early 410, Alcibiades led an Athenian fleet of 18 triremes against the Persian-financed Spartan fleet at Abydos near the Hellespont . The Battle of Abydos had actually begun before

7738-463: The Athenian-controlled island of Samos . Alcibiades felt that "radical democracy" was his worst enemy. Accordingly, he asked his supporters to initiate a coup to establish an oligarchy in Athens. If the coup were successful Alcibiades promised to return to Athens. In 411, a successful oligarchic coup was mounted in Athens, by a group which became known as "the 400". However, a parallel attempt by

7884-399: The Athenians. Through Cleisthenes' reforms, the people endowed their city with isonomic institutions—equal rights for all citizens (though only men were citizens)—and established ostracism . The isonomic and isegoric (equal freedom of speech) democracy was first organized into about 130 demes , which became the basic civic element. The 10,000 citizens exercised their power as members of

8030-488: The Battle of Haliartus the Spartans had been defeated by the Theban forces. Worse yet, Lysander, Sparta's chief military leader, had been killed during the battle. This was the start of what became known as the " Corinthian War " (395–387 BC). Upon hearing of the Spartan loss at Haliartus and of the death of Lysander, Agesilaus headed out of Asia Minor, back across the Hellespont, across Thrace and back towards Greece. At

8176-565: 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,

8322-519: 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

8468-566: The Eurypontid king as Agesilaus II , expelled Leotychidas from the country, and took over all of Agis' estates and property. The end of the Peloponnesian War left Sparta the master of Greece, but the narrow outlook of the Spartan warrior elite did not suit them to this role. Within a few years the democratic party regained power in Athens and in other cities. In 395 BC the Spartan rulers removed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost her naval supremacy. Athens , Argos , Thebes , and Corinth,

8614-416: The Greek city-states. It greatly widened the horizons of the Greeks and led to a steady emigration of the young and ambitious to the new Greek empires in the east. Many Greeks migrated to Alexandria, Antioch and the many other new Hellenistic cities founded in Alexander's wake, as far away as present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan , where the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and the Indo-Greek Kingdom survived until

8760-460: The Greek colonies Syracusae ( Συράκουσαι ), Neapolis ( Νεάπολις ), Massalia ( Μασσαλία ) and Byzantion ( Βυζάντιον ). These colonies played an important role in the spread of Greek influence throughout Europe and also aided in the establishment of long-distance trading networks between the Greek city-states, boosting the economy of ancient Greece . Ancient Greece consisted of several hundred relatively independent city-states ( poleis ). This

8906-470: The Greek colony Sybaris in southern Italy, its allies, and the Serdaioi. 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

SECTION 60

#1732870114185

9052-420: The Greek system are further evidenced by the colonies that they set up throughout the Mediterranean , which, though they might count a certain Greek polis as their 'mother' (and remain sympathetic to her), were completely independent of the founding city. Inevitably smaller poleis might be dominated by larger neighbors, but conquest or direct rule by another city-state appears to have been quite rare. Instead

9198-660: The Greeks began 250 years of expansion, settling colonies in all directions. To the east, the Aegean coast of Asia Minor was colonized first, followed by Cyprus and the coasts of Thrace , the Sea of Marmara and south coast of the Black Sea . Eventually, Greek colonization reached as far northeast as present-day Ukraine and Russia ( Taganrog ). To the west the coasts of Illyria , Southern Italy (called " Magna Graecia ") were settled, followed by Southern France , Corsica , and even eastern Spain . Greek colonies were also founded in Egypt and Libya . Modern Syracuse , Naples , Marseille and Istanbul had their beginnings as

9344-423: The Greeks were very aware of their tribal origins; Herodotus was able to extensively categorise the city-states by tribe. Yet, although these higher-level relationships existed, they seem to have rarely had a major role in Greek politics. The independence of the poleis was fiercely defended; unification was something rarely contemplated by the ancient Greeks. Even when, during the second Persian invasion of Greece,

9490-504: The Ionian cities, sent a Persian fleet to punish the Greeks. (Historians are uncertain about their number of men; accounts vary from 18,000 to 100,000.) They landed in Attica intending to take Athens, but were defeated at the Battle of Marathon by a Greek army of 9,000 Athenian hoplites and 1,000 Plataeans led by the Athenian general Miltiades . The Persian fleet continued to Athens but, seeing it garrisoned, decided not to attempt an assault. In 480 BC, Darius' successor Xerxes I sent

9636-420: 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

9782-430: The League of Corinth following the death of Philip, Alexander began his campaign against Persia in 334 BC. He conquered Persia, defeating Darius III at the Battle of Issus in 333 BC, and after the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BC proclaimed himself king of Asia. From 329 BC he led expeditions to Bactria and then India; further plans to invade Arabia and North Africa were halted by his death in 323 BC. The period from

9928-404: The League took the name "Delian League". Its formal purpose was to liberate Greek cities still under Persian control. However, it became increasingly apparent that the Delian League was really a front for Athenian hegemony throughout the Aegean. A competing coalition of Greek city-states centred around Sparta arose, and became more important as the external Persian threat subsided. This coalition

10074-618: The Megarian people. The Peloponnesian League accused Athens of violating the Thirty Years Peace through all of the aforementioned actions, and, accordingly, Sparta formally declared war on Athens. Many historians consider these to be merely the immediate causes of the war. They would argue that the underlying cause was the growing resentment on the part of Sparta and its allies at the dominance of Athens over Greek affairs. The war lasted 27 years, partly because Athens (a naval power) and Sparta (a land-based military power) found it difficult to come to grips with each other. Sparta's initial strategy

10220-403: The Middle East. The Hellenistic Period is considered to have ended in 30 BC, when the last Hellenistic kingdom, Ptolemaic Egypt , was annexed by the Roman Republic . Classical Greek culture , especially philosophy, had a powerful influence on ancient Rome , which carried a version of it throughout the Mediterranean and much of Europe. For this reason, Classical Greece is generally considered

10366-428: The Peloponnese Peninsula. In the 7th century BC Argos dominated the peninsula. Even in the early 6th century the Argives attempted to control the northeastern part of the peninsula. The rise of Sparta in the 6th century brought Sparta into conflict with Argos. However, with the conquest of the Peloponnesian city-state of Tegea in 550 BC and the defeat of the Argives in 546 BC the Spartans' control began to reach well beyond

10512-400: The Peloponnesian War vary from account to account. However three causes are fairly consistent among the ancient historians, namely Thucydides and Plutarch . Prior to the war, Corinth and one of its colonies, Corcyra (modern-day Corfu ), went to war in 435 BC over the new Corcyran colony of Epidamnus . Sparta refused to become involved in the conflict and urged an arbitrated settlement of

10658-401: The Persian army at Plataea . The Persians then began to withdraw from Greece, and never attempted an invasion again. The Athenian fleet then turned to chasing the Persians from the Aegean Sea, defeating their fleet decisively in the Battle of Mycale ; then in 478 BC the fleet captured Byzantium . At that time Athens enrolled all the island states and some mainland ones into an alliance called

10804-521: The Persians to dominate the Greek peninsula. Among the war party in Athens, a belief arose that the catastrophic defeat of the military expedition to Sicily in 415–413 could have been avoided if Alcibiades had been allowed to lead the expedition. Thus, despite his treacherous flight to Sparta and his collaboration with Sparta and later with the Persian court, there arose a demand among the war party that Alcibiades be allowed to return to Athens without being arrested. Alcibiades negotiated with his supporters on

10950-620: The Roman general Sulla . The Roman civil wars devastated the land even further, until Augustus organized the peninsula as the province of Achaea in 27 BC. Greece was a key eastern province of the Roman Empire, as the Roman culture had long been in fact Greco-Roman . The Greek language served as a lingua franca in the East and in Italy , and many Greek intellectuals such as Galen would perform most of their work in Rome . The territory of Greece

11096-556: The Spartan Empire provoked much heated debate among Sparta's full citizens. The admiral Lysander felt that the Spartans should rebuild the Athenian empire in such a way that Sparta profited from it. Lysander tended to be too proud to take advice from others. Prior to this, Spartan law forbade the use of all precious metals by private citizens, with transactions being carried out with cumbersome iron ingots (which generally discouraged their accumulation) and all precious metals obtained by

11242-449: The Spartan navy was after the Battle of Abydos, the Persian navy directly assisted the Spartans. Alcibiades then pursued and met the combined Spartan and Persian fleets at the Battle of Cyzicus later in the spring of 410, achieving a significant victory. With the financial help of the Persians, Sparta built a fleet to challenge Athenian naval supremacy. With the new fleet and new military leader Lysander , Sparta attacked Abydos , seizing

11388-478: The Spartan state. Agesilaus employed a political dynamic that played on a feeling of pan-Hellenic sentiment and launched a successful campaign against the Persian empire. Once again, the Persian empire played both sides against each other. The Persian Court supported Sparta in the rebuilding of their navy while simultaneously funding the Athenians, who used Persian subsidies to rebuild their long walls (destroyed in 404 BC) as well as to reconstruct their fleet and win

11534-399: The action of the vandals would have weakened Alcibiades and the war party in Athens. Furthermore, it is unlikely that Alcibiades would have deliberately defaced the statues of Hermes on the very eve of his departure with the fleet. Such defacement could only have been interpreted as a bad omen for the expedition that he had long advocated. Even before the fleet reached Sicily, word arrived to

11680-473: The allied cities, all of which were put down by force, but Athenian dynamism finally awoke Sparta and brought about the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC. After both forces were spent, a brief peace came about; then the war resumed to Sparta's advantage. Athens was definitively defeated in 404 BC, and internal Athenian agitations mark the end of the 5th century BC in Greece. Since its beginning, Sparta had been ruled by

11826-575: The ancient Greeks did not think in terms of race . Most families owned slaves as household servants and laborers, and even poor families might have owned a few slaves. Owners were not allowed to beat or kill their slaves. Owners often promised to free slaves in the future to encourage slaves to work hard. Unlike in Rome, freedmen did not become citizens. Instead, they were mixed into the population of metics , which included people from foreign countries or other city-states who were officially allowed to live in

11972-474: The arrival of Alcibiades, and had been inclining slightly toward the Athenians. However, with the arrival of Alcibiades, the Athenian victory over the Spartans became a rout. Only the approach of nightfall and the movement of Persian troops to the coast where the Spartans had beached their ships saved the Spartan navy from total destruction. Following Alcibiades' advice, the Persian Empire had been playing Sparta and Athens off against each other. However, as weak as

12118-518: The assembly ( ἐκκλησία , ekklesia ), headed by a council of 500 citizens chosen at random. The city's administrative geography was reworked, in order to create mixed political groups: not federated by local interests linked to the sea, to the city, or to farming, whose decisions (e.g. a declaration of war) would depend on their geographical position. The territory of the city was also divided into thirty trittyes as follows: A tribe consisted of three trittyes, selected at random, one from each of

12264-465: The borders of Laconia . As the two coalitions grew, their separate interests kept coming into conflict. Under the influence of King Archidamus II (the Eurypontid king of Sparta from 476 BC through 427 BC), Sparta, in the late summer or early autumn of 446 BC, concluded the Thirty Years Peace with Athens. This treaty took effect the next winter in 445 BC Under the terms of this treaty, Greece

12410-646: The center, while in the east lay Boeotia , Attica , and Megaris . Northeast lay Thessaly , while Epirus lay to the northwest. Epirus stretched from the Ambracian Gulf in the south to the Ceraunian Mountains and the Aoos river in the north, and consisted of Chaonia (north), Molossia (center), and Thesprotia (south). In the northeast corner was Macedonia , originally consisting Lower Macedonia and its regions, such as Elimeia , Pieria , and Orestis . Around

12556-399: The city becoming state property. Without the Spartans' support, Lysander's innovations came into effect and brought a great deal of profit for him—on Samos, for example, festivals known as Lysandreia were organized in his honour. He was recalled to Sparta, and once there did not attend to any important matters. Sparta refused to see Lysander or his successors dominate. Not wanting to establish

12702-553: The city lost its greatest leader and his successors blundered into an ineffectual ten-year war with Phocis . In 346 BC the Thebans appealed to Philip II of Macedon to help them against the Phocians, thus drawing Macedon into Greek affairs for the first time. The Peloponnesian War was a radical turning point for the Greek world. Before 403 BC, the situation was more defined, with Athens and its allies (a zone of domination and stability, with

12848-528: The command of Themistocles , they defeated the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis . In 483 BC, during the period of peace between the two Persian invasions, a vein of silver ore had been discovered in the Laurion (a small mountain range near Athens), and the hundreds of talents mined there were used to build 200 warships to combat Aeginetan piracy. A year later, the Greeks, under the Spartan Pausanias , defeated

12994-637: The commanding officer of a brigade or as the executive officer of a division . In the Hellenic Air Force , which otherwise uses Royal Air Force -style ranks different from those of the Army, the equivalent rank ( Air Commodore ) is denoted as Taxiarchos tis Aeroporias ("Air Force Brigadier") or simply Taxiarchos . The rank is also used by the Hellenic Police (and the Greek Gendarmerie before) and

13140-455: The course of the archaic period. Already in the seventh 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

13286-473: The course of the eighth and seventh century. According to Spartan tradition, this constitution was established by the legendary lawgiver Lycurgus . Over the course of the first and second Messenian wars , Sparta subjugated the neighbouring region of Messenia , enserfing the population. In the sixth century, Greek city-states began to develop formal relationships with one another, where previously individual rulers had relied on personal relationships with

13432-474: 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. 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

13578-405: The death of Agis II, Leotychidas attempted to claim the Eurypontid throne for himself, but this was met with an outcry, led by Lysander, who was at the height of his influence in Sparta. Lysander argued that Leotychidas was a bastard and could not inherit the Eurypontid throne; instead he backed the hereditary claim of Agesilaus, son of Agis by another wife. With Lysander's support, Agesilaus became

13724-461: The death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC until the death of Cleopatra , the last Macedonian ruler of Egypt, is known as the Hellenistic period. In the early part of this period, a new form of kingship developed based on Macedonian and Near Eastern traditions. The first Hellenistic kings were previously Alexander's generals, and took power in the period following his death, though they were not part of existing royal lineages and lacked historic claims to

13870-539: 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

14016-423: The deaths of Cleon and Brasidas, the strongest proponents of war on each side, a peace treaty was negoitiated in 421 by the Athenian general Nicias . The peace did not last, however. In 418 BC allied forces of Athens and Argos were defeated by Sparta at Mantinea . In 415 Athens launched an ambitious naval expedition to dominate Sicily; the expedition ended in disaster at the harbor of Syracuse , with almost

14162-545: The democracy and appointed in its place an oligarchy called the " Thirty Tyrants " to govern Athens. Meanwhile, in Sparta, Timaea gave birth to a child. The child was given the name Leotychidas, after the great grandfather of Agis II—King Leotychidas of Sparta. However, because of Timaea's alleged affair with Alcibiades, it was widely rumoured that the young Leotychidas was fathered by Alcibiades. Indeed, Agis II refused to acknowledge Leotychidas as his son until he relented, in front of witnesses, on his deathbed in 400 BC. Upon

14308-560: The dominance that would allow it to challenge Persia, the Persian king initially joined the alliance against Sparta, before imposing the Peace of Antalcidas ("King's Peace") which restored Persia's control over the Anatolian Greeks. By 371 BC, Thebes was in the ascendancy, defeating Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra , killing the Spartan king Cleombrotus I , and invading Laconia. Further Theban successes against Sparta in 369 led to Messenia gaining independence; Sparta never recovered from

14454-409: The domination of politics and concomitant aggregation of wealth by small groups of families was apt to cause social unrest in many poleis . In many cities a tyrant (not in the modern sense of repressive autocracies), would at some point seize control and govern according to their own will; often a populist agenda would help sustain them in power. In a system wracked with class conflict , government by

14600-700: The east to the Indian king Chandragupta Maurya in exchange for war elephants, and later lost large parts of Persia to the Parthian Empire . By the mid-third century, the kingdoms of Alexander's successors was mostly stable, though there continued to be disputes over border areas. The great capitals of Hellenistic culture were Alexandria in the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Antioch in the Seleucid Empire . The conquests of Alexander had numerous consequences for

14746-536: The economic growth of the Athenian Empire . Concentration on the Athenian Empire, however, brought Athens into conflict with another Greek state. Ever since the formation of the Delian League in 477 BC, the island of Melos had refused to join. By refusing to join the League, however, Melos reaped the benefits of the League without bearing any of the burdens. In 425 BC, an Athenian army under Cleon attacked Melos to force

14892-537: 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 sixth century included those between Elis and Heraea in the Peloponnese; and between

15038-600: The end of the first century BC. The city-states within Greece formed themselves into two leagues; the Achaean League (including Corinth and Argos) and the Aetolian League (including Sparta and Athens). For much of the period until the Roman conquest, these leagues were at war, often participating in the conflicts between the Diadochi (the successor states to Alexander's empire). The Antigonid Kingdom became involved in

15184-592: The entire army killed, and the ships destroyed. Soon after the Athenian defeat in Syracuse, Athens' Ionian allies began to rebel against the Delian league, while Persia began to once again involve itself in Greek affairs on the Spartan side. Initially the Athenian position continued relatively strong, with important victories at Cyzicus in 410 and Arginusae in 406. However, in 405 the Spartan Lysander defeated Athens in

15330-529: The exact borders of the Hellenistic kingdoms were not settled. Antigonus attempted to expand his territory by attacking the other successor kingdoms until they joined against him, and he was killed at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC. His son Demetrius spent many years in Seleucid captivity, and his son, Antigonus II , only reclaimed the Macedonian throne around 276. Meanwhile, the Seleucid kingdom gave up territory in

15476-479: The first congress was named the "Hellenic League" and included Sparta. Persia, under Xerxes, invaded Greece in September 481 BC, but the Athenian navy defeated the Persian navy. The Persian land forces were delayed in 480 BC by a much smaller force of 300 Spartans, 400 Thebans and 700 men from Boeotian Thespiae at the Battle of Thermopylae . The Persians left Greece in 479 BC after their defeat at Plataea . Plataea

15622-441: The fleet that Alcibiades was to be arrested and charged with sacrilege of the statues of Hermes, prompting Alcibiades to flee to Sparta. When the fleet later landed in Sicily and the battle was joined, the expedition was a complete disaster. The entire expeditionary force was lost and Nicias was captured and executed. This was one of the most crushing defeats in the history of Athens. Meanwhile, Alcibiades betrayed Athens and became

15768-402: The former and conquered the latter, but he was wounded and forced to retreat back into Asia Minor. In addition, a fleet of around 1,200 ships that accompanied Mardonius on the expedition was wrecked by a storm off the coast of Mount Athos . Later, the generals Artaphernes and Datis led a successful naval expedition against the Aegean islands. In 490 BC, Darius the Great , having suppressed

15914-464: 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

16060-423: The god Hermes that were scattered throughout the city of Athens. This action was blamed on Alcibiades and was seen as a bad omen for the coming campaign. In all likelihood, the coordinated action against the statues of Hermes was the action of the peace party. Having lost the debate on the issue, the peace party was desperate to weaken Alcibiades' hold on the people of Athens. Successfully blaming Alcibiades for

16206-569: The government. In Athens, the population was divided into four social classes based on wealth. People could change classes if they made more money. In Sparta, all male citizens were called homoioi , meaning "peers". However, Spartan kings, who served as the city-state's dual military and religious leaders, came from two families. Women in Ancient Greece appear to have primarily performed domestic tasks, managed households, and borne and reared children. Slaves had no power or status. Slaves had

16352-428: 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

16498-430: The island to join the Delian League. However, Melos fought off the attack and was able to maintain its neutrality. Further conflict was inevitable and in the spring of 416 BC the mood of the people in Athens was inclined toward military adventure. The island of Melos provided an outlet for this energy and frustration for the military party. Furthermore, there appeared to be no real opposition to this military expedition from

16644-455: The issue of joining the Delian League is presented by Thucydides in his Melian Dialogue . The debate did not in the end resolve any of the differences between Melos and Athens and Melos was invaded in 416 BC, and soon occupied by Athens. This success on the part of Athens whetted the appetite of the people of Athens for further expansion of the Athenian Empire. Accordingly, the people of Athens were ready for military action and tended to support

16790-524: The latter two former Spartan allies, challenged Sparta's dominance in the Corinthian War , which ended inconclusively in 387 BC. That same year Sparta shocked the Greeks by concluding the Treaty of Antalcidas with Persia. The agreement turned over the Greek cities of Ionia and Cyprus, reversing a hundred years of Greek victories against Persia. Sparta then tried to further weaken the power of Thebes, which led to

16936-514: The loss of Messenia's fertile land and the helot workforce it provided. The rising power of Thebes led Sparta and Athens to join forces; in 362 they were defeated by Thebes at the Battle of Mantinea . In the aftermath of Mantinea, none of the major Greek states were able to dominate. Though Thebes had won the battle, their general Epaminondas was killed, and they spent the following decades embroiled in wars with their neighbours; Athens, meanwhile, saw its second naval alliance, formed in 377, collapse in

17082-495: The mid-350s. The power vacuum in Greece after the Battle of Mantinea was filled by Macedon, under Philip II . In 338 BC, he defeated a Greek alliance at the Battle of Chaeronea , and subsequently formed the League of Corinth . Philip planned to lead the League to invade Persia, but was murdered in 336 BC. His son Alexander the Great was left to fulfil his father's ambitions. After campaigns against Macedon's western and northern enemies, and those Greek states that had broken from

17228-470: The moderate Athenian leader Nicias concluded the Peace of Nicias (421). In 418 BC, however, conflict between Sparta and the Athenian ally Argos led to a resumption of hostilities. Alcibiades was one of the most influential voices in persuading the Athenians to ally with Argos against the Spartans. At the Mantinea Sparta defeated the combined armies of Athens and her allies. Accordingly, Argos and

17374-443: 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

17520-445: The other ancient Greek states . From the perspective of Athenian culture in classical Greece, the period generally referred to as the 5th century BC extends slightly into the 6th century BC. In this context, one might consider that the first significant event of this century occurs in 508 BC, with the fall of the last Athenian tyrant and Cleisthenes ' reforms. However, a broader view of the whole Greek world might place its beginning at

17666-519: The other king was from the Agiad Dynasty. With the signing of the Thirty Years Peace treaty, Archidamus II felt he had successfully prevented Sparta from entering into a war with its neighbours. However, the strong war party in Sparta soon won out and in 431 BC Archidamus was forced to go to war with the Delian League. However, in 427 BC, Archidamus II died and his son, Agis II succeeded to the Eurypontid throne of Sparta. The immediate causes of

17812-518: The peace party. Enforcement of the economic obligations of the Delian League upon rebellious city-states and islands was a means by which continuing trade and prosperity of Athens could be assured. Melos alone among all the Cycladic Islands located in the south-west Aegean Sea had resisted joining the Delian League. This continued rebellion provided a bad example to the rest of the members of the Delian League. The debate between Athens and Melos over

17958-410: The power of the rich and the poor. In the middle of the sixth century, Pisistratus established himself as a tyrant, and after his death in 527 his son Hippias inherited his position; by the end of the sixth 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

18104-613: The reforms of Solon (early 6th century), but the poorest citizens could not address the assembly or run for office. With the establishment of the democracy, the assembly became the de jure mechanism of government; all citizens had equal privileges in the assembly. However, non-citizens, such as metics (foreigners living in Athens) or slaves , had no political rights at all. After the rise of democracy in Athens, other city-states founded democracies. However, many retained more traditional forms of government. As so often in other matters, Sparta

18250-420: The regions of Laconia (southeast), Messenia (southwest), Elis (west), Achaia (north), Korinthia (northeast), Argolis (east), and Arcadia (center). These names survive to the present day as regional units of modern Greece , though with somewhat different boundaries. Mainland Greece to the north, nowadays known as Central Greece , consisted of Aetolia and Acarnania in the west, Locris , Doris , and Phocis in

18396-479: The rest of the Peloponnesus was brought back under the control of Sparta. The return of peace allowed Athens to be diverted from meddling in the affairs of the Peloponnesus and to concentrate on building up the empire and putting their finances in order. Soon trade recovered and tribute began, once again, rolling into Athens. A strong "peace party" arose, which promoted avoidance of war and continued concentration on

18542-518: The right to have a family and own property, subject to their master's goodwill and permission, but they had no political rights. By 600 BC, chattel slavery had spread in Greece. By the 5th century BC, slaves made up one-third of the total population in some city-states. Between 40–80% of the population of Classical Athens were slaves. Slaves outside of Sparta almost never revolted because they were made up of too many nationalities and were too scattered to organize. However, unlike later Western culture ,

18688-448: The state. City-states legally owned slaves. These public slaves had a larger measure of independence than slaves owned by families, living on their own and performing specialized tasks. In Athens, public slaves were trained to look out for counterfeit coinage , while temple slaves acted as servants of the temple's deity and Scythian slaves were employed in Athens as a police force corralling citizens to political functions. Sparta had

18834-514: The strategic initiative. By occupying the Hellespont , the source of Athens' grain imports, Sparta effectively threatened Athens with starvation. In response, Athens sent its last remaining fleet to confront Lysander, but were decisively defeated at Aegospotami (405 BC). The loss of her fleet threatened Athens with bankruptcy. In 404 BC Athens sued for peace, and Sparta dictated a predictably stern settlement: Athens lost her city walls, her fleet, and all of her overseas possessions. Lysander abolished

18980-492: The struggle. In 433 BC, Corcyra sought Athenian assistance in the war. Corinth was known to be a traditional enemy of Athens. However, to further encourage Athens to enter the conflict, Corcyra pointed out how useful a friendly relationship with Corcyra would be, given the strategic locations of Corcyra itself and the colony of Epidamnus on the east shore of the Adriatic Sea. Furthermore, Corcyra promised that Athens would have

19126-669: The territories they controlled. The most important of these rulers in the decades after Alexander's death were Antigonus I and his son Demetrius in Macedonia and the rest of Greece, Ptolemy in Egypt, and Seleucus I in Syria and the former Persian empire; smaller Hellenistic kingdoms included the Attalids in Anatolia and the Greco-Bactrian kingdom . In the early part of the Hellenistic period,

19272-510: The territory or unify it into a new province, but compelled most of the poleis to join his own Corinthian League . Initially many Greek city-states seem to have been petty kingdoms; there was often a city official carrying some residual, ceremonial functions of the king ( basileus ), e.g., the archon basileus in Athens. However, by the Archaic period and the first historical consciousness, most had already become aristocratic oligarchies . It

19418-488: The thematic droungos under a droungarios . During the 11th century, with the demise of the thematic armies, the rank rose in importance, and eventually surpassed and replaced that of tourmarches , so that in the Komnenian-era army , the taxiarchia was the largest-scale permanent infantry formation. In the modern Hellenic Army the rank of Taxiarchos (abbreviated Ταξχος) is equivalent to Brigadier General with

19564-402: The three groups. Each tribe therefore always acted in the interest of all three sectors. It was this corpus of reforms that allowed the emergence of a wider democracy in the 460s and 450s BC. In Ionia (the modern Aegean coast of Turkey ), the Greek cities, which included great centres such as Miletus and Halicarnassus , were unable to maintain their independence and came under the rule of

19710-608: The time of Alexander I of Macedon , the Argead kings of Macedon started to expand into Upper Macedonia , lands inhabited by independent Macedonian tribes like the Lyncestae , Orestae and the Elimiotae and to the west, beyond the Axius river , into Eordaia , Bottiaea , Mygdonia , and Almopia , regions settled by Thracian tribes. To the north of Macedonia lay various non-Greek peoples such as

19856-447: The use of Corcyra's navy, the third-largest in Greece. This was too good of an offer for Athens to refuse. Accordingly, Athens signed a defensive alliance with Corcyra. The next year, in 432 BC, Corinth and Athens argued over control of Potidaea (near modern-day Nea Potidaia ), eventually leading to an Athenian siege of Potidaea. In 434–433 BC Athens issued the " Megarian Decrees ", a series of decrees that placed economic sanctions on

20002-529: Was a notable exception to the rest of Greece, ruled through the whole period by not one, but two hereditary monarchs. This was a form of diarchy . The Kings of Sparta belonged to the Agiads and the Eurypontids, descendants respectively of Eurysthenes and Procles . Both dynasties' founders were believed to be twin sons of Aristodemus , a Heraclid ruler. However, the powers of these kings were held in check by both

20148-460: Was a situation unlike that in most other contemporary societies, which were either tribal or kingdoms ruling over relatively large territories. Undoubtedly, the geography of Greece —divided and sub-divided by hills, mountains, and rivers—contributed to the fragmentary nature of ancient Greece. On the one hand, the ancient Greeks had no doubt that they were "one people"; they had the same religion , same basic culture, and same language. Furthermore,

20294-498: Was accused of having seduced Timaea, the wife of Agis II, the Eurypontid king of Sparta. Accordingly, Alcibiades was required to flee from Sparta and seek the protection of the Persian Court. In the Persian court, Alcibiades now betrayed both Athens and Sparta. He encouraged Persia to give Sparta financial aid to build a navy, advising that long and continuous warfare between Sparta and Athens would weaken both city-states and allow

20440-732: Was conquered by the Romans. The Aetolian league grew wary of Roman involvement in Greece, and sided with the Seleucids in the Roman–Seleucid War ; when the Romans were victorious, the league was effectively absorbed into the Republic. Although the Achaean league outlasted both the Aetolian league and Macedon, it was also soon defeated and absorbed by the Romans in 146 BC, bringing Greek independence to an end. The Greek peninsula came under Roman rule during

20586-486: Was formally divided into two large power zones. Sparta and Athens agreed to stay within their own power zone and not to interfere in the other's. Despite the Thirty Years Peace, it was clear that war was inevitable. As noted above, at all times during its history down to 221 BC, Sparta was a "diarchy" with two kings ruling the city-state concurrently. One line of hereditary kings was from the Eurypontid Dynasty while

20732-417: Was in permanent settlements founded by Greeks, which formed as independent poleis. The second form was in what historians refer to as emporia ; trading posts which were occupied by both Greeks and non-Greeks and which were primarily concerned with the manufacture and sale of goods. Examples of this latter type of settlement are found at Al Mina in the east and Pithekoussai in the west. From about 750 BC

20878-481: Was no equality at all between the members, as might be implied by the term "league". Furthermore, most of its members were located outside the Peloponnese Peninsula. The terms "Spartan League" and "Peloponnesian League" are modern terms. Contemporaries instead referred to " Lacedaemonians and their Allies" to describe the "league". The league had its origins in Sparta's conflict with Argos , another city on

21024-590: Was preceded by the Greek Dark Ages ( c.  1200 – c.  800 BC ), 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

21170-411: Was the final battle of Xerxes' invasion of Greece. After this, the Persians never again tried to invade Greece. With the disappearance of this external threat, cracks appeared in the united front of the Hellenic League. In 477, Athens became the recognised leader of a coalition of city-states that did not include Sparta. This coalition met and formalized their relationship at the holy city of Delos. Thus,

21316-429: Was to invade Attica , but the Athenians were able to retreat behind their walls. An outbreak of plague in the city during the siege caused many deaths, including that of Pericles . At the same time the Athenian fleet landed troops in the Peloponnesus, winning battles at Naupactus (429) and Pylos (425). However, these tactics could bring neither side a decisive victory. After several years of inconclusive campaigning,

#184815