Language families
Grimm's Law of Sound Shift
Migrations
The Development of Agriculture
The Mother Goodess or Fertility Goodess
IV. Minoan (3000-1500 BC) and Mycenaean(2200-1100)
Crete is the site of Minoan culture.
They are non-Greek speaking people.
2000-1500 Minoan culture reaches its peak with the development of Knossos on Crete.
Worship of the Mother Goddess
2200 Greek-speaking Indo-European invaders enter the Mediterranean.
The Greek invaders were pastoralists from the steppes of central Europe.
The domestication of the horse made the invasions possible.
Bronze weapons arise along with walled forts. Warriors are buried with their weapons.
The horse-drawn chariot emerges at this time.
1500-1120 Mycenaean Civilization influenced by Minoan culture
1200 Fall of Troy
1200 Movement of Ionians from central Greece to the islands and Asia Minor
V. Dark Ages
1100 Invasion of Greece by the Dorians, another Indo-European Greek-speaking people.
They have iron weapons. Tribal organization.
There is a general decline of culture as the ability to write is lost to the Greeks.
1050-950 Greek colonization of Asia Minor (western coast of Turkey)
900 Beginning of the rise of the polis (city state) most noticeably in Athens, Thebes, and Megara.
The city-states first arise around market places.
Thought of themselves as descended from a common ancestor and related by blood and worship.
Several associations of kinship organizations comprised a tribe.
VI. Archiac Period (800-500)
Corinth, Sparta, and Athens emerge.Map
They go through similar stages of development from monarchies to oligarchies to tyrannies to democracies.
Sparta is an exception to this with its rigid hierarchy. King originally was related to the gods, was a protector and a warrior.
800-700 Rise of the aristocracies, who replaced the monarchy by usurpation or by reducing it to an elected office.
They denied political rights to the masses, creating discontent. They also seized the best lands for themselves.
Class conflict led to colonization to reduce the conflict between the upper, middle, and lower classes.
776 Olympic Games established
750 Greek colonization of Southern Italy and Sicily begins. Southern Italy becomes Magna Graecia.Sparta is an exception to this with its rigid hierarchy. King originally was related to the gods, was a protector and a warrior. Sparta is an exception to this with its rigid hierarchy. King originally was related to the gods, was a protector and a warrior.
730 Spartans consolidate their rule. The Spartans were Dorians who reduced inhabitants of Laconia to serfs, called helots.
720 Homer, Iliad
700 Hesiod, Theogony and Works and Days
680 Homer, Odyssey ; Archilochus (lyric poet)
650 Greek colonization around the Black Sea begins.
650 Messenian Revolt led Spartans to constitute themselves as a perpetual army in a highly regimented society to control the large number of helots. The helots outnumbered the Spartans about ten to one.
Children were taken from their parents at age seven and placed under control of state until twenty.
After age twenty, they lived a military life.
Sparta had secret police.
Emergence of middle class hoplite, heavily-armed foot soldiers comprised of the middle class. They demanded a role in government. Metal coinage made wealth independent of land.
This led to the rise of tyrannies. They maintained civil law as they found it, destroyed aristocracy, broadened the base of wealth, and patronized the arts.
Ionians developed into Athenians.
621 Draco's code of law in Athens after attempted tyranny. State took on power to punish homicides.
600 Sappho (lyric poet); Thales (philosopher)
594 Great Depression. Debt and poverty oppressed the poor
594-593 Archonship of Solon in Athens. Freed those in slavery.
Prohibited people from pledging their bodies as securities for loans.
Lands encumbered by dept were relieved from their incumbrances
Created public works in erecting public buildings. However, this exhausted the treasury.
Revised coinage and opened silver mines. Prohibited export of agricultural necessities.
Wealth became a qualification for office and the limits were low.
Gave promise of citizen to foreigners to attract artisans to Athens.
545-510 Tyranny of the Peisistratus in Athens. Formed an alliance with the shepherds. Redistributed land of the rich and promoted cultural development.
533 Thespis wins first tragedy competition at Athens
508 Cleisthenes reforms the Athenian Constitution.
Rallied the masses to prevent the exiled aristocrats from regaining power.
Abolished the four Ionian tribes and replaced them with a township organizations.
His reorganization favored the city of Athens over the surrounding areas.
505 Development of the Peloponnesian League under Spartan control
VII. Classical Period (500-323)
490-479 Persian War
499 Greeks revolt against Darius and the Persians. Miletus the best city in Greece was entirely destroyed.
493 Themistocles prepares for war against Persians.
Miltiades, who was familiar with the Persians, was elected general.
490 Marathon in which the Athenians defeat the Persians
480 Thermopylae. Xerxes attempts to subdue the Greeks. The Greeks were betrayed, and the Persians were told how to get through the mountains to outflank the Greeks. The Greeks withdrew.
480 Salamis The Persians moved toward Athens. The Athenians abandoned Athens and took to their ships, and destroyed a large part of the Persian fleet.
479 Plataea and Mycale. The Persians were defeated and returned to Asia.
477 Delian League under the leadership of Athens was formed. The members paid Athens, while Athens pledged to defend them.
458 Aeschylus, Oresteia
Pindar wrote lyrical songs in honor of the winners in national games
461-429 Pericles dominant in Athenian politics; the "Periclean Age." Delian League changed into empire when the Persians no longer are a threat. Acropolis built by tribute.
c. 450-420 Herodotus composes his Histories about the Persian War.
c. 450 Aristophanes born
447 Parthenon begun in Athens
441 Sophocles, Antigone
431-404 Peloponnesian War (Athens and allies vs. Sparta and allies)
429 Pericles dies
c. 428 Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
c. 424-400 Thucydides composes his History of the Peloponnesian War
423 Aristophanes, Clouds
420 Alcibiades becomes general. Destruction of Melos.
415 Sicilian Expedition. Athenian fleet destroyed.
c. 405 Euripides, Bacchae
404 Athens loses Peloponnesian War to Sparta. The Thirty Tyrants assume power.
403 Democracy restored.
399 Trial and death of Socrates
c. 399-347 Plato writes his philosophical dialogues
384 Aristotle born
Xenophon, historian in 4th century Greece
Demosthenes grestest orator of antiguity
Spartan Empire
Decline of the Greek city state organization and rise of individualism and cosmopolitanism.
Unification of Greece by Philip
Rule of Alexander the Great
VII. Hellenistic Period (323-146 BC)
Alexander's empire fragments. Greek monarchies form in Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt.
Expanded world trade.
Antisthenes of Athens and the Cynics
Zeno and the Stoics
Epicurus
Archimedes
208 Roman overseas expansion starts.
VIII. Roman Conquest
146AD Athens made subject to the Roman governor of Macedon