History of Greece

Once known as sophisticated Greece (Yunan), it still exists, etched as a part of map on the globe, but has lost its prior value due to unstable governance, injustice, slavery, poor economic policies, immoral values, prostitution, homo-sexuality and a continuous pounding in the grinding machine of time. Greece had some treasure of cultures and traditions, due to which its history was record worthy, otherwise the Greek cultures were nothing more than a mess.

Europeans normally call Yunan as Greece and its citizens, Greeks. It all started when the people of Rome came into contact with the tribe of Graecians. Romans called them Graeci till the end even though Greeks called themselves as Hellen and their country as Hellas. The Romans did recognize their mistake, but for unknown reasons, they never corrected it and this name became famous all over Europe.

The first residents of Greece whom we call Yunani or Yunwan, were actually Mediterranean people, as shown by the pictures found on the walls of ancient Cyprus. Gradually, they increased in numbers as more and more groups joined them, and each group with its arrival, brought new languages with them, however the names remained authentic for specific things.

When we think about ancient Greece, Greek literature, art, philosophy, religion, poetry and those traditions come to mind which caused more harm than good to the society, but it was due to these aspects that this civilization gained fame over others. The major contributor to these traditions was the city of Athens. The most learned Greek philosophers and literates resided here, and the city was greatly inspired by them. In literature, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Sophocles, in politics, Pericles, in public speaking, Demosthenes, in historians, Herodotus, in philosophy of religion, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, were the major personalities, and all were linked to this city. Some of the most applied subjects of today like philosophy, democracy and tragedy, found their roots in Athens. It is said that Athens held the same position in Greece what Makkah held in all of Arabia. Athens was considered the center of knowledge.

It’s strange that even after being a center of knowledge, Athens was still a simply constructed city with narrow streets and small markets, somewhat resembling the markets of our small colonies where everybody knew each other. The only difference between then and now is that in smaller colonies, people know each other due to the availability of technological gadgets and facilities like radio, newspaper, television etc., whereas in old Athens, people got to know each other by gathering in the gymnasium or markets, and exchanging views. The most important area of the city was the piazza.

Gymnasium, friend’s places, market places were the prime centers of Socrates’ discussions, who was born in Athens in 469 B.C., but the background, due to which he wrote such famous pieces is not clear. That era was known as the Great age of Greece. This was the age when the Greeks thwarted two huge attacks by the Persians, went through great political changes, and made developments in the fields of education and arts.

The Chronological details of the Greek Civilization are as follows:

Cycladic Age

The Cyclades is a group of islands located in the Aegean Sea between the Greek mainland and the coast of Asia Minor. Bronze Age culture began in these islands in about 2500 B.C. In addition to using bronze for their tools and weapons, the inhabitants of the Cyclades also fashioned objects from lead, silver, and marble. People of the Cycladic civilization lived in small, unfortified communities scattered among the islands. They practiced subsistence farming and traded with communities on the mainland. Religion seems to have centered on the worship of fertility goddesses. The Cycladic civilization disappeared around 1900 B.C., however, its influence remained on the Greek mainland, along the coast of Asia Minor, and on the large island of Crete to the south. ¹

Minoan Age

Based on the Aegean island of ancient Crete, this accomplished palatial society flourished from roughly 2200 to 1400 B.C. The name “Minoan Civilization” referred to a mythological Cretan ruler, King Minos, and was discovered in 1900 C.E. by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. Evans was the first to discover the remains of this wealthy, sophisticated culture during excavations at the site of Knossos.

The Minoans were not Greeks, and their language, religion, and social structures were not Greek. Most of what is known or can be guessed about the Minoans comes from modern Archaeology on Crete. (The little island of Thera also has yielded an important Minoan site.) Evidence suggests that the Minoans emerged from a fusion between existing Cretan inhabitants and invaders from Asia Minor during the era 2900–2200 B.C. These people became master seafarers and built a society inspired partly by contact with the Egyptian Old Kingdom (ca. 2650–2250 B.C.). By about 1900 B.C. the Minoans had acquired an Aegean Sea empire and constructed palaces on Crete—at Knossos, Phaistos, Mallia, and Khania—that were bigger and more elaborate than any buildings outside the Near East. So confident were the Minoans in their naval power that they declined to encircle their palaces with defensive walls.

Wealth came from Cretan farming and fishing, from taxes paid by subject people in the Cyclades and other Aegean locales, and from long-distance trade. Minoan relics discovered by archaeologists outside Crete indicate a two-way commerce with Egypt, Asia Minor, and Levant as well as with western Italy (a region that offered raw tin and copper, the components of Bronze). But much Minoan trade, especially after 1600 B.C., was with the northwestern Aegean mainland now called Greece, where Greek-speaking tribes had been settling since about 2100 B.C. The Minoan’s importance for Greek history is that they supplied the model for the Greek’s Mycenaean Civilization, which arose on the mainland around 1600 B.C.

The Mycenaean fortress palaces at Mycenae Tiryns, and elsewhere were warlike imitations of Minoan palaces on Crete. Mycenaean skills in metalworking, pottery-making, and other handicrafts were improved by copying Cretan models. The Mycenaean form of writing—a syllabary script that modern scholars call Linear-B, invented soon before 1400 B.C.—was copied from the Minoan system (a yet-un-deciphered script called Linear-A). Eventually the Mycenaeans were ready to challenge Minoan supremacy in the Aegean.

Scenes from the Minoan’s daily lives are preserved on some of their art works, which include cut gems, worked gold, terra-cotta figurines, vase paintings, and frescoes. Sensuous and contemporary in design, Minoan pictorial art favored sea animals and other subjects from nature. Religious scenes often show a goddess (or priestess) with a subordinate male figure or with wild beasts, such as lions, in tame postures. This evidence leads many scholars to conclude that Minoan religion was centered on a mother goddess or a group of goddesses overseeing nature and bounty. Aspects of Minoan worship apparently infiltrated Greek religion in the cult of certain goddesses, such as Artemis and Hera.

The Minoans ascribed religious or magical power to dancing and to the remarkable athletic performance now known as bull leaping. Minoan reverence for the bull is reflected in Greek Myths of later days, such as the interrelated tales of Minos and of Theseus ² and the Minotaur, or the tale of Heracles and the Cretan bull. Minoan high society probably revolved around a priest-king or priest-queen whose capital city was Knossos and whose royal emblem was the labrys, a double-headed ax. Scenes in art also suggest a confident, vivacious life at court.

Upper-class women were portrayed as wearing flounced skirts and open-breasted tunics and apparently played prominent roles in court life (as opposed to the secluded existence of women in Greece in later centuries). The material level enjoyed by the Minoan ruling class was probably unsurpassed anywhere before the late 19th century C.E. The Knossos palace, reaching three stories in parts, boasted clay-piped plumbing and a clever system of air wells to bring light and ventilation to interior rooms. Coinage had not yet been invented, but Minoan wealth was measured in luxury items and in farm surplus such as sheep, pigs, and olive oil (great quantities of which were stored at Knossos).

The Minoan golden age on Crete, around 1900–1450 B.C., was a time of peace but was troubled by natural disasters. Archaeology at Knossos shows that the palace was destroyed twice by an earthquake, in about 1730 and 1570 B.C. Around 1480 B.C. Cretan coastal regions suffered damage and depopulation, from some natural disaster. The Knossos palace, on high ground, survived, but new archaeological signs of distress in the mid-1400s B.C. included proliferation of war equipment and the first appearance on Crete of the horse (presumably imported as a tool of war). Overseas, Minoan pottery from this time was absent from certain sites—a sign of disrupted trade routes. Presumably a foreign enemy or number of enemies, taking advantage of Cretan natural disaster, had begun to cut into the Minoan Empire. These enemies surely included groups of Mycenaean Greeks. In about 1400 B.C. or soon after, all the Cretan palaces were destroyed by fire, presumably in war. The most obvious explanation for this simultaneous destruction could be a Mycenaean invasion of Crete. Intriguingly, archaeological evidence suggests that, prior to this invasion, Mycenaean Greeks had already taken over the Knossos palace and that it was they who were destroyed in the palace’s ruin. There may have been rival Mycenaean armies, battling each other for control of Crete. ³

Mycenaean Age

Historians consider the earliest evidence of Greek culture to be from a group that is now known as the Mycenaeans. They are called that because archaeologists first found artifacts (items from daily life that are left behind) belonging to them near the ancient town of Mycenae on the Peloponnese Peninsula. Like the Classical Greeks who came after them, the Mycenaeans lived in independent kingdom communities but shared a common language and culture.

The Mycenaean civilization began about 1600 B.C. although it is not clear just how it originated. Their language was Indo-European, which means it shared its roots with languages from both Europe and India. Whether the Mycenaeans settled in Greece thousands of years before their written history began, or whether they conquered people already living there in about 2000 B.C., is not known for sure. But they were connected to the later Greeks by language and religion.

The Mycenaeans were influenced by their neighbors, the Minoans. The Minoans lived on the large island of Crete, south of the Greek mainland and not far from the northern shores of Africa. Some of their arts and handicrafts were similar to those of the Mycenaeans. Mycenaean chieftains or kings lived in heavily walled palaces. Excavated towns and palaces of the seemingly peaceful Minoans on Crete, by contrast, show no walls. A variety of bronze weapons and armor was found at Mycenaean burial sites, along with leather helmets and shields, some bronze drinking cups, and even a bronze comb with gold teeth. Weapons do not seem to have been passed down from father to son. The fact that each soldier had new weapons showed that these ancient warriors had some wealth.

By the mid-14th century B.C., the Mycenaeans were the most powerful force on the Aegean Sea. Warfare was carried out on a rather small scale compared to the big armies of the Egyptians and the Hittites, but the aggressive Mycenaeans were successful in their corner of the Mediterranean world. Most likely, they overran and absorbed the Minoan society. The kingdom of Troy, once located along the Aegean coast in today’s Turkey, was destroyed about 1230 B.C. Homer ⁴ wrote in the Iliad about one long war between Troy and the Greeks (actually, the Mycenaeans). But archaeologists think Troy probably endured several attacks over many years.

The Mycenaeans lived in densely populated towns in today’s Greece and across the Aegean Sea in modern-day Turkey. Their towns had a more centralized government than the Greek city-states that appeared a few centuries later. Technically, everything the society produced belonged to the king. Local rulers then divided up the wealth as they saw fit. Large palaces were built for the Mycenaean kings—the one at Mycenae may have been the palace of the overall king. At the peak of their civilization in the 13th century B.C., the Mycenaeans traveled far and wide in the Mediterranean world. ⁵

Dark Age

The local conflicts, economic disruptions, and movement of the people of the period 1200-1000 B.C. that destroyed Mycenaean civilization in Greece and weakened or obliterated cities, kingdoms, and civilizations across the Near East brought grinding poverty to many of the populations that managed to survive the widespread violence of these centuries. Enormous difficulties impede our understanding of the history of this troubled period and of the recovery that followed because few literary or documentary sources exist to supplement the incomplete information provided by archaeology, because conditions were so grueling for many people and, perhaps more than anything, because the absence of written records from Greece limits us to a dim view of what happened there in these years, these years were known as the Dark Age as the fortunes of the people of the time seemed generally dark.

The Near East recovered its strength much sooner than did Greece, ending its Dark Age by around 900 B.C. The end of this period in Greece is conventionally placed some 150 years after that, in the mid-eighth century.

Economic conditions in Greece after the undoing of Mycenaean civilization dramatically exemplified the reduced circumstances of life which many people in the Mediterranean and Near Eastern world had to endure during the worst years of the Dark Age. Mycenaean society had collapsed because the violence of the period after about 1200 B.C. had destroyed the complex economic system on which Mycenaean prosperity had depended. The most startling indication of the severe conditions of life in the early Dark Age was that the Greeks apparently lost their knowledge of writing when the Mycenaean civilization was destroyed.

Once the palaces and the redistributive economy of Mycenaean Greece had fallen apart, with nothing coming in to be recorded and no central authority to keep records, there was no longer a place for scribes or a need for writing. Significantly, however, the oral transmission of the traditions allowed Greek culture to survive this loss by continuing its stories and legends as valuable possessions passed down through time. Storytelling, music, singing, and oral performances of poetry, which surely had been a part of Greek life for longer than we can trace, transmitted the most basic cultural ideas of the Greeks about themselves from generation to generation. ⁶

Poverty was widespread. And most people identified themselves only with the particular isolated valley or island where they lived. They dwelled in wooden or stone houses clustered in small villages, each dominated by a local chieftain (basileus). Gradually, some of these scattered villages grew into large towns. Each came to dominate the affairs of a valley, island, or other local region and served as the nucleus of a new political entity that began to rise across Greece—the city-state, or polis. Trade and commerce revived as well as reading and writing, which had disappeared during the Dark Age, reappeared. In addition, monumental (large-scale) architecture developed; Pan-Hellenic (all-Greece) shrines, oracles, and athletic games, including the Olympics, arose; and a number of cities established colonies along the shores of the Aegean, Black, and Mediterranean seas. ⁷

Archaic Age

During the Archaic Age the Greeks fully developed the most widespread and influential of their new political forms, the city-state (polis). The term Archaic Age, meaning the "Old-Fashioned Age" and designating Greek history from approximately 750 to 500 B.C., stems from art history. Scholars of Greek art, employing criteria of aesthetic judgment that are today not so common, judged the style of works from this period as looking more old-fashioned than the more naturalistic art of the following period (the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.), which they saw as producing models of beauty and therefore named the Classical Age. Archaic sculptors, for example, made free-standing figures that stood stiffly, staring straight ahead in imitation of Egyptian statuary. By the Classical Age, sculptors depicted their subjects in more varied and lively poses.

The Archaic Age witnessed the gradual pinnacle of developments in social and political organization in ancient Greece that had begun much earlier in the Dark Age and led to the emergence of the Greek city-state. Organized on the principle of citizenship, the city-state included in its population male citizens, female citizens, their children, resident foreigners, and slaves belonging to individuals as well as to the city-state as a whole. It was thus a complex community made up of people of very different legal and social statuses. One of its most remarkable characteristics was the extension of citizenship and a certain share of political rights to even the poorest free-born local members of the community. Although poverty could make their lives as physically deprived as those of slaves, this distinction gave an extra meaning to the personal freedom that set them apart from the enslaved inhabitants of the city-state and the foreigners, resident there.

The Characteristics of the City-state

At the end of the Dark Age, self-governing states called poleis (singular polis, city) emerged, some of which were very small. The Greek world was eventually divided into several hundred poleis. Some poleis were very large, such as Sparta, while some islands were divided into several poleis. These city-states or self-governing communities consisted of only one city (also called a polis) with a citadel (acropolis) and marketplace (agora), surrounded by the countryside (chora) and its villages (hinterland). The term asty also referred to the city or town itself. The citizens lived in the countryside or in the city, but the government of the polis was concentrated specifically in the city. The large number of poleis led to numerous conflicts between them, as well as civil war (stasis), particularly where there was a struggle concerning the type of government (oligarchy or democracy).

Presiding over the polis as protector and patron was a particular god, for example, Athena at Athens. Different communities could choose the same deity as their protector; Sparta, Athens's chief rival in the Classical period, also had Athena as its patron god. The members of a polis constituted a religious association obliged to honor the state's patron deity as well as the community's other gods. The community expressed official homage and respect to the gods through its cults, which were regular sets of public religious activities paid for at public expense and overseen by citizens serving as priests and priestesses. The central ritual of a city-state's cults was the sacrifice of animals to demonstrate the gods as divine protectors and show the respect and piety of the members of the polis. ⁸

Federations and Alliances

The Greek mainland was divided into a number of regions, often distinct geographical entities. Tribal units, such as Aetolians and Boeotians, occupied these regions. When poleis began to develop, the tribal units in these regions were frequently retained. Cities within these regions often formed a loose or more formal confederation. City-states in alliance with each other were usually termed federal states, confederacies or leagues. These alliances first appeared in the 5th century B.C. Alternatively one city-state, such as Athens, became more powerful than other city-states in the region.

A symmachia (symmakhia, alliance in fighting) was often an informal alliance of city-states in war or for defense; it could also mean an alliance of city-states under the leadership (hegemonia) of one state. They were not federal states, and member city-states retained their individual freedom. Examples include: the Peloponnesian League, Delian League, Second Athenian League and Hellenic League, some of which are also referred to as confederacies or alliances.

A sympoliteia (alliance in political life) was a true federal state in which city-states gave up some of their independence to a central federal government, so that power was divided between central and local governments. Citizens therefore often considered themselves as belonging to both a city-state and a federal state. Examples of sympoliteiai include the Achaean Confederacy, Arcadian Confederacy, Boeotian Confederacy and Aetolian Confederacy, although they are often referred as leagues. The term koinon (the state or commonwealth) is also used for a federal state, as is ethnos (plural: ethne, meaning: “tribe”). From 300 B.C., federal states of Greece were classified as ethne.

Many federal states were dissolved at the King’s Peace (386 B.C.). Particularly from the 3rd century B.C., some federal states, such as the Achaean Confederacy, became so powerful that they incorporated cities and states from beyond their own regional boundaries. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century B.C., the polis lost much of their independence. Federal states were particularly numerous and powerful in the Hellenistic period, and continued in the Roman period in Asia Minor and Greece as forms of local government. The Amphictyonic Council (or Delphic Amphictyony) managed the affairs of the Delphi sanctuary. It consisted mostly of states in the central and northern part of Greece, and its name was derived from amphictyones (dwellers round about). Its original function had been the care of the temple of Demeter at Anthela near Thermopylae, but it acquired the care of the oracle and temple of Apollo at Delphi. Each member state sent one or two sacred representatives (hieromnemones) to the council meetings, which were held twice a year. ⁹

Classical Age

Classical Greece was both an Icon and an Enigma.

The architectural forms and proportions displayed by public buildings of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. have become the reference point for all modern western architecture, whether it accepted them or rejected them. The selective naturalism of classical sculpture and its sensuous exploration of the naked human body has put figurative art at the center of the grand tradition of painting, as well as of sculpture, and has become the epitome of the art of a free and self-confident society. The crises and dilemmas of individuals, families, and communities, probed and unfolded in Greek tragedy, have been endlessly, reinvestigated by successive generations of writers from Roman times to the present day and have acquired archetypal status as the essential expressions of human psychology. The relativism of Heraclitus or Protagoras, the idealism of Plato, the skepticism of Democritus, is still considered the basic expressions of what are fundamental philosophical positions. The determination by a community as a whole, for its actions and policies through the medium of the popular assembly is still used as the model of democratic practice in some countries.

The classical Greek world was very different from the earlier great civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. It was a world of tiny, more or less independent ‘cities’, many of which enjoyed no special resources and whose livelihood was based on agricultural production, which uncertain rainfall rendered highly unpredictable. The 5th and 4th centuries B.C. were regarded as the Classical Age of Greece, from the end of the Persian invasions to the accession of Alexander the Great (479–336 B.C.). In 478 B.C. Pausanias was sent with an allied fleet to recapture Byzantium from the Persians, but was recalled by Sparta. In 478 B.C. Athens rose to power, particularly under Pericles, and replaced Sparta as leader of the Greeks. Initially, Sparta was infuriated, but its displeasure lessened after Themistocles was ostracized (471 B.C.) and Cimon became powerful. Athens became leader of a group of allies called the Delian League, set up to fight against the Persians. The Delian League, also known today as the “Confederacy of Delos,” (because it was based on the island of Delos) was known in the 5th century B.C. as “The Athenians and their allies.” Developed from the Hellenic League, its treasury and meeting place were at Delos. ¹⁰

Hellenistic Age

The term ‘Hellenistic’ describes the period from the accession of Alexander the Great in 336 B.C., to the final conquest of the Greek world by Rome in 30 B.C.—a period of about 306 years. During this time city-states such as Athens declined, but there was a huge expansion of Greek territory into non-Greek areas as far as Afghanistan, with the establishment of numerous monarchies, the founding of many Greek cities, and a shift of the cultural center to Alexandria in Egypt. On his accession, Alexander acted against the tribes of the lower Danube and suppressed a revolt in Greece, in which he destroyed Thebes, killing and enslaving its inhabitants (335 B.C.). Alexander next pursued Philip II’s plan to invade the Persian Empire; within 12 years he had conquered as far as the steppes of Russia, Afghanistan and the Punjab, all of which became part of the Hellenistic world. All Hellenistic rulers throughout his empire came to use the title “king.”

Age of the Successors

After Alexander’s death there was a struggle among his former generals (the Successors, diadokhoi—literally, the inheritors) to retain control of Alexander’s empire (323–301 B.C.), initially by the regent Perdiccas. From 321 B.C. Ptolemy I had established Egypt as a separate kingdom. Greek states including Athens tried to revolt against Macedonia, but were defeated by Antipater in the Lamian War (323–322 B.C.), and Athens was occupied by the Macedonians. In 320 B.C. Perdiccas died, and Antigonus I tried to gain control of the Empire. The other generals—Cassander, Lysimachus, Ptolemy I and Seleucus I—formed alliances against Antigonus I and his son Demetrius I Poliorcetes. By 306 B.C. Alexander’s family had been eliminated, and the Successors claimed the title of king in their own areas. Demetrius I Poliorcetes and Antigonus I were defeated at the battle of Ipsus in 301 B.C., hence, destroying any chance of holding together Alexander’s empire. This was the end of the Greek Empire. ¹¹

Geography

Greece is the southern portion of the great peninsula of Europe, surrounded on three sides by the Mediterranean Sea, which is now generally known as the Balkan Peninsula. That part which was called Greece or Hellas was bounded on the north by the Cambunian Mountains which separate it from Macedonia. It extended from the fortieth degree of latitude to the thirty-sixth, its greatest length being not more than two hundred and fifty English miles, and its greatest breadth only one hundred and eighty. ¹²

Greece was formed of limestone mountains, dividing up the country into large fertile plains in Thessaly, Boeotia and Attica, with some smaller plains elsewhere. The plains were almost entirely surrounded by mountains or had one side accessible to the sea. The mountains comprised the majority of the territory and often formed barriers with few passes and narrow valleys, so that transport by land was difficult. This type of landscape encouraged the development of independent states. The highest mountain was Olympus in Thessaly (9,750 feet, 2,972 m), and the mountains once had much deciduous and evergreen forest. It is believed that by Classical times, much deforestation had already occurred, so that the landscape was similar to today, although without the modern development and with much more marshland.

The coastline was deeply indented, and in the Aegean the submerged mountains formed numerous islands. To the south of the Aegean was the large island of Crete. In the center of the Aegean, were numerous small islands known collectively as the Cyclades, and off the west coast of Asia Minor were several larger islands, such as Lesbos and Rhodes. There were over 3,000 islands.

In mainland Greece, there were no navigable rivers. The rivers were often torrents in winter but dry in summer. There were many good harbors and anchorages, though, only a few in Thessaly or on the west coast. The coastline in many areas has suffered considerable change overtime for a variety of reasons, such as tectonic activity, silting of rivers and artificial drainage of wetlands. Harbors like Pella are now well inland. Sea levels have also risen since ancient Greek times, possibly by as much as 2–3 meters (6–9 feet).

Mainland Greece was virtually split into two parts by the Saronic Gulf and Corinthian Gulf, which were separated by a narrow isthmus (now cut by the Corinth canal). The southern mainland was the Peloponnese (island of Pelops). To the north of the isthmus was central Greece and northern Greece. Central Greece was a long peninsula between the Corinthian Gulf and the straits of Euboea. Hellas was originally a small district of Phthiotis in Thessaly (and the people were Hellenes), but the name was extended to the rest of Greece.

The climate in winters was severe in the mountains, but mild elsewhere, and in the hot summers there was very little rain. Most rain falls occurred during five months in winter (the growing season), with the greatest amount of rainfall in western Greece. The country was prone to earthquakes, especially in the Peloponnese, some of which have been devastating, as at Sparta in 464 B.C. and at Helice on the northern coast of the Peloponnese in 373 B.C., which disappeared into the sea. An active volcano existed at the island of Thera. Colonization and expansion of territory by conquest extended the Greek world westward into Spain, Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, southern France and Magna Graecia (Great Greece: southern Italy) progressively expanding the Greek world eventually extended into northern Africa (Cyrene), Egypt, around the Black Sea, Asia Minor, Cyprus and as far east as India and Afghanistan. Greek sailors feared passing through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Atlantic. Ancient Greece was characterized by isolated farms, hamlets, villages, small towns and cities. ¹³

Rivers

All Greek rivers shared three characteristics in common. Firstly, they were not navigable. Home-keeping Greeks did not know what a navigable river was. Herodotus ¹⁴ was delighted with the navigation of the Euphrates and the Nile, which he described in great detail. Yet the Thames-side dweller would hardly describe these as navigable rivers, since neither of them allowed small boats to go up stream, and the Euphrates boatmen had to take donkeys on board to carry the boat back by land. Roads and rivers were indeed connected in the Greek mind; for where there was a river there was probably a land-road too. Goods came down from the North along the big rivers, such as the Strymon, which flowed into the North Aegean. But, with the possible exception of timber, they came by the rivers, not on them. It was only the rivers of Russia and Central Europe which were really useful as beasts of burden, and it is no wonder that Herodotus extolled them. He stated that there are three special wonders in Scythia: the rivers, the vast plain, and a footprint of Heracles.

Secondly, Greek rivers were not easy to cross. In summer there was no great difficulty in going over stony torrent beds; but they were very difficult to bridge, and became quite impassable in winter. Thus, they were as inconvenient for land as for water/transport. A slight downpour would block an important high road, as the Thebans found when they marched on Plataea in two detachments on a wet night. The first crossed the Asopus easily: the second was stopped and could hardly get through. When a Greek river was in flood there was nothing to do but to wait, till it passed. The idea of taming a strong-flowing river and performing engineering feats with it, which Herodotus found prevalent in countries where streams flowed more steadily, appealed greatly to his Greek imagination, and he made the most of the story-telling possibilities of Mesopotamia.

Thirdly, there was another reason why the Greeks did not play with rivers. They were too muddy to drink. The Greeks did not know what a clean river was. Every stream, when it flowed at all, flowed burdened with silt. Hence when the Greeks laid pipes underground, they were directed, not to lakes or rivers, but to the mountain springs; these alone were pure enough to be the resort of maiden spirits. The fact that Mediterranean rivers flow brown and muddy is more important than it seems as they deposited all the silt at the river banks. ¹⁵

Weather

The climate of Greece was conditioned by its degree of latitude, the proximity of the sea, its position in the eastern half of the Mediterranean, and by the above—mentioned opening of that sea towards the north-east. In the south, the latitude favored the cultivation of many things which require great warmth. The exposure, however, of the whole country to the north-east and to the steppes round the Black Sea caused a considerable decrease of temperature, which was sometimes marked in winter; but the sea air, which penetrated everywhere, tempered this severity. All these occurrences combined to produce varieties of vegetation, differing even from the products of the same latitudes in Italy, which possessed altogether a more southern climate. Laconia and above all Messenia were the only districts which had a really southern climate. The celebrated date-palms of Greece served only as an ornament of the landscape and not for food or profit. Although those fruits which we consider characteristic of southern climes did not flourish abundantly in Greece, yet the soil was rich in useful products of a mild climate, especially in the gifts of Demeter, Dionysus, and Athene, of the two last in a marked degree. In the fair season—that is, with the exception of the short winter—the winds were tolerable, often refreshing northern breezes by day and mild southern ones by night. The sea routes were safe. The soil was of great variety. It was chiefly composed of limestone ranges, which, in places where the limestone came to the surface, readily absorbed moisture, so that aridity predominated in the peninsulas and islands, and on the mountains; in the valleys and basins, on the other hand, the soil was heavier, and water often stagnated. On the whole, Greece was not a country where the cultivator was richly rewarded without great trouble. In the case of corn, the most important crop of all, the soil was subject to atmospheric influences of varied kinds, and severe labor was necessary. The supply of corn was then, as now, not sufficient for the demand. ¹⁶

Ethnologies

Since Greece was composed of many islands of the Mediterranean, it was inhabited by various tribes. The most prominent of those people were the Greeks, the Ionians and the Dorians. The details of the Ionians and the Dorians are given below:

Ionians, were member of an important eastern division of the ancient Greek people, who gave their name to a district on the western coast of Anatolia (now Turkey). The Ionian dialect of Greek was closely related to Attic and was spoken in Ionia and on many of the Aegean islands. The Ionians are said to have migrated to western Anatolia from Attica and other central Greek territories following the Dorian immigration (1000 B.C.) that upset the Achaean kingdoms on the mainland. This was confirmed by the fact that the same four “tribes” (phylai) found among the Athenians reappear in the inhabitants of Miletus and other Ionian cities. Homer in his epics gives the Ionians, but in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, roughly corresponding in time to the first certain written reference to the Ionians by the Assyrian king Sennacherib (reigned 704–681 B.C.), they are noted as the great and wealthy people who frequented the festival of Apollo at Delos.

By the time of Herodotus (450 B.C.), Greek thinkers had worked out a detailed ethnological theory, identifying the Ionians with the aboriginal element in Greece (Pelasgoi) and the Dorians with the immigrant northern Hellenes proper. This hypothesis introduced an element of racialism into Greek interstate polemics. The Ionians of Asia, because of their exposed position, had been subjected by Persia and came to be despised as “soft” in comparison to the military, disciplined cadres of the Peloponnesian Dorians.

From about 700 B.C., expansion and accompanying colonization brought the Ionians of Euboea to eastern Sicily and Cumae near Naples, and Samians to Nagidus and Celenderis in Pamphylia. Among the Ionian cities, Miletus, which was said to have founded 90 colonies, was instrumental in opening up the Black Sea, while Phocaea was active in the Mediterranean, establishing a colony at Massilia (Marseille).

The contribution of Ionians to Greek culture was of major importance in their history, including the Homeric epics and the earliest elegiac and iambic poetry. In the 6th century, Ionic rational thought dominated the life of the common people of the time, fostering the study of geography and nature and research into matter and the universe. Ionians at home and overseas also laid the foundation of Greek philosophy and historiography. In the age after Alexander the Great, Attic Ionic, the literary language, became the basis of Koine, or “common speech,” the language of practically all later Greek writing, including the New Testament, down to the present day. Ionians were also substantial artists in the areas of architecture, sculpture, and cast-bronze statuary. ¹⁷

The Dorians were one of the three principal subdivisions of the ancient Greeks, the other two being Ionians and Aeolians. Pan-Hellenic Genealogy derived their name from Dorus son of Hellen. ¹⁸ According to ancient authors, the Dorians had originally lived in central and northern Greece but had, towards the end of the heroic age, migrated south to the Peloponnese in the company of the Heraclidae (descendants of Heracles). ¹⁹

Modern scholars long theorized that this early, probably culturally backward Greek speaking people, who hailed from the region just south of the Danube River, invaded Greece in the 1100s B.C., ending Greece’s Bronze Age and initiating its Dark Age. But recent evidence has challenged this idea and laid the blame for the collapse of the Bronze Age cultures on other factors, including civil conflicts and economic problems. Thus, the Dorians were more likely opportunists who moved into mainland Greece after the fall of Mycenaean culture. They unsuccessfully assaulted Athens, and then moved on, settling in the region of Sparta, on the island of Crete, and elsewhere. ²⁰

The Language

In the Classical period, Greek was spoken in mainland Greece, the Aegean islands and in the Greek colonies. Although Greece was divided into numerous regions and states, the same language was spoken, distinguishing Greeks from barbarians (barbaroi, a word they applied to all non-Greek-speaking people, meaning all those who spoke in an inarticulate tongue, especially the Persians in the 5th century B.C.). Greeks were therefore monoglots ²¹] , although there were numerous dialects, and the Greeks themselves mentioned four ethnic groups of Athenians, Ionians, Dorians and Aeolians. There was no break between ancient and Modern Greek, and so it is the longest-attested European language, a language that changed over time. Greek was an Indo-European language related to language groups such as Italic, Germanic, Indo-Iranian and Armenian, originating in the later 2nd millennium B.C. with the migrations of Indo-European people into Greece. During the 17th and 16th centuries B.C. the Greek language began to develop and is recognizable in the Linear B script written on clay tablets in the Mycenaean period. ²² The Linear B syllabary was the product of the Mycenaean civilization of the Late Bronze Age in its high phase (1400–1200 B.C.) and was instrumental to documenting the administrative transactions of a highly centralized economy focused on palace complexes on Crete (Knossos, Khania) and in mainland Greece (Pylos, Mycenae, Tiryns, and Thebes). But while Linear B was a clear manifestation of the Mycenaean culture responsible for its creation, its origin, from an essentially paleographic perspective, is deeply embedded in the Minoan period, preceding the Mycenaean period by half a millennium. ²³

It is unclear whether the Mycenaean language was a dialect of Greek, but it does have close links with Arcado-Cyprian. It was once thought that the different dialects were due to different waves of invaders from about 1200 B.C., when there were widespread movements of people throughout Europe, including a Dorian invasion into parts of Greece by Greek people who spoke a Doric dialect and came from northwest Greece (Epirus and Macedonia). Some settled in the region known as Doris, and others moved into the Peloponnese via Delphi and Naupactus. In the central Peloponnese the Arcadian dialect was similar to pre-Dorian Greek, so the Dorians probably failed to penetrate much of Arcadia. During the Dark Age people migrated from Greece to other parts of the Greek world. This included the migration of Ionian Greeks to western Asia Minor. These events may have resulted in the distribution of various dialects in historic Greece even though the invasion theories are not universally believed.

The movement of people bringing their individual dialects may not have been real, although no other good evidence as yet exists to explain the dialects. The differences between the dialects were fairly small, and speakers of one dialect could probably be understood by speakers of another. The basic vocabulary of the different dialects was shared, with few differences. As the Greeks tended not to learn foreign languages, loan words from other languages were rarely found until contact with the Romans. The main dialects were Doric, Attic-Ionic, Aeolic, North-West Greek and Arcado-Cyprian. North-West Greek was spoken in Phocis, Locris, Elis and Aetolia, and Doric was spoken throughout the Peloponnese and places colonized from there, such as the southern Aegean islands, Crete, southwest coast of Asia Minor, Rhodes and parts of Sicily and Italy. Other dialects were categorized as East Greek: Ionic was spoken in the Ionic colonies of Asia Minor (Ionia), Euboea and some Aegean islands, with its offshoot, Attic, spoken in Attica and Athens. Aeolic was spoken in Lesbos and neighboring Aeolis, with a variant in Thessaly and Boeotia (actually a mixture with North-West Greek). Linear B is recognizable as East Greek. The dialect of epic poetry was an artificial dialect based on Ionic, but with fundamental differences such as ‘¯e’ being used instead of ‘¯a’. Arcado-Cyprian (a modern term) was an archaic dialect used in Arcadia, Pamphylia and Cyprus that possibly preserved Mycenaean Greek; it was not found in extant literature. Aeolic and Arcado-Cyprian had many common elements and are classed as Achaean. They were similar to the language of Linear B texts. The Attic dialect later predominated and dialects used by authors were not necessarily their native tongue or that of the city in which they wrote, but that of the literary genre.

The Macedonian language was probably a dialect of Greek, related to North-West Greek, but there is a possibility of it being a different Indo-European language. With the unification by conquest of many parts of Greece by Philip II of Macedonia, and many parts of the east by Alexander the Great, local dialects declined, certainly for inscriptions, and a new uniform Greek dialect emerged known as koine or koine dialektos (common dialect). It was based on the Attic dialect rather than the semi-barbarous Macedonian dialect. Its use spread throughout the Greek Empire, and Xenophon ²⁴ was the first writer to use the koine. Lexicons of ancient Greek dialects were compiled by scholars at Alexandria in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. to aid the study of poetry. ²⁵

The positive and negative influence of Greeks has been continuous and long lasting, so we have no choice but to investigate their special qualities and traits for which they are celebrated. We need to know what were those special rules and practices which were understood and used by genuine Greeks. But, in order to enlighten ourselves with their theories and experiments, we might have to face some difficulties. The language in which Aristotle, Plato, Euripides, and Aristoxenus used to write, lost its originality till the 4th or 5th A.D. Its genuine finesse, elegance, and pleasantness were gone.

The left-over buildings, statues, pictures, ornaments, scribes, and other artifacts are not sufficient to understand the reality of the ancient Greeks. In musical poetry, philosophy and history there are other tragic, happy ending plays available other than Homer’s, and as far as artistry and craftsmanship is concerned, we know very little. Although we did find some vases with artistic prints, some statues made from elephant tusks, but they were stolen and only a few statues of their gods remain. After all the plunder, still, the researchers have managed to recover enough material and have managed to sketch a picture of Greece.

• ¹ Carroll Moulton (1998), Ancient Greece and Rome: An Encyclopedia for Students, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, USA, Vol. 1, Pg. 104.
• ² Theseus was a great hero of Attic legend. He was the son of Aegeus (king of Athens) and Aethra (daughter of Pittheus who was the king of Troezen), or of the sea god, Poseidon, and Aethra. Legend relates that Aegeus, being childless, was allowed by Pittheus to have a child (Theseus) by Aethra. [Encyclopedia Britannica (Online Version): https://www.britannica.com/topic/Theseus-Greek-hero : Retrieved: 12-04-19
• ³ David Sacks, Revised by Lisa R. Brody (2005), Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World, (Revised Edition), Facts on File Inc., New York, USA, Pg. 210-211.
• ⁴ Homer is the name credited by the old Greeks to the amazing creator of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic sonnets which are the focal works of antiquated Greek writing. He was a blind poet from Ionia, an area of focal seaside Anatolia in exhibit day Turkey. [Barbara Graziosi (2002), Inventing Homer: The Early Reception of Epic, Cambridge University Press, U.K, Pg. 15.
• ⁵ Jean Kinney Williams (2009), Empire of Ancient Greece, Chelsea House Publishers, New York, USA, Pg. 19.
• ⁶ Thomas R. Martin (2000), Ancient Greece from Prehistoric till Hellenistic Times, Yale Nota Bene, New York, USA, Pg. 36-38
• ⁷ Don Nardo (2006), The Green Haven Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece, Green Haven Press, New York, USA, Pg. 160
• ⁸ Thomas R. Martin (2000), Ancient Greece from Prehistoric till Hellenistic Times, Yale Nota Bene, New York, USA, Pg. 51-52.
• ⁹ Lesley Adkins and Roy A. Adkins (2005), Handbook to the Life in Ancient Greece, Facts on File Inc., New York, USA, Pg. 138-139.
• ¹⁰ Robin Osborne (2000), Classical Greece, Oxford University Press, New York, USA, Pg. 2-3.
• ¹¹ Lesley Adkins and Roy A. Adkins (2005), Handbook to the Life in Ancient Greece, Facts on File Inc., New York, USA, Pg. 11
• ¹² Sir William Smith (1923), A Smaller History of Greece from the Earliest Times to the Roman Conquest, John Murray, London, Great Britain, Pg. 1.
• ¹³ Lesley Adkins and Roy A. Adkins (2005), Handbook to the Life in Ancient Greece, Facts on File Inc., New York, USA, Pg. 136-137.
• ¹⁴ Herodotus (484-425 B.C.) is a famous history writer in the account of Greek who was born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire (advanced Turkey). He was a contemporary of Socrates and Plato and is regularly alluded to as "The father of History", a title initially presented by Cicero. He was the originator of investigative history known to have parted from Homeric custom to regard chronicled subjects as a strategy of inspection and analysis by gathering his materials systematically and critically, and after that organizing them into a historiographic account.
• ¹⁵ Alfred E. Zimmern (1911), The Greek Common Wealth, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, Great Britain, Pg. 37-38.
• ¹⁶ Adolf Holm (1894), The History of Ancient Greece: Its Commencement to the Close of Independence of Greek Nation, Macmillan and Co., London, U.K., Vol. 1, Pg. 28-30.
• ¹⁷ Encyclopedia Britannica (Online Version): https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ionian : Retrieved: 21-05-17
• ¹⁸ Michael Gagarin (2010), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, Oxford, U.K., Vol.1, Pg. 446.
• ¹⁹ Nigel Wilson (2006), Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece, Routledge, New York, USA, Pg. 240.
• ²⁰ Don Nardo (2006), The Green Haven Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece, Green Haven Press, New York, USA, Pg. 123.
• ²¹ A person who speaks only one language. [A. S. Hornby (2015), Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K., Pg. 972
• ²² Lesley Adkins and Roy A. Adkins (2005), Handbook to the Life in Ancient Greece, Facts on File Inc., New York, USA, Pg. 258.
• ²³ Egbert J. Bakker (2010), A Companion to the Ancient Greek language, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Sussex, U.K, Pg.11.
• ²⁴ Xenophon (430– 354 B.C.) was an early Greek thinker, history specialist, officer, hired soldier, and the intelligent student of Socrates'. As a history writer, Xenophon is known for recording the historical backdrop of his contemporary time, the late 5th and mid-4th hundreds of years B.C., in such Hellenica is about the last seven years and the result of the Peloponnesian War (431– 404 B.C.). Like Plato (427– 347 B.C.), Xenophon was an expert on Socrates, about whom he composed number of books like An Apology of Socrates to the Jury, which relates the thinker's and philosopher’s trial in 399 B.C.
• ²⁵ Lesley Adkins and Roy A. Adkins (2005), Handbook to the Life in Ancient Greece, Facts on File Inc., New York, USA Pg. 258-259.