Ancient Greece

Many of these notes were taken from Ancient Greece by Thomas R. Martin.

Minoans

• Named after the legendary king Minos
• c. 6000 First settlers migrated to Crete
• c. 2200 Earliest Cretan palaces of Minoan Civilization
• Constructed large building complexes, referred to as “palaces”
• Famous palace at Knossos had indoor plumbing, and storage jars which could hold 240,000 gallons of water, olive oil, wine, or other goods.
• They appear to have had a top-down redistributive economy
• Were sea-traders; seem to have specialized in luxury goods
• Colorful frescoes of dolphins, bulls, ships, women, and griffins
• Minoans are depicted in Egyptian tomb reliefs
• Archaeological evidence indicates that Minoan civilization existed peaceably for several centuries
• There are no defensive walls found around the towns or palaces
• Prominent snake and bull imagery; bull leaping
• There is some evidence that they practiced human sacrifice
• c. 1450 most sites on the island were burned
• c. 1370 The palace at Knossos is destroyed

Myceneaens

• Named after the city Mycenae
• c. 1600–1450 shaft graves
• c. 1450–1240 Koine Era (Highpoint of their civilization)
• Strongly influenced by the Minoans, who they eventually conquered
• Unlike the Minoans, they seem like a warrior culture
• Spoke Greek; wrote using Linear B
• References to Hera, Zeus, Poseidon, Dionysus and other divinities found in Linear B tablets
• Built walls with such large blocks that the Greeks believed Cyclops had built them
• Traded widely, including with the Egyptians
• c. 1250–1100 Decline

Greek Dark Age

• c. 1100 All major Myceneaen palaces except Athens destroyed
• The Greek Dark Age is darker than then Medieval Dark Age
• Population decline, poverty, greatly decreased trade
• Quality of pottery and other goods greatly decreased
• Stopped writing in Linear B; no literary sources
• Myceneaen culture and religion passed down orally
• Art has geometric patterns
• c. 900–800 Population growth and adoption of iron tools and weapons
• c. 800 Adopt the Phoenician alphabet
• c. 776 First Olympics—competition between individual naked athletes
• Later Greeks did not know much about their Mycenaean past

Greek Archaic Age

• Art-historians thought Greek art from this period was old-fashioned, or archaic, compared to the classical age
• Population growth
• Rise of the Polis, a political, social, and religious organization of a city and surrounding areas
• Political systems included monarchies, oligarchies, tyrants, and early forms of democracy
• c. 750–500 Population growth and Greek colonization of the Mediterranean and Black Sea; “Frogs around a pond” (Plato)
• c. 750–700 Homer and Hesiod write epic poems
• c. 600 chattel slavery is the norm

Greek Classical Age

• 499–494 Ionian revolt in Western Anatolia, which is eventually crushed by the Persians
• 490 Darius sends force to Athens; Athenians win the battle of Marathon
• 480 Xerxes leads massive Persian force into Greece; battle of Thermopylae (the 300) and navel battle of Salamis
• 458 Aeschylus writes The Oresteia (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides)
• c. 440 Herodotus writes The Histories
• 431–404 Peloponnesian War, written about by Thucydides
• 399 Trial and execution of Socrates
• c. 400–380 Plato founds the Academy at Athens
• 359 Philip II becomes king of Macedonia
• 336 Philip II murdered, Alexander the Great becomes king
• 335 Aristotle founds the Lyceum at Athens
• 334 Alexander begins campaign against Persia
• 331 Alexander takes Egypt and founds Alexandria
• 326 Alexander’s army mutinies at the Hyphasis River in India, and they head back to Babylon
• 323 Alexander dies in Babylon

Hellenistic Age

• 310 murder of Alexander’s son
• 310 Zeno founds Stoic school in Athens
• 307 Epicurus founds his school in Athens
• 306–304 Alexander’s former commanders split up the empire
• 304–30 Ptolemys in Egypt