Greece

Europe's earliest advanced civilization grew on the island of Crete. The Minoan civilization, flourishing roughly from the early second millennium BCE to about 1450 BCE, built sprawling palace complexes at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia and Zakros, decorated with vivid frescoes and supported by long-distance trade. The Minoans developed writing systems, including the still-undeciphered Linear A, and left a legacy later mythologized in the legend of the labyrinth and the Minotaur.

On the Greek mainland the Mycenaean civilization came to prominence in the Late Bronze Age, centred on fortified citadels such as Mycenae, Tiryns and Pylos. The Mycenaeans, the first Greek-speakers known to history, adapted the Minoan script into Linear B to record an early form of Greek for palace administration, and by around 1450–1400 BCE they had extended their reach to Crete itself.

This was a connected, literate, palace-based world whose warrior elites and overseas trade later echoed in Homer's epics. Around 1200–1100 BCE it came apart in the wider Bronze Age collapse: the Mycenaean palaces were destroyed, writing was lost, and population and material culture sharply declined.

The centuries that followed are often called the Greek Dark Ages. Yet from this contraction emerged the building blocks of later Greek life, including the spread of iron, the formation of small communities that would become the polis, and the oral traditions that preserved memories of the heroic age.

Turning points

1. c. 2000–1450 BCEFormation

   Rise of the Minoan palaces on Crete

   The Minoan civilization built great palace complexes at Knossos and elsewhere on Crete, Europe's first advanced civilization, sustained by trade and a sophisticated artistic and administrative culture.

   [15] [11]

2. c. 1600 BCEFormation

   Flourishing of Mycenaean civilization

   Fortified palace-citadels such as Mycenae and Pylos rose on the mainland, ruled by warrior elites who were the first attested Greek-speakers and traded across the eastern Mediterranean.

   [16] [12]

3. c. 1450 BCECulture & Ideas

   Linear B and Mycenaean control of Crete

   Mycenaeans adapted Minoan script into Linear B to write an early form of Greek and extended their authority to Knossos, as Minoan power on Crete waned.

   [16] [11]

4. c. 1200–1100 BCECatastrophe

   Bronze Age collapse and the Greek Dark Ages

   The Mycenaean palaces were destroyed and writing was lost in the wider Bronze Age collapse, ushering in centuries of decline known as the Greek Dark Ages.

   ↗See the data

   [17] [12]

Figures of the era

From around the 8th century BCE Greek society revived. The polis, or city-state, emerged as the characteristic unit of Greek life, the Greek alphabet was adopted, the first Olympic Games were traditionally held in 776 BCE, and Homer's epics took shape. Population growth drove waves of colonization that planted Greek cities around the Mediterranean and Black Sea, from southern Italy and Sicily to the coasts of Asia Minor.

Athens became the crucible of a new political idea. Around 508/507 BCE the statesman Cleisthenes reorganized the citizen body and established institutions of popular self-government, a system later called demokratia, 'rule by the people', widely regarded as the world's first democracy. Rival Sparta developed a very different militarized society, and the tension between the two would shape Greek politics.

In the early 5th century BCE the Greek states faced invasion by the vast Persian Empire. Athens defeated the first invasion at Marathon in 490 BCE; a decade later a Greek coalition checked Xerxes' army at Thermopylae and destroyed his fleet at Salamis in 480 BCE, before a final land victory at Plataea in 479 BCE ended the Persian threat. These victories ushered in a golden age, above all in Periclean Athens.

The 5th and 4th centuries BCE saw an extraordinary cultural flowering: the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides; the philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle; and the architecture of the Parthenon. Yet the era was also riven by war, above all the long Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta (431–404 BCE), which exhausted the city-states and left them vulnerable to a rising power in the north.

Turning points

1. 776 BCE (traditional)Culture & Ideas

   Traditional first Olympic Games

   Greek tradition dated the first Olympic Games to 776 BCE at Olympia, a panhellenic religious festival that became a shared marker of Greek identity and a basis for dating.

   [14]

2. c. 508/507 BCEPolitics & Power

   Cleisthenes founds Athenian democracy

   The Athenian statesman Cleisthenes reorganized the citizens into ten tribes and established popular institutions of self-rule, the system later called democracy and regarded as the first in the world.

   [4] [22] [23]

3. 490 BCEWar & Rupture

   Battle of Marathon

   Athenian hoplites defeated the first Persian invasion on the plain of Marathon, a landmark victory that became central to Athenian self-confidence and identity.

   ↗See the data

   [5] [18]

4. 480 BCEWar & Rupture

   Battle of Salamis

   A Greek coalition fleet destroyed the navy of the Persian king Xerxes in the straits of Salamis, the decisive naval victory of the second Persian invasion; victory at Plataea in 479 BCE ended the threat.

   ↗See the data

   [5] [14]

5. 431–404 BCEWar & Rupture

   The Peloponnesian War

   A protracted war between Athens and Sparta and their allies ended in Athens' defeat, exhausting the leading city-states and chronicled by the historian Thucydides.

   ↗See the data

   [14]

Figures of the era

The exhausted Greek city-states fell under the power of Macedon to their north. In 338 BCE King Philip II decisively defeated a coalition led by Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea, establishing Macedonian hegemony over Greece. Philip's plans to invade Persia passed, on his assassination, to his son Alexander.

Alexander III, 'the Great', launched his campaign in 334 BCE and in little more than a decade overthrew the entire Persian Empire, conquering Egypt and pressing as far as the Indus valley. He founded cities, most famously Alexandria in Egypt, and fused Greek and local peoples and customs. His sudden death at Babylon in 323 BCE, aged 32, left an empire without an heir.

Alexander's generals, the Diadochi, fought over his conquests and carved them into great kingdoms, above all the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Seleucids in the Near East, and the Antigonids in Macedonia and Greece. This Hellenistic age spread the Greek language and urban culture across the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East.

It was an era of cosmopolitan cities, scholarship and science, exemplified by the Library and Museum of Alexandria and figures such as Euclid and Archimedes. The Hellenistic world flourished for three centuries until it was absorbed piece by piece into the expanding Roman Empire, conventionally ending with Rome's conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt in 30 BCE.

Turning points

1. 338 BCEWar & Rupture

   Battle of Chaeronea

   Philip II of Macedon defeated an alliance of Greek city-states led by Athens and Thebes, ending the era of fully independent poleis and establishing Macedonian dominance over Greece.

   ↗See the data

   [6] [19]

2. 334 BCEWar & Rupture

   Alexander invades the Persian Empire

   Alexander the Great crossed into Asia and began the campaign that, over a decade, toppled the Persian Empire and carried Greek arms and culture as far as India.

   ↗See the data

   [7] [20]

3. 331 BCEFormation

   Foundation of Alexandria

   Alexander founded Alexandria in Egypt, which became the greatest city of the Hellenistic world and a centre of Greek learning, home to its famous Library and Museum.

   [20]

4. 323 BCEPolitics & Power

   Death of Alexander and the Hellenistic kingdoms

   Alexander died at Babylon, and his generals divided his empire into the Ptolemaic, Seleucid and Antigonid kingdoms, beginning the Hellenistic age of Greek-ruled states across the East.

   [7] [8]

Figures of the era

Rome's expansion into the Greek east culminated in 146 BCE, when the Roman general Lucius Mummius sacked Corinth and broke the Achaean League, bringing Greece firmly under Roman control; the region was later organized as the province of Achaea. Politically subdued, Greece nonetheless captivated its conquerors: Greek language, art, philosophy and religion shaped Roman culture profoundly.

When the emperor Constantine refounded the city of Byzantium as Constantinople in 330 CE, he shifted the empire's centre of gravity to the Greek-speaking east. As the western empire fell in the 5th century, the eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire endured, increasingly Greek in language and culture and Christian in faith, with the Orthodox Church at its heart.

For a thousand years Byzantium was a major power and a guardian of Greek and Roman learning. Greece itself was a core province, dotted with churches and fortified towns; centres such as Thessalonica and, later, Mystras in the Peloponnese became important hubs of Byzantine art and scholarship even as the empire's fortunes fluctuated.

From the 11th century the empire faced mounting pressures, and the Fourth Crusade's sack of Constantinople in 1204 fragmented Byzantine lands, including parts of Greece, among Latin and Greek rulers. Though Byzantium recovered Constantinople in 1261, it never regained its former strength, and on 29 May 1453 the city fell to the Ottoman Turks under Mehmed II, ending the empire.

Turning points

1. 146 BCEWar & Rupture

   Rome sacks Corinth and conquers Greece

   The Roman general Lucius Mummius destroyed Corinth and crushed the Achaean League, bringing Greece under Roman domination; it was later organized as the province of Achaea.

   ↗See the data

   [21] [1]

2. 330 CEFormation

   Foundation of Constantinople

   Constantine refounded Byzantium as Constantinople, the new capital that shifted the Roman Empire's centre eastward and became the heart of the Greek-speaking Byzantine world.

   [9] [1]

3. 1204 CEWar & Rupture

   Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople

   Crusaders captured and plundered Constantinople, fragmenting Byzantine territory, including parts of Greece, among Latin and Greek rulers and gravely weakening the empire.

   ↗See the data

   [9] [1]

4. 29 May 1453War & Rupture

   Fall of Constantinople

   Ottoman forces under Sultan Mehmed II captured Constantinople, ending the Byzantine Empire and clearing the way for Ottoman rule over the Greek lands.

   ↗See the data

   [10] [9]

Figures of the era

After the fall of Constantinople the Ottomans conquered the Greek mainland and islands over the following decades, with the last Byzantine outpost at Mystras falling in 1460. For most of the next four centuries the Greek lands formed part of the Ottoman Empire. Greeks were organized within the Orthodox Christian Rum millet, and the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople held authority over religious and many civil affairs, helping to preserve Greek language, faith and identity.

Ottoman rule brought heavy taxation and periodic hardship, but also long periods of stability, and some Greeks rose to prominence as merchants, churchmen and administrators. Over time, ideas from the European Enlightenment, a flourishing Greek merchant diaspora, and a revived sense of national identity rooted in classical and Orthodox heritage fed a growing movement for independence.

In 1821 revolution broke out, conventionally dated to 25 March, spreading through the Peloponnese and beyond. The struggle was brutal and at times desperate, but it captured the imagination of European philhellenes and eventually drew in the Great Powers. In 1827 a combined British, French and Russian fleet destroyed the Ottoman-Egyptian navy at the Battle of Navarino, a turning point in the war.

Diplomacy completed what arms had begun. By the London Protocol of 3 February 1830 the Great Powers recognized Greece as an independent state, and the Ottoman sultan formally acknowledged Greek independence and the new state's frontiers in the Treaty of Constantinople in July 1832. A monarchy was established, and the Bavarian prince Otto was chosen as the first king of the new kingdom.

Turning points

1. 1460War & Rupture

   Ottoman conquest of the Morea

   The Ottomans completed their conquest of the Greek mainland with the fall of the Byzantine Despotate of the Morea, including Mystras, bringing the Greek lands under Ottoman rule.

   ↗See the data

   [2] [26]

2. 25 March 1821 (traditional)Independence

   Outbreak of the Greek War of Independence

   Revolution against Ottoman rule erupted across the Peloponnese and beyond, beginning the war that would create an independent Greek state and inspiring philhellenes across Europe.

   ↗See the data

   [3] [24]

3. 20 October 1827War & Rupture

   Battle of Navarino

   A combined British, French and Russian fleet destroyed the Ottoman-Egyptian navy at Navarino, a decisive intervention by the Great Powers that turned the war in Greece's favour.

   ↗See the data

   [3] [24]

4. 3 February 1830Independence

   London Protocol recognizes Greek independence

   Britain, France and Russia signed the London Protocol declaring Greece an independent state, the first international act recognizing Greek sovereignty.

   ↗See the data

   [25] [24]

5. July 1832Independence

   Treaty of Constantinople and the Kingdom of Greece

   The Ottoman sultan recognized Greek independence and the new state's frontiers in the Treaty of Constantinople; the Bavarian prince Otto was chosen as the first king of Greece.

   ↗See the data

   [3] [13]

Figures of the era

The young kingdom was at first small and poor, but through the 19th and early 20th centuries it pursued the 'Great Idea' of uniting Greek-populated lands, gradually expanding its territory, notably through the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. Its trajectory shifted dramatically after the First World War.

Greece's campaign in Anatolia ended in disaster. The Greco-Turkish War of 1919–1922 collapsed in the Asia Minor Catastrophe, the fall of Smyrna in 1922 and the flight of the Greek population of Asia Minor. The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 confirmed the outcome and mandated a compulsory population exchange that brought well over a million Orthodox refugees into Greece, transforming its society.

The Second World War brought fresh catastrophe. After resisting the Italian invasion of 1940, Greece was overrun and occupied by Axis forces from 1941 to 1944, suffering famine and devastation. Liberation was followed almost immediately by a bitter Greek Civil War between communist and government forces from 1946 to 1949, leaving deep and lasting divisions.

Post-war Greece rebuilt and modernized, but democracy was interrupted by a military junta that seized power in 1967. The dictatorship fell in 1974, and a referendum on 8 December 1974 abolished the monarchy and confirmed a parliamentary republic. Greece anchored itself firmly in Europe, joining the European Communities in 1981 and adopting the euro in 2001, while in the 2010s it weathered a severe sovereign debt crisis.

Turning points

1. 1919–1922War & Rupture

   Asia Minor Catastrophe

   The Greco-Turkish War ended in the rout of Greek forces and the destruction of Smyrna in 1922; the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne mandated a population exchange that brought over a million refugees into Greece.

   ↗See the data

   [1] [29]

2. 1941–1944War & Rupture

   Axis occupation of Greece

   After resisting Italy in 1940, Greece was occupied by Germany, Italy and Bulgaria from 1941 to 1944, enduring a devastating famine and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.

   ↗See the data

   [27] [1]

3. 1946–1949War & Rupture

   Greek Civil War

   Following liberation, a civil war between communist and government forces tore the country apart until 1949, an early conflict of the Cold War that left lasting political divisions.

   ↗See the data

   [28] [1]

4. 8 December 1974Politics & Power

   Fall of the junta and the Third Hellenic Republic

   After the collapse of the 1967–1974 military dictatorship, a referendum abolished the monarchy and established the current Greek parliamentary republic.

   [1] [30]

5. 1981Politics & Power

   Greece joins the European Communities

   Greece became a member of the European Communities (later the European Union), anchoring its post-war democracy in European integration; it adopted the euro in 2001.

   [1] [30]

Figures of the era