Ancient Greece Timeline

Agamemnon

1524 BCE

Agamemnon was the king of Mycenae and leader of the Greek army in the Trojan War of Homer's Illiad. He is presented as a great warrior but selfish ruler, famously upsetting his invincible champion Achilles and so prolonging the war and suffering of his men.

Homer

850 BCE

Homer is the presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are the central works of ancient Greek literature.

First Olympic Games

776 BCE

The ancient Olympic Games were originally a festival, or celebration with events such as a footrace, a javelin contest, and wrestling. They were held in honor of Zeus, the king of the gods

Draco’s code of law

620 BCE

The draconian law was created by king Draco for the Athenian people. It was written in response to the unjust interpretation and modification of oral law by Athenian aristocrats.

Darius I

550 BCE

Darius the Great, was the third Persian King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE

Rise Of The Tyrants

546 BCE

a tyrant arose in Athens in the 6th century B.C. His name was Peisistratos, and after several unsuccessful attempts he seized power in 546 B.C. and ruled until his death in 527, after which he was succeeded by his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchos.

Xerxes

519 BCE

Xerxes the Great, was the fourth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, ruling from 486 to 465 BC. He is best known for his massive invasion of Greece from across the Hellespont , a campaign marked by the battles of Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea.

Democracy

508 BCE

The concepts of democracy and constitution as a form of government originated in ancient Athens circa 508 B.C. In ancient Greece, where there were many city-states with different forms of government, democracy was contrasted with governance by elites

First Persian War

499 BCE

A series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire and Greek city-states that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC.

Pericles

495 BCE

Pericles was a prominent and influential Greek statesman, orator and general of Athens during its golden age, specifically the time between the Persian and the Peloponnesian Wars.

Battle Of Marathon

490 BCE

The first Persian invasion of Greece. The battle was fought on the Marathon plain of northeastern Attica and marked the first blows of the Greco-Persian War

The Second Persian War

482 BCE

The second Persian invasion of Greece occurred during the Greco-Persian Wars, as King Xerxes I of Persia sought to conquer all of Greece.

Battle of Thermopylae

480 BCE

The Battle of Thermopylae was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas I of Sparta, and the Achaemenid Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days, during the second Persian invasion of Greece. The Spartans held their ground with 300 men but were eventually overwhelmed.

Parthenon Completed

432 BCE

DescriptionThe Parthenon is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their patron. The construction concluded in 432 BC.

Peloponnesian wars

431 BCE

an ancient Greek war fought by the Delian League led by Athens against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases.

Plato

428 BCE

DescriptionPlato was an Athenian philosopher during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, founder of the Platonist school of thought, and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.

Catapult

400 BCE

The catapult was an ancient siege machine that could hurl heavy objects or shoot arrows with great force and for considerable distances.

Socrates

399 BCE

Socrates was a scholar, teacher and philosopher born in ancient Greece. His Socratic method laid the groundwork for Western systems of logic and philosophy.

Plato’s Academy

387 BCE

The Academy was founded by Plato in c. 387 BC in Athens. It persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a skeptical school, until coming to an end after the death of Philo of Larissa in 83 BC.

Aristotle

385 BCE

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Lyceum, the Peripatetic school of philosophy, and the Aristotelian tradition.

Philip II of Macedon

382 BCE

Philip II of Macedon was the king of the kingdom of Macedon from 359 BC until his assassination in 336 BC. He was a member of the Argead dynasty of Macedonian kings, the third son of King Amyntas III of Macedon, and father of Alexander the Great and Philip III.

Alexander the Great

356 BCE

Alexander the Great was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon and a member of the Argead dynasty. He was born in Pella in 356 BC and succeeded his father Philip II to the throne at the age of 20.

Battle of Chaeronea

338 BCE

battle in Boeotia, central Greece, in which Philip II of Macedonia defeated a coalition of Greek city-states led by Thebes and Athens. The victory, partly credited to Philip’s 18-year-old son Alexander the Great, cemented the Macedonian hegemony in Greece and ended effective military resistance to Philip in the region.

League of Corinth

338 BCE

The League of Corinth was a federation of Greek states created by Philip II of Macedon during the winter of 338 BC after the Battle of Chaeronea, as a means to organize and facilitate Greek military forces for his future war against Persia.