Ancient Greece

Begging Of Ancient Greece

7250 BCE

Mycenaean Civilization

1600 BCE

Mycenaean civilization originated and evolved from the society and culture of the Early and Middle Bronze Age in mainland Greece under influences from Minoan Crete. These Bronze Age Greeks establish themselves as political units sometime around 1600. The Mycenaeans quite possibly lived under Minoan dominance until around 1400, when they conquered Crete.

Trojan War

1210 BCE

Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably through Homer's Iliad. During the war a large wooden horse filled with army men attacked, once the horse was pulled through the gates.

First Greek Alaphabet

850 BCE

The Greek alphabet is the writing system developed in Greece. This was not the first writing system that was used to write Greek: several centuries before the Greek alphabet was invented, the Linear B script was the writing system used to write Greek during Mycenaean times. The Linear B script was lost around c.1100 BCE and with it, all knowledge of writing vanished from Greece until the time when the Greek alphabet was developed.

City-States

827 BCE

City-states were each ruled by one leader and often warred against one another. The two most well known city-states were Athens and Sparta.

First Olympic Games

776 BCE

The Olympic Games began in Olympia, southwest Greece. The Games were part of a religious festival. The Greek Olympics, thought to have begun in 776 BC, inspired the modern Olympic Games in 1896. The Games were held in honor of Zeus, king of the gods, and were staged every 4 years at Olympia. People from all over the Greece came to watch and take part.

Odyssey

700 BCE

Odyssey is one of the two major poems by Homer. The poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus and his journey home after the fall of Troy. It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the Trojan War. In his absence, it is assumed Odysseus has died, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of unruly suitors, the Mnesteres or Proci, who compete for Penelope's hand in marriage.

Code of Laws

621 BCE

After the Dark Ages, about 1072 BC and beginning at 900 BC, Greeks had no official laws or punishments. Murders were settled by members of the victim's family, who would go and kill the killer. This often began endless blood feuds.It was not until the middle of the 17th century BC that the Greeks first began to establish official laws. In 620 BC Draco set down the first known written law of Ancient Greece. These laws were so harsh that his name became Daconian meaning an unreasonably harsh.

Coin Currency

600 BCE

Before 600 B.C. there wasn't a monetary system in Greece,so they utilized the barter system. This was a system of trading goods and or services for other goods or services.By 500 B.C, each city-state began minting their own coin. Visitors had to find a moneychanger to exchange their coins. Typically a 5% fee was charged to exchange foreign currency to local currency.Athens used a currency known as the drachma. Their currency was widely used because of the large trade network that they developed.

Battle of Marathon

490 BCE

The battle of Marathon is one of the earliest recorded battles. Their victory over the Persian invaders gave the fledgling Greek confidence in their ability to defend themselves and belief in their continued existence. In 490 BC a Persian armada of 600 ships disgorged an invasion force of about 20,000 infantry and cavalry on Greek soil north of Athens. Their mission was to crush the Greek states in retaliation for their support of their Ionian cousins who had revolted against Persian rule.

The Battle Of Thermopylae

480 BCE

The Battle of Thermopylae was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days. It took place simultaneously with the naval battle at Artemisium, in 480 BC, at the narrow coastal pass of Thermopylae The Persian invasion was a delayed response to the defeat of the first Persian invasion of Greece, which had been ended by the Athenian victory at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC.

War between Athen and Sparta

431 BCE

These two popular city states went to war over land and law issues.

Peloponnesian War

431 BCE

Peloponnesian War,was fought between the 2 leading city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta. Each stood at the head of alliances that, between them, included nearly every Greek city-state. The fighting engulfed virtually the entire Greek world, and it was properly regarded by Thucydides, whose contemporary account of it is considered to be among the world’s finest works of history, as the most momentous war up to that time. Over time there were two other parts to this war.

Archimedes

200 BCE

Archimedes was the greatest mathematician of his age. His contributions in geometry revolutionised the subject and his methods anticipated the integral calculus 2,000 years before Newton and Leibniz. He was also a practical man who invented a wide variety of machines including pulleys and the Archimidean screw pumping device.

Romans Conquer Greece

146 BCE

In 146 BC, the Romans finally defeated their main rival,and spent the following months provoking the Greeks. During winter of that year the Achaean League rebelled against Roman predominance in Greece. Marching from Macedonia,the Romans defeated the 1st Achaean army at the Battle of Scarpheia, and went unhindered onto Corinth. The Roman consul Mummius, with 23,000 infantry and 3,500 cavalry. They had a successful night attack on the camp of the Roman advance guard, inflicting heavy casualties.

End of Ancient Greece

30 BCE