From the first colonies in the west to the death of Alexander: where the Greeks lived, who ruled them, and who led them.
Greece was never one state. In 750 B.C. it was several hundred small cities around the Aegean, sharing a language, gods and festivals but little else. These three maps follow those cities over four centuries: across the sea to found new ones, against the Persian empire, and through the long wars among themselves that ended with a Macedonian king as master of them all.
The first map uses a wide frame, from Spain to the Caucasus, because the Greeks came to live around both seas. The other two close in on the Aegean, where Athens, Sparta, Thebes and Macedon fought for the leadership of Greece. A gold outline marks what changed at each step.
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From the first trading post in Italy to Darius on the Danube: the Greek cities spread round two seas, and the Persian empire reaches them.
By the traditional date of the first Olympic games (776), Greeks from Euboea are trading with the Etruscans from a base on the island of Pithekoussai, and soon found Cumae on the Italian shore. Phoenicians from Tyre are ahead of them: Carthage was founded, by tradition, in 814, and Gades lies beyond the straits. From the Phoenicians the Greeks take their alphabet.
Within a generation Greeks settle eastern Sicily and the coasts of southern Italy. Thucydides, the source for the Sicilian dates, puts Naxos in 734 and Corinthian Syracuse a year later. Achaeans found Sybaris and Croton, Spartans Taras (706), Corinthians Corcyra. Each colony is a new, independent city, tied to its mother city by cult and custom, not by government.
Megarians found Chalcedon and, opposite it, Byzantium (by tradition 668); Milesians settle Cyzicus, Sinope and Istros, and a later tradition credits Miletus with ninety colonies. Parians take Thasos, where the poet Archilochus fought the Thracians; Rhodians and Cretans found Gela (688). Inland of Ionia, Gyges makes Lydia a power and attacks Miletus and Smyrna.
Theraeans, sent by the Delphic oracle as Herodotus tells it, found Cyrene in Libya (c. 631). Phocaeans found Massalia (c. 600), and Greek traders work from Naucratis in the Nile delta. Olbia, Pantikapaion and the western Pontic towns ring the Black Sea. Lydia under Alyattes pushes east until, in 585, a battle with the Medes at the Halys is broken off by an eclipse.
Akragas (580) and Emporion are founded, and Phocaeans settle Alalia in Corsica. Croesus of Lydia makes the Ionian cities pay him tribute, then crosses the Halys against Cyrus the Persian, who has overthrown the Medes. Sardis falls, and Cyrus' generals take the Ionian cities one by one. Most Phocaeans sail away rather than submit; after a sea battle off Alalia they settle Elea.
Cyrus takes Babylon (539) and its Syrian lands; his son Cambyses conquers Egypt (525), and Cyrene and Cyprus submit. Darius crosses the Bosporus on a bridge of boats, marches against the Scythians beyond the Danube, and leaves Megabazus to subdue Thrace; Amyntas of Macedon gives earth and water. Persia now rules every Greek city in Asia and many in Europe.
Colonies are drawn as coastal spots of about 30 km round each city, grouped by the wave that founded them; foundation dates follow Thucydides (6.3–5), Herodotus and the later chronographers and are often traditional. Empires are broad editorial outlines. Coastlines and rivers: Natural Earth. Sites: Pleiades.
Persia now held the Greeks of Asia and the northern Aegean. The next two maps close in on the Aegean, where the free cities of the mainland met the empire.
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The Persian Wars, the Athenian empire that grew out of them, and the war with Sparta that ended it.
The Persian king rules from the Aegean to the Indus. In 499 Aristagoras of Miletus leads the Ionian cities in revolt; Sparta refuses him help, but Athens sends twenty ships and Eretria five. The rebels march inland and burn Sardis (498), and Caria, the Hellespont and Cyprus join them. Herodotus calls those Athenian ships the beginning of the troubles between Greeks and barbarians.
Persia crushes the Ionian fleet at Lade and sacks Miletus (494); Mardonius recovers Thrace and Macedon (492). In 490 Datis and Artaphernes cross the Aegean, take Naxos, sack Eretria, and land at Marathon, where the Athenians and Plataeans charge and drive them to their ships. Herodotus gives the dead as 6,400 Persians and 192 Athenians.
Xerxes bridges the Hellespont and marches through Thrace; Herodotus' figure of more than five million men is impossible, but no larger army had entered Europe. Thessaly, Thebes and most of Boeotia go over to him, while thirty-one Greek states hold together under Sparta. Leonidas falls at Thermopylae, Athens is abandoned and burned, and the allied fleet wins at Salamis.
Mardonius, left in Greece with the army, burns Athens a second time, then is killed and his army destroyed at Plataea by the Spartan regent Pausanias. The Greek fleet crosses to Ionia and burns the Persian camp at Mycale, on the same day, tradition said. Samos, Chios, Lesbos and the Ionian cities rise, and the Athenians besiege Sestos on the Hellespont.
In 478 Athens and the islanders form a league at Delos, paying ships or money assessed by Aristides. Cimon destroys a Persian fleet and army at the Eurymedon (c. 466). Naxos and Thasos try to leave and are forced back. In 454 the treasury moves from Delos to Athens and the tribute lists begin. Athens holds Boeotia after Oenophyta (457), while Sparta fights its helots in Messenia.
Athens gives up Boeotia and Megara in the Thirty Years' Peace (446), but crushes Samos (440–439), allies with Corcyra (433) and besieges Potidaea (432). In 431 Sparta and its allies invade Attica. Pericles keeps the Athenians behind their walls and uses the fleet; the plague, which Thucydides survived and described, kills Pericles in 429. Thucydides judged Sparta's fear of Athens the war's truest cause.
The Peace of Nicias (421) does not hold. Athens destroys Melos (416) and sends a great armada against Syracuse (415); in 413 it is annihilated. Sparta fortifies Decelea in Attica, and more than twenty thousand slaves desert, Thucydides says. Chios, Lesbos, Miletus, Rhodes, Euboea and Byzantium revolt, and Persia's satraps pay for a Spartan fleet.
Athens rebuilds its fleet and wins at Arginusae (406), but Lysander destroys it at Aegospotami (405). Starved by blockade, the city surrenders in 404: its long walls are pulled down, its fleet is cut to twelve ships, and the Thirty rule with a Spartan garrison. Sparta takes over the islands; the Greeks of Asia, promised to the King for Persian gold, pass to Cyrus the Younger.
Regions are editorial outlines, clipped to Natural Earth coastlines; islands are shown whole. A region takes the colour of its leading cities, so smaller towns that stood apart (Plataea, Melos) are named in the notes. Membership of the Athenian alliance follows the tribute lists from 454. Sites: Pleiades.
Athens lost its empire, though not for long its walls or its fleet. The last map follows the contest for leadership that Sparta, Thebes and finally Macedon each won in turn.
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Three leading powers in seventy years, the King of Persia holding the balance, and a Macedonian king at the end.
Sparta rules Athens' old empire through governors and garrisons, and goes to war with Persia for the Greeks of Asia, under Thibron (400) and then King Agesilaus (396). With Persian gold, Thebes, Athens, Corinth and Argos rise against Sparta in 395, and Lysander falls at Haliartus. The next year Conon's fleet, in the King's pay, destroys Sparta's navy off Cnidus.
After eight years of war the Persian king sets the terms. The Greek cities of Asia, and Cyprus, are his; every other city is to be autonomous, except Lemnos, Imbros and Scyros, which go to Athens. Sparta, as the peace's enforcer, breaks up the Boeotian League, splits Mantinea into villages (385) and seizes the citadel of Thebes (382).
Theban exiles retake their citadel (379), and Athens forms a new league (378), promising its members no tribute and no settlers. At Leuctra (371) the Theban army of Epaminondas, massed fifty shields deep on its left, breaks the Spartan line. King Cleombrotus and about four hundred of the seven hundred Spartiates present are killed, according to Xenophon.
Epaminondas invades Laconia, the first enemy army there in centuries, and frees Messenia, where the helots found Messene (369); the Arcadians build Megalopolis. Pelopidas carries Theban power into Thessaly. At Mantinea (362) Epaminondas wins and is killed. Xenophon ends his history there: after the battle, he says, Greece was in more confusion than before.
Philip II takes the Macedonian throne (359) and rebuilds the army around a long-speared phalanx. He takes Amphipolis (357), Pydna and Potidaea (356) and Methone (354), where he loses an eye. Athens' allies break away in the Social War (357–355). After the Crocus Field (352) Philip heads the Thessalians, and in 348 he destroys Olynthus while Demosthenes urges Athens to act.
The peace of Philocrates (346) ends the Sacred War on Philip's terms. He conquers Thrace (342–340), though Perinthus and Byzantium beat off his sieges. At Chaeronea (338) he defeats Athens and Thebes, with his eighteen-year-old son Alexander commanding a wing. Philip garrisons Thebes, spares Athens, and gathers every Greek state but Sparta into a league at Corinth that votes war on Persia.
Philip is murdered (336). Alexander crushes a Theban revolt and razes the city (335), then crosses the Hellespont with about 37,000 men by Diodorus' count. He beats the satraps at the Granicus (334), takes Sardis, and restores democracy to the Ionian cities; Miletus and Halicarnassus are taken by siege. The Persian fleet holds the islands until 332.
Alexander destroys the Persian empire at Issus (333) and Gaugamela (331) and marches on to India. In Greece, Antipater beats Agis III of Sparta at Megalopolis (331). When news comes that Alexander has died at Babylon (June 323), Athens and the Aetolians lead a Greek rising, the Lamian War, and shut Antipater up in Lamia. Macedon wins it in 322.
Regions are editorial outlines, clipped to Natural Earth coastlines; islands are shown whole, and a region takes the colour of its leading cities. In 395 the dashed teal marks the coalition of Thebes, Athens, Corinth and Argos against Sparta. Sites: Pleiades.
When Alexander died, Greek was the language of kings and settlers from Egypt to the Indus, and the cities of old Greece were small states in a world of great monarchies. The Lamian War was their last attempt to act together against Macedon. What Alexander's generals made of his empire, and how Rome came to inherit it, is the story of the next chapters.
Continue: Alexander's campaign, 334–323 B.C. →
Then: the heirs of Alexander →
Meanwhile in the west: the rise of Rome, 509–146 B.C. →