Topics in the History of Ancient Greece

Greece, a country in southeastern Europe whose peninsula extends from the Balkans into the Mediterranean Sea, is mountainous, with many gulfs and bays. Some areas of Greece are filled with forests. Much of Greece is stony and suitable only for pasturage, but other areas are suitable for growing wheat, barley, citrus, dates, and olives.

Prehistoric Greece includes that period known to us through archaeology rather than writing. The Minoans and Mycenaeans with their bullfights and labyrinths come from this period. The Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, describe valiant heroes and kings from the prehistoric Bronze Age of Greece. After the Trojan Wars, the Greeks were shuffled around the peninsula because of invaders the Greeks called Dorians.

There were two main periods of colonial expansion among the ancient Greeks. The first was in the Dark Ages when the Greeks thought the Dorians invaded. See Dark Age Migrations. The second period of colonization began in the 8th century when Greeks founded cities in southern Italy and Sicily. The Achaeans founded Sybaris was an Achaean colony perhaps founded in 720 B.C. The Achaeans also founded Croton. Corinth was the mother city for Syracuse. The territory in Italy colonized by the Greeks was known as Magna Graecia (Great Greece). Greeks also settled colonies northward up to the Black (or Euxine) Sea.

Greeks set up colonies for many reasons, including trade and to provide land for the landless. They held close ties to the mother city.

Early Athens had the household or oikos as its basic unit. There were also progressively larger groups, genos, phratry, and tribe. Three phratries formed a tribe (or phylai) headed by a tribal king. The earliest known function of the tribes was military. They were corporate bodies with their own priests and officials, as well as military and administrative units. The original four tribes in Athens were the

1. Geleontes
2. Hopletes
3. Argadeis
4. Aegicoreis

Archaic Greece
Classical Greece

Originally kings ruled the Greek states, but as they urbanized, the kings were replaced by a rule by the nobles, an oligarchy. In Sparta, the kings remained, possibly because they didn't have too much power since the power was split in 2, but elsewhere the kings were replaced.

Land Shortage was among the precipitating factors leading to the rise of democracy in Athens. So was the rise of the non-equestrian army. Cylon and Draco helped create a uniform law code for all Athenians that furthered the progress to democracy. Then came the poet politician Solon, who set up a constitution, followed by Cleisthenes, who had to iron out the problems Solon left behind, and in the process increased from 4 to 10 the number of tribes.

Philip II (382 - 336 B.C.) with his son Alexander the Great conquered the Greeks and expanded the empire, taking Thrace, Thebes, Syria, Phoenicia, Mesopotamia, Assyria, Egypt, and on to the Punjab, in northern India. Alexander founded possibly more than 70 cities throughout the Mediterranean region and east to India, spreading trade and the culture of the Greeks wherever he went.