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Greece• Indo-European people
• Balkan Peninsula and Aegean Sea
• Commerce/Manufacturing through empire
• Agriculture basis
Minoan Civilization
• 2800- 1450 BCE Crete• Sailed to southern
Greece, Egypt for trade• Ruled by king• Evidence of archives,
art, opulent buildings• Destroyed by tidal way
or invasion– Historians unsure
Mycenae
• 1600-1100 BCE 1st Greek state
• Alliance of powerful monarchies living within stone walls
• Warrior culture; established commercial network
• King to remember- Agamemnon
• Knowledge comes from Homer’s poetry
• Collapse b/c fight each other, earthquake
Persian Wars
• To punish the Athenians and discourage future interference, Darius attacked Athens in 490
• The Athenians repelled the invasion– Marathon
Battle of Marathon• The Persians landed
at the Plains of Marathon on September 9, 490
• For eight days, the two armies faced each other
• On the ninth day, the Persians started to advance, forcing Miltiades, the commander in chief of the Athenian army, to deploy his army of 10,000 Athenians and 1,000 Plataeans for battle
Battle of Marathon• The Athenians
surrounded the Persians in a double envelopment– Although the
Athenians were outnumbered, their spears were superior to the Persians’ bows and short lances
• The Persians fled to their ships
• Persians lost 6,400 men and seven ships
• Athenians lost 192
Battle of Marathon• However, Miltiades realized that the
Persian fleet could sail and attack the undefended city of Athens
• According to legend, he called upon Phidippides to run to Athens to tell them of the victory and warn them of the approaching Persian ships
• Phidippides ran the 26 miles from Marathon to Athens in about three hours, successfully warning the Athenians who repelled the Persian invasion
• Phidippides was exhausted from the fight at Marathon and the 26 mile run and died upon announcing the warning
Miltiades
Xerxes
• Darius’s successor Xerxes tried to avenge the Persian losses by launching another attack in 480– Thermopylae
Thermopylae
• The Greeks sent an allied army under the Spartan king Leonidas to Thermopylae, a narrow mountain pass in northeastern Greece
• The point was to stall the Persians long enough that the city states could prepare for later major battles after the Persians broke through
Persians attempting to force the pass at Thermopylae
Thermopylae
• Twice the Greeks repelled the Persians• Then Ephialtes, a local farmer, traitorously led
a force of Persian infantry through a mountain passage and the next morning they appeared behind the Greek lines
• Leonidas ordered the rest of the army to withdraw and held the passage with just 300 Spartans
• As true Spartans, they chose death over retreat
• All died but they did hold off the Persians long enough to ensure the safe withdrawal of the rest of the Greek army.
Leonidas
Thermopylae
• “Stranger, go tell the Spartans that we lie here in obedience to their laws.”– (Inscription carved
on the tomb of Leonidas’s Three Hundred)
Leonidas at Thermopylae by David
After Thermopylae
• The Persians captured and burned Athens but were defeated by the Athenian navy at Salamis
• In 479 the Persians were defeated at Plataea and forced back to Anatolia
Delian League
• After the Persian threat subsided, the Greek poleis had conflicts among themselves
• The poleis formed an alliance called the Delian League– Athens supplied most of the military force and the other poleis
provided financial support– Sparta did not join the league– In the absence of the Persian threat, eventually the other poleis
came to resent financing Athens’s bureaucracy and construction projects
• The resulting tensions led to the Peloponnesian War (431-404) in which the poleis divided up into two sides led by Athens and Sparta
The Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.)
• The war went back and forth until 404 when the Spartans and their allies forced Athens to surrender
• Conflicts continued however and the world of the poleis steadily lost power– Alexander the Great is
going to step into this power vacuum (next lesson)
Philip II
• Ruled Macedonia from 359-336 B.C. and transformed it into a powerful military machine
• Moved into northern Greece and met little resistance due to residual effects of Peloponnesian War– By 338 he had Greece under
his control
Alexander the Great
• Philip intended to use Greece as a launching pad to invade Persia, but he was assassinated before he could begin his plan
• Instead the invasion of Persia would be left for Philip’s son Alexander who was just 20 when Philip was assassinated– “Alexander inherited from his father the most perfectly
organized, trained, and equipped army of ancient times.”
• J.F.C. Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great
Conquests of Alexander
• Ionia and Anatolia 333• Syria, Palestine, Egypt 332• Mesopotamia 331• Persepolis 331• King of Persia 330• India 327• Returns to Susa 324• Dies (age 33) 323
Warfare in the Age of Alexander
• Phalanx: A formation of infantry carrying overlapping shields and long spears, developed by Philip II and used by Alexander the Great
Warfare in the Age of Alexander
• Hoplite – The main melee
warrior of the Macedonian army.
– Worked mainly in the tight phalanx formation, creating impregnable lines that often left the enemy demoralized.
Warfare in the Age of Alexander
• Sieges involved the surrounding and blockading of a town or fortress by an army trying to capture it.
• A variety of weapons were built to hurl projectiles over city walls, scale or batter the walls, and transport soldiers over them.
Tyre
• “… if Alexander deserves permanent commemoration as a general, then it is above all in his capacity as a besieger, and of all his sieges Tyre was his masterpiece.”– Paul Cartledge, Alexander the Great, 147
After Gaugamela
• Darius’s escape frustrated Alexander because it prevented him from full claim to being king of Persia
• Eventually Darius’s followers assassinated him
• As Alexander became king of Persia and continued to advance east, he took on an increasingly Eastern attitude
The End of the Empire
"The Marriage of Alexander the Great
and Roxanna" by Ishmail Parbury
• Alexander– Married Roxanna and had his men
also intermarry– Adopted Eastern dress and habits– Publicly insisted upon his descent
from the gods– Began giving key positions to
Persians
• The Macedonians were tired of campaigning and resented the changes in Alexander’s behavior and become mutinous
• Alexander died in June 323, perhaps as a result of poisoning
After Alexander• After Alexander died,
his generals jockeyed for power and by 275 they had divided up his kingdom into three large states– Antigonus took
Greece and Macedon
– Ptolemy took Egypt– Seleuces took the
former Achaemenid empire
• The period of Alexander and his successors is called the Hellenistic period to reflect the broad influence of Greek culture beyond Greece’s borders