Overview

About three centuries after the Bronze Age Age collapse of the Mycenaean civilisation, Greece moved towards being organised into city-states (known as polis). Although each of the city states varied, they shared a number of characteristics, such as a notion of citizenship, an agora (an open marketplace and assembly area), public trials and published legal codes. 

In 776BC the first athletic festival known as the Olympic Games were held in the state of Elis and ran every four years. During this all Greeks dropped their weapons and rivalry and gathered together to compete in the these games which were dedicated by Hercules to their chief god Zeus.

At the turn of the 8th century an early form of writing was replaced by adopting the Phoenician alphabet into the Greek alphabet we know today. Not content to remain in their homeland many Greek city states established overseas colonies. Many hundreds of sites were set up around the Mediterranean and Black Seas, thus spreading the Greek culture. 

The polis fostered a tradition of militarism for self defence and expansion. Their armies were made up of hoplites - male volunteer citizens who fought in a close packed mass of spears and shields called a phalanx. Victory in battle relied on discipline and trust in one’s comrades. There were two major polis - Athens and Sparta.

Athens was a rich and confident city located in the state of Attica in south eastern Greece and shaped western civilisation in a big way. The culture produced by Athens in the 400s BC - philosophy, theatre, architecture and sculpture - provides a cornerstone of our modern society. 

Athens is built on an  advantageous site that helped make the city great. It lies amid the region‘s  largest plain, where grain and olives grew in historical times. The largest attraction is the 300 foot tall rock formed hill called the acropolis on where the Parthenon was later built. 

This seafaring city state was still in the hands of aristocrats when Solon was elected archon in 594BC. With a mandate to defuse the mounting tensions between the haves and have-nots, he declared all Athenians equal by law. He abolished inherited privileges and reconstituted the political power along classes based on wealth that were allowed to elect magistrates and vote. As such Athens was the birthplace of Democracy (demokratia) - power by the people. 

In the Peloponnese, Sparta - which was founded by Dorian invaders from the north - was a very different kind of city-state. The polis emerged in the tenth century BC, and rose to become a power by around 650BC. Unlike other polis it didn’t have a democratic assembly but rather two hereditary kings. 

Sparta was highly militarised and as such all citizens were expected to bear arms. At age seven free citizens began a strict regime of military training (agoge) and were recruited into the army by twenty years of age. Spartan women were also given military training as well and led the household while the men were on campaign. 

Despite living in a fertile region the Spartans did not farm themselves but rather forced the neighbouring population to labour for them. These people were known as helots were not allowed to leave their land. By the sixth century BC there were ten times as many helots as there were Spartan citizens. To keep order a secret police called the Crypteia was set up to monitor the helots and ensure there were no uprisings.

Sparked by a revolt of the colonies in Asia Minor, Persia was intent on occupying and destroying Greece. King Darius spent five years suppressing the revolt and emerged hellbent on revenge. A 25,000 strong army reached Attica in 490BC, but suffered a humiliating defeat when outmanoeuvred by the Athenian force of 10,000 men at Marathon.

Darius died in 485BC, and his son Xerxes was left to fulfil his father’s ambition on conquering Greece. In 480BC Xerxes gathered men from every corner of the the Persian empire and launched a coordinated invasion by army and navy, the likes the world had never seen. Some 30 city states met in central Greece and agreed on a combined military force under Spartan command, with the strategy provided by the Athenian leader Themistocles.

The Spartan king Leonidas led a selection of his best 300 hoplites to the pass of Thermopylae, which was the main passage to central Greece from the north. Although the men were greatly outnumbered they managed to hold the pass for many days, until the traitor Efialtes showed the enemy a way around the mountains. Forced to retreat, Leonidas’ elite Spartan troops fought to the death. This gave the Greek force in the south time to gather and provide for an adequate defence. 

With the Persian army on the march, Themistocles ordered his people to flee Athens, the women and children to the island of Salamis, and his men to sea with the Athenian fleet. By skilfully manoeuvring the Greek naval power trapped the Persian ships at Salamis, where they became easy picking fro the Greek vessels. Xerxes retreated, and returned to Persia in disgust, leaving his general Mardonius to subdue Greece. Within a year, under the Spartan general Pausanias, the Greeks managed to obliterate the remaining Persian army at the battle of Plataea.

After the defeat of Persia, the disciplined Spartans retreated home and formed the Peloponnesian League. Athens however basked in its role as liberator and founded the Delian League, so called because the treasury was on the sacred Aegean island of Delos. When Pericles became leader of Athens in 461BC he moved the money to Athens and used it to begin a building programme in which the Parthenon was built on the acropolis and a long fortified walls were erected to link it to the port of Piraeus.

Tensions between the two alliances led to the First Peloponnesian War (460-445BC).  Athens knew it could defeat Sparta on land so it abandoned Attica and withdrew behind its walls, opting to rely on its navy to put pressure on Sparta by blocking the Peloponnese. This blockade eventually began to hurt and the cities reached an uneasy truce.

A second major conflict erupted in 431BC. The Spartans advanced through the countryside around Athens but were unable to breach the city’s walls. The war carried on until 404BC when Sparta (which had allied with its former rival Persia) defeated the Athenian fleet and forced it to surrender. This was a death blow to Athens’ political and economic dominance in the region, and made Sparta the greatest force in Greece. However, Sparta was unable to enforce stability in the region, and wars between city-states became more commonplace. This led to a power vacuum which would be filled by the rise of Macedon in the north.

The Greeks had long considered Macedonians to be barbarians. The man who turned Macedonia into a force to be reckoned with was Phillip II, who ascended to the throne in 359BC. Within a year he had marched into Greece and defeated a combined army of Athenian and Thebans at the Battle of Khaironeia. He then called together all the city states (except Sparta) at Corinth and persuaded them to swear alliance to Macedonia by promising a campaign against Persia. However Phillip’s ambition to invade Persia never materialised, and in 336BC he was assassinated by a Macedonian noble. His son Alexander thus became king of Greece at 20 years of  age.

Alexander wasted no time in crushing rebellions within Greece. After restoring order on the mainland he then turned his attention on the Persian Empire and  marched an army of 40,000 men into Asia Minor in 334BC. After a few bloody battles, most notably at Issus, he successfully conquered Syria, Palestine and Egypt - where he was proclaimed pharaoh and founded the city of Alexandria. He then started hunting down king Darius III, defeating his army in 331BC. Alexander continued east into what is now Uzbekistan, Bactria and northern India. His ambition was to conquer the known world,  but his soldiers grew weary and in 324BC forced him to return to Mesopotamia, where he died in Babylon, heirless at the age of 33.