Ancient Greece: an easy and complete summary of the history and civilization of ancient Greece, the cradle of western civilization.
Ancient Greece - the origins
In the eleventh century B.C., after the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, Greece entered a phase of economic and cultural decline, evidenced by demographic contraction and the abandonment of writing.
For this reason, historians have defined the period between the 11th and 9th centuries B.C. as "dark centuries" or "Hellenic Middle Ages".
Between the 11th and 10th centuries B.C. the first Greek colonization took place: the Dorians, an original people from Macedonia and Illyria, pushed groups of Aeolians and Ions to the western coasts of Asia Minor (today Turkey). These gave rise to a long series of cities, such as Miletus, Ephesus and Halicarnassus; the practice of writing again spread, through a new alphabet derived from the Phoenician alphabet, and the Greek cities gave themselves the first written laws.
Ancient Greece - the Archaic Age and the birth of the pólis
From the 8th century B.C. a new phase of Greek history began, conventionally defined as the Archaic Age, characterized by a decisive resumption of economic activities and trade.
In this period the pólis was born. The pólis was a city-state in which the citizens participated in political life. In reality, the right to vote is reserved only for male individuals able to pay for an armament (and thus be part of the army), but it represents a radical change from the great civilizations of the Near East, where the individual is considered only a subject subject subject to the will of an absolute ruler. For more information, read La pólis greca, characteristics of the Greek city.
Ancient Greece - the second colonization
During the Archaic Age, the demographic increase and the consequent need for new land to cultivate led to a second colonization, involving southern Italy, renamed by the colonizers Magna Graecia (or "Great Greece").
Meanwhile, on all the other poleis, the aristocratic Sparta and the democratic Athens are affirmed (for an in-depth study of the laws Sparta and Athens in comparison).
Ancient Greece - the Persian Wars
Greece will never constitute a unitary state; however, despite the heated rivalries, the Greeks do not go so far as to question their belonging to a common civilization, by virtue of which they consider themselves superior to the foreign peoples with whom they come into contact, called barbarians (an onomatopoeic term that literally means "stammering", since they speak a foreign language and therefore incomprehensible).
The awareness of a common identity emerges clearly on the occasion of the Persian Wars, fought between 490 and 479 B.C. against the vast and powerful Persian Empire (for an in-depth analysis read the Persian Wars - Greeks against Persians, easy summary). At the end of the fifth century B.C. ends the Archaic Age and opens the Classical Age (V-IV century B.C).
Ancient Greece - the hegemony of Athens and the age of Pericles
After the victory over the Persians, Sparta and Athens create two opposing systems of alliance: on the one hand the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta; on the other hand the League of theio-actics, led by Athens.
In Athens, the figure of Pericles emerges, who will dominate the scene for about thirty years (from 461 to 429 B.C). For more information read Pericles and the Golden Age of Athens.
Ancient Greece - culture in the Classical Age
Pericles makes Athens the economic, political and cultural capital of Greece. Under his rule, philosophers such as Socrates, Anaxagoras and Protagoras gather in Athens; tragedians such as Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and the playwright Aristophanes.
Pericles promotes a great program of public building, which has its culmination and its masterpiece in the Parthenon, the great temple dedicated to Athena erected on the acropolis, built by architects Ictino and Callicrate and decorated by the sculptor Phidias.
Classical culture did not end with the death of Pericles (429 B.C.), but rather reached its peak later with philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, the doctor Hippocrates, the historian Xenophon.