A BRIEF HISTORY OF GREECE

Greeks call themselves Hellenes, and Greece Hellas; our term "Greece" derives
from their Roman conquerors. From the eighth century BC, colonization had taken
Greek-speakers all over the Mediterranean, from the Black Sea, Turkey, to North
Africa, Italy France and Spain, like "frogs around a pond" (Plato). By the fifth century
BC Classical Greeks had organized themselves into independent citizen states
(known as polis, from which comes our word "political") such as Athens, Sparta,
Ephesus, Byzantine and Marseilles. Each polis had its own laws, dialect, currency
and government. Strongly independent, they fought among themselves for
domination, and internally over different styles of constitution (e.g., tyranny,
democracy, oligarchy). In the fourth century BC, Macedon in the north, under its king
Philip II and his son Alexander the Great, took brief control, but on the death of
Alexander in 323 BC, the mainland split into a series of leagues under Macedonian
governors. Radical, direct democracy died at that moment, never to be restored.

The land-mass of Hellas became part of the Roman Empire in the second
century BC, and Greek poleis in Turkey and elsewhere followed. The leagues
and poleis continued to run themselves, but were now under close Roman
supervision. Roman expansion east was made easier by the conquests of Alexander
the Great, who introduced Greek polis style culture, administration and urban living,
as far as Afghanistan.

The Greek language, however, spread throughout the Mediterranean. Greek

was heard in Rome probably more often than Latin. The gospel writers and St Paul
knew perfectly well that they would have to write in Greek if they wanted their
message to spread. Romans lapped up Greek culture literature, history,
philosophy and architecture and by making Greek a central feature of their
education system ensured that Greek achievement would be handed on to us today.

By the fourth century AD it was clear that the Roman Empire was becoming too
large to be centrally controlled. In 324 the Roman emperor Constantine in effect split
the empire into two halves, the eastern half centered on Greek Byzantium, renamed
Constantinople (now Istanbul). When the Western Roman Empire collapsed under
the impact of Germanic invasions in the fifth century, Constantinople became the
new center of the Roman Empire, known as the Byzantine Empire.

The collapse of the western empire led to some turmoil in the east, but the
Byzantines gradually regained control over Greece until the treacherous attack on
Constantinople in 1204 by the Frankish crusaders (western Europeans). The Franks
split up Greece, but fighting among themselves and against Serbs, Albanians and
Turks left them fatally weakened. On 29 May 1453 Constantinople fell to the
Ottoman branch of the Turkish invaders, who had been mopping up the remaining
territories of the old Byzantine Empire, and for nearly 400 years Greece was under
Ottoman control.
 By the 19th century, the empire was economically on its last legs, and on 25
March 1821, Greece declared its independence. When France, Britain and Russia
threatened to intervene against the Turks, the Turks capitulated. Greece used
various means to extend its territory into the Ionian Islands, Thessaly, Macedon,
Crete and the Aegean a disastrous advance into Turkey (1919-22) failed and it
reached its present configuration in 1947.

German occupation of Greece in the second world war ended in 1944, but a
violent and complicated civil war at once broke out between (broadly) communists
and western-backed government forces (1944-49), resulting in a Greek government
inclined to the west, but with significant anti-western sentiment still in force.

In 1967 a military junta ("the colonels") overthrew the government and ended
the monarchy. In 1974, the regime imploded, and since 1975 Greece has been a
democratic republic. It joined the EU in 1981 and adopted the euro in 2001.
Tensions with Turkey remain.

Ancient Greece Timeline

2900 BC- 2900-2000 BC: The Bronze Age when Early Aegean cultures start to emerge

2500 BC- The great Minoan civilization