1.
Peloponnesian War
The Peloponnesian War was an ancient Greek war fought by Athens and its empire against the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases and this period of the war was concluded in 421 BC, with the signing of the Peace of Nicias. That treaty, was undermined by renewed fighting in the Peloponnese. In 415 BC, Athens dispatched an expeditionary force to attack Syracuse in Sicily. This ushered in the phase of the war, generally referred to either as the Decelean War. The destruction of Athens fleet at Aegospotami effectively ended the war and Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and all its citizens should be enslaved, but Sparta refused. The Peloponnesian War reshaped the ancient Greek world, the economic costs of the war were felt all across Greece, poverty became widespread in the Peloponnese, while Athens found itself completely devastated, and never regained its pre-war prosperity. Greek warfare, originally a limited and formalized form of conflict, was transformed into a struggle between city-states, complete with atrocities on a large scale.
Indeed, the fifty years of Greek history that preceded the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War had been marked by the development of Athens as a major power in the Mediterranean world. The city proceeded to conquer all of Greece except for Sparta and its allies, by the middle of the century, the Persians had been driven from the Aegean and forced to cede control of a vast range of territories to Athens. This tribute was used to support a fleet and, after the middle of the century, to fund massive public works programs in Athens. According to Thucydides, although the Spartans took no action at this time, conflict between the states flared up again in 465 BC, when a helot revolt broke out in Sparta. The Spartans summoned forces from all of their allies, including Athens, Athens sent out a sizable contingent, but upon its arrival, this force was dismissed by the Spartans, while those of all the other allies were permitted to remain. According to Thucydides, the Spartans acted in this way out of fear that the Athenians would switch sides and support the helots, the offended Athenians repudiated their alliance with Sparta.
When the rebellious helots were finally forced to surrender and permitted to evacuate the country, a fifteen-year conflict, commonly known as the First Peloponnesian War, ensued, in which Athens fought intermittently against Sparta, Aegina, and a number of other states. The war was ended by the Thirty Years Peace, signed in the winter of 446/5 BC. The Thirty Years Peace was first tested in 440 BC, when Athens powerful ally Samos rebelled from its alliance with Athens, the rebels quickly secured the support of a Persian satrap, and Athens found itself facing the prospect of revolts throughout the empire. The Spartans, whose intervention would have been the trigger for a war to determine the fate of the empire
2.
Byzantine Empire
It survived the fragmentation and fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and continued to exist for an additional thousand years until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. During most of its existence, the empire was the most powerful economic, several signal events from the 4th to 6th centuries mark the period of transition during which the Roman Empires Greek East and Latin West divided. Constantine I reorganised the empire, made Constantinople the new capital, under Theodosius I, Christianity became the Empires official state religion and other religious practices were proscribed. Finally, under the reign of Heraclius, the Empires military, the borders of the Empire evolved significantly over its existence, as it went through several cycles of decline and recovery. During the reign of Maurice, the Empires eastern frontier was expanded, in a matter of years the Empire lost its richest provinces and Syria, to the Arabs. This battle opened the way for the Turks to settle in Anatolia, the Empire recovered again during the Komnenian restoration, such that by the 12th century Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest European city.
Despite the eventual recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire remained only one of several small states in the area for the final two centuries of its existence. Its remaining territories were annexed by the Ottomans over the 15th century. The Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 finally ended the Byzantine Empire, the term comes from Byzantium, the name of the city of Constantinople before it became Constantines capital. This older name of the city would rarely be used from this point onward except in historical or poetic contexts. The publication in 1648 of the Byzantine du Louvre, and in 1680 of Du Canges Historia Byzantina further popularised the use of Byzantine among French authors, however, it was not until the mid-19th century that the term came into general use in the Western world. The Byzantine Empire was known to its inhabitants as the Roman Empire, the Empire of the Romans, the Roman Republic, and as Rhōmais. The inhabitants called themselves Romaioi and Graikoi, and even as late as the 19th century Greeks typically referred to modern Greek as Romaika and Graikika.
The authority of the Byzantine emperor as the legitimate Roman emperor was challenged by the coronation of Charlemagne as Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III in the year 800. No such distinction existed in the Islamic and Slavic worlds, where the Empire was more seen as the continuation of the Roman Empire. In the Islamic world, the Roman Empire was known primarily as Rûm, the Roman army succeeded in conquering many territories covering the entire Mediterranean region and coastal regions in southwestern Europe and north Africa. These territories were home to different cultural groups, both urban populations and rural populations. The West suffered heavily from the instability of the 3rd century AD
3.
Battle of Cyzicus
The naval Battle of Cyzicus took place in 410 BC during the Peloponnesian War. In the battle, an Athenian fleet commanded by Alcibiades, the victory allowed Athens to recover control over a number of cities in the Hellespont over the next year. In the wake of their defeat, the Spartans made a peace offer, the Athenians, were unable to follow through on their victory, since the depletion of the Athenian treasury precluded any major operations. Thus, by the spring of 410 BC, Mindarus had built a fleet of eighty ships and this fleet, along with a force of land troops under Chaereas, set out to the Hellespont to challenge Mindarus. The Athenian force entered the Hellespont, passing the Spartan base at Abydos by night so as to conceal their numbers, established a base on the island of Proconnesus, the next day, they disembarked Chaereass force near Cyzicus. The Athenian fleet divided, with 20 ships under Alcibiades advancing towards Cyzicus while two divisions under Thrasybulus and Theramenes lurked behind.
Mindarus, seeing an opportunity to attack what appeared to be an inferior force. Alcibiadess force fled, and Mindaruss ships gave chase, when both forces had gotten well out from the harbor, Alcibiades turned to face Mindarus, and Thrasybulus and Theramenes appeared with their forces to cut off his retreat. Mindarus, seeing the trap, fled in the one direction, towards a beach south of the city. The Spartan fleet suffered losses in the flight, and reached the shore with the Athenians right behind them, alcibiadess troops, leading the Athenian pursuit and attempted to pull the Spartan ships back out to sea with grappling hooks. The Persian troops under Pharnabazus, entered the fighting on the shore and began to drive the Athenians, seeing this, Thrasybulus landed his force as a diversion and ordered Theramenes to combine his troops with those of Chaereas and join the battle. All the Spartan ships were captured save for those of the Syracusan allies, in the wake of this dramatic victory, the Athenians had full control of the waters of the Hellespont.
The next day, they took Cyzicus, which surrendered without a fight, an intercepted letter from the Spartan troops stranded near Cyzicus reads “The ships are gone. Demoralized by the devastation of their fleet, the Spartans sent an embassy to Athens seeking to make peace, at Athens, the oligarchic government that had ruled since 411 gave way to a restored democracy within a few months of the battle. An expeditionary force under Thrasyllus was prepared to join the forces in the Hellespont, this was a result of financial inability, even after the victory, the Athenian treasury was hard pressed to support large-scale offensive operations. Meanwhile, the Spartans, with Persian funding, quickly rebuilt their fleet, Athens would win only one more naval battle in the war, at Arginusae, and their defeat at Aegospotami in 405 BC would bring the war to a close. The Peloponnesian War ISBN 0-670-03211-5 Xenophon
4.
Pelasgians
The name Pelasgians was used by classical Greek writers to either refer to populations that were the ancestors of the Greeks, or to signify all pre-classical indigenes of Greece. During the classical period, enclaves under that name survived in several locations of mainland Greece, populations identified as Pelasgian spoke a language or languages that at the time Greeks identified as barbaric, though some ancient writers nonetheless described the Pelasgians as Greeks. A tradition survived that large parts of Greece had once been Pelasgian before being Hellenized and these parts fell largely, though far from exclusively, within the territory which by the 5th century BC was inhabited by those speakers of ancient Greek who were identified as Ionians and Aeolians. Much like all aspects of the Pelasgians, their ethnonym is of extremely uncertain provenance. Michel Sakellariou collects fifteen different etymologies proposed for it by philologists and linguists during the last 200 years, an ancient etymology based on mere similarity of sounds linked pelasgos to pelargos and postulates that the Pelasgians were migrants like storks, possibly from Egypt, where they nest.
Aristophanes deals effectively with this etymology in his comedy The Birds, julius Pokorny derives Pelasgoi from *pelag-skoi, specifically Inhabitants of the Thessalian plain. He details a previous derivation, which appears in English at least as early as William Gladstones Studies on Homer, if the Pelasgians were not Indo-Europeans, the name in this derivation must have been assigned by the Hellenes. Ernest Klein argued that the ancient Greek word for sea and the Doric word plagos, side shared the same root, *plāk-, and that *pelag-skoi therefore meant the sea men, where the sea is flat. This could be connected to the maritime marauders referred to as the Sea People in Egyptian records, subsequent scholarship shows that the connection between the two roots is phonetically impossible. Literary analysis has been going on since classical Greece, when the writers of those times read previous works on the subject, no definitive answers were ever forthcoming by this method, it rather served to better define the problems.
The method perhaps reached a peak in the Victorian era when new methods of systematic comparison began to be applied in philology, typical of the era is the long and detailed study of William Ewart Gladstone, who among his many talents was a trained classicist. Until further ancient texts come to light, advances on the subject cannot be made, the most likely source of progress regarding the Pelasgians continues to be archaeology and related sciences. The Pelasgians first appear in the poems of Homer, those who are stated to be Pelasgians in the Iliad are among the allies of Troy. In the section known as the Catalogue of Trojans, they are mentioned between mentions of the Hellespontine cities and the Thracians of south-eastern Europe, Homer calls their town or district Larisa and characterises it as fertile, and its inhabitants as celebrated for their spearsmanship. He records their chiefs as Hippothous and Pylaeus, sons of Lethus son of Teutamus, thus giving all of them names that were Greek or so thoroughly Hellenized that any foreign element has been effaced.
In the Odyssey, affecting to be Cretan himself, instances Pelasgians among the tribes in the ninety cities of Crete, last on his list, Homer distinguishes them from other ethnicities on the island, Cretans proper, Cydonians and noble Pelasgians. The Iliad refers to Pelasgic Argos, which is most likely to be the plain of Thessaly, and to Pelasgic Zeus, living in and ruling over Dodona, which must be the oracular one in Epirus. However, neither passage mentions actual Pelasgians, Myrmidons and Achaeans specifically inhabit Thessaly and they all fought on the Greek side
5.
Greeks
The Greeks or Hellenes are an ethnic group native to Greece, southern Albania, Sicily, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. They form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world, many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization. The cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens, Alexandria, most ethnic Greeks live nowadays within the borders of the modern Greek state and Cyprus. The Greek genocide and population exchange between Greece and Turkey nearly ended the three millennia-old Greek presence in Asia Minor, other longstanding Greek populations can be found from southern Italy to the Caucasus and southern Russia and Ukraine and in the Greek diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, most Greeks are officially registered as members of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Greeks speak the Greek language, which forms its own unique branch within the Indo-European family of languages, the Hellenic.
They are part of a group of ethnicities, described by Anthony D. Smith as an archetypal diaspora people. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age, the Mycenaeans quickly penetrated the Aegean Sea and, by the 15th century BC, had reached Rhodes, Crete and the shores of Asia Minor. Around 1200 BC, the Dorians, another Greek-speaking people, followed from Epirus, the Dorian invasion was followed by a poorly attested period of migrations, appropriately called the Greek Dark Ages, but by 800 BC the landscape of Archaic and Classical Greece was discernible. The Greeks of classical antiquity idealized their Mycenaean ancestors and the Mycenaean period as an era of heroes, closeness of the gods. The Homeric Epics were especially and generally accepted as part of the Greek past, as part of the Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of antiquity. The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is linked to the development of Pan-Hellenism in the 8th century BC, the works of Homer and Hesiod were written in the 8th century BC, becoming the basis of the national religion, ethos and mythology.
The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was established in this period, the classical period of Greek civilization covers a time spanning from the early 5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BC. It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in eras, the Peloponnesian War, the large scale civil war between the two most powerful Greek city-states Athens and Sparta and their allies, left both greatly weakened. Many Greeks settled in Hellenistic cities like Alexandria and Seleucia, two thousand years later, there are still communities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, like the Kalash, who claim to be descended from Greek settlers. The Hellenistic civilization was the period of Greek civilization, the beginnings of which are usually placed at Alexanders death. This Hellenistic age, so called because it saw the partial Hellenization of many non-Greek cultures and this age saw the Greeks move towards larger cities and a reduction in the importance of the city-state.
These larger cities were parts of the still larger Kingdoms of the Diadochi, however, remained aware of their past, chiefly through the study of the works of Homer and the classical authors. An important factor in maintaining Greek identity was contact with barbarian peoples and this led to a strong desire among Greeks to organize the transmission of the Hellenic paideia to the next generation
6.
Archaic Greece
According to Anthony Snodgrass, the Archaic period in ancient Greece was bounded by two revolutions in the Greek world. The Archaic period saw developments in Greek politics, international relations, warfare and it laid the groundwork for the Classical period, both politically and culturally. The word archaic derives from the Greek word archaios, which means old and it refers to the period in ancient Greek history before the classical. The Archaic period was considered to have been less important and historically interesting than the classical period. More recently, Archaic Greece has come to be studied for its own achievements, with this reassessment of the significance of the Archaic period, some scholars have objected to the term archaic, due to its connotations in English of being primitive and outdated. No term which has suggested to replace it has gained widespread currency, however. Much of our evidence about the period of ancient Greece comes from written histories. By contrast, we have no evidence from the Archaic period.
We have written accounts of life in the period in the form of poetry, and epigraphical evidence, including parts of law codes, inscriptions on votive offerings, none of this evidence is in the quantity for which we have it in the classical period. What is lacking in evidence, however, is made up for in the rich archaeological evidence from the Archaic Greek world. Indeed, where much of our knowledge of classical Greek art comes from Roman copies, other sources for the period are the traditions recorded by Greek writers such as Herodotus. However, these traditions are not part of any form of history as we would recognise it today, Herodotus does not even record any dates before 480 BC. Politically, the Archaic period saw the development of the polis as the predominant unit of political organisation, many cities throughout Greece came under the rule of autocratic leaders, called tyrants. The period saw the development of law and systems of communal decision-making, with the earliest evidence for law codes, by the end of the Archaic period, both the Athenian and Spartan constitutions seem to have developed into their classical forms.
The Archaic period saw significant urbanisation, and the development of the concept of the polis as it was used in classical Greece. The urbanisation process in Archaic Greece known as synoecism – the amalgamation of small settlements into a single urban centre – took place in much of Greece in the eighth century BC. Both Athens and Argos, for instance, began to coalesce into single settlements around the end of that century and these two factors created a need for a new form of political organisation, as the political systems in place at the beginning of the Archaic period quickly became unworkable. Though in the part of the classical period the city of Athens was both culturally and politically dominant, it was not until the late sixth century that it became a leading power in Greece
7.
Miletus
Miletus was an ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in ancient Caria. Its ruins are located near the village of Balat in Aydın Province. Before the Persian invasion in the middle of the 6th century BC, Miletus greatest wealth and splendor was reached during the Hellenistic era and Roman times. Evidence of first settlement at the site has been inaccessible by the rise of sea level. The first available evidence is of the Neolithic, in the early and middle Bronze age the settlement came under Minoan influence. Legend has it that an influx of Cretans occurred displacing the indigenous Leleges, the site was renamed Miletus after a place in Crete. The Late Bronze Age, 13th century BC, saw the arrival of Luwian language speakers from south central Anatolia calling themselves the Carians, in that century other Greeks arrived. The city at that time rebelled against the Hittite Empire, after the fall of that empire the city was destroyed in the 12th century BC and starting about 1000 BC was resettled extensively by the Ionian Greeks.
Legend offers an Ionian foundation event sponsored by a founder named Neleus from the Peloponnesus, the Greek Dark Ages were a time of Ionian settlement and consolidation in an alliance called the Ionian League. The Archaic Period of Greece began with a sudden and brilliant flash of art, Miletus is the birthplace of the Hagia Sophias architect Isidore of Miletus and Thales, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher in c.624 BC. The ruins appear on maps at 37°31. 8N 27°16. 7E, about 3 km north of Balat and 3 km east of Batıköy in Aydın Province. In antiquity the city possessed a harbour at the entry of a large bay. The harbour of Miletus was additionally protected by the small island of Lade. Over the centuries the gulf silted up with alluvium carried by the Meander River, there is a Great Harbour Monument where, according to the New Testament account, the apostle Paul stopped on his way back to Jerusalem by boat. He met the Ephesian Elders and headed out to the beach to bid farewell, recorded in the book of Acts 20.
During the Pleistocene epoch the Miletus region was submerged in the Aegean Sea and it subsequently emerged slowly, the sea reaching a low level of about 130 meters below present level at about 18,000 BP. The site of Miletus was part of the mainland, a gradual rise brought a level of about 1.75 meters below present at about 5500 BP, creating several karst block islands of limestone, the location of the first settlements at Miletus. At about 1500 BC the karst shifted due to small crustal movements, since the sea has risen 1.75 m but the peninsula has been surrounded by sediment from the Maeander river and is now land-locked
8.
Mysia
Mysia was a region in the northwest of ancient Asia Minor or Anatolia. It was located on the south coast of the Sea of Marmara and it was bounded by Bithynia on the east, Phrygia on the southeast, Lydia on the south, Aeolis on the southwest, Troad on the west and by the Propontis on the north. In ancient times it was inhabited by the Mysians, Aeolian Greeks, the precise limits of Mysia are difficult to assign. The Phrygian frontier was fluctuating, while in the northwest the Troad was only included in Mysia. The northern portion was known as Lesser Phrygia or Phrygia Minor, Mysia was in times known as Phrygia Hellespontica or Phrygia Epictetus, so named by the Attalids when they annexed the region to the Kingdom of Pergamon. The Caïcus in the rises in Temnus, and from thence flows westward to the Aegean Sea. In the northern portion of the province are two lakes, Artynia or Apolloniatis and Aphnitis, which discharge their waters into the Macestus from the east and west respectively. The most important cities were Pergamon in the valley of the Caïcus, further south, on the Eleatic Gulf, were Elaea and Cyme.
A minor episode in the Trojan War cycle in Greek mythology has the Greek fleet land at Mysia, Achilles wounds their king, after he slays a Greek, Telephus pleads with Achilles to heal the wound. This coastal region ruled by Telephus is alternatively named Teuthrania in Greek mythology, in the Iliad, Homer represents the Mysians as allies of Troy, with the Mysian forces led by Ennomus and Chromius, sons of Arsinous. Homeric Mysia appears to have much smaller in extent than historical Mysia. Homer does not mention any cities or landmarks in Mysia, and it is not clear exactly where Homeric Mysia was situated, there are a number of Mysian inscriptions in a dialect of the Phrygian language, in a variant of the Phrygian alphabet. There are a number of references to a Lutescan language indigenous to Mysia in Aeolic Greek sources. According to the Acts of the Apostles, the apostles Paul, the narrative suggests that they were uncertain where to travel during this part of the journey, being forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia.
Shortly afterwards Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia who invited the apostles to travel westwards to Macedonia
9.
Tombolo
Once attached, the island is known as a tied island. Several islands tied together by bars which rise above the level are called a tombolo cluster. Two or more tombolos may form an enclosure that can fill with sediment. The shoreline moves toward the island due to accretion of sand in the lee of the island where wave energy and longshore drift are reduced, true tombolos are formed by wave refraction and diffraction. As waves near an island, they are slowed by the water surrounding it. These waves bend around the island to the side as they approach. The wave pattern created by water movement causes a convergence of longshore drift on the opposite side of the island. The beach sediments that are moving by lateral transport on the lee side of the island will accumulate there, in other words, the waves sweep sediment together from both sides. Eventually, when sediment has built up, the beach shoreline, known as a spit, will connect with an island. Tombolos are more prone to fluctuations of profile and area as a result of tidal.
Because of this susceptibility to weathering, tombolos are sometimes made more sturdy through the construction of roads or parking lots, the sediments that make up a tombolo are coarser towards the bottom and finer towards the surface. It is easy to see this pattern when the waves are destructive and wash away finer grained material at the top, revealing coarser sands, sea level rise may contribute to accretion, as material is pushed up with rising sea levels. This is the case with Chesil Beach, notable because the ridge is parallel rather than perpendicular to the coast. Tombolos demonstrate the sensitivity of shorelines, a small piece of land, such as an island, can change the way that waves move, leading to different deposition of sediments
10.
Olympiad
An Olympiad is a period of four years associated with the Olympic Games of the Ancient Greeks. During the Hellenistic period, beginning with Ephorus, it was used as a calendar epoch, by this reckoning, the first Olympiad lasted from the summer of 776 BC to that of 772 BC. By extrapolation to the Gregorian calendar, the 1st year of the 699th Olympiad begins in mid-summer 2017, a modern Olympiad refers to a four-year period beginning January 1 of a year in which the Summer Olympics are due to occur. The first modern Olympiad began in 1896, the second in 1900, an Olympiad was a period of four years. Example, Olympiad 140, year 1 = 220/219 BC, year 2 = 219/218 BC, year 3 = 218/217 BC, the first to do so consistently was Timaeus of Tauromenium in the third century BC. In the 2nd century AD, Phlegon of Tralles summarised the events of each Olympiad in a book called Olympiads, christian chroniclers continued to use this Greek system of dating as a way of synchronising biblical events with Greek and Roman history.
In the 3rd century AD, Sextus Julius Africanus compiled a list of Olympic victors up to 217 BC, early historians sometimes used the names of Olympic victors as a method of dating events to a specific year. For instance, Thucydides says in his account of the year 428 BC and it was in this year that king Xerxes made his campaign against Greece. An Olympiad started with the games, which were held at the beginning of the Olympic new year, though the games were held without interruption, on more than one occasion they were held by others than the Eleians. The Eleians declared such games Anolympiads, but it is assumed the winners were nevertheless recorded, during the 3rd century AD, records of the games are so scanty that historians are not certain whether after 261 they were still held every four years. During the early years of the Olympiad, any physical benefit deriving from a sport was banned, some winners were recorded though, until the last Olympiad of 393AD. In 394, Roman Emperor Theodosius I outlawed the games at Olympia as pagan, though it would have been possible to continue the reckoning by just counting four-year periods, by the middle of the 5th century AD reckoning by Olympiads had become disused.
For the modern Olympics the term was used to indicate the games themselves. The modern Olympiad is a period of four consecutive years, beginning on the first of January of the first year. The Olympiads are numbered consecutively from the first Games of the Olympiad celebrated in Athens in 1896, the XXXI Olympiad began on January 1,2016 and will end on December 31,2019. The Summer Olympics are more correctly referred to as the Games of the Olympiad, for example, The first Winter Games, in 1924, were not designated as Winter Games of the VIII Olympiad, but as the I Winter Olympic Games. The 1936 Summer Games were the Games of the XI Olympiad, after the 1940 and 1944 Summer Games were canceled due to World War II, the Games resumed in 1948 as the Games of the XIV Olympiad. However, the 1936 Winter Games were the IV Winter Olympic Games, indeed, at least one IOC-published article has applied this nomenclature as well
11.
Stater
The stater was an ancient coin used in various regions of Greece. The term is used for similar coins, imitating Greek staters. The stater, as a Greek silver currency, first as ingots, the earliest known stamped stater is an electrum turtle coin, struck at Aegina that dates to about 700 BC. It is on display at the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris, the silver stater minted at Corinth of 8.6 grams weight was divided into three silver drachmas of 2.9 grams, but was often linked to the Athenian silver didrachm coin weighing 8.6 grams. In comparison, the Athenian silver tetradrachm was weighing 17.2 grams. There existed a gold stater, but it was minted in some places, and was mainly an accounting unit worth 20–28 drachmas depending on place and time. The use of gold staters in coinage seems mostly of Macedonian origin, the best known types of Greek gold staters are the 28 drachmas Kyzikenos from Cyzicus. Celtic tribes brought the concept to Western and Central Europe after obtaining it while serving as mercenaries in north Greece.
Gold staters were minted in Gaul by Gallic chiefs modeled after those of Philip II of Macedonia, some of these staters in the form of the Gallo-Belgic series were imported to Britain on a large scale. These went on to influence a range of staters produced in Britain, british Gold staters generally weighed between 6.5 and 4.5 grams. Celtic staters were minted in present-day Czech Republic and Poland. The conquests of Alexander extended Greek culture east, leading to the adoption of staters in Asia, Gold staters have been found from the ancient region of Gandhara from the time of Kanishka
12.
Pergamon
Pergamon /ˈpɜːrɡəmən/ or /ˈpɜːrɡəmɒn/ or Pergamum /ˈpɜːrɡəməm/ was a rich and powerful ancient Greek city in Aeolis. It is located 26 kilometres from the coastline of the Aegean Sea on a promontory on the north side of the river Caicus. Many remains of its monuments can still be seen and especially the outstanding masterpiece of the Pergamon Altar. It became the capital of the Kingdom of Pergamon during the Hellenistic period under the Attalid dynasty in 281–133 BC, Pergamon is cited in the Book of Revelation as one of the seven churches of Asia. Xenophon provides the earliest surviving mention of Pergamon. Captured by Xenophon in 399 BC and immediately recaptured by the Persians, in 261 BC he bequeathed his possessions to his nephew Eumenes I, who increased them greatly, leaving as heir his cousin Attalus I. The Attalids became some of the most loyal supporters of Rome in the Hellenistic world, for their support against the Seleucids, the Attalids were rewarded with all the former Seleucid domains in Asia Minor.
As a consequence of its rise to power, the city expanded greatly, until 188 BC, it had not grown significantly since its founding by Philetaerus, and covered c.21 hectares. After this year, a new city wall was constructed,4 kilometres long and enclosing an area of approximately 90 hectares. The Attalids ruled with intelligence and generosity, many documents survive showing how the Attalids supported the growth of towns by sending in skilled artisans and by remitting taxes. They allowed the Greek cities in their domains to maintain nominal independence and they sent gifts to Greek cultural sites like Delphi and Athens. They remodeled the Acropolis of Pergamon after the Acropolis in Athens, when Attalus III died without an heir in 133 BC, he bequeathed the whole of Pergamon to Rome in order to prevent a civil war. Not everyone in Pergamon accepted Romes rule, who claimed to be Attalus brother as well as the son of Eumenes II, an earlier king, led a revolt among the lower classes with the help of Blossius.
The revolt was put down in 129 BC, and Pergamon was divided among Rome, Pergamon was briefly the capital of the Roman province of Asia, before the capital was transferred to Ephesus. After a slow decline, the city was favoured by several imperial initiatives under Hadrian, in addition, at the city limits the shrine to Asclepius was expanded into a lavish spa. This sanctuary grew in fame and was considered one of the most famous therapeutic, after Hippocrates the most famous physician of antiquity, was born at Pergamon and received his early training at the Asclepeion. Pergamon reached the height of its greatness under Roman Imperial rule and was home to about 200,000 inhabitants, the city was an early seat of Christianity and was granted a bishopric by the 2nd century. The city suffered badly during the century and was badly damaged by an earthquake in 262 and was sacked by the Goths shortly after
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 
