1.
Peloponnese
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The Peloponnese or Peloponnesus is a peninsula and geographic region in southern Greece. It is separated from the part of the country by the Gulf of Corinth. During the late Middle Ages and the Ottoman era, the peninsula was known as the Morea, the peninsula is divided among three administrative regions, most belongs to the Peloponnese region, with smaller parts belonging to the West Greece and Attica regions. In 2016, Lonely Planet voted the Peloponnese the top spot of their Best in Europe list, the Peloponnese is a peninsula that covers an area of some 21,549.6 square kilometres and constitutes the southernmost part of mainland Greece. It has two connections with the rest of Greece, a natural one at the Isthmus of Corinth. The peninsula has an interior and deeply indented coasts. The Peloponnese possesses four south-pointing peninsulas, the Messenian, the Mani, the Cape Malea, mount Taygetus in the south is the highest mountain in the Peloponnese, at 2,407 metres. Οther important mountains include Cyllene in the northeast, Aroania in the north, Erymanthos and Panachaikon in the northwest, Mainalon in the center, the entire peninsula is earthquake prone and has been the site of many earthquakes in the past. The longest river is the Alfeios in the west, followed by the Evrotas in the south, extensive lowlands are found only in the west, with the exception of the Evrotas valley in the south and in the Argolid in the northeast. The Peloponnese is home to spectacular beaches, which are a major tourist draw. Two groups of islands lie off the Peloponnesian coast, the Argo-Saronic Islands to the east, the island of Kythera, off the Epidaurus Limera peninsula to the south of the Peloponnese, is considered to be part of the Ionian Islands. The island of Elafonissos used to be part of the peninsula but was separated following the quake of 365 AD. Since antiquity, and continuing to the present day, the Peloponnese has been divided into seven regions, Achaia, Corinthia, Argolid, Arcadia, Laconia, Messinia. Each of these regions is headed by a city, the largest city is Patras in Achaia, followed by Kalamata in Messinia. The peninsula has been inhabited since prehistoric times and its modern name derives from ancient Greek mythology, specifically the legend of the hero Pelops, who was said to have conquered the entire region. The name Peloponnesos means Island of Pelops, the Mycenaean civilization, mainland Greeces first major civilization, dominated the Peloponnese in the Bronze Age from its stronghold at Mycenae in the north-east of the peninsula. The Mycenean civilization collapsed suddenly at the end of the 2nd millennium BC, archeological research has found that many of its cities and palaces show signs of destruction. The subsequent period, known as the Greek Dark Ages, is marked by an absence of written records
2.
Argos
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Argos is a city in Argolis, Peloponnese, Greece and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It is also a bishopric and present Latin Catholic titular see. It is the biggest town in Argolis and a center for the area. Since the 2011 local government reform it has been part of the municipality of Argos-Mykines, the municipal unit has an area of 138.138 km2. It is 11 kilometres from Nafplion, which was its historic harbour, a settlement of great antiquity, Argos has been continuously inhabited as at least a substantial village for the past 7,000 years. The city is a member of the Most Ancient European Towns Network, a resident of the city of Argos is known as an Argive. However, this term is used to refer to those ancient Greeks generally who assaulted the city of Troy during the Trojan War. Numerous ancient monuments can be found in the city today, the most famous of which is the Heraion of Argos, agriculture is the mainstay of the local economy. The name of the city is ancient and several etymological theories have been proposed as an explanation to its meaning. The most popular one maintains that the name of the city is a remainder from the Pelasgian language, i. e. the one used by the people who first settled in the area, in which Argos meant plain. Alternatively, the name is associated with Argos, the king of the city in ancient times. It is also believed that Argos is linked to the word αργός, which meant white, possibly, according to Strabo, the name could have even originated from the word αγρός by antimetathesis of the consonants. As a strategic location on the plain of Argolis, Argos was a major stronghold during the Mycenaean era. There is evidence of settlement in the area starting with a village about 7000 years ago in the late Neolithic. It was colonized in prehistoric times by the Pelasgian Greeks, since that time, Argos has been continually inhabited at the same geographical location. Its creation is attributed to Phoroneus, with its first name having been Phoronicon Asty, the city is located at a rather propitious area, among Nemea, Corinth and Arcadia. It also benefitted from its proximity to lake Lerna, which, during the Dorian invasion, c.1100 BC, Argos was divided into four neighbourhoods, each of them inhabited by a different phyle. Argos experienced its greatest period of expansion and power under the energetic 7th century BC ruler King Pheidon, under Pheidon, Argos regained sway over the cities of the Argolid and challenged Sparta’s dominance of the Peloponnese
3.
Sparta
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Sparta was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece. In antiquity the city-state was known as Lacedaemon, while the name Sparta referred to its settlement on the banks of the Eurotas River in Laconia. Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece, given its military pre-eminence, Sparta was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars. Between 431 and 404 BC, Sparta was the enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War, from which it emerged victorious. Spartas defeat by Thebes in the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC ended Spartas prominent role in Greece, however, it maintained its political independence until the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BC. It then underwent a period of decline, especially in the Middle Ages. Modern Sparta is the capital of the Greek regional unit of Laconia, Sparta was unique in ancient Greece for its social system and constitution, which completely focused on military training and excellence. Its inhabitants were classified as Spartiates, mothakes, perioikoi, Spartiates underwent the rigorous agoge training and education regimen, and Spartan phalanges were widely considered to be among the best in battle. Spartan women enjoyed more rights and equality to men than elsewhere in the classical world. Sparta was the subject of fascination in its own day, as well as in the West following the revival of classical learning and this love or admiration of Sparta is known as Laconism or Laconophilia. At its peak around 500 BC the size of the city would have been some 20,000 –35,000 free residents, plus numerous helots, olliers theory of the Spartan mirage has been widely accepted by scholars. The ancient Greeks used one of three words to refer to the location of the Spartans. The first refers primarily to the cluster of settlements in the valley of the Eurotas River. The second word was Lacedaemon, this was used sometimes as an adjective and is the name commonly used in the works of Homer. Herodotus seems to denote by it the Mycenaean Greek citadel at Therapne and it could be used synonymously with Sparta, but typically it was not. It denoted the terrain on which Sparta was situated, in Homer it is typically combined with epithets of the countryside, wide, lovely, shining and most often hollow and broken. The hollow suggests the Eurotas Valley, Sparta on the other hand is the country of lovely women, a people epithet. The name of the population was used for the state of Lacedaemon
4.
Ancient Corinth
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Corinth was a city-state on the Isthmus of Corinth, the narrow stretch of land that joins the Peloponnese to the mainland of Greece, roughly halfway between Athens and Sparta. The modern town of Corinth is located approximately 5 kilometres northeast of the ancient ruins, for Christians, Corinth is well-known from the two letters of Saint Paul in the New Testament, First Corinthians and Second Corinthians. Corinth is also mentioned in the Book of Acts as part of the Apostle Pauls missionary travels, in addition, the second book of Pausanias Description of Greece is devoted to Corinth. Ancient Corinth was one of the largest and most important cities of Greece, the Romans demolished Corinth in 146 BC, built a new city in its place in 44 BC, and later made it the provincial capital of Greece. According to Hellenic myth, the city was founded by Corinthos, however, other myths suggest that it was founded by the goddess Ephyra, a daughter of the Titan Oceanus, thus the ancient name of the city. There is evidence that the city was destroyed around 2000 BC, some ancient names for the place are derived from a pre-Greek Pelasgian language, such as Korinthos. It seems likely that Corinth was also the site of a Bronze Age Mycenaean palace-city, like Mycenae, Tiryns, according to myth, Sisyphus was the founder of a race of ancient kings at Corinth. It was also in Corinth that Jason, the leader of the Argonauts, during the Trojan War, as portrayed in the Iliad, the Corinthians participated under the leadership of Agamemnon. In a Corinthian myth recounted to Pausanias in the 2nd century AD, Briareus and his verdict was that the Isthmus of Corinth belonged to Poseidon and the acropolis of Corinth belonged to Helios. Thus, Greeks of the Classical age accounted for the cult of the sun-titan in the highest part of the site. The Upper Peirene spring is located within the walls of the acropolis, the spring, which is behind the temple, they say was the gift of Asopus to Sisyphus. The latter knew, so runs the legend, that Zeus had ravished Aegina, the daughter of Asopus, Corinth had been a backwater in 8th-century Greece. The Bacchiadae were a tightly-knit Doric clan and the kinship group of archaic Corinth in the 8th and 7th centuries BC. In 747 BC, an aristocratic revolution ousted the Bacchiad kings and they dispensed with kingship and ruled as a group, governing the city by annually electing a prytanis, probably a council, and a polemarchos to head the army. During Bacchiad rule from 747 to 650 BC, Corinth became a unified state, large scale public buildings and monuments were constructed at this time. In 733 BC, Corinth established colonies at Corcyra and Syracuse, by 730 BC, Corinth emerged as a highly advanced Greek city with at least 5,000 people. Aristotle tells the story of Philolaus of Corinth, a Bacchiad who was a lawgiver at Thebes and he became the lover of Diocles, the winner of the Olympic games. They both lived for the rest of their lives in Thebes and their tombs were built near one another and Philolaus tomb points toward the Corinthian country, while Diocles faces away
5.
History of Crete
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The History of Crete goes back to the 7th millennium BC, preceding the ancient Minoan civilization by more than four millennia. The Minoan civilization was the first civilization in Europe and the first, in Europe, excavations in South Crete in 2008–2009 led by Thomas F. Strasser revealed stone tools at least 130,000 years old. This was a discovery as the previously accepted earliest sea crossing in the Mediterranean was thought to occur around 12,000 BC. The stone tools found in the Plakias region of Crete include hand axes of the Acheulean type made of quartz and it is believed that pre-Homo sapiens hominids from Africa crossed to Crete on rafts. The archaeological record of Crete includes superb palaces, houses, roads, paintings, early Neolithic settlements in Crete include Knossos and Trapeza. For the earlier times, radiocarbon dating of remains and charcoal offers independent dates. Based on this, it is thought that Crete was inhabited from the 7th millennium BC onwards, most of these animals died out at the end of the last ice-age. Humans played a part in this extinction, which occurred on other medium to large Mediterranean islands as well, for example on Cyprus, Sicily, cretes religious symbols included the dove, lily and double-headed ax. Remains of a settlement found under the Bronze Age palace at Knossos date to the 7th Millennium BC, the first settlers introduced cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs, as well as domesticated cereals and legumes. Up to now, Knossos remains the only aceramic site, the settlement covered approximately 350,000 square metres. The sparse animal bones contain the domestic species as well as deer, badger, marten and mouse. Neolithic pottery is known from Knossos, Lera Cave and Gerani Cave, the Late Neolithic sees a proliferation of sites, pointing to a population increase. In the late Neolithic, the donkey and the rabbit were introduced to the island, deer, the Kri-kri, a feral goat, preserves traits of the early domesticates. Horse, fallow deer and hedgehog are only attested from Minoan times onwards, Crete was the centre of Europes most ancient civilization, the Minoans. Tablets inscribed in Linear A have been found in sites in Crete. The Minoans established themselves in many islands besides Ancient Crete, secure identifications of Minoan off-island sites include Kea, Kythera, Milos, Rhodes, archaeologists ever since Sir Arthur Evans have identified and uncovered the palace-complex at Knossos, the most famous Minoan site. Other palace sites in Crete such as Phaistos have uncovered magnificent stone-built, multi-story palaces containing drainage systems, and the queen had a bath, the expertise displayed in the hydraulic engineering was of a very high level. There were no walls to the complexes
6.
Mercenary
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A mercenary is a person who takes part in an armed conflict who is not a national or party to the conflict and is motivated to take part in the hostilities by desire for private gain. Mercenaries fight for money or other recompense instead of fighting for ideological interests, in the last century, and as reflected in the Geneva Convention, mercenaries have increasingly come to be seen as less entitled to protections by rules of war than non-mercenaries. However, whether or not a person is a mercenary may be a matter of degree, Protocol Additional GC1977 is a 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions. Article 47 of the protocol provides the most widely accepted definition of a mercenary, though not endorsed by some countries. The Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, a mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war. All the criteria must be met, according to the Geneva Convention, according to the GC III, a captured soldier must be treated as a lawful combatant and, therefore, as a protected person with prisoner-of-war status until facing a competent tribunal. That tribunal, using criteria in APGC77 or some equivalent domestic law, may decide that the soldier is a mercenary. The only possible exception to GC IV Art 5 is when he is a national of the authority imprisoning him, if, after a regular trial, a captured soldier is found to be a mercenary, then he can expect treatment as a common criminal and may face execution. As mercenary soldiers may not qualify as PoWs, they cannot expect repatriation at wars end, the four mercenaries sentenced to death were shot by a firing squad on 10 July 1976. The legal status of civilian contractors depends upon the nature of their work, on 4 December 1989, the United Nations passed resolution 44/34, the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. It entered into force on 20 October 2001 and is known as the UN Mercenary Convention. Article 1 contains the definition of a mercenary, Article 1.1 is similar to Article 47 of Protocol I, however Article 1. – under Article 1.2 a person does not have to take a part in the hostilities in a planned coup détat to be a mercenary. Critics have argued that the convention and APGC77 Art,47 are designed to cover the activities of mercenaries in post-colonial Africa and do not address adequately the use of private military companies by sovereign states. While the United States governed Iraq, no U. S. citizen working as a guard could be classified as a mercenary because he was a national of a Party to the conflict. S. However, those who acknowledge the United States and other forces as continuing parties to the conflict might insist that U. S. armed guards cannot be called mercenaries. The laws of countries forbid their citizens to fight in foreign wars unless they are under the control of their own national armed forces. If a person is proven to have worked as a mercenary for any other country while retaining Austrian citizenship, in 2003, France criminalized mercenary activities, as defined by the protocol to the Geneva convention for French citizens, permanent residents and legal entities
7.
Ancient Greece
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Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th-9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the end of the Mediterranean Sea. Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a influence on ancient Rome. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC. Classical Antiquity in Greece is preceded by the Greek Dark Ages and this period is succeeded, around the 8th century BC, by the Orientalizing Period during which a strong influence of Syro-Hittite, Jewish, Assyrian, Phoenician and Egyptian cultures becomes apparent. The end of the Dark Ages is also dated to 776 BC. The Archaic period gives way to the Classical period around 500 BC, Ancient Periods Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details The history of Greece during Classical Antiquity may be subdivided into five major periods. The earliest of these is the Archaic period, in which artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff, the Archaic period is often taken to end with the overthrow of the last tyrant of Athens and the start of Athenian Democracy in 508 BC. It was followed by the Classical period, characterized by a style which was considered by observers to be exemplary, i. e. classical, as shown in the Parthenon. This period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon, following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East. This period begins with the death of Alexander and ends with the Roman conquest, Herodotus is widely known as the father of history, his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato, most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities. Their scope is limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, ignoring economic. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. The Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period and it was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, a mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC
8.
Spartan army
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The Spartan army stood at the center of the Spartan state, whose citizens were trained in the discipline and honor of the warrior society. Subject to military drill from early manhood, the Spartans were one of the most feared military forces in the Greek world. At the height of Spartas power – between the 6th and 4th centuries BC – it was accepted that one Spartan was worth several men of any other state. According to Thucydides, the moment of Spartan surrender on the island of Sphacteria. He said that it was the perception at the time that Spartans would never lay down their weapons for any reason, be it hunger. The iconic army was first developed by the semi-mythical Spartan legislator Lycurgus, a Spartan mans involvement with the army began in infancy when he was inspected by the Gerousia. If the baby was found to be weak or deformed he was left at Mount Taygetus to die and it should be noted, however, that the practice of discarding children at birth took place in Athens as well. Those deemed strong were then put in the regime at the age of seven. Under the agoge the young boys or Spartiates were kept under intense and their education focused primarily on cunning, sports and war tactics, but also included poetry, music, academics, and sometimes politics. Those who passed the agoge by the age of 30 were given full Spartan citizenship, the term spartan became synonymous with fearlessness, harsh and cruel life, endurance or simplicity by design. The first reference to the Spartans at war is in the Iliad, like the rest of the Mycenaean-era armies, it was depicted as composed largely of infantry, equipped with short swords, spears, and Dipylon-type. This was the Golden Age of Warfare, each opposing army tried to fight through the other line on the right side and then turn left, wherefore they would be able to attack the vulnerable flank. When this happened, it as a rule caused the army to be routed, the fleeing enemy were put to the sword only as far as the field of battle extended. The outcome of one battle would determine the outcome of a particular issue. In the Golden Age of War defeated armies were not massacred, they fled back to their city and it wasnt until after the Peloponnesus War that indiscriminate slaughter, enslavement and depredations were countenanced among the Greeks. Mycenaean Sparta, like much of Greece, was engulfed in the Dorian invasions, during this time, Sparta was merely a Doric village on the banks of the river Eurotas in Laconia. However, in the early 8th century BC, Spartan society was transformed, the reforms, which were ascribed by later tradition to the possibly mythical figure of Lycurgus, created new institutions and established the military nature of the Spartan state. This constitution of Lycurgus remained essentially unchanged for five centuries, by the beginning of the 7th century BC, Sparta was, along with Argos, the dominant power in the Peloponnese
9.
Temple
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A temple is a structure reserved for religious or spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. It is typically used for such buildings belonging to all faiths where a specific term such as church. These include Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism among religions with many modern followers, the form and function of temples is thus very variable, though they are often considered by believers to be in some sense the house of one or more deities. Typically offerings of some sort are made to the deity, and other rituals enacted, the degree to which the whole population of believers can access the building varies significantly, often parts or even the whole main building can only be accessed by the clergy. Temples typically have a building and a larger precinct, which may contain many other buildings. The word comes from Ancient Rome, where a templum constituted a sacred precinct as defined by a priest and it has the same root as the word template, a plan in preparation of the building that was marked out on the ground by the augur. Templa also became associated with the places of a god or gods. Hindu temples are large and magnificent with a rich history, there is evidence of use of sacred ground as far back as the Bronze Age and later the Indus Valley Civilization. Hindu temples have been built in countries around the world, including Cambodia, Nepal, Mauritius, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Great Britain. They include the structures called stupa, wat and pagoda in different regions, Temples in Buddhism represent the pure land or pure environment of a Buddha. Traditional Buddhist temples are designed to inspire inner and outer peace, a Jain temple is the place of worship for Jains, the followers of Jainism. Some famous Jain temples are Shikharji, Palitana Jain Temples, Ranakpur Jain Temple, Shravan Belgola, Dilwara Temples, Jain temples are built with various architectural designs. Jain temples in North India are completely different from the Jain temples in South India, additionally, a Manastambha is a pillar that is often constructed in front of Jain temples. The temple of Mesopotamia derived from the cult of gods and deities in the Mesopotamian religion and it spanned several civilizations, from Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian. Ancient Egyptian temples were meant as places for the deities to reside on earth, indeed, the term the Egyptians most commonly used to describe the temple building, ḥwt-nṯr, means mansion of a god. A gods presence in the temple linked the human and divine realms and these rituals, it was believed, sustained the god and allowed it to continue to play its proper role in nature. They were therefore a key part of the maintenance of maat, maintaining maat was the entire purpose of Egyptian religion, and thus it was the purpose of a temple as well. Ancient Egyptian temples were also of significance to Egyptian society
10.
F. L. Lucas
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He is now best remembered for his scathing 1923 review of T. S. Eliots The Waste Land, and for his book Style, an acclaimed guide to recognising and writing good prose. His Tragedy in Relation to Aristotles Poetics was for fifty years a standard introduction. Eliot called Lucas the perfect annotator, and subsequent Webster scholars have been indebted to him, Lucas is also remembered for his anti-fascist campaign in the 1930s, and for his wartime work at Bletchley Park, for which he received the OBE. He increasingly linked his studies to developments in Psychology, notably in Literature, the real unwritten laws, he observed, seem to me those of human psychology. Centrally, he discussed the writers psychology as revealed through style, Even science has invented no pickle for embalming a man like style, he noted. The poets to whom he returned most often in publications were Tennyson and Housman, a public tends to get the literature it deserves, a literature, to get the public it deserves. The values men pursue in each, affect the other and they turn in a vicious, or a virtuous, circle. Only a fine society could have bred Homer, and he left it finer for hearing him and his criticism, while acknowledging that morality is historically relative, was thus values-based. Writers can make men feel, not merely see, the values that endure, one may question whether real civilisation is so safely afloat, he wrote in his last published letter, that we can afford to use our pens for boring holes in the bottom of it. The writer or artist serving up slapdash nightmares out of his Unconscious, in an age morbidly avid of uncivilised irreticence, not only exhibited his own neuroses, Literary critics, too, had to take more responsibility. Much cant gets talked, he noted of the Structuralists, by critics who care more for the form and organisation of a work than for its spirit, its content, its supreme moments. The serious note in his criticism was counterbalanced by wit and urbanity, by lively anecdote and quotation and it can make acceptable even common sense. There are sentences here which recall the clear-cut Doric strength of the Lives of the Poets and his Cambridge colleague T. R. Henn noted that Lucass approach and style were influenced by the Strachey of Books and Characters. Lucass impatience with the obscurantism and coterie-appeal of much modern poetry made him in the years one of the foremost opponents of the new schools. As for profundity, he wrote, it is not uncommonly found also in dry wells and he opposed also what he saw as the narrow dogmatism of the New Critics, those tight-lipped Calvins of art, as he called them, of Criterion and Scrutiny. Lucas had stopped reviewing for the New Statesman in 1926 and never reviewed anonymously, remarks elsewhere confirm that he had not changed his opinion. Described by F. W. Bateson as brilliantly wrong-headed, the review is known today than it was during Lucass lifetime. His only other comment on the poem occurs in his essay English Literature in the volume University Studies, Cambridge 1933, the Letters of T. S. Eliot includes correspondence between Eliot and Lucas but no reference to the review
11.
Ancient Greek warfare
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Warfare occurred throughout the history of ancient Greece, from the Greek Dark Ages onward. The Greek Dark Age drew to a close as a significant increase in population allowed urbanized culture to be restored and these developments ushered in the period of Archaic Greece. They also restored the capability of organized warfare between these Poleis, the fractious nature of Ancient Greek society seems to have made continuous conflict on this larger scale inevitable. Along with the rise of the city-state evolved a new style of warfare, Hoplites were armored infantryman, armed with spear and shield, and the phalanx was a formation of these soldiers with their shields locked together and spears pointed forward. The chigi vase, dated to around 650 BC, is the earliest depiction of a hoplite in full battle array, with this evolution in warfare, battles seem to have consisted mostly of the clash of hoplite phalanxes from the city-states in conflict. Since the soldiers were citizens with other occupations, warfare was limited in distance, season, neither side could afford heavy casualties or sustained campaigns, so conflicts seem to have been resolved by a single set-piece battle. The scale and scope of warfare in Ancient Greece changed dramatically as a result of the Greco-Persian Wars, to fight the enormous armies of the Achaemenid Empire was effectively beyond the capabilities of a single city-state. The eventual triumph of the Greeks was achieved by alliances of many city-states, the rise of Athens and Sparta during this conflict led directly to the Peloponnesian War, which saw diversification of warfare. Emphasis shifted to naval battles and strategies of attrition such as blockades and sieges, following the defeat of the Athenians in 404 BC, and the disbandment of the Athenian-dominated Delian League, Ancient Greece fell under the Spartan hegemony. But this was unstable, and the Persian Empire sponsored a rebellion by the powers of Athens, Thebes, Corinth and Argos. Persia switched sides, which ended the war, in return for the cities of Ionia, the Spartan hegemony would last another 16 years, until, at the Battle of Leuctra the Spartans were decisively defeated by the Theban general Epaminondas. The Thebans acted with alacrity to establish a hegemony of their own over Greece, however, Thebes lacked sufficient manpower and resources, and became overstretched. Following the death of Epaminondas and loss of manpower at the Battle of Mantinea, the losses in the ten years of the Theban hegemony left all the Greek city-states weakened and divided. The city-states of southern Greece were too weak to resist the rise of the Macedonian kingdom in the north, with revolutionary tactics, King Phillip II brought most of Greece under his sway, paving the way for the conquest of the known world by his son Alexander the Great. The rise of the Macedonian Kingdom is generally taken to signal the beginning of the Hellenistic period, along with the rise of the city-state evolved a brand new style of warfare and the emergence of the hoplite. The hoplite was an infantryman, the element of warfare in Ancient Greece. The word hoplite derives from hoplon meaning an item of armor or equipment, Hoplites were the citizen-soldiers of the Ancient Greek City-states. They were primarily armed as spear-men and fought in a phalanx, Hoplite armor was extremely expensive for the average citizen, so it was commonly passed down from the soldiers father or relative
12.
Trojan War
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In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably through Homers Iliad. The Iliad relates four days in the year of the decade-long siege of Troy. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems, episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid. Zeus sent the goddesses to Paris, who judged that Aphrodite, as the fairest, in exchange, Aphrodite made Helen, the most beautiful of all women and wife of Menelaus, fall in love with Paris, who took her to Troy. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and the brother of Helens husband Menelaus, led an expedition of Achaean troops to Troy and besieged the city for ten years because of Paris insult. After the deaths of heroes, including the Achaeans Achilles and Ajax, and the Trojans Hector and Paris. The Achaeans slaughtered the Trojans and desecrated the temples, thus earning the gods wrath, few of the Achaeans returned safely to their homes and many founded colonies in distant shores. The Romans later traced their origin to Aeneas, one of the Trojans, in 1868, however, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann met Frank Calvert, who convinced Schliemann that Troy was a real city at what is now Hissarlik in Turkey. On the basis of excavations conducted by Schliemann and others, this claim is now accepted by most scholars, whether there is any historical reality behind the Trojan War remains an open question. The events of the Trojan War are found in works of Greek literature. There is no single, authoritative text which tells the events of the war. Instead, the story is assembled from a variety of sources, the most important literary sources are the two epic poems traditionally credited to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, composed sometime between the 9th and 6th centuries BC. Each poem narrates only a part of the war, the Iliad covers a short period in the last year of the siege of Troy, while the Odyssey concerns Odysseuss return to his home island of Ithaca, following the sack of Troy. Other parts of the Trojan War were told in the poems of the Epic Cycle, also known as the Cyclic Epics, the Cypria, Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Iliou Persis, Nostoi, and Telegony. Though these poems survive only in fragments, their content is known from an included in Proclus Chrestomathy. The authorship of the Cyclic Epics is uncertain, both the Homeric epics and the Epic Cycle take origin from oral tradition. Even after the composition of the Iliad, Odyssey, and the Cyclic Epics, events and details of the story that are only found in later authors may have been passed on through oral tradition and could be as old as the Homeric poems
