1.
Battle of Thermopylae
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It took place simultaneously with the naval battle at Artemisium, in August or September 480 BC, at the narrow coastal pass of Thermopylae. The Persian invasion was a response to the defeat of the first Persian invasion of Greece. Xerxes had amassed an army and navy, and set out to conquer all of Greece. A Greek force of approximately 7,000 men marched north to block the pass in the middle of 480 BC. The Persian army, alleged by the ancient sources to have numbered one million. The vastly outnumbered Greeks held off the Persians for seven days before the rear-guard was annihilated in one of historys most famous last stands, during two full days of battle, the small force led by Leonidas blocked the only road by which the massive Persian army could pass. After the second day, a resident named Ephialtes betrayed the Greeks by revealing that a small path led behind the Greek lines. Leonidas, aware that his force was being outflanked, dismissed the bulk of the Greek army and remained to guard their retreat with 300 Spartans,700 Thespians,400 Thebans, fighting to the death. At Artemisium, the Greek navy, under the command of the Athenian politician Themistocles, since the Greek strategy required both Thermopylae and Artemisium to be held, and given their losses, it was decided to withdraw to Salamis. The Persians overran Boeotia and then captured the evacuated Athens, the Greek fleet—seeking a decisive victory over the Persian armada—attacked and defeated the invaders at the Battle of Salamis in late 480 BC. Fearful of being trapped in Europe, Xerxes withdrew with much of his army to Asia, however, the following year saw a Greek army decisively defeat the Persians at the Battle of Plataea, thereby ending the Persian invasion. Both ancient and modern writers have used the Battle of Thermopylae as an example of the power of an army defending its native soil. The primary source for the Greco-Persian Wars is the Greek historian Herodotus and this account is fairly consistent with Herodotus. Archaeological evidence, such as the Serpent Column, also some of Herodotus specific claims. For example, the military strategist Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart defers to Grundy, Grundy also explored Plataea and wrote a treatise on that battle. On the Battle of Thermopylae itself, two sources, Herodotus and Simonides accounts, survive. In fact, Herodotus account of the battle, in Book VII of his Histories, is such an important source that Paul Cartledge wrote, we write a history of Thermopylae with. The Greek city-states of Athens and Eretria had encouraged the unsuccessful Ionian Revolt against the Persian Empire of Darius I in 499–494 BC, the Persian Empire was still relatively young and prone to revolts amongst its subject peoples
2.
Ancient Greek
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Ancient Greek includes the forms of Greek used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around the 9th century BC to the 6th century AD. It is often divided into the Archaic period, Classical period. It is antedated in the second millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Hellenistic phase is known as Koine. Koine is regarded as a historical stage of its own, although in its earliest form it closely resembled Attic Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects, Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical phases of the language, Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language, divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic, Aeolic, Arcadocypriot, some dialects are found in standardized literary forms used in literature, while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms, homeric Greek is a literary form of Archaic Greek used in the epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic, the origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of a lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period and they have the same general outline, but differ in some of the detail. The invasion would not be Dorian unless the invaders had some relationship to the historical Dorians. The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, the Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians, each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Often non-west is called East Greek, Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric, Southern Peloponnesus Doric, and Northern Peloponnesus Doric. The Lesbian dialect was Aeolic Greek and this dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language, which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek, by about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek
3.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
4.
Greece
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Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, historically also known as Hellas, is a country in southeastern Europe, with a population of approximately 11 million as of 2015. Athens is the capital and largest city, followed by Thessaloniki. Greece is strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, situated on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, the Republic of Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the northeast. Greece consists of nine regions, Macedonia, Central Greece, the Peloponnese, Thessaly, Epirus, the Aegean Islands, Thrace, Crete. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, the Cretan Sea and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin and the 11th longest coastline in the world at 13,676 km in length, featuring a vast number of islands, eighty percent of Greece is mountainous, with Mount Olympus being the highest peak at 2,918 metres. From the eighth century BC, the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states, known as polis, which spanned the entire Mediterranean region and the Black Sea. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC, becoming a part of the Roman Empire and its successor. The Greek Orthodox Church also shaped modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox World, falling under Ottoman dominion in the mid-15th century, the modern nation state of Greece emerged in 1830 following a war of independence. Greeces rich historical legacy is reflected by its 18 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, among the most in Europe, Greece is a democratic and developed country with an advanced high-income economy, a high quality of life, and a very high standard of living. A founding member of the United Nations, Greece was the member to join the European Communities and has been part of the Eurozone since 2001. Greeces unique cultural heritage, large industry, prominent shipping sector. It is the largest economy in the Balkans, where it is an important regional investor, the names for the nation of Greece and the Greek people differ from the names used in other languages, locations and cultures. The earliest evidence of the presence of human ancestors in the southern Balkans, dated to 270,000 BC, is to be found in the Petralona cave, all three stages of the stone age are represented in Greece, for example in the Franchthi Cave. Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe by several centuries and these civilizations possessed writing, the Minoans writing in an undeciphered script known as Linear A, and the Mycenaeans in Linear B, an early form of Greek. The Mycenaeans gradually absorbed the Minoans, but collapsed violently around 1200 BC and this ushered in a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, from which written records are absent. The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the Iliad and the Odyssey, the foundational texts of Western literature, are believed to have been composed by Homer in the 7th or 8th centuries BC. With the end of the Dark Ages, there emerged various kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, in 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted the worlds first democratic system of government in Athens
5.
Classical antiquity
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It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout Europe, North Africa and Southwestern Asia. Conventionally, it is taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer, and continues through the emergence of Christianity and it ends with the dissolution of classical culture at the close of Late Antiquity, blending into the Early Middle Ages. Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many disparate cultures, Classical antiquity may refer also to an idealised vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poes words, the glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome. The culture of the ancient Greeks, together with influences from the ancient Near East, was the basis of art, philosophy, society. The earliest period of classical antiquity takes place before the background of gradual re-appearance of historical sources following the Bronze Age collapse, the 8th and 7th centuries BC are still largely proto-historical, with the earliest Greek alphabetic inscriptions appearing in the first half of the 8th century. Homer is usually assumed to have lived in the 8th or 7th century BC, in the same period falls the traditional date for the establishment of the Ancient Olympic Games, in 776 BC. The Phoenicians originally expanded from Canaan ports, by the 8th century dominating trade in the Mediterranean, carthage was founded in 814 BC, and the Carthaginians by 700 BC had firmly established strongholds in Sicily, Italy and Sardinia, which created conflicts of interest with Etruria. The Etruscans had established control in the region by the late 7th century BC, forming the aristocratic. According to legend, Rome was founded on April 21,753 BC by twin descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas, Romulus and Remus. As the city was bereft of women, legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins and the Sabines. Archaeological evidence indeed shows first traces of settlement at the Roman Forum in the mid-8th century BC, the seventh and final king of Rome was Tarquinius Superbus. As the son of Tarquinius Priscus and the son-in-law of Servius Tullius, Superbus was of Etruscan birth and it was during his reign that the Etruscans reached their apex of power. Superbus removed and destroyed all the Sabine shrines and altars from the Tarpeian Rock, the people came to object to his rule when he failed to recognize the rape of Lucretia, a patrician Roman, at the hands of his own son. Lucretias kinsman, Lucius Junius Brutus, summoned the Senate and had Superbus, after Superbus expulsion, the Senate voted to never again allow the rule of a king and reformed Rome into a republican government in 509 BC. In fact the Latin word Rex meaning King became a dirty and hated throughout the Republic. In 510, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Hippias, cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy conducted by Isagoras. Greece entered the 4th century under Spartan hegemony, but by 395 BC the Spartan rulers removed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost her naval supremacy. Athens, Argos, Thebes and Corinth, the two of which were formerly Spartan allies, challenged Spartan dominance in the Corinthian War, which ended inconclusively in 387 BC
6.
Mineral spring
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Mineral springs are naturally occurring springs that produce water containing minerals, or other dissolved substances, that alter its taste or give it a purported therapeutic value. Salts, sulfur compounds, and gases are among the substances that can be dissolved in the water during its passage underground. Mineral water obtained from mineral springs has long been an important commercial proposition, mineral spas are resorts that have developed around mineral springs, where patrons would repair to “take the waters” — meaning that they would drink or bathe in the mineral water. Others were entirely enclosed within spring houses, chalybeate springs contained salts of iron. Sulfur springs contained hydrogen sulfide gas, salt springs contained salts of calcium, magnesium or sodium. Thermal springs could contain a concentration of various minerals. Soda springs contained carbon dioxide gas, radioactive springs contain traces of radioactive substances such as radium or uranium. Types of sedimentary rock - usually limestone - are sometimes formed by the evaporation, or rapid precipitation, of spring water. Spectacular formations, including terraces, stalactites, stalagmites and “frozen waterfalls” can result, one light-colored porous calcite of this type is known as travertine and has been used extensively in Italy and elsewhere as building material. Travertine can have a white, tan, or cream-colored appearance, another type of spring water deposit, containing siliceous as well as calcareous minerals, is known as tufa. Tufa is similar to travertine but is softer and more porous. Sweet springs, those with no detectable sulfur or salt content Cohen, Stan, Springs of the Virginias, A Pictorial History, Charleston, West Virginia, laMoreaux, Philip E. Tanner, Judy T, eds. Springs and bottled water of the world, Ancient history, source, occurrence, quality and use, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, Springer-Verlag, ISBN 3-540-61841-4, retrieved 13 July 2010
7.
Hades
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Hades was the ancient Greek chthonic god of the underworld, which eventually took his name. In Greek mythology, Hades was regarded as the oldest son of Cronus and Rhea and he and his brothers Zeus and Poseidon defeated their fathers generation of gods, the Titans, and claimed rulership over the cosmos. Hades received the underworld, Zeus the sky, and Poseidon the sea, Hades was often portrayed with his three-headed guard dog Cerberus. The Etruscan god Aita and Roman gods Dis Pater and Orcus were eventually taken as equivalent to the Greek Hades and merged as Pluto, the origin of Hades name is uncertain, but has generally been seen as meaning The Unseen One since antiquity. Modern linguists have proposed the Proto-Greek form *Awides, the earliest attested form is Aḯdēs, which lacks the proposed digamma. West argues instead for a meaning of the one who presides over meeting up from the universality of death. In Homeric and Ionic Greek, he was known as Áïdēs, other poetic variations of the name include Aïdōneús and the inflected forms Áïdos, Áïdi, and Áïda, whose reconstructed nominative case *Áïs is, however, not attested. The name as it came to be known in classical times was Háidēs, later the iota became silent, then a subscript marking, and finally omitted entirely. Perhaps from fear of pronouncing his name, around the 5th century BC, Plouton became the Roman god who both rules the underworld and distributed riches from below. This deity was a mixture of the Greek god Hades and the Eleusinian icon Ploutos, and from this he received a priestess. More elaborate names of the genre were Ploutodótēs or Ploutodotḗr meaning giver of wealth. Epithets of Hades include Agesander and Agesilaos, both from ágō and anḗr or laos, describing Hades as the god who carries away all. He was also referred to as Zeus Katachthonios, meaning the Zeus of the Underworld, by avoiding his actual name. In Greek mythology, Hades the god of the underworld, was a son of the Titans Cronus and he had three sisters, Demeter, Hestia, and Hera, as well as two brothers, Zeus, the youngest of the three, and Poseidon. Upon reaching adulthood, Zeus managed to force his father to disgorge his siblings, after their release, the six younger gods, along with allies they managed to gather, challenged the elder gods for power in the Titanomachy, a divine war. The war lasted for ten years and ended with the victory of the younger gods, following their victory, according to a single famous passage in the Iliad, Hades and his two brothers, Poseidon and Zeus, drew lots for realms to rule. Some myths suggest that Hades was dissatisfied with his turnout, but had no choice, Hades obtained his wife and queen, Persephone, through abduction at the behest of Zeus. Despite modern connotations of death as evil, Hades was actually more altruistically inclined in mythology, Hades was often portrayed as passive rather than evil, his role was often maintaining relative balance
8.
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
9.
Iran
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Iran, also known as Persia, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a sovereign state in Western Asia. Comprising a land area of 1,648,195 km2, it is the second-largest country in the Middle East, with 82.8 million inhabitants, Iran is the worlds 17th-most-populous country. It is the country with both a Caspian Sea and an Indian Ocean coastline. The countrys central location in Eurasia and Western Asia, and its proximity to the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is the countrys capital and largest city, as well as its leading economic and cultural center. Iran is the site of to one of the worlds oldest civilizations, the area was first unified by the Iranian Medes in 625 BC, who became the dominant cultural and political power in the region. The empire collapsed in 330 BC following the conquests of Alexander the Great, under the Sassanid Dynasty, Iran again became one of the leading powers in the world for the next four centuries. Beginning in 633 AD, Arabs conquered Iran and largely displaced the indigenous faiths of Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism by Islam, Iran became a major contributor to the Islamic Golden Age that followed, producing many influential scientists, scholars, artists, and thinkers. During the 18th century, Iran reached its greatest territorial extent since the Sassanid Empire, through the late 18th and 19th centuries, a series of conflicts with Russia led to significant territorial losses and the erosion of sovereignty. Popular unrest culminated in the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1906, which established a monarchy and the countrys first legislative body. Following a coup instigated by the U. K. Growing dissent against foreign influence and political repression led to the 1979 Revolution, Irans rich cultural legacy is reflected in part by its 21 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the third-largest number in Asia and 11th-largest in the world. Iran is a member of the UN, ECO, NAM, OIC. Its political system is based on the 1979 Constitution which combines elements of a democracy with a theocracy governed by Islamic jurists under the concept of a Supreme Leadership. A multicultural country comprising numerous ethnic and linguistic groups, most inhabitants are Shia Muslims, the largest ethnic groups in Iran are the Persians, Azeris, Kurds and Lurs. Historically, Iran has been referred to as Persia by the West, due mainly to the writings of Greek historians who called Iran Persis, meaning land of the Persians. As the most extensive interactions the Ancient Greeks had with any outsider was with the Persians, however, Persis was originally referred to a region settled by Persians in the west shore of Lake Urmia, in the 9th century BC. The settlement was then shifted to the end of the Zagros Mountains. In 1935, Reza Shah requested the international community to refer to the country by its native name, opposition to the name change led to the reversal of the decision, and Professor Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, propagated a move to use Persia and Iran interchangeably
10.
Simonides of Ceos
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Simonides of Ceos was a Greek lyric poet, born at Ioulis on Ceos. The scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets, along with Bacchylides, both Bacchylides and Pindar benefited from his innovative approach to lyric poetry and he was more involved than either of them in the major events and personalities of their times. Such accounts include fanciful elements yet he had a influence on the sophistic enlightenment of the classical era. His fame as a poet rests largely on his ability to present basic human situations with affecting simplicity, few clear facts about Simonides life have come down to modern times in spite of his fame and influence. Ancient sources are uncertain even about the date of his birth, according to the Byzantine encyclopaedia, Suda, He was born in the 56th Olympiad or according to some writers in the 62nd and he survived until the 78th, having lived eighty-nine years. Other ancient sources also have awkward consequences, however, the Parian Marble is known to be unreliable and possibly it was not even the grandfather but a grandson that won the aforementioned victory in Athens. According to the Suda, this grandson was yet another Simonides, Simonides is identified in the Suda as the son of a Leoprepes. He was born in Ioulis on Ceos, the outermost island of the Cyclades, the innermost island, Delos, was the reputed birthplace of Apollo, where the people of Ceos regularly sent choirs to perform hymns in the gods honour. Carthaea, another Cean town, included a choregeion or school where choirs were trained, indeed, the grandfather of Simonides nephew, Bacchylides, was one of the islands notable athletes. These were two of the most powerful families in the Thessalian feudal aristocracy yet they seemed notable to later Greeks such as Theocritus only for their association with Simonides, thessaly at that time was a cultural backwater, remaining in the Dark Ages until the close of the 5th century. According to an account by Plutarch, the Ionian poet once dismissed the Thessalians as too ignorant to be beguiled by poetry, among the most colourful of his ignorant patrons was the head of the Scopadae clan, named Scopas. Simonides embellished his ode with so many references to the twins Castor, Simonides however ended up getting much more from the mythical twins than just a fee, he owed them his very life. According to this story he was called out of the feast hall to see two visitors who had arrived and were asking for him – presumably Castor and Pollux, as soon as he left the hall, it collapsed, killing everyone within. These events were said to have inspired him to develop a system of mnemonics based on images and places called the method of loci, the method of loci is one component of the Art of memory. According to Plutarch, the Cean had a statue of himself made about this time, the last years of the poets life were spent in Sicily where he became a friend and confidant of Hieron of Syracuse. According to a scholiast on Pindar, he acted as peace-maker between Hieron and another Sicilian tyrant, Theron of Acragas, thus ending a war between them. Scholiasts are the authority for stories about rivalry between Simonides and Pindar at the court of Hieron, traditionally used to explain some of the meanings in Pindars victory odes. However, Pindar scholiasts are generally considered unreliable and there is no reason to accept their account, the Hellenistic poet Callimachus revealed in one of his poems that Simonides was buried outside Acragas and that his tombstone was later mis-used in the construction of a tower
11.
Thessaly
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Thessaly is a traditional geographic and modern administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, Thessaly became part of the modern Greek state in 1881, after four and a half centuries of Ottoman rule. Since 1987 it has formed one of the countrys 13 regions and is further sub-divided into 5 regional units and 25 municipalities, the capital of the region is Larissa. Thessaly lies in central Greece and borders the regions of Macedonia on the north, Epirus on the west, Central Greece on the south, the Thessaly region also includes the Sporades islands. In Homers epic, the Odyssey, the hero Odysseus visited the kingdom of Aeolus, the Plain of Thessaly, which lies between Mount Oeta/Othrys and Mount Olympus, was the site of the battle between the Titans and the Olympians. According to legend, Jason and the Argonauts launched their search for the Golden Fleece from the Magnesia Peninsula, Thessaly was home to extensive Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures around 6000–2500 BC. Mycenaean settlements have also discovered, for example at the sites of Iolcos, Dimini. In Archaic and Classical times, the lowlands of Thessaly became the home of baronial families, in the summer of 480 BC, the Persians invaded Thessaly. The Greek army that guarded the Vale of Tempe evacuated the road before the enemy arrived, not much later, Thessaly surrendered to the Persians. The Thessalian family of Aleuadae joined the Persians subsequently, in the 4th century BC, after the Greco-Persian Wars had long ended, Jason of Pherae transformed the region into a significant military power, recalling the glory of Early Archaic times. Shortly after, Philip II of Macedon was appointed Archon of Thessaly, the Avars had arrived in Europe in the late 550s. They asserted their authority over many Slavs, who were divided into numerous petty tribes, many Slavs were galvanized into an effective infantry force, by the Avars. In the 7th century the Avar-Slav alliance began to raid the Byzantine Empire, laying siege to Thessalonica, relations between the Slavs and Greeks were probably peaceful apart from the initial settlement and intermittent uprisings. Being agriculturalists, the Slavs probably traded with the Greeks inside towns and it is likely that the re-Hellenization had already begun by way of this contact. This process would be completed by a newly reinvigorated Byzantine Empire, with the abatement of Arab-Byzantine Wars, the Byzantine Empire began to consolidate its power in those areas of mainland Greece occupied by Proto-Slavic tribes. Following the campaigns of the Byzantine general Staurakios in 782–783, the Byzantine Empire recovered Thessaly, apart from military expeditions against Slavs, the re-Hellenization process begun under Nicephorus I involved transfer of peoples. Many Slavs were moved to other parts of the such as Anatolia. In return, many Greeks from Sicily and Asia Minor were brought to the interior of Greece, to increase the number of defenders at the Emperors disposal, even non-Greeks such as Armenians were transferred to the Balkans
12.
Balkans
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The Balkan Peninsula, or the Balkans, is a peninsula and a cultural area in Eastern and Southeastern Europe with various and disputed borders. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch from the Serbia-Bulgaria border to the Black Sea, the highest point of the Balkans is Mount Musala 2,925 metres in the Rila mountain range. In Turkish, Balkan means a chain of wooded mountains, the name is still preserved in Central Asia with the Balkan Daglary and the Balkan Province of Turkmenistan. A less popular hypothesis regarding its etymology is that it derived from the Persian Balā-Khāna, from Antiquity through the Middle Ages, the Balkan Mountains had been called by the local Thracian name Haemus. According to Greek mythology, the Thracian king Haemus was turned into a mountain by Zeus as a punishment, a reverse name scheme has also been suggested. D. Dechev considers that Haemus is derived from a Thracian word *saimon, a third possibility is that Haemus derives from the Greek word haema meaning blood. The myth relates to a fight between Zeus and the monster/titan Typhon, Zeus injured Typhon with a thunder bolt and Typhons blood fell on the mountains, from which they got their name. The earliest mention of the name appears in an early 14th-century Arab map, the Ottomans first mention it in a document dated from 1565. There has been no other documented usage of the word to refer to the region before that, there is also a claim about an earlier Bulgar Turkic origin of the word popular in Bulgaria, however it is only an unscholarly assertion. The word was used by the Ottomans in Rumelia in its meaning of mountain, as in Kod̲j̲a-Balkan, Čatal-Balkan, and Ungurus-Balkani̊. The concept of the Balkans was created by the German geographer August Zeune in 1808, during the 1820s, Balkan became the preferred although not yet exclusive term alongside Haemus among British travelers. Among Russian travelers not so burdened by classical toponymy, Balkan was the preferred term, zeunes goal was to have a geographical parallel term to the Italic and Iberian Peninsula, and seemingly nothing more. The gradually acquired political connotations are newer and, to a large extent, after the dissolution of Yugoslavia beginning in June 1991, the term Balkans again received a negative meaning, especially in Croatia and Slovenia, even in casual usage. A European Union initiative of 1999 is called the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, and its northern boundary is often given as the Danube, Sava and Kupa Rivers. The Balkan Peninsula has an area of about 470,000 km2. It is more or less identical to the known as Southeastern Europe. As of 1920 until World War II, Italy included Istria, the current territory of Italy includes only the small area around Trieste inside the Balkan Peninsula. However, the regions of Trieste and Istria are not usually considered part of the Balkans by Italian geographers, the Western Balkans is a neologism coined to describe the countries of ex-Yugoslavia and Albania
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Malians (Greek tribe)
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The Malians were a Greek tribe that resided at the mouth of the river Spercheios in Greece. The Malian Gulf is named after them, in the western valley of the Spercheios, their land was adjacent to the Aenianes. In the town of Anthele, the Malians had an important temple of Demeter, in 426 BCE, the Malians asked Sparta for help in their war against the Oetaeans. The Spartans then founded the town Heraclea Trachis in place of Trachis, in the following decades, the Malians were under the hegemony of Sparta until they revolted against Sparta in the Corinthian War. In this war, they lost their land south of the Spercheios, Herakleia Trachis was given to the Oitaians, the Malians also betrayed Sparta in the battle of Thermopylae, helping the Persians surround the greek army. Together with the Oitaians and the Ainians, the Malians became members of the Corinthian League and, in 235 BCE, in 189 BCE they were joined to Achaea Phthiotis and since that time the Malians were regarded as Thessalians
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Greeks
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The Greeks or Hellenes are an ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus, southern Albania, Turkey, Sicily, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. They also 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, Thessalonica, Alexandria, Smyrna, 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, Cyprus 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 later 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, history 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 later 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, Antioch 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, Greeks, 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
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Spercheios
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The Spercheios, also known as the Spercheus from its Latin name, is a river in Phthiotis in central Greece. It was worshipped as a god in the ancient Greek religion, in antiquity, its upper valley was known as Ainis. In AD997, its valley was the site of the Battle of Spercheios, the river begins in the Tymfristos mountains on the border with Evrytania and flows to the east through the village Agios Georgios Tymfristou, entering a wide plain. It flows along the towns Makrakomi and Leianokladi, and south of the Phthiotidan capital Lamia, the river flows through an area of former wetlands, that have been reclaimed for agriculture. It empties into the Malian Gulf of the Aegean Sea 13 kilometers southeast of Lamia, in antiquity, the mouth of the river was the site of Antikyra, which was famed for its black and white hellebore. Several studies have been conducted regarding the rivers hydrological regime and its silt has slowly filled the Malian Gulf, turning Thermopylae from a narrow pass into a wide plain. Homers Iliad names the river as the father of Menesthius, one of Achilless lieutenants, antoninus Liberalis notes the tradition that Cerambus was punished for claiming that the nymphs of Mount Othrys were the daughters of Spercheios by Deino. Antoninus Liberalis also relates the account that Spercheios and Polydoras son was Dryops, king of Oeta, la vallée du Spercheios des origines au IVe siècle
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Malian Gulf
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The Malian or Maliac Gulf is a gulf in the western Aegean Sea. It forms part of the coastline of Greeces region of Phthiotis, the gulf stretches east to west to a distance of 15 to 22 kilometers, depending on the definition, and is very shallow, with a maximum depth of 27 meters. The only harbour is that of Stylida, which serves the city of Lamia, to its east is Cape Lichada, the northwesternmost point of the island of Euboea. The gulf is named after the ancient Malians who lived on its shores, due to the constant accretion of silt from the river the Spercheios and smaller streams, the gulf has been shrinking over the centuries. The ancient strait of Thermopylae, which at the time the battle was fought, was delineated by Mount Kallidromo. Under the London Protocol of 1830, the line connecting the Malian Gulf and the Aspropotamos River was established as the northern border of the newly independent Greek state
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Ainis
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Ainis or Aeniania, was a region of ancient Greece located near Lamia in modern Central Greece, roughly corresponding to the upper Valley of Spercheios. The region takes its name from the tribe of the Ainianians, the name Ainis first occurs in Roman times, the only known earlier name of the region was land of the Aenianians, Ainianōn khōra. Ainis is located in the upper Spercheios valley, bordering with Dolopia in the west, Oita in the south, Malis in the east, the exact borders with Oita and Malis have never been established. The river Spercheios floats through the region on its way down to the Maliac Gulf, the area is limited to the north by the Othrys mountains, and to the west by a spur of the Pindus mountains, with the peak of Tymphrestus visible from most of the region. To the south lies the peaks of Goulinas and Mount Oeta, most of Ainis consists today of a fertile river plain, whether this was the case during Antiquity does however remain uncertain. As with Greece in general, there is some activity with hot springs close to the village of Platystomo. After the introduction of modern heating, the previously bald foothills of the mountains are now covered with dense thickets of ivy. Plutarch writes that the Ainianians were once expelled from Thessaly by the Lapiths to wander the Greek peninsula until they settled in the upper Valley of Spercheios. According to Plutarch, when the Ainianians finally settled in what would become Ainis, the land was occupied by the Inachians. Phemios, king of the Ainianians, however, killed Hyparochos king of the Inachians with a stone while the latter had his head turned, the Ainianians struck coins in Hypata with the head of Zeus on the obverse and the legendary king Phemios on the reverse. Very little is known of the settlements in ancient Ainis apart from the city of Hypata, several poleis are mentioned in inscriptions at Delphi, but apart from Hypate, none has yet been convincingly identified. A smaller settlement, that of Makra Kome, is mentioned in a passage by Livy as being ravaged by the Aetolians during the Second Macedonian War. There are, however, several sites in the area, mostly of the Hellenistic period. The capital of Ainis, Hypata, was located at the town of Ypati on the northern slope of Mount Oeta. The ancient city was divided in a lower fortified city located approximately at the modern location of the town. The commanding tower on the acropolis is of a later date, the political area of Hypata probably extended far north on the river plain, which is also mentioned in several inscriptions. A road over Mount Oeta led southward from Hypata towards Kallion in Aetolia, most of Apuleius The Golden Ass takes place in and about Hypata, which at the time of the novel was a thriving Roman city. After the introduction of Christianity, Hypata became a Metropolitan bishopric in the Roman province of Achaea, an elongated hill near the village of Vitoli bears the name Kastrorakhi, and on its top there are remains of a wall with many towers as well as an impressive gate
18.
Demeter
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In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, Demeter is the goddess of the harvest and agriculture, who presided over grains and the fertility of the earth. Her cult titles include Sito, she of the Grain, as the giver of food or grain, though Demeter is often described simply as the goddess of the harvest, she presided also over the sacred law, and the cycle of life and death. She and her daughter Persephone were the figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries that predated the Olympian pantheon. In the Linear B Mycenean Greek tablets of c, 1400–1200 BC found at Pylos, the two mistresses and the king may be related with Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon. It is possible that Demeter appears in Linear A as da-ma-te on three documents, all three dedicated in religious situations and all three bearing just the name. It is unlikely that Demeter appears as da-ma-te in a Linear B inscription, on the other hand,
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Amphictyonic League
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Historians have puzzled over the broader meanings of alliance in such early times. Twelve members would meet at times in the same sanctuary to keep religious festivals. An early amphictyony centered on Kalaureia, a close to the coast of Troezen in the Peloponnesus sacred to Poseidon, was noted by Strabo. Archaeology of the suggested to Thomas Kelly that the sacred league was founded in the second quarter of the 7th century BC. 680-650, before that there were virtually no remains at the site. The island was known at one time as Eirene, clearly in reference to the amphictyony, the least obscure and longest-lasting amphictyony was the Delphic or Great Amphictyonic League that was organized to support the greater temples of Apollo and Demeter. The League council had religious authority and the power to pronounce punishments against offenders, punishments could range from fines to expulsion and to conduct sacred wars. The Amphictyonic League also set the rules of battle so as to protect sanctuaries, all members were obliged to pledge themselves by an oath as reported by Aeschines. The founding myth claimed that it had founded in the most distant past by an eponymous founder Amphictyon, brother of Hellen. Representatives of the members met in Thermopylae in spring and in Delphi in autumn. The League doctrine required that no member would be wiped out in war. It did not prevent members from fighting about the dominance over the temples, the oldest religious Amphictyonic League was known as Anthelian, because it was centered on the cult of the chthonic goddess Demeter at Anthela. The twelve delegates were entitled Pylagorai, perhaps a reference to the local Gates of Hades, the immediate dwellers-round were some small states and also Achaea-Phthiotis that probably paved the way for the entry of the body of the rest Boeotian tribes which were living around Thessaly. As a result of the war the Anthelan body was known thenceforth as the Delphic Amphictyony and became the official overseer, a strange and revealing anti-Thessalian feeling appeared and a wall was built across the narrow defile at Thermopylae to keep the Thessalians out. This was a made to be sung at a Boeotian festival at midsummer at the hottest time of the dogstar Sirios. The name Hellenes, may be related to the members of the league, in Greek mythology Amphictyon was brother of Hellen, and Graecus was son of his sister Pandora. According to the Parian Chronicle, the previously-named Graeces were renamed Hellenes, originally a religious organization, the Amphictyonic League became politically important in the 6th century BC, when larger city-states began to use it to apply pressure to the lesser ones. The Oracle managed to become independent from the city of Krissa, the people of Krissa then imposed a tax on those who were passing through their area to go to Delphi, causing strong complaints and reducing the resources of the Oracle
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Limestone
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Limestone is a sedimentary rock, composed mainly of skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral, forams and molluscs. Its major materials are the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate, about 10% of sedimentary rocks are limestones. The solubility of limestone in water and weak acid solutions leads to karst landscapes, most cave systems are through limestone bedrock. The first geologist to distinguish limestone from dolomite was Belsazar Hacquet in 1778, like most other sedimentary rocks, most limestone is composed of grains. Most grains in limestone are skeletal fragments of organisms such as coral or foraminifera. Other carbonate grains comprising limestones are ooids, peloids, intraclasts and these organisms secrete shells made of aragonite or calcite, and leave these shells behind when they die. Limestone often contains variable amounts of silica in the form of chert or siliceous skeletal fragment, some limestones do not consist of grains at all, and are formed completely by the chemical precipitation of calcite or aragonite, i. e. travertine. Secondary calcite may be deposited by supersaturated meteoric waters and this produces speleothems, such as stalagmites and stalactites. Another form taken by calcite is oolitic limestone, which can be recognized by its granular appearance, the primary source of the calcite in limestone is most commonly marine organisms. Some of these organisms can construct mounds of rock known as reefs, below about 3,000 meters, water pressure and temperature conditions cause the dissolution of calcite to increase nonlinearly, so limestone typically does not form in deeper waters. Limestones may also form in lacustrine and evaporite depositional environments, calcite can be dissolved or precipitated by groundwater, depending on several factors, including the water temperature, pH, and dissolved ion concentrations. Calcite exhibits a characteristic called retrograde solubility, in which it becomes less soluble in water as the temperature increases. Impurities will cause limestones to exhibit different colors, especially with weathered surfaces, Limestone may be crystalline, clastic, granular, or massive, depending on the method of formation. Crystals of calcite, quartz, dolomite or barite may line small cavities in the rock, when conditions are right for precipitation, calcite forms mineral coatings that cement the existing rock grains together, or it can fill fractures. Travertine is a banded, compact variety of limestone formed along streams, particularly there are waterfalls. Calcium carbonate is deposited where evaporation of the leaves a solution supersaturated with the chemical constituents of calcite. Tufa, a porous or cellular variety of travertine, is found near waterfalls, coquina is a poorly consolidated limestone composed of pieces of coral or shells. During regional metamorphism that occurs during the building process, limestone recrystallizes into marble
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Deposition (geology)
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Deposition is the geological process in which sediments, soil and rocks are added to a landform or land mass. Deposition can also refer to the buildup of sediment from organically derived matter or chemical processes, for example, chalk is made up partly of the microscopic calcium carbonate skeletons of marine plankton, the deposition of which has induced chemical processes to deposit further calcium carbonate. Similarly, the formation of coal begins with deposition of material, mainly from plants. The null-point hypothesis explains how sediment is deposited throughout a shore profile according to its grain size and this is due to the influence of hydraulic energy, resulting in a seaward-fining of sediment particle size, or where fluid forcing equals gravity for each grain size. The concept can also be explained as sediment of a particular size may move across the profile to a position where it is in equilibrium with the wave, figure 1 illustrates this relationship between sediment grain size and the depth of the marine environment. The relatively strong onshore stroke of the forms a eddy or vortex on the lee side of the ripple, provided the onshore flow persists. Where there is symmetry in ripple shape the vortex is neutralised and this creates a cloudy water column which travels under tidal influence as the wave orbital motion is in equilibrium. R is the radius of the object, ρ is the mass density of the fluid, g is the gravitational acceleration, Cd is the drag coefficient. When the fluid becomes more viscous due to grain sizes or larger settling velocities, prediction is less straight forward. Cohesion of sediment occurs with the grain sizes associated with silts and clays. Akaroa Harbour is located on Banks Peninsula, Canterbury, New Zealand and this research shows conclusive evidence for the null point theory existing on tidal flats with differing hydrodynamic energy levels and also on flats that are both erosional and accretional. Kirby R. Cheniers can be found at any level on the foreshore and this is because sediment grain size analysis throughout a profile allows inference into the erosion or accretion rates possible if shore dynamics are modified. Planners and managers should also be aware that the environment is dynamic. Cementation Cross-bedding Drift Flocculation Longshore drift Overbank Sedimentary rock Sedimentary structures Settling Shields parameter Stokes law Superficial deposits
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Travertine
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Travertine is a form of limestone deposited by mineral springs, especially hot springs. Travertine often has a fibrous or concentric appearance and exists in white, tan, cream-colored and it is formed by a process of rapid precipitation of calcium carbonate, often at the mouth of a hot spring or in a limestone cave. In the latter, it can form stalactites, stalagmites, and it is frequently used in Italy and elsewhere as a building material. Travertine is a sedimentary rock, formed by the precipitation of carbonate minerals from solution in ground and surface waters. Similar deposits formed from water are known as tufa. The word travertine is derived from the Italian travertino, itself a derivation of the Latin tiburtinus ‘of Tibur’ and its namesake is also the origin of Tivoli, a district near Rome. Modern travertine is formed from geothermally heated supersaturated alkaline waters, with raised pCO2, on emergence, waters degas CO2 due to the lower atmospheric pCO2, resulting in an increase in pH. Since carbonate solubility decreases with increased pH, precipitation is induced, precipitation may be enhanced by factors leading to a reduction in pCO2, for example increased air-water interactions at waterfalls may be important, as may photosynthesis. Precipitation may also be enhanced by evaporation in some springs, both calcite and aragonite are found in hot spring travertines, aragonite is preferentially precipitated when temperatures are hot, while calcite dominates when temperatures are cooler. When pure and fine, travertine is white, but often it is brown to yellow due to impurities, travertine may precipitate out directly onto rock and other inert materials as in Pamukkale or Yellowstone for example. The latter has a historic value, because it was one of the quarries that Gian Lorenzo Bernini selected material from to build the famous Colonnade of St. Peters Square in Rome in 1656-1667. Michaelangelo also chose travertine as the material for the ribs of the dome of St Peters Basilica. Travertine derives its name from the town, known as Tibur in ancient Roman times. The ancient name for the stone was lapis tiburtinus, meaning tibur stone, detailed studies of the Tivoli and Guidonia travertine deposits revealed diurnal and annual rhythmic banding and laminae, which have potential use in geochronology. Cascades of natural lakes formed behind travertine dams can be seen in Pamukkale, Turkey, in Central Europes last post-glacial palaeoclimatic optimum, huge deposits of tufa formed from karst springs. On a smaller scale, these karst processes are still working, travertine has been an important building material since the Middle Ages. Travertine has formed sixteen huge, natural dams in a valley in Croatia known as Plitvice Lakes National Park, clinging to moss and rocks in the water, the travertine has built up over several millennia to form waterfalls up to 70 m in height. In the U. S. the most well-known place for travertine formation is Yellowstone National Park, Oklahoma has two parks dedicated to this natural wonder
23.
Leonidas I
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Leonidas I was a warrior king of the Greek city-state of Sparta. He was the husband of Gorgo, the daughter of Cleomenes I of Sparta and the 17th of the Agiad line, Anaxandridas refused, claiming his wife was blameless, whereupon the ephors agreed to allow him to take a second wife without setting aside his first. This second wife, a descendent of Chilon of Sparta, promptly bore a son, however, one year after Cleomenes birth, Anaxandridas first wife also gave birth to a son, Dorieus. Leonidas was the son of Anaxandridas first wife, and either the elder brother or twin of Cleombrotus. Leonidas was thus one of the few Spartan kings to have undergone the notoriously harsh training of Spartan youth. Anaxandridas died in 520 BC, and Cleomenes succeeded to the sometime between then and 516 BC. Dorieus was so outraged that the Spartans had preferred his half-brother over himself that he found it impossible to remain in Sparta. He made one attempt to set up a colony in Africa and, when this failed, sought his fortune in Sicily. Leonidas relationship with his bitterly antagonistic elder brothers is unknown, but he married Cleomenes daughter, Gorgo, Leonidas was heir to the Agiad throne and a full citizen at the time of the Battle of Sepeia against Argos. Likewise, he was a citizen when the Persians sought submission from Sparta. Leonidas was chosen to lead the combined Greek forces determined to resist the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 481 BC, the rejection of Leotychidas and Pausanias was not a reflection on Spartan arms. Spartas military reputation had never stood in higher regard, nor was Sparta less powerful in 478 BC than it had been in 481 BC and this selection of Leonidas to lead the defense of Greece against Xerxes invasion led to Leonidas death in the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. Upon receiving a request from the confederated Greek forces to aid in defending Greece against the Persian invasion, there are various theories on why Leonidas was accompanied by such a small force of hoplites. After completing their festival Carneia, they left their garrison at Sparta, the rest of the allies planned to do likewise, for the Olympiad coincided with these events. They accordingly sent their advance guard, not expecting the war at Thermopylae to be decided so quickly, many modern commentators are unsatisfied with this explanation and point to the fact that the Olympic Games were in progress or impute internal dissent and intrigue. Whatever the reason Spartas own contribution was just 300 Spartiates, the force assembled for the defense of the pass of Thermopylae came to something between four and seven thousand Greeks. They faced a Persian army who had invaded from the north of Greece under Xerxes I, Herodotus stated that this army consisted of over two million men, modern scholars consider this to be an exaggeration and give estimates ranging from 70,000 to 300,000. Xerxes waited four days to attack, hoping the Greeks would disperse, finally, on the fifth day the Persians attacked
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Epitaph
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An epitaph is a short text honouring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves before their death, while others are chosen by those responsible for the burial. An epitaph may be written in prose or in verse, poets have been known to compose their own epitaphs prior to their death. Most epitaphs are brief records of the family, and perhaps the career, of the deceased, often with an expression of love or respect—for example. Notably, the Laudatio Turiae, the longest known Ancient Roman epitaph, exceeds almost all of these at 180 lines, it celebrates the virtues of an honored wife, some are quotes from holy texts, or aphorisms. One approach of many epitaphs is to speak to the reader, a wry trick of others is to request the reader to get off their resting place, inasmuch as the reader would have to be standing on the ground above the coffin to read the inscription. Nearly all note name, year or date of birth, many list family members and the relationship of the deceased to them. Heroes and Kings your distance keep, In peace let one poor poet sleep, Who never flattered folks like you, Let Horace blush, — Alexander Pope Wir müssen wissen. — David Hilbert He never killed a man that did not need killing, — Clay Allison Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water — John Keats Undefeated — Hans-Joachim Marseille And the beat goes on. — Sonny Bono Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas, Ease after warre, death after life, — Joseph Conrad Thats all folks. — Mel Blanc Ive finally stopped getting dumber, — Paul Erdős Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by that here, obedient to their law, we lie. — Simonidess epigram at Thermopylae I told you I was ill, — Spike Milligan Here sleeps at peace a Hampshire Grenadier Who caught his early death by drinking cold small beer. Soldiers, be wise at his fall, And when youre hot. — Thomas Thetcher tombstone epitaph in Winchester Cathedral To save your world you asked this man to die, Would this man, could he see you now, ask why. — Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier, written by W. H. Auden There is borne an empty hearsecovered over for such as appear not. Heroes have the earth for their tomb. — Unknown Soldiers epitaph, Athens, passages taken from Pericles Funeral Oration Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death. — Virginia Woolf Good frend for Iesvs sake forebeare, To digg the dvst encloased heare. Bleste be man spares thes stones, Good friend for Jesus sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he moves my bones
25.
Christian views on Hades
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Hades, according to various Christian denominations, is the place or state of departed spirits. In the Septuagint, the Greek term ᾅδης is used to translate the Hebrew term שאול in, for example, Isaiah 38,18. In New Testament Greek, the Hebrew phrase לא־תעזב נפשׁי לשׁאול in Psalm 16,10 is quoted in Acts 2,27 as οὐκ ἐγκαταλείψεις τὴν ψυχήν μου εἰς ᾅδου. Except in this verse of 1 Corinthians, where it uses grave, modern translations, for which there are only 10 instances of the word ᾅδης in the New Testament, generally transliterate it as Hades. The word ᾅδης is usually related to afterlife punishment, death and Hades are repeatedly associated in the Book of Revelation. Thou shalt go down unto Hades, Greek, on the other hand, has kept the original meaning of ᾅδης and uses the word κόλασις to refer to what nowadays is usually meant by hell in English. Most mainstream Christian denominations and churches believe in form of conscious existence after the death of the body. The teaching of the Eastern Orthodox Church is that, after the leaves the body. There are exceptions, such as the Theotokos, who was borne by the angels directly into heaven, as for the rest, we must remain in this condition of waiting. Because some have a prevision of the glory to come and others foretaste their suffering, when Christ returns, the soul rejoins its risen body to be judged by Him in the Last judgment. The good and faithful servant will inherit eternal life, the unfaithful with the unbeliever will spend eternity in hell and their sins and their unbelief will torture them as fire. The Latin word infernus or infernum indicated the abode of the dead and it appears in both the documents quoted above, and pointed more obviously than the Greek word to an existence beneath the earth. Later, the transliteration hades of the Greek word ceased to be used in Latin, though infernus is usually translated into English as hell, it did not have the narrow sense that the English word has now acquired. It continued to have the meaning of abode of the dead. John Henry Hobart, an Anglican bishop, writes that Hades, or the place of the dead, is represented as a receptacle with gates. This space is divided into Paradise and Gehenna but with an impassable gulf between the two, souls, with exception of martyrs and saints, remain in Hades until the Final Judgment and Christians may also improve in holiness after death during the middle state before the final judgment. As such, many Anglicans pray for the dead, in the Methodist Church, hades denotes the intermediate state of souls between death and the general resurrection, which is divided into Paradise and Gehenna. After the general judgment, hades will be abolished, john Wesley, the founder of Methodism, made a distinction between hell and hades, and also between paradise and heaven itself
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Myth
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A myth is any traditional story consisting of events that are ostensibly historical, though often supernatural, explaining the origins of a cultural practice or natural phenomenon. The word myth is derived from the Greek word mythos, which means story. Mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths, myth can mean sacred story, traditional narrative or tale of the gods. A myth can also be a story to explain why something exists, human cultures usually include a cosmogonical or creation myth, concerning the origins of the world, or how the world came to exist. The active beings in myths are generally gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, or animals, most myths are set in a timeless past before recorded time or beginning of the critical history. A myth can be a story involving symbols that are capable of multiple meanings, a myth is a sacred narrative because it holds religious or spiritual significance for those who tell it. Myths also contribute to and express a cultures systems of thought and values, myths are often therefore stories that are currently understood as being exaggerated or fictitious. According to Albert A. Anderson, a professor of philosophy, in these works, the term had several meanings, conversation, narrative, speech, story, tale, and word. Like the related term logos, mythos expresses whatever can be delivered in the form of words, Anderson contrasts the two terms with ergon, a Greek term for action, deed, and work. The term mythos lacks an explicit distinction between true or false narratives, in the context of the Theatre of ancient Greece, the term mythos referred to the myth, the narrative, the plot, and the story of a theatrical play. According to David Wiles, the Greek term mythos in this era covered an entire spectrum of different meanings, from undeniable falsehoods to stories with religious, according to philosopher Aristotle, the spirit of a theatrical play was its mythos. The term mythos was also used for the material of Greek tragedy. The tragedians of the era could draw inspiration from Greek mythology, David Wiles observes that modern conceptions about Greek tragedy can be misleading. It is commonly thought that the ancient audience members were familiar with the mythos behind a play. However, the Greek dramatists were not expected to faithfully reproduce traditional myths when adapting them for the stage and they were instead recreating the myths and producing new versions. Storytellers like Euripides relied on suspense to excite their audiences, in one of his works, Merope attempts to kill her sons murderer with an axe, unaware that the man in question is actually her son. According to an ancient description of reactions to this work. They rose to their feet in terror and caused an uproar, David Wiles points that the traditional mythos of Ancient Greece, was primarily a part of its oral tradition
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Heracles
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Heracles, born Alcaeus or Alcides, was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson and half-brother of Perseus. He was the greatest of the Greek heroes, a paragon of masculinity, the ancestor of clans who claimed to be Heracleidae. In Rome and the modern West, he is known as Hercules, with whom the later Roman emperors, in particular Commodus and Maximian, often identified themselves. The Romans adopted the Greek version of his life and works essentially unchanged, details of his cult were adapted to Rome as well. Extraordinary strength, courage, ingenuity, and sexual prowess with both males and females were among the characteristics commonly attributed to him, together with Hermes he was the patron and protector of gymnasia and palaestrae. His iconographic attributes are the skin and the club. These qualities did not prevent him from being regarded as a figure who used games to relax from his labors. By conquering dangerous archaic forces he is said to have made the safe for mankind. Many popular stories were told of his life, the most famous being The Twelve Labours of Heracles and his figure, which initially drew on Near Eastern motifs such as the lion-fight, was widely known. Heracles was the greatest of Hellenic chthonic heroes, but unlike other Greek heroes, the core of the story of Heracles has been identified by Walter Burkert as originating in Neolithic hunter culture and traditions of shamanistic crossings into the netherworld. Heracles role as a hero, whose death could be a subject of mythic telling, was accepted into the Olympian Pantheon during Classical times. Around him cries of the dead rang out like cries of birds scattering left, in Christian circles a Euhemerist reading of the widespread Heracles cult was attributed to a historical figure who had been offered cult status after his death. The ancient Greeks celebrated the festival of the Heracleia, which commemorated the death of Heracles, what is believed to be an Egyptian Temple of Heracles in the Bahariya Oasis dates to 21 BCE. A reassessment of Ptolemys descriptions of the island of Malta attempted to link the site at Ras ir-Raħeb with a temple to Heracles, several ancient cities were named Heraclea in his honor. A major factor in the tragedies surrounding Heracles is the hatred that the goddess Hera. A full account of Heracles must render it clear why Heracles was so tormented by Hera, Heracles was the son of the affair Zeus had with the mortal woman Alcmene. Zeus made love to her after disguising himself as her husband, Amphitryon, thus, Heracles very existence proved at least one of Zeus many illicit affairs, and Hera often conspired against Zeus mortal offspring as revenge for her husbands infidelities. His twin mortal brother, son of Amphitryon, was Iphicles, Hera did this knowing that while Heracles was to be born a descendant of Perseus, so too was Eurystheus
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Lernaean Hydra
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The Lernaean Hydra or Hydra of Lerna, more often known simply as the Hydra, was a serpentine water monster in Greek and Roman mythology. Its lair was the lake of Lerna in the Argolid, which was also the site of the myth of the Danaids, Lerna was reputed to be an entrance to the Underworld and archaeology has established it as a sacred site older than Mycenaean Argos. In the canonical Hydra myth, the monster is killed by Heracles, more known as Hercules, using sword and fire. According to Hesiod, the Hydra was the offspring of Typhon and it possessed many heads, the exact number of which varies according to the source. Later versions of the Hydra story add a feature to the monster, for every head chopped off. The Hydra had poisonous breath and blood so virulent that even its scent was deadly, the oldest extant Hydra narrative appears in Hesiods Theogony, while the oldest images of the monster are found on a pair of bronze fibulae dating to ca.700 BCE. In both these sources, the motifs of the Hydra myth are already present, a multi-headed serpent that is slain by Heracles. While the fibulae portray a six-headed Hydra, its number of heads was first fixed in writing by Alcaeus, simonides, writing a century later, increased the number to fifty, while Euripides, Virgil and others did not bother to give an exact figure. Heraclitus the paradoxographer rationalized the myth by suggesting that the Hydra would have been a single-headed snake accompanied by its offspring, like the initial number of heads, the monsters capacity to regenerate lost heads varies with time and author. The first mention of this ability of the Hydra occurs with Euripides, palaephatus, Ovid and Diodorus Siculus concur with Euripides, while Servius has the Hydra grow back three heads each time, the Suda does not give a number. Depictions of the dating to ca.500 BCE show it with a double tail as well as multiple heads, suggesting the same regenerative ability at work. The Hydra had many parallels in ancient Near Eastern religions, the constellation is also sometimes associated in Babylonian contexts with Marduks dragon, the Mushhushshu. Eurystheus sent Heracles to slay the Hydra, which Hera had raised just to slay Heracles, upon reaching the swamp near Lake Lerna, where the Hydra dwelt, Heracles covered his mouth and nose with a cloth to protect himself from the poisonous fumes. He shot flaming arrows into the Hydras lair, the spring of Amymone and he then confronted the Hydra, wielding either a harvesting sickle, a sword, or his famed club. The chthonic creatures reaction to this decapitation was botanical, two back, an expression of the hopelessness of such a struggle for any but the hero. The weakness of the Hydra was that it was only if it retained at least one head. The details of the struggle are explicit in the Bibliotheca, realizing that he could not defeat the Hydra in this way and his nephew then came upon the idea of using a firebrand to scorch the neck stumps after each decapitation. Heracles cut off each head and Iolaus cauterized the open stumps, seeing that Heracles was winning the struggle, Hera sent a giant crab to distract him
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Herodotus
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Herodotus was a Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire and lived in the fifth century BC, a contemporary of Socrates. The Histories is the work which he is known to have produced. Despite Herodotus historical significance, little is known of his personal life and his place in history and his significance may be understood according to the traditions within which he worked. His work is the earliest Greek prose to have survived intact, of these only fragments of Hecataeuss work survive yet they allow us glimpses into the kind of tradition within which Herodotus wrote his own Histories. In his introduction to Hecataeus’s work, Genealogies, This points forward to the ‘folksy’ yet ‘international’ outlook typical of Herodotus. Yet, one scholar has described the work of Hecataeus as “a curious false start to history” since despite his critical spirit. It is possible that Herodotus borrowed much material from Hecataeus, as stated by Porphyry in a recorded by Eusebius. But Hecataeus did not record events that had occurred in living memory, unlike Herodotus, Herodotus claims to be better informed than his predecessors by relying on empirical observation to correct their excessive schematism. For example, He argues for continental asymmetry as opposed to the theory of a perfectly circular earth with Europe. Yet, he retains idealizing tendencies, as in his notions of the Danube. His debt to previous authors of prose ‘histories’ might be questionable, however, this point is one of the most contentious issues in modern scholarship. It is on account of the strange stories and the folk-tales he reported that his critics in early modern times branded him “The Father of Lies”. Even his own contemporaries found reason to scoff at his achievement, similarly, the Athenian historian Thucydides dismissed Herodotus as a “logos-writer”. Moreover, Thucydides developed a historical topic more in keeping with the Greek world-view, the interplay of civilizations was more relevant to Greeks living in Anatolia, such as Herodotus himself, for whom life within a foreign civilization was a recent memory. Modern scholars generally turn to Herodotus’s own writing for reliable information about his life, supplemented with ancient yet much later sources, modern accounts of his life typically go something like this, Herodotus was born at Halicarnassus around 484 BC. His name is not mentioned later in the tribute list of the Athenian Delian League, the epic poet Panyassis – a relative of Herodotus – is reported to have taken part in a failed uprising. Herodotus expresses affection for the island of Samos, and this is an indication that he might have lived there in his youth. So it is possible that his family was involved in an uprising against Lygdamis, leading to a period of exile on Samos, Herodotus wrote his Histories in the Ionian dialect, yet he was born in Halicarnassus, which was a Dorian settlement
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Tegea
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Tegea was a settlement in ancient Arcadia, and it is also a former municipality in Arcadia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Tripoli, the municipal unit has an area of 118.350 km2. Its seat was the village Stadio, the reputed prehistoric founder of Tegea was Tegeates, a son of Lycaon. Ancient Tegea was an important religious center of ancient Greece, containing the Temple of Athena Alea, the temenos was founded by Aleus, Pausanias was informed. Votive bronzes at the site from the Geometric and Archaic periods take the forms of horses and deer, there are sealstones, in the Archaic period the nine villages that underlie Tegea banded together in a synoecism to form one city. Tegea was listed in Homers Catalogue of Ships as one of the cities that contributed ships, in the 4th century Tegea joined the Arcadian League and struggled to free itself from Sparta. The Temple of Athena Alea burned in 394 BC and was rebuilt, to designs by Scopas of Paros. Pausanias visited the city in the 2nd century CE, the tombs he saw there were shrines to the chthonic founding daemones, There are also tombs of Tegeates, the son of Lycaon, and of Maira, his wife. Maira was a daughter of Atlas, and Homer makes mention of her in the passage where Odysseus tells to Alkinous his journey to Hades, the city retained civic life under the Roman Empire, Tegea survived being sacked by the Goths in AD 395–396. In the Middle Ages, through some process, Tegea received the name of Amyklion by the 10th century. In 1082, it became the seat of the Diocese of Amyclae, Nikli and the rest of Arcadia were captured by the Crusaders in c. 1206–09, becoming part of the new Frankish Principality of Achaea, the Chronicle of the Morea depicts Nikli as a site of some importance and fortified, which fell to the Crusaders only after a siege. It became the seat of a barony, while a Roman Catholic bishop was installed in the episcopal see. Nikli was still in Frankish hands in 1280, but was lost to the resurgent Byzantines by 1302, the site of ancient Tegea is now located within the modern village of Alea. Alea is located about 10 kilometers southeast of Tripoli, the municipality of Tegea has its seat at Stadio. Yet the Cretans denied this, instead tried to portray these three characters as the offspring of the local heroes Minos and Rhadamantus. Recherches historiques, topographiques et archéologiques sur la principauté d’Achaïe, Η μετά της επισκοπής Αμυκλών ένωσις της πατριαρχικής εξαρχίας Τριπολιτζάς. Deltion of the Christian Archaeological Society, Συμβολή στην ιστορική γεωγραφία της Αρκαδίας
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Orchomenus (Arcadia)
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Orchomenus or Orchomenos was an ancient city of Arcadia, Greece, called by Thucydides the Arcadian Orchomenus, to distinguish it from the Boeotian town. Orchomenos was a settlement and became one of the powerful cities in West Arcadia along with Tegea. The heyday of the city was between 7th-6th century BC and it became a city which minted its own currency. Its ruins are near the village of Orchomenos. Orchomenos was initially established at the foot of the acropolis on a plain surrounded on every side by mountains, later the settlement was built on the mountain where the most important monuments of the city have been found. The modern village of Orchomenos stands on the site of lower Orchomenus, the plain is divided into two by hills projecting from the eastern and western ranges, and which approach so close as to allow space for only a narrow ravine between them. Upon the summit of the hill stood the acropolis of Orchomenus, nearly 900 m high, resembling the strong fortress of Messenian Ithome and, like the latter. The waters of the part of the plain run through the ravine into the northern plain where, as there is no outlet for the waters. The kings of Orchomenus are said to have ruled over nearly all Arcadia, Pausanias also gives a list of the kings of Orchomenus, whom he represents at the same time as kings of Arcadia. One of these kings, Aristocrates, the son of Aechmis, was stoned to death by his people for violating the virgin priestess of Artemis Hymnia, in the Persian Wars, Orchomenus sent 120 men to Thermopylae, and 600 to Plataea. The Orchomenians, through their enmity to the Mantineians, refused to join the Arcadian confederacy, henceforth, Orchomenus lost its political importance, but, from its commanding situation, its possession was frequently an object of the belligerent powers in later times. In the war between Cassander and Polyperchon, it fell into the power of the former,313 BC, later, under Roman pressure, it was given back by Philip V to the Achaeans. Strabo mentions it among the Arcadian cities, which had disappeared, or of which there were scarcely any traces left. Pausanias mentions, amongst other monuments, that close to the city was a statue of Artemis, enclosed in a great cedar tree. When the 19th century classicist William Smith visited the place the old city on the acropolis was in ruins and there were only vestiges of the agora. Many monuments were revealed during the excavations and can be admired today including the theatre, the remains of the ancient agora, the city walls, other monuments identified during the excavations are a Bouleuterion, a prehistoric tomb and a bridge of the Archaic Period. The most important monument is the theatre with a capacity of 4000, at an altitude of 800 metres it offered a spectacular view during cultural events. Pausanias described the temples of Artemis and Poseidon as among the most remarkable monuments, approaching the town from the south one can see tumuli on the left, chiefly composed of collections of stones as described by Pausanias
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Arcadia
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Arcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula and it takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan, in European Renaissance arts, Arcadia was celebrated as an unspoiled, harmonious wilderness. Arcadia has its capital at Tripoli. It covers about 18% of the Peloponnese peninsula, making it the largest regional unit on the peninsula, Arcadia has a ski resort on Mount Mainalo, located about 20 km NW of Tripoli. Other mountains of Arcadia are the Parnon in the southeast and the Lykaion in the west, the climate consists of hot summers and mild winters in the eastern part, the southern part, the low-lying areas and the central area at altitudes lower than 1,000 m. The area primarily receives rain during fall and winter months in the rest of Arcadia, winter snow occurs commonly in the mountainous areas for much of the west and the northern part, the Taygetus area, the Mainalon. After the collapse of the Roman power in the west, Arcadia became part of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire, the region fell into the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1460. With the exception of a period of Venetian rule in 1687–1715, the phrase is most often associated with a 1647 painting by Nicolas Poussin, also known as The Arcadian Shepherds. In the painting the phrase appears as an inscription on a tomb discovered by youthful figures in classical garb, Arcadia was one of the centres of the Greek War of Independence which saw victories in their battles including one in Tripoli. After a victorious war, Arcadia was finally incorporated into the newly created Greek state. Arcadia saw economic growth and small emigration, in the 20th century, Arcadia experienced extensive population loss through emigration, mostly to the Americas. Many Arcadian villages lost half their inhabitants, and fears arose that they would turn into ghost towns, Arcadia now has a smaller population than Corinthia. Demographers expected that its population would halve between 1951 and the early 21st century, the population has fallen to 87,000 in 2011. An earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter magnitude scale shook Megalopoli, large numbers of buildings were destroyed, leaving people homeless. Within a couple of years, the buildings were rebuilt anti-seismically, in 1967, construction began on the Megalopoli Power Plant, which began operating in 1970, producing additional electricity for southern Greece. A mining area south of the plant is the largest mining area in the peninsula, in July and August 2007 forest fires caused damage in Arcadia, notably in the mountains
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Phlius
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Phlius was a Greek city in the northwestern Argolid, in the Peloponnese, said to be named after the Greek hero Phlias but formerly called Araethyrea, after the mythological Araethyrea. Although geographically close to Argos, the city became a Spartan ally, in 229 BC Phlius was ruled by the tyrant Cleonymus, when Aratus of Sicyon convinced him to step down and let his city join the democratic Achaean League. It was the hometown of the playwright Pratinas and of Platos female student Axiothea of Phlius, the Ancient Greeks, A critical history ISBN 0-674-03314-0 Xenophon
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Mycenae
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Mycenae is an archaeological site in Greece, located about 90 kilometres southwest of Athens, in the north-eastern Peloponnese. Argos is 11 kilometres to the south, Corinth,48 kilometres to the north, from the hill on which the palace was located, one can see across the Argolid to the Saronic Gulf. In the second millennium BC, Mycenae was one of the centres of Greek civilization. The period of Greek history from about 1600 BC to about 1100 BC is called Mycenaean in reference to Mycenae, at its peak in 1350 BC, the citadel and lower town had a population of 30,000 and an area of 32 hectares. Although the citadel was built by Greeks, the name Mukanai is thought not to be Greek, legend has it that the name was connected to the Greek word mycēs. Thus, Pausanias ascribes the name to the legendary founder Perseus, the earliest written form of the name is Mykēnē, which is found in Homer. The reconstructed Mycenaean Greek name of the site is Mukānai, which has the form of a plural like Athānai, the change of ā to ē in more recent versions of the name is the result of a well-known sound change in later Attic-Ionic. An EH–MH settlement was discovered near a well on top of the Kalkani hill southwest of the acropolis. The first burials in pits or cist graves manifest in the MH period on the west slope of the acropolis, during the Bronze Age, the pattern of settlement at Mycenae was a fortified hill surrounded by hamlets and estates, in contrast to the dense urbanity on the coast. Richer grave goods mark the burials as possibly regal, mounds over the top contained broken drinking vessels and bones from a repast, testifying to a more than ordinary farewell. A walled enclosure, Grave Circle A, included six more shaft graves, with nine female, eight male, Grave goods were more costly than in Circle B. The presence of engraved and inlaid swords and daggers, with points and arrowheads, leave little doubt that warrior chieftains. Some art objects obtained from the graves are the Silver Siege Rhyton, the Mask of Agamemnon, the Cup of Nestor, Alan Wace divided the nine tholos tombs of Mycenae into three groups of three, each based on architecture. His earliest – the Cyclopean Tomb, Epano Phournos, and the Tomb of Aegisthus – are dated to LHIIA, burial in tholoi is seen as replacing burial in shaft graves. The care taken to preserve the shaft graves testifies that they were by then part of the royal heritage, being more visible, the tholoi all had been plundered either in antiquity, or in later historic times. Within these walls, much of which can still be seen, the final palace, remains of which are currently visible on the acropolis of Mycenae, dates to the start of LHIIIA,2. Earlier palaces must have existed, but they had cleared away or built over. The construction of palaces at that time with an architecture was general throughout southern Greece
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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
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Thebes, Greece
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Thebes is a city in Boeotia, central Greece. It played an important role in Greek myths, as the site of the stories of Cadmus, Oedipus, Dionysus and others. Archaeological excavations in and around Thebes have revealed a Mycenaean settlement and clay tablets written in the Linear B script, Thebes was the largest city of the ancient region of Boeotia and was the leader of the Boeotian confederacy. It was a rival of ancient Athens, and sided with the Persians during the 480 BC invasion under Xerxes. Theban forces ended the power of Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC under the command of Epaminondas, the Sacred Band of Thebes famously fell at the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC against Philip II and Alexander the Great. Prior to its destruction by Alexander in 335 BC, Thebes was a force in Greek history. During the Byzantine period, the city was famous for its silks, the modern city contains an Archaeological Museum, the remains of the Cadmea, and scattered ancient remains. Modern Thebes is the largest town of the unit of Boeotia. Thebes is situated in a plain, between Lake Yliki to the north, and the Cithaeron mountains, which divide Boeotia from Attica and its elevation is 215 metres above mean sea level. It is about 50 kilometres northwest of Athens, and 100 kilometres southeast of Lamia, motorway 1 and the Athens–Thessaloniki railway connect Thebes with Athens and northern Greece. The municipality of Thebes covers an area of 830.112 square kilometres, the unit of Thebes 321.015 square kilometres. In 2011, as a consequence of the Kallikratis reform, Thebes was merged with Plataies, Thisvi, and Vagia to form a larger municipality, the other three become units of the larger municipality. Five main cycles of story may be distinguished, The foundation of the citadel Cadmea by Cadmus, the building of a seven-gated wall by Amphion, and the cognate stories of Zethus, Antiope and Dirce. See Theban pederasty and Pederasty in ancient Greece for detailed discussion, the immolation of Semele and the advent of Dionysus. The Greeks attributed the foundation of Thebes to Cadmus, a Phoenician king from Tyre, Cadmus was famous for teaching the Phoenician alphabet and building the Acropolis, which was named the Cadmeia in his honor and was an intellectual, spiritual, and cultural center. Archaeological excavations in and around Thebes have revealed cist graves dated to Mycenaean times containing weapons, ivory, *Tʰēgʷai in LHIIIB lost contact with Egypt but gained it with Miletus and Cyprus. In the late LHIIIB, according to Palaima, *Tʰēgʷai was able to pull resources from Lamos near Mount Helicon, and from Karystos and Amarynthos on the Greek side of the isle of Euboia. As a fortified community, it attracted attention from the invading Dorians, and this centralizing policy is as much the cardinal fact of Theban history as the counteracting effort of the smaller towns to resist absorption forms the main chapter of the story of Boeotia
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Phocian
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Phocis was an ancient region in the central part of Ancient Greece, which included Delphi. A modern administrative unit, also called Phocis, is named after the ancient region, although the modern region is substantially larger than the ancient one. Ancient Phocis was about 1,619 km² in area, bounded on the west by Ozolian Locris and Doris, on the north by Opuntian Locris, on the east by Boeotia, and on the south by the Gulf of Corinth. The massive ridge of Parnassus, which traverses the heart of the country, being neither rich in material resources nor well placed for commercial enterprise, Phocis was mainly pastoral. No large cities grew up within its territory, and its places, such as Delphi. The early history of Phocis remains quite obscure, in 457 BC an attempt to extend their influence to the headwaters of the Cephissus in the territory of Doris brought a Spartan army into Phocis in defence of the metropolis of the Dorians. In the 4th century BC Phocis was constantly endangered by its Boeotian neighbours, after helping the Spartans to invade Boeotia during the Corinthian War, the Phocians were placed on the defensive. They received assistance from Sparta in 380 BC, but were compelled to submit to the growing power of Thebes. The Phocian levy took part in the inroads of Epaminondas into Peloponnesus, except in the campaign of Mantinea. In return for this negligence the Thebans fastened a religious quarrel upon their neighbours, the Phocians participated in two important battles, the Battle of Crocus Field and the Battle of Thermopylae. The Phocians, led by two generals, Philomelus and Onomarchus, replied by seizing Delphi and using its riches to hire a mercenary army. The conditions which he imposed – the obligation to restore the funds. In 339 BC the Phocians began to rebuild their cities, in the year they fought against Philip at Chaeronea. Again in 323 BC they took part in the Lamian War against Antipater, henceforth little more is heard of Phocis. During the 3rd century BC it passed into the power of Macedonia and of the Aetolian League, the Phocian League is last heard of under Trajan
38.
Locris
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Locris was a region of ancient Greece, the homeland of the Locrians, made up of three distinct districts. The city of Locri in Calabria, also known in antiquity as Epizephyrian Locris, was a founded by the Locrians in Magna Graecia. There is some disagreement over whether it was those from Opuntian Locris or from Ozolian Locris who were responsible, the territory of the Locrians was divided into three by Doris and Phocis, perhaps due to an early invasion of a contiguous Locrian state. This fact, combined with the regions infertility, meant that the Locrians tended to be dominated by their neighbours, to the south-west of Phocis was Ozolian Locris, situated on the north coast of the Gulf of Corinth, between Naupactus and Crisa. The main cities of Ozolian Locris were Amphissa and Naupactus which was its seaport, to the north east of Phocis was Opuntian Locris, named after its main city, Opus. Finally, to the north of Phocis was Epicnemidian Locris, situated near the pass of Thermopylae, the territories of the Opuntian Locri and the Epicnemidian Locri were not a continuous unit but were separated from one another by Phocis The main towns of Ozolian Locris were Amphissa and Naupactus. Today, the area is part of Aetolia-Acarnania and Phocis, the main towns of Opuntia Locris were Opus and Larymna. Today, Opuntian Locris is part of modern Phthiotis, main article, Epicnemidian Locris The main towns of Epicnemidian Locris were Nicaea and Thronium. Today, Epicnemidian Locris is part of modern Phthiotis, the province of Locris was one of the provinces of the Phthiotis Prefecture. Its capital was the town Atalanti and its territory corresponded with that of the current municipalities Amfikleia-Elateia, Lokroi, and Molos-Agios Konstantinos
39.
Xerxes I
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Xerxes I, called Xerxes the Great, was the fourth king of kings of the Achaemenid dynasty of Persia. He ruled from 486 BC until his assassination in 465 BC at the hands of Artabanus, Xerxes I is most likely the Persian king identified as Ahasuerus in the biblical Book of Esther. He is also notable in Western history for his invasion of Greece in 480 BC. Like his predecessor Darius I, he ruled the empire at its territorial apex and his forces temporarily overran mainland Greece north of the Isthmus of Corinth until the losses at Salamis and Plataea a year later reversed these gains and ended the second invasion decisively. Xerxes was born to Darius I and Atossa, Darius and Atossa were both Achaemenids as they were both descendants of Achaemenes. While Darius was preparing for war against Greece, a revolt spurred in Egypt in 486 BC due to heavy taxes. Under Persian law, the king was required to choose a successor before setting out on dangerous expeditions, when Darius decided to leave, Darius prepared his tomb at Naqsh-e Rustam and appointed Xerxes, his eldest son by Atossa, as his successor. However, Darius could not lead the campaign due to his failing health, Xerxes was crowned and succeeded his father in October–December 486 BC when he was about 36 years old. Almost immediately, Xerxes crushed revolts in Egypt and Babylon that had broken out the year before, and appointed his brother Achaemenes as satrap over Egypt. In 484 BC, he outraged the Babylonians by violently confiscating and melting down the statue of Bel. This comes from the Daiva Inscriptions of Xerxes, lines 6-13, although Herodotus report in the Histories has created debate concerning Xerxess religious beliefs, modern scholars consider him a Zoroastrian. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Xerxess first attempt to bridge the Hellespont ended in failure when a storm destroyed the flax, in retaliation, Xerxes ordered the Hellespont whipped three hundred times, and had fetters thrown into the water. Xerxess second attempt to bridge the Hellespont was successful, many smaller Greek states, moreover, took the side of the Persians, especially Thessaly, Thebes and Argos. Xerxes was victorious during the initial battles, Xerxes set out in the spring of 480 BC from Sardis with a fleet and army which Herodotus estimated was roughly one million strong along with 10,000 elite warriors named the Persian Immortals. More recent estimates place the Persian force at around 60,000 combatants, at the Battle of Thermopylae, a small force of Greek warriors led by King Leonidas of Sparta resisted the much larger Persian forces, but were ultimately defeated. According to Herodotus, the Persians broke the Spartan phalanx after a Greek man called Ephialtes betrayed his country by telling the Persians of another pass around the mountains. At Artemisium, large storms had destroyed ships from the Greek side and so the battle stopped prematurely as the Greeks received news of the defeat at Thermopylae, most of the Athenians had abandoned the city and fled to the island of Salamis before Xerxes arrived. A small group attempted to defend the Athenian Acropolis, but they were defeated, Xerxes burnt the city, leaving an archaeologically attested destruction layer, known as the Perserschutt
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Third Sacred War
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The Third Sacred War was fought between the forces of the Delphic Amphictyonic League, principally represented by Thebes, and latterly by Philip II of Macedon, and the Phocians. Thus, although the Phocians suffered several defeats, they were able to continue the war for many years. Philip II used the distraction of the states to increase his power in northern Greece. The ancient sources for the Third Sacred War are scant, the main source for the period is Diodorus Siculuss Bibliotheca historica, written in the 1st century BC, which is therefore very much a secondary source. Diodorus is often derided by modern historians for his style and inaccuracies, beyond Diodorus, further details of the Sacred War can be found in the orations of Athenian statesmen, primarily Demosthenes and Aeschines, which have survived intact. Nevertheless, their allusions in speeches to contemporary or past events indicate some of the gaps in Diodoruss account, the accounts of Diodorus, Demosthenes and Aeschines can be further supplemented by fragments of otherwise lost histories and by contemporary epigraphic sources. Modern historians dates for the war have been debated, with no clear consensus. It is generally accepted that the war lasted 10 years, and ended in summer 346 BC, which yields a date of 356 BC for the beginning of the war, with Philomeloss seizure of Delphi. Buckler, the historian to produce a systematic study of the sacred war, therefore places Neon in 355 BC. Other historians have placed Neon in 354 BC, because Diodorus says that the battle took place while Philip besieged Methone which Diodorus places in 354 BC, disregarding the dates, most historians agree upon the same sequence of events for the first phases of the Sacred War. The principal question is therefore when that sequence started, thus, Buckler dates Neon to 355 BC, Methone to 355–354 BC, Philips first Thessalian campaign to 354 BC, and his second to 353 BC. Conversely, Cawkwell, Sealey, Hammond and others lower all these dates by one year, beginning with Neon in 354 BC. The fine was occasioned by the Phocianss illegal cultivation of sacred land on the Kirrhaean plain, which they did not deny, the fine was, however, far beyond the Phocians ability to pay. Under normal circumstances, refusal to pay the fine would have made the Phocians religious outcasts in Greece, behind the religious element, there probably lay a display of realpolitik in bringing charges against the Phocians, instigated by the Thebans. The Phocians had declined to send troops on the Mantinea campaign of 362 BC, despite Theban requests, by 357 BC, with the Athenians embroiled in the Social War, and Alexander of Pherae dead, the Thebans deemed that the chance to punish Phocis had come. The Amphictyonic League was composed of 12 Greek tribes, primarily of central Greece, plus the Dorians and the Ionians, with each tribe having two votes in the council of the league. Thebes had effectively become the protector of the league in 360 BC, after the war had restarted in Thessaly. Since the fines for both parties were unjustifiably harsh, the Thebans probably expected neither party to pay, and thus to be able to declare a war on either
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Philip II of Macedon
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Philip II of Macedon was the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon from 359 BC until his assassination in 336 BC. He was a member of the Argead dynasty of Macedonian kings, the son of King Amyntas III. However, his assassination led to the succession of his son Alexander. Philip was the youngest son of the king Amyntas III and Eurydice I, in his youth, Philip was held as a hostage in Thebes, which was then the leading city of Greece. In 364 BC, Philip returned to Macedon, the deaths of Philips elder brothers, King Alexander II and Perdiccas III, allowed him to take the throne in 359 BC. Originally appointed regent for his infant nephew Amyntas IV, who was the son of Perdiccas III, Philips military skills and expansionist vision of Macedonian greatness brought him early success. He first had to remedy a predicament which had greatly worsened by the defeat against the Illyrians in which King Perdiccas himself had died. Using diplomacy, Philip pushed back the Paionians and Thracians promising tributes, momentarily free from his opponents, he concentrated on strengthening his internal position and, above all, his army. Philip had married Audata, great-granddaughter of the Illyrian king of Dardania, however, this did not prevent him from marching against the Illyrians in 358 and crushing them in a ferocious battle in which some 7,000 Illyrians died. By this move, Philip established his authority inland as far as Lake Ohrid, the Athenians had been unable to conquer Amphipolis, which commanded the gold mines of Mount Pangaion. So Philip reached an agreement with Athens to lease the city to them after its conquest, however, after conquering Amphipolis, Philip kept both cities. As Athens had declared war against him, he allied Macedon with the Chalkidian League of Olynthus and he subsequently conquered Potidaea, this time keeping his word and ceding it to the League in 356. In 357 BC, Philip married the Epirote princess Olympias, who was the daughter of the king of the Molossians, Alexander was born in 356, the same year as Philips racehorse won at the Olympic Games. During 356 BC, Philip conquered the town of Crenides and changed its name to Philippi and he then established a powerful garrison there to control its mines, which yielded much of the gold he later used for his campaigns. In the meantime, his general Parmenion defeated the Illyrians again, in 355–354 he besieged Methone, the last city on the Thermaic Gulf controlled by Athens. During the siege, Philip was injured in his eye, despite the arrival of two Athenian fleets, the city fell in 354. Philip also attacked Abdera and Maronea, on the Thracian coast, Philip was involved in the Third Sacred War which had begun in Greece in 356. In summer 353 he invaded Thessaly, defeating 7,000 Phocians under the brother of Onomarchus, the latter however defeated Philip in the two succeeding battles
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Battle of Thermopylae (279 BC)
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The Battle of Thermopylae was fought in 279 BC between invading Gallic armies and a combined army of Greek Aetolians, Boeotians, Athenians, Phocians at Thermopylae. The Gauls under Brennus were victorious, and advanced further into the Greek peninsula where they sacked Delphi, Gallic groups, originating from the various La Tène chiefdoms, began a south-eastern movement into the Balkan peninsula from the 4th century BC. Although Gallic settlements were concentrated in the half of the Carpathian basin, there were notable incursions. From their new bases in northern Illyria and Pannonia, the Gallic invasions climaxed in the early 3rd century BC, the Celtic military pressure toward Greece in the southern Balkans reached its turning point in 281 BC. In 280 BC a great army, comprising about 85,000 warriors, coming from Pannonia, under the leadership of Cerethrius,20,000 men moved against the Thracians and Triballi. Another division, led by Brennus and Acichorius moved against Paionians while a division, headed by Bolgios. Bolgios inflicted heavy losses on the Macedonians, whose young king, however, Bolgios contingent was repulsed by the Macedonian nobleman Sosthenes, and satisfied with the loot they had won, Bolgios contingents turned back. Sosthenes, in turn, was attacked and defeated by Brennus and his division, after these expeditions returned home, Brennus urged and persuaded them to mount a third united expedition against central Greece, led by himself and Acichorius. A Greek coalition made up of Aetolians, Boeotians, Athenians, Phocians, during the initial assault, Brennus forces suffered heavy losses. Hence he decided to send a force under Acichorius against Aetolia. The Aetolian detachment, as Brennus hoped, left Thermopylae to defend their homes, the Aetolians joined the defense en masse - the old and women joining the fight. Realizing that the Gallic sword was only at close quarters. According to Pausanias, only half the number that had set out for Aetolia returned, eventually Brennus found a way around the pass at Thermopylae but the Greeks escaped by sea. Brennus pushed on to Delphi where he was defeated and forced to retreat and his army fell back to the river Spercheios where it was routed by the Thessalians and Malians. Some of the survivors of the Greek campaign, led by Comontoris settled in Thrace, another group of Gauls, who split off from Brennus army in 281, were transported over to Asia Minor by Nicomedes I to help him defeat his brother and secure the throne of Bithynia. They eventually settled in the region came to be named after them as Galatia. They were defeated by Antiochus I, and as a result, on the contrary, the Aetolian League strengthened its position in mainland Greece and for about a century it dominated Delphi. As a token of gratitude, they were accorded the right to participate at the amphictyonic convention, honorary games, the Amphictyonic Soteria, were organized, which in 246 B. C were renamed “Aetolian Soteria” and evolved into panhellenic Games which took place every five years
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