Ancient Greece

2,000 BCE O.S. – 146 BCE O.S.68 items

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The Acropolis of Athens at dusk, with the Parthenon above the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, 7 October 2025. Photo: Giles Laurent, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Acropolis of Athens at dusk, with the Parthenon above the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, 7 October 2025. Photo: Giles Laurent, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

From the palaces of Crete to the fall of Corinth

Eighteen centuries of the Greek world, from the first palaces on Crete around 1900 BCE to the day in 146 BCE when a Roman army razed Corinth. Classical Athens sits at the centre: the hundred years from Cleisthenes’ reforms to the death of Socrates carry more events than the thousand before them.

How it is built

  • Six ages as bands: the Minoan palaces, Mycenaean Greece, the collapse and the Dark Age, the Archaic, the Classical and the Hellenistic.

  • Inside the Classical age, four more: the Persian Wars, the Delian League, Pericles’ building programme and the Peloponnesian War, with their battles nested inside them. The Sicilian Expedition is drawn as a route from Piraeus to Syracuse.

  • The map runs from Massalia to Babylon: Knossos and Thera, Mycenae and Pylos, Miletus in Ionia, the colonies in Sicily, Libya and on the Bosporus, then Alexandria and Pergamon.

Filter by war for the battles, democracy for Athens’s constitution from Solon to the Thirty, philosophy from Thales to Zeno, science for Alexandria and Archimedes, colonies for the settlements overseas, and writing for Linear B, the alphabet, Homer and the historians.

Dates

Every date is BCE in the Julian calendar, the convention for ancient history. Before about 700 BCE the dates come from pottery styles and radiocarbon and are drawn a generation or more wide. Athenians counted archon years that ran from midsummer to midsummer, so a law dated 508/507 is drawn as those twelve months. Only two items are pinned to the day, both by astronomy: the solar eclipse of 28 May 585 and the lunar eclipse of 27 August 413.

I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 1.22, trans. Richard Crawley.

Items

  1. The Minoan palaces

    500 years · Palace of Knossos, Crete

  2. Mycenaean Greece

    500 years

  3. Thera erupts

    Akrotiri, Thera (Santorini)

  4. Grave Circle A at Mycenae

    Grave Circle A, Mycenae

  5. Mycenaeans rule at Knossos

    Palace of Knossos, Crete

  6. The Lion Gate

    Lion Gate, Mycenae

  7. Bronze Age collapse and Dark Age

    400 years

  8. The palace of Pylos burns

    Palace of Nestor, Ano Englianos (Pylos)

  9. The hero of Lefkandi

    Toumba, Lefkandi, Euboea

  10. Archaic Greece

    320 years

  11. The first Olympiad

    Stadium, Olympia

  12. Corinthians found Syracuse

    Ortygia, Syracuse

  13. Nestor’s cup at Pithekoussai

    Pithekoussai (Lacco Ameno, Ischia)

  14. The Iliad and the Odyssey

  15. Megarians found Byzantium

    Byzantium (Sarayburnu, Istanbul)

  16. Therans found Cyrene

    Cyrene (Shahhat, Libya)

  17. Sappho on Lesbos

    Lesbos

  18. Phocaeans found Massalia

    Massalia (the Old Port, Marseille)

  19. Solon’s reforms

    The Agora, Athens

  20. Thales and the eclipse

    Miletus

  21. Croesus asks the oracle at Delphi

    Temple of Apollo, Delphi

  22. Pythagoras at Croton

    Croton (Crotone), Calabria

  23. Cleisthenes’ reforms

    The Agora, Athens

  24. The Persian Wars

    ≈ 21 years

  25. The sack of Miletus

    Miletus

  26. Battle of Marathon

    The Soros, plain of Marathon

  27. Silver at Laurion builds a fleet

    Silver mines of Laurion

  28. Classical Greece

    ≈ 157 years

  29. Battle of Thermopylae

    Kolonos hill, Thermopylae

  30. Battle of Salamis

    The straits of Salamis

  31. Battle of Plataea

    Below Plataea, Boeotia

  32. The Delian League

    ≈ 73 years

  33. Aeschylus’ Persians

    Theatre of Dionysus, Athens

  34. Earthquake at Sparta and the helot revolt

    Sparta

  35. The league treasury moves to Athens

    Acropolis of Athens

  36. Pericles’ building programme

    ≈ 15 years · Acropolis of Athens

  37. Work begins on the Parthenon

    The Parthenon, Acropolis of Athens

  38. Phidias’ Athena Parthenos

    The Parthenon, Acropolis of Athens

  39. The Peloponnesian War

    ≈ 27 years

  40. Pericles’ funeral oration

    The public cemetery by the Kerameikos

  41. Herodotus’ Histories

  42. The plague of Athens

    Athens

  43. Pericles dies

    Athens

  44. Spartans surrender on Sphacteria

    Sphacteria, bay of Pylos

  45. Aristophanes’ Clouds

    Theatre of Dionysus, Athens

  46. The Melian dialogue

    The ancient city of Melos (Klima)

  47. The Sicilian Expedition

    ≈ 2 years, 3 months · Piraeus to Syracuse

  48. The herms are mutilated

    The Agora, Athens

  49. An eclipse keeps the Athenians at Syracuse

    Great Harbour of Syracuse

  50. Disaster at the Assinarus

    The Assinarus (probably the Tellaro)

  51. Battle of Aegospotami

    Aegospotami, on the Hellespont

  52. The Thirty

    ≈ 1 year · Athens

  53. Athens surrenders

    Piraeus

  54. The trial and death of Socrates

    The Agora, Athens

  55. Plato founds the Academy

    The Academy, Akadimia Platonos

  56. Thebes throws out the Spartans

    The Cadmea, Thebes

  57. Battle of Leuctra

    Leuctra, Boeotia

  58. Battle of Chaeronea

    The Lion of Chaeronea

  59. Aristotle opens the Lyceum

    The Lyceum, Rigillis Street, Athens

  60. The Hellenistic age

    ≈ 177 years

  61. Alexander dies at Babylon

    Babylon

  62. Zeno teaches in the Painted Stoa

    Stoa Poikile, north side of the Agora

  63. The Library of Alexandria

    Royal quarter (Brucheion), Alexandria

  64. The Colossus of Rhodes

    ≈ 54 years · Harbour of Rhodes (site of the statue unknown)

  65. Eratosthenes measures the Earth

    Royal quarter (Brucheion), Alexandria

  66. Archimedes killed at Syracuse

    Syracuse

  67. The Great Altar of Pergamon

    Terrace of the Great Altar, Pergamon

  68. Rome destroys Corinth

    Corinth