522 BCE was the year of death of Polykrates, the tyrant of Samos, famous for having assembled a navy of hundred pentekontoroi, by that time the greatest navy of Greece. In Athens, Hippias had succeeded Peisistratos as the tyrant of Athens. In 522, Darius I gained kingship of Persia. He would create an empire comparable to the Imperium Romanum; an empire without bounds in space, focusing on people and defendable… Read more
Both Cleisthenes and Thrasybulus played important roles in the independence of Athens, and its existence as a democracy. Yet both their roles were downplayed by succeeding generations. Athens indeed spun the murder of the tyrant Hipparchus by a pair of disgruntled lovers into a fight against tyranny, but neglected Cleisthenes’ place in the true origins of the democracy. The citizens of the polis welcomed the freedom and democracy restored by… Read more
In the period of about 600–480 BCE, Ionian colonists emigrated from Attica to the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, which is modern Turkey[1]. There they inhabited a narrow coastal strip from Phocaea in the north to Miletus in the south, including the islands of Chios and Samos. Persia (c 540 BCE) conquered the cities of this area and appointed native tyrants to rule for them. The rebellion of the colonists against the rule of these… Read more
After we finish reading the last scroll of the Iliad, we might wonder what happens in Troy after Hector’s funeral. We have parts of what happens next in the Odyssey, in tragedies, and in fragments and plot-summaries. However, in his Description of Greece Pausanias writes an interesting description of a painting which depicted “Troy taken and the Greeks sailing away” (Pausanias 10.25.2)[1], and which was still at Delphi when he… Read more
The Punic wars were a series of conflicts encompassing 43 years of war over more than a century, from 265 BCE to 146 BCE. They led to the Roman Republic controlling much of the Mediterranean world, to the ruin of a great North African civilization, and to many modern people speaking a Latin-based or Latin-influenced language. They occurred about 120 years before the Empire was established under Augustus Caesar in… Read more