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Alexander the great

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:45:00 +0000

The decisive battle of Philip's conquest of Greece occurred in 338 BC at Chaeronea in Boeotia, when Philip beat the Athenians and their allies. The military feat that won that day was a cavalry charge by Philip's eighteen year old son, Alexander. Alexander seems to have inherited much from his brilliant father: physical courage, arrogance, extreme intelligence, and, most importantly, unbridled ambition. For when his father died in 336 BC at an assassin's hand, Alexander quickly consolidated his power and set out to conquer the world. At the age of twenty-one.

He had been a youth of infinite promise. Physically handsome, strong, brave, and nothing short of brilliant, he had been schooled by no less a person than Aristotle. With all these qualities, he took up his father's ambition and prosecuted it with a swiftness that is almost frightening.

In 334 BC, Alexander crossed over into Asia Minor to begin his conquest of Persia. To conquer Persia was to conquer the world, for the Persian Empire sprawled over most of the known world: Asia Minor, the Middle East, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran. He didn't have much to go on: his army numbered thirty thousand infantry and only five thousand cavalry. He had no navy. He had no money.

His strategy was simple. He would move quickly and begin with a few sure victories, so he could gain money and supplies. He would focus on the coastal cities so that he could gain control of the ports; in that way, the Persian navy would have no place to make landfall. Finally, he took the battle right to the center of the opposing forces, and he threw himself into the very worst of the battle. His enemies were stunned and his troops grew intensely loyal to this man who threw both them and himself right into the teeth of the wolf.

He quickly overran Asian Minor after defeating the Persian forces that controlled the territory, and after seizing all the coastal cities, he turned inland towards Syria in 333 BC. There he engaged the main Persian army under the leadership of the Persian king, Darius, at a city called Issus. As he had done at Chaeronia, he led a astounding cavalry charge against a superior opponent and forced them to break ranks. Darius, and much of his army, ran inland towards Mesopotamia, leaving Alexander free to continue south. He seized the coastal towns along the Phoenician and Palestinian coasts. When he entered Jerusalem, he was hailed as their great liberator. He continued south and conquered Egypt with almost no resistance whatsoever; the Egyptians called him king and son of Re.

By this point, Darius understood that the situation was out of his control. As Alexander moved down the Phoenican coast, he managed to conquer the city of Tyre, which was absolutely central to Persian naval operations. Darius knew that he could never recover Asia Minor, Phoenicia, or Palestine, so he sent an offer to halt hostilities. If Alexander would cease, Darius would cede to him all of the Persian Empire west of the Euphrates River; Mesopotamia, Persia (modern day Iran), and the northern territories would remain Persian.

Alexander would have none of this. In 331 BC, he crossed the Euphrates river into Mesopotamia. Darius met him near the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh, the city that had been destroyed by the Chaldeans only three centuries earlier. This was the last battle between Darius and Alexander; the Macedonian king again put the numerically superior Persian army to flight, and Darius ran also. In January of 330 BC, Alexander entered Babylon: he had conquered Mesopotamia and now controlled its greatest and wealthiest city.

The Persians had amassed vast wealth from the tribute paid by the various states under them. Alexander, who had started with no money at all, was now in control of the fattest treasury that had ever existed.

Darius, meanwhile, met his death at the hands of a conspiracy. The Persian nobles no longer felt that he could effectively lead them and, under the leadership of his brother Bessus, the nobles killed Darius and left his body for Alexander to find. Alexander, however, pushed on, found Bessus, and killed him and as many Persian nobles as he could. The Persian Empire had officially come to a close.

Having conquered what was then the known world, Alexander had pushed his army to the very limits of civilization as he knew it. But he wanted more; he saw that the world extended further and partly out of curiosity, and partly out of a desire to conquer the enitre world within the boundaries of the river Ocean (the Greeks believed that a great river, called Ocean, encircled all the land of the world), Alexander and his army pushed east, through Scythia (northern Iran), and all the way to Pakistan and India. He had conquered Bactria at the foot of the western Himalayas, gained a huge Bactrian army, and married a Bactrian princess, Roxane. But when he tried to push on past Pakistan, his army grew tired, and he abandoned the eastward conquest in 327 BC.

In 324 BC, Alexander returned to Babylon. He was now, literally, king of the world, and began to lay down his strategies for consolidating his empire. He began to plan cities and building works, new conquests, and even considered deifying himself. But like so many human gods, his own death caught up with him. In 323 BC, at the age of thirty-three, he fell into a fever and died.

It's rare in history that human events become so focussed on a single individual; rarely is that focus justified. Alexander, however, is one of the notable exceptions. The age of Alexander was the age created by Alexander, and he would permanently stamp world culture with a Greek character. He was in many ways a brilliant and selfless person, quite possibly the most brilliant military leader in human history. With a small army, little or no supplies, and no money, he conquered the greatest, wealthiest, and most powerful empire in the world. He never lost a battle, not once, and he flung himself into battle with intense physical bravery. He was also a tyrant and a bully, given to fits of uncompromising violence. He was certainly a drunkard and at times unstable. We will never know if he could have ruled or unified this huge empire, for it may have crumbled into nothing within a few years. His death, however, guaranteed that the empire he had built would never last.

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Philip of Macedon

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:44:00 +0000

Philip of Macedon ascended the throne of Macedon in his late twenties. He had found himself regent, that is, the individual in charge of the kingdom because the king was only an infant. As regent, he promptly overthrew his infant nephew, the king, and crowned himself king in 359 BC. In his early twenties, however, he had been a Macedonian hostage living in Thebes during the heyday of the Theban hegemony. Political hostages generally lived a good life, they were simply kept in order that they may be executed if hostilities commenced between the government the hostage came from and the government that held him (or her). Philip lived a good life in Thebes and was well-integrated into the politics and military. He grew to think of himself as a Greek rather than as a Macedonian, but he also learned Greek politics and Greek military strategy. Philip had learned to be a general.

When he assumed the throne of Macedon, he promptly pacified all the European tribes to his north, seized gold and silver mines by conquering the city of Amphipolis to his south, and began to build new cities and large standing armies.

He then turned his eyes to the south in 349 BC and began to systematically conquer all the Greek cities; after a great victory against Athens and its allies in 338 BC, Philip found himself in control of all Greece (except Sparta). Philip promptly went to work at securing his power in Greece, building garrisons at Corinth, Thebes, and Chalcis; in 338 BC, he created the Federal League of Corinth. Ostensibly an alliance of free city-states, Philip was its ruler and for all practical purposes had become king of Greece. The independent city-state, the polis, had ceased to exist. But Philip wasn't finished. The Persian Wars still festered in the Greek memory, and the Spartan invasion of Persia in 379 BC showed Philip that it was possible to defeat the mightiest empire known to humanity. So in 337, Philip announced the the League would attack Persia as revenge for the wars, and in 336 he stood poised to prosecute his mighty invasion of the Persian Empire, but an assassin's sword ended his great campaign. It should've ended the brief Macedonian control of Greece; but Philip's twenty-one year old son stepped into his father's shoes and became the conqueror of the world.

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the Spartans

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:43:00 +0000

After the unconditional surrender of Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian War, Sparta became the undisputed major power among the Greek city-states. Stripped of its navy and its empire, Athens simply became just one more city under the political control of its more powerful neighbor in the south. This period in Greek history is called the Spartan hegemony, for although Sparta didn't rule the city -states of Greece as if it were an empire, Sparta did exercise considerable influence over the domestic and foreign decisions of these independent states: it exercised, then, hegemonic control over these states.

In Athens, the Spartan general who defeated the city, Lysander, pulled down the democratic government and established an oligarchy. Members of the democratic factions fled the city and raised armies in Corinth and in Thebes. The oligarchy ruled with an iron fist, often ordering summary executions of its political opponents (as Socrates tells us in The Apology); for this, the thirty members of the oligarchy were called "the Thirty Tyrants," or simply, "the Thirty." Eventually the Athenians were allowed by Sparta to return to a democratic constitution.

Sparta, meanwhile, vigorously went about establishing an empire of its own. Shortly after the defeat of Athens, they entered into an alliance with Cyrus, who claimed the Persian throne against his brother, Artaxerxes II, who occupied the throne. The Persians the the Greeks, under the leadership of Sparta, managed to make it all the way to the center of Mesopotamia and the capital itself, where Cyrus was killed. The Greeks escaped, but the Spartans soon entered into defensive alliances with the Greek city-states of Asia Minor.

The great figure of this age is Agesilaus, the king of Sparta from 396 to 360 BC. Agesilaus was an energetic and aggressive general who, though physically lame, was incomprehensibly physically brave whenever in battle. Soon the Spartan and Greek army was threatening Persia again, but the Persians destroyed the Spartan sea empire in 394 BC. The Spartans had been distracted by another war on the Greek mainland, the Corinthian War (395-387 BC), when Athens, Corinth, and Argos formed an alliance against Sparta. Athens rebuilt the walls of the city and its navy.

This war, like the Peloponnesian War, essentially accomplished nothing. In the end, all sides agreed to a peace established by the Persian king. Fearful of the Athenians, the Persian king put Sparta in charge of Greece, and Agesilaus promptly broke up the Corinthian alliance and any other alliances that didn't involve Sparta. From 387 BC onwards, Agesilaus and the Spartans closely controlled political decisions in the individual city-states and stacked their governments with individuals friendly to Sparta and its interests.

The period of Spartan hegemony saw the first years of the maturing of Greek philosophy. Socrates, who looms large as a principle foundation of Greek philosophy, had come to the end of his years when the Age of Pericles closed. He was put to death in 399 BC. However, his pupil, who more than anyone else is responsible for synthesizing earlier Greek philosophy int a single, overarching system, began his activities as a philosopher and teacher in these years. Based in Athens, his school, the Academy, would become the intellectual center of Greece in the decades to follow.

Agesilaus finally overstepped himself when he captured the city of Thebes without any provocation whatsoever. When he then turned on Athens, the Athenians allied themselves with the Thebans, and the Spartan control over Greece came to a final end in 371 BC.

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The Peloponnesian War

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:43:00 +0000

Suspicious and fearful of Athenian power and wealth, the Spartans were not happy with the thirty year peace they had agreed to. The Athenians themselves had become chauvinistic and power hungry, and seemed ready to begin to reassert their power on the mainland of Greece. In 431, spurred on by a relatively trivial event in a distant part of the Greek mainland, Sparta and Athens fell into another war which is simply called, The Peloponnesian War.

The Spartans wished to fight a land war, which they were very good at. They outnumbered the Athenians two to one, odds they believed the Athenians could stand up to only for a very short time. At the outbreak of the war, then, they invaded Attica and began burning crops in order to starve the Athenians into submission.

The Athenians, however, had a harbor and a powerful navy. Pericles knew that they could hold out against the Spartans for several years on the tribute money from the Empire. He also knew that he could take the war right to the doorsteps of Spartan allies, by sailing troops along the coast of Greece and landing them far from Athenian lines. Although Pericles died in the second year of the war in a plague that devestated Athens, the Athenians, nevertheless, kept to the Periclean strategy of prosecuting the war.

Both sides believed that their strategy would wear down the other side and force a surrender. However, this really didn't happen. After ten years of fighting and some disastrous events among allied cities, the situation was no different than it was at the beginning of the war. Both sides had become worn down, so Sparta and Athens signed a fifty year peace called the Peace of Nicias, after the Athenian politician and general who was leading Athens at the time. Essentially similar in view and ability to Pericles, Nicias was a brilliant and cautious man who managed to pull off an effective truce. Everyone was allowed to go home, and the territorial status as it stood at the time of the peace, was allowed to remain in place. Athens kept its continental territories and allies, and Sparta got to keep all the territories it had acquired.

Nicias, however, had rivals in the democratic assembly. Perhaps the most talented of these rivals was a young, brilliant follower of the philosopher Socrates named Alcibiades. With creativity, energy, and immense oratorical ability, Alicibiades in 415 BC convinced the Athenians to attack the Greek city-states on the island of Sicily and bring them under the glove of the Athenian Empire. Although the expedition was in part under the leadership of Nicias, it soon turned into a disaster. In 413 BC, the entire army was defeated and captured and a large part of the great, powerful fleet of the Athenians was destroyed in the harbor of Syracuse. Athenian power since the Persian Wars had rested solely on the power of the navy; the disastrous Sicilian expedition left Athens almost completely powerless.

Knowing a good thing when they saw it, the Spartans soon attacked Athens and—worse news piled on top of bad news—they were soon joined by the Persians who were still smarting from the war Athens had so vigorously prosecuted in the first half of the fifth century. For awhile the Athenians hung on, even enjoying tremendous victories when the war was shifed to the Aegean Sea. But in 405, the rest of their navy was destroyed in a surprise attack, and by the next year the situation was hopeless. In 404 BC, the Athenians surrendered totally to the Spartans, who tore down the walls of the city, barred them from ever having a navy, and installed their own oligarchic government, the Thirty. The Age of Athens, the Age of Pericles, the Classical Age, the Athenian Empire, had come to an end.

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the athenian ancient empire

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:42:00 +0000

The First Peloponnesian War

In 461 BC, under the leadership of Pericles, Cimon was ousted from power. Athens overnight changed direction in domestic and foreign politics. In foreign affairs, Athens began to define its role in direct relationship with Sparta rather than in relationship with Persia. Immediately after the exile of Cimon, the Athenians formed an alliance with Argos, a long-standing rival of Sparta. They later formed an alliance with Megara, the city which lay directly in the path of the route from Athens to the Peloponnesus, the southern part of Greece. To get at Athens, then, the Spartans would first have to go through the Megarans. The Spartans, as you can imagine, grew suspicious of these moves, particularly the alliance with Megara, and began a campaign against the Athenians: the First Peloponnesian War.

Athens dominated the war in its early years, but a disastrous campaign against the Persians in Egypt decimated the Athenian navy and inspired several members of the Delian League to revolt. For the Delian League had imperceptibly become the Athenian Empire; the alliance was less about the security of the League as equal states, and more about Athenian power politics in Greece. Reeling from the Egyptian defeat and the various rebellions, Athens made peace with the Spartans. In 449 BC, Athens stopped the war with Persia that it had been aggressively pursuing since 478 BC.

The Athenian empire, though, which was maintained not so much through good will as through the threat of force, began to fray at the edges. When Megara and a neighboring state, Boeotia, revolted from the alliance, Athens no longer had a buffer zone between it and the Peloponnesian states allied with Sparta. In 445 BC, Pericles, however, diverted disaster by making a thirty year peace with Sparta. Both sides got they wanted. Athens gave up political power over the states on the Greek mainland; in return, Sparta recognized the Athenian Empire as a legitimate political institution. The Athenian Empire, which had been gradually forming, was now official.

The Empire

Before the peace with Sparta, Athens benefitted from the taxes paid into the League and began growing quite wealty; after the peace, the Athenians moved the treasury to Athens and began keeping one sixtieth of all the revenue. The Athenians began to grew especially wealthy. The League, after all, was no longer at war with Persia, but the tribute money kept rolling in. At this stage, when the League had lost its military justification and when the tribute money was no longer really going for defense, the League in reality had become an Athenian empire. Reaction among the tribute states was mixed; some city-states eagerly participated in the empire, but most fumed under the onerousness of Athenian control and taxation. As Athens grew more and more powerful and the city more opulent, discontent grew among the tribute states. However, the Spartans, in particular, grew increasingly distrustfull of Athenian power and wealth. They had agreed to recognize the Athenian Empire in exchange for Athens giving up claims to continental territories; however, it was becoming apparent that even without the continental territory, the Athenians were a major threat to Sparta and its influence.

Democracy and the Age of Pericles

The great Athenian leader of this age, Pericles, was swept into power in a popular democratic movement. A member of a noble and venerable family, Pericles led the Athenians against Cimon for harboring autocratic intentions. Pericles had been the leader of the democratic faction of Athenian politics since 462 BC. Ephialtes was the Athenian leader who had finally divested the Areopagus of all its power; Athens was now solely governed by the council and the democratic Assembly. Pericles quickly brought forward legislation that let anyone serve as the archon (one of the nine central leaders of the country) despite birth or wealth. The Assembly became the central power of the state. Consisting of all the free-born (no freed slaves) male citizens of Athens, the Assembly was given sole approval or veto power over every state decision. The Assembly was not a representative government, but instead consisted of every male citizen. In terms of numbers, this still was not a democratic state: women weren't included, nor were foreigners, slaves, or freed slaves. Pericles also changed the rules of citizenship: before the ascendancy of Pericles, anyone born of a single Athenian parent was an Athenian citizen; Pericles instituted laws which demanded that both parents be Athenian citizens. So, in reality, the great democracy of Periclean Athens was in reality only a very small minority of the people living in Athens. It was, however, the closest human culture has come to an unadulterated democracy.

The Assembly was given unprecedented power over the selections of officials; elected officials, such as military generals, were not chosen by the Assembly, but the Assembly did hire and fire all other public officials. In addition, the Assembly served as a law court hearing major cases. Any decision made in a court of law could be appealed to the Assembly where a court of free citizens would hear the case. There was no standing army, either, as there was in Sparta; free citizens could choose to serve in the military.

One figure towers over this new democratic state: Pericles. This Age of Athens, which begins either in 462 or 450 or 445 BC and lasts until 404 BC, when Athens is defeated by Sparta, is called the Athenian Age, the Classical Age, or, after its most important political figure, the Age of Pericles. Just about everything that you associate with Greek culture is squeezed into this half century of wealth, energy, creativity, and chauvinism in Athens. All the great works of Greek tragedy and comedy, the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, were written in this time in the city of Athens. Most of the monumental works of architecture, built off of the wealth that literally poured into Athens from her imperial possessions, were built at this time: the Acropolis, the rebuilding of the Agora. Flush with wealth and at peace with Persia and Sparta, the Athenians had nothing better to do with this wealth then invest it in a massive cultural flowering of art, poetry, philosophy, and architecture.

And still there remains the figure of Pericles himself. There is no question that the democratic reforms of the Age of Pericles owe their existence to the energy of this political figure. He was a man of immense persuasiveness and an orator of great power. Although he was eventually ostracized by the Athenians (he later returned), he dominated the democratic government of Athens with his formidable capacity to speak and to persuade. He had two central policies: democratic reform and the maintenance of the empire.

Sparta, however, growing increasinly wary of Athenian prosperity, would soon find itself entangled once again with its old rival. The thirty year peace managed to hang on for only fourteen years before hostilities broke out again. In 431, a second war broke out, called simply The Peloponnesian War; this war would see the death of Pericles in its second year, but eventually witness the foolish destruction of the Athenian navy, the defeat of Athens, and the end of Athenian democracy.

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the Greek League

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:41:00 +0000

When the Persians retreated from Greece, the Greek League began show tensions. Although Sparta had contributed the most to the war and had fought the deciding battle at Plataea, the victory over the Persians would not have been possible without the Athenian navy, which remained powerful after the war. All the Greek cities in Asia Minor lived under the direct threat of Persian invasion and revenge; Sparta, being a land-based military, was in no position to defend these city-states. So these city-states, and the city-states of the islands in the Aegean, turned to Athens and her powerful navy for protection and alliance. The city-states in the south of Greece, and some in the north, turned to Sparta, which had led the Greek League in the war against the Persians. Thus was set up the great rivalry between these two diametrically opposed Greek states and cultures, a rivalry that would lift Athens to the height of empire only to be finally defeated by an increasingly distrustful Spartan alliance.

The Persians had become a permanent fixture in Greek life; Greek experience throughout the fifth century BC was lived under the shadow of a possible Persian return. For Persia remained powerful and revenge was always on the horizon. In 478 BC, one year after the final defeat of the Persians, representatives from the Greek city-states of Asia Minor and the islands scattered throughout the Aegean Sea, met on the island of Delos—a sacred island associated with the cult of Apollo—to discuss an alliance with the Athenians. They swore oaths of alliance to each other and to Athens; thus was born the Delian League. This new league had several purposes besides defense; one of these was to wage a military campaign against the Persians to free those Greek cities that were still under the control of the Persians. Alhtough Athens was the leader of the League, each city-state had one vote—the League was essentially a democratic alliance between equals.

The League busily set about fighting the Persians, freeing city after city until they achieved a decisive victory against the Persians in 467 BC. This battle freed several Greek cities, all of which joined the league. Many cities joined unwillingly; they were coerced by the League members sometimes under threat of destruction. Although the League was essentially democratic, they believed that the safety of the League and its objectives would be seriously compromised by states independent of the League.

Athens during all this time was led by a powerfully brilliant political leader named Cimon, who was the son of Miltiades, the great hero of the battle of Marathon. Under his leadership, Athens and the League constantly and aggressively attacked the Persians; as the League grew, the power of Athens, as leader of the League, grew proportionately.

Athens itself grew tremendously wealthy during this time; part of the agreement of the League involved tax payments by other members of the League to Athens for maintaining the fleet. With all that wealth, Athens began to invest in large building projects (such as the Acropolis), in drama, in art, and in crafts. The great flowering of Athenian culture begins in the heyday years of the Delian League, as wealth and power seemed to flow to Athens as if it were the center of the world.

The turning point in the Delian League came with the revolt of a small island city, Thasos. Unhappy with the League and payments to Athens, Thasos rebelled against the League. Cimon promptly squashed this revolt; however, the reaction to the Thasos rebellion was the first time in the League history where a decision was made only in regard to the interests of Athens rather than the interests of the League as a whole. At home, Cimon became unpopular, and a radical democratic movement, under the leadership of Pericles, challenged his authority. As Athens stood on the brink of becoming a democratic state, Pericles stood ready to move the Delian League into an Athenian Empire.

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persian wars

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:41:00 +0000

Like the Trojan War, the Persian Wars were a defining moment in Greek history. The Athenians, who would dominate Greece culturally and politically through the fifth century BC and through part of the fourth, regarded the wars against Persia as their greatest and most characteristic moment. For all their importance, though, the Persian Wars began inauspiciously. In the middle of the sixth century BC, the Greek city-states along the coast of Asia Minor came under the control of the Lydians and their king, Croesus (560-546 BC). However, when the Persians conquered the Lydians in 546 BC, all the states subject to the Lydians became subject to the Persians. The Persians controlled their new subject-states very closely; they appointed individuals to rule the states as tyrants. They also required citizens to serve in the Persian army and to pay fairly steep taxes. Smarting under these new burdens and anxious for independence, the tyrant of Miletus, Aristagoras, began a democratic rebellion in 499 BC. Aristagoras was an opportunist. He had been placed in power by the Persians, but when he persuaded the Persians to launch a failed expedition against Naxos, he began to fear for his life. So he fomented a popular rebellion against the Persians and went to the Greek mainland for support. He went first to the Spartans, since they were the most powerful state in Greece, but the Spartans seem to have seen right through him. When he approached the Athenians, they promised him twenty ships. In 498 BC, the Athenians conquered and burned Sardis, which was the capital of Lydia, and all the Greek cities in Asia Minor joined the revolt. The Athenians, however, lost interest and went home; by 495 BC, the Persians, under king Darius I (521-486 BC), had restored control over the rebellious Greek cities.

And there it should have ended. But Athens had gotten the attention of the Persians, who desired that Athens be punished for the role it played in the destruction of Sardis. The Persians also had Hippias, the tyrant of Athens who had been deposed by Cleisthenes in 508 BC. So in 490 BC, the Persians launched an expedition against Athens. They were met, however, by one of their former soldiers, Miltiades. He had been an outstanding soldier in the Persian army, but he took to his heels when he angered Darius. Unlike other Athenians, he knew the Persian army and he knew its tactics. The two armies, with the Athenians led by Miltiades, met at Marathon in Attica and the Athenians roundly defeated the invading army. This battle, the battle of Marathon (490 BC), is perhaps the single most important battle in Greek history. Had the Athenians lost, Greece would have eventually come under the control of the Persians and all the subsequent culture and accomplishmenst of the Greeks would probably not have taken the form they did.

For the Athenians, the battle at Marathon was their greatest achievement. From Marathon onwards, the Athenians began to think of themselves as the center of Greek culture and Greek power. This pride, or chauvinism, was the foundation on which much of their cultural achievements were built. The first great dramas, for instance, were the dramas of Aeschylus; the principle subject of these dramas is the celebration of Athenian greatness. The great building projects of the latter half of the fifth century were motivated by the need to display Athenian wealth, greatness, and power.

The Persians, however, weren't done. For the Persians, Marathon barely registered; the Persians, after all, controlled almost the entire world: Asia Minor, Lydia, Judah, Mesopotamia, and Egypt. While Marathon stands as one of the greatest of Greek military accomplishments, it was really more of an irritation to the Persians. The Persian government, however, was embroiled in problems of its own, and it wasn't until Xerxes (486-465 BC) became king, that the Persians really got down to business and launched a punitive expedition against Athens. This time the Persians were determined to get it right. In 481 BC, Xerxes gathered together an army of some one hundred fifty thousand men and a navy of six hundred ships; he was determined that the whole of Greece would be conquered by his army.

The Athenians, however, were prepared. While many Athenians celebrated their victory at Marathon and thought that the Persians had gone home permanently, the Greek poitician, Themistocles, convinced the Athenians otherwise. So while Persia delayed through the 480's, Themistocles and the Athenians began a navy-building project of epic proportions. Themistocles convinced the Athenians to invest the profits from a newly discovered silver mine into this project; by 481 BC, Athens had a navy of two hundred ships.

When Xerxes gathered his army at the Hellespont, the narrow inlet to the Black Sea that separates Asia Minor from Europe, most Greeks despaired of winning against his powerful army. Of several hundred Greek city-states, only thirty-one decided to resist the Persian army; these states were led by Sparta, Corinth, and Athens: the Greek League. Sparta was made leader of all land and sea operations.

Themistocles, however, understood that the battle would be won or lost at sea; he figured that the Persian army could only succeed if it were successfully supported by supplies and communications provided by the fleet. He also understood that the Aegean Sea was a violent place, subject to dangerous winds and sudden squalls. While he kept the Athenian fleet safe in harbor, many of Xerxes' boats were destroyed at sea. He also waited his time; if the Persians could be delayed on land, then he could destroy the Persian fleet when the time was right.

That time came in a sea battle off the island of Salamis. The Greeks had slow, clumsy boats in comparison with the Persian boats, so they turned their boats into fighting platforms. They filled their boats with soldiers who would fight with the opposing boats in hand-to-hand combat; it was a brilliant innovation, and the Athenians managed to destroy the majority of the Persian fleet. The Persians withdrew their army.

However, one Persian general, Mardonius, remained. He wintered in Greece, but he was met in 479 BC by the largest Greek army history had ever known. Under the leadership of the Spartan king, Pausanias, Mardonius was killed in the battle of Plataea, and his army retreated back to Persia.

It's difficult to assess all the consequences of the Greek victory over the Persians. While the Spartans were principally responsible for the victory, the Athenian fleet was probably the most important component of that victory. This victory left Athens with the most powerful fleet in the Aegean, and since the Persians hadn't been completely defeated, all the Greeks feared a return. The majority of Greek city-states, however, didn't turn to Sparta; they turned, rather, to Athens and the Athenian fleet. The alliances that Athens would make following the retreat of the Persians, the so-called Delian League, would suddenly catapult Athens into the major power of the Greek city-states. This power would make Athens the cultural center of the Greek world, but it would also spell their downfall as the Spartans grew increasingly frightened of Athenian power and increasingly suspicious of Athenian intentions.

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great leaders in ancient athens

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:40:00 +0000

The Areopagus

Athens entered the Archaic Period in the same way so many of its neighbors, as a city-state ruled by a basileus , or "king." Unlike Sparta, however, Athens' history was not dominated by invasion of a neighbor, for the land around Athens was agriculturally rich and the city had a harbor so that it could trade easily with city-states around the Aegean. The power of the basileus slowly faded; underneath the basileus was a council of nobles, which were called the Areopagus, from the name of the hill on which they met. In the eighth century BC, these nobles gradually became very wealthy, particularly off of the cash crops of wine and olive oil, both of which require great wealth to get started. As their wealth increased, the nobles of the Areopagus slowly stripped the king of power until Athenian government imperceptibly became an oligarchy. The Areopagus consisted of a varying number of members, and it elected nine archons, or "rulers," to run the state. The archons, however, always had to submit to the approval or veto of the Areopagus, and they also became members of the Areopagus when their term in office expired, so, in reality, the Areopagus ruled the country.

Rule by the wealthy, however, is often inherently unstable. In Athens, the farmers in the surrounding countryside produced mainly wheat, while the wealthy and nobility owned estates that produced wine and olive oil. Wheat-farming was badly managed, however; the average Athenian farmer didn't rotate crops or let fields lie fallow. Production of wheath plummeted at the same time that Athenians began to import wheat and to export olive oil and wine. So not only did production of wheat fall, so did its price. Pretty soon, even though the wealthy farmers were making money hand over fist, the average farmer had fallen deeply into debt to the wealthiest members of society. To pay for that debt, farmers sold their children, their wives, and even themselves into (limited) slavery both in Athens and abroad. The situation was a powder-keg waiting to go off; suffering under unmanageable debts, sold into slavery, with the government under the control of the wealthy people that were the causes of their problems, the average Athenian farmer was primed for revolution.

The Reforms of Solon

But history takes strange turns sometimes. Recognizing the danger of the situation, in 594 BC, the Areopagus and the people of Athens agreed to hand over all political power to a single individual, Solon. In effect a tyrant, Solon's mission was to reform the government to stem the tide of privation and exploitation and set up a system to guarantee that Athens didn't slip into such a situation again.

Solon immediately dismissed all outstanding debts, and he freed as many Athenians as he could from the slavery they had sold themselves into. He banned any loans that are secured by a promise to enter into slavery if the loan is defaulted, and he tried to bring people who had been sold into slavery abroad back to Athens. In addition, he encouraged the development of olive and wine production, so that by the end of the century, most of Athenian land was dedicated to these lucrative crops.

As far as government is concerned, he divided Athenian society into four classes based on wealth. The two wealthiest classes were allowed to serve on the Areopagus. The third class were allowed to serve on an elected council of four hundred people. This council was organized according to the four tribes making up the Athenian people; each tribe was allowed to elect one hundred representatives from this third class. This council of four hundred served as a kind of balance or check to the power of the Areopagus. The fourth class, the poorest class, was allowed to participate in an assembly; this assembly voted on affairs brought to it by the council of four hundred, and even elected local magistrates. This class also participated in a new judicial court that gradually drew civil and military cases out of the hands of the wealthiest people, the Areopagus.

Peisistratus and the Tyranny

The Athenians considered Solon the great hero of their state and pointed to the reforms of Solon as the basis of their state. Solon's new state, however, lasted very briefly. Although he brilliantly reformed the government, he really didn't solve the economic crisis, and within a few years, Athens was collapsing in anarchy. A nobleman, Peisistratus, swept into power during this anarchy and set about restoring order. The tyranny of Peisistratus, however, was as important to the foundation of Athenian democracy as Solon's reforms had been. Although he was a military leader who backed up his power with a frightening mercenary army, Peisistratus began to actively build in and around Athens, and actively reform Athenian religion and religious practices, and, in particular, devoted his government to cultural reform. He sought out poets and artists in order to make Athens a culturally sophisticated and dynamic society. But, in particular, he launched a full attack on the power of the nobility. He increased the power of the Assembly and the courts associated with the poorest classes, and used all his power to make sure that the Solonian government worked smoothly and that elections were held (provided his supporters were elected).

Like most tyrants, Peisistratus had monarchical ambitions; on his death, the tyranny fell to his son, Hippias. The life of a tyrant is not a comfortable one, and although Hippias began in the mold of his father, the assassination of his brother caused him great fright and consternation. He became suspicious and withdrawn and increasingly arbitrary. His enemies, which were many, if they hadn't already started, began plotting his overthrow. In particular, a wealthy family, the Alcmaeonids, who had been exiled by Peisistratus, prevailed on Sparta to assist them in the overthrow of Hippias. Under the Spartan king, Cleomenes I, Athens was overcome in 510 BC and Hippias ran to exile in Persia

Cleisthenes

The Spartans followed their usual practice and entered into a truce with Athens and installed their own hand-picked Athenians to lead the government. The Spartans, however, were too clever for their own good. They chose an individual, Isagoras, whom they felt was the most loyal to Sparta; Isagoras, however, was a bitter rival of the Alcmaeonids, who had been the original allies of Sparta. Isagoras, for his part, set about restoring the Solonic government, but he also set about "purifying" Athenian citizenship. Under Solon and later Peisistratus, a number of people had been enfranchised as citizens even though they weren't Athenian or who were doubtfully Athenian. For in the Greek world, you could only be the citizen of a city-state if you could trace your ancestorship back to the original inhabitants of the state. Isagoras, however, began to throw people off the citizenship rolls in great numbers. Cleisthenes, an Alcmaeonid noble, rallied popular support and threatened the power of Isagoras, who promptly called for the Spartans again. The Spartans invaded a second time, and Cleisthenes was expelled, but soon a popular uprising swept Isagoras from power and installed Cleisthenes.

From 508 to 502 BC, Cleisthenes began a series of major reforms that would produce Athenian democracy. He enfranchised as citizens all free men living in Athens and Attica (the area surrounding Athens). He established a council which would be the chief arm of government with all executive and administrative control. Every citizen over the age of thirty was eligible to sit on this council; each year the members of the council would be chosen by lot. The Assembly, which included all male citizens, was allowed to veto any of the council's proposals and was the only branch of government that could declare war. In 487, long after Cleisthenes, the Athenians added the final aspect of Athenian democracy proper: ostracism. The Assembly could vote (voting was done on potsherds called ostra ) on expelling citizens from the state for a period of ten years. This ostracism would guarantee that individuals who were contemplating seizing power would be removed from the country before they got too powerful.

So by 502 BC, Athens had pretty much established its culture and political structure, just as Sparta had pretty much established its culture and political structure by 550 BC. Athens was more or less a democracy; it had become primarily a trading and commercial center; a large part of the Athenian economy focussed on cash crops for export and crafts; it had become a center of art and literature; the city had become architecturally rich because of the building projects of Peisistratus—an architectural richness that far outshone other Greek city-states; and Athenian religious fesitivals were largely in place. The next one hundred years would be politically and culturally dominated by Athens; the event that would catapult Athens to the center of the Greek world was the invasion of the Persians in 490 BC.

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History of Athens

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:37:00 +0000

The History of Athens is one of the longest of any city in Europe and in the world. Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 3,000 years, becoming the leading city of Ancient Greece in the first millennium BC; its cultural achievements during the 5th century BC laid the foundations of western civilization. During the Middle Ages, the city experienced decline and then recovery under the Byzantine Empire, and was relatively prosperous during the Crusades, benefiting from Italian trade. After a long period of decline under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Athens re-emerged in the 19th century as the capital of the independent Greek state.

1 Etymology
2 Origins and setting
3 Early History
4 Reform and democracy
5 Classical Athens
- 5.1 Early Athenian Military History
- 5.2 Artists and philosophers
- 5.3 Peloponnesian War
- 5.4 Athenian coup of 411 BC
- 5.5 Corinthian War and the Second Athenian League
- 5.6 Athens under Macedon
6 Roman Athens
7 Byzantine Athens
8 Latin Athens
- 8.1 Burgundian period
- 8.2 Catalan period
- 8.3 Florentine period
9 Ottoman Athens
- 9.1 Independence from the Ottomans
10 Modern Athens
- 10.1 Population Influx
- 10.2 Athens Under the Nazis
- 10.3 Postwar Athens
- 10.4 Athens Today
11 Historical Population
12 Notable Athenians
13 Ancient sites in Athens
14 Photo Gallery
15 References
16 See also
17 External links

Etymology

The name of Athens in Ancient Greek was Athḗnai (Ἀθῆναι, pronounced [ʔaˈtʰɛːnai], or roughly "at-heh-nye"). There is a legendary Myth on how Athens acquired this name. Both Athena and Poseidon requested to be patrons and give their name to the city, so they competed, offering the city one gift each. Poseidon produced a spring by striking the ground with his trident, symbolizing naval power. Athena created the olive tree, symbolizing peace and prosperity. The Athenians under Cecrops accepted the olive tree and named the city after Athena. Athḗnai is a plural form: the city was called "The Athenses" since it was originally a group of ten cities which Theseus unified into one city. In his dialogue Cratylus, Plato gives the etymology of Athena's name based on the view of the ancient Athenians:

"That is a graver matter, and there, my friend, the modern interpreters of Homer may, I think, assist in explaining the view of the ancients. For most of these in their explanations of the poet, assert that he meant by Athene "mind" [nous] and "intelligence" [dianoia], and the maker of names appears to have had a singular notion about her; and indeed calls her by a still higher title, "divine intelligence" [theou noesis], as though he would say: This is she who has the mind better than others. Nor shall we be far wrong in supposing that the author of it wished to identify this Goddess with moral intelligence [en ethei noesin], and therefore gave her the name ethonoe; which, however, either he or his successors have altered into what they thought a nicer form, and called her Athene".

Plato, Cratylus, 407b

Thus for Plato her name was to be derived from Greek Ētheonóa (Ή-θεο-νόα) or Atheonóa (Ἀθεονόα) — which the Greeks rationalised as from god's (theos) mind (nous).

Origins and setting

View of part of central Athens and some of the city's southern suburbs from Lykavittos Hill.

Athens began its history as a Neolithic hill-fort on top of the Acropolis ("high city"), some time in the third millennium BC. The Acropolis is a natural defensive position which commands the surrounding plains. The settlement was about 20 kilometers inland from the Saronic Gulf, in the centre of the Cephisian Plain, a fertile dale surrounded by rivers. To the east lies Mount Hymettus, to the north Mount Pentelicus.

The River Cephisus flowed in ancient times through the city. Ancient Athens occupied a very small area compared to the sprawling metropolis of modern Athens. The walled ancient city encompassed an area measuring about 2 km from east to west and slightly less than that from north to south, although at its peak the city had suburbs extending well beyond these walls. The Acropolis was just south of the centre of this walled area. The Agora, the commercial and social centre of the city, was about 400 m north of the Acropolis, in what is now the Monastiraki district. The hill of the Pnyx, where the Athenian Assembly met, lay at the western end of the city.

One of the most important religious sites in Athens was the Temple of Athena, known today as the Parthenon, which stood atop the Acropolis, where its evocative ruins still stand. Two other major religious sites, the Temple of Hephaestus (which is still largely intact) and the Temple of Olympian Zeus or Olympeion (once the largest temple in Greece but now in ruins) also lay within the city walls.

Based on Thucydides, the Athenian citizens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War were 40.000, making with their families a total of 140.000. The metics, i.e. those who did not have citizen rights and paid for the right to reside in Athens were 70.000 while slaves were estimated between 150.000 to 400.000.^[1] Hence, approximately 6,5 to 11% of the population were adult male citizens, eligible to meet and vote in the Assembly and be elected to office. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC the city's population began to decrease as Greeks migrated to the Hellenistic empires in the East.

Early History

The Acropolis of Athens was inhabited from Neolithic times. By 1400 BC Athens had become a powerful center of the Mycenaean civilization. Unlike other Mycenaean centers, such as Mycenae and Pylos, Athens was not sacked and abandoned at the time of the Doric invasion of about 1200 BC, and the Athenians always maintained that they were "pure" Ionians with no Doric element. However, Athens lost most of its power and probably dwindled to a small hill fortress once again.

By the 8th century BC Athens had re-emerged, by virtue of its central location in the Greek world, its secure stronghold on the Acropolis and its access to the sea, which gave it a natural advantage over potential rivals such as Thebes and Sparta. From early in the 1st millennium, Athens was a sovereign city-state, ruled at first by kings (see Kings of Athens). The kings stood at the head of a land-owning aristocracy known as the Eupatridae (the "well-born"), whose instrument of government was a Council which met on the Hill of Ares, called the Areopagus. This body appointed the chief city officials, the archons and the polemarch (commander-in-chief).

Before the concept of the political state arose, four tribes based upon family relationships dominated the area. The members had certain rights, privileges, and obligations:

Common religious rites.
A common burial place.
Mutual rights of succession to property of deceased members.
Reciprocal obligations of help, defense and redress of injuries.
The right to intermarry in the gens in the cases of orphan daughters and heiresses.
The possession of common property, an archon, and a treasurer.
The limitation of descent to the male line.
The obligation not to marry in the gens except in specified cases.
The right to adopt strangers into the gens.
The right to elect and depose its chiefs.^[2]

During this period Athens succeeded in bringing the other towns of Attica under its rule. This process of synoikismos – bringing together in one home – created the largest and wealthiest state on the Greek mainland, but it also created a larger class of people excluded from political life by the nobility. By the 7th century BC social unrest had become widespread, and the Areopagus appointed Draco to draft a strict new lawcode (hence "draconian"). When this failed, they appointed Solon, with a mandate to create a new constitution (594).

Reform and democracy

The reforms of Solon dealt with both political and economic issues. The economic power of the Eupatridae was reduced by abolishing slavery as a punishment for debt, breaking up large landed estates and freeing up trade and commerce, which allowed the emergence of a prosperous urban trading class. Politically, Solon divided the Athenians into four classes, based on their wealth and their ability to perform military service. The poorest class, the Thetes, who were the majority of the population, received political rights for the first time, being able to vote in the Ecclesia (Assembly), but only the upper classes could hold political office. The Areopagus continued to exist but its powers were reduced.

The new system laid the foundations for what eventually became Athenian democracy, but in the short term it failed to quell class conflict, and after 20 years of unrest the popular party led by Peisistratus, a cousin of Solon, seized power (541). Peisistratus is usually called a tyrant, but the Greek word tyrannos does not mean a cruel and despotic ruler, merely one who took power by force. Peisistratus was in fact a very popular ruler, who made Athens wealthy, powerful, and a centre of culture, and founded the Athenian naval supremacy in the Aegean Sea and beyond. He preserved the Solonian constitution, but made sure that he and his family held all the offices of state.

The ruins of the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

Peisistratus died in 527, and was succeeded by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus. They proved much less adept rulers, and in 514 Hipparchus was assassinated after a private dispute over a young man (see Harmodius and Aristogeiton). This led Hippias to establish a real dictatorship, which proved very unpopular and was overthrown, with the help of an army from Sparta, in 510. A radical politician of aristocratic background, Cleisthenes, then took charge. He was the one who established democracy in Athens.

The reforms of Cleisthenes replaced the traditional four "tribes" (phyle) with ten new ones, named after legendary heroes and having no class basis: they were in fact electorates. Each tribe was in turn divided into three trittyes while each trittys had one or more demes (see deme) - depending on the population of the demes -, which became the basis of local government. The tribes each elected fifty members to the Boule, a council which governed Athens on a day-to-day basis. The Assembly was open to all citizens and was both a legislature and a supreme court, except in murder cases and religious matters, which became the only remaining functions of the Areopagus. Most offices were filled by lot, though the ten strategoi (generals) were, for obvious reasons, elected. This system remained remarkably stable, and with a few brief interruptions remained in place for 170 years, until Alexander the Great conquered Athens in 338 BCE.

Classical Athens

Early Athenian Military History

Main articles: Ionian Revolt and Persian Wars

Early Athenian coin, 5th century BCE. British Museum.

Prior to the rise of Athens, the city of Sparta considered itself the leader of the Greeks, or hegemon. In 499 BC Athens sent troops to aid the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, who were rebelling against the Persian Empire (see Ionian Revolt). This provoked two Persian invasions of Greece, both of which were defeated under the leadership of the Athenian soldier-statesmen Miltiades and Themistocles (see Persian Wars). In 490 the Athenians, lead by Miltiades, defeated the first invasion of the Persians, guided by the king Darius at the Battle of Marathon. In 480 the Persians returned under a new ruler, Xerxes. The Persians had to pass through a narrow strait to get to Athens. A call had been sent via a runner to Sparta for help. The Spartans were in the middle of a religious festival, and so could only send three hundred men. The 300 Spartans and their allies blocked the narrow passageway from the 200,000 men of Xerxes (the Battle of Thermopylae). They held them off for a number of days, but eventually all but one Spartan was killed (see Aristodemus (Spartan)). This forced the Athenians to evacuate Athens, which was taken by the Persians and seek the protection of their fleet. Subsequently the Athenians and their allies, lead by Themistocles had defeated the still vastly larger Persian navy at sea in the Battle of Salamis. It is interesting to note that Xerxes had built himself a throne on the coast in order to see the Greeks defeated. Instead, the Persians were routed. Sparta's hegemony was passing to Athens, and it was Athens that took the war to Asia Minor. These victories enabled it to bring most of the Aegean and many other parts of Greece together in the Delian League, an Athenian-dominated alliance.

Artists and philosophers

Main articles: Greek philosophy and Greek theatre

The Karyatides statues of the Erechtheion on its Acropolis.

The period from the end of the Persian Wars to the Macedonian conquest marked the zenith of Athens as a center of literature, philosophy (see Greek philosophy) and the arts (see Greek theatre). Some of the most important figures of Western cultural and intellectual history lived in Athens during this period: the dramatists Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides and Sophocles, the philosophers Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, the historians Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, the poet Simonides and the sculptor Phidias, The leading statesman of this period was Pericles, who used the tribute paid by the members of the Delian League to build the Parthenon and other great monuments of classical Athens. The city became, in Pericles's words, "the school of Hellas [Greece]."

Peloponnesian War

Main article: Peloponnesian War

The National Academy in Athens, with Apollo and Athena on their columns, and Socrates and Plato seated in front.

Resentment by other cities at the hegemony of Athens led to the Peloponnesian War in 431, which pitted Athens and her increasingly rebellious sea empire against a coalition of land-based states led by Sparta. The conflict marked the end of Athenian command of the sea. The war between the two city-state Sparta had defeated Athens.

Athenian coup of 411 BC

Main article: Athenian coup of 411 BC

The democracy was briefly overthrown by a coup in 411 due to its poor handling of the war, but quickly restored. The war ended with the complete defeat of Athens in 404. Since the defeat was largely blamed on democratic politicians such as Cleon and Cleophon, there was a brief reaction against democracy, aided by the Spartan army (the rule of the Thirty Tyrants). In 403, democracy was restored by Thrasybulus and an amnesty declared.

Corinthian War and the Second Athenian League

Sparta's former allies soon turned against her due to her imperialist policy and soon Athens's former enemies Thebes and Corinth had become her allies. Argos, Thebes, Corinth allied to Athens fought against Sparta in the indecisive Corinthian War (395 BC - 387 BC). Opposition to Sparta enabled Athens to establish a Second Athenian League Finally Thebes defeated Sparta in 371 in the Battle of Leuctra. Then the Greek cities (including Athens and Sparta) turned against Thebes whose dominance was stopped at the Battle of Mantinea (362 BC) with the death of its military genius leader Epaminondas.

Athens under Macedon

Further information: Alexander the Great, Antigonid dynasty, and Seleucid Empire

By mid century, however, the northern Greek kingdom of Macedon was becoming dominant in Athenian affairs, despite the warnings of the last great statesman of independent Athens, Demosthenes. In 338 BC the armies of Philip II defeated the other Greek cities at the Battle of Chaeronea, effectively ending Athenian independence. Further, the conquests of his son, Alexander the Great, widened Greek horizons and made the traditional Greek city state obsolete. Athens remained a wealthy city with a brilliant cultural life, but ceased to be an independent power. In the 2nd century, after 200 years of Macedonian supremacy, Greece was absorbed into the Roman Republic.

Roman Athens

Main articles: Roman Empire and Roman Greece

The ruins of the Roman Agora, the second commercial centre of ancient Athens.

In 88-85BC, most Athenian houses and fortifications were leveled by Roman general Sulla, while many civic buildings and monuments were left intact.^[3] Under Rome, Athens was given the status of a free city because of its widely admired schools. Various Roman emperors would construct a concert hall, a law court, a library, a gymnasium, a small temple on the Acropolis, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and an aqueduct which is still in use today.^[3]

The city was sacked by the Heruli in 267 AD resulting in the burning of all the public buildings, the plundering of the lower city, and the damaging of the Agora and Acropolis. After this the city to the north of the Acropolis was hastily refortified on a smaller scale with the Agora left outside the walls. Athens remained a centre of learning and philosophy during 500 years of Roman rule, patronised by emperors such as Nero and Hadrian. But the conversion of the Empire to Christianity ended the city's role as a centre of pagan learning; the Emperor Justinian closed the schools of philosophy in 529 AD. This is generally taken to mark the end of the ancient history of Athens.

Byzantine Athens

Further information: Byzantine Empire and Byzantine Greece

Byzantine Church in the Agora, Athens

By 529 AD, Athens was under rule by the Byzantines and had grown out of favor.^[3] The Parthenon and Erechtheion were transformed into churches. During the period of the Byzantine Empire Athens was a provincial town, and experienced fluctuating fortunes. In the early years many of its works of art were taken by the emperors to Constantinople. Furthermore, although the Byzantines retained control of the Aegean and its islands throughout this period, during the seventh and eighth centuries direct control did not extend far beyond the coast. From about 600 the city shrank considerably due to barbarian raids by the Avars and Slavs, and was reduced to a shadow of its former self. As the seventh century progressed, much of Greece was overrun by Slavic peoples from the north, and Athens entered a period of uncertainty and insecurity.

By the middle of the 9th century, as Greece was fully reconquered again, the city began to recover. Just as other cities benefited from improved security and the restoration of effective central control during this period, so Athens expanded once more.

The invasions of the Turks after the battle of Manzikert in 1071 and the ensuing civil wars largely passed the region by, and Athens continued its provincial existence unharmed. When the Byzantine Empire was rescued by the resolute leadership of the three Komnenos emperors Alexios, John and Manuel, Attica and the rest of Greece prospered. Archaeological evidence tells us that the mediaeval town experienced a period of rapid and sustained growth, starting in the eleventh century and continuing until the end of the twelfth century. The agora or marketplace, which had been deserted since late antiquity, began to be built over, and soon the town became an important centre for the production of soaps and dyes. The growth of the town attracted the Venetians, and various other traders who frequented the ports of the Aegean, to Athens. This interest in trade appears to have further increased the economic prosperity of the town.

The 11th and 12th centuries were the Golden Age of Byzantine art in Athens. Almost all of the most important Byzantine churches around Athens were built during these two centuries, and this reflects the growth of the town in general. However, this medieval prosperity was not to last. In 1204, the Fourth Crusade conquered Athens and the city was not recovered from the Latins before it was taken by the Ottoman Turks. It did not become Greek in government again until the 19th century.

Latin Athens

Further information: Duchy of Athens

From 1204 until 1458, Athens was ruled by Latins in three separate periods. It was initially the capital of the eponymous Duchy of Athens, a fief of the Latin Empire which replaced Byzantium. After Thebes became a possession of the Latin dukes, which were of the Burgundian family called De la Roche, it replaced Athens as the capital and seat of government, though Athens remained the most influential ecclesiastical centre in the duchy and site of a prime fortress. In 1311, Athens was conquered by the Catalan Company, a band of mercenaries called almogávares. It was held by the Catalans until 1388. After 1379, when Thebes was lost, it became the capital of the duchy again. In 1388, the Florentine Nerio I Acciajuoli took the city and made himself duke. His descendants ruled the city (as their capital) until the Turkish conquest of 1458. It was the last Latin state in Greece to fall.

Burgundian period

Under the Burgundian dukes, a bell tower was added to the Parthenon. The Burgundians brought chivalry and tournaments to Athens; they also fortified the Acropolis. They were themselves influenced by Greek culture and their court was a syncretistic mix of classical knowledge and French knighly haute couture.

Catalan period

The history of Catalan Athens, called Cetines (rarely Athenes) by the conquerors, is most obscure. Athens was a veguería with its own castellan, captain, and veguer. At some point during the Catalan period, the Acropolis was further fortified and the Athenian archdiocese received an extra two suffragan sees.

Florentine period

The Florentines had to dispute the city with the Republic of Venice, but they ultimately emerged victorious after seven years of Venetian rule (1395–1402).

Ottoman Athens

A view of the Acropolis of Athens during the Ottoman period, showing the buildings which were removed at the time of independence

Finally, in 1458, Athens fell to the Ottoman Empire. As the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II the Conqueror rode into the city, he was greatly struck by the beauty of its ancient monuments and issued a firman (imperial edict) forbidding their looting or destruction, on pain of death. The Parthenon was converted into Athen's main mosque.^[3]

Despite the initial efforts of the Ottoman authorities to turn Athens into a model provincial capital, the city's population severely declined and by the 17th century it was a mere village. Great damage to Athens was caused in the 17th century, when Ottoman power was declining. The Turks would begin a practice of storing gun powder and explosives in the Parthenon and Propylaea. In 1640, a lighting bolt would strike the Propylaea, causing its destruction.^[4] In 1687, Athens was besieged by the Venetians, and the temple of Athena Nike was dismantled by the Ottomans to fortify the Parthenon. A shot fired during the bombardment of the Acropolis caused a powder magazine in the Parthenon to explode, and the building was severely damaged, giving it the appearance we see today. The occupation of the Acropolis continued for six months, but even the Venetians participated in the looting of the Parthenon. One of the west pediments of the Parthenon would be removed causing even more damage to the structure. The following year Turkish forces set fire to the city. Ancient monuments were destroyed to provide material for a new wall with which the Ottomans surrounded the city in 1778. Between 1801 and 1805 Lord Elgin, the British resident at Athens, removed reliefs from the Parthenon (see Elgin marbles for more detail.) Along with the Panatheniac frieze, one of the six caryatids of the Erechtheion was extracted and replaced with a plaster mold. All in all, fifty sculptural pieces were carried away from the Parthenon including three fragments purchased by the French.^[3]

Independence from the Ottomans

In 1822 a Greek insurgency captured the city, but it fell to the Ottomans again in 1826. Again the ancient monuments suffered badly. Partially funded by Lord Byron, the Greeks continued to fight. Ottoman forces remained in possession until 1833, when they withdrew and Athens was chosen as the capital of the newly established kingdom of Greece. At that time the city was virtually uninhabited, being merely a cluster of buildings at the foot of the Acropolis, where the Plaka district is now.

Modern Athens

In 1832, Otto, Prince of Bavaria was proclaimed King of Greece. He adopted the Greek spelling of his name, King Othon as well as Greek national dress, and moved the capital of Greece back to Athens. Othon's first task as king was to make a detailed archaeological and topographical survey of Athens. He assigned Gustav Eduard Schaubert and Stamatios Kleanthes to complete this task.^[3] At that time Athens had a population of roughly 4,000-5,000 people, located in what today covers the district of Plaka in Athens.

Athens was chosen as the Greek capital for historical and sentimental reasons, not because it was a large city: there are few buildings in Athens from the period of Byzantine Empire and the 18th century. Once the capital was established there, a modern city plan was laid out and public buildings erected. The finest legacy of this period are the buildings of the University of Athens (1837), Old Royal Palace (now the Greek Parliament Building) (1843), the National Gardens of Athens (1840), the National Library of Greece (1842), the Greek National Academy (1885), the Zappeion Exhibition Hall (1878), the Old Parliament Building (1858), the New Royal Palace (now the Presidential Palace) (1897) and the Athens Town Hall (1874).

Population Influx

Main articles: Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and Population exchange between Greece and Turkey

^{This short section requires expansion.}

Athens experienced its first period of explosive growth following the disastrous war with Turkey in 1921, when more than a million Greek refugees from Asia Minor were resettled in Greece. Suburbs such as Nea Ionia and Nea Smyrni began as refugee settlements on the Athens outskirts.

Athens Under the Nazis

Main article: Axis Occupation of Greece during WWII

^{This short section requires expansion.}

Athens was occupied by the Germans during World War II and experienced terrible privations during the later years of the war. In 1944 there was heavy fighting in the city between Communist forces and the royalists backed by the British.

Postwar Athens

Main article: Greek Civil War

The aftermath of street fighting in Athens, December 1944.

After World War II the city began to grow again as people migrated from the villages and islands to find work. Greek entry into the European Union in 1981 brought a flood of new investment to the city, but also increasing social and environmental problems. Athens had some of the worst traffic congestion and air pollution in the world. This posed a new threat to the ancient monuments of Athens, as traffic vibration weakened foundations and air pollution corroded marble. The city's environmental and infrastructure problems were the main reason Athens failed to secure the 1996 centenary Olympic Games.

Athens Today

After this, both the city of Athens and the Greek government, aided by European Union funds, undertook major infrastructure projects such as the new Athens Airport and a new metro system. The city also tackled air pollution by restricting the use of cars in the centre of the city. As a result, Athens was awarded the 2004 Olympic Games. Despite the scepticism of many observers, the games were a great success and brought renewed international prestige (and tourism revenue) to Athens.

Historical Population

Throughout its long history, Athens has had many different population levels. The table below shows the historical population of Athens in modern history.

Year	City population	Urban population	Metro population
1833	4,000^[3]	-	-
1870	44,500^[3]	-	-
1896	123,000^[3]	-	-
1921 (Pre-Population exchange)	473,000^[3]	-	-
1921 (Post-Population exchange)	718,000^[3]	-	-
1971	867,023^[5]	-	-
1981	885,737	-	-
1991	772,072	-	3,444,358^[6]
2001	745,514^[7]	3,130,841^[7]	3,761,810^[7]

Notable Athenians

Aeschylus
Alcibiades
Aristophanes
Aspasia
Cimon
Cleisthenes
Cleon
Demosthenes
Ephialtes
Euripides
Herodotus
Empress Irene
Miltiades
Nicias
Peisistratus
Pericles
Pheidias
Plato
Simonides
Socrates
Solon
Sophocles
Themistocles
Theseus
Thrasybulus
Thucydides
Xenophon

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Apollo

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:31:00 +0000

Apollo is the god of prophecy, of musical and artistic inspiration, of archers and of healing.

Leto persecuted

When the Titaness Leto had been seduced by Zeus, she was hunted over the whole earth by the jealousy of the god's wife Hera. And after having wandered through many countries Leto came to the rocky island of Delos, which is one of the so called Cyclades Islands in the Aegean Sea, and there she gave birth to her twins, first to Artemis and soon after to Apollo.

This island came about, they say, when Leto's sister Asteria 1 cast herself into the sea in order to escape the amorous advances of Zeus, who transformed her into a quail. From her a floating island sprang that was first called Ortygia and later Delos, although some have said that Ortygia and Delos are two different islands and that Artemis was born in the former and Apollo in the latter.

Birth

This happened, some say, with great difficulty; for after nine days of travail the goddess of childbirth Ilithyia had not yet arrived, since she was kept in heaven by the envy of Hera. But the goddesses who kept Leto company bribed the heavenly messenger Iris 1 with a necklace strung with golden threads, and she brought Ilithyia to Delos. On her arrival, Leto cast her arms around a palm tree or an olive tree and, kneeling on the meadow, gave birth first to Artemis and then, with the help of Artemis' midwifery, to Apollo.

The Lycian peasants

Leto's troubles did not stop after giving birth, for it is said that she, having arrived with her newborns to a certain place in Lycia in Asia Minor where there was a lake, was forbidden by the inhospitable locals to quench her thirst. No matter how much she begged them to let her drink, they would still forbid her to touch the water, and as Leto insisted the Lycian peasants threatened her and soil the pool with their feet and hands, stirring up the mud from the bottom. And seeing them so tight-fisted and mean, and at the same time so in love with the pool, Leto turned them into frogs so that they could live in its depth for ever enjoying the water and the mud.

Python

But others say that the twins, so soon they were born, punished all the men of that time who, when Leto was pregnant and in the course of her wanderings, refused to receive her when she came to their land. And it is said that only four days after his birth Apollo went to Mount Parnassus and killed Python, the dragon that gave oracular responses and that had followed the pregnant Leto in order to kill her.

Prophecy

It was then that Apollo took over Themis' oracle in Delphi. He then appointed Cretan sailors as the sanctuary's first priests. For having seen a Cretan ship sailing from Cnossos in Crete to Pylos in the Peloponnesus, he turned himself into a dolphin and brought the ship into the Crisaean Gulf (the Phocian section of the northern coast of the Gulf of Corinth). So from Crisa, the Cretan sailors conducted by Apollo came to Parnassus, and having become priests of Apollo, they called the city Delphi, for the god, having appeared to them in the shape of a dolphin, told them:

"I sprang upon the ship in the form of a dolphin, pray to me as Apollo Delphinius; also the altar itself shall be called Delphinius ..." [Apollo to the Cretan sailors. Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo 493]

The Oracle at Delphi

Concerning the oracle says a Pythian priestess of Delphi that the first to have prophetic powers was Gaia, who appointed Daphnis 4, a Mountain Nymph (Oread), as prophetess. After her came Themis, and then the Titaness Phoebe 1, who gave her seat at Delphi to Phoebus Apollo, called after her. But others say that Gaia and Poseidon had the oracle in common and that it was Themis who gave the oracle to Apollo as a gift, and that Poseidon was compensated receiving Calaureia, that lies off Troezen, in exchange for the oracle.

It is said that Phemonoe was the first prophetess of Apollo at Delphi. A Delphian woman, Boeo, says that the Hyperboreans Pagasus 1, Olen and Agyieus established the oracle of Apollo at Delphi and that Olen was Apollo's first prophet. The seat of the oracle has been described as a cave hollowed out deep down in the earth with a narrow mouth, from which arose breath that inspired a divine frenzy. Over the mouth a high tripod was placed, and when the Pythian priestess mounted it she received the breath and uttered oracles, in both prose and verse. The oracle at Delphi was believed to be the most truthful, also because it was placed in the geographical centre of Greece or, as some claimed, in the centre of the inhabited world; for this reason it has been considered to be "the navel of the earth". Many riches were deposited in treasure-houses at Delphi, and these were offerings dedicated, for example, from spoils of war [see also Delphi].

The Bow

Archers regard Apollo as their lord, for this is the god who, as they say, strikes from afar. And when Philoctetes, for example, came to Italy after the Trojan War, he founded a sanctuary of Apollo to whom he dedicated his bow.

This bow had been Heracles 1's, but the one used by Odysseus to massacre the SUITORS OF PENELOPE had been first given to King Eurytus 4 of Oechalia by Apollo. But Eurytus 4 (who was son of the archer Melaneus 5, himself son of Apollo) challenged Apollo to a contest with the bow and was killed by the wrath of the god. Others say that Eurytus 4 was slain by Heracles 1 for quite another reason, but in any case when Eurytus 4 died he left the bow to his son Iphitus 1 who, before being thrown down by Heracles 1 from the walls of Tiryns, gave Odysseus the bow; and with it Odysseus ended the SUITORS' pestering of Penelope bathing his halls in their blood.

The Bow, Healing and Music

But when the god himself shoots his arrows with his silver bow another is usually the result, as when he and his sister, punishing the boasts and insults of Amphion 1's wife Niobe 2, caused the Royal House of Thebes to be left desolate by plague after shooting the NIOBIDS from afar.

Likewise, in the tenth year of the Trojan War, Apollo came down from heaven darker than night (although he is usually called the bright one) and, in order to punish the arrogance of Agamemnon who had humiliated and dismissed one of his priests, the god let his arrows rain on the Achaean camp, decimating the army by means of a pestilence that took many lives.

Such is the power of Apollo on the subject of health, which otherwise could be thought to be preserved by following the counsels of the same god which were engraved upon a column at Delphi: "Know yourself" and "Nothing in excess". For these counsels are believed to preserve balance and harmony, which are conditions of health. And similarly: by bringing the same kind of consonance and agreement among the sounds, the harmony of music is created, just like the balance between the fast and the slow appropriately combined produces its rhythm. All these agreements, in both medicine and music, although the works of Love, are ruled by Apollo, who has been called Musegetes (Leader of the MUSES) on account of his musical and inspiring gift.

Asclepius

Apollo, who is a primary source of healing, transmitted his powers to his son Asclepius who in turn carried the art among men to such a great pitch that he not only prevented some from dying, but even raised up the dead. This, they say, was not approved by Zeus who, fearing that mortals might acquire the healing art from him and so come to the rescue of each other, smote Asclepius with a thunderbolt. Grieved at the death of his beloved son, and not being able to raise his hand against his own father, Apollo, in revenge, slew the CYCLOPES who had fashioned the thunderbolt with which Zeus smote Asclepius.

Apollo the thrall obtains favour from the MOERAE

On account of this deed Zeus, who would have hurled Apollo to Tartarus had Leto not intervened, ordered Apollo, as a penalty for having destroyed the CYCLOPES, to serve as a thrall to a mortal man for one year. And this man came to be King Admetus 1 of Pherae, whom Apollo served as herdman. And since Apollo found he had been kindly treated when given in servitude to Admetus 1, he provided him with the wild beasts, with which Admetus 1 bore off Alcestis in marriage.

But in offering a sacrifice at his marriage, Admetus 1 forgot to sacrifice to Artemis, and consequently found his marriage chamber full of coiled serpents. Apollo bade King Admetus 1 appease the goddess and meanwhile, because Admetus 1 was such a kind master towards him, he obtained a special favour of the MOERAE, which was that when Admetus 1 should be about to die, he might be released from death if someone should choose voluntarily to die for him [see Alcestis].

The Lyre

In the process of recovering the cattle that the newborn Hermes had stolen from him, Apollo discovered the lyre that Hermes had invented and was willing to give Hermes the cattle in exchange for the musical instrument. So they did, and Hermes went pasturing the cattle and he now made a shepherd's pipe for himself; and this pipe was so amazing that Apollo desired it too. So Apollo offered to give Hermes the golden wand which he used while he herded cattle, but in the bargain Hermes received from Apollo, besides the wand, the art of divining by pebbles. The golden wand, the Caduceus, is a splendid staff of riches and wealth, which keeps Hermes scatheless.

But although Hermes invented the three-stringed lyre, it was Apollo, some say, who added four more strings to it. Yet when Apollo quickly repented for what he had done to Marsyas, he, being distressed at his horrible deed, broke the four strings of the lyre that he had discovered. These, however, were later rediscovered by the MUSES, when they added a middle string, by one Linus, who added the string struck with the forefinger, and by Orpheus and Thamyris 1, who discovered the remaining two strings that Apollo had broken.

Otherwise it is said that it was Apollo who taught Orpheus to play the lyre, and they add that after the death of the latter the instrument was put by the MUSES among the stars [see also CONSTELLATIONS].

Marsyas

Concerning the musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas some have said that the latter was departing as victor when Apollo turned his lyre upside down, and played the same tune, a prowess that Marsyas could not do with the flute. But others tell that Marsyas was defeated when Apollo added his voice to the sound of the lyre. Marsyas, they say, protested arguing that the skill with the instrument was to be compared and not the voice. However, Apollo replied that when Marsyas blew into the pipes he was doing almost the same thing as himself. And the argument presented by Apollo was judged by the Nysaeans or by the MUSES to be the most just, and that is why, after comparing their skills again, Marsyas was defeated, and subsequently flayed alive by the god. Some have said that it was on this occasion that King Midas got the ears of an ass for having judged against Apollo:

"You will have ears to match the mind you have in judging" [Apollo to Midas. Hyginus, Fabulae 191]

The Laurel

Since Daphne 1, pursued by Apollo, changed into a Laurel tree, the god is associated with the Laurel. For it is said that while Apollo pursued her, she implored to Zeus to disappear from sight, and as her prayers were heard, she was turned into a laurel tree. That was all that remained of her, but Apollo broke a branch from the tree and placed it on his head declaring:

"Since you cannot be my bride, you shall at least be my tree. My hair, my lyre, my quiver shall always be entwined with you, O laurel." [Apollo. Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.557]

Daphne 1 escapes Apollo by turning into a laurel tree | Dafne 1 se escapa de Apolo, convirtiéndose en un laurel

Amours impossibles

Daphne 1 was not the only girl to refuse Apollo:

For Marpessa 1 chose Idas 2 (the man who killed Castor 1, one of the DIOSCURI) before Apollo as husband of fear that Apollo might desert her in her Old Age.

And Coronis 2 preferred Ischys to Apollo, who learned about it when a crow told him that she had wedded Ischys. Then the god cursed the crow, that became black instead of white, and killed the still pregnant Coronis 2, snatching Asclepius (her child by Apollo) from the funeral pyre as she was burning in it.

Also Cassandra refused Apollo after having promised to consent if he would teach her the art of prophecy; but when she, after having received the gift, still refused, Apollo deprived her prophecy of the power to persuade, thus making vain his gift. And so when later Cassandra warned the Trojans about the nature of the WOODEN HORSE, nobody listened and Troy was destroyed by means of this clever device.

Love for two young men

Apollo loved Hymenaeus 2 and this distraction gave Hermes a chance to steal his brother's cattle.

He also loved Hyacinthus 1; but him the god involuntarily killed with the cast of a quoit, and in the place where his blood had stained the grass there sprang a flower.

The Cypress

Of Cyparissus it is told that he could not find consolation after the death of a stag who was dear to him and, having asked Apollo for permission to grieve for ever, the god turned him into a cypress deciding that his place would always be where others grieve. This is still so since cypresses are a common sight in many cemeteries.

Some interventions related to Troy

It was Apollo and Poseidon who fortified Troy; for, as it is said, they wished to put King Laomedon 1 to the test. And so, assuming the likeness of mortal men, they undertook to fortify the city for wages. Yet when they had accomplished their work, the king would not pay their wages, and that is why Apollo sent a pestilence, and Poseidon sent a sea-monster, which snatched away the people of the plain.

Later, during the Trojan War, Apollo destroyed by pestilence a large part of the Achaean army, in order to punish Agamemnon, who, while refusing to give Chryseis 3 back to her father Chryses 3, humiliated him who was a priest of Apollo. And in the tenth year of the war Apollo, in conjunction with the archer Paris, killed Achilles.

The god is also remembered for his warning to Diomedes 2 who wounded Aphrodite when she protected Aeneas. The goddess then handed over Aeneas to Apollo, and as Diomedes 2 persisted in his attack, Apollo shouted at him:

"... Give way! Do not aspire to be the equal of the gods. The immortals are not made of the same stuff as men that walk on the ground!" [Apollo to Diomedes 2. Homer, Iliad 5.440]

Apollo is also held responsible for the death of Laocoon 2 (who threw his spear against the WOODEN HORSE) and his sons; for he sent snakes to kill his sons, and in trying to help them, Laocoon 2 was also killed. But others say that these serpents were sent by Athena.

Family

Linaje

Parentage

Mates

Offspring

Notes

Zeus & Leto

Hypermnestra 2

Amphiaraus

["a)", "b)", etc. = different versions]

Hypermnestra 2 is daughter of Thestius 1. For Amphiaraus see also SEVEN AGAINST THEBES and Robe & Necklace of Harmonia 1.

Dryope 1

Amphissus

For Dryope 1 see NYMPHS.

Acalle

Amphithemis 1

Acalle was loved by Apollo in the house of Carmanor. Fearing the wrath of her father King Minos 2 of Crete, who drove her from home to dwell in Libya, she exposed her son Miletus.

Rhoeo

Anius

Apollo lay with Rhoeo but her father, believing that her seduction was due to a man, was angry and he shut up her in a chest and cast her into the sea. However she gave birth at Delos, where the chest was washed up. Anius was King of Delos and priest of Apollo.

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Apis 2

Apis 2 took over power in the Peloponnesus, which he called after himself Apia, but being a stern tyrant he was conspired against and probably slain by his son Thelxion.

Cyrene

Aristaeus

Cyrene is daughter of Hypseus 1, king of the LAPITHS. Aristaeus received from the MUSES the arts of healing and of prophecy. Grieved at the death of Actaeon (who was destroyed by his own dogs), he migrated to Sardinia. He competed with his honey against the wine of Dionysus 2 but Zeus gave the first prize to the wine. Aristaeus also discovered the olive. After dwelling some time near Mount Haemus he never was seen again by men and received immortal honours. Aristaeus married Autonoe 2, daughter of Cadmus & Harmonia 1.

a) Coronis 2

Asclepius

b) Arsinoe 2

Stilbe

Centaurus

Stilbe is a daughter of the River God Peneus. For Centaurus, who is also said to be the offspring of Ixion and Nephele 1, see CENTAURS.

Thero 2

Chaeron

Thero 2 is daughter of Phylas 2, son of Antiochus 1, son of Heracles 1. Chaeron is the eponym of Chaeronea in Boeotia.

Chryseis 3

Chryses 4

Chryseis 3 is the daughter of the priest of Apollo Chryses 3. She is the one Agamemnon refused to give back when her father demanded her. Because of that refusal Apollo punished the Achaean army which besieged Troy with pestilence. Chryses 4 is also said to be son of Agamemnon. This Chryses 4, on account of his family ties, intervened to save Orestes 2, son of Agamemnon, by killing King Thoas 3 of Tauris, who threatened his life.

Chrysorthe

Coronus 2

Thalia 2

CORYBANTES

Hyrie

Cycnus 7

Cycnus 7 was loved by Phylius who brought him many gifts but. Cycnus 7 commanded him often to perform several tasks. But as Phylius refused one of them he cast himself from a cliff and was turned into a swan. Hyrie melted away in tears or else threw herself into a lake and was also turned into a swan.

a) Celaeno 3 b) Thyia 1 c) Melaena

Delphus

After Delphus the city of Delphi was named. Celaeno 3 is daughter of Hyamus, son of Lycorus, son of Apollo. Thyia 1 was Priestess of Dionysus 2 and the first to celebrate orgies in his honour; she was daughter of the Phocian Castalius. Melaena is daughter of the River God Cephisus.

Phthia 2

Dorus 2

Dorus 2 is father of Xanthippe 1, wife of Pleuron, after whom the city in Aetolia was named. Pleuron is son of Aetolus 2 & Pronoe 2 and brother of Calydon. Aetolus 2, who was king of Elis, killed Dorus 2.

Aethusa

Eleuther 1

Aethusa is daughter of Poseidon & Alcyone 1. Eleuther 1 was a singer who won a Pythian victory for his loud and sweet voice.

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Epidaurus

Arsinoe 2

Eriopis 3

Arsinoe 2 was daughter of Leucippus 2, son of Perieres 1 & Gorgophone 2.

---

Hilaira

Hilaira was a priestess of Artemis.

Evadne 3

Iamus

Evadne 3 is daughter of Poseidon & Pitana. From Iamus descend the diviners called Iamides.

Cyrene

Idmon 2

For Cyrene see NYMPHS. Idmon 2 was a seer who is found among the ARGONAUTS. He was killed by a boar, in the land of the Mariandynians, or died of disease during the voyage with the ARGONAUTS.

Urea

Ileus 1

Urea is a Nymph, daughter of Poseidon.

Creusa 1

Ion 1

Creusa 1 is daughter of King Erechtheus of Athens. From Ion 1 the Ionians derive their name. Ion 1 died in Attica helping the Athenians in their war against the Eleusinians.

Phthia 2

Laodocus 2

Stilbe

Lapithus 1

Urania 2

Linus 1

Urania 2 is one of the MUSES. Linus 1 (Oetolinus) won great reputation as a musician and master of eloquent speech. Some say Apollo killed him, for being his rival in singing. It is also said that Linus 1 was son of Amphimarus (son of Poseidon) & Urania 2.

Psamathe 2

Linus 3

Psamathe 2 is daughter of Crotopus, a king in Argolis. Linus 3 was exposed by his mother and destroyed by the sheep-dogs of Crotopus. Because of his death Apollo sent Poine (Vengeance) to punish the Argives.

Calliope

Linus 4

Calliope is one of the MUSES. Linus 4 taught Heracles 1 to play the lyre, but Heracles 1 killed him with a blow of the lyre.

Parthenope 2

Lycomedes 3

Parthenope 2 is a Lelegian, daughter of Ancaeus 2, son of Poseidon and King of Samos. The Lelegians lived about the river Satnioeis in Asia Minor. Otherwise they were scattered over parts of Greece and Asia Minor.

Corycia

Lycorus

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Melaneus 5

King of the Dryopians (people living between the Sperchius River and Mount Parnasus).

a) Aria b) Deione c) Acalle

Miletus

Miletus is the founder of the city of Miletus.

Manto 1

Mopsus 2

Manto 1, daughter of the seer Tiresias, is a seeress and Priestess of Apollo. Mopsus 2 was a diviner, who drove the Carians out of their country and defeated Calchas in the art of divination. He was killed in a fight with Amphilochus 2 (son of Alcmaeon 1, son of Amphiaraus, son of Oicles or Apollo). Mopsus 2 and Amphilochus 2 killed each other.

Rhetia

Nine of the CORYBANTES

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Oncius

Oncius lived in Oncium in Thelpusian territory in Arcadia.

Chrysothemis 2

Parthenos

Parthenos hurled herself down from a rock in fear of her father's severity as a swine destroyed the wine she was watching, and wine was a drink which had only recently been discovered.

Othris

Phagros

a) Chione 2 b) Leuconoe 3 c) Philonis

Philammon

Both Apollo and Hermes fell in love with Chione 2 at the same time. Hermes touched her face with his sleep-compelling wand and then made love to her at once. But Apollo waited until night had come and, assuming an old woman's form, made love to her. Artemis killed Chione 2 for having criticized the goddess' beauty.

Leuconoe 3 is daughter of Eosphorus, who is Lucifer, that is the morning and evening star (Venus).

Philonis is sister of Chione 2, daughter of Daedalion, a cruel man.

Philammon was famous for his song and zither. He was killed by an armed force of Phlegyans that marched against the sanctuary at Delphi.

Acalle

Philander

The child Philander was suckled by a goat.

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Phoebe 2

A priestess of Athena, wife of Polydeuces, one of the DIOSCURI.

Acalle

Phylacides

Phylacides was as a baby suckled by a goat.

Phthia 2

Polypoetes 2

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Pythaeus

Hecate

Scylla 1

Sinope

Syrus 1

Syrus 1 became king of the Syrians, who were named after him.

Melia

Tenerus

Melia is one of the OCEANIDS. Tenerus was given the art of divination by Apollo.

---

Tenes

King of Tenedos. He was killed by Achilles.

Hecabe 1

Troilus

Troilus, also called son of Priam 1, was killed by Achilles during the Trojan War.

---

Trophonius

Trophonius built, together with his brother, the fourth temple of Apollo at Delphi. One day the earth opened and swallowed him.

Syllis

Zeuxippus

Syllis is a Nymph. Zeuxippus became king of Sicyon when Phaestus 2 migrated to Crete.

Abolengo Album - High Resolution Genealogical Charts

Names in this chart

Amphiaraus , Amphissus, Amphithemis 1, Anius, Apis 2, Apollo, Aristaeus, Artemis, Asclepius, Centaurus, Chaeron, Chryses 4, Coeus, Coronus 2, CORYBANTES , Cronos, Cycnus 7, Delphus, Dorus 2, Eleuther 1, Epidaurus, Eriopis 3, Gaia, Hilaira, Iamus, Idmon 2, Ileus 1, Ion 1, Laodocus 2, Lapithus 1, Leto, Linus 1, Linus 3, Linus 4, Lycomedes 3, Lycorus, Melaneus 5, Miletus, Mopsus 2, Oncius, Parthenos, Phagros, Philammon, Philander, Phoebe 1, Phoebe 2, Phylacides, Polypoetes 2, Pythaeus, Rhea 1, Scylla 1, Syrus 1, Tenerus, Tenes, Troilus, Trophonius, Uranus, Zeus, Zeuxippus.

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Cronos

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:30:00 +0000

Cronos is the wily, youngest and most terrible of the children of Uranus, whom he hated. He castrated his father and became ruler of the universe, but was later overthrown by his own son Zeus.

Children of Uranus

Cronos' father Uranus (Sky) is counted as the first to have ruled the Universe. He was the son of Gaia (Earth) or, as others say, the son of Aether (the Upper Sky) and Hemera (Day). Uranus married Gaia, and had children by her among which the HECATONCHEIRES, who had hundred hands and fifty heads, and the CYCLOPES, who had only one eye in their forehead.

Uranus banishes his children

Uranus, for some reason or other, hated these children of his and hid them away in a secret place on earth, or as others say, cast them into Tartarus, which is a gloomy place in the Underworld as far distant from earth as earth is from the sky. However, Gaia, grieved at the destruction of her gifted children, and being strained and stretched with so many giant beings inside her, planned the destruction of her own husband and his rule as a way to set them and herself free.

Cronos eager to revolt

In order to overthrow him, Gaia tried to persuade the TITANS, who were also her own children by Uranus, to attack their father, but these were afraid, excepting Cronos who immediately said:

"Mother, I will undertake to do this deed, for I reverence not our father of evil name, for he first thought of doing shameful things." [Cronos to Gaia. Hesiod, Theogony 170]

Castration of Uranus

In order to accomplish the seditious purpose, Gaia gave Cronos an adamantine sickle with jagged teeth, which is said to have been made by the TELCHINES. And when Uranus by night approached Gaia longing for love, Cronos came out from his hiding place and cut off his father's genitals, throwing them into the sea behind his back at cape Drepanum in Achaea. And from the foam which gathered round the severed genitals, lovely Aphrodite was born after a long time, but from the drops of flowing blood that fell on Earth the ERINYES were created, who avenge crime and wickedness, and punish those who are guilty of bloodshed within the family.

Power changes the mind

This is how the TITANS dethroned their father and first ruler of the Universe, committing the sovereignty to Cronos, who was the youngest of them all. Having thus succeeded his father, Cronos brought up the CYCLOPES and the HECATONCHEIRES, who were prisoners in Tartarus. But Power changes the mind, whereas there is no mind able to change the nature of Power. So, when Cronos became ruler, he started seeing things in the same way as the predecessor he had dethroned had seen them; and soon he again bound and shut his brethren up in the same dark depth.

The Punishment of Neoptolemus

Cronos was affected, for having attacked his father, by what later came to be called the "Punishment of Neoptolemus", which consists in suffering oneself what one has done to another, or almost. Soon Cronos was prophetically informed by his parents that he would be dethroned by his own son.

Cronos devours his offspring

And believing that these fateful news could be averted, he started to swallow his offspring at birth. But once the procedure had been repeated several times, her wife and sister Rhea 1, feeling for her children as Gaia for her own, deceived her husband by wrapping a stone in clothes and giving it to him to swallow, as if it were the newborn child Zeus. Some say that when Rhea 1 brought the stone to Cronos, he, believing the stone to be a child, bade her offer milk to the baby. Rhea 1 then pressed her breast, and the flowing milk created the stars that are known by the name of the Milky Way.

Cronos devouring his offspring

Rhea 1 saves Zeus

Note: English translations of Hesiod 477-485 (for example Evelyn-White's or Dorothea Wender's) appear to say that Gaia, and not Rhea, gave Cronos the stone to swallow. But modern authors, dictionaries and manuals have since long ago followed exclusively the version saying that Rhea gave her husband the stone wrapped in swaddling clothes as if it were the baby Zeus. This version is originally found in the works of Apollodorus and Pausanias among other ancient sources. The name of the subject in verse 485 of the Theogony is not mentioned, but the Hesiodic context suggests, in more than one way, that Gaia and not Rhea gave the stone to Cronos.

Having thus deluded her husband, Rhea 1 went to Crete where she gave birth to Zeus in a cave in Mount Dicte. And while the child was fed by NYMPHS on the milk of Amalthea the goat, the CURETES who guarded the cave clashed their spears on their shields in order that Cronos might not hear the child's voice.

Rhea 1 gives Cronos a wrapped stone to swallow, as if it were the child Zeus

Cronos meets Philyra 1

In the meantime, Cronos, having realised that he had been deluded by means of a stone, was hunting his child Zeus throughout the earth. During his search he met the Oceanid Philyra 1 and consorted with her. By him she bore the wise Centaur Chiron, but later, when Philyra 1 saw the strange species she had given birth to, she asked Zeus to change her into another form, and he turned her into the tree called linden.

What was said in Arcadia

The Arcadians are reported to have said that when Rhea 1 gave birth to Poseidon, which she did before she gave birth to Zeus, she declared to Cronos that she had given birth to a horse. Apparently Cronos had no reason to disbelieve his wife, for gods are capable of anything, and so Rhea 1, who had laid Poseidon in a flock of lambs to live with them, gave him a foal to swallow instead of the child. This account has been considered to be both foolish and wise, for wisdom at times appears as foolishness, being sometimes difficult to tell one from the other, specially when riddles and hidden meanings are suspected. And the Arcadians also said that in a wonderful mountain near Methydrium, Rhea 1 enlisted, when she was pregnant with Zeus, the giant Hopladamus as an ally against Cronos, whom she feared might attack her, adding that it was in that place that the substitution of a stone for the child took place. The stone itself, however, was shown at Delphi, not far away from the tomb of Neoptolemus, whose 'punishment' Cronos shared. Olive oil was poured on the stone every day, and on special occasions unworked wool was placed on it.

The Divine Vomit

In any case, Cronos was later forced to disgorge the children that he had previously swallowed through a drug that the Oceanid Metis 1 gave him. So when the gods had been vomited, they aided Zeus in waging war against Cronos and the TITANS, for Zeus had promised that whosoever would fight with him against the TITANS, would keep the office he had before, adding that he who was without office or right under the rule of Cronos, should be raised and acquire them.

Zeus banishes Cronos

The TITANS, who fought from Mount Othrys in Thessaly, were defeated when the CYCLOPES and the HECATONCHEIRES sided with the gods, who fought from Mount Olympus. When Zeus had conquered the TITANS he bound them in chains and shut them up in Tartarus to live in darkness, for Night spreads about it in triple line.

Men cannot do as gods do

Some have thought that neither Cronos nor Zeus honoured their fathers, and that consequently, men could do the same or even worse against their own, but Apollo reminds that Zeus was able to undo Cronos' fetters whenever he wished, for gods have at their disposal many remedies,

"But when the dust has drawn up the blood of a man, once he is dead, there is no return to life." [Apollo to the ERINYES. Aeschylus, Eumenides 645]

The rule of Cronos

Despite all these events, which some have called barbarous, Cronos has been celebrated for having ruled the world under the period known as the Golden Age, which is the first age of man. At this time there were no punishments, no swords, no helmets and no threatening words, and even to eat the flesh of oxen was held a crime. And being so, war was unknown and life passed in gentle ease. This was the time when spring was everlasting, and streams of milk, nectar and honey flowed in abundance. And, as unbelievable as it sounds, this was the nature of the rule held by the one who castrated his father: a time and a rule without pain, during which the earth, without compulsion, brought forth great stores of all kinds of needful things, and men lived secure never cheating or destroying each other.

More about his rule

During the reign of Cronos, they say, men did not have children, for at that time, when the universe revolved backwards, all humans came out of the earth and were therefore called AUTOCHTHONOUS. And for that very reason there were no families or states and nothing of what comes with them. Instead, humans had the ability of conversing, not only among themselves, but also with all kinds of animals, and were able to learn from every creature. For all these reasons the men of the Golden Age are believed in any respect to have been happier than those of the following ages. This rule lasted until Zeus overthrew his father and banished him to Tartarus, land of darkness and death in the depth of the Underworld.

Zeus releases Cronos

Later, however, Zeus released Cronos from his bonds and let him rule the Islands of the Blest, a place where the virtuous come after death, retaining their faculties and enjoying a life free of care [see also Underworld & Afterlife].

Note about Cronos and Chronos

The name Chronos appears in several authors such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Quintus Smyrnaeus, Cicero and Nonnus. He is identified with Time, but some of them say that he is the same as Cronos (Saturn). Chronos is said to be the father of the HORAE, of Aether and Eros. In this version (Nonnus), the HORAE are regarded as Hours instead of Seasons. Chronos appears as father of Aether (the upper sky) and Eros in the Argonautica Orphica.

Family

Parentage [two versions]

Mates

Offspring

Notes

Uranus & Gaia

Oceanus & Tethys

Uranus is the first ruler of the universe.

[See also Castration of Uranus, Titanomachy, Gaia, and Table Theogony]

For Tethys see TITANS, and for this particular parentage see one of the versions at Myths of Creation.

Rhea 1

Hestia

Demeter

Hera

Hades

Poseidon

Zeus

CORYBANTES

Philyra 1

Chiron

Philyra 1 is one of the OCEANIDS.

unknown

Picus

Picus lived on the Aventine hill in Italy. He is said to have used powerful drugs and practised clever incantations. See also Circe, who loved him, and being refused, transformed him into a bird.

Picus married the gifted singer Canens, daughter Janus and Venilia, and had by her a son Faunus 1, who was king of Latium, and is sometimes identified with Pan, or with one of the SATYRS.

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Zeus

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:25:00 +0000

Zeus was allotted the dominion of the sky, having waged war against Cronos and the TITANS [see also Titanomachy]. This supreme god surpasses all others in spirit, wisdom, and justice, and prevails upon good men by persuasion, intimidating the evil by punishment. Zeus, some say, caused the Trojan War, so that the load of death might empty the world. Zeus got the thunderbolt, his ultimate weapon, from the CYCLOPES, and an eagle brings back the thunderbolts which he has flung.

Birth and clandestine infancy	Both Gaia and Uranus foretold Cronos that he would be dethroned by his own son. To avoid this sad fate, he used to swallow his children at birth. This bizarre behaviour, however, enraged his wife Rhea 1, who being pregnant with Zeus, went to Crete and gave him birth in a cave of Dicte. NYMPHS fed the child on the milk of the goat Amalthea while the CURETES in arms guarded the child in the cave, clashing their spears on their shields, in order to prevent Cronos to hear his voice. In the meantime, Rhea 1 wrapped a stone in clothes and gave it to Cronos to swallow, as if it were the newborn child. This is how Cronos, the second ruler of the universe, was deceived.
Amalthea and other nurses	Amalthea, some say, was one of ZEUS' NURSES. She was a naiad, famous in the Cretan Mount Ida, who nursed Zeus when the newborn god had to be concealed and protected from his father Cronos, who, out of fear for being dethroned by his own son (as it had been predicted), devoured his offspring. Amalthea hung Zeus in a cradle from a tree, so that he could be found neither in heaven nor on earth nor in the sea, and gathering youths, she gave them brazen shields and spears, and ask them to go around the tree making noise lest the cries of little Zeus be heard. These youths are called CURETES by some whereas others called them CORYBANTES. It has also been said that the nymph Amalthea owned a bull's horn which could supply food and drink in abundance. However, some affirm that Amalthea owned a wonderful she-goat who suckled the god, and that one day the goat broke one of her beautiful horns. The nymph Amalthea then picked it up, and wrapping it in fresh herbs, took it full of fruit to the lips of the newborn god. Because of this, on becoming ruler of heaven, Zeus transformed both his nurse and the horn of plenty into stars. Yet some assert that Zeus was given to the care of Adrastia 1 and Ide 3, daughters of King Melisseus 1 in Crete, who laid him in a cradle of gold, and since they had not milk for the child, they furnished him a goat, whose name was Amalthea. But others affirm that Amalthea was the nymph who owned the goat that nursed Zeus. The Messenians affirm that it was Neda, the eldest of the NYMPHS, who reared Zeus secretly; but many others are said to have nursed Zeus as well.
Zeus becomes ruler of Heaven	When Zeus was grown up, he asked Metis 1 to help him against his father, and she gave Cronos a drug that forced him to disgorge first the stone and then the children whom he had swallowed. And with the aid of his brothers and sisters, Zeus waged war against Cronos and the TITANS, and being victorious, Zeus became the ruler of Heaven [see also Titanomachy].
Metis 1	Metis 1 turned into many shapes to avoid Zeus' embraces, but she nevertheless became his first wife. Gaia had prophesied that after giving birth to the maiden who was in her womb, Metis 1 would bear a son who would be the lord of heaven. Fearing the prophecy, Zeus swallowed Metis 1. And when the time came for the birth to take place, Prometheus 1, or else Hephaestus smote the head of Zeus with an axe, and Athena, fully armed, leapt up from the top of his head at the river Triton.
Conflict with Prometheus 1	Prometheus 1 gave mankind fire, which, unknown to Zeus, he had hidden in a stalk of fennel. But having learned about the theft, Zeus had him nailed in Mount Caucasus, where every day an eagle swooped on him and devoured the lobes of his liver, which grew by night.
Impious Lycaon 2	It is told that Zeus, desirous of putting the impiety of King Lycaon 2 of Arcadia and his sons to the test, came to them in the likeness of a day-labourer. Having slaughtered a male child, they mixed his bowels with the sacrifices, and set them before him. Zeus in disgust killed him and his sons. Because of their impiety, it is said, there occurred The Flood in the age of Deucalion 1. Zeus transformed Lycaon 2 into a wolf, or blasted him and his sons with a thunderbolt.
The Flood of Deucalion 1	When Zeus then decided to destroy the men of the Bronze Age, he poured heavy rain and flooded the world so that all men were destroyed, except a few [see The Flood].
Amour impossible	Zeus also loved the nereid Thetis, but Themis prophesied that her son would be mightier than his father, and he withdrew. Zeus then bade his grandson Peleus to marry her, and in time Achilles was born, who was indeed mightier than his father.
Ate thrown away	Ate, who is Delusion and Ruinous Conduct, was held responsible by Zeus for the blindness with which he took a solemn oath, and in his rage he seized her by her hair, and whirling her round his head cast her down to the world, swearing that she should never set foot in Olympus again. [This oath refers to the birth of Heracles 1; see Alcmena below. For Ate see ABSTRACTIONS.]
Hephaestus expelled	Zeus cast Hephaestus out of heaven, because he came to the rescue of Hera once she had a fight with her husband. Hephaestus fell on Lemnos, and for that reason he is lamed of his legs.
Ganymedes in exchange for beautiful horses	For the sake of Ganymedes' beauty, Zeus caught him up on an eagle, and ever since he is the cupbearer of the gods in heaven. In compensation for the rape of Ganymedes, Zeus gave some fine mares to King Laomedon 1 of Troy.
Sun sets in the East by the will of Zeus	At the time when the brothers Atreus and Thyestes 1 disputed about the kingdom of Mycenae, Zeus sent Hermes to Atreus to make him stipulate with Thyestes 1 that Atreus should be king if the sun should go backwards; and when Thyestes 1, believing it impossible, agreed, the sun set in the east. Thus Atreus got the kingdom.
Another miracle performed by Zeus	Callirrhoe 2 requested of Zeus that the sons she had by Alcmaeon 1 might be full-grown in order to avenge their father's murder, and they suddenly became grown-up [see also Robe & Necklace of Harmonia 1].
Zeus takes part in the birth of Orion	Hyrieus was childless and asked the gods Zeus, Hermes, and Poseidon, who came to visit him, for children, and they urinated in the hide of the sacrificed bull, buried it in the earth and from it Orion was born.
CYPRIAN CENTAURS	Some say that this horned generation of CENTAURS came to be because Zeus chased Aphrodite but could not catch her. In the pursuit the god dropped his seed on the ground, and these CYPRIAN CENTAURS grew out of the earth. [See also the regular CENTAURS]
Immortality in exchange for maidenhood	Juturna became a goddess of lakes and rivers in return for the maidenhood Zeus ravished. But the naiad Lara, also called Tacita, who could not hold her tongue, reported to Hera that Zeus loved Juturna. For this, Zeus wrenched from her the indiscreet tongue, and told Hermes to take her to Hades as she was to become an infernal nymph.
Because of an opinion one kind of vision turns into another	Tiresias was blinded by Hera for saying that women enjoy the pleasures of love ten times more than men, but was given by Zeus the art of soothsaying which he kept even in the Underworld.
Ixion deluded	Ixion was in love with Hera and attempted to rape her, but Zeus then made the Cloud Resembling Hera (Nephele 1) to delude him [see CENTAURS]. For this attempt Ixion is punished in the Underworld [see also Immortals].
Love and sleep may distract the gods	When once Hera, for the sake of helping the Achaeans in the Trojan War, wished to keep Zeus away from the battles, she received Aphrodite's magic belt from this goddess, and with its help and her own charms she was able to distract her husband. Later on, with the help of Hypnos (Sleep), whom she bribed, Zeus was conveniently put to sleep. Hypnos dared this deed in spite of his fears. For some time ago he had performed, also at Hera's request, a similar task; and Zeus, who then woke up in anger and sought him everywhere, would have hurled him from heaven into the deep, had not her mother Nyx (Night) saved him.

Attacks against the rule of Zeus
The ALOADS	The rule of Zeus was not beyond threat: Ephialtes 2 and Otus 1, two giants called the ALOADS tried to unseat Zeus from his throne. The ALOADS grew every year a cubit in breadth and a fathom in height; and when they were nine years old, being nine cubits broad and nine fathoms high, they resolved to fight against the gods. They then set Ossa on Olympus, and having set Pelion on Ossa they threatened by means of these mountains to ascend up to heaven. They also declared that by filling up the sea with the mountains they would make it dry land, and the land they would make sea. Ephialtes 2 wooed Hera, and Otus 1 wooed Artemis; and they put Ares in bonds. But when they wished to assault Artemis and she could not resist their strength, Apollo sent a deer between them. So driven mad by anger in trying to kill it with javelins, they killed each other. But others assert that Artemis caused their death; that she changed herself into a deer and leaped between them, and in their eagerness to hit the quarry they threw their darts at each other. In the Underworld they are punished thus: they are bound by serpents to a column, back to back. Between them is a screech-owl, sitting on the column to which they are bound.
The Revolt of the GIANTS	Also the serpent-footed GIANTS, who had a thousand hands and were matchless in size and invincible in their might, tried to dethrone Zeus. This happened because Gaia was vexed after the OLYMPIANS had defeated the TITANS. She then gave birth to GIANTS so that they would attack heaven. As an oracle had said that none of the GIANTS could perish at the hands of the gods, but that with the help of a mortal they could be killed, the gods summoned Heracles 1 to their aid, and the GIANTS were destroyed [see also Gigantomachy].
Typhon	But then winged Typhon attacked heaven spouting fire from his mouth. This hybrid monster, whose eyes flashed with fire, had human shape but from the thighs downward he had huge coils of vipers, which when drawn out, reached to his very head and emitted a loud hissing. This came to be because when the OLYMPIANS had overcome the GIANTS, Gaia, still more enraged, had intercourse with Tartarus and gave birth to Typhon, who surpassed all her offspring in both size and strength. Typhon's size was such that he out-topped all the mountains and brushed the stars with his head, his hands reaching out, one to the west and the other to the east, and from them projected a hundred dragons' heads. Typhon, hurling kindled rocks, attacked heaven with hissings and shouts, spouting a great jet of fire from his mouth. So when the gods saw him rushing at heaven, they made for Egypt in flight. Being pursued they changed their forms into those of animals. However, Zeus pelted Typhon at a distance with thunderbolts, and at close quarters struck him down with an adamantine sickle, and as he fled pursued him closely as far as Mount Casius, which overhangs Syria. But Typhon wrested the sickle from him, severed the sinews of his hands and feet, and lifting him on his shoulders carried him through the sea to Cilicia, and deposited him on arrival in the Corycian cave. Likewise, he put away the sinews there also, hidden in a bearskin, and he set to guard them the she-dragon Delphyne, who was a half-bestial maiden. It was then that Hermes and Aegipan 1 stole the sinews and fitted them unobserved to Zeus. Having recovered his strength, Zeus pelted Typhon with thunderbolts and pursued him to the mountain called Nysa, where the MOERAE beguiled the fugitive. They made him taste of the ephemeral fruits in the persuasion that he would be strengthened thereby. So being again pursued when he started to flee through the Sicilian sea, Zeus cast Mount Etna in Sicily upon him. That is a huge mountain, from which down to this day they say that blasts of fire issue from the thunderbolts that were thrown.
Conspiracy in Olympus	A minor conspiracy once took place in Olympus when Hera, Poseidon, and Athena plotted against Zeus and planned to throw him into chains. It was the nereid Thetis, Achilles' mother, who then saved Zeus by calling to Olympus the Hecatoncheire Briareus, who squatted by Zeus and displaying his force frightened the other gods away.

Family

Parentage

Cronos & Rhea 1

Mates

Offspring

Notes

[Sources refer mainly to children. Abbreviations]

Aegina

Aeacus

["a)", "b)", etc. = different versions]

Aegina, daughter of the river god Asopus, was carried off by Zeus, who had taken the shape of an eagle, to the island then named Oenone but now called Aegina after her. Asopus came to Corinth looking for his daughter and learned from Sisyphus that the ravisher was Zeus. Asopus pursued him, but Zeus, by hurling thunderbolts, sent him away to his own streams. And Sisyphus is ever since being punished in the Underworld for having disclosed Zeus' secret concerning the abduction of Aegina.

Aegina gave birth to Aeacus, who became king of the island of Aegina. But as there were no men, Zeus transformed ANTS into men to populate the island. Aeacus joined Dionysus 2 in his war against India, and as the pious man he was, he delivered Hellas from the dearth through prayers [see also: Psamathe 1 at NEREIDS]. Aeacus keeps, since his death, the keys of Underworld.

Boetis

Aegipan 2

Boetis was a she-goat.

Hyg.Fab.155.

a) Protogenia 1

Aethlius

Protogenia 1 is a daughter of Deucalion 1.

Aethlius became the first ruler of Elis.

Apd.1.7.2, 1.7.5; Hes.CWE.8; Hyg.Fab.155; Pau.5.1.3, 5.8.2.

b) Calyce 1

Calyce 1 is a daughter of Aeolus 1.

Protogenia 1

Aetolus 4

Hyg.Fab.155.

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Agdistis

Agdistis was a demon with two sexual organs, male and female. The gods cut off the male organ and an almond tree grew up from it, the fruit of which was taken by Sangarius' Daughter who became pregnant. Agdistis is born from Zeus' Seed.

Pau.7.17.10.

Antiope 3

Amphion 1

Antiope 1 was loved by Zeus and gave birth to twins: Amphion 1 and Zethus, who became rulers in Thebes. Zeus took the shape of a Satyr to approach her.

Apd.1.9.10, 3.5.5-6; Eur.Her.29; Hes.CWE.96; Hom.Il.24.602.ff.; Hom.Od.11.283; Hyg.Fab.11; Ov.Met.6.271; Pau.2.21.9, 9.5.8, 9.36.10; Stat.Theb.1.10, 2.455; Strab.8.4.4.

Zethus

Apd.3.5.5-6; Eur.Her.29; Hom.Od.19.518ff.; Pau.9.5.9.

Dione 1

Aphrodite

Leto

Apollo

Because Zeus made love to Leto, she was hunted over the whole earth by Hera, until she came to Delos where she gave birth to Apollo and Artemis.

Artemis

Callisto

Arcas 1

Zeus seduced Callisto taking the shape of Artemis. Zeus, who did not wished to be detected by Hera transformed her into a bear, but Hera told Artemis to shoot the wild beast. However some say that Artemis shot the bear because Callisto had not kept her promise concerning her maidenhood, and that it was Hera who turned her into a bear. When Callisto died Zeus took the baby Arcas 1 and gave him to Maia for upbringing. Callisto he transformed into the constellation of the Great Bear [Ursa Major]. The district of Arcadia was named after Arcas 1.

Apd.3.8.2, 3.9.1; Hyg.Ast.2.4; Hyg.Fab.224; Nonn.13.296; Pau.5.1.4, 8.4.1-2, 8.9.9, 8.24.1, 10.9.5.

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Arcisius

Arcisius is Odysseus' grandfather.

Apd.1.9.16; Hom.Od.16.118; Hyg.Fab.189; Ov.Met.13.143.

Hera

Ares

Hebe

Ilithyia

For Ilithyia see Other Deities and main text above.

Niobe 1

Argus 5

Niobe 1 was the first mortal woman with whom Zeus consorted. She is a daughter of Phoroneus, who is said to be the first man. Argus 5 became king and called the Peloponnesus after himself Argos.

Apd.2.1.1-3; Pau.2.16.1, 2.26.2, 2.25.8.

Pelasgus 1

The inhabitants of the Peloponnesus were called Pelasgians after Pelasgus 1. Otherwise he is remembered as the king of Argos to whom the DANAIDS came.

Aes.Supp.250 and passim; Apd.2.1.1, 3.8.1; DH.1.11.2; Pau.8.22.1.

Eurynome 3

Asopus

Eurynome 3, counted among the OCEANIDS, is said to have ruled Olympus together with Ophion 1 until Cronos and Rhea 1 replaced them. Asopus is one of the RIVER GODS.

CHARITES

Themis

Astraea

For Astraea see ABSTRACTIONS.

HORAE

MOERAE

---

Ate

For Ate see ABSTRACTIONS.

---

Athena

Cassiopea 1

Atymnius 1

Atymnius 1 is known because the children of Europa fell in love with him.

Apd.3.1.2.

Carme

Britomartis

Britomartis (Aphaea, Dictynna, Laphria), fled from King Minos 2 of Crete, leapt into the sea from the top of a cliff and fell into the nets of fishermen, which saved her. She was made a goddess by Artemis.

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Caerus 2

"Opportunity", called "the youngest child of Zeus".

Pau.5.14.9; Call.6.

Ceroessa

Nonn.32.70.

Epaphus 1

Zeus seduced Io while she held the priesthood of Hera, but being detected by Hera he turned Io into a white cow by a touch and swore that he had not known her (consequently it has been remarked that a lover's oaths do not draw down the anger of the gods).

Epaphus 1 was King of Egypt and founder of the city of Memphis. From him sprang the Libyans and the Ethiopians.

Aes.Supp.48; Apd.2.1.3-4, 2.5.11; Eur.Phoe.676, Hes.CW.40a; Hyg.Fab.149; Nonn.3.284, Strab.10.1.3.

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Clarus

Clarus was a companion of Aeneas in Italy.

Vir.Aen.10.125.

Hora 2

Colaxes

Hora 2's body was half-human and half-snake. Colaxes was a chieftain in the army of Perses 3 during the civil war in Colchis between Perses 3 and Aeetes. He was killed by Jason, Captain of the ARGONAUTS.

Val.6.48ff., 6.651ff.

---

Corinthus

Corinthus was King of Corinth. After him the Corinthian land is named. As he died childless the Corinthians sent for Medea.

Apd.3.16.2; Pau.2.1.1, 2.3.10.

Calliope

CORYBANTES

Calliope is the eldest of the MUSES.

---

Crinacus

Crinacus is father of Macar 1, King of Lesbos.

Dio.5.81.4.

Himalia

Cronius 2

Dio.5.55.6.

Cytus

Spartaeus

Dio.5.55.6.

Electra 3

Dardanus 1

Electra 3 is the one of the PLEIADES who does not appear because of the death of Dardanus 1 and the loss of Troy. Dardanus 1 grieved at his brother Iasion's death, left Samothrace and came to the country where the Teucrians dwelt, and called it Dardania.

Apd.3.12.1-2; Col.286; DH.1.50.3, 1.61.2; Dio.4.75.1, 5.48.2; Hyg.Fab.155; Hyg.Ast.2.21; Nonn.3.195; Ov.Fast.4.31, 4.33; QS.2.141, 13.558; Vir.Aen.8.134.

Emathion 4

Emathion 4 became King of Samothrace after his brother Dardanus 1.

Nonn.3.186, 13.395.

Harmonia 1

See Robe & Necklace of Harmonia 1.

Apd.3.4.2, 3.5.4; Dio.5.48.2; Eur.Bacc.1357; Hes.The.975; Nonn.3.375ff., 4.61, 5.101.

Iasion

For Iasion see Demeter.

Apd.3.12.1; DH.1.61.2-4; Dio.5.48.2; Hes.The.970; Hom.Od.5.125; Hyg.Ast.2.4, 2.22; Hyg.Fab.250, 270; Nonn.48.678; Strab.Fra.7.49.

Semele

Dionysus 2

Zeus fell in love with Semele and consorted with her, but Semele died, some say, because of the jealousy of Hera. However, after Semele's death Zeus carried the unborn child, Dionysus 2, in his thigh.

Leda

DIOSCURI

Polydeuces and Castor 1 are the DIOSCURI. Zeus in the form of a swan consorted with Leda, and on the same night Tyndareus lay with her. Polydeuces and Helen, children of Zeus, were born from an egg laid by Leda and Castor 1 and Clytaemnestra were children of Tyndareus. But some say that Helen was a daughter of Nemesis and Zeus and that a shepherd found the egg and brought it to Leda and when Helen was hatched in due time, Leda suckled and nursed her and brought her up.

Calyce 1

Endymion

See also Olympia, Elis, Aeolus 1, and Selene.

Apd.1.7.5-7; Hes.GE.11; Nonn.7.239, 48.581; Pau.5.1.4.

Pandora 2

Graecus

Pandora 2 is daughter of Deucalion 1 & Pyrrha 1. After Graecus were called Greeks those who followed Hellenic customs.

Hes.CWE.2.

Latinus 3

After Latinus 3 the Latins were called.

Hes.CWE.2.

a) Leda

Helen

See Leda above in this list.

b) Nemesis

c) Oceanid

Pyrrha 1

Hellen 1

Hellen 1 named Hellenes those who were called Greeks. He is father of Aeolus 1, Dorus 1 and Xuthus 1.

Apd.1.7.2-3; Dio.4.60.2; Hes.CWE.4; Hyg.Fab.155; Strab.8.7.1, 9.5.6.

Alcmena

Heracles 1

Alcmena was the last mortal woman with whom Zeus lay. Zeus took the form of Amphitryon (her husband) to deceive her. When Heracles 1, Zeus' child by her, was about to be born, Zeus declared among the gods that the descendant of Perseus 1 then about to be born would reign over Mycenae, and Hera, out of jealousy, persuaded Ilithyia to retard Alcmena's delivery, and contrived that Eurystheus should be born a seven-month child, and thus he became king of Mycenae.

Lysithoe

Heracles 4

Heracles 4 was born very much earlier than Heracles 1. Because both bore the same name the deeds of Heracles 4 were transferred to Heracles 1.

Cic.ND.3.42; Dio.5.76.2.

Asteria 1

Heracles 6

Asteria 1 tried in vain to escape the amorous advances of Zeus and was turned into a quail by him. Heracles 6, chiefly worshipped at Tyre, is father of the Tyrian Nymph Carthago.

Cic.ND.3.42.

Maia

Hermes

Maia is one of the PLEIADES.

Nymph 13 African

Iarbas

For Iarbas see Aeneas and NYMPHS.

Ov.Fast.3.552; Vir.Aen.4.36, 4.198.

Taygete

Lacedaemon

Taygete is one of the PLEIADES. She is known for having consecrated to Artemis the Cerynitian Hind with the golden horns that Heracles 1 had to fetch. The country Lacedaemon is called after Lacedaemon. He succeeded Eurotas in the throne of Laconia and Sparta.

Apd.3.10.3; Hyg.Ast.2.21; Pau.3.1.1.

---

Lamus 3

Father of the NYMPHS LAMUSIDES who were to take care of the child Dionysus 2, but were maddened by Hera.

Nonn.9.28ff.

---

LITAE

See ABSTRACTIONS.

Thyia 2

Macedon

Thyia 2 is a daughter of Deucalion 1 & Pyrrha 1. The district of Macedonia takes its name from Macedon.

Hes.CWE.3.

Magnes 1

Magnes 1 was father, among other children, of Polydectes 1, who colonized Seriphus and there became King, fell in love with Danae and sent Perseus 1 to bring the head of Medusa 1.

Apd.1.3.3, 1.7.3, 1.9.6; Hes.CWE.3; Pau.6.21.11.

Gaia

Manes

Manes was the first king of Lydia.

DH.1.27.1-2; Hdt.1.94, 4.45.

Nymph 8 Sithnid

Megarus

Megarus is known for having escaped the Flood in the age of Deucalion 1.

Pau.1.40.1.

Othris

Meliteus

For Othris and Meliteus see NYMPHS.

Lib.Met.13.

Europa

Minos 2

Zeus fell in love with a Phoenician princess called Europa and having taken the form of a bull, Zeus carried her off and took her across the sea to the island of Crete. She bore sons who became famous both in this world and in the next, for Minos 2 became king of Crete and, since his death, delivers judgement to the dead in Hades, while Rhadamanthys acts as a judge in Hades, along with his brother and Aeacus [see also Crete, Minotaur and Robe & Necklace of Harmonia 1].

Rhadamanthys

Zakynthos zante

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:24:00 +0000

Zakynthos (Greek: Ζάκυνθος - Zákynthos, also named in Italian language Zante or Zacinto) is a city in western Greece. It is the capital and main town of the island and prefecture of Zakynthos.

The capital, which has the same name as the prefecture, is the town of Zakynthos; apart from the official name, it is also called Chora (i.e. the Town, a common denomination in Greece when the name of the island itself is the same as the name of the principal town).

The Municipality of Zákynthos is the administrative entity which surrounds the town. It lies in the easternmost part of the island and has a land area of 45.788 km² and a population of 39,015 at the 2001 census. Its municipal seat is the town of Zákynthos (pop. 11,196). Other large towns within the municipality are Ampelókipoi (pop. 1,177), Bocháli (730), and Argási (569). The municipality also includes the Strofades islands, which lies about 50 km south of Zákynthos Island.

Geography

Zakynthos has a varied terrain, with fertile plains in the southeastern part and mountainous terrain with steep cliffs along the coasts on the west. The mild, Mediterranean climate and the plentiful winter rainfall endow the island with dense vegetation. The principal products are olive oil, currants, grapes and citrus fruit.

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Corfu

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:23:00 +0000

Corfu (Greek: Κέρκυρα - Kérkyra) is a city in north-western Greece. It is the capital and main town of the island and prefecture of Corfu. The city (pop. 28,185 in 2001) is a major tourist attraction, and has played an important role since the 8th century. The city has become known as a Kastropolis (Castle City) because of its three castles.^[1] In 2007, the old town of the city was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.^[2]^[3]^[4] The Municipality of Corfu (Kérkyra) generally stretches in a northwesterly direction from the city on the central east coast of the island, and has a land area of 41.905 km² and a total population of 39,487 inhabitants. Besides the city of Corfu/Kérkyra, its largest other towns are Kanáli (pop. 3,556), Potamós (2,365), Kontokáli (1,616), Alepoú (1,606), and Gouviá (952).

[hide]

1 Climate
2 Layout
3 Architecture
4 Government
- 4.1 Mayors
- 4.2 Consulates
5 Twin Cities
6 References
7 External links

Climate

Corfu city's climate is Mediterranean. The summers are warm with moderate humidity, and temperatures reaching 33 Celsius. The winters are mild and temperatures around on or above 10 Celsius.

Layout

The town of Corfu stands on the broad part of a peninsula, whose termination in the Venetian citadel (Παλαιό Φρούριο in Greek) is cut off from it by an artificial fosse formed in a natural gully, with a salt-water ditch at the bottom, that serves also as a kind of marina. The old city having grown up within fortifications, where every metre of ground was precious, is a labyrinth of narrow streets paved with cobblestones, sometimes tortuous but mostly pleasant, colourful and sparkling clean. These streets are called "kantounia" (Greek: καντούνια) and the older ones sometimes follow the gentle irregularities of the ground while many of them are too narrow for vehicular traffic. There is promenade by the seashore towards the bay of Garitsa (Γαρίτσα), and also a handsome esplanade between the town and the citadel called "Liston" (Greek: Λιστόν) where upscale restaurants and European style bistros abound. The name Liston came from the English "List on" meaning the list of the vendors' fare, in other words the menu.

Architecture

The old fortifications of the town, formerly so extensive as to require a force of from 10,000 to 20,000 troops to man them, were in great part thrown down by the English in the 19th century. In several parts of the town may be found houses of the Venetian time, with some traces of past splendour, but they are few compared to the British Neoclassical housing of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The palace, built in 1815 by Sir Thomas Maitland (1759-1824; lord high commissioner of the Ionian Islands) is a large structure of white Maltese stone. Near Gasturi stands the Pompeian style Achilleion, the palace built for the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, and purchased in 1907 by the German emperor, William II.

Of the thirty-seven Greek churches the most important are the cathedral, dedicated to Our Lady of the Cave; St. Spiridon's, with the tomb of the patron saint of the island; and the suburban church of St Jason and St Sosipater, reputedly the oldest in the island. The city is the seat of a Greek and a Roman Catholic archbishop; and it possesses a gymnasium, a theatre, an agricultural and industrial society, and a library and museum preserved in the buildings formerly devoted to the university, which was founded by Frederick North, 5th Earl of Guilford (1766-1827, himself the first chancellor in 1824) in 1823, but disestablished on the cessation of the English protectorate.

Based on the ICOMOS evaluation of the old town of Corfu,^[3] it was inscribed on the World Heritage List. The ICOMOS experts have noted that "about 70% of the pre-20th century buildings date from the British period" and that "whole blocks were destroyed" in the Old Town by the World War II blitzes; these were "replaced by new constructions in the 1960s and 1970s". The urban fabric was classified as being predominantly of the Neoclassical period "without special architectural features for which it could be distinguished".^[3]

Government

Mayors

Up until 1866, Corfu had no mayors. This list starts from 1866 and on.^[5]

Nikolaos V. Manesis (1866 - 1870)
Christodoulos M. Kiriakis (1870 - 1879)
Georgios Theotokis (1879 - 1887)
Michael Theotokis (1887 - 1895)
Aggellos Psoroulas (1895 - 1899)
Dimitrios Kollas (1899 - 1911)
Ioannis Mavrogian (1914 - 1925)
Spiridon Kollas (1925 - 1951)
Stamatios Dessilas (1951 - 1959)
Panagiotis Zafiropoulos (1959 - 1964)
Spiridon Rath (1964 - 1967)
Konstantinos Alexopoulos (1974 - 1975)
Spiridon Rath (1975 - 1978)
Ioannis Kourkoulos (1979 - 1990)
Chrisanthos Sarlis (1991 - 2002)
Alexandros Mastoras (2003 - 2006)
Sotirios Micallef (2007 - present)

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some words about ionian islands

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:21:00 +0000

History

The Ionian Islands

The islands were settled by Greeks at an early date, possibly as early as 1000 BC, and certainly by the 9th century BC. The early Eretrian settlement at Kerkyra was displaced by colonists from Corinth in 734 BC. The islands were mostly a backwater during Ancient Greek times and played little part in Greek politics. The one exception was the conflict between Kerkyra and its mother-City Corinth in 434 BC, which brought intervention from Athens and triggered the Peloponnesian War.

Ithaca was the name of the island home of Odysseus in the epic Ancient Greek poem The Odyssey by Homer. Attempts have been made to identify Ithaki with ancient Ithaca, but the geography of the real island cannot be made to fit Homer's description

Macedonian, Roman and Byzantine rule

In the 4th century BC, the islands, like most of Greece, was absorbed into the empire of Macedon. They remained under the control of Macedon and its successor kingdoms until 146 BC, when the Greek peninsula was annexed by Rome. After 400 years of peaceful Roman rule the islands passed to the Eastern Roman Empire, and remained part of the Byzantine Empire for another 900 years, until the destruction of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade by marauding Western Europeans and Venetians in 1204.

When the allies of the Fourth Crusade - the French rulers of the Latin Empire based in Constantinople and the Venetians, who competed with the Byzantines for control of Mediterranean trade - split up the spoils of the Byzantine territories between themselves, the Venetians acquired Kerkyra and Paxi, and also Kythera, which they used as way-stations for their maritime trade with the Levant. Kefallonia and Zakynthos became the County palatine of Cephalonia and Zakynthos until 1357, when this entity was merged with Lefkada and Ithaki to become the Duchy of Leucadia under French and Italian dukes. When Greeks retook Constantinople in 1261, they briefly liberated some of the islands, but the Venetians gradually increased their grip.

Venetian rule

From 1204 the Republic of Venice controlled Corfu and slowly all the Ionian islands fell under venetian rule. In the 15th century the Ottomans occupied most of Greece, but the islands remained Christian thanks to the Venetians. Zakynthos passed permanently to Venice in 1482, Kefallonia and Ithaki in 1483, Lefkada in 1502. Kythera had been Venetian since 1393.

The islands thus became the only part of the Greek-speaking world to escape Ottoman rule, which gave them both a unity and an importance in Greek history they would otherwise not have had. Corfu was the only greek island never conquered by the Turks.

Under Venetian rule, many of the upper classes spoke Italian (or Venetian in some cases) and converted to Roman Catholicism, but the mass of people remained Greek in language and religion.

In the 18th century a Greek national independence movement began to emerge, and the free status of the Ionian islands made them the natural base for exiled Greek intellectuals, freedom fighters and foreign sympathisers. The islands became more self-consciously Greek as the 19th century, the century of romantic nationalism, neared.

Napoleonic era

In 1797, however, Napoléon Bonaparte conquered Venice, and by the Treaty of Campo Formio the islanders found themselves under French rule, the islands being organised as the départments Mer-Égée, Ithaque and Corcyre. In 1798 the Russian Admiral Ushakov evicted the French, and established the Septinsular Republic under joint Russo-Ottoman protection—the first time Greeks had had even limited self‐government since the fall of Constantinople in 1453. But in 1807 they were ceded again to the French and directly annexed to the French Empire.

British rule

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In 1809 the British defeated the French fleet in Zakynthos (October 2, 1809) captured Kefallonia, Kythera and Zakynthos, and took Lefkada in 1810. The French held out in Kerkyra until 1814. The Treaty of Paris in 1815 turned the islands into the "United States of the Ionian Islands" under British protection (November 5, 1815). In January 1817 the British granted the islands a new constitution. The islanders elected an Assembly of 40 members, who advised the British High Commissioner. The British greatly improved the islands' communications, and introduced modern education and justice systems. The islanders welcomed most of these reforms, and took up afternoon tea, cricket and other English pastimes.

Once Greek independence was established after 1830, however, the islanders began to resent foreign rule and to press for enosis - union with Greece. The British statesman William Gladstone toured the islands and recommended that they be given to Greece. The British government resisted, since like the Venetians they found the islands made useful naval bases. They also regarded the German-born king of Greece, King Otto, as unfriendly to Britain. But in 1862 Otto was deposed and a pro-British king, George I, was installed.

Greek rule

In 1862 Britain decided to transfer the islands to Greece. On May 2, 1864 the British departed and the islands became three provinces of the Kingdom of Greece though Britain retained the use of the port of Corfu.

World War II

Further information: Axis Occupation of Greece

In 1941 when Axis forces occupied Greece, the Ionian Islands (except Kythera) were handed over to the Italians, who in their three years of rule attempted to Italianize the population of Corfu (as has happened with the Corfiot Italians). In 1943 the Germans replaced the Italians, and deported the centuries-old Jewish community of Corfu to their deaths. By 1944 most of the islands were under the control of the EAM/ELAS resistance movement, and they have remained a stronghold of left-wing sentiment ever since.

Today

Today all the islands are part of the Greek periphery of Ionian Islands (Ionioi Nisoi), except Kythera, which is part of the periphery of Attiki. Kerkyra has a population of 113,479 (including Paxoi), Zakynthos 38,680, Kefallonia 39,579 (including Ithaca), Lefkada 22,536, Ithaki 3,052, Kythera 3,000 and Paxi 2,438.

In recent decades the islands have lost much of their population through emigration and the decline of their traditional industries, fishing and marginal agriculture. Today their major industry is tourism. Specifically Kerkyra, with its magnificent harbour, splendid scenery and wealth of picturesque ruins and castles, is a favourite stopping place for cruise liners. British tourists in particular are attracted through having read Gerald Durrell's evocative book My Family and Other Animals (1956), which describes his childhood on Kerkyra in the 1930s. Also, the novel and movie Captain Corelli's Mandolin is located in Kefallonia.

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Ionian Islands some words

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:19:00 +0000

The Ionian Islands (Modern Greek: Ιόνια νησιά, Ionia nisia; Ancient Greek: Ἰόνιοι Νῆσοι, Ionioi Nēsoi) are a group of islands in Greece. They are traditionally called the Seven Islands (in Modern Greek Eptanisa, Επτάνησα), but the group includes many smaller islands as well as the seven principal ones. The seven are, from north to south:

Kerkyra (Κέρκυρα) usually known as Corfu in English
Paxi (Παξοί) also known as Paxos in English
Lefkada (Λευκάδα) also known as Lefkas in English
Ithaki (Ιθάκη) usually known as Ithaca in English
Kefallonia (Κεφαλλονιά) often known as Kefalonia/Cephalonia/Kefallinia in English
Zakynthos (Ζάκυνθος) sometimes known as Zante in English
Kythira (Κύθηρα) sometimes known as Cerigo in English

The six northern islands are off the west coast of Greece, in the Ionian Sea. The seventh island, Kythira, is off the southern tip of the Peloponnesus, the southern part of the Greek mainland. It should be noted that Kythira is not part of the periphery of Ionian Islands (Ionioi Nisoi), as it is included in the periphery of Attiki.

Latin transliteration, as well as Modern Greek pronunciation, may suggest that the Ionian Sea and Islands are somehow related to Ionia, an Anatolian region; in fact the Ionian Sea and Ionian Islands are spelt in Greek with an omicron (Ιόνια), whereas Ionia has an omega (Ιωνία). In Modern Greek this is purely a spelling distinction, but the different pronunciations in Ancient Greek would have eliminated the risk of confusion between the two areas. Furthermore in both Ancient Greek and Modern Greek, the Ionian is accented in the antepenult (i-O-nia) whereas Ionia in the penult (ion-I-a); also the proper adjective for Ionia is Ionic, not Ionian.

The islands themselves are known by a rather confusing variety of names. During the centuries of rule by Venice, they acquired Italian names, by which some of them are still known in English. Kerkyra was known as Corfu, Ithaki as Val di Compare, Kythera as Cerigo, Lefkada as Santa Maura and Zakynthos as Zante.

A variety of spellings is used for the Greek names of the islands, particularly in historical writing. Kefallonia is often spelled as Cephalonia, Ithaki as Ithaca, Kerkyra as Corcyra, Kythera as Cythera, Lefkada as Leucada or Leucas and Zakynthos as Zacinthus or Zacynthus. Older or variant Greek forms are sometimes also used: Kefallinia for Kefallonia and Paxos or Paxoi for Paxi.

Throughout this article the islands will be called by their Modern Greek names.

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the greek words

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:06:00 +0000

the most greek words are

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Aphrodite

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:36:00 +0000

Roman name Venus. See The Olympians for more information and another picture; also this picture.

Aphrodite was the goddess of love. The Romans called her Venus (hence the famous armless statue known as the Venus de Milo). Aphrodite lived on Mount Olympus with the other supreme deities and was married to the homely craftsman-god, Hephaestus. She was said to have been born from the foam of the sea (hence Botticelli's much-reproduced painting of the goddess floating on a seashell).

Aphrodite involved herself on several noteworthy occasions with the affairs of mortal heroes. When Jason asked permission of the king of Colchis to remove the Golden Fleece from the grove in which it hung, the king was clearly unwilling. So the goddess Hera, who sponsored Jason's quest, asked Aphrodite to intervene. The love goddess made the king's daughter Medea fall in love with Jason, and Medea proved instrumental in Jason's success.

Aphrodite can also be said to have caused the Trojan War. This came about in the following fashion. When the hero Peleus was married to the sea-nymph Thetis, all the gods were invited to the ceremony -- all but one that is. The slighted goddess happened to a specialist in sowing discord, so she maliciously deposited a golden apple on the banquet table. The fruit was inscribed with the legend, "For the fairest". Immediately all the goddesses began to argue about whose beauty entitled her to be the rightful possesor of this prize.

Finally it was decided to put the dispute to arbitration. Reasonably enough, the designated judge was to be the most handsome mortal in the world. This turned out to be a noble Trojan youth named Paris, who was serving as a shepherd at the time. So the three finalists -- Aphrodite, Hera and Athena -- sought him out in the meadow where he was tending his flocks.

Not content to leave the outcome to the judge's discernment, the three goddesses proceeded to offer bribes. Hera, Queen of Olympus, took Paris aside and told him she would help him rule the world. Athena, goddess of war, said she would make him victorious in battle. Aphrodite sized Paris up and decided he would be more impressed with the guaranteed love of the most beautiful woman in the world. This was Helen, who happened to be married to the king of Sparta.

Paris promptly awarded the golden apple to Aphrodite, who in turn enabled him to elope with Helen, who thenceforth became notorious as Helen of Troy. Helen's husband and his brother raised a Greek army to retrieve his wife, and this was the inception of the Trojan War.

Another occasion in which the goddess of love came to the aid of a mortal hero also happened to involve golden apples. When the mighty heroine Atalanta agreed to wed whatever suitor managed to best her in a foot race, Aphrodite favored one of the contestants with a peck of golden fruit. By strewing these enchanted apples on the race course, the young lad caused Atalanta to become distracted and she lost the race.

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Achilles

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:34:00 +0000

Achilles was the best fighter of the Greeks besieging Troy in the Trojan War. When the hero Odysseus journeyed to the Underworld to seek the advice of the dead prophet Teiresias, he encountered the shade of Achilles. This hero had slain the Trojan hero Hector in single combat and had himself been brought down only by the connivance of Apollo. The god guided the arrow of Hector's brother Paris to the only vulnerable spot on Achilles' body - his heel.

Achilles would not have been vulnerable even in this part of his body had his mother, the sea-goddess Thetis, been allowed to protect him as she intended. When he was an infant, she rubbed him each day with godly ambrosia, and each night she laid him upon the hearth fire. Unfortunately, Achilles' father was unaware that this procedure would make his son immortal. And when he unexpectedly came Home one night to find his wife holding their baby in the flames, he cried out in alarm. Thetis was offended and went home to her father, the Old Man of the Sea, leaving Achilles to his mortal fate.

Another version of the myth has Thetis attempting to protect her infant by dipping him in the river Styx. The infernal waters indeed rendered Achilles' skin impervious to the likes of any mere Trojan arrow. But Thetis forgot that she was holding him by the heel during the dipping process, so that part was unprotected.

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Acheron

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:33:00 +0000

The Acheron was one of the rivers of the Underworld. It was at the confluence of the Acheron and the river Styx that the hero Odysseus dug a pit and poured sacrificial blood into it to summon the ghosts of the dead. Odysseus needed to question the shade of the blind prophet Teiresias in order to find his way Home again after the Trojan War. Acheron is also the name of a river in modern Greece, still reputed to give access to Hades.

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Dining in Ancient Greece - Nutritional habits

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:32:00 +0000

Such was the importance of sailing and fishing that fish was a major part of the local diet. Fish, shellfish, squid and eels were consumed in near any manner possible. The richer families may extend their diet to caviar, oysters and turtles. Smoked fish was even imported from as far a field as the Black Sea and Spain.

Meat was a far less common dish. At home one would be more than happy to have sausages or hare. Any animal capable of producing food was valuable alive. Goats cheese, for example could be happily produced in great volume. Any kind of poultry, however, would not be out of place on a table. Pheasants, chickens, all were available.

During the summer fruits and vegetables were readily available fresh. Fruits were eaten in all possible manners, while vegetables were preferable well dressed. However, for over the winter one was advised to dry out and preserve them. Apparently one manner of preserving a whole variety of fruits is to put them in honey, carefully ensuring that no one fruit touches another. To preserve green vegetables one need only put them in a receptacle treated with pitch.

Seasonings of all sorts were imported. Garlic, onions and mustard were highly popular. And, as with today, olive groves grew in abundance. They were quite capable of supplying far beyond the reaches of Greece itself even then. Wine, too, was readily available and cheap. Each area, as today, produced its own distinct flavour. The Aegean islands, especially Lesbos and Chios, were said to be the best. The wine was transported in amphorae and was then strained through fine cloth prior to use, relieving it of the bitty sediments left in during production

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greek food in athens ancient

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:32:00 +0000

Some unusual ingredients that were commonly used in ancient cooking are also referred in the recipes that are given in this web page .Therefore it is essential that we describe them in order to understand the ways that can be produced, searched for or even replaced with others that resemble them, in order to be able to maintain the original taste of the recipes.

The following information can be found, together with many recipes, in an excellent book by Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger. The translated into Greek version of the book has the title "Μαγειρική της Αρχαιότητας" (The Classical Cookbook).

Garos (Γάρος - liquamen): Liquid that is produced when straining fish that has been kept in salt for 3 months. The fish was put in salt without been cleaned. The smell of the fish that was mixed with salt was often very bad. This is the main reason why the production of Garos in big cities was often forbidden. Garos was used in large quantities in Greek and Roman dishes.

The modern Tai sauce Nam Pla and Vietnamese sauce Nwok Mam are the sauces that best resemble the taste of garos. The Nwok Mam sauce can be easily found in any chinese supermarket.

Ligystiko(Λυγιστικό - Levisticum officinale): Commonly used in recipes described in the Roman book "Apicius: the Roman cookery book". Has a bitter and strong taste and is suitable for cooking fish. Its taste characterizes the authentic Roman cuisine. It should be used fresh. It can be cultivated and can reach 3 meters high. It resembles the taste of the green leaves of celery. It is easily preserved chopped in olive oil.

Apiganos (Απήγανος - Ruta graveolens): Rarely used these days. It has an unusual bitter taste and is also known as a pharmaceutical herb. It can be also used in dried form.

Skordolasaro (Σκορδολάζαρο - Ferula asafoetida): Used today in Indian cuisine for example for the production of the fried breads "Popadom". It resembles the taste of garlic and leek.

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Ancient Greek Recipes food in greece

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:31:00 +0000

Today, it is very difficult to prepare a dish exactly as it was prepared in ancient times. We do not have the right utensils or the many different spices that were used by the ancient chefs to bind together the sweet, bitter and sour tastes. There is also the problem of not having the exact instructions to fix the recipes. Most of the cooking guides from ancient times have been lost but we do know that they did not give exact details. They were mostly guides that gave lists of types of ingredients and spices to use to spark the imagination of the trained chef, who, of course, added his own personal touch to each meal depending on the occasion. In the last few centuries many people, including chefs, philologists, archeologists, botanists, have become interested in the art of ancient Greek cooking, starting from pre-historic times and the Greek years. By continually testing, modifying and improving, they have managed to give us some recipes that have turned the tide back toward the first flavors used. They are good recipes that are tasty and enjoyable. For us Greeks, as we will see further down, the continuing thread of flavors doesn't seem to have been cut. In forgotten corners of our country one is pleasantly surprised by food that is clearly prepared as it was in centuries past.

Try the recipes below and let yourself go back the ancient culture of the Greeks. And if some people think there is too much emphasis on the "what" of classical antiquity and that it is a small and unimportant thing, let us get our answer from the philosopher of life Epicurus: "Origin and roots, all kinds of riches and the pot a delight".

Recipes By Orestis Davias (Taste magazine) and by Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger (The Classical Cookbook)

1. Ancient Greek Mullet
2. Tuna
3. Bean soup
4. Fruit salad
5. Sweet meat with honey
6. Ancient honey and sesame fritters
It is amazing how little this recipe has changed 1800 years after. The Roman Physician Galinos (129 - 99 ac) describes in his book this sweet with many details.
7. Ancient Greek Pulp (Kikeon)
Kikeon is something between food and drink. The word "kikeon" (κυκεών) comes from the verb "kikan" (κυκάν), which means thickening by continuously stirring. The recipe that is given best resembles the ancient version of "Kikeon".
8. Ancient Greek Shrimps in a glace of honey
9. Ancient Greek Gilt - head bream with cheese and oil
10. Ancient Greek Fish with coriander

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Ancient Greek Food

noreply@blogger.com (greek-photos) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 12:30:00 +0000

Ancient greek recipes! A definitely exciting experiment it seems, but how feasible is it to reproduce ways of food preparation which were in use thousands of years ago? Furthermore, what philosophy stands behind cooking and eating in ancient Greece? The following pages try to answer these questions.

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Greek-photos.com view photos images from greece

Alexander the great

Philip of Macedon

the Spartans

The Peloponnesian War

the athenian ancient empire

The First Peloponnesian War

The Empire

Democracy and the Age of Pericles

the Greek League

persian wars

great leaders in ancient athens

The Areopagus

The Reforms of Solon

Peisistratus and the Tyranny

Cleisthenes

History of Athens

Contents

Etymology

Origins and setting

Early History

Early Athenian Military History

Artists and philosophers

Peloponnesian War

Athenian coup of 411 BC

Corinthian War and the Second Athenian League

Athens under Macedon

Roman Athens

Byzantine Athens

Burgundian period

Catalan period

Florentine period

Ottoman Athens

Independence from the Ottomans

Modern Athens

Population Influx

Athens Under the Nazis

Postwar Athens

Athens Today

Historical Population

Notable Athenians

Ancient sites in Athens

Apollo

Cronos

Zeus

Zakynthos zante

Geography

Corfu

Contents

Climate

Layout

Architecture

Government

Mayors

some words about ionian islands

History

Venetian rule

Napoleonic era

British rule

Greek rule

World War II

Today

Ionian Islands some words

the greek words

Aphrodite

Achilles

Acheron

Dining in Ancient Greece - Nutritional habits

greek food in athens ancient

Ancient Greek Recipes food in greece

Ancient Greek Food