The Eight Ages Of Greece

Civilisation. That collecting of humans under a blanket of laws and cities, writing and philosophy, infrastructure and technology. It’s what separates us from barbarism, from a crueller tooth and claw existence. Where it began on this planet is not the subject of this presentation. But where it was refined, is. When you consider a peninsula and archipelago at the south-east edge of Europe, at first sight, one would think such a rocky, unyielding part of the world would amount to nothing on a global scale. But it can be argued that this uninviting land produced a people and culture that influenced the world beyond any other. A world without the development of the republic or democracy, athletics or science, critical thinking, or the subject of history itself. It could be argued that the western world in particular would be unrecognisable today without the existence of this culture, with Western philosophy rooted here. Modern European languages have large numbers of words derived from those first used by these people, and its alphabet is still used widely in science, and is the ancestor of the key alphabets in use in the world today. Having one of the longest spans of recorded history, its people have gone from global influencers, to conquerors and then to the conquered. But their people and language have survived more or less intact to the present day, distinct from others and deeply proud of their past. There is perhaps no other land where the cycle of civilisation has been traced so thoroughly. It is, in short, an incredible story. And as this channel reaches the landmark of 100,000 subscribers, I decided to mark this occasion by looking my personal favourite among the world’s nation states. I’m happy to tell that story now. And that story is Greece. Greece is a country that marks the South Eastern boundary of Europe. It is home to the Greek people, descendants of a culture that spans almost 5,000 years of history. The word Greece comes to us via the Latin Graecia, as the first contact the Romans made with the Greeks were the ancient Graeci tribe that settled in southern Italy. Greeks today call their country Ellada (Ελλάδα), but in classical times it was known as Hellas (Ἑλλάς), and this is why Greek culture is often referred to as Hellenic. In this, the first of two videos about the country, I will be focusing on its long history, from political, military and cultural viewpoints. In Part 2, I will look at the structures and symbols of the modern state, the physical and human geography of the mainland and islands, the country’s economy, and the Greek culture of today. In order to understand not just the Greek people of today, but how their ancestors came to influence so much of the world today, we must undertake a journey through time in one of the longest strands of human history. There have been many looks at specific stages of Greek history, especially those focusing on the ancient part. And while these studies are valid, something about the whole is lost when viewed separately. Perhaps it is because it is such a huge, daunting subject that few have attempted to address the whole span of history of these people. But I remain undaunted, and so will attempt such a journey, breaking it down into a series of chapters in what I will call the Eight Ages of Greece. Each period is distinct in its situation, marking a particular turning in events, and the fate of its people, and at times, the peoples of many other nations. Humans have existed in Greece for as much as 200,000 years, and in fact the oldest skulls of our species, homo sapiens, outside of Africa, have been found here. Farming reached the area around 7000BC, the first in Europe, being adjacent to the Near East where it began. But it was in the Bronze Age when civilisation took an upward turn, with the Minoans on the island of Crete developing a sophisticated urban culture around 2700BC, considered to be the first advanced civilisation in Europe. Palaces up to four stories were built, such as at Knossos, supposed location of King Minos, the labyrinth and the half-man half-bull Minotaur of Greek legend. They were followed by the Mycenaean civilisation on the mainland around 1600BC. Their writing system, called Linear B, is the first evidence of the emergence of the Greek language, and the oldest European written language. The Mycenaean’s interactions with the non-Greek civilisations of Anatolia across the Aegean sea may have been the inspiration for later stories concerning the siege of Troy. Around 1500BC the island of Thera, today’s Santorini, was blown into pieces in one of the largest volcanic eruptions in human history. At least 60 cubic kilometres of rock was ejected, covering to some degree most of the Eastern Mediterranean, and burying the ancient city of Akrotiri on the island itself. This burial preserved complete houses, wall paintings and other artefacts which were unearthed only in modern times, and so is often referred to as the “Greek Pompeii”. Some have suggested that myths concerning the eruption may have been the inspiration for the story of Atlantis, first mentioned by the Greek philosopher Plato a thousand years later. Between 1250 and 1180BC a catastrophic series of events that is still not well understood, resulted in the collapse of the Mycenaean civilisation, along with all other civilisations of the Eastern Mediterranean except Egypt. The four centuries that followed the Late Bronze Age Collapse were a dark age in which little is known, with writing ending and the cities being abandoned or destroyed. But out of this dark age would emerge something more sophisticated, and much more far reaching in its impact upon the world. Around 800BC an unknown Greek took the Phoenician alphabet and adjusted it to better suit the sounds of the Greek language. This alphabet was the first ever to have specific letters for not just consonant sounds but vowels also. It spread rapidly into use across the Greek world and beyond, becoming the ancestor of the Latin script that today dominates the world outside of Asia, as well as the Cyrillic scripts of Russian and other Slavic languages. Local variants existed until 402BC when it was formalised. That script is still in use today throughout Greece and the rest of the world in academia. With the resumption of writing, we are able once again to trace the journey of the Greek people, and it was in the Archaic Age that the formation of the ancient Greek civilisation that we know so well occurred. Sudden population growth across Mediterranean, possibly related to a shift to cooler and wetter weather at that time that allowed for more bountiful harvests, led to rapid urbanisation in 8th century BC in the form of the “polis”, the Greek word for city. While the polis of Athens moved toward a democratisation of power among its citizens, and indeed the demes or suburbs of that city gave us the word democracy, the norm was for such cities to come under the rule of a single man, or tyrant. The sudden rise in population also led to pressure to seek land outside of Greece, and in this period significant colonisation of the Mediterranean occurred, especially in Sicily and Southern Italy, while cities as far as modern day Georgia in the Black Sea, and the South of France were founded. And with that system of writing, the deeply rich tradition of Greek literature was born. Most famous and influential of these are the earliest – the epic poems of Homer. Homer, who may or may not have been one person, wrote the Iliad and Odyssey sometime during the 8th Century BC. These poems, the earliest stories in European culture, relate to events surrounding and after the siege of Troy by the Greeks, and have through the ages been celebrated by countless European writers as the most important works of literature in history. But Homer was accompanied by many other poets during the Archaic age, as the sophistication of storytelling, such as the development of the tragedy, in both poetry and theatre increased. Many of these stories concerned the mythology of heroes, such as Herakles and their manipulation by an often capricious pantheon of gods. This pantheon is known as the Olympians, since Zeus, Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite, Diana and Ares among others supposedly lived atop Mount Olympus. They existed in mythology at least as early as the Bronze Age, and are today perhaps the most widely known of all mythologies concerning deities, thanks to the colourful way in which such a large number of stories are formed, and indeed the adoption or fusion of these gods with their own by the Romans as we shall later see. These myths went on to immortality in the form of constellations in the night sky, many of which are still in use today, such as Perseus and Andromeda, Hercules and Orion. And although the stars of such constellations later took on mostly Arabic names, the sequential designations of each star within each constellation use the Greek alphabet, with the name of the closest star system to our sun, Alpha Centauri, being an entirely Greek latter-day construction. And on the subject of the night sky, as everyone learns from childhood, the names of almost every planet and moon in the solar system are derived from the gods, goddesses and other characters of this rich mythology. It was claimed that one of these deities, Apollo, would utter words of prophecy through the vessel of a high priestess, known as Pythia, who resided at the shrine of Delphi. While there were other seers or oracles within the Greek world, the oracle of Delphi became the most well respected and known throughout the ancient world, owing to the apparent accuracy of her often-cryptic responses. The oracle was consulted by rulers as well as commoners, and exerted considerable political influence, as many key decisions in Greek history were made after she was consulted, and so it is argued that she was the most important woman of the ancient world. Established some time before the 8th century BC, she was consulted for over 1,200 years with the last recorded response given to the last pagan emperor of Rome, Julian the Apostate, in 362AD. The start of the Archaic age is officially marked by the hosting of the first athletic games of Olympia, in 776BC. Held every four years, in celebration of Zeus at his temple in that city, the Olympic games continued to be held in this way for another twelve hundred years, and were the inspiration behind the modern games that we all know today. Sculpture of the human form developed in this time, but would not reach its apex until the following age. Pottery, on the other hand, became remarkably sophisticated, and being so durable, such large quantities have survived that they give us the most detailed glimpse into the lives of these ancient Greeks, more so than any written sources. Coinage was invented in the Greek kingdom of Lydia in Anatolia around 650BC. While previously precious metal bullion had been used in trade, the development of standardised coinage, with a stamp to mark its authenticity of confirmed purity and weight, was an innovation and its use quickly spread among the Greek world, and beyond, as history shows. Military innovation at this time saw the development of the Hoplite, a well-armoured spearman fighting in well ordered, tightly formed ranks, known as a phalanx, wherein their shields would overlap, and where an opposing enemy would find only a bristling set of spikes as a welcome. The hoplite, developed over centuries of individual Greek cities fighting each other, would come to the fore in the following age, when Greece had to face down its greatest threat, this time from the outside. It was at ancient Greek civilisation’s cultural apex that the whole Greek world faced it greatest threat, in this, the Classical Age. The Empire of Persia had grown dramatically over the 6th and 5th Centuries BC to become the largest empire the world had yet known. It was at least twenty times the size of the Greek world in terms of population and area, extending from present day Afghanistan to the shores of the Aegean. And it was at this latter boundary that the troubles between the two cultures began, as the Greeks of Ionia, what is modern day western Turkey, resisted the rule of the Persians and rebelled. They were ultimately defeated, but the Persian king Darius saw that the only way to deal with the Greek threat was to take over the whole Greek world. In a series of invasions over the next half-century, he and his successor Xerxes engaged the allied Greek city states in a series of land and sea battles that became legendary. The battle of Marathon, in which supposedly a single soldier ran the 26 miles from the battlefield to Athens to inform the city of victory. The battle of Thermopylae in which 300 Spartans, at a narrow pass, held back the entire Persian host of a hundred thousand or more for three days before being wiped out. The battle of Salamis that routed the Persian navy. The battle of Plataea, where the Greeks finally defeated the Persians in the open field. Even though the Persians at one time occupied most of Greece, including Athens, they were unable to hold their gains and by 450BC, having lost much of the coast of the Aegean, the Persians sought peace. Greek culture had survived, despite the odds of being overwhelmingly outnumbered. There was an uneasy truce for the next 120 years, and one which would end explosively, changing the ancient world forever. These events became the subject of… the form of this presentation, namely the subject of history itself. Prior to this, history was mixed up with mythology, such as Homer’s telling of the Greek wars with Troy, which may or may not have been true, and if they were, based upon generations of oral tradition handed down. Herodotus, born only a few years after the Greek-Persian wars, documented them after first systematically investigating the actual events, through interviews of those that were there, or first-hand written accounts. This method would become the model of history as we know it through to the present day. The Roman orator Cicero called Herodotus “The Father of History”. Culturally, the independent city states that made up the Greek world were at their richest. Sculpture, that had been in gradual development throughout the Archaic age, undertook a revolution at the time of the Persian wars, with the particular focus on the realistic depiction of the human form that was the most advanced anywhere in the world at that time, becoming the model for Roman and Greek sculptures over the next 800 years, and revived again in the 1500s during the Italian Renaissance and actively copied from then until the present day. Greek philosophy equally undertook a revolution at this time, and it is perhaps philosophy that makes Ancient Greece stand out from its peers more than any other, as most cultures at that time relied upon religion for answers to the age-old question of human existence, and had no subject that we would today recognise as philosophy, that is questioning and reason associated with our existence and the natural order of things. The Athenian philosopher Socrates used the dialogue method for challenging thinking that was so revolutionary, he is regarded by many as the founder of Western philosophy. His pupil, Plato continued his tradition. Plato’s most famous work, Republic, explored the area of justice and sought to find the ideal way to exist within a governed community, or literally, a utopia, and has influenced political science more than any other work. His pupil Aristotle sought to unify all strands of knowledge, from the existing philosophers’ works, logic, science and the arts. He could be thought of as the father of knowledge itself. Aristotle’s most notable pupil was not a philosopher at all, but the son of a king - Alexander of Macedon, and his world-changing story will be told in the next chapter. Architecture was also swept up in this golden age of Greek culture. The temples atop the acropolis of Athens were destroyed during the Persian invasion, and to replace them, in 447BC, the city’s leader, Pericles undertook an historic rebuilding of this sacred site, with the highlight being the Parthenon, dedicated to the city’s goddess Athena, a structure considered to be of such perfect form and geometry that it still stands today as one of the most famous and recognisable buildings in the world. The Greek system of columns and beams went on to be adopted by the Romans, and, after the Renaissance, became the standard for Neo-Classical architecture used in thousands of civic buildings across Europe and North America up to the present day. The strive to architectural perfection extended from the religious to that of public entertainment, with the erection of countless amphitheatres across the Greek world as the site of drama, which the Greeks had also taken to a form of sophistication yet to be seen anywhere in the world. The tradition of the Greeks organising themselves into self-governing communities, or the polis, again marked them out as unique within the civilisations of the ancient world. But lacking a central authority led to its own problem, that of war between such states for ascendancy. Such matters came to a head in 431BC with start of the Peloponnesian War as Sparta challenged the hitherto dominant Athens. Sparta and Athens had been the two leading powers within Greece for centuries, and were natural opponents. Athens had democracy and its primary strategic focus was on maritime trade and guaranteeing it with a large navy. Sparta was a society hyper-focused on its land army, with all male Spartan citizens being highly trained soldiers, made possible by the enslavement of most of the remaining people within its borders. The war between Athens and Sparta, and their allies, dragged on for the next three decades, leading to the ultimate defeat of Athens and the end of Athenian democracy. But the almost single-minded warrior culture of Sparta was an ill-fit for the rest of Greece, and Sparta’s dominance of the Greek world was short lived, with Athens recovering some of its earlier power, while the city of Thebes gained much in the following decades. When Thebes asked Philip, the king of Macedon in the far north, for help in one of its wars, this proved to be a turning point. Prior to this, Macedonia had not been much involved in the affairs of the squabbling city states to the south, but seeing their weakness after so many decades of constant infighting, seized the opportunity, defeating a coalition of them all at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338BC, and uniting Greece for the first time in a confederation under a single overarching ruler. The polis was gone. But what came in its place, few could have ever predicted. Macedonia, at the northern fringe of the Greek world, was considered semi-barbaric by the more “civilised” Greeks in the city states to the south. It had been ruled by a dynastic family for centuries, and during such time had remained roughly the same size. But with the accession of Phillip II in 359BC, this changed dramatically. He radically reformed the army, and innovated with the new sarissa pikes that were far longer than the traditional hoplite spears used in the Greek phalanx. They were so long and heavy that they had to be wielded with both hands, so reducing the traditional hoplite shield to a piece of armour hung around the neck. The Macedonian phalanx was impenetrable from the front, as the enemy had to somehow fight through multiple bristling ranks of spears. However, they were vulnerable from the sides and back, and so required high discipline in order to lift spears, turn and lower again to re-engage. The second key innovation came in the development of an elite cavalry, known as the Companions, regarded as the first shock cavalry in European military history. This cavalry and infantry combined on the battlefield would prove unbeatable in the next one and a half centuries, and was the instrument used to fashion the will of Phillip to conquer Greece, and then his son, Alexander, to conquer an empire. With Greece now in Phillip’s hands, he had planned to use the united armies of the former city states in his intended invasion of the Persian Empire. However, just two years after the decisive battle of Chaeronea, he was murdered by one of his bodyguards in 336BC. Alexander assumed the throne and sharing the will of his father, began the invasion just two years later, under the pretext of avenging the desecration of the temples atop the Athenian acropolis a century and a half early. Initially meeting limited resistance, Alexander’s army marched through Anatolia liberating the ethnically Greek cities therein, and only first engaging the Persian king Darius III in a large battle at Issus, three years into the campaign in 333BC. Despite being outnumbered 2:1, the Greeks prevailed, Darius fled, and the campaign continued. A long siege at Tyre, in today’s Lebanon, was followed by the invasion of Persian Egypt, where he was welcomed as a liberator and proclaimed Pharoah, the first in a long line of Macedonian Pharoahs that ended with Cleopatra, yes, that Cleopatra, three centuries later. The city of Alexandria was founded by him, the first of many new cities where Greeks were encouraged to settle and spread Greek culture far and wide. Meanwhile Darius had been amassing an enormous army, waiting for Alexander to cross the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern day Iraq, where he could use the large plain for his superiority of numbers to full advantage. The chosen site, Gaugamela, should, by any accounts have been an overwhelming proposition for the Greeks. Outnumbered by at least 2:1 and possibly a lot more, with no features of the terrain to even out the odds, Alexander understood this would be his greatest test. And yet, showing his unrivalled force of will backed up by the best military machine of its day, he triumphed. The Battle of Gaugamela, of 331BC ranks as one of the largest of the ancient world, and its consequences among the most far reaching. Although Darius fled the battlefield, he was eventually betrayed by his own bodyguards, left to die at the side of the road, and with him ended the centuries long Achaemenid Empire that had, up until that time been the largest in the world. Alexander marched triumphally into Babylon, which he made the new imperial capital. He apparently showed great tolerance toward his new subjects, incorporated many of the existing Persian bureaucrats into his new administration. But on the darker side burned the old capital of Persepolis to the ground, supposedly as revenge for the destruction of the Athenian acropolis. The campaign continued for another seven years, with Alexander’s armies defeating remnants of the Persian army, and founding new cities as far as Central Asia. Seeking to find the fabled end of the world ocean, he then invaded India, but it was a step too far for his generals and men, who had not been home in a decade. Facing a mutiny, Alexander agreed to return to centre of the new empire, but in the harsh deserts of Southern Iran lost half his army to thirst and starvation. That march home was his greatest blunder. Within a year of the campaign being over, however, Alexander was dead, aged just 31, and having conquered most of the known world. He is unquestionably one of the greatest military commanders in history, if not the greatest. He never lost a battle, despite being frequently outnumbered. The astonishing Macedonian achievement, of defeating an empire more than 20 times its size, is as much due to his father, Philip, as it is to Alexander himself. It is rare indeed in history when we find two successive generations of kings at the very top of their game. But beyond Alexander’s military prowess, he appeared to genuinely seek a greater unity in the world, giving positions of authority to Persians within the army and government, marrying the easterner Roxane, and supposedly having plans to mix the peoples of Europe and Asia together with encouraged migrations each way. Part of this more creative side of Alexander may have been a result of his tutelage by Aristotle. But his darker side, such as the gratuitous burning of Persepolis, reminds us that the Macedonians were not as civilised as we might hope to believe. The cause of his death has been the subject of intense speculation in the ensuing 2,300 years, with theories being that he unwittingly mixed septic water with his wine, others that he was poisoned. The latter theory has weight in that assassination was a recurring theme among the Macedonians, and there is a motivation for one or more of his generals to have wanted him dead. Alexander had been planning yet more conquests, first that of Arabia to the south, and then to confront the “upstart” Romans far to the west. For some, they had had enough fighting for one lifetime. The empire was divided among four of his generals, in what would become known as the Successor Kingdoms. For the next half-century they fought each other over the spoils of land that Alexander had conquered. In the east, much of the heart of the Persian Empire was lost to the new Parthian Empire, although the Greek Bactrian kingdom in today’s Afghanistan survived for another two hundred years. Despite his short reign, Alexander’s legacy was enormous. Greek culture, once confined to a relatively small area around the Aegean, and Southern Italy, was now released upon the Near and Middle East, and would have a profound effect on the culture of Egypt, Palestine and Anatolia in particular for the next thousand years, as Greek became the common language of these regions. The New Testament of the Bible was first written in Greek, for example. Numerous scientific advances using the Greek philosophical method were made, and all known written works were assembled in the Great Library of Alexandria, within Ptolemaic Egypt, the most long lasting of the successor kingdoms that was founded by one of Alexander’s generals, Ptolemy. And it was at this time, with the Greeks now travelling to such far-flung lands, that the ancient travel guide of sights to be seen was compiled. The top seven of these “sights” "theamata" (θεάματα) "thaumata" θαύματα, "wonders" became what we know today as the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Only the most ancient of these, the Great Pyramid of Giza, however, has survived to the present day. Had Alexander lived, world history would have undoubtedly taken a very different turn, because with Alexander’s death died his plans for the invasion of Rome. And that political force, not checked, would eventually come to dominate the entire Greek world, and indeed the entire Mediterranean. The Hellenistic Age is considered by historians to extend until the Battle of Actium in western Greece in 31BC, in which the last Macedonian Pharoah, Cleopatra VII was defeated by Octavian - the future Roman Emperor Augustus. But events within Greece proper regarding the expanding Romans had occurred a century earlier, and the extensive Greek cities in Southern Italy and Sicily had been defeated by the Romans a century before even that. Since this presentation is about Greece itself, I have begun this new, Roman, Age of Greece a century earlier than Actium. The motivations of the Roman Republic in the last few centuries BC are complex and beyond the scope of this presentation, but will be addressed in a future video concerning Italy. To be brief, Roman expansion across the Mediterranean seemed inevitable from about 250BC onwards, and so to explain the complex details of Roman involvement within Greece are simply details in the greater picture. In a series of wars with Macedonia that began in 200BC, the showdown to see which military system was superior, the Roman legions or the Macedonian phalanx, would be decided. Despite seeming invulnerable throughout the wars of Alexander in Persia, the phalanx proved to be no match to the well-armoured, flexible and highly mobile Roman legions, with Macedonia suffering a crushing defeat against Rome at the Battle of Cynoscephalae in 197BC. Macedonia was finally defeated in 148BC, and the central and southern part of Greece, at that time known as the Achaean League was defeated by Rome just two years later at the Battle of Corinth, and so by 146BC Greek independence was lost and became the property of the Roman state. Corinth itself was sacked, and many thousands of Greeks taken back to Rome as slaves. In the rebellion of 88BC, the Greek peninsula was devastated by the Roman dictator Sulla, and further damaged in the Roman Civil Wars later that century. So in this regard the fate of Greece was a fairly typical, tragic one for a newly conquered Roman province. However, what made Greece unique in its past also made it unique among Rome’s acquisitions, for many Romans saw that in so many ways Greek civilisation was superior to theirs, particularly in the arts and in philosophy. Many Roman nobles would soon be educated by Greek tutor slaves, and to speak Greek was a sign of prestige and good education. The Greek and Roman pantheon was very similar, hinting at a distant common ancestor of the two peoples. Many Greek gods were matched with Roman, such as Zeus to Jupiter or Ares to Mars. So in many ways, Greece influenced her conqueror greatly, much in the way that Persia influenced her Arabian conquerors seven centuries later. In the words of the Roman poet Horace “Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit” ("Captive Greece captured her rude conqueror") After the initial century of devastation, and the final spasm of the civil wars that led to the ending of the Roman Republic, and the beginning of its empire in Greek waters at Actium in 31BC, the Greek peninsula and islands recovered and enjoyed four centuries of peace, the longest in their history, under the Pax Romana. Greek, and not Latin, continued to be the lingua franca in the Eastern Mediterranean, and some philhellene Emperors such as Hadrian invested considerable sums in restoring public buildings and places within Greek cities. Greece played an instrumental role in the spread of Christianity in the first few centuries AD, with one of the twelve apostles of Jesus, St Paul, in particular spending many years preaching here, and the area was a key centre of growth for the new religion. With the accession of the Roman Emperor Constantine, and his conversion to Christianity in the early 4th Century AD, he moved the capital of the empire from Rome to Byzantium, renaming it Constantinople, today’s Istanbul. Constantine saw Rome as an unsuitable location for the changing priorities of the empire. Byzantium, being at the centre of both sea and land routes between Europe and Asia, as well as being much more defensible with its situation at the end of a promontory into the Bosphorus straight, seemed ideal. A century later, Constantine’s decision proved right. The Empire, despite still being considered as a single political entity, went through a series of crises in the 3rd and 4th Centuries AD, and in an attempt to solve these issues, was now administered from two separate courts, with the western half governed from Rome, and later Ravenna, while the eastern half was governed from Constantinople. At the end of the 4th Century, the large tribe of Visigoths, under pressure to flee the Huns emerging from deep within Asia, were given refuge by the emperor within the bounds of the empire just south of the Danube in today’s Bulgaria. Due to a combination of the Roman officials being overwhelmed with this refugee crisis, as well as possible mistreatment by them, the Goths rebelled, and in 378AD an army led by the emperor went to deal with the threat. Due to poor leadership, however, the Romans were crushed, and the Battle of Adrianople, one of the worst defeats in the history of Rome, severely weakened the empire. The Visigoths went on to pillage much of peninsular Greece, before turning their attentions to Italy. In 410AD, they sacked Rome, the first time in 800 years that the city had been breached. In the following decades, the Eastern half recovered, but the Western half disintegrated. Rome had fallen and yet “Rome” in the guise of Constantinople, would continue, for another thousand years. With the end of the Western Roman empire, we now enter a new, quite different age in the story of Greece. Cut off from the west, the Eastern Roman empire turned inward, focused on developing its new Christian order, and then later spreading that message to the Slavic peoples to the north. The east also commanded its attention, protecting the Greek world once begun by Alexander two ages before, from the threats of Persia and later Arabia and the Turks. It is at this point that we see the end of any final influence upon Western civilisation, as Greece developed the beginnings of the culture that we see today. This separation was cemented in the Great Schism of the Christian church in the 11th Century, with the west become Catholic, and the east becoming Orthodox. For the next thousand years, despite various temporary invasions, Greece continued to thrive culturally and economically, and with recent evidence indicating that it was one of the most commercially active centres in the Eastern Mediterranean. Byzantine Art, centred around the Christian story, in particular, became notable for its frescos and mosaics, and which more than anything mark this period in the eye of the beholder today. It is somewhat of a paradox that, for the next one thousand years, the imperial court at Constantinople continued to refer to themselves as Roman. Greek became the official language of the Empire in the 7th Century, and so the empire was Greek in all but name. It is because of this paradox that today we refer to this entity as the Byzantine Empire, after the original name of its capital, and not the Roman empire, but until its fall in 1460AD, it was in no doubt the continuation of the same political entity founded on the River Tiber 2,200 years earlier. Such a lineage is marked by one of the key symbols of the empire. Where once an eagle represented the legions of Rome, following the split of the empire in the 4th Century AD, two eagles came to prominence in state symbology, representing the western and eastern halves of the empire. In the empire holding onto this symbol so long after the fall of its western half, it perhaps still dreamed of regaining that lost part of itself, and indeed under the Emperor Justinian in the 6th Century AD, an attempt was made to regain Italy, which it held for a time, before losing it once again. The double headed eagle is still with us today with many Eastern European countries including it on their flags or coats of arms, due to the empire’s influence in the form of Christian Orthodox missionaries sent north. The history of this stage of the Roman Empire is long and complex, involving half a continent. But since this presentation is about Greece, such history is beyond its scope, and the portions that pertain to these other regions, such as Italy, Egypt, Palestine and Turkey, will be addressed in future videos. In general, however, the empire went through a series of crises, with a gradual reduction in land area, in the face of, particularly, invasions from Arabia and the Ottoman Turks. But perhaps its most tragic setback came from powers that claimed to be friendly. A series of Crusades to “liberate” Jerusalem from Islam had been going on since the late 11th Century, but in the Fourth Crusade at the turn of the 13th Century, a series of events led to these Christian armies, whose role was to fight the Muslims in the Holy Land, sacking Constantinople, killing thousands of their fellow Christian civilians and returning to Venice, which was their prime sponsor and creditor, with uncounted riches. The emperor was overthrown, and in his place a new “Latin Empire” was created. The act was condemned by many, including the Pope, at the time, and caused severe damage to Catholic-Orthodox relations for centuries to come. If there was one consolation from these events it was that many of the artefacts and manuscripts taken back to Italy included those from the earlier Roman empire and by extension the classical age of Greece. The continuation of this empire had kept preserved records and other physical memories that had been lost to the West. And with their capture and study back in Italy, they served as the seeds of the Renaissance of classical times that sprouted from that country in the following centuries. Although the Byzantines were able to recover their capital several decades later, the wounds to the empire were deep, and it was never able to recover its former strength. So weakened, it was unable to resist the advance of the Ottoman Turks, who had moved into Anatolia from Central Asia as early as the 11th Century, and who over the next four centuries advanced slowly but methodically until, on 29 May 1453, Constantinople fell after a short siege. The event marked the end of the middle ages, the end of eight centuries of effective Greek rule, the last vestiges of the Roman Empire expiring, and the final reversal of that great age of Greek expansion that had exploded with Alexander the Great, consolidated for centuries after as the Eastern Mediterranean became the greater Greek-speaking world. For Europe as a whole, the fall of Constantinople meant centuries of worry and conflict as the Muslim Turks carved their way into Christian Europe. For the Greeks themselves, however, in their civilisation of five millennia, the four centuries that would follow would perhaps mark the lowest ebb. With the capture of Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire was now fundamentally broken, and the entire Greek peninsula fell to the Ottomans within a few short years, although it would be another two centuries before islands such as Crete fell to the Turks, while the islands to the West of the mainland escaped this fate, belonging to Venice throughout the succeeding centuries. Many Greeks escaped this fate, some having moved to Italy during the period of the Latin Empire, others fleeing after the occupation had begun and seeing the dismal fate that awaited them if they stayed. The former Byzantine land-owning aristocracy were all but wiped out, with administration of the land officially under the control of the supreme leader of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan. He would parcel out the land to soldiers and bureaucrats who had a lease on it during their lifetime, but which reverted back to the Sultan on their death. The Greeks peasants working the land technically had ownership of it, that was passed down the generations, but they were under the direction of the appointed Turk overseeing it. It was in essence feudal. The economic decline after the conquest led many Greeks to leave the cities and live in the countryside to revert to subsistence farming, and in general there was decline in population. Many escaped into the mountains where they could be free of the Ottoman system, albeit under the primitive conditions that the mountains could offer. The system of millets, an Ottoman term for giving non-Muslim subject peoples autonomy over their own communities, supposedly existed but in practice this was not often followed, due to corruption of the local Turk governors. The Orthodox Church was free to practice, and in fact, gained control over all non-Greek Christians in the empire. Conversion to Islam was encouraged as Christians were taxed through the Islamic law of jizya, a practice used throughout the Middle East by Muslim rulers for centuries. Greeks had to keep a receipt of their payment of the tax at all times, or be subject to imprisonment, forced conversion or on occasion, death. But perhaps the most harrowing aspect of life under Ottoman rule was the “tribute of children”. Up to one in five of all young boys could be conscripted into the Janissaries, the elite Ottoman infantry corps, while young girls could be taken to serve in the Sultan’s harem, either as servants, or worse, one of the hundreds of concubines of the ruler. One positive development that came out of the occupation was that the Greeks were given control over all merchant shipping within the empire, and is the background to today’s importance of Greek merchant shipping, which we’ll look at in Part 2. In all of this, it can seem like the connection to the past glory of the Classic Age had all but gone. And yet, the endurance of so many of those structures of that time was considerable. The most famous of these, the Parthenon, had been more or less intact for over two millennia, until a fateful moment in 1687. During a war with the Venetians, the Turks used the former temple as a magazine to store their gunpowder. A mortar round from the Venetians hit the magazine, causing the entire mass to explode, shattering much of the structure of the building into ruins. These indignities and deprivations could not continue indefinitely. And unsurprisingly, a resistance movement had begun as soon as the occupation started. But it wasn’t until the early 19th century that real hope emerged. Sentiment within Europe, particularly among the British, French and Americans, was heavily pro-Greek, as, since the Age of Enlightenment, knowledge and admiration of Ancient Greece was strong. Meanwhile Russia, facing the Ottomans as an enemy in the Black Sea and Caucasus for more than a century, saw Greek Independence as a way to weaken the Empire. And so with the help of these powers, and wealthy Greek ex-pats within Britain and the United States, uprisings within the Greek peninsula were financed, and carried out in 1821. The backlash from the Ottomans was severe, with populations massacred, but this only made the resolve of other countries more determined. Britain, France and Russia declared war, defeating the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. Greek rebel forces then were able to advance on land. By 1832, the southern part of Greece was liberated and with recognition by the Western Powers, the modern Greek state was born. In the century following independence, Greece underwent a rapid modernisation of its infrastructure and industrialised to some degree. Culturally, the government attempted policies that could be seen as De-Byzantinism or De-Ottomanism, that is, an attempt at the cultural restoration of Ancient Greece in precedence over what came after. Western powers favoured this policy, and encouraged the government to move the capital from Nafplio to Athens, once the shining beacon of ancient Greek culture and democracy, to symbolise this policy. Prior to this, Athens had sunk in significance and population to only a small town. Politically, Greece did not settle, oscillating between despotism and democracy, monarchs, republics and military dictators until very recently. Many Greeks left this difficult domestic situation to begin new lives abroad, especially to the United States, other European countries and Australia. It took another eighty years for Greece to gain territory similar to its geographic profile of ancient times and the borders that it has today, with the largest chunk coming in the Balkan Wars of 1913. After a political split within the country about joining the much larger First World War, Greece finally joined the allies in 1917, persuaded by promises from the allies for land in Eastern Thrace and Anatolia, which had significant Greek populations, and which many Greek politicians and nationalists saw as rightfully restoring lands that had been Greek for thousands of years until the collapse of the Byzantine Empire. After the defeat and dissolution of the defeated Ottoman Empire at the end of the war, Greece was awarded such territories as part of the Treaty of Sevres. When the Greek army landed in Smyrna, today’s Izmir, in 1919, they sought to occupy such lands as promised. Encouraged by the little resistance encountered, they pressed further into Anatolia. This military advance, among other factors, triggered an overthrow of the Turkish government that had signed the earlier treaty that had humiliated the Turks, and ushered in their new nationalist president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He rallied Turkish resolve, and military power, and pushed the Greek army back to the Aegean. The resultant Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 led to a loss of the gains Greece had made in 1920, and tragically, a mass population exchange, in which Turks within Greece were forcibly removed to Turkey, and several million Greeks in Anatolia were removed to the west of the Aegean. This brought to a close the 2,700 year Greek presence in Anatolia that had existed since the Archaic period. Frosty relations have continued between Turkey and Greece to this day. At the beginning of World War II, an invasion by Italy in 1940 was repelled by Greek forces. But a subsequent invasion by German forces shortly after was successful and led to a brutal occupation. A strong and persistent resistance movement operated throughout this time, despite the threat and carrying out of severe reprisals. Some 70,000 Greeks were executed and the razing of hundreds of towns and villages left more than a million homeless. The jubilation at the liberation of the country at the end of the war was short lived as a new civil war erupted between government forces and communists that finally ended in 1949. Political polarisation of the left and right continued for decades afterwards. Economic growth in the post war years was strong, however, despite this political strife. The last major swing in the political turmoil of the modern Greek state occurred in 1967 when the country was taken over in a coup d’etat by a military junta, known historically as the Regime of the Colonels. Opposition parties were banned. Arbitrary imprisonment and torture were commonplace. The junta collapsed in 1974, however and democratic ruled restored. Greece joined the EEC (later European Union) in 1982. The country joined the Euro currency in 2001, a move that seven years later would exacerbate a severe contraction of the economy following the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Because the country’s economy was tied to the Euro, it was unable to devalue its currency as a way of dealing with the situation, as it would have done had it kept the drachma. Faced with an inability to pay its foreign debt, under pressure from government bondholders, many of which were in Germany, the Greek government introduced severe austerity measures that led to mass unemployment and civil unrest. This latest crisis, sadly, can be seen as another cycle in the continuing up-and-down fortunes of the modern independent Greek state. In spite of this, however, Greeks today enjoy the highest living standards they’ve had in many centuries. Over five millennia, Greece has risen and fallen and risen once more, time and again, from the Bronze Age heroics, to the collapse of the dark age that followed, resurging again in the Archaic Age to unbeaten glory in its Golden age, the Classical Age of Greece. With its rich culture firmly established, it then exported this in the explosion of the wars of Alexander, spreading the Greek world throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. The military conquest by Rome in turn led, in a way, to the Greek cultural conquest of its host that further exported an echo of this culture across Western Europe through its empire. The conquered nation went onto survive Rome for more than a thousand years under the Byzantines, who through missionary work then influenced much of Eastern Europe. Once again the Greeks fell into a new dark age under Ottoman rule, once again they resurged under independence as the modern Greek state. Few cultures have persisted as long as the Greeks have, and very few have been able to paint this picture of the cycle of human civilisation quite so vividly. It is a remarkable story, and, undoubtedly, a story set to continue long into the future. Coming up in Part 2, the Geography of Greece – the mainland and islands, sun-kissed beaches, bustling cities, olive groves and forested mountains, and that special Mediterranean climate. The modern Greek economy, of shipping tourism and farming, and a look at Greek culture today in the form of music, food… and big fat weddings. Please like and share this video if you enjoyed it or found it useful, and please let me know your thoughts in the comments, especially if you’re from this country, and if I missed out anything you feel is important. If you haven’t done so already, then please click the Subscribe button and the bell notification icon so you don’t miss future episodes. 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