Experimental Blog #71

Comments on "Ancient Greece" - A History in Eleven Cities by Paul Cartledge

This book is a very convenient account of the long history of Ancient Greece, with a chapter on each of 11 cities. Actually, there were about 700 cities and communities on "mainland" Greece and about 300 more scattered all around the Greek World of the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

The first city is Cnossos on the island of Crete, that was founded about 3000 BCE, that means, Before the Common Era. In other words, this means about 5000 years ago. At Cnossos have been found clay tablets from about 1400 BCE in the "Linear B" script, which was deciphered in 1952, of this usually called "Minoan Civilization", a "Late Bronze Age" civilization. The author says that the as yet undeciphered "Linear A" script, perhaps considered to be earlier, is probably not early Greek, but, perhaps, a Semetic language.

The "Early Iron Age" begins from 1100 to 700 BCE, and involves the spread of settlements of both Greek Dorian and Ionion dialects and cultures to settlements in Asia Minor and the western Mediteranean. The Olympic games were started at Olympia! in 776 BCE, and the Greek alphabet was invented at Thebes, which is near Athens, in 750 BCE by an immigrant named Cadmus from Tyre, Phoenicia, where he apparently got the idea.

The well known "Classical Age" is dated from about 500 to 330 BCE, which is around the time of Alexander the Great, who lived from 356 to 323 BCE, and his empire. The "Hellenistic Age" begins about this time, but eventually the Romans came. First, Sicily was made a Roman province in 241 BCE, and, almost one hundred years later, Macedonia became the first eastern Roman province in 147 BCE. The "Byzantine Age" begins in 325 AD, with the refoundation of Byzantion as Constantinople.