3. Athens and Attica
Sparta and the Peloponnesus

4. Pre-Classical Age Greece: Timeline
ca Mycenaean period (setting for Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey). Kings promote and exploit commerce and agriculture (palace economy). Palaces, bureaucracy, literacy
ca. 1250? Historical basis for Trojan war
ca Destruction of Mycenaean power (Cause uncertain: Dorian invasion from north? Sea Peoples? Internal warfare between feuding aristocratic clans?). Palaces destroyed, Mycenaean kings and bureaucracy swept away. This led to …..
ca Dark Ages: ‘disappearance of the palace economy and with it law and order, loss of writing, decrease in trade and population, abandonment of settlements, loss of the fine arts, evidenced especially in pottery.’ Greek peoples colonize islands of the Aegean and coast Turkey
Sparta conquers Laconia (region around Sparta).
ca Archaic Age: Greek colonization of Mediterranean and Black Sea. Kingship gives way to the polis, initially rule by aristocratic rule, which gave way to tyrannies, and in Athens to a democracy. Revival of literacy, fine arts, and literature.
ca Composition of the “Homeric” poems, Iliad and Odyssey
ca. 725 Sparta conquers neighboring Messenia (sw Peloponnesus). Land supports Spartan nobles families, worked by enslaved Messenian peasants (called helots).
ca “Age of Tyrannies.” One man rule replaces aristocratic rule in many poleis
ca. 675 “Hoplite Revolution.” Armor and weapons designed to be used in closed ranks (phalanx)
ca Revolt of Messenians leads to “Lycurgan” reforms. Spartan-system designed to produced hoplite soldiers to prevent slave revolts. Spartan poet Tyrtaeus
594 Solon’s economic and social reforms in Athens
Tyranny of Pisistratus and sons in Athens. Overturned in 510 with help of Spartans
508 Cleisthenes institutes democratic reforms in Athens

6. Growth of the Persian Empire

7. Homeric warfare depicted on classical vases (top: shield of Heracles, c.540 BCE bottom: Diomedes fights Aeneas, c.480 BCE)

8. Chigi vase (Corinthian ca. 650)