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The layouts of Athens (Athenae) and Miletus typify two different types of Greek city structure, which would today be described as ‘naturally grown’ in the case of Athens, and as ‘planned’ to characterize Miletus. I. Athens (maps A and B) The overall map of ancient Athens (map A, overlaying the plan of today’s Athens) shows the ring-wall (no. 20) erected directly after the destruction of Athens by the Persians (480 BC), the connection with the ‘Long Walls’ (to the southwest, no. 23) which around the middle of the 5th cent. were built to provi…

While (Western) Phoenicians, Greeks and Etruscans had arrived at an understanding about their areas of settlement and economic spheres of influence in the western and central Mediterranean in the 7th cent. BC, this balance was increasingly disturbed from the 6th cent. onward. The map shows the central Mediterranean region (Tyrrhenian Sea), i.e. the area of contact between the three most powerful trading nations and the theatre of war for the essential military operations from c. 540 BC onward. I. Causes of the conflicts One cause of the conflicts was the expansion of the Greek…

The 2nd cent. BC was the period during which the Hellenistic world of the eastern Mediterranean came under Roman rule. This came about not so much through a policy of aggression on Rome’s part (in fact, the Romans long sought to avoid involvement in the east, not least because of their commitments in the west, e.g. Punic Wars) as in consequence of the self-seeking prestige politics typically pursued, as throughout the preceding Hellenistic period, by the Hellenistic monarchs and the Greek cities and leagues. Ultimately, Rome established a presence in the Balkans and Asia Minor …

Far from separating the nations living on its shores, as is the case today, the Aegean Sea in Antiquity served as a medium of interaction to its coastal communities in Macedonia, Greece and Crete, along the shoreline of Asia Minor and in the Ancient Balkan region in the north. In the Aegean Bronze Age ( c. 2700– c. 1200 BC) and the subsequent Iron Age ( c. 1200– c. 900 BC), cultural assets and ideas spread along the sea routes to such a degree that we can speak of an ‘Aegean koine’, although interpretation of the surviving material and textual sources shows that…

The Postpalatial period ( c. 1200–1050 BC, subdivided chronologically into the Late Helladic and the sub-Mycenaean or sub-Minoan phases) after the decline of the Mycenaean palace culture, did not entail a radical culture change nor the definitive end of Mycenaean civilization. It was followed by the so-called Dark Ages ( c. 1050–800 BC) covering the Protogeometric period ( c. 1050–900) and part of the Geometric period ( c. 900-700), which is subdivided into the Early Geometric ( c. 900–850) and the Geometric phase ( c. 850–750). For the Postpalatial period as well as the ‘Dark …

The map covers the so-called Dark Ages, a time during which – as far as we know – at least western and central Asia Minor were scriptless until the 8th cent. This period saw the emergence of the Phrygian and Lydian kingdoms, the only verified major kingdoms in the western half of Asia Minor before the rise of the Persian Achaemenids. For Anatolia the two empires also marked the transition from the so-called prehistoric era to the historic one; they are mentioned in Assyrian source texts as well.…

At his sudden death in 323 BC, Alexander the Great left his empire with no provision for succession. The period leading up to the emergence of the Hellenistic states in the 3rd cent. (272) was thus characterized by many disputes among his ‘successors’ ( diadochoi), his closest companions and officers, who held important offices or received or already held satrapies. The emergence of the kingdoms of the Diadochi can be roughly divided into two phases: a) the four Wars of the Diadochi up to the death of Antigonus Monophthalmus (who had primarily fought to …

In the history of writing systems, three different fundamental methods of recording the spoken word have been established: these are – in order of emergence – ideographic, syllabic and phonetic scripts. Any known writing system on this planet, including those of the Ancient World, is bound to use one of these methods or a combination of them, with the phonetic script – including the special case of the mostly oriental consonant script (e.g. Phoenician) – best suited to represent combinations of sounds. The Early Iron Age ( c. 12th to 7th cents.) was chosen as the most suitable era…

The theme of the map is ‘the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians’ (Thuc. 1,1,1) which was also called ‘the Peloponnesian War’ in subsequent ancient writings (Ephorus, the Hellenistic chronographers, Diod. Sic. 12,37,2 etc.; Cic. Rep. 3,44). Among scholars this term is also used for the so-called First Peloponnesian War (460/58/57–446), which means that this one would have to be termed the Second Peloponnesian War. It covers the military conflict between Athens and its Delian League …

In spite of the many military conflicts, the Near East and the Mediterranean region formed an increasingly close-knit zone of economic and commercial activity in the Hellenistic period. Participants were the Hellenistic kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean, the Carthaginian thalassocracy, the Greek cities and leagues and, from at least the 3rd cent., the ascendant power of Rome. This process of integration was assisted by the increasing establishment of the money economy. The most important com…

I. The Ptolemaic kingdom (323 BC–12 August 30 BC) (map A) The Ptolemies established themselves in Egypt, which Ptolemy I initially (323 BC) held as a satrapy, after the death of Alexander the Great (Ptolemy’s assumption of the royal title: 305 BC). They ruled with the help of the immigrant Graeco-Macedonian upper class (functionaries, colonists, esp. in the region of the drained Lake Moiris/Faiyum, and klerouchoi), who were socially and politically dominant, but they always had to fulfil the expectations of the indigenous elite (priests, later Egyptian klerouchoi and functionaries…

The Syrian-Palestinian region was an important link between Asia Minor and the south (Arabia and Egypt) throughout Antiquity. This was where overland routes from north, south and east met, and there were important trading centres and harbour cities here through which trade was conducted into the Mediterranean region. Accordingly, the region was constantly fought over, e.g. in the Hellenistic period by the Ptolemies and Seleucids (Syrian Wars). Although the overlords changed (e.g. Assyrians, Achaemenids), certain local entities or independent …

I. The Roman Republic’s system of organizing its Italian socii (‘allies’) from 338 BC (with the end of the Latin War) until the so-called ‘Social War’ (also bellum sociale, bellum Marsicum, waged by the socii against Rome from 91-89 BC to win Roman citizenship) is generally referred to by scholars by use of the term ‘confederation’. The ancients had no term for it, using only circumlocutions (e.g. cives Romani, socii et nomen Latinum). This ‘system’ is to be understood in the context of Rome’s gradual subjection of Italy. The main source for the conflicts associated…

I. Sources and the current state of research The source material on the development and formation of the Hellenistic states of the 3rd century is particularly sketchy for the period from the death of Pyrrhus of Epirus (319/18–272 BC), whose life is included in Plutarch’s collection of biographies, and 220 BC, the starting-point of Polybius’ Histories. All that has survived is some disconnected remarks by various ancient writers, such as the Latin excerpts made by Justin in the 4th cent. AD from a history written in the first cent. AD. There are also…

As reflected in Greek myth (the Pillars of Hercules), the cultures in the southwest and along the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula and its 200 km wide hinterland strip had been trading partners of the contemporaneous high civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean region from the Final Bronze Age. Nevertheless their cultures and the prehistoric cultures of the central plateau and the north-west have only in recent times been accorded appropriate interest in research. The choice of pe…

Among the peoples of ancient Italy it was the Etruscans whose highly developed culture attracted the attention of travellers and scholars at an early stage. They were the only Italic people to be actively involved in overseas trade and despite the problematic state of the sources, their history can still be retraced more clearly than that of the other peoples. The question of their origin and immigration has been the subject of controversy ever since Antiquity (among others Hdt. 1,94; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1,30). The same is true of their ethnogenesis, wh…

The Mycenaean civilization has been named after its main site Mykenai/Mycenae, located in the Peloponnesian Argolid. In scholarly usage the term signifies the Late Bronze Age (late 17th–11th cents. BC) civilization of mainland Greece and the continuation of the Minoan palace system across the whole Aegean region under Mycenaean auspices (see map Map A – The Aegean area in the Early Bronze Age (c. 2700-2000 BC) — Map B – The extent of the ‘Minoan Koine’ in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (c. 2200-1400 BC)). Its essential manifestations are the finds and findings at the sites immort…

‘The matter of whether one was a Greek or a “barbarian” was decided on the basis not of origin or race, but of education’ (H. Gehrke). The Greek term for education, paideia, denoted education as a process of ‘upbringing’ and, at the same time, as ‘cultivation’, as an attribute and result of the process of schooling. The Greek educational ideal in the Hellenistic Period was characterized by free personal development. The concept of schooling encompassed gymnastics, artistic and literary education, imparted through private tuit…

The main map is concerned with Greece, the Aegean and Asia Minor in the period following the ‘Dark Ages’, from the late 9th cent. to the middle of the 6th cent., a period which in art encompasses the Geometric ( c. 900–700 BC) and the Archaic ( c. 700–500 BC) periods. This era has not yet attracted sufficient attention from archaeological and historical research. Its politically most important events were the development of the polis structure in the Greek cultural area and the so-called Great Greek Colonization, which started around 750 BC. In Asia Minor, Greek citie…

Mycenaean and Italic-Mycenaean sites in the central Mediterranean region in the Late Bronze Age and the transition period to the Iron Age ( c. 1400–10th cent. BC) This map outlines the commercial and possibly colonial presence of Mycenaeans from the Aegean in southern Italy, on the Aeolian Islands and in Sicily, extending to parts of the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian coasts as well as to Sardinia. The charted period covers the time from the late Bronze Age, i.e. the peak of the Mycenaean civilization as well as its decline and …