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Athenian Navy
The Athenian military was the old man force of Athens, one of the major city-states ('' poleis'') of Ancient Greece. It was largely similar to other armies of the region – see Ancient Greek warfare. Army In the manner of neighboring city-states, the backbone of the Athenian military on land was the hoplite. Accompanying every hoplite was a lightly armed attendant, either a poor citizen who could not afford a regular suit of armor (''panoplia''), or possibly a trusted slave. These attendants carried the hoplite's shield (''aspis'') until the battle and most of the baggage. While generally armed with javelins, they sometimes had spears, slings or bows. The attendants acted as skirmishers before the pitched battle and were assigned to guard the camp during the actual fight. When the battle was over, they would attempt either to cover the retreat of the main body or slaughter the fleeing enemy forces if their own hoplites were victorious. During and after the Peloponne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athenian Empire Atheight 450 Shepherd1923
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh List of urban areas in the European Union, largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates and is the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, world's oldest cities, with its recorded history spanning over 3,400 years and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BC. Classical Athens was a powerful Greek city-state, city-state. It was a centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, and the home of Plato's Platonic Academy, Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum (classical), Lyceum. It is widely referred to as the cradle of civilization, cradle of Western culture, Western civilization and the democracy#History, birthplace of democracy, larg ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pelte
A ''peltast'' ( grc-gre, πελταστής ) was a type of light infantryman, originating in Thrace and Paeonia, and named after the kind of shield he carried. Thucydides mentions the Thracian peltasts, while Xenophon in the Anabasis distinguishes the Thracian and Greek peltast troops. The peltast often served as a skirmisher in Hellenic and Hellenistic armies. In the Medieval period, the same term was used for a type of Byzantine infantryman. Description ''Pelte'' shield ''Peltasts'' carried a crescent-shaped wicker shield called a "''pelte''" (Ancient Greek grc, πέλτη, peltē, label=none; Latin: ) as their main protection, hence their name. According to Aristotle, the ''pelte'' was rimless and covered in goat- or sheepskin. Some literary sources imply that the shield could be round, but in art it is usually shown as crescent-shaped. It also appears in Scythian art and may have been a common type in Central Europe. The shield could be carried with a central strap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paralus (ship)
The ''Paralus'' or ''Paralos'' ( el, Πάραλος, "sea-side"; named after a mythological son of Poseidon), was an Athenian sacred ship and a messenger trireme of the Athenian navy during the late 5th century BC. Its crew were known for their vehement pro-democracy views. It played a notable role in several episodes of the Peloponnesian War. The ''Paralus'' appears more often in the literary and epigraphical sources for the classical period than any other individual ship;Jordan, ''Athenian Navy'', 172 it carried almost all recorded Athenian diplomatic missions in the 5th and 4th centuries, and it appears that on most of these missions the treasurer (''tamias'') of Paralus acted as the chief ambassador. The crew of the ''Paralus'' (the ''Paraloi'') was known for its exceptionally strong pro-democracy views; its remarkable unity on this matter may indicate that it was composed of the members of a single ''genos'' of the name ''Paraloi''. This crew was instrumental in preventing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Athenian League
The Second Athenian League was a maritime confederation of Aegean city-states from 378 to 355 BC and headed by Athens, primarily for self-defense against the growth of Sparta and secondly, the Persian Empire. Background In 478 BC, Athens founded the Delian League to counter Persian influence during the Greco-Persian Wars. Athenian leadership became solidified over the next few decades, with many historians considering the league to be an Athenian Empire, especially after the treasury was moved from Delos to Athens in 454 BC. This league fought against the Peloponnesian League, dominated by Sparta, in the Peloponnesian War, which lasted from 431 to 404 BC. It ended after a siege of Athens in 404 BC, when Athens and Sparta struck a peace deal establishing Spartan hegemony over the Greek world. The Corinthians and Thebans, both Spartan allies, wanted to destroy Athens and enslave its citizens instead of a more lenient peace deal. The Spartans rejected this due to Athens being a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peloponnesian War
The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was an ancient Greek war fought between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies for the hegemony of the Greek world. The war remained undecided for a long time until the decisive intervention of the Persian Empire in support of Sparta. Led by Lysander, the Spartan fleet built with Persian subsidies finally defeated Athens and started a period of Spartan hegemony over Greece. Historians have traditionally divided the war into three phases. The first phase (431–421 BC) was named the Ten Years War, or the Archidamian War, after the Spartan king Archidamus II, who launched several invasions of Attica with the full hoplite army of the Peloponnesian League, the alliance network dominated by Sparta. However, the Long Walls of Athens rendered this strategy ineffective, while the superior navy of the Delian League (Athens' alliance) raided the Peloponnesian coast to trigger rebellions within Sparta. The precarious Peace of Nicias ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Delian League
The Delian League, founded in 478 BC, was an association of Greek city-states, numbering between 150 and 330, under the leadership of Athens, whose purpose was to continue fighting the Persian Empire after the Greek victory in the Battle of Plataea at the end of the Second Persian invasion of Greece. The League's modern name derives from its official meeting place, the island of Delos, where congresses were held in the temple and where the treasury stood until, in a symbolic gesture, Pericles moved it to Athens in 454 BC. Shortly after its inception, Athens began to use the League's funds for its own purposes, which led to conflicts between Athens and the less powerful members of the League. By 431 BC, the threat the League presented to Spartan hegemony combined with Athens's heavy-handed control of the Delian League prompted the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War; the League was dissolved upon the war's conclusion in 404 BC under the direction of Lysander, the Spartan command ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Polis
''Polis'' (, ; grc-gre, πόλις, ), plural ''poleis'' (, , ), literally means "city" in Greek. In Ancient Greece, it originally referred to an administrative and religious city center, as distinct from the rest of the city. Later, it also came to mean the body of citizens under a city's jurisdiction. In modern historiography, the term is normally used to refer to the ancient Greek city-states, such as Classical Athens and its contemporaries, and thus is often translated as "city-state". The ''poleis'' were not like other primordial ancient city-states like Tyre or Sidon, which were ruled by a king or a small oligarchy; rather, they were political entities ruled by their bodies of citizens. The Ancient Greek ''poleis'' developed during the Archaic period as the ancestor of the Ancient Greek city, state and citizenship and persisted (though with decreasing influence) well into Roman times, when the equivalent Latin word was '' civitas'', also meaning "citizenhood", w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Triremes
A trireme( ; derived from Latin: ''trirēmis'' "with three banks of oars"; cf. Greek ''triērēs'', literally "three-rower") was an ancient vessel and a type of galley that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean Sea, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans. The trireme derives its name from its three rows of oars, manned with one man per oar. The early trireme was a development of the penteconter, an ancient warship with a single row of 25 oars on each side (i.e., a single-banked boat), and of the bireme ( grc, διήρης, ''diērēs''), a warship with two banks of oars, of Phoenician origin. The word dieres does not appear until the Roman period. According to Morrison and Williams, "It must be assumed the term pentekontor covered the two-level type". As a ship, it was fast and agile and was the dominant warship in the Mediterranean from the 7th to the 4th centuries BC, when it was largely superseded by the larger quadriremes a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Salamis
The Battle of Salamis ( ) was a naval battle fought between an alliance of Greek city-states under Themistocles and the Persian Empire under King Xerxes in 480 BC. It resulted in a decisive victory for the outnumbered Greeks. The battle was fought in the straits between the mainland and Salamis, an island in the Saronic Gulf near Athens, and marked the high point of the second Persian invasion of Greece. To block the Persian advance, a small force of Greeks blocked the pass of Thermopylae, while an Athenian-dominated Allied navy engaged the Persian fleet in the nearby straits of Artemisium. In the resulting Battle of Thermopylae, the rearguard of the Greek force was annihilated, while in the Battle of Artemisium the Greeks suffered heavy losses and retreated after the loss at Thermopylae. This allowed the Persians to conquer Phocis, Boeotia, Attica and Euboea. The Allies prepared to defend the Isthmus of Corinth while the fleet was withdrawn to nearby Salamis Island. Alth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Achaemenid Navy
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest empire in history, spanning a total of from the Balkans and Egypt in the west to Central Asia and the Indus Valley in the east. Around the 7th century BC, the region of Persis in the southwestern portion of the Iranian plateau was settled by the Persians. From Persis, Cyrus rose and defeated the Median Empire as well as Lydia and the Neo-Babylonian Empire, marking the formal establishment of a new imperial polity under the Achaemenid dynasty. In the modern era, the Achaemenid Empire has been recognized for its imposition of a successful model of centralized, bureaucratic administration; its multicultural policy; building complex infrastructure, such as road systems and an organized postal system; the use of official languages across its t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant. The Sea has played a central role in the history of Western civilization. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago. The Mediterranean Sea covers an area of about , representing 0.7% of the global ocean surface, but its connection to the Atlantic via the Strait of Gibraltar—the narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates the Iberian Peninsula in Europe from Morocco in Africa—is only wide. The Mediterranean S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greco-Persian Wars
The Greco-Persian Wars (also often called the Persian Wars) were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire and Greek city-states that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conquered the Greek-inhabited region of Ionia in 547 BC. Struggling to control the independent-minded cities of Ionia, the Persians appointed tyrants to rule each of them. This would prove to be the source of much trouble for the Greeks and Persians alike. In 499 BC, the tyrant of Miletus, Aristagoras, embarked on an expedition to conquer the island of Naxos, with Persian support; however, the expedition was a debacle and, preempting his dismissal, Aristagoras incited all of Hellenic Asia Minor into rebellion against the Persians. This was the beginning of the Ionian Revolt, which would last until 493 BC, progressively drawing more regions of Asia Minor int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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