The best thing about this book is how the author divides the chapters by significant Greek dates or bookends to the various chapters.
Important dates for the Greeks from various sources (see also this website):
- Bronze Age began: 3300 BC (did not begin in Britain until 1900 BC)
- Fall of Troy: April 24, 1183 BC
- End of Bronze Age, ended with discovery of iron: with the fall of Troy, around 1200 BC
- Homer: 8th or 9th century (so he wrote about Troy 400 years after the event)
- Athens Classical Age: Fifth Century BC
- Alexander the Great: b. 356 BC, Pelia - d. 323 BC, Babylon
- Muhammad died, June 632.
- Rome founded: April 21, 753 BC
- Byzantine Empire, outlasted western half of Roman Empire: began 5th century
- Byzantine Empire, outlasted western half of Roman Empire: ended 1453
- Greek war of independence, Ottoman Empire: 1821 - 1828
Chapter 1:
Chapter 2:
Chapter 3:
Chapter 4:
Chapter 5:
Chapter 6:
Chapter 7:
Chapter 8:
Chapter 9:
Chapter 10:
Chapter 11: Hopeful Monsters. Timeline of eastern orthodoxy in Greece, wiki. Bookends: 1204 - 1453.
1204:
Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople;
the Great Schism is generally considered to have become complete by the sack of Constantinople
1453:
Constantinople falls to the Ottomans, ending the Roman Empire
of the 100,000 inhabitants of Constantinople, about 40,000 are supposed
to have perished in the siege, and the Greek aristocracy was either
then or immediately afterwards annihilated;[
many Greek scholars
escape to the West with books that become translated into Latin,
triggering the Renaissance;beginning of the genre of
lamentation folk songs known as "Moirologia", or dirges (Byzantine
secular music).
Wow: Renaissance began in Florence, Italy, 15th century and quickly worldwide in the 16th century; pretty much began when "Greek" scholars fled Constantinople, when it fell to the Ottomans
Chapter 12: Between Two Worlds. Bookends, 1453 - 1669: most famous date, 1492, Christopher Columbus.
1453: fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans; last remnant of the Byzantine Empire to fall to the Ottomans -- Despotate of the Morea (Sparta-Greece but not Athens-Greece)
1669: Ottomans defeat the Venetian forces in the Siege of Candia (now Heraklion), capital of the Kingdom of Candia on the island of Crete; a 21-year siege, one of the longest in history; Ottomans finally won but cost/effort of the battle contributed to the decline of the Ottoman Empire (think of the Cold War siege on USSR which ultimately led to its downfall, as "predicted" by Ronald Reagan). The Cretan War, between the Ottoman Empire and Venice from 1645 to 1669; Ottomans gained control of most of Crete during the first years of the war (also, think Russia - Ukraine war). Despite the toll on the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Empire held on until the modern era; the Greek war of independence began in 1821 and resulted in a Greek victory after nine years -- and the beginning of a Turkish-Greek "cold war" ever since.
So, Greece, Hellenistic, Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire / Venice Empire, Ottomans, Greek independence. That's the scaffolding.
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Notes From The Book
1: Of Ledgers and Legends, 1500 BCE - c. 1180 BCE
2: "Homer's World, Not Ours," c 1180 BCE - c. 720 BCE
3. Inventing Politics, Discovering the Cosmos, c. 720 BCE - 494 BCE
4. The First World Wars and the "Classical" Age, 494 BCE - 404 BCE (Fifth-Century Athens)
5. Cultural Capital, 404 BCE - 322 BCE
6. "Becoming Greek," 322 BCE - 27 BCE -- p. 181
After Alexander's death, the Greek-speaking world: "Hellenistic."
Three "successors" emerged: Asia, Africa, Europe but the Hellenistic world extended even farther
to the east: almost immediately the regions were won back by Indian king Chandragupta (Sandrakottos to Greek historians).
the dynasty he founded: the Mauryans; would go on to dominate much of the Indian subcontinent
then grandson Ashoka
Ashoka: an enthusiastic convert to Buddhism
Kandahar in Afghanistan, today -- an inscription announced the success of the new religion, written in two languages, one of which was Greek
one Greek speaker, Menander, would play a part in the development of Indian Buddhism a century later
wow -- where have we read this before? Petty kingdoms in what is now Pakistan; known as "Indo-Greek"; Greek rule in that part lasted 300 years; longer than the British Raj of modern times, that ended in 1947; No one ever wrote a history of these kings or their subjects, or if they did, their words have not come down to us; often the only evidence: the coins they minted (sort of like sharks' teeth).
Gandharan: near the modern capital of Pakistan, Islamabad. Greek-Islam.
Bactria: today's Afghanistan and the southern part of Uzbekistan; would maintain its independence as a minor Macedonian kingdom on the fringes of the Hellenistic world for at least a 150 years
Kandahar and Smarkand: flourishing Greek cities
Ai Khanoum -- p. 183; Clearchus, a former student of Aristotle
Then, tracking westwards, there was Mesopotamia -- p. 183
Susa: on a tributary of the Tigris; had been the administrative capital of Persia
Babyon on the Euphrates; Hanging Gardens; King Nebuchardnezzar, of Biblical fame
Uruk, father south on the Euphrates, even a longer history
became known as Asia; rused by the Seleucids, founded by Seleucus I; proclaimed himself king, 305 BC
Antiochus: son of Seleucus
Language of the former Persian administration, Aramaic, continued alongside Greek for official purposes. Local folks adopted Greek names; often kept both Aramaic and Greek names.
The prestige language was now Greek.
Bactria:
Skip ahead
Last paragraph of the chapter:
Antony and Cleopatra fled back to Alexandria; both committed suicide, 30 BCE
Octavian executed Caesarion, or Ptolemy XV, 17 years old, ruled for only a few weeks
the end of the Ptolemies in Egypt
Egypt became a Roman province
"Achaea" meaning most of today's Greece followed in 27 BCE (becoming a Roman province)
Augustus reigns: the Roman Empire had begun.
7. Rome's Greek Empire, 27 BCE - 337 CE
the beginning of pax romana, would last 200 years; the Greeks had never experienced anything like it;
Augustus: 40-year reign; dies 14 CE
Tiberius
Trajan / Hadrian: empire would reach its greatest height; 100 years after Augustus
Caligula
Nero -- the last in line
Latin: official language, but eastern provinces still spoke / wrote Greek; the lines drawn, p. 220
Magna Graecia (Great Greece): the southern half of their own landmass, Italy!
Nicopolis ("Victory City" -- Greek): celebrate Augustus' victory over Antony and Cleopatra in the sea battle of Actium not far offshore
a "long Hellenistic age" that lasted well into the second century AD -- p. 222
8. Becoming Christian, 337 - 630
around the end of the fifth century (490 AD) the Parthenon has been converted into a Christian temple
monks and monasteries, p. 255
Greek Orthodox Church
Constantine II: on the death of his last (his third) surviving son, his 30-year-old cousin Julian, already self-proclaimed co-emperor, became master of the entire Roman world.
Julian the Apostate or Transgressor; spoke Latin, but mother Greek-speaking
tried to combine Greek myth gods with Christian religion
Hellenes: p. 257
Julian, and two of the bishops still remembers as "Fathers of the Church" were his fellow students at Athens. Christian orthodoxy in the Eastern Roman Empire:
Saint Basil the Great
Saint Gregory of Nazianzus
and then also, Basil's brother Saint Gregory of Nyssa (spent his life in Cappadocia; one of three so-called Cappadocians), and
Saint John of Chrysostom in the next generation; born in Antioch, Turkey, pagan parents; ultimately archbishop of Constantinople
The collapse of the Roman Empire: the model of systems collapse has often been invoked by modern historians, begins in 395:
on his deathbed, Theodosius I formally divides his kingdom in two, for. his two sons
the western half (Rome) began to disintegrate immediately; Vandals
Christian doctrine, p. 260- 261
Nicaea, 325
Chalcedon, opposite side of the Bosphorus from Constantinople, 451
correct belief, orthodoxia - p. 261
Hellenes: pagans -- p. 261
From Chapter 8, p. 255:
At the time of Constantine's deathbed baptism in 337 ....
In Egypt, a villager by the name of Pachomius, who had converted to Christianity while serving in the Roman legions, seems to have been one of the first to establish a system of communal living for segregated groups of men and women, under strict religious rules and keeping their distance form towns and cities. By the time that Pachomius died in 346, nine of these "monasteries," as they came to be known, were in existence in Egypt. Those who submitted to the rule of a monastery were known as "monks."
The Greek word monanchos literally means "one all alone," a description that better fits the hermits and solitary ascetics than members of the communities founded by Pacohmius and others. A hundred years later, there may have been as many a fifteen thousand monks living in Egypt, including at least four hundred nuns.
Many of those would have spoken Coptic, a form of ancient Egyptian that was also gaining ground as a written language among Christians. But the lives of the founders were written in Greek and widely read throughout the east empire. It was to the monks and hermits of their own localities that ordinary people looked for an example of how to love as Christians, as much as to distant emperors laying down the law in Constantinople.
9. "The Eyes of the Universe," 630 - 1018
Muhammed died 632
his last ten years, spent uniting the tribes of Arabia in the name of a new monotheistic religion: Islam
635: Caliph Omar sweeps through the entire region
636: Christian army from Constantinople severely beaten at the Golan Heights (meeting point of Israel, Jordan, Syria today)
638: Jerusalem had a new master and about to become a holy city of Islam, as well as of Judism and Christianity
Greek-Persians had fought themselves to exhaustion; Arabs simply filled the void
by 650 (or thereabouts), the entire Middle East became the Muslim Caliphate, from from it new capital, Damascus
the 300-y/o Sassanid dynasty had come to an end
Wow, the dark ages (again)
Theophylact Simocattes (last of the three historians -- Herodotus, Thucydides, and Simocattes) -- fell silent, 630;
historical record does not pick up again until a monk by the of Theophanes completed his Chronicle shortly before his dead in 818.
Result: Byzantine. That's our word. The Byzantines never called themselves that; they continued to think of themselves as Romans for more than a millennium to come.
So, now it was the Arabs against the Byzantines (centered at Constantinople)
Interesting: 660s, Kallinikos; liquid fire -- burned Arab ships at sea ... p. 291
718: Byzantines (at Constantinople) defeat the Arabs: for centuries thereafter, that defeat, in Muslim histories, was one of the greatest defeats for the forces of Islam.
That lasted until 14th and 15th centuries when the Ottoman Turks, a new Muslim army, would set its sights on Constantinople
String of natural events --> iconoclasm
- 726: Thera: erupts, p. 293 (reminder, Akrotiri two millennia earlier)
- 741: constantinope rocked by severe earthquake
- 747: another outbreak of the plague; worst since the first one
- population turned to experts: theologians --> iconoclasm; eikonomachia (battle over images)
- first serious disagreement between churches of Rome and Constantinople
Irene: first empress of the Byzantine Empire; ended the first period of iconoclasm
Nikephoros:
Leo V:
Theophilos:
Theodora: second empress; ended the second period of econoclasm
843: "The Triumph of Orthodoxy" - p. 298
1018: Basil II, senior Byzantine emperor, 976 to 1025;
Byzantium Empire was very close to the height of its power
Basil II makes pilgrimage to the Parthenon, Athens, 1018
to thank the Virgin of Athens for his victory over the Bulgarians
Basil II's visit was unusual because no emperor had visited Athens since Constans II in the seventh century. The
Parthenon had been converted into a Christian temple around the end of
the fifth century, and it became an important pilgrimage site in
Byzantine territory
10. "City of the World's Desire," 1018 - 1204
1018:
1204: sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade,
a devastating event that significantly weakened the Byzantine Empire
had lasting impacts on Greece as a whole;
the city was plundered and largely destroyed by the Crusaders
11. Hopeful Monsters, 1204 - 1453
1204: sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade,
a devastating event that significantly weakened the Byzantine Empire
had lasting impacts on Greece as a whole;
the city was plundered and largely destroyed by the Crusaders
1453: the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire
effectively ended the Byzantine Empire
12. Between Two Worlds, 1453 - 1669
1453 - 1669: Greek history marked by the Ottoman rule of Greece and the migration of Byzantine scholars to Italy!
1453: fall of Constantinople.
Empire of Trebizond mentioned in the first paragraph. I remember reading The Towers of Trebizond, Rose Macaulay (1881 - 1958), published in 1956. It was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for picture that year (1956). See wiki.
See video of the Caucasus Mountains here. Think:
Lesser Caucasus: Appalachian Mountains;
Greater Caucasus: Rocky Mountains.
Part of the huge long Alpide Belt from Morocco to southeast Asia
At this point, one needs to shift from Greece to Italy for a short period of time to see what was going on with Shakespeare / Sir Henry Neville at this time in Italy, probably around 1584.
Shakespeare: 1564 - 1616 -- Shakespeare very much a pupil of the Italian Renaissance and right in the middle of the English Renaissance (late 15th, all of the 16th, and the early 17th centuries -- Shakespeare died in the early 17th century;
English Renaissance: literature and music (vs visual arts in the Italian Renaissance); see wiki; Roger Ascham, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Thomas Wyatt
a host of playwrights: Shakespeare; Christopher Marlowe, Ben Johnson
Elizabeth 1 was a product of Renaissance humanism trained by Roger Ascham
Thomas Moore, Francis Bacon
all of the 16th century Tudor monarchs were highly educated as was much of the nobility; think Sir Henry Neville
actively writing:
poems before plays:
several of his plays on the London stage by 1592 (exactly 100 years after Christopher Columbus' 1492)
so, Sir Henry Neville on his grand tour probably around 1564 + 20 years = 1584
when one googles "Italian history 1564 - 1594, first hit: Italian Renaissance!
Italian Renaissance, much longer
Florence: beginning; then to --
Venice: Mediterranean empire and Marco Polo (1271 - 1295)
so, what might have Shakespeare / Neville seen in northern Italy in 1584 (+/- a few years)?
the Renaissance near its end, well established
Italy was the musical center of Europe
Italy entering the Baroque period which originated in northern Italy in the last few decades of the century; Shakespeare / Neville may have just been in Italy at the beginning of the Baroque
the Florentine Camerata developed monody, the important precursor to opera, which itself appeared around 1600; and the avant-garde, manneristic style of the Ferrara school, which migrated to Naples, and elsewhere through the music of Carlo Gesualdo, was to be the final statement of the polyphonic vocal music of the Renaissance
Italy might have been at the beginning of its economic decline
1585: Italy experiencing the early signs of an economic downturn; first indications of hardship; would eventually lead to widespread famine throughout the 1590s
1648: conclusion of the European wars of religion in 1648, as marking the end of the Renaissance.
1699: the end of the Morean war (1684 - 1699; the Sixth Ottoman-Venetian War; part of the wider conflict known as the "Great Turkish War" between the Republic of Venice and the Ottoman Empire
the war's major campaign was the Venetian conquest of the Morea (Peloponnese) peninsula in southern Greece
Morea: pretty much the Byzantine name for the Peloponnese peninsula; etymology unknown; related to the word for mulberry
mulberrry: tree which, though known in the region from the ancient times, gained value after the 6th century, when mulberry-eating silkworms were smuggled from China to Byzantium.
13. "Greek Revival," 1669 - 1833
14. European State, Global Nation, 1833 - 1974
15. New Ledgers, New Legends, 1974 - 2021
Epilogue
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