![]() ![]() Philip of MacedonĪt the beginning of the fourth century BCE, in about the year 370 BCE, a king arose in Macedonia known as Philip of Macedon. The resulting hatred toward the Persians created a common enemy and thereby laid the groundwork for a great leader to step in and do what no one before him was able to do: unite the powerful and industrious Greek peoples. The Persians also made a great mistake, because they were now in a place people came to resent them. However, the victory came at a great price: the Persians were now in Greece for the first time. However, in the last Peloponnesian War, the Persians bottled up the Athenian fleet and the Spartans won the war. Athens always had a great navy, which often was the decisive factor in victory over land-locked Sparta. In the last Peloponnesian War, which happened in about 420 BCE, Sparta made an agreement with Persia to use part of the Persian navy to bottle up the Athenian fleet. WHERE DID ALEXANDER THE GREAT CONQUER SERIESFor 500 years, Greek history was characterized by a series of conflicts such as the Peloponnesian Wars, as well as many other nameless wars between Athens and Sparta, and everybody against everybody else. The most famous were: Athens, Sparta, Thebes (not to be confused with the Thebes of Ancient Egypt) and Macedonia. Unable to ever successfully put up a united force or government, the Greek tribes developed as city-states. Thus, for centuries the communities of Greece were disparate and antagonistic toward each other. Great rivers and impassable mountains dominate its topography. The first thing to know about Greece is that, romantic as it sounds, it is a difficult land to tame. How did Greece come to take center stage and supplant major, world-crushing empires? A Brief History of Greece They were a seemingly insignificant player in global events that saw the Babylonians and Persians rise and become masters of the world. However, they were also an empire, a terrifying predatory beast, and embodied all the traits that empires embody: violence, oppression and terror.įor the longest time in world history, Greece was a side-show, a small, divided country at the extreme western end of the known world. We tend to think of Greece as a nation of poets and philosophers, which they were. According to Jewish tradition (Midrash, Leviticus Rabbah 13:5), each beast represents one of the four major empires that would exile the Jews: Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. The Book of Daniel ( Daniel 7:3-7) begins with a frightening vision: four beasts, one more frightening than the other, emerge from the sea. However, its after-effects shook the Jewish world to its roots. The story of Alexander the Great and the Jews is intimately intertwined. ![]()
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