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Classical Greece

800 BCE – 146 BCE

The Greek city-states and the Hellenistic world — democracy, philosophy, and the wars that shaped the ancient Aegean.

236 events · 353 people

Key events

1. Battle of Marathon489 BCE
   The Battle of Marathon took place in 490 BC during the first Persian invasion of Greece. It was fought between the citizens of Athens, aided by Plataea, and a Persian force commanded by Datis and Artaphernes. The battle was the culmination of the first attempt by Persia under King Darius I to subjugate Greece. The Greek army inflicted a crushing defeat on the more numerous Persians, marking a turning point in the Greco-Persian Wars.
2. Battle of Salamis479 BCE
   The Battle of Salamis was a naval battle fought in 480 BC, between an alliance of Greek city-states under Themistocles, and the Achaemenid Empire under King Xerxes. It resulted in a victory for the outnumbered Greeks.
3. Battle of Artemisium479 BCE
   The Battle of Artemisium or Artemision was a series of naval engagements over three days during the second Persian invasion of Greece. The battle took place simultaneously with the land battle at Thermopylae, in August or September 480 BC, off the coast of Euboea and was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, including Sparta, Athens, Corinth and others, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I.
4. Battle of Thermopylae479 BCE
   The Battle of Thermopylae was fought in 480 BC at Thermopylae between the Achaemenid Persian Empire under Xerxes and an alliance of Greek city-states led by Sparta under Leonidas I. Lasting over the course of three days, it was one of the most prominent battles of both the second Persian invasion of Greece and the wider Greco-Persian Wars.
5. Battle of Mycale478 BCE
   The Battle of Mycale was one of the two major battles that ended the second Persian invasion of Greece during the Greco-Persian Wars. It took place on 27 or 28 August, 479 BC on the slopes of Mount Mycale, which is located on the coast of Ionia opposite the island of Samos. The battle was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, including Sparta, Athens and Corinth; and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I.
6. Battle of Plataea478 BCE
   The Battle of Plataea was the final land battle during the second Persian invasion of Greece. It took place in 479 BC near the city of Plataea in Boeotia, and was fought between an alliance of the Greek city-states, and the Achaemenid Empire of Xerxes I.
7. Peloponnesian War430 BCE
   The Peloponnesian War was fought in the Eastern Mediterranean between the Athenian-led Delian League and the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League from 431 to 404 BC for hegemony over Ancient Greece. Initially inconclusive, the intervention of the Persian Empire in support of Sparta in 413 BC allowed the Spartan coalition to decisively defeat Athens, beginning a period of Spartan hegemony over Greece.
8. Battle of Chaeronea337 BCE
   The Battle of Chaeronea was fought in 338 BC, near the city of Chaeronea in Boeotia, between Macedonia under Philip II and an alliance of Greek city-states led by Athens and Thebes. The battle was the culmination of Philip's final campaigns in 339–338 BC and resulted in a decisive victory for the Macedonians and their allies.
9. Battle of the Granicus333 BCE
   The Battle of the Granicus in May 334 BC was the first of three major battles fought between Alexander the Great of Macedon and the Persian Achaemenid Empire. The battle took place on the road from Abydus to Dascylium, at the crossing of the Granicus in the Troad region, which is now called the Biga River in Turkey. In the battle Alexander defeated the field army of the Persian satraps of Asia Minor, which defended the river crossing. After this battle, the Persians were forced onto the defensive in the cities that remained under their control in the region.
10. Battle of Cynoscephalae196 BCE
    The Battle of Cynoscephalae was an encounter battle fought in Thessaly in 197 BC between the Roman-Aetolian army, led by Titus Quinctius Flamininus, and Antigonid Macedon, led by Philip V, during the Second Macedonian War. It was a decisive Roman victory and marked the end of the conflict.
11. Roman–Seleucid War191 BCE
    The Roman–Seleucid war (192–188 BC), also called the Aetolian war, Antiochene war, Syrian war, and Syrian-Aetolian war was a military conflict between two coalitions, one led by the Roman Republic and the other led by the Seleucid king Antiochus III. The fighting took place in modern-day southern mainland Greece, the Aegean Sea, and Asia Minor.
12. Battle of Magnesia189 BCE
    The Battle of Magnesia took place in either December 190 or January 189 BC. It was fought as part of the Roman–Seleucid War, pitting forces of the Roman Republic led by the consul Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus and the allied Kingdom of Pergamon under Eumenes II against a Seleucid army of Antiochus III the Great. The two armies initially camped northeast of Magnesia ad Sipylum in Asia Minor, attempting to provoke each other into a battle on favorable terrain for several days.

Notable people

• Socrates470 BCE – 399 BCE
• Alexander the Great356 BCE – 323 BCE
• Herodotus484 BCE – 425 BCE
• Plutarch40 CE – 120 CE
• Aeschylus525 BCE – 456 BCE
• Cyrus the Great600 BCE – 530 BCE
• Hannibal247 BCE – 183 BCE
• Thucydides460 BCE – 395 BCE
• Xenophon430 BCE – 354 BCE
• Pericles494 BCE – 429 BCE
• Demosthenes384 BCE – 322 BCE
• Darius I550 BCE – 486 BCE

Cultural works

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Events from Wikipedia/Wikidata (CC-BY-SA); base map © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); era boundaries are a hand-curated set in v1. Spotted a mistake? Email [email protected].