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"First Cities" of "Ancient Greece" appear:  Thebes, Athens, Mycenae, Pylos, civilizations that had fully "appropriated" or absorbed the Minoan Culture. This is similar to how the three states in the aztecs came together and creaed a culture.

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The Ancient Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet. The Aztecs spoke Nahuatl which was an alphabet derived from Native people.

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The history of the Greek alphabet starts with the adoption of Phoenician letter forms and continues to the present day. The Greek alphabet postdates Linear B, the syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, by several centuries. This article concentrates on the early period, before the codification of the now-standard Greek alphabet.

The Phoenician alphabet was strictly speaking one that was consistently explicit only about consonants, though even by the 9th century BC it had developed matres lectionis to indicate some, mostly final, vowels. This arrangement is much less suitable for Greek than for Semitic languages, and these matres lectionis, as well as several Phoenician letters which represented consonants not present in Greek, were adapted according to the acrophonic principle to represent Greek vowels consistently, if not unambiguously.

The Greek alphabet was developed by a Greek with first-hand experience of contemporary Phoenician script. Almost as quickly as it was established in the Greek mainland, it was rapidly re-exported, eastwards to Phrygia, where a similar script was devised. It was also exported westwards with Euboean or West Greek traders, where the Etruscans adapted the Greek alphabet to their own language, which eventually led to the Latin alphabet.

Most specialists believe that the Phoenician alphabet was adopted for Greek during the early 8th century BC, perhaps in Euboea. The earliest known fragmentary Greek inscriptions date from this time, 770-750 BC, and they match Phoenician letter forms of c. 800-750 BC. The oldest substantial texts known to date are the Dipylon inscription and the text on the so-called Cup of Nestor, both dated to the late 8th century BC, inscriptions of personal ownership and dedications to a god.

Tradition recounts that a daughter of a certain Agamemnon, king of Aeolian Cyme, married a Phrygian king called Midas. This link may have facilitated the Greeks "borrowing" their alphabet from the Phrygians because the Phrygian letter shapes are closest to the inscriptions from Aeolis.

Some scholars argue for earlier dates: Naveh (1973) for the 11th century BC, Stieglitz (1981) for the 14th century, Bernal (1990) for the 18th-13th century, some for the 9th, but none of these are widely accepted.

According to legends recounted by Herodotus, the alphabet was first introduced to Greece by a Phoenician named Cadmus:

The Phoenicians who came with Cadmus-amongst whom were the Gephyraei-introduced into Greece, after their settlement in the country, a number of accomplishments, of which the most important was writing, an art till then, I think, unknown to the Greeks. At first they [the Phoenicians] used the same characters as all the other Phoenicians, but as time went on, and they changed their language, they also changed the shape of their letters. At that period most of the Greeks in the neighbourhood were Ionians; they were taught these letters by the Phoenicians and adopted them, with a few alterations, for their own use, continuing to refer to them as the Phoenician characters-as was only right, as the Phoenicians had introduced them. The Ionians also call paper 'skins'-a survival from antiquity when paper was hard to get, and they did actually use goat and sheep skins to write on. Indeed, even today many foreign peoples use this material. In the temple of Ismenian Apollo at Theba in Boeotia I have myself seen cauldrons with inscriptions cut on them in Cadmean characters-most of them not very different from the Ionian.

Herodotus estimates that Cadmus lived sixteen hundred years earlier, or around 2000 BC. He had seen and described the Cadmean writing engraved on certain tripods in the temple of Apollo at Thebes. He estimated that those tripods dated back to the time of Laius, the great-grandson of Cadmus. On one of the tripods there was this inscription in Cadmean writing, which as he attested, resembled Ionian letters: Ἀμφιτρύων μ᾽ ἀνέθηκ᾽ ἐνάρων ἀπὸ Τηλεβοάων ("Amphitryon dedicated me from the spoils of [the battle of] Teleboae."). A second tripod bears the inscription in hexameter verse: Σκαῖος πυγμαχέων με ἑκηβόλῳ Ἀπόλλωνι νικήσας ἀνέθηκε τεῒν περικαλλὲς ἄγαλμα. ("Scaeus the boxer, victorious in the contest, dedicated me to Apollo, the archer god, a lovely offering"). Herodotus estimated that if Scaeus, the son of Hippocoon was the dedicator and not another of the same name, he would have lived at the time of Oedipus. The third tripod bears the inscription again in hexameter verse: Λαοδάμας τρίποδ᾽ αὐτὸς ἐυσκόπῳ Ἀπόλλωνι μουναρχέων ἀνέθηκε τεῒν περικαλλὲς ἄγαλμα. ("Laodamas, while he reigned, dedicated this cauldron to Apollo, the sure of aim, as a lovely offering").

Hyginus recounts the following legend about the introduction of Phoenician letters to Greece:

The three Fates created the first five vowels of the alphabet and the letters B and T. It is said that Palamedes, son of Nauplius invented the remaining eleven consonants. Then Hermes reduced these sounds to characters, showing wedge shapes because cranes fly in wedge formation and then carried the system from Greece to Egypt*. This was the Pelasgian alphabet, which Cadmus had later brought to Boeotia, then Evander of Arcadia, a Pelasgian, introduced into Italy, where his mother, Carmenta, formed the familiar fifteen characters of the Latin alphabet. Other consonants have since been added to the Greek alphabet. Alpha was the first of eighteen letters, because alphe means honor, and alphainein is to invent.

Some ancient Greek scholars argued that the Greek alphabet should not be attributed to the Phoenician alphabet. Diodorus Siculus in his Historical Library, Book 5, suggests that the Phoenicians merely changed the form and shape of earlier letters:

But there are some who attribute the invention of letters to the Syrians, from whom the Phoenicians learned them and communicated them to the Greeks when they came with Cadmus into Europe; hence the Greeks called them Phoenician letters. To these that hold this opinion, it is answered that the Phoenicians were not the first that found out letters, but only changed the form and shape of them into other characters, which many afterwards using the name of Phoenicians grew to be common.

In his book On the malice of Herodotus, Plutarch criticizes Herodotus for prejudice and misrepresentation. Furthermore, he argues that Gephyraei were Euboeans or Eretrians and he doubts the reliability of Herodotus' sources.

As for Aristogeiton, Herodotus puts him not forth at the back door, but thrusts him directly out of the gate into Phoenicia, saying that he had his origins from the Gephyraei, and that the Gephyraei were not, as some think, Euboeans or Eretrians, but Phoenicians, as himself has learned by report.

Plutarch and other ancient Greek writers credited the legendary Palamedes of Nauplion on Euboea with the invention of the supplementary letters not found in the original Phoenician alphabet. The distinction between Eta and Epsilon and between Omega and Omicron, adopted in the Ionian standard, was traditionally attributed to Simonides of Ceos (556-469).

Plutarch goes further back to describe an older Greek writing system, similar as he attested to the Egyptian writing. In his "Discourse Concerning Socrates's Daemon", he describes how Agesilaus king of Sparta, uncovers Alcmene's tomb at Haliartus and discovers a brazen plate on which a very ancient script was written, much older than the Ancient Greek alphabet. Agesilaus sent a transcript to Egypt in order to be translated back into Ancient Greek. Agetoridas the Spartan travelled to Memphis of Egypt and gave the transcript to Chonouphis the Egyptian priest. Some scholars speculate that this plate was written in Linear B. Agesilaus' decision to have text sent to Egypt is not unreasonable; it is widely accepted that Ancient Egyptians during the 4th century BC were able to translate to and from various other languages; they used three different writing systems within Egypt: hieroglyphic script, hieratic and demotic; this tradition continued during the Hellenistic period when all kinds of scripts were translated and copies were added to the library of Alexandria; one example today of a script written in three forms is the Rosetta Stone that appears in three texts: in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, in Egyptian demotic, and in ancient Greek. And therefore, as the story goes, the Egyptian priest, having studied the script and translated it, concluded that the writing enjoined the Greeks to institute games in honor of the Muses.

The majority of the letters of the Phoenician alphabet were adopted into Greek with much the same sounds as they had had in Phoenician. However, Phoenician, like other Semitic scripts, has a range of consonants, commonly called gutturals, that did not exist in Greek: [ʔ], [h, e, a], [ħ], and [ʕ]. Of these, only ḥēth was retained in Greek as a consonant, eta, representing the [h] sound in those dialects that had an [h], while the consonants ʼāleph, hē and ʽayin became the vowels alpha [a], e [e] and o [o], respectively.

Phoenician had foreshadowed the development of vowel letters with a limited use of matres lectionis, that is, consonants that pulled double duty as vowels, which for historical reasons occurred mostly at the ends of words. For example, the two letters and stood for both the approximant consonants [w] and [j], and the long vowels [u] and [i] in Phoenician. By this point in time, Greek had lost its [j] sound, so Phoenician yōdh was used only for its vocalic value, becoming the Greek vowel letter iota [i]. However, several Greek dialects still had a [w] sound, and here wāw was used for both of its Phoenician values, but with different forms: as the Greek letter digamma for the consonant [w], and as the letter upsilon for the vowel [u]. Upsilon was added at the end of the alphabet, perhaps to avoid upsetting the alphabetic order that was used in Greek numerals. Phoenician hē had been used as a mater lectionis for both [a] and [e] in addition to [h], but in Greek it was restricted to [e], following the acrophonic principle; its value [a] was instead written with the letter ʼāleph, while Greek [h] was written with ḥeth.

All Phoenician letters had been acrophonic, and they remained so in Greek. Since the names of the letters ʼāleph and hē were pronounced [alepʰ] and [e] by the Greeks, with initial vowels due to the silent gutturals (the disambiguation e psilon "narrow e" came later), the acrophonic principle was retained for vowels as well as consonants by using them for the Greek vowel sounds [a] and [e]. Only the letter ʽayin for [o] necessitated a change of name ( o, later o micron).

Phoenician also had an "emphatic" consonant, , which did not exist in Greek. However, Greek had an aspiration distinction that Phoenician lacked, and used ṭēth for the aspirated [tʰ].

The Phoenician consonants and represented sounds that were not distinctive in Greek-at most, they may have been identified with allophones determined by the following vowel. The letter qoppa was used in certain Greek dialects (notably the western dialects, which ultimately gave rise to Etruscan and eventually the Latin alphabet), but elsewhere dropped out of general use. It is possible that qoppa had been assigned to the Ancient Greek /kʷʰ/, and when that sound shifted to /pʰ/, the letter qoppa continued as the letter phi.

Phoenician had three letters, and , representing three or probably four voiceless sibilant sounds, whereas Greek only required one. The history here is complicated, but basically sāmekh dropped out in certain dialects, and was reused to represent [ks] in others, while usage for the [s] sound varied between ṣādē and šin. The letter now known as sigma took its name from sāmekh but its form from šin, while the letter San, which occurred in a few dialects only, took its name from šin but its place in the alphabet from ṣādē. A further Greek letter of uncertain origin, sampi, is found occasionally, and may represent an affricate, such as [t͡s].

For the special case of zeta, see Zeta (letter).

In the 8th to 6th centuries, local or epichoric variants of the alphabet developed. They are classified into three main groups, following Adolf Kirchhoff (1887): green (Cretan), red ( Euboean or Western) and blue (Ionic, Attic and Corinthian). The main distinction is in the supplemental signs added to the Phoenician core inventory.

With the exception of the early Fayum alphabet, which does not fit into the tripartite scheme, all abecedaries add Υ to the Phoenician inventory. The green alphabets have only this; the red add Φ for [pʰ], Χ for [ks], and Ψ for [kʰ]; and the blue add Φ for [pʰ], and Χ for [kʰ], with a dark blue subgroup (Corinth and Rhodes) also having Ψ for [ps].

In some, but not all, Greek dialects, additional letters were created to represent aspirated versions of Κ and Π (an aspirated version of Τ already existed as described above) and combinations of Κ and Π with Σ. There was some variation between dialects as to the symbols used:

Because [ks] and [ps] were the only consonant clusters occurring at the end of syllables, some gave them their own letters, Χ or Ξ and Ψ, so that all syllables would end in a single consonant letter, rather than seemingly have two exceptions in spelling.

Greek, like Phoenician, made a distinction for vowel length; indeed, Greek had five short vowels and seven long vowels, but only five vowel letters. As in Phoenician, the difference in length was not originally made in writing. However, by the 6th century BC the letter eta (not needed for a consonant in eastern dialects of Greek, which lacked [h]) came to stand for the long vowel [ɛː], and a new letter, omega, was developed for long [ɔː]. The provenance of omega is not known, but it is generally assumed to derive from omicron with a line drawn under it. Long [eː] and [oː] were written with the digraphs ει and ου, respectively, whereas long and short [a], [i], [u] were never distinguished in writing.

Standardization - the Ionic alphabet

In 403/2 BC, following the devastating defeat in the Peloponnesian War and the restoration of democracy, the Athenians voted to abandon the old Attic alphabet ( Pre-Euclidean alphabet) and to introduce a standardized variant of the eastern Ionic alphabet, after a proposal by archon Eucleides. This Euclidean alphabet included eta and omega, which concluded the process of adapting the Phoenician script so that all vowels could be written systematically, thus becoming the first 'true' alphabet. Apparently, some thirty years later, the same alphabet was introduced to Boeotia, having been adopted perhaps a little earlier in Macedonia, and went on in the course of the 4th century to displace the local alphabets throughout the whole Greek-speaking world.

The Ionic alphabet included a new letter, omega, at the end of the alphabet, and standardised the representation of various sounds that had varied from one dialect to another, as follows:

The absence of a letter for [h] was of no consequence for the Ionic dialects, but sometimes led to ambiguities in Attic, which had retained the sound. A symbol based on the left-hand half (Ͱ) of the letter Η was therefore sometimes used to indicate the presence of [h] where necessary, and its absence was indicated by a symbol based on the right half.

During the classical period, ΕΙ came to be pronounced [iː] and ΟΥ came to be pronounced [uː], Υ having meanwhile moved to [y].

By about 200 BC, a system of diacritical marks was invented, representing the tone accents in use in Ancient Greek. This also helped to indicate the length of the vowels Α, Ι, and Υ in certain cases (for instance a circumflex can only occur on a long vowel), but Greek orthography has never had a comprehensive way of indicating vowel length, and this distinction has in any case been lost in Modern Greek. This innovation of accents, as well as that of punctuation marks, has been credited to Aristophanes of Byzantium (257 - c. 185 BC).

By the time of late antiquity and the early Byzantine period, two different styles of handwriting had developed, both suitable to the act of writing with quill and ink on soft materials (paper or parchment). The uncial script consisted of large upright letter glyphs, similar to those used in inscriptions on stone and to the modern uppercase glyphs. It was used mainly for carefully produced book manuscripts. For other types of writing, for instance private letters, documents and other types of everyday writing, a cursive script had developed that used slanted, interconnected glyphs and many ligatures.

From the mid-9th century AD onwards, the uncial script was replaced in book writing by a new writing style, the Greek minuscule, which used more compact, rounded letter shapes and was partly based on the earlier cursive. This innovation may have centered on the scribal work of the Stoudion monastery in Constantinople. The earliest type of books written in minuscule, dated from the mid-9th to mid-10th century, are called codices vetustissimi ('oldest codices'). During the following centuries, this style of writing was further developed and took on more cursive elements again. This became the dominant type of handwriting until the post-Byzantine period.

Together with the minuscule letter shapes, Greek writing also began to use word-boundary spaces and diacritics (i.e. the accent marks and breathings of polytonic orthography) more regularly. Some punctuation began also to be employed. The iota subscript was employed from the 13th century onwards.

Often, in medieval manuscripts, old uncial letter forms were mixed in with the normal minuscule letters for writing titles or for emphasizing the initial letter of a word or sentence. Like in Latin, this became the root of the modern innovation of letter case, the systematic distinction between uppercase and lowercase letters in orthography. The uppercase letters of modern orthography are derived from the uncial script, while the lowercase letters are derived from minuscules.

The invention of printing saw the codification of a more fixed set of letter structures. Greek handwriting made extensive use of ligatures with letters written differently depending on their place in the word. Early printers, such as Aldus Manutius and Claude Garamond, attempted to imitate this, basing their printing on the writing of Greek scribes, producing a style text similar to modern italics. As Greece was occupied by the Ottoman Empire until the nineteenth century, early printers of (mostly ancient) Greek were mostly based in western Europe; few were Greek. This led to the adoption of writing conventions for Greek such as letter case influenced by printing and developments in the Latin alphabet. Cursive-inspired Greek print slowly disappeared during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in favour of an upright and less ornamented style of writing more like Latin print.

In 1982, the monotonic orthography was officially adopted, abandoning the rough and smooth breathings (since the [h] sound had long since disappeared) and reducing the three types of accent mark to one (since the tone accent had been replaced by a stress accent).

Greek pronunciation has also changed considerably since ancient times, but these changes have not been apparent from the orthography, which has remained conservative - see Greek alphabet for a summary of the current situation.

The names of some letters were changed in order to distinguish them from certain digraphs which had become homophonous, as follows:

The letters of the alphabet were used in the system of Greek numerals. For this purpose the letters digamma and qoppa (but not san) were retained although they had gone out of general use, and the obscure letter sampi was added at the end of the alphabet. Digamma was often replaced in numerical use by stigma (Ϛ), originally a ligature of sigma and tau, or even the sequence sigma-tau (στ').

The Old Italic and Anatolian alphabets are, like the Greek alphabet, attested from the 8th century BC. It is unclear whether they should be considered as siblings of the latter, adopted from the Phoenician simultaneously, or rather as early descendants of the nascent Greek alphabet proper.

1. M. O'Connor, ^ Epigraphic Semitic Scripts, in Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systems, 1996

2. The date of the earliest inscribed objects; A.W. Johnston, "The alphabet", in N. Stampolidis and V. Karageorghis, eds, ^ Sea Routes from Sidon to Huelva: Interconnections in the Mediterranean 2003:263-76, summarizes the present scholarship on the dating.

3. Pierre Swiggers, ^ Transmission of the Phoenician Script to the West, in Daniels and Bright, The World's Writing Systems, 1996

4. ^ Panhellenes at Methone: Graphê in Late Geometric and Protoarchaic Methone, edited by Jenny Strauss Clay, Irad Malkin, Yannis Z. Tzifopoulos, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG, 2017, pg154

5. ^ Crossing boundaries and linking horizons: studies in honor of Michael C. Astour: "The alleged tomb of Alcmene was opened, and a bronze tablet was found there with a long inscription in an unknown script, which they thought resembled Egyptian signs. It was probably written in Linear B."[full citation needed ]

6. ^ Horrocks, Geoffrey (2010). "The Greek Alphabet". Greek - A History of the Language and its Speakers (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. p. xiix. ISBN 978-1-4051-3415-6.

7. A. Panayotou, "Ionic and Attic", in Christides, A History of Ancient Greek, p. 407, ^ ISBN 978-0-521-83307-3

8. ^ As original [w] ⟨ϝ⟩ and [b] ⟨β⟩ merged as [v] (probably by way of ), digamma and beta are sometimes interchanged, ex. gr. Corinthian ἀμοιϝάν for ἀμοιβάν (5th century BC).

Bernal, Martin (1990), Cadmean Letters: The Transmission of the Alphabet to the Aegean and Further West Before 1400 BC, Eisenbrauns, ISBN 0-931464-47-1

Peter T Daniels and William Bright, The World's Writing Systems, Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-507993-0, especially Section 21 "Transmission of the Phoenician Script to the West" (Pierre Swiggers) and Section 22 "The Greek Alphabet" (Leslie Threatte).

Lilian Hamilton "Anne" Jeffery, The local scripts of archaic Greece: a study of the origin of the Greek alphabet and its development from the eighth to the fifth centuries B.C., Oxford, 1961, ISBN 0-19-814061-4. The standard reference.

P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., The antiquity of the Greek alphabet and the early Phoenician scripts, Harvard Semitic monographs, 1975. ISBN 0-89130-066-X.

-------- (1996), "The Early Diffusion of the Greek Alphabet", in Macrakis, Michael S (ed.), Greek letters: from tablets to pixels (proceedings of a Greek Font Society conference), Oak Knoll Press, ISBN 1-884718-27-2 .

-------- (Winter 1998), "Who Invented the Alphabet: A Different View", Archaeological Odyssey, 1 (1)

Joseph Naveh, "Some Semitic epigraphical considerations in the antiquity of the Greek alphabet", American journal of archaeology 77: 1-8 (1973). Argues for an earlier date of transmission.

.

Barry B. Powell, "Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet," Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Ruijgh, CJ (1998), "Sur la date de la création de l'alphabet grec", Mnemosyne, 51 (51): 658-87, doi:10.1163/1568525981569785.

Robert R. Stieglitz, "The Letters of Kadmos: Mythology, Archaeology, and Eteocretan", Pepragmena tou Diethnous Kretologikou Synedriou (Herakleio, 29 August - 3 September 1976), Athens, 1981.

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The history of the Greek alphabet starts with the adoption of Phoenician letter forms and continues to the present day. The Greek alphabet postdates Linear B, the syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, by several centuries. This article concentrates on the early period, before the codification of the now-standard Greek alphabet.

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The fullest and most important source of Greek myths and the origins of the gods found in Theogony of Hesiod. The Aztecs wrote their stories through pictures they drew on deer skin.

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Who are some of the major figures of Greek mythology?

What are some major works in Greek mythology?

When did Greek mythology start?

Greek mythology, body of stories concerning the gods, heroes, and rituals of the ancient Greeks. That the myths contained a considerable element of fiction was recognized by the more critical Greeks, such as the philosopher Plato in the 5th-4th century bce. In general, however, in the popular piety of the Greeks, the myths were viewed as true accounts. Greek mythology has subsequently had extensive influence on the arts and literature of Western civilization, which fell heir to much of Greek culture.

Although people of all countries, eras, and stages of civilization have developed myths that explain the existence and workings of natural phenomena, recount the deeds of gods or heroes, or seek to justify social or political institutions, the myths of the Greeks have remained unrivaled in the Western world as sources of imaginative and appealing ideas. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology and have discovered contemporary significance and relevance in Classical mythological themes.

Sources of myths: literary and archaeological

The 5th-century-bce Greek historian Herodotus remarked that Homer and Hesiod gave to the Olympian gods their familiar characteristics. Few today would accept this literally. In the first book of the Iliad, the son of Zeus and Leto ( Apollo, line 9) is as instantly identifiable to the Greek reader by his patronymic as are the sons of Atreus ( Agamemnon and Menelaus, line 16). In both cases, the audience is expected to have knowledge of the myths that preceded their literary rendering. Little is known to suggest that the Greeks treated Homer, or any other source of Greek myths, as mere entertainment, whereas there are prominent Greeks from Pindar to the later Stoa for whom myths, and those from Homer in particular, are so serious as to warrant bowdlerization or allegorization.

The fullest and most important source of myths about the origin of the gods is the Theogony of Hesiod (c. 700 bce). The elaborate genealogies mentioned above are accompanied by folktales and etiological myths. The Works and Days shares some of these in the context of a farmer's calendar and an extensive harangue on the subject of justice addressed to Hesiod's possibly fictitious brother Perses. The orthodox view treats the two poems as quite different in theme and treats the Works and Days as a theodicy (a natural theology). It is possible, however, to treat the two poems as a diptych, each part dependent on the other. The Theogony declares the identities and alliances of the gods, while the Works and Days gives advice on the best way to succeed in a dangerous world, and Hesiod urges that the most reliable-though by no means certain-way is to be just.

Other literary works

Fragmentary post-Homeric epics of varying date and authorship filled the gaps in the accounts of the Trojan War recorded in the Iliad and Odyssey; the so-called Homeric Hymns (shorter surviving poems) are the source of several important religious myths. Many of the lyric poets preserved various myths, but the odes of Pindar of Thebes (flourished 6th-5th century bce) are particularly rich in myth and legend. The works of the three tragedians- Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, all of the 5th century bce-are remarkable for the variety of the traditions they preserve.

In Hellenistic times (323-30 bce) Callimachus, a 3rd-century-bce poet and scholar in Alexandria, recorded many obscure myths; his contemporary, the mythographer Euhemerus, suggested that the gods were originally human, a view known as Euhemerism. Apollonius of Rhodes, another scholar of the 3rd century bce, preserved the fullest account of the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece.

In the period of the Roman Empire, the Geography of Strabo (1st century bce), the Library of the pseudo- Apollodorus (attributed to a 2nd-century-ce scholar), the antiquarian writings of the Greek biographer Plutarch, and the works of Pausanias, a 2nd-century-ce historian, as well as the Latin Genealogies of Hyginus, a 2nd-century-ce mythographer, have provided valuable sources in Latin of later Greek mythology.

Archaeological discoveries

The discovery of the Mycenaean civilization by Heinrich Schliemann, a 19th-century German amateur archaeologist, and the discovery of the Minoan civilization in Crete (from which the Mycenaean ultimately derived) by Sir Arthur Evans, a 20th-century English archaeologist, are essential to the 21st-century understanding of the development of myth and ritual in the Greek world. Such discoveries illuminated aspects of Minoan culture from about 2200 to 1450 bce and Mycenaean culture from about 1600 to 1200 bce; those eras were followed by a Dark Age that lasted until about 800 bce. Unfortunately, the evidence about myth and ritual at Mycenaean and Minoan sites is entirely monumental, because the Linear B script (an ancient form of Greek found in both Crete and Greece) was mainly used to record inventories.

Geometric designs on pottery of the 8th century bce depict scenes from the Trojan cycle, as well as the adventures of Heracles. The extreme formality of the style, however, renders much of the identification difficult, and there is no inscriptional evidence accompanying the designs to assist scholars in identification and interpretation. In the succeeding Archaic (c. 750-c. 500 bce), Classical (c. 480-323 bce), and Hellenistic periods, Homeric and various other mythological scenes appear to supplement the existing literary evidence.

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Greek mythology | Gods, Stories, & History

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Greek mythology, oral and literary traditions of the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes and the nature of the cosmos. The narratives influenced the arts of later centuries so that such stories as the abduction of Persephone and those from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey remained popular in the 21st century.

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Trade was greatly facilitated by the construction of specialised merchant ships (annotation: Link to article). The Aztecs traded with nearby states which developed int o a trading center.

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Trade was a fundamental aspect of the ancient Greek world and following territorial expansion, an increase in population movements, and innovations in transport, goods could be bought, sold, and exchanged in one part of the Mediterranean which had their origin in a completely different and far distant region. Food, raw materials, and manufactured goods were not only made available to Greeks for the first time but the export of such classics as wine, olives, and pottery helped to spread Greek culture to the wider world.

From Local to International Trade

In Greece and the wider Aegean, local, regional, and international trade exchange existed from Minoan and Mycenaean times in the Bronze Age. The presence, in particular, of pottery and precious goods such as gold, copper, and ivory, found far from their place of production, attests to the exchange network which existed between Egypt, Asia Minor, the Greek mainland, and islands such as Crete, Cyprus, and the Cyclades. Trade lessened and perhaps almost disappeared when these civilizations declined, and during the so-called Dark Ages from the 11th to 8th centuries BCE international trade in the Mediterranean was principally carried out by the Phoenicians.

The earliest written sources of Homer and Hesiod attest to the existence of trade ( emporia) and merchants ( emporoi) from the 8th century BCE, although they often present the activity as unsuitable for the ruling and landed aristocracy. Nevertheless, international trade grew from 750 BCE, and contacts spread across the Mediterranean driven by social and political factors such as population movements, colonisation (especially in Magna Graecia), inter-state alliances, the spread of coinage, the gradual standardisation of measurements, warfare, and safer seas following the determination to eradicate piracy.

From 600 BCE trade was greatly facilitated by the construction of specialised merchant ships and the diolkos haulway across the isthmus of Corinth. Special permanent trading places ( emporia), where merchants of different nationalities met to trade, sprang up, for example, at Al Mina on the Orontes river (modern Turkey), Ischia-Pithekoussai (off the coast of modern Naples), Naucratis in Egypt, and Gravisca in Etruria. From the 5th century BCE, Athens' port of Piraeus became the most important trading centre in the Mediterranean and gained a reputation as the place to find any type of goods on the market.

Traded Goods

Goods which were traded within Greece between different city-states included:

cereals

wine

olives

figs

pulses

eels

cheese

honey

meat (especially from sheep and goats)

tools (e.g.: knives)

perfumes

fine pottery, especially Attic and Corinthian wares.

The most important trade exports were wine and olives, while cereals, spices, & precious metals Were Imported.

Fine Greek pottery was also in great demand abroad and examples have been found as far afield as the Atlantic coast of Africa. Other Greek exports included wine, especially from Aegean islands like Mende and Kos, bronze work, olives and olive oil (transported, like wine, in amphorae), emery from Delos, hides from Euboea, marble from Athens and Naxos, and ruddle (a type of waterproofing material for ships) from Keos.

The goods available at the market places ( agorai) of major urban centres which were imported from outside Greece included:

wheat

slaves from Egypt

grain from the Black Sea (especially via Byzantium)

salt fish from the Black Sea

wood (especially for shipbuilding) from Macedonia and Thrace

papyrus

textiles

luxury food such as spices (e.g.: pepper)

glass

metals such as iron, copper, tin, gold and silver.

Trade Incentives & Protection

Maritime loans enabled traders to pay for their cargoes and the loan did not have to be repaid if the ship failed to reach safely its port of destination. To compensate the lender for this risk, interest rates ( nautikos tokos) could be from 12.5 to 30% and the ship was often the security on the loan.

The involvement of the state in trade was relatively limited; however, a notable exception was grain. For example, so vital was it to feed Athens' large population and especially valuable in times of drought, trade in wheat was controlled and purchased by a special 'grain buyer' ( sitones). From c. 470 BCE the obstruction of the import of grain was prohibited, as was the re-exportation of it; for offenders the punishment was the death penalty. Market officials ( agoranomoi) ensured the quality of goods on sale in the markets and grain had its own supervisors, the sitophylakes, who regulated that prices and quantities were correct.

Besides taxes on the movement of goods (e.g.: road taxes or, at Chalkedon, a 10% transit charge on Black Sea traffic payable to Athens) and levies on imports and exports at ports, there were also measures taken to protect trade. For example, Athens taxed those citizens who contracted loans on grain cargo which did not deliver to Piraeus or those merchants who failed to unload a certain percentage of their cargo. Special maritime courts were established to tempt traders to choose Athens as their trading partner, and private banks could facilitate currency exchange and safeguard deposits. Similar trading incentives existed on Thasos, a major trading-centre and large exporter of high quality wine.

With the decline of the Greek city-states in the late Classical period, international trade moved elsewhere; nevertheless, many Greek cities would continue to be important trading centres in Hellenistic and Roman times, especially Athens and the free-trade ports of Delos and Rhodes.

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Trade was a fundamental aspect of the ancient Greek world and following territorial expansion, an increase in population movements, and innovations in transport, goods could be bought, sold, and exchanged in one part of the Mediterranean which had their origin in a completely different and far distant region.

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Peloponnesian War, or the Civil War between Sparta and Athens. The Aztecs had a civil war as well.

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The two most powerful city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta, went to war with each other from 431 to 405 B.C. The Peloponnesian War marked a significant power shift in ancient Greece, favoring Sparta, and also ushered in a period of regional decline that signaled the end of what is considered the Golden Age of Ancient Greece.

The Cause of the Peloponnesian War

The formation of the Delian League, or Athenian League, in 478 B.C. united several Greek city-states in a military alliance under Athens, ostensibly to guard against revenge attacks from the Persian Empire. In reality, the league also granted increased power and prestige to Athens. The Spartans, meanwhile, were part of the Peloponnesian League (550 BC- 366 B.C.) of city-states. It was only a matter of time before the two powerful leagues collided.

The Great Peloponnesian War, also called the First Peloponnesian War, was the first major scuffle between them. It became a 15-year conflict between Athens and Sparta and their allies. Peace was decreed by the signing of the Thirty Years Treaty in 445 B.C., effective until 437 B.C., when the Peloponnesian War began.

A civil war in the obscure country of Epidamnus led to the involvement of Sparta's ally, Corinth. When Sparta was brought in to be part of conflict negotiations, Corinth's longtime enemy Corcyra targeted Epidamnus and seized it in a naval battle. Corinth retreated to rebuild its fleet and plan retaliation.

Did you know? The Athenians experienced a major setback when a plague broke out in 430 B.C. Between one-third and two-thirds of the Athenian population died, including the prominent general Pericles.

The Peloponnesian War Begins

In 433 B.C. the tension continued to build and Corcyra officially sought Athens' support by arguing that conflict with Sparta was inevitable and Athens required an alliance with Corcyra to defend itself. The Athenian government debated the suggestion, but its leader Pericles suggested a defensive alliance with Corcya, sending a small number of ships to protect it against Corinthian forces.

All forces met at the Battle of Sybota, in which Corinth, with no support from Sparta, attacked and then retreated at the sight of Athenian ships. Athens, convinced it was about to enter war with Corinth, strengthened its military hold on its various territories in the region to prepare.

Sparta was hesitant to enter the war directly, but was eventually convinced by Corinth to do so, though this was not a popular decision among Sparta's other allies. A year passed before Sparta took aggressive action. During that time, Sparta sent three delegations to Athens to avoid war, offering proposals that could be viewed as a betrayal of Corinth. These efforts conflicted with Pericles' agenda and the Athenians rejected peace.

Athens vs. Sparta

The first 10 years of the conflict are known as "Archidamian War," after Spartan King Archidamus. The Spartan slogan for that period was "Freedom for the Greeks," and its stated aim was to liberate the states under Athenian rule by destroying its defenses and dismantling its structure.

As Spartan forces surrounded Athens in a siege, decimating the countryside and farmland, Pericles declined to engage against them near the city's walls, instead leading naval campaigns elsewhere. He returned to Athens in 430 B.C. as a plague ravaged the city, killing nearly two-thirds of the population. Pericles, following a political uprising that led to his censure, succumbed to the plague in 429 B.C., fracturing the Athenian leadership. Despite this major setback for the Athenians, the Spartans saw only mixed success in their war efforts, and some major losses in western Greece and at sea.

The Peace of Nicias

In 423 B.C., both sides signed a treaty known as the Peace of Nicias, named for the Athenian general who engineered it. Meant to last 50 years, it barely survived eight, undermined by conflict and rebellion brought on by various allies.

Second Phase of War

War reignited decisively around 415 B.C. when Athens received a call to help allies in Sicily against invaders from Syracuse, where an Athenian official defected to Sparta, convincing them that Athens was planning to conquer Italy. Sparta sided with Syracuse and defeated the Athenians in a major sea battle.

Who Won the Peloponnesian War?

Athens did not crumble as expected, winning a string of naval victories against Sparta, which sought monetary and weapons support from the Persian Empire. Under the Spartan general Lysander, the war raged for another decade. By in 405 B.C. Lysander decimated the Athenian fleet in battle and then held Athens under siege, forcing it to surrender to Sparta in 404 B.C.

Impact of the Peloponnesian War

The Peloponnesian War marked the end of the Golden Age of Greece, a change in styles of warfare and the fall of Athens, once the strongest city-state in Greece. The balance in power in Greece was shifted when Athens was absorbed into the Spartan Empire. It continued to exist under a series of tyrants and then a democracy. Athens lost its dominance in the region to Sparta until both were conquered less than a century later and made part of the kingdom of Macedon.

Sources

The Peloponnesian War by Nigel Bagnall, published by St Martins Press, 2004.

The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan, published by Viking Penguin, 2003.

Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times by Thomas R. Martin, published by Yale University Press, 1996.

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The two most powerful city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta, went to war with each other from 431 to 405 B.C. The Peloponnesian War marked a significant power shift in ancient Greece, favoring Sparta, and also ushered in a period of regional decline that signaled the end of what is considered the Golden Age of Ancient Greece.

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Roman Invasion of "Greece" (annotation: link to article and link to video)

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Oxford Academic (Oxford University Press)

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How did the Romans conquer classical Greece?

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When the Aztec civilization flourished. The Aztec warriors where able to dominate neighboring states which helped them impose Aztec ideas and religion across Mexico.
https://www.ancient.eu/Aztec_Civilization/

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Fundraiser: Mesopotamia Teaching Materials

Please help us create teaching materials on Mesopotamia (including several complete lessons with worksheets, activities, answers, essay questions, and more), which will be free to download for teachers all over the world.

Video

The Aztec army was highly organized and featured an elaborate career path to advance up the ranks. Today we will be taking a look at what it took to rise to the top as a Jaguar warrior and beyond!

License

Original video by Invicta. Embedded by Arienne King, published on 04 October 2019. Please check the original source(s) for copyright information. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.

The video and its description text are provided by Youtube. This website claims no authorship of this content; we are republishing it for educational purposes.

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Please help us create teaching materials on Mesopotamia (including several complete lessons with worksheets, activities, answers, essay questions, and more), which will be free to download for teachers all over the world. The Aztec army was highly organized and featured an elaborate career path to advance up the ranks.

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The Aztecs spoke Nahuatl which is branched from the Spanish language that most of the people spoke in Mexico at the time.
https://www.ancient.eu/Aztec_Civilization/

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Small empires had formed in Aztec resulting in alliances and war. A tripe alliance formed in between Tenochititlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. They came together and established the capital of the Aztecs.
https://www.ancient.eu/Aztec_Civilization/

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Was when the Aztecs and Texcoco war happened. This resulted in the Tenochtitlan alliance which established itself as the capital of the Aztec empire. https://www.ancient.eu/Aztec_Civilization/

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The New fire ceremony was created where they would participate in human sacrifice.
https://www.ancient.eu/Aztec_Civilization/

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The Aztecs got captured by a nearby city which was good for them because it was deemed a "trade city" which started off the trade route for the Aztecs.
https://www.livescience.com/34660-tenochtitlan.html

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When the Aztecs finished building a 12 foot  carved stone that they used to tell time. This is why we have a complex calendar system today.
https://www.classzone.com/net_explorations/U4/U4_article3.cfm#:~:text=In%20what%20other%20way%20did,folded%20to%20form%20a%20book.

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The Aztecs celebrated their religion through pottery and archaeologists where able to trace some of their most famous pottery all the way back to 1490! https://www.historycrunch.com/aztec-art.html#/

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The spanish conquered the Aztects and Cuauhtemoc reigns as the new leader. https://www.ancient.eu/Aztec_Civilization/