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The Battle of Greece was an important World War II battle which occurred on the Greek mainland and in southern Albania. The battle was fought between the Allies (Greece and the British Commonwealth) and the Axis (Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy) forces. The battle of Greece began on October 28, 1940, when Fascist Italy invaded Greece, and ended with the fall of Kalamata in the Peloponnese. With the Battle of Crete and several naval actions it is considered part of the wider Aegean component of the Balkans Campaign of World War II.
Fascist Italy invaded Greece on October 28, 1940, from Italian-occupied Albania. The Greek army however, proved to be an able opponent, counterattacked and forced the Italians to retreat. By mid-December the Greeks occupied one quarter of Albania, tying down 530,000 Italian troops. In March 1941 a major Italian counterattack failed, humiliating Italian military pretensions.
On April 6, 1941, Nazi Germany reluctantly invaded Greece through Bulgaria to secure its southern flank. The Greek troops fought back with great tenacity but the Greek army was vastly outnumbered and outgunned, and it collapsed. Athens fell on April 27 and the British Commonwealth managed to evacuate nearly 50,000 troops. The Battle of Greece, however, is credited by some historians, such as John Keegan, as being "decisive in determining the future course of the Second World War" as the invasion of the area made it impossible for Hitler and Stalin to come to an agreement on their respective spheres of influence. (Read more...)
The Cretan War (205 BC–200 BC) was fought by King Philip V of Macedon, the Aetolian League, several Cretan cities (of which Olous and Hierapytna were the most important) and Spartan pirates against the forces of Rhodes and later Attalus I of Pergamum, Byzantium, Cyzicus, Athens and Knossos.
The Macedonians had just concluded the First Macedonian War and Philip, seeing his chance to defeat Rhodes, formed an alliance with Aetolian and Spartan pirates who began raiding Rhodian ships. Philip also formed an alliance with several important Cretan cities, such as Hierapynta and Olous. With the Rhodian fleet and economy suffering from the depredations of the pirates, Philip believed his chance to crush Rhodes was at hand. To help achieve his goal, he formed an alliance with the King of the Seleucid Empire, Antiochus the Great, against Ptolemy V of Egypt (the Seleucid Empire and Egypt were the other two Diadochi states). Philip began attacking the lands of Ptolemy and Rhodes's allies in Thrace and around the Sea of Marmara.
In 202, Rhodes and her allies Pergamum, Cyzicus, and Byzantium combined their fleets and defeated Philip at the Battle of Chios. Just a few months later, Philip's fleet defeated the Rhodians at Lade. While Philip was plundering Pergamese territory and attacking cities in Caria, Attalus I of Pergamum went to Athens to try to create a diversion. He succeeded in securing an alliance with the Athenians, who immediately declared war on the Macedonians. The King of Macedon could not remain inactive; he assailed Athens with his navy and with some infantry. The Romans warned him, however, to withdraw or face war with Rome. After suffering a defeat at the hands of the Rhodian and Pergamese fleets, Philip withdrew, but not before attacking the city of Abydos on the Hellespont. Abydos fell after a long siege and most of its inhabitants committed suicide. Philip rejected the Roman ultimatum to stop attacking Greek states and the Romans declared war on Macedon. This left the Cretan cities with no major allies, and the largest city of Crete, Knossos, joined the Rhodians. Faced with this combination, both Hierapynta and Olous surrendered and were forced to sign a treaty favourable to Rhodes and Knossos. (Read more...)
The Corinthian War was an ancient Greek conflict lasting from 395 BC until 387 BC, pitting Sparta against a coalition of four allied states; Thebes, Athens, Corinth, and Argos; which were initially backed by Persia. The immediate cause of the war was a local conflict in northwest Greece in which both Thebes and Sparta intervened. The deeper cause was hostility towards Sparta provoked by that city's unilateral domination of Greek politics in the nine years after the end of the Peloponnesian War.
The war was fought on two fronts, on land near Corinth and Thebes and at sea in the Aegean. On land, the Spartans achieved several early successes in major battles, but were unable to capitalize on their advantage, and the fighting soon became stalemated. At sea, the Spartan fleet was decisively defeated by a Persian fleet early in the war, an event that effectively ended Sparta's attempts to become a naval power. Taking advantage of this fact, Athens launched several naval campaigns in the later years of the war, recapturing a number of islands that had been part of the original Athenian Empire during the 5th century BC.
Alarmed by these Athenian successes, the Persians stopped backing the allies and began supporting Sparta. This defection forced the allies to seek peace. The Peace of Antalcidas, commonly known as the King's Peace, was signed in 387 BC, ending the war. This treaty declared that Persia would control all of Ionia, and that all other Greek cities would be independent. Sparta was to be the guardian of the peace, with the power to enforce its clauses. The effects of the war, therefore, were to establish Persia's ability to interfere successfully in Greek politics and to affirm Sparta's hegemonic position in the Greek political system. (Read more...)
The Greco-Persian Wars or Persian Wars or Medic Wars were a series of conflicts between several Greek city-states and the Persian Empire that started about 500 BC and lasted until 448 BC. The expression "Persian Wars" usually refers to either or both of the two Persian invasions of the Greek mainland in 490 BC and in 480-479 BC; in both cases, the allied Greeks successfully defeated the invasions. Notably not all Greeks fought against the Persians, some were neutral and others were allied with Persia.
What is known today of this conflict is derived primarily from Greek sources (mainly Herodotus), and to a lesser extent some Roman writings. The Persians enter Greek history after they conquered the Lydians and thus the Greek city-states of Ionia that were previously under the Lydians. When in 499 BC an attempt to help restore the aristocrats in Naxos failed, the Ionians rebelled against the Persians. Token aid was sent from the Greek mainland which did not change the final outcome of Persian victory. Mardonius campaigned in 492 BC in Thrace to consolidate Persian power but was stopped by a storm. An amphibious force under Datis and Artaphernes razed Eretria but was defeated in Marathon a few days later by general Miltiades of Athens. Ten years later, in 480 BC, after massive preparation king Xerxes led a huge force to subjugate Greece. A small force under King Leonidas of Sparta caused disproportionate casualties at the Battle of Thermopylae but was defeated on the third day. Athens was sacked and razed by the orders of Xerxes but the Persian fleet was defeated in the battle of Salamis. Xerxes left Mardonius with part of the original force to finish the job and fled to Asia Minor. The next year Mardonius was defeated and killed in the battle of Plataea and the Persian fleet remnant in the battle of Mycale. The Greek fleet sailed to the Hellespont where the Athenians and the newly rebelled Ionians besieged Sestus.
In the next year the Spartans under Pausanias campaigned for the last time in Byzantium which fell after a siege. Pausanias was recalled and the Athenians continued alone. They set up the Delian League to continue the fight. The Persians were first driven from Thrace and then, after the battle of Eurymedon from Ionia. The war moved to Cyprus and then Egypt after it revolted against the Persians. Sparta became alarmed with the power of Athens and declared war. Athens was eventually defeated in Egypt, came to peace with Sparta and signed the Peace of Callias with Persia. With that peace Cyprus returned to Persia which was forced out of the Aegean. The war ended but the Greeks and the Persians continued to meddle in each other's affairs until Persia was conquered by Alexander the Great. (Read more...)
The Roman-Spartan War or Laconian War of 195 BC was fought between the Greek city-state of Sparta and a coalition comprised of Rome, the Achean League, Pergamum, Rhodes, and Macedon.
During the Second Macedonian War (200–196 BC), Macedon had given Sparta control over Argos, an important city on the Aegean coast of Peloponnese. Sparta's continued occupation of Argos at the end of war was used as a pretext for Rome and its allies to declare war. The anti-Spartan coalition laid siege to Argos, captured the Spartan naval base at Gythium, and soon invested and besieged Sparta itself. Eventually, negotiations led to peace on Rome's terms, under which Argos and the coastal towns of Laconia were freed from Spartan rule and the Spartans were compelled to pay a war indemnity to Rome over the next eight years. Argos joined the Achaean League, and the Laconian towns were placed under Achaean protection.
As a result of the war, Sparta lost its position as a major power in Greece. All consequent Spartan attempts to recover the losses failed and Nabis, the last sovereign ruler, was eventually murdered. Soon after, Sparta was forcibly made a member of its former rival, the Achaean League, ending several centuries of fierce political independence.
The Battle of Marathon (490 BC) was the culmination of King Darius I of Persia's first major attempt to conquer the remainder of the Greeks and incorporate it into the Persian Empire, to secure the weakest portion of his Western border. Most of what is known of this battle comes from Herodotus.
Darius first sent Mardonius, in 492 BC, via a land route to Europe to strengthen Persia's hold of Thrace and Macedon, which had been weakened by the Ionian Revolt. Although successful, most of this force perished in a storm off Mount Athos, and the remainder was forced to return to Asia, losing men along the way. In 490 BC, Datis and Artaphernes were sent in a maritime operation to subjugate the Cyclades islands in the central Aegean and punish Eretria and Athens for their assistance in the Ionian revolt. Eretria was besieged and fell; then the fleet landed in Marathon bay. There they were defeated by a small force of Athenian and Plataean hoplites, despite their numerical advantage. The long run of the messenger who conveyed news of the victory to Athens became the inspiration for the marathon race, which was first staged at the 1896 Olympic Games. (Read more...)
