Outline Of Greek History

Prehistory
Mycenaean Greece (c. 1600 BC c. 1100 BC) is a cultural period of Bronze Age, taking its name from the archaeological site of Mycenae in the southern Greece, which was one of the major centers of Greek civilization, a military stronghold ,the head of the Greek world.

Prehistory
The last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece is the historical setting of much ancient Greek literature and myth, including the epics of Homer.

Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is the civilization belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC up to the end of antiquity and beginning of the Early Middle Ages. At the center of this time period is Classical Greece, which flourished during the 5th to 4th centuries BC, at first under the Athenian leadership successfully repelling the military threat of Persian invasion.

Ancient Greece
The Athenian Golden Age ends with the defeat of Athens at the hands of Sparta in the Peloponnesian War in 404 BC. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the western end of the Mediterranean Sea.

Classical Greek culture had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean region and Europe .Classical Greece is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of Western civilization

Roman Greece

Roman Greece is the period of Greek history ,following the Roman victory over the Corinthians at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC until the reestablishment of the city of Byzantium and the naming of the city Constantinople by the Emperor Constantine as the capital of the Roman Empire in 330 AD.

Greece was the key eastern province of the Roman Empire, as the Roman culture had long been in fact Greco-Roman. The Greek language served as a lingua franca in the East and in Italy, and many Greek intellectuals would perform most of their work in Rome.Several emperors contributed new buildings to Greek cities, especially in the Athenian agora

The epics of Homer inspired the Aeneid of Virgil, and authors wrote using Greek style. Most Roman emperors tended to be philhellenic.

At the same time Greece and much of the rest of the Roman east came under the influence of Early Christianity. The apostle Paul of Tarsus had preached in Corinth and Athens, and Greece soon became one of the most highly Christianized areas of the empire. During the Byzantine period many standards were set for the Orthodox Church

Byzantium
Greece remained part of the eastern half of the Empire, and eventually became the center of the remaining Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire. Between the 4th and 7th centuries AD, Greece may have been one of the most economically active regions in the eastern Mediterranean.

For one thousand years the Byzantine Empire was one of the most powerful military, economic and cultural forces throughout Europe,meeting its downfall in 1204 when Constantinople was seized by the Crusaders from the west and the spoils divided up amongst the victors. Parts of Greece were given away to western leaders while strategic coastal areas were taken over by the trading Venetians.

The restoration of the Byzantine Empire was attempted in 1262 only to be dismantled again by the Turks culminating in its complete destruction in 1453. This period in Greek history saw its absorption into the Ottoman Empire, beginning with the capture of Constantinople in 1453.

Ottoman
The Ottoman empire went on to flourish in Greece for four hundred years and it was not until the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829) that it was finally ousted.

Independence
Greece was the first country to secure its independence from the Turkish occupation. After a long and bloody conflict, in 1830 an independent Greek kingdom was formed which was finally ratified by the Treaty of Constantinople in July 1832.

This kingdom however did not cover all of modern day Greece. The struggle for liberation of all the regions of Greek speaking people continued right up to the end of the Second World War.

World War II
Despite the country's numerically small and illequipped armed forces, Greece made a decisive contribution to the Allied efforts in World War II. At the start of the war Greece sided with the Allies and refused to give in to Italian demands. Italy invaded Greece by way of Albania on 28 October 1940, but Greek troops repelled the invaders after a bitter struggle.

To secure his strategic southern flank, German dictator Adolf Hitler reluctantly stepped in and launched the Battle of Crete. It is argued that if the German invasion of the Soviet Union had started on 20 May 1941 instead of 22 June 1941, the Nazi assault against the Soviet Union might have succeeded. The heavy losses of German paratroopers led the Germans to launch no further large-scale air-invasions.

Resistance

During these years,thousands of Greeks died in direct combat, in concentration camps, or of starvation. The occupiers murdered the greater part of the Jewish community despite efforts by the Greek Orthodox Church and many other Christian Greeks to shelter the Jews. The economy of Greece was devastated. The German occupation of Greece ended in October 1944.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Greece developed rapidly.

Dictatorship
In 1967 the Greek military overthrew the government while the military officers(such as Papadopoulos or Patakos) put themselves violently in charge of the country for 7 years. From 1967 until 1974 the Greeks were forbidden to meet after 9.00 pm,to listen to the radio, to walk in the street without a partner, to go against the military junta as it was called, through any ways because that would mean their imprisonment or death and were forced not to speak about social and political changes as they would certainly be imprisoned to say the least.

The dictatorship came to an end when the students of the Polytechnic School revolted and among them the whole country upraised, though unfortunately a lot of young people were murdered during the military attacks.

On 23 July 1974 the Greek military junta collapsed for one more reason : the events in Cyprus.The Turks invaded Cyprus and since then the island has been devided and the demographic structure of Cyprus has changed illegally with violation of human rights

Since 1975, Greece has been a presidential parliamentary republic.

Modern Greece
On 1 January 1981, Greece became the 10th member of the European Community (now the European Union).

The Athens Olympics of 2004 was one of the best Olympics ever made,as the Games returned to Greece, their birthplace .

While our eurozone peers had expressed their concern about the state of the Greek economy for years, it wasn't until the global financial crisis hit that the depth of the problem was revealed.

After 15 consecutive years of economic growth, Greece entered recession in 2009. Greece's economy has been in a mostly downward spiral since the country joined the euro in 2001

Greek government has passed severe austerity measures in order to get out of the crisis and thousands of Greek "Indignants" have protested outside parliament for more than 30 days

Although there is the fear of our countrys bankrupcy ,we strongly believe that Greece will finally reborn from its ashes and go ahead .

Created by : Panagiotis Garavelas Kostas Makris Music by : Nikos Skalkottas