These maps originally appeared in the December 1999 issue of National Geographic.
The City of
Troy
The Spread of Greek
Culture
Rebellion and
Invasion
Alexander's Empire
The site of Troy was discovered and excavated in the 1870's by Heinrich Schliemann in Turkey near the Dardanelles. In the 1990's, archaeologists discovered several wooden palisades and a ten-foot wide trench encircling the lower town. The trench was probably used to stop on-rushing chariots and increased by almost ten times the known size of Troy. According to current estimates, the city had about 6000 inhabitants, nothing like the 50,000 that Homer's account implies.
The Greeks were voracious for land. Greek city states established independent colonies abroad. The Greeks went west, settling in Italy, France, and Spain. Looking to the east, they colonized the northern Aegean and the Black Sea. By 600 BC. hundreds of Greek cities ringed the Mediterranean and Black Seas. With colonization came far-flung trade for luxury goods, grains, and raw materials. Trade bred a wealthy middle class. The clamor of that new class for political power contributed to Greece's innovations in government, from tyranny to democracy. Exposure to foreign lands enriched the Greeks, who adapted an alphabet from Phoenicia and exotic art forms from Asia Minor. But more prevalent was the diffusion of Greek culture. Doric columns, Corinthian vases, and lyric verse spread to distant shores. As Greeks started to glorify their own culture with Panhellenic religious festivals and athletic games, they began to see themselves as superior to "barbarians"-anyone who did not speak Greek.
"Barbarians," in this case the Persians, soon put Greek power to the test. In 499 B.C. Ionian Greek cities in Asia Minor rebelled against their Persian masters. Athens and Eretria aided the uprising, and Greeks burned Sardis, a key Persian capital. Persia's king, Darius I, retaliated by quashing the revolt and sacking Miletos, a prized Greek city. The gods appeared to favor Greece in 492 when an invading Persian fleet was swamped in a storm off Mount Athos. But by 490 Darius's forces had made it to Marathon. Though heavily outnumbered, Athenian troops defeated the Persian army at Marathon in ancient Greece's most famous battle. Persia withdrew for ten years, and the Athenians built a navy of maneuverable wooden battleships. War resumed in 480 under Darius's son Xerxes. He stormed Artemisium and Thermopylae, then burned the Acropolis in Athens. But at Salamis the Athenian navy sank 200 of Xerxes' ships, leaving a sea strewn with wrecks and slaughtered men. After victories at Plataea and Mycale, Greek allies, led by Sparta and Athens, defied impossible odds and repelled the massive Persian Empire. Flush with victory, Athens embarked on a path of brilliance that changed the Western world.
Philip II turned a cluster of independent Macedonian tribes and cities into a united kingdom, then led its army south. By 338 B.C. he ruled Greece. That was not enough for his son. Age 20 when he succeeded his father in 336, Alexander claimed bloodlines to Greek heroes Heracles and Achilles, and he aspired to equal their feats. In 334 he led more than 30,000 men across the Hellespont into Persia. With military cunning and charisma he won battles from the Granicus River to Tyre, then conquered Egypt, thus controlling the eastern Mediterranean. In 331 he routed Persia's King Darius III at Gaugamela, then burned the royal palaces at Persepolis, partly in revenge for Persia's torching of the Acropolis 150 years earlier. Proclaimed "Lord of Asia," he braved deserts, mountains, and monsoons to cross the Hindu Kush into unfamiliar land. At the Hyphasis River, weary of war, his army rebelled. Returning west, Alexander died of a fever at Babylon in 323. He was 32. His empire soon split into successor kingdoms. The Ptolemies ruled in Egypt, the Seleucids in the East, and the Antigonids in Greece. Those kingdoms perpetuated Hellenistic culture for 300 years, ensuring survival of a Greek legacy.