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216-425: Macedonia ( / ˌ m æ s ɪ ˈ d oʊ n i ə / MASS -ih- DOH -nee-ə ; Greek : Μακεδονία , romanized :  Makedonía ), also called Macedon ( / ˈ m æ s ɪ d ɒ n / MASS -ih-don ), was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece , which later became the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece . The kingdom was founded and initially ruled by

432-577: A Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered

648-768: A Macedonian princess, a gift from Seleucus to formalize an alliance. In a return gesture, Chandragupta sent 500 war elephants , a military asset which would play a decisive role at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC. In addition to this treaty, Seleucus dispatched an ambassador, Megasthenes , to Chandragupta, and later Deimakos to his son Bindusara , at the Mauryan court at Pataliputra (modern Patna in Bihar state ). Megasthenes wrote detailed descriptions of India and Chandragupta's reign, which have been partly preserved to us through Diodorus Siculus . Later Ptolemy II Philadelphus ,

864-831: A rump state in Syria after a civil war, until their conquest by Tigranes the Great of Armenia in 83 BC, and ultimate overthrow by the Roman general Pompey in 63 BC. Contemporary sources, such as a loyalist decree honoring Antiochus I from Ilium , in Greek language define the Seleucid state both as an empire ( ἀρχή , archḗ ) and as a kingdom ( βασιλεία , basileía ). Similarly, Seleucid rulers were described as kings in Babylonia. The rulers did not describe themselves as being of any particular territory or people, but starting from

1080-565: A Macedonian garrison from Nicaea (near Thermopylae) , leading Thebes to join Athens, Megara , Corinth, Achaea , and Euboea in a final confrontation against Macedonia at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338   BC. After the Macedonian victory at Chaeronea, Philip   II installed an oligarchy in Thebes, yet was lenient toward Athens, wishing to utilize their navy in a planned invasion of

1296-599: A Thracian city in what is now Bulgaria and renamed it Philippopolis (modern Plovdiv ). War broke out with Athens in 340   BC while Philip   II was engaged in two ultimately unsuccessful sieges of Perinthus and Byzantion , followed by a successful campaign against the Scythians along the Danube and Macedonia's involvement in the Fourth Sacred War against Amphissa in 339   BC. Thebes ejected

1512-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,

1728-485: A brother and cousin of Perdiccas   II who had rebelled against him. Thus, two separate wars were fought against Athens between 433 and 431   BC. The Macedonian king retaliated by promoting the rebellion of Athens' allies in Chalcidice and subsequently won over the strategic city of Potidaea . After capturing the Macedonian cities Therma and Beroea , Athens besieged Potidaea but failed to overcome it; Therma

1944-522: A coalition against Perdiccas in a civil war initiated by Ptolemy's seizure of the hearse of Alexander the Great . Perdiccas was assassinated in 321   BC by his own officers during a failed campaign in Egypt against Ptolemy, where his march along the Nile River resulted in the drowning of 2,000 of his men. Although Eumenes of Cardia managed to kill Craterus in battle, this had little to no effect on

2160-508: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on

2376-492: A high degree of autonomy and even had democratic governments with popular assemblies . The name Macedonia ( Greek : Μακεδονία , Makedonía ) comes from the ethnonym Μακεδόνες ( Makedónes ), which itself is derived from the ancient Greek adjective μακεδνός ( makednós ), meaning "tall, slim", also the name of a people related to the Dorians ( Herodotus ), and possibly descriptive of Ancient Macedonians . It

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2592-681: A large degree of autonomy and was never made a satrapy (i.e. province) of the Achaemenid Empire, it was expected to provide troops for the Achaemenid army . Alexander   I provided Macedonian military support to Xerxes I ( r.  486–465 BC ) during the Second Persian invasion of Greece in 480–479 BC, and Macedonian soldiers fought on the side of the Persians at the 479   BC Battle of Platea . Following

2808-590: A lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and

3024-400: A limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in the nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by

3240-541: A marriage contract, and received in return five hundred elephants. Other territories ceded before Seleucus' death were Gedrosia in the south-east of the Iranian plateau, and, to the north of this, Arachosia on the west bank of the Indus River . Following his and Lysimachus ' decisive victory over Antigonus at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, Seleucus took control over eastern Anatolia and northern Syria . In

3456-459: A mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and a fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes ,

3672-524: A new regent (since Philip   III was considered mentally unstable), in effect bypassing the council of the army as well. Forming an alliance with Ptolemy, Antigonus, and Lysimachus , Cassander had his officer Nicanor capture the Munichia fortress of Athens' port town Piraeus in defiance of Polyperchon's decree that Greek cities should be free of Macedonian garrisons, sparking the Second War of

3888-623: A possible second wife Gygaea: Archelaus, Arrhidaeus, and Menelaus . Philip   II had Archelaus put to death in 359   BC, while Philip   II's other two half brothers fled to Olynthos, serving as a casus belli for the Olynthian War (349–348   BC) against the Chalcidian League. While Athens was preoccupied with the Social War (357–355 BC) , Philip   II retook Amphipolis from them in 357   BC and

4104-558: A pro-Athenian democracy , the Athenian navy was able to form a blockade against Macedonian seaports and invade Chalcidice in 417   BC. Perdiccas   II sued for peace in 414   BC, forming an alliance with Athens that was continued by his son and successor Archelaus   I ( r.  413–399 BC ). Athens then provided naval support to Archelaus   I in the 410   BC Macedonian siege of Pydna , in exchange for timber and naval equipment. Although Archelaus I

4320-550: A regular basis, with occasional intervention from Ptolemaic Egypt and other outside powers. The Seleucids existed solely because no other nation wished to absorb them—seeing as they constituted a useful buffer between their other neighbours. In the wars in Anatolia between Mithridates VI of Pontus and Sulla of Rome, the Seleucids were largely left alone by both major combatants. Mithridates' ambitious son-in-law, Tigranes

4536-466: A reply to lay before the senate." For a few moments he hesitated, astounded at such a peremptory order, and at last replied, "I will do what the senate thinks right." He then chose to withdraw rather than set the empire to war with Rome again. On his return journey, according to Josephus , he made an expedition to Judea , took Jerusalem by force, slew a great many who had favored Ptolemy , sent his soldiers to plunder them without mercy. He also spoiled

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4752-722: A resurgent Rome should seek revenge against either Macedonia or Carthage. Although the Macedonians were perhaps only interested in safeguarding their newly conquered territories in Illyria, the Romans were nevertheless able to thwart whatever grand ambitions Philip   V had for the Adriatic region during the First Macedonian War (214–205   BC). In 214   BC, Rome positioned a naval fleet at Oricus , which

4968-403: A rump Seleucid kingdom was restored under Antiochus XIII . Even so, civil wars could not be prevented, as another Seleucid, Philip II , contested rule with Antiochus. After the Roman conquest of Pontus, the Romans became increasingly alarmed at the constant source of instability in Syria under the Seleucids. Once Mithridates was defeated by Pompey in 63 BC, Pompey set about the task of remaking

5184-463: A series of religious persecutions. This cumulated in a localized revolt in Jerusalem. Antiochus IV's violent retaking of the city and the banning of traditional Judean practices led to the eventual loss of control of Judea by the Seleucid government, paving the way for the rise of an independent Hasmonean kingdom . As with the other major Hellenistic armies , the Seleucid army fought primarily in

5400-651: A series of speeches by Demosthenes known as the Olynthiacs , were unsuccessful in persuading their allies to counterattack and in 346   BC concluded a treaty with Macedonia known as the Peace of Philocrates . The treaty stipulated that Athens would relinquish claims to Macedonian coastal territories, the Chalcidice, and Amphipolis in return for the release of the enslaved Athenians as well as guarantees that Philip   II would not attack Athenian settlements in

5616-642: A shortage of provisions in winter. In 424 BC, Arrhabaeus , a local ruler of Lynkestis in Upper Macedonia, rebelled against his overlord Perdiccas, and the Spartans agreed to help in putting down the revolt. At the Battle of Lyncestis the Macedonians panicked and fled before the fighting began, enraging the Spartan general Brasidas , whose soldiers looted the unattended Macedonian baggage train . Perdiccas then changed sides and supported Athens, and he

5832-558: A small kingdom outside of the area dominated by the great city-states of Athens , Sparta and Thebes , and briefly subordinate to Achaemenid Persia . During the reign of the Argead king Philip   II (359–336 BC), Macedonia subdued mainland Greece and the Thracian Odrysian kingdom through conquest and diplomacy. With a reformed army containing phalanxes wielding the sarissa pike, Philip   II defeated

6048-707: A staged banquet of reconciliation between Persians and Macedonians. Alexander perhaps undercut his own rule by demonstrating signs of megalomania . While utilizing effective propaganda such as the cutting of the Gordian Knot , he also attempted to portray himself as a living god and son of Zeus following his visit to the oracle at Siwah in the Libyan Desert (in modern-day Egypt) in 331   BC. His attempt in 327   BC to have his men prostrate before him in Bactra in an act of proskynesis borrowed from

6264-460: A state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in the early 19th century that

6480-624: A successful war against the old enemy, Ptolemaic Egypt , which met with initial success as the Seleucids defeated and drove the Egyptian army back to Alexandria itself. As the king planned on how to conclude the war, he was informed that Roman commissioners, led by the Proconsul Gaius Popillius Laenas , were near and requesting a meeting with the Seleucid king. Antiochus agreed, but when they met and Antiochus held out his hand in friendship, Popilius placed in his hand

6696-468: A tiny minority of the overall population, these Greeks were the backbone of the empire: loyal and committed to a cause that gave them vast territory to rule, they overwhelmingly served in the military and government. Unlike Ptolemaic Egypt , Greeks in the Seleucid Empire seem to rarely have engaged in mixed marriages with non-Greeks; they kept to their own cities. The various non-Greek peoples of

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6912-577: Is most likely cognate with the adjective μακρός ( makrós ), meaning "long" or "tall" in Ancient Greek . The name is believed to have originally meant either "highlanders", "the tall ones", or "high grown men". Linguist Robert S. P. Beekes claims that both terms are of Pre-Greek substrate origin and cannot be explained in terms of Indo-European morphology, however Filip De Decker rejects Beekesʼ arguments as insufficient. The Classical Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides reported

7128-683: Is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek

7344-485: Is now Afghanistan and Pakistan , therefore including a diverse array of cultures and ethnic groups. Greeks , Assyrians , Armenians , Georgians , Persians , Medes , Mesopotamians, Jews , and more all lived within its bounds. The immense size of the empire gave the Seleucid rulers a difficult balancing act to maintain order, resulting in a mixture of concessions to local cultures to maintain their own practices while also firmly controlling and unifying local elites under

7560-904: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Seleucid Empire The Seleucid Empire ( / s ɪ ˈ lj uː s ɪ d / )

7776-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,

7992-632: Is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near the Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in

8208-503: The tagus (supreme Thessalian military leader) Alexander of Pherae , capturing the city of Larissa . The Thessalians, desiring to remove both Alexander   II and Alexander of Pherae as their overlords , appealed to Pelopidas of Thebes for aid; he succeeded in recapturing Larissa and, in the peace agreement arranged with Macedonia, received aristocratic hostages including Alexander   II's brother and future king Philip   II ( r.  359–336 BC ). When Alexander

8424-535: The Aegean Sea . He improved Macedonia's currency by minting coins with a higher silver content as well as issuing separate copper coinage . His royal court attracted the presence of well-known intellectuals such as the Athenian playwright Euripides . When Archelaus   I was assassinated (perhaps following a homosexual love affair with royal pages at his court), the kingdom was plunged into chaos, in an era lasting from 399 to 393   BC that included

8640-601: The Balkans , the Persian general Megabazus used diplomacy to convince Amyntas   I to submit as a vassal of the Achaemenid Empire , ushering in the period of Achaemenid Macedonia . Achaemenid Persian hegemony over Macedonia was briefly interrupted by the Ionian Revolt (499–493   BC), yet the Persian general Mardonius brought it back under Achaemenid suzerainty . Although Macedonia enjoyed

8856-613: The Battle of Cynoscephalae . Rome then ratified a treaty that forced Macedonia to relinquish control of much of its Greek possessions outside of Macedonia proper, if only to act as a buffer against Illyrian and Thracian incursions into Greece. Although some Greeks suspected Roman intentions of supplanting Macedonia as the new hegemonic power in Greece, Flaminius announced at the Isthmian Games of 196   BC that Rome intended to preserve Greek liberty by leaving behind no garrisons and by not exacting tribute of any kind. His promise

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9072-648: The Battle of Mount Labus and Battle of the Arius and besieged the Bactrian capital . He even emulated Seleucus with an expedition into India where he met with King Sophagasenus ( Sanskrit : Subhagasena ) receiving war elephants, perhaps in accordance of the existing treaty and alliance set after the Seleucid-Mauryan War. Actual translation of Polybius 11.34 (No other source except Polybius makes any reference to Sophagasenus): He [Antiochus] crossed

9288-421: The Battle of Sellasia in 222   BC. Sparta was occupied by a foreign power for the first time in its history, restoring Macedonia's position as the leading power in Greece. Antigonus died a year later, perhaps from tuberculosis , leaving behind a strong Hellenistic kingdom for his successor Philip   V. Philip V of Macedon ( r.  221–179 BC ) faced immediate challenges to his authority by

9504-562: The British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of the membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in

9720-574: The Cadmea , Alexander left the Illyrian front and marched to Thebes, which he placed under siege . After breaching the walls, Alexander's forces killed 6,000 Thebans, took 30,000 inhabitants as prisoners of war , and burned the city to the ground as a warning that convinced all other Greek states except Sparta not to challenge Alexander again. Throughout his military career, Alexander won every battle that he personally commanded. His first victory against

9936-639: The Danube , forcing their surrender on Peuce Island . Shortly thereafter, the Illyrian chieftain Cleitus , son of Bardylis , threatened to attack Macedonia with the aid of Glaucias , king of the Taulantii , but Alexander took the initiative and besieged the Illyrians at Pelion (in modern Albania ). When Thebes had once again revolted from the League of Corinth and was besieging the Macedonian garrison in

10152-657: The European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute the objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek

10368-619: The Fifth Syrian War , the Seleucids ousted Ptolemy V from control of Coele-Syria . The Battle of Panium (200 BC) definitively transferred these holdings from the Ptolemies to the Seleucids. Antiochus appeared, at the least, to have restored the Seleucid Kingdom to glory. Following the defeat of his erstwhile ally Philip by Rome in 197 BC, Antiochus saw the opportunity for expansion into Greece itself. Encouraged by

10584-524: The Greek victory at Salamis in 480   BC, Alexander   I was employed as an Achaemenid diplomat to propose a peace treaty and alliance with Athens , an offer that was rejected. Soon afterwards, the Achaemenid forces were forced to withdraw from mainland Europe , marking the end of Persian control over Macedonia. Although initially a Persian vassal, Alexander   I of Macedon fostered friendly diplomatic relations with his former Greek enemies,

10800-703: The Indian ruler Chandragupta of the Maurya Empire in 305 BC led to the cession of vast territory west of the Indus and a political alliance. In the early second century BC, Antiochus III the Great attempted to project Seleucid power and authority into Hellenistic Greece , but his attempts were thwarted by the Roman Republic and its Greek allies. The Seleucids were forced to pay costly war reparations and had to relinquish territorial claims west of

11016-456: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as

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11232-406: The Indus River . For a brief period, his Macedonian Empire was the most powerful in the world – the definitive Hellenistic state, inaugurating the transition to a new period of Ancient Greek civilization . Greek arts and literature flourished in the new conquered lands and advances in philosophy , engineering , and science spread across the empire and beyond. Of particular importance were

11448-431: The Italian peninsula . In 216   BC, Philip   V sent a hundred light warships into the Adriatic Sea to attack Illyria, a move that prompted Scerdilaidas of the Ardiaean Kingdom to appeal to the Romans for aid. Rome responded by sending ten heavy quinqueremes from Roman Sicily to patrol the Illyrian coasts, causing Philip   V to reverse course and order his fleet to retreat, averting open conflict for

11664-427: The King of Epirus and the Molossians . This marriage would bear a son who would later rule as Alexander   III (better known as Alexander the Great ) and claim descent from the legendary Achilles by way of his dynastic heritage from Epirus . It is unclear whether or not the Achaemenid Persian kings influenced Philip   II's practice of polygamy, although his predecessor Amyntas   III had three sons with

11880-445: The Near Eastern territories that encompass modern-day Iraq , Iran , Afghanistan , Syria , and Lebanon , all of which had been under Macedonian control after the fall of the former Persian Achaemenid Empire . At the Seleucid Empire's height, it had consisted of territory that covered Anatolia , Persia , the Levant , Mesopotamia , and what are now modern Kuwait , Afghanistan , and parts of Turkmenistan . The Seleucid Empire

12096-505: The Roman Republic known as the Pyrrhic War , followed by his invasion of Sicily . Ptolemy Keraunos secured his position on the Macedonian throne by giving Pyrrhus five thousand soldiers and twenty war elephants for this endeavor. Pyrrhus returned to Epirus in 275   BC after the ultimate failure of both campaigns, which contributed to the rise of Rome because Greek cities in southern Italy such as Tarentum now became Roman allies. Pyrrhus invaded Macedonia in 274   BC, defeating

12312-484: The Roman Republic negotiated the Treaty of Phoenice in 205   BC, ending the war and allowing the Macedonians to retain some captured settlements in Illyria. Although the Romans rejected an Aetolian request in 202   BC for Rome to declare war on Macedonia once again, the Roman Senate gave serious consideration to the similar offer made by Pergamon and its ally Rhodes in 201   BC. These states were concerned about Philip   V's alliance with Antiochus III

12528-401: The Roman consul Titus Quinctius Flamininus managed to expel Philip   V from Macedonia in 198   BC, forcing his men to take refuge in Thessaly. When the Achaean League switched their loyalties from Macedonia to Rome, the Macedonian king sued for peace, but the terms offered were considered too stringent, and so the war continued. In June 197   BC, the Macedonians were defeated at

12744-543: The Seleucid Empire , and Lysimachus ( r.  306–281 BC ), King of Thrace , defeated the Antigonids at the Battle of Ipsus in 301   BC, killing Antigonus and forcing Demetrius into flight. Cassander died in 297 BC, and his sickly son Philip   IV died the same year, succeeded by Cassander's other sons Alexander V of Macedon ( r.  297–294 BC ) and Antipater II of Macedon ( r.  297–294 BC ), with their mother Thessalonike of Macedon acting as regent. While Demetrius fought against

12960-440: The Strymon River near the Kingdom of Macedonia, where the colonial city of Amphipolis was founded in 437/436   BC so that it could provide Athens with a steady supply of silver and gold as well as timber and pitch to support the Athenian navy . Initially Perdiccas II did not take any action and might have even welcomed the Athenians, as the Thracians were foes to both of them. This changed due to an Athenian alliance with

13176-411: The Susa weddings in 324   BC. Meanwhile, in Greece, the Spartan king Agis III attempted to lead a rebellion of the Greeks against Macedonia. He was defeated in 331   BC at the Battle of Megalopolis by Antipater, who was serving as regent of Macedonia and deputy hegemon of the League of Corinth in Alexander's stead. Before Antipater embarked on his campaign in the Peloponnese , Memnon,

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13392-402: The Taurus Mountains in southern Anatolia , marking the gradual decline of their empire. Mithridates I of Parthia conquered much of the remaining eastern lands of the Seleucid Empire in the mid-second century BC including Assyria and what had been Babylonia , while the independent Greco-Bactrian Kingdom continued to flourish in the northeast. The Seleucid kings were thereafter reduced to

13608-505: The Thracian Chersonese . Meanwhile, Phocis and Thermopylae were captured by Macedonian forces, the Delphic temple robbers were executed, and Philip   II was awarded the two Phocian seats on the Amphictyonic Council and the position of master of ceremonies over the Pythian Games . Athens initially opposed his membership on the council and refused to attend the games in protest, but they eventually accepted these conditions, perhaps after some persuasion by Demosthenes in his oration On

13824-472: The United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout the Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to

14040-515: The comitia centuriata finally voted in approval of the Roman Senate's declaration of war in 200   BC and handed their ultimatum to Philip   V, demanding that a tribunal assess the damages owed to Rhodes and Pergamon, the Macedonian king rejected it. This marked the beginning of the Second Macedonian War (200–197   BC), with Publius Sulpicius Galba Maximus spearheading military operations in Apollonia. The Macedonians successfully defended their territory for roughly two years, but

14256-495: The diadochi were declared kings of their respective territories. The beginning of Hellenistic Greece was defined by the struggle between the Antipatrid dynasty , led first by Cassander ( r.  305–297 BC ), son of Antipater, and the Antigonid dynasty , led by the Macedonian general Antigonus I Monophthalmus ( r.  306–301 BC ) and his son, the future king Demetrius   I ( r.  294–288 BC ). Cassander besieged Athens in 303   BC, but

14472-468: The genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in the ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in

14688-410: The imperial cult fostered by Alexander was never adopted in Macedonia, yet Macedonian rulers nevertheless assumed roles as high priests of the kingdom and leading patrons of domestic and international cults of the Hellenistic religion . The authority of Macedonian kings was theoretically limited by the institution of the army, while a few municipalities within the Macedonian commonwealth enjoyed

14904-474: The legend that the Macedonian kings of the Argead dynasty were descendants of Temenus , king of Argos , and could therefore claim the mythical Heracles as one of their ancestors as well as a direct lineage from Zeus , chief god of the Greek pantheon . Contradictory legends state that either Perdiccas I of Macedon or Caranus of Macedon were the founders of the Argead dynasty, with either five or eight kings before Amyntas   I. The assertion that

15120-512: The monarchy was toppled in a republican revolution . Demetrius   II enlisted the aid of the Illyrian king Agron to defend Acarnania against Aetolia, and in 229   BC, they managed to defeat the combined navies of the Aetolian and Achaean Leagues at the Battle of Paxos . Another Illyrian ruler, Longarus of the Dardanian Kingdom , invaded Macedonia and defeated an army of Demetrius   II shortly before his death in 229   BC. Although his young son Philip immediately inherited

15336-413: The region of Macedonia in modern Greece . It gradually expanded into the region of Upper Macedonia , inhabited by the Greek Lyncestae and Elimiotae tribes, and into regions of Emathia , Eordaia , Bottiaea , Mygdonia , Crestonia , and Almopia , which were inhabited by various peoples such as Thracians and Phrygians . Macedonia's non-Greek neighbors included Thracians, inhabiting territories to

15552-417: The syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow the noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However,

15768-463: The temple , and interrupted the constant practice of offering a daily sacrifice of expiation, for three years and six months. The latter part of his reign saw a further disintegration of the Empire despite his best efforts. Weakened economically, militarily and by loss of prestige, the Empire became vulnerable to rebels in the eastern areas of the empire, who began to further undermine the empire while

15984-487: The tyrannies installed in Greece were to be abolished and Greek freedom was to be restored. When Alexander the Great died at Babylon in 323   BC, his mother Olympias immediately accused Antipater and his faction of poisoning him, although there is no evidence to confirm this. With no official heir apparent , the Macedonian military command split, with one side proclaiming Alexander's half-brother Philip   III Arrhidaeus ( r.  323–317 BC ) as king and

16200-528: The war elephants of King Porus of the Pauravas threatened Alexander's troops, he had them form open ranks to surround the elephants and dislodge their handlers by using their sarissa pikes. When his Macedonian troops threatened mutiny in 324   BC at Opis , Babylonia (near modern Baghdad , Iraq ), Alexander offered Macedonian military titles and greater responsibilities to Persian officers and units instead, forcing his troops to seek forgiveness at

16416-566: The 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as

16632-588: The 2nd century BC, ancient writers referred to them as the Syrian kings, the kings of Syria or of the Syrians, the kings descended from Seleucus Nicator, the kings of Asia, and other designations. Alexander , who quickly conquered the Persian Empire under its last Achaemenid dynast, Darius III , died young in 323 BC, leaving an expansive empire of partly Hellenised culture without an adult heir. The empire

16848-534: The Achaemenid Empire. He was then chiefly responsible for the formation of the League of Corinth that included the major Greek city-states except Sparta. Despite the Kingdom of Macedonia's official exclusion from the league, in 337   BC, Philip   II was elected as the leader ( hegemon ) of its council ( synedrion ) and the commander-in-chief ( strategos autokrator ) of a forthcoming campaign to invade

17064-466: The Achaemenid Empire. Philip's plan to punish the Persians for the suffering of the Greeks and to liberate the Greek cities of Asia Minor as well as perhaps the panhellenic fear of another Persian invasion of Greece, contributed to his decision to invade the Achaemenid Empire. The Persians offered aid to Perinthus and Byzantion in 341–340   BC, highlighting Macedonia's strategic need to secure Thrace and

17280-555: The Aegean Sea against increasing Achaemenid encroachment, as the Persian king Artaxerxes III further consolidated his control over satrapies in western Anatolia . The latter region, yielding far more wealth and valuable resources than the Balkans, was also coveted by the Macedonian king for its sheer economic potential. When Philip II married Cleopatra Eurydice , niece of general Attalus , talk of providing new potential heirs at

17496-644: The Aetolians formed an alliance with the Achaean League as a result, Demetrius   II was able to invade Boeotia and capture it from the Aetolians by 236   BC. The Achaean League managed to capture Megalopolis in 235   BC, and by the end of Demetrius   II's reign most of the Peloponnese except Argos was taken from the Macedonians. Demetrius   II also lost an ally in Epirus when

17712-566: The Antipatrid forces in Greece, Antipater   II killed his own mother to obtain power. His desperate brother Alexander   V then requested aid from Pyrrhus of Epirus ( r.  297–272 BC ), who had fought alongside Demetrius at the Battle of Ipsus, but was sent to Egypt as a hostage as part of an agreement between Demetrius and Ptolemy   I. In exchange for defeating the forces of Antipater   II and forcing him to flee to

17928-682: The Argeads descended from Temenus was accepted by the Hellanodikai authorities of the Ancient Olympic Games , permitting Alexander I of Macedon ( r.  498–454 BC ) to enter the competitions owing to his perceived Greek heritage. Little is known about the kingdom before the reign of Alexander   I's father Amyntas I of Macedon ( r.  547–498 BC ) during the Archaic period . The kingdom of Macedonia

18144-604: The Athenian and Spartan -led coalition of Greek city-states. His successor Perdiccas   II ( r.  454–413 BC ) led the Macedonians to war in four separate conflicts against Athens, leader of the Delian League , while incursions by the Thracian ruler Sitalces of the Odrysian kingdom threatened Macedonia's territorial integrity in the northeast. The Athenian statesman Pericles promoted colonization of

18360-520: The Black in 328   BC is described as "vengeful and reckless" by Dawn L. Gilley and Ian Worthington. Continuing the polygamous habits of his father, Alexander encouraged his men to marry native women in Asia, leading by example when he wed Roxana , a Sogdian princess of Bactria. He then married Stateira II , eldest daughter of Darius   III, and Parysatis II , youngest daughter of Artaxerxes III , at

18576-575: The Caucasus Indicus (Paropamisus) ( Hindu Kush ) and descended into India; renewed his friendship with Sophagasenus the king of the Indians; received more elephants, until he had a hundred and fifty altogether; and having once more provisioned his troops, set out again personally with his army: leaving Androsthenes of Cyzicus the duty of taking home the treasure which this king had agreed to hand over to him. Having traversed Arachosia and crossed

18792-460: The Diadochi (319–315   BC). Given a string of military failures by Polyperchon, in 317   BC, Philip   III, by way of his politically engaged wife Eurydice II of Macedon , officially replaced him as regent with Cassander. Afterwards, Polyperchon desperately sought the aid of Olympias in Epirus. A joint force of Epirotes, Aetolians, and Polyperchon's troops invaded Macedonia and forced

19008-423: The Great of the Seleucid Empire, which invaded the war-weary and financially exhausted Ptolemaic Empire in the Fifth Syrian War (202–195   BC) as Philip   V captured Ptolemaic settlements in the Aegean Sea. Although Rome's envoys played a critical role in convincing Athens to join the anti-Macedonian alliance with Pergamon and Rhodes in 200   BC, the comitia centuriata (people's assembly) rejected

19224-447: The Great , king of Armenia , however, saw opportunity for expansion in the constant civil strife to the south. In 83 BC, at the invitation of one of the factions in the interminable civil wars, he invaded Syria and soon established himself as ruler of Syria, putting the Seleucid Empire virtually at an end. Seleucid rule was not entirely over, however. Following the Roman general Lucullus ' defeat of both Mithridates and Tigranes in 69 BC,

19440-488: The Great, grew up at the Macedonian court. After campaigning against the Thracian ruler Cersobleptes , in 349   BC, Philip   II began his war against the Chalcidian League, which had been reestablished in 375   BC following a temporary disbandment. Despite an Athenian intervention by Charidemus , Olynthos was captured by Philip   II in 348   BC, and its inhabitants were sold into slavery , including some Athenian citizens . The Athenians, especially in

19656-591: The Greco-Macedonian style, with its main body being the phalanx . The phalanx was a large, dense formation of men armed with small shields and a long pike called the sarissa . This form of fighting had been developed by the Macedonian army in the reign of Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great. Alongside the phalanx, the Seleucid armies used numerous native and mercenary troops to supplement their Greek forces, which were limited due to

19872-544: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit

20088-549: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in

20304-525: The Greek language, wrote in Greek, absorbed Greek philosophical ideas, and took on Greek names; some of these practices then slowly filtered down to the lower classes. Hellenic ideas began an almost 250-year expansion into the Near East, Middle East, and Central Asian cultures. Synthesizing Hellenic and indigenous cultural, religious, and philosophical ideas – an ethnic unity framework established by Alexander – met with varying degrees of success. The result

20520-483: The Hellenistic East , by creating new client kingdoms and establishing provinces. While client nations like Armenia and Judea were allowed to continue with some degree of autonomy under local kings, Pompey saw the Seleucids as too troublesome to continue; doing away with both rival Seleucid princes, he made Syria into a Roman province . The domain of the Seleucids stretched from the Aegean Sea to what

20736-661: The Illyrian Dardani and Aetolian League. Philip   V and his allies were successful against the Aetolians and their allies in the Social War (220–217 BC) , yet he made peace with the Aetolians once he heard of incursions by the Dardani in the north and the Carthaginian victory over the Romans at the Battle of Lake Trasimene in 217   BC. Demetrius of Pharos is alleged to have convinced Philip   V to first secure Illyria in advance of an invasion of

20952-534: The Indus was subject to Seleucus. Chandragupta Maurya ( Sandrokottos ) founded the Maurya Empire in 321 BC after the conquest of the Nanda Empire and their capital Pataliputra in Magadha . Chandragupta then redirected his attention to the Indus River region, and by 317 BC, he conquered the remaining Greek satraps left by Alexander. Expecting a confrontation, Seleucus gathered his army and marched to

21168-462: The Indus. It is said that Chandragupta could have fielded a conscript army of 600,000 men and 9,000 war elephants. Chandragupta received, formalized through a treaty, territory west of the Indus, including the Hindu Kush , modern day Afghanistan , and the eastern part Balochistan province of Pakistan , bordering on the Indus. Archaeologically, concrete indications of Mauryan rule, such as

21384-457: The Macedonian throne. Amyntas III was forced to flee his kingdom in either 393 or 383   BC (based on conflicting accounts), owing to a massive invasion by the Illyrians led by Bardylis . The pretender to the throne Argaeus ruled in his absence, yet Amyntas   III eventually returned to his kingdom with the aid of Thessalian allies. Amyntas   III was also nearly overthrown by

21600-758: The Parthians moved into the power vacuum to take over the old Persian lands. Antiochus' aggressive Hellenizing (or de-Judaizing) activities provoked a full scale armed rebellion in Judea —the Maccabean Revolt . Efforts to deal with both the Parthians and the Jews as well as retain control of the provinces at the same time proved beyond the weakened empire's power. Antiochus orchestrated a military campaign, capturing Artaxias I , King of Armenia, and reoccupying Armenia. His offensive ventured as far as Persepolis, but he

21816-701: The Peace . Over the next few years, Philip II reformed local governments in Thessaly, campaigned against the Illyrian ruler Pleuratus I , deposed Arybbas in Epirus in favor of his brother-in-law Alexander   I (through Philip   II's marriage to Olympias), and defeated Cersebleptes in Thrace. This allowed him to extend Macedonian control over the Hellespont in anticipation of an invasion into Achaemenid Anatolia . In 342   BC, Philip   II conquered

22032-639: The Peloponnese and at times incorporated Athens and Sparta. While the Seleucid Empire aligned with Antigonid Macedonia against Ptolemaic Egypt during the Syrian Wars , the Ptolemaic navy heavily disrupted Antigonus   II's efforts to control mainland Greece. With the aid of the Ptolemaic navy, the Athenian statesman Chremonides led a revolt against Macedonian authority known as the Chremonidean War (267–261   BC). By 265   BC, Athens

22248-421: The Persian kings was rejected as religious blasphemy by his Macedonian and Greek subjects after his court historian Callisthenes refused to perform this ritual. When Alexander had Parmenion murdered at Ecbatana (near modern Hamadan , Iran ) in 330   BC, this was "symptomatic of the growing gulf between the king's interests and those of his country and people", according to Errington. His murder of Cleitus

22464-529: The Persians in Asia Minor at the Battle of the Granicus in 334   BC used a small cavalry contingent as a distraction to allow his infantry to cross the river followed by a cavalry charge from his companion cavalry . Alexander led the cavalry charge at the Battle of Issus in 333   BC, forcing the Persian king Darius III and his army to flee. Darius   III, despite having superior numbers,

22680-596: The Roman Senate decided in 184/183   BC to force Philip   V to abandon Aenus and Maronea , since these had been declared free cities in the Treaty of Apamea. This assuaged the fear of Eumenes   II that Macedonia could pose a threat to his lands in the Hellespont. Perseus of Macedon ( r.  179–168 BC ) succeeded Philip   V and executed his brother Demetrius , who had been favored by

22896-413: The Roman Senate's proposal for a declaration of war on Macedonia. Meanwhile, Philip   V conquered territories in the Hellespont and Bosporus as well as Ptolemaic Samos , which led Rhodes to form an alliance with Pergamon , Byzantium , Cyzicus , and Chios against Macedonia. Despite Philip   V's nominal alliance with the Seleucid king, he lost the naval Battle of Chios in 201   BC and

23112-553: The Romans but was charged by Perseus with high treason . Perseus then attempted to form marriage alliances with Prusias II of Bithynia and Seleucus IV Philopator of the Seleucid Empire, along with renewed relations with Rhodes that greatly unsettled Eumenes   II. Although Eumenes   II attempted to undermine these diplomatic relationships, Perseus fostered an alliance with the Boeotian League , extended his authority into Illyria and Thrace , and in 174   BC, won

23328-404: The Seleucid banner. The government established Greek cities and settlements throughout the empire via a program of colonization that encouraged immigration from Greece; both city settlements as well as rural ones were created that were inhabited by ethnic Greeks. These Greeks were given good land and privileges, and in exchange were expected to serve in military service for the state. Despite being

23544-706: The Seleucids in the 191   BC Battle of Thermopylae as well as the Battle of Magnesia in 190   BC, forcing the Seleucids to pay a war indemnity , dismantle most of its navy, and abandon its claims to any territories north or west of the Taurus Mountains in the 188   BC Treaty of Apamea . With Rome's acceptance, Philip   V was able to capture some cities in central Greece in 191–189   BC that had been allied to Antiochus   III, while Rhodes and Eumenes II ( r.  197–159 BC ) of Pergamon gained territories in Asia Minor. Failing to please all sides in various territorial disputes,

23760-526: The Upper Macedonian aristocracy as well as the Illyrian princess Audata to ensure a marriage alliance. To establish an alliance with Larissa in Thessaly, he married the Thessalian noblewoman Philinna in 358   BC, who bore him a son who would later rule as Philip III Arrhidaeus ( r.  323–317 BC ). In 357   BC, he married Olympias to secure an alliance with Arybbas ,

23976-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),

24192-479: The arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During the older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from

24408-602: The behest of Larissa ended in two disastrous defeats by the Phocian general Onomarchus . Philip   II in turn defeated Onomarchus in 352   BC at the Battle of Crocus Field , which led to Philip   II's election as leader ( archon ) of the Thessalian League, provided him a seat on the Amphictyonic Council, and allowed for a marriage alliance with Pherae by wedding Nicesipolis , niece of

24624-800: The city and treated the inhabitants cordially, unlike the Potidaeans, who had been enslaved. Philip II then involved Macedonia in the Third Sacred War (356–346   BC). It began when Phocis captured and plundered the temple of Apollo at Delphi instead of submitting unpaid fines, causing the Amphictyonic League to declare war on Phocis and a civil war among the members of the Thessalian League aligned with either Phocis or Thebes. Philip   II's initial campaign against Pherae in Thessaly in 353   BC at

24840-514: The city of Pergamum in the west was asserting its independence under the Attalid dynasty . The Seleucid economy started to show the first signs of weakness, as Galatians gained independence and Pergamum took control of coastal cities in Anatolia. Consequently, they managed to partially block contact with the West. A revival would begin when Seleucus II's younger son, Antiochus III the Great , took

25056-651: The contributions of Aristotle , tutor to Alexander, whose writings became a keystone of Western philosophy . After Alexander's death in 323   BC, the ensuing wars of the Diadochi , and the partitioning of Alexander's short-lived empire, Macedonia remained a Greek cultural and political center in the Mediterranean region along with Ptolemaic Egypt , the Seleucid Empire , and the Attalid kingdom . Important cities such as Pella , Pydna , and Amphipolis were involved in power struggles for control of

25272-796: The country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine ,

25488-538: The court of Lysimachus in Thrace, Pyrrhus was awarded the westernmost portions of the Macedonian kingdom. Demetrius had his nephew Alexander   V assassinated and was then proclaimed king of Macedonia, but his subjects protested against his aloof, Eastern-style autocracy . War broke out between Pyrrhus and Demetrius in 290   BC when Lanassa, wife of Pyrrhus , daughter of Agathocles of Syracuse , left him for Demetrius and offered him her dowry of Corcyra . The war dragged on until 288   BC, when Demetrius lost

25704-441: The dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before

25920-455: The distance from the Seleucid rulers' Macedonian homeland. The size of the Seleucid army usually varied between 70,000 and 200,000 in manpower. The distance from Greece put a strain on the Seleucid military system, as it was primarily based around the recruitment of Greeks as the key segment of the army. In order to increase the population of Greeks in their kingdom, the Seleucid rulers created military settlements. There were two main periods in

26136-528: The earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of the Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of

26352-403: The east, where he sought to extract money to pay the indemnity. The reign of his son and successor Seleucus IV Philopator (187–175 BC) was largely spent in attempts to pay the large indemnity, and Seleucus was ultimately assassinated by his minister Heliodorus . Seleucus' younger brother, Antiochus IV Epiphanes , now seized the throne. He attempted to restore Seleucid power and prestige with

26568-399: The empire were still influenced by the spread of Greek thought and culture, a phenomenon referred to as Hellenization . Historically significant towns and cities, such as Antioch , were created or renamed with Greek names, and hundreds of new cities were established for trade purposes and built in Greek style from the start. Local educated elites who needed to work with the government learned

26784-410: The establishment of settlements, firstly under Seleucus I Nicator and Antiochus I Soter and then under Antiochus IV Epiphanes . The military settlers were given land, "varying in size according to rank and arm of service'. They were settled in 'colonies of an urban character, which at some point could acquire the status of a polis". The settler-soldiers were called katoikoi ; they would maintain

27000-570: The exiled Carthaginian general Hannibal , and making an alliance with the disgruntled Aetolian League , Antiochus launched an invasion across the Hellespont . With his huge army he aimed to establish the Seleucid empire as the foremost power in the Hellenic world, but these plans put the empire on a collision course with the new rising power of the Mediterranean, the Roman Republic . At the battles of Thermopylae (191 BC) and Magnesia (190 BC), Antiochus's forces suffered resounding defeats, and he

27216-412: The extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English

27432-551: The extent to which his ideas were influenced by his adolescent years of captivity in Thebes as a political hostage during the Theban hegemony , especially after meeting with the general Epaminondas . The Macedonians, like the other Greeks, traditionally practiced monogamy , but Philip   II practiced polygamy and married seven wives with perhaps only one that did not involve the loyalty of his aristocratic subjects or new allies. His first marriages were to Phila of Elimeia of

27648-704: The famed Nisean horse herd); and Roman intervention was an ever-present threat. Sidetes managed to bring the Maccabees to heel and frighten the Anatolian dynasts into a temporary submission; then, in 133, he turned east with the full might of the Royal Army (supported by a body of Jews under the Hasmonean prince, John Hyrcanus ) to drive back the Parthians. Sidetes' campaign initially met with spectacular success, recapturing Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and Media. In

27864-467: The following year recaptured Pydna and Potidaea, the latter of which he handed over to the Chalcidian League as promised in a treaty. In 356   BC, he took Crenides , refounding it as Philippi , while his general Parmenion defeated the Illyrian king Grabos II of the Grabaei . During the 355–354   BC siege of Methone, Philip   II lost his right eye to an arrow wound, but managed to capture

28080-461: The forces of the Chalcidian city of Olynthos , but with the aid of Teleutias , brother of the Spartan king Agesilaus II , the Macedonians forced Olynthos to surrender and dissolve their Chalcidian League in 379   BC. Alexander II ( r.  370–368 BC ), son of Eurydice   I and Amyntas   III, succeeded his father and immediately invaded Thessaly to wage war against

28296-482: The governor of Thrace, was dissuaded from rebellion by use of diplomacy. Antipater deferred the punishment of Sparta to the League of Corinth headed by Alexander, who ultimately pardoned the Spartans on the condition that they submit fifty nobles as hostages. Antipater's hegemony was somewhat unpopular in Greece due to his practice (perhaps by order of Alexander) of exiling malcontents and garrisoning cities with Macedonian troops, yet in 330   BC, Alexander declared that

28512-475: The historian Appian : Always lying in wait for the neighboring nations, strong in arms and persuasive in council, he [Seleucus] acquired Mesopotamia, Armenia, 'Seleucid' Cappadocia, Persis, Parthia, Bactria, Arabia, Tapouria, Sogdia, Arachosia, Hyrcania, and other adjacent peoples that had been subdued by Alexander, as far as the river Indus, so that the boundaries of his empire were the most extensive in Asia after that of Alexander. The whole region from Phrygia to

28728-478: The inscriptions of the Edicts of Ashoka , are known as far as Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. According to Appian: He [Seleucus] crossed the Indus and waged war with Sandrocottus [Maurya], king of the Indians, who dwelt on the banks of that stream, until they came to an understanding with each other and contracted a marriage relationship. It is generally thought that Chandragupta married Seleucus's daughter, or

28944-499: The kingdom's guards' regiments. The rest of the Seleucid army would consist of native and mercenary troops, who would serve as light auxiliary troops. While the Seleucids were happy to recruit from less populated and outlying parts of the Empire such as the Arabs and Jews, Iranian peoples in the east, and inhabitants of Asia Minor to the north, they generally eschewed recruiting native Syrians and native Mesopotamians ( Babylonians ). This

29160-513: The land as their own and in return, they would serve in the Seleucid army when called. The majority of settlements were concentrated in Lydia , northern Syria , the upper Euphrates and Media . Antiochus III brought Greeks from Euboea , Crete and Aetolia and settled them in Antioch . These Greek settlers would be used to form the Seleucid phalanx and cavalry units, with picked men put into

29376-449: The language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to the modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows

29592-465: The largely mercenary army of Antigonus   II at the 274   BC Battle of Aous and driving him out of Macedonia, forcing him to seek refuge with his naval fleet in the Aegean. Pyrrhus lost much of his support among the Macedonians in 273   BC when his unruly Gallic mercenaries plundered the royal cemetery of Aigai. Pyrrhus pursued Antigonus   II in the Peloponnese, yet Antigonus   II

29808-652: The last was defeated and killed by the invading Parni of Arsaces —the region would then become the core of the Parthian Empire . Diodotus , the Seleucid governor for the Bactrian territory, asserted independence in around 245 BC, although the exact date is far from certain, to form the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom . This kingdom was characterized by a rich Hellenistic culture and was to continue its domination of Bactria until around 125 BC when it

30024-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write

30240-672: The latter area, he founded a new capital at Antioch on the Orontes , a city he named after his father. An alternative capital was established at Seleucia on the Tigris , north of Babylon. Seleucus's empire reached its greatest extent following his defeat of his erstwhile ally, Lysimachus, at Corupedion in 281 BC, after which Seleucus expanded his control to encompass western Anatolia. He hoped further to take control of Lysimachus's lands in Europe – primarily Thrace and even Macedonia itself, but

30456-452: The many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is

30672-430: The monarchy during the Fourth Macedonian War in 150–148   BC ended with the establishment of the Roman province of Macedonia . The Macedonian kings, who wielded absolute power and commanded state resources such as gold and silver, facilitated mining operations to mint currency , finance their armies and, by the reign of Philip   II, a Macedonian navy. Unlike the other diadochi successor states ,

30888-465: The morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks the infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of

31104-601: The new system, which eventually led to the demise of Perdiccas. Ptolemy's revolt created a new subdivision of the empire with the Partition of Triparadisus in 320 BC. Seleucus , who had been "Commander-in-Chief of the Companion cavalry " ( hetairoi ) and appointed first or court chiliarch (which made him the senior officer in the Royal Army after the regent and commander-in-chief Perdiccas since 323 BC, though he helped to assassinate him later) received Babylonia and, from that point, continued to expand his dominions ruthlessly. Seleucus established himself in Babylon in 312 BC,

31320-416: The newly formed Parthian Empire . The Seleucid satrap of Parthia, named Andragoras , first claimed independence, in a parallel to the secession of his Bactrian neighbour. Soon after, however, a Parthian tribal chief called Arsaces invaded the Parthian territory around 238 BC to form the Arsacid dynasty , from which the Parthian Empire originated. Antiochus II's son Seleucus II Callinicus came to

31536-404: The northeast, Illyrians to the northwest, and Paeonians to the north, while the lands of Thessaly to the south and Epirus to the west were inhabited by Greeks with similar cultures to that of the Macedonians. A year after Darius I of Persia ( r.  522–486 BC ) launched an invasion into Europe against the Scythians , Paeonians , Thracians , and several Greek city-states of

31752-436: The old powers of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338   BC. Philip   II's son Alexander the Great , leading a federation of Greek states , accomplished his father's objective of commanding the whole of Greece when he destroyed Thebes after the city revolted. During Alexander's subsequent campaign of conquest , he overthrew the Achaemenid Empire and conquered territory that stretched as far as

31968-492: The other siding with the infant son of Alexander and Roxana, Alexander   IV ( r.  323–309 BC ). Except for the Euboeans and Boeotians, the Greeks also immediately rose up in a rebellion against Antipater known as the Lamian War (323–322   BC). When Antipater was defeated at the 323   BC Battle of Thermopylae , he fled to Lamia where he was besieged by the Athenian commander Leosthenes . A Macedonian army led by Leonnatus rescued Antipater by lifting

32184-406: The outcome of the 321   BC Partition of Triparadisus in Syria where the victorious coalition settled the issue of a new regency and territorial rights. Antipater was appointed as regent over the two kings. Before Antipater died in 319   BC, he named the staunch Argead loyalist Polyperchon as his successor, passing over his own son Cassander and ignoring the right of the king to choose

32400-466: The possible role of Alexander   III "the Great" and his mother Olympias in the assassination of Philip   II, noting the latter's choice to exclude Alexander from his planned invasion of Asia, choosing instead for him to act as regent of Greece and deputy hegemon of the League of Corinth, and the potential bearing of another male heir between Philip   II and his new wife, Cleopatra Eurydice. Alexander   III ( r.  336–323 BC )

32616-437: The raiding party of Brennus , Sosthenes died and left a chaotic situation in Macedonia. The Gallic invaders ravaged Macedonia until Antigonus Gonatas , son of Demetrius, defeated them in Thrace at the 277   BC Battle of Lysimachia and was then proclaimed king Antigonus II of Macedon ( r.  277–274, 272–239 BC ). In 280 BC, Pyrrhus embarked on a campaign in Magna Graecia (i.e. southern Italy ) against

32832-440: The recovered eastern territories were recaptured by the Parthians. The Maccabees again rebelled, civil war soon tore the empire to pieces, and the Armenians began to encroach on Syria from the north. By 100 BC, the once-formidable Seleucid Empire encompassed little more than Antioch and some Syrian cities. Despite the clear collapse of their power, and the decline of their kingdom around them, nobles continued to play kingmakers on

33048-417: The regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of

33264-474: The reign of four different monarchs: Orestes , son of Archelaus   I; Aeropus   II , uncle, regent , and murderer of Orestes; Pausanias , son of Aeropus   II; and Amyntas   II , who was married to the youngest daughter of Archelaus   I. Very little is known about this turbulent period; it came to an end when Amyntas   III ( r.  393–370 BC ), son of Arrhidaeus and grandson of Amyntas   I, killed Pausanias and claimed

33480-403: The river Enymanthus, he came through Drangene to Carmania; and as it was now winter, he put his men into winter quarters there. When he returned to the west in 205 BC, Antiochus found that with the death of Ptolemy IV , the situation now looked propitious for another western campaign. Antiochus and Philip V of Macedon then made a pact to divide the Ptolemaic possessions outside of Egypt, and in

33696-409: The role of managing the Temple of Apollo at Delphi as a member of the Amphictyonic Council . Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ ) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It

33912-401: The royal Argead dynasty , which was followed by the Antipatrid and Antigonid dynasties. Home to the ancient Macedonians , the earliest kingdom was centered on the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula , and bordered by Epirus to the southwest, Illyria to the northwest, Paeonia to the north, Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south. Before the 4th century BC, Macedonia was

34128-441: The royal family, King Alexander   IV and the queen mother Roxana. The conflict that followed lasted until the winter of 312/311   BC, when a new peace settlement recognized Cassander as general of Europe, Antigonus as "first in Asia", Ptolemy as general of Egypt, and Lysimachus as general of Thrace. Cassander had Alexander   IV and Roxana put to death in the winter of 311/310   BC, and between 306 and 305   BC

34344-429: The rule of Antiochus IV introduced significant changes. Antiochus IV instigated a bidding process for the High Priest position—this led to Menelaus , a radical Hellenist, outbidding Jason , a moderate Hellenist who upheld many traditional Judean practices. The shift from Jason to Menelaus unsettled the Jewish populace due to Menelaus's more extreme Hellenistic leanings. Aggravating the situation, Antiochus IV initiated

34560-476: The ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt and contemporary of Ashoka the Great , is also recorded by Pliny the Elder as having sent an ambassador named Dionysius to the Mauryan court. The Indians occupy [in part] some of the countries situated along the Indus, which formerly belonged to the Persians: Alexander deprived the Ariani of them, and established there settlements of his own. But Seleucus Nicator gave them to Sandrocottus (Chandragupta Maurya) in consequence of

34776-485: The self-proclaimed King Alexander of Corinth . Although Alexander died in 246   BC and Antigonus was able to score a naval victory against the Ptolemies at Andros , the Macedonians lost the Acrocorinth to the forces of Aratus in 243   BC, followed by the induction of Corinth into the Achaean League. Antigonus   II made peace with the Achaean League in 240   BC, ceding the territories that he had lost in Greece. Antigonus   II died in 239   BC and

34992-475: The siege. Antipater defeated the rebellion, yet his death in 319   BC left a power vacuum wherein the two proclaimed kings of Macedonia became pawns in a power struggle between the diadochi , the former generals of Alexander's army. A council of the army convened in Babylon immediately after Alexander's death, naming Philip   III as king and the chiliarch Perdiccas as his regent. Antipater, Antigonus Monophthalmus , Craterus , and Ptolemy formed

35208-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of

35424-521: The support of the Macedonians and fled the country. Macedonia was then divided between Pyrrhus and Lysimachus, the former taking western Macedonia and the latter eastern Macedonia. By 286   BC, Lysimachus had expelled Pyrrhus and his forces from Macedonia. In 282   BC, a new war erupted between Seleucus   I and Lysimachus; the latter was killed in the Battle of Corupedion , allowing Seleucus   I to take control of Thrace and Macedonia. In two dramatic reversals of fortune, Seleucus   I

35640-536: The surrender of Philip   III and Eurydice's army, allowing Olympias to execute the king and force his queen to commit suicide. Olympias then had Nicanor and dozens of other Macedonian nobles killed, but by the spring of 316   BC, Cassander had defeated her forces, captured her, and placed her on trial for murder before sentencing her to death. Cassander married Philip II's daughter Thessalonike and briefly extended Macedonian control into Illyria as far as Epidamnos (modern Durrës , Albania). By 313   BC, it

35856-436: The tablets on which was written the decree of the senate and told him to read it. The decree demanded that he should abort his attack on Alexandria and immediately stop waging the war on Ptolemy. When the king said that he would call his friends into council and consider what he ought to do, Popilius drew a circle in the sand around the king's feet with the stick he was carrying and said, "Before you step out of that circle give me

36072-418: The territory. New cities were founded, such as Thessalonica by the usurper Cassander (named after his wife Thessalonike of Macedon ). Macedonia's decline began with the Macedonian Wars and the rise of Rome as the leading Mediterranean power. At the end of the Third Macedonian War in 168   BC, the Macedonian monarchy was abolished and replaced by Roman client states . A short-lived revival of

36288-438: The throne after his brother's capture. He faced the enormous task of restoring a rapidly crumbling empire, one facing threats on multiple fronts. Hard-won control of Coele-Syria was threatened by the Jewish Maccabee rebels. Once-vassal dynasties in Armenia, Cappadocia, and Pontus were threatening Syria and northern Mesopotamia ; the nomadic Parthians, brilliantly led by Mithridates I of Parthia , had overrun upland Media (home of

36504-515: The throne around 246 BC. Seleucus II was soon dramatically defeated in the Third Syrian War against Ptolemy III of Egypt and then had to fight a civil war against his own brother Antiochus Hierax . Taking advantage of this distraction, Bactria and Parthia seceded from the empire. In Asia Minor too, the Seleucid dynasty seemed to be losing control: the Gauls had fully established themselves in Galatia , semi-independent semi-Hellenized kingdoms had sprung up in Bithynia , Pontus , and Cappadocia , and

36720-477: The throne in 223 BC. Although initially unsuccessful in the Fourth Syrian War against Egypt, which led to a defeat at the Battle of Raphia (217 BC), Antiochus would prove himself to be the greatest of the Seleucid rulers after Seleucus I himself. He spent the next ten years on his anabasis (journey) through the eastern parts of his domain and restoring rebellious vassals like Parthia and Greco-Bactria to at least nominal obedience. He gained many victories such as

36936-417: The throne, his regent Antigonus III Doson ( r.  229–221 BC ), nephew of Antigonus   II, was proclaimed king by the army, with Philip as his heir, following a string of military victories against the Illyrians in the north and the Aetolians in Thessaly. Aratus sent an embassy to Antigonus III in 226   BC seeking an unexpected alliance now that the reformist king Cleomenes III of Sparta

37152-457: The time being. In 215 BC, at the height of the Second Punic War with the Carthaginian Empire , Roman authorities intercepted a ship off the Calabrian coast holding a Macedonian envoy and a Carthaginian ambassador in possession of a treaty composed by Hannibal declaring an alliance with Philip   V. The treaty stipulated that Carthage had the sole right to negotiate the terms of Rome's hypothetical surrender and promised mutual aid if

37368-549: The tyrant Jason of Pherae . Philip II had some early involvement with the Achaemenid Empire, especially by supporting satraps and mercenaries who rebelled against the central authority of the Achaemenid king. The satrap of Hellespontine Phrygia Artabazos II , who was in rebellion against Artaxerxes III , was able to take refuge as an exile at the Macedonian court from 352 to 342 BC. He was accompanied in exile by his family and by his mercenary general Memnon of Rhodes . Barsine , daughter of Artabazos, and future wife of Alexander

37584-494: The usurping general Diodotus Tryphon —held out in Antioch . Meanwhile, the decay of the Empire's territorial possessions continued apace. By 143 BC, the Jews in the form of the Maccabees had fully established their independence. Parthian expansion continued as well. In 139 BC, Demetrius II was defeated in battle by the Parthians and was captured. By this time, the entire Iranian Plateau had been lost to Parthian control. Demetrius Nicator's brother, Antiochus VII Sidetes , took

37800-434: The wedding altogether and exiled Alexander's advisors Ptolemy , Nearchus , and Harpalus . To reconcile with Olympias, Philip   II had their daughter Cleopatra marry Olympias' brother (and Cleopatra's uncle) Alexander   I of Epirus, but Philip   II was assassinated by his bodyguard, Pausanias of Orestis , during their wedding feast and succeeded by Alexander in 336   BC. Modern scholars have argued over

38016-447: The wedding feast infuriated Philip   II's son Alexander, a veteran of the Battle of Chaeronea, and his mother Olympias. They fled together to Epirus before Alexander was recalled to Pella by Philip   II. When Philip   II arranged a marriage between his son Arrhidaeus and Ada of Caria , daughter of Pixodarus , the Persian satrap of Caria , Alexander intervened and proposed to marry Ada instead. Philip   II then cancelled

38232-415: The west, including repeated wars with Ptolemy II and a Celtic invasion of Asia Minor —distracting attention from holding the eastern portions of the Empire together. Towards the end of Antiochus II's reign, various provinces simultaneously asserted their independence, such as Bactria and Sogdiana under Diodotus , Cappadocia under Ariarathes III , and Parthia under Andragoras . A few years later,

38448-419: The winter of 130/129 BC, his army was scattered in winter quarters throughout Media and Persis when the Parthian king, Phraates II , counter-attacked. Moving to intercept the Parthians with only the troops at his immediate disposal, he was ambushed and killed at the Battle of Ecbatana in 129 BC. Antiochus Sidetes is sometimes called the last great Seleucid king. After the death of Antiochus VII Sidetes, all of

38664-468: The year later used as the foundation date of the Seleucid Empire. The rise of Seleucus in Babylon threatened the eastern extent of the territory of Antigonus I Monophthalmus in Asia. Antigonus, along with his son Demetrius I Poliorcetes , unsuccessfully led a campaign to annex Babylon. The victory of Seleucus ensured his claim of Babylon and legitimacy. He ruled not only Babylonia, but the entire enormous eastern part of Alexander's empire, as described by

38880-477: Was a Greek state in West Asia during the Hellenistic period . It was founded in 312 BC by the Macedonian general Seleucus I Nicator , following the division of the Macedonian Empire founded by Alexander the Great , and ruled by the Seleucid dynasty until its annexation by the Roman Republic under Pompey in 63 BC. After receiving the Mesopotamian regions of Babylonia and Assyria in 321 BC, Seleucus I began expanding his dominions to include

39096-515: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or

39312-423: Was a major center of Hellenistic culture . Greek customs and language were privileged; the wide variety of local traditions had been generally tolerated, while an urban Greek elite had formed the dominant political class and was reinforced by steady immigration from Greece . The empire's western territories were repeatedly contested with Ptolemaic Egypt —a rival Hellenistic state. To the east, conflict with

39528-457: Was able to put down Arrhabaeus's revolt. Brasidas died in 422 BC, the year Athens and Sparta struck an accord, the Peace of Nicias , that freed Macedonia from its obligations as an Athenian ally. Following the 418   BC Battle of Mantinea , the victorious Spartans formed an alliance with Argos , a military pact Perdiccas   II was keen to join given the threat of Spartan allies remaining in Chalcidice. When Argos suddenly switched sides as

39744-406: Was again forced to flee the Battle of Gaugamela in 331   BC. The Persian king was later captured and executed by his own satrap of Bactria and kinsman, Bessus , in 330   BC. The Macedonian king subsequently hunted down and executed Bessus in what is now Afghanistan , securing the region of Sogdia in the process. At the 326   BC Battle of the Hydaspes (modern-day Punjab ), when

39960-567: Was also able to make peace with the Illyrians who had threatened his borders . Philip II spent his initial years radically transforming the Macedonian army . A reform of its organization, equipment, and training, including the introduction of the Macedonian phalanx armed with long pikes (i.e. the sarissa ), proved immediately successful when tested against his Illyrian and Paeonian enemies. Confusing accounts in ancient sources have led modern scholars to debate how much Philip   II's royal predecessors may have contributed to these reforms and

40176-442: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe

40392-543: Was assassinated by Ptolemy Ceraunus on landing in Europe. His son and successor, Antiochus I Soter , was left with an enormous realm consisting of nearly all of the Asian portions of the Empire, but faced with Antigonus II Gonatas in Macedonia and Ptolemy II Philadelphus in Egypt, he proved unable to pick up where his father had left off in conquering the European portions of Alexander's empire. Antiochus I (reigned 281–261 BC) and his son and successor Antiochus II Theos (reigned 261–246 BC) were faced with challenges in

40608-628: Was assassinated by his brother-in-law Ptolemy of Aloros , the latter acted as an overbearing regent for Perdiccas   III ( r.  368–359 BC ), younger brother of Alexander   II, who eventually had Ptolemy executed when reaching the age of majority in 365   BC. The remainder of Perdiccas III's reign was marked by political stability and financial recovery. However, an Athenian invasion led by Timotheus , son of Conon , managed to capture Methone and Pydna, and an Illyrian invasion led by Bardylis succeeded in killing Perdiccas   III and 4,000 Macedonian troops in battle. Philip II

40824-443: Was assassinated in 281   BC by his officer Ptolemy Keraunos , son of Ptolemy   I and grandson of Antipater, who was then proclaimed king of Macedonia before being killed in battle in 279   BC by Celtic invaders in the Gallic invasion of Greece . The Macedonian army proclaimed the general Sosthenes of Macedon as king, although he apparently refused the title. After defeating the Gallic ruler Bolgios and driving out

41040-441: Was assaulted along with Apollonia by Macedonian forces. When the Macedonians captured Lissus in 212   BC, the Roman Senate responded by inciting the Aetolian League, Sparta, Elis , Messenia , and Attalus I ( r.  241–197 BC ) of Pergamon to wage war against Philip   V, keeping him occupied and away from Italy. The Aetolian League concluded a peace agreement with Philip   V in 206   BC, and

41256-451: Was blockaded at Bargylia by the Rhodian and Pergamene navies. While Philip V was busy fighting Rome's Greek allies, Rome viewed this as an opportunity to punish this former ally of Hannibal with a war that they hoped would supply a victory and require few resources. The Roman Senate demanded that Philip   V cease hostilities against neighboring Greek powers and defer to an international arbitration committee for settling grievances. When

41472-428: Was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and

41688-437: Was compelled to make peace and sign the Treaty of Apamea (188 BC), the main clause of which saw the Seleucids agree to pay a large indemnity, to retreat from Anatolia and to never again attempt to expand Seleucid territory west of the Taurus Mountains . The Kingdom of Pergamum and the Republic of Rhodes , Rome's allies in the war, gained the former Seleucid lands in Anatolia. Antiochus died in 187 BC on another expedition to

41904-501: Was delayed by negotiations with the Spartan king Nabis , who had meanwhile captured Argos, yet Roman forces evacuated Greece in 194   BC. Encouraged by the Aetolian League and their calls to liberate Greece from the Romans, the Seleucid king Antiochus   III landed with his army at Demetrias , Thessaly, in 192   BC, and was elected strategos by the Aetolians. Macedonia, the Achaean League, and other Greek city-states maintained their alliance with Rome. The Romans defeated

42120-410: Was faced with some internal revolts and had to fend off an invasion of Illyrians led by Sirras of Lynkestis, he was able to project Macedonian power into Thessaly where he sent military aid to his allies. Although he retained Aigai as a ceremonial and religious center, Archelaus   I moved the capital of the kingdom north to Pella , which was then positioned by a lake with a river connecting it to

42336-455: Was forced from the city by the populace. On his return home, Antiochus died in Isfahan in 164 BC. After the death of Antiochus IV Epiphanes , the Seleucid Empire became increasingly unstable. Frequent civil wars made central authority tenuous at best. Epiphanes' young son, Antiochus V Eupator , was first overthrown by Seleucus IV's son, Demetrius I Soter in 161 BC. Demetrius I attempted to restore Seleucid power in Judea particularly, but

42552-416: Was forced to retreat to Macedonia when Demetrius invaded Boeotia to his rear, attempting to sever his path of retreat. While Antigonus and Demetrius attempted to recreate Philip   II's Hellenic league with themselves as dual hegemons, a revived coalition of Cassander, Ptolemy I Soter ( r.  305–283 BC ) of Egypt's Ptolemaic dynasty , Seleucus I Nicator ( r.  305–281 BC ) of

42768-422: Was immediately proclaimed king by an assembly of the army and leading aristocrats, chief among them being Antipater and Parmenion. By the end of his reign and military career in 323   BC, Alexander would rule over an empire consisting of mainland Greece , Asia Minor , the Levant , ancient Egypt , Mesopotamia , Persia , and much of Central and South Asia (i.e. modern Pakistan ). Among his first acts

42984-447: Was overrun by the invasion of northern nomads. One of the Greco-Bactrian kings, Demetrius I of Bactria , invaded India around 180 BC to form the Indo-Greek Kingdoms . The rulers of Persis , called Fratarakas , also seem to have established some level of independence from the Seleucids during the 3rd century BC, especially from the time of Vahbarz . They would later overtly take the title of Kings of Persis , before becoming vassals to

43200-447: Was overthrown in 150 BC by Alexander Balas —an impostor who (with Egyptian backing) claimed to be the son of Epiphanes. Alexander Balas reigned until 145 BC when he was overthrown by Demetrius I's son, Demetrius II Nicator . Demetrius II proved unable to control the whole of the kingdom, however. While he ruled Babylonia and eastern Syria from Damascus , the remnants of Balas' supporters—first supporting Balas' son Antiochus VI , then

43416-417: Was presumably mostly from a desire not to train and arm the people who were an overwhelming majority in the trade and governmental centers of the Empire in Antioch and Babylon, risking revolt. While a revolt in a remote place could be put down by resolute action from the center, an uprising in Syria-Coele would have undermined the kingdom's very existence. Following losses of territory in Asia Minor during

43632-419: Was put under the authority of a regent, Perdiccas , and the vast territories were divided among Alexander's generals, who thereby became satraps at the Partition of Babylon , all in that same year. Alexander's generals, known as diadochi , jostled for supremacy over parts of his empire following his death. Ptolemy I Soter , a former general and then current satrap of Egypt , was the first to challenge

43848-430: Was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with the epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in

44064-534: Was retaken by the Illyrian king Glaucias of Taulantii . By 316   BC, Antigonus had taken the territory of Eumenes and managed to eject Seleucus Nicator from his Babylonian satrapy, leading Cassander, Ptolemy, and Lysimachus to issue a joint ultimatum to Antigonus in 315   BC for him to surrender various territories in Asia. Antigonus promptly allied with Polyperchon, now based in Corinth, and issued an ultimatum of his own to Cassander, charging him with murder for executing Olympias and demanding that he hand over

44280-408: Was returned to Macedonia and much of Chalcidice to Athens in a peace treaty brokered by Sitalces, who provided Athens with military aid in exchange for acquiring new Thracian allies. Perdiccas   II sided with Sparta in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) between Athens and Sparta, and in 429 BC Athens retaliated by persuading Sitalces to invade Macedonia, but he was forced to retreat owing to

44496-400: Was situated along the Haliacmon and Axius rivers in Lower Macedonia , north of Mount Olympus . Historian Robert Malcolm Errington suggests that one of the earliest Argead kings established Aigai (modern Vergina ) as their capital in the mid-7th century   BC. Before the 4th century   BC, the kingdom covered a region corresponding roughly to the western and central parts of

44712-411: Was succeeded by his son Demetrius II of Macedon ( r.  239–229 BC ). Seeking an alliance with Macedonia to defend against the Aetolians, the queen mother and regent of Epirus, Olympias II , offered her daughter Phthia of Macedon to Demetrius   II in marriage. Demetrius II accepted her proposal, but he damaged relations with the Seleucids by divorcing Stratonice of Macedon . Although

44928-504: Was surrounded and besieged by Antigonus   II's forces, and a Ptolemaic fleet was defeated in the Battle of Cos . Athens finally surrendered in 261   BC. After Macedonia formed an alliance with the Seleucid ruler Antiochus II , a peace settlement between Antigonus   II and Ptolemy II Philadelphus of Egypt was finally struck in 255   BC. In 251 BC, Aratus of Sicyon led a rebellion against Antigonus   II, and in 250   BC, Ptolemy   II declared his support for

45144-403: Was the burial of his father at Aigai. The members of the League of Corinth revolted at the news of Philip   II's death, but were soon quelled by military force alongside persuasive diplomacy, electing Alexander as hegemon of the league to carry out the planned invasion of Achaemenid Persia. In 335 BC, Alexander fought against the Thracian tribe of the Triballi at Haemus Mons and along

45360-430: Was threatening the rest of Greece in the Cleomenean War (229–222   BC). In exchange for military aid, Antigonus   III demanded the return of Corinth to Macedonian control, which Aratus finally agreed to in 225   BC. In 224   BC, Antigonus   III's forces took Arcadia from Sparta. After forming a Hellenic league in the same vein as Philip   II's League of Corinth, he managed to defeat Sparta at

45576-444: Was times of simultaneous peace and rebellion in various parts of the empire. In general, the Seleucids allowed local religions to operate undisturbed, such as incorporating Babylonian religious tenets , to gain support. Tensions around the integration of Judaism were present during the reign of the Seleucid governments. Though previous governments had managed a relatively seamless integration of Judean religious and cultural practices,

45792-450: Was twenty-four years old when he acceded to the throne in 359   BC. Through the use of deft diplomacy, he was able to convince the Thracians under Berisades to cease their support of Pausanias , a pretender to the throne, and the Athenians to halt their support of another pretender . He achieved these by bribing the Thracians and their Paeonian allies and establishing a treaty with Athens that relinquished his claims to Amphipolis. He

46008-440: Was ultimately able to recapture Macedonia. Pyrrhus was killed while besieging Argos in 272   BC, allowing Antigonus   II to reclaim the rest of Greece. He then restored the Argead dynastic graves at Aigai and annexed the Kingdom of Paeonia . The Aetolian League hampered Antigonus   II's control over central Greece , and the formation of the Achaean League in 251   BC pushed Macedonian forces out of much of

46224-453: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect

46440-637: Was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to

46656-450: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage

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