Greece

Bronze Age civilization on Crete; Europe's earliest advanced culture.

Late Bronze Age mainland culture of the Homeric heroes; collapsed c. 1100 BCE.

Period of decline after the Bronze Age collapse; loss of writing and monumental building.

Rise of the polis (city-state), the Greek alphabet, and Mediterranean colonization.

Traditional date of the first games at Olympia; a common anchor for Greek chronology.

Epic poem on the Trojan War, traditionally attributed to Homer; date is approximate.

Epic poem on Odysseus's return from Troy; composed somewhat after the Iliad, date approximate.

Reforms of Cleisthenes laid the foundations of democracy in Athens.

Greek city-states repelled Persian invasions (Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis).

Height of Athenian culture: Pericles, Socrates, Plato, drama, and the Parthenon.

War between Athens and Sparta ending in Athenian defeat.

Macedon under Alexander conquered from Greece to India, spreading Greek culture.

Successor kingdoms after Alexander; Greek culture dominant across the eastern Mediterranean until Roman conquest.

Rome sacked Corinth in 146 BCE, bringing Greece under Roman rule.

Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire centered on Constantinople (founded 330 CE).

Nearly four centuries of Ottoman rule over the Greek lands.

Ottoman conquest ended the Byzantine Empire.

Revolt against Ottoman rule leading to an independent Greek state.

Independent monarchy from 1832; territory expanded steadily toward the modern borders.

Greece greatly expanded its territory, gaining Macedonia, Epirus, and Crete.

Defeat in Anatolia and the 1923 population exchange ended millennia of Greek presence there.

German, Italian, and Bulgarian occupation during World War II.

War between government and communist forces; an early conflict of the Cold War.

Rule of the Colonels; a right-wing military dictatorship.

Democracy restored in 1974; the monarchy was abolished by referendum. End set to the present.

Accession to the European Communities (later the EU) as its tenth member.