Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Philip II engaged the philosopher Aristotle to tutor the teenage Alexander, who was
greatly inspired by Homer's 'Iliad'. Alexander retained a strong interest in the arts and
culture throughout his life.
Foreign Rule
Roman Era
While Alexander the Great was forging his vast empire in the east, the Romans had been
expanding theirs to the west, and now they were keen to start making inroads into
Greece. After several inconclusive clashes, they defeated Macedon in 168 BC at the
Battle of Pydna.
The Achaean League was defeated in 146 BC and the Roman consul Mummius made
an example of the rebellious Corinthians by destroying their city. In 86 BC Athens joined
an ill-fated rebellion against the Romans in Asia Minor staged by the king of the Black
Sea region, Mithridates VI. In retribution, the Roman statesman Sulla invaded Athens
and took off with its most valuable sculptures. Greece now became the Graeco-Roman
province of Achaea. Although officially under the auspices of Rome, some major Greek
cities were given the freedom to self-govern to some extent. As the Romans revered
Greek culture, Athens retained its status as a centre of learning. During a succession of
Roman emperors, namely Augustus, Nero and Hadrian, Greece experienced a period of
relative peace, the Pax Romana, which was to last until the middle of the 3rd century
AD.
The Green Line separating Greece and Turkey in modern-day Cyprus is a ghost town, a
desert of silence where the clock stopped in 1974. Greeks still peer through the barb-
wire partition to the place they were born and banished from, but are unlikely to return
to.
The Byzantine Empire & the Crusades
The Pax Romana began to crumble in AD 250 when the Goths invaded Greece, the first
of a succession of invaders spurred on by the 'great migrations' of the Visigoths and then
the Ostrogoths from the middle Balkans.
In an effort to resolve the conflict in the region, in AD 324 the Roman Emperor Con-
stantine I, a Christian convert, transferred the capital of the empire from Rome to Byzan-
tium, a city on the western shore of the Bosphorus, which was renamed Constantinople
(present-day İstanbul). While Rome went into terminal decline, the eastern capital began
