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Prehistoric Period 
Archaeological evidence indicates that a primitive Mediterranean people, closely akin to the races of northern Africa, inhabited the southern Aegean area as far back as the Neolithic Age, before 4000 BC. The evidence shows a cultural progression from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, which in the area of Greece commenced about 3000 BC. Beginning in the 3rd millennium BC the prehistoric Aegean civilization progressed to an extremely high level. The Bronze Age civilization in the Aegean was divided into two main cultures, each of which passed through several phases and subdivisions. One, called Cretan or Minoan (see Minoan Culture), was centered on the island of Crete, only 660 km (400 mi) northwest of Egypt and directly on the sea routes to the ancient countries of the Middle East. The other culture, called Helladic (Mycenaean in its late phase), flourished contemporaneously on mainland Greece, particularly in the Peloponnesus. Its greatest centers were at Mycenae, Tiryns (near present N�vplion), and Pylos (see P�los). Cretan culture and trade dominated the Mediterranean until after 1500 BC, when leadership passed to the Mycenaeans. During the late 3rd millennium BC began a series of invasions by tribes from the north who spoke an Indo-European language. Evidence exists that the northerners originally inhabited the basin of the Danube River in southeast Europe. The most prominent of the early invaders, who were to be called the Achaeans, had, in all probability, been forced to migrate by other invaders. They overran southern Greece and established themselves on the Peloponnesus. According to some scholars, a second tribe, the Ionians, settled chiefly in Attica, east-central Greece, and the Cyclades, where they were assimilated to a great degree with the Helladic people. The Aeolians, a third, rather vaguely defined tribe, originally settled in Thessaly. 

Ancient Greece 
Gradually, in the last period (circa 1500-1200 BC) of Bronze Age Greece, the mainland absorbed the civilization of Crete. By 1400 BC the Achaeans were in possession of the island itself, and soon afterward they became dominant on the mainland, notably in the region around Mycenae. Although this city has given its name to the Achaean ascendancy because of the extensive archaeological investigations of its ruins, other city-kingdoms were of great, if not equal, importance. The Trojan War, described by Homer in the Iliad, began about, or shortly after, 1200 BC and was probably one of a series of wars waged during the 13th and 12th centuries BC. It may have been connected with the last and most important of the invasions from the north, which occurred at a similar time and brought the Iron Age to Greece. The Dorians left their mountainous home in Epirus and pushed their way down to the Peloponnesus and Crete, using iron weapons to conquer or expel the previous inhabitants of those regions. The invading Dorians overthrew the Achaean kings and settled, principally, in the southern and eastern part of the peninsula. Sparta and Corinth became the chief Dorian cities. Many of the Achaeans took refuge in northern Peloponnesus, a district afterward called Achaea. Others resisted the Dorians bitterly, and after being subjugated were made serfs and called helots. Refugees from the Peloponnesus fled to their kin in Attica and the island of Euboea, but they later migrated, as did the Aeolians, to the coast of Asia Minor. In the centuries after 1200 BC the increased colonization of the Asia Minor coast, first by refugees from the Dorians and then by the Dorians themselves, made the area a political and cultural part of Greece. Three great confederacies were established by each of the Greek ethnic divisions. The northern part of the coast of Asia Minor and the island of Lesbos constituted the Aeolian confederacy. The Ionian confederacy occupied the middle district, called Ionia, and the islands of Kh�os and S�mos. A Doric confederacy was established in the south and on the islands of Rhodes and Kos. Several centuries later (750-550 BC) a rapid population increase and a consequent shortage of food, the rise of trade and industry, and other conditions led to another great colonizing movement. Colonies were established in places as widely separated as the eastern coast of the Black Sea and what is now Marseille, France, and included settlements in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian peninsula. The latter was so thickly inhabited by Greeks that the area became known as Magna Graecia (Latin, "Greater Greece"). 

The Hellenic Period 
After the conclusion of the great migrations in the Aegean, the Greeks developed a proud racial consciousness. They called themselves Hellenes, originally the name, according to Homer, of a small tribe living south of Thessaly. The term Greeks, used by later foreign peoples, was derived from Graecia, the Latin name for a small Hellenic tribe of Epirus, presumably the Hellenes with whom the Romans first had dealings. Out of the mythology that became the basis of an intricate religion, the Hellenes developed a genealogy that traced their ancestry to semidivine heroes. See Greek Mythology. Although the small Hellenic states maintained their autonomy, they pursued a common course of political development. In the pre-Hellenic period the tribal chiefs of invading tribes became the kings of the territories they conquered. These monarchies were slowly replaced, between 800 and 650 BC, by oligarchies of aristrocrats, as the noble families acquired land, the measure of wealth and power. About 650 BC many of the Hellenic oligarchies were themselves overthrown by wealthy commoners or disgruntled aristocrats, called tyrants. The rise of the tyrants was due mainly to economic conditions. Popular discontent under the aristocracies had become a major political factor because of the increasing enslavement of landless peasants; colonization and trade in the 8th and 7th centuries BC hastened the development of a prosperous merchant class, which took advantage of the mounting discontent to demand a share of power with the aristrocrats in the city-states. 

Age of Tyrants 
The age of the Greek tyrants (circa 650-500 BC) was notable for advances made in Hellenic civilization. The title of tyrant connoted that political power had been illegally seized, rather than that it was abused. Generally, the tyrants, such as Periander of Corinth, Gelon of Syracuse, and Polycrates of Samos, were wise and popular rulers. Trade and industry flourished. In the wake of political and economic strength came a flowering of Hellenic culture, especially in Ionia, where Greek philosophy began with the speculations of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. The development of cultural pursuits common to all the Hellenic cities was one of the factors that united ancient Greece, despite the political separation of the various states. Another factor was the Greek language, the many dialects of which were readily understandable in any part of the country or any colony. The third factor was the Greek religion, which held the Hellenes together, and the sanctuary of Delphi, with its oracle, became the greatest national shrine. As a corollary to their religion, the Greeks held four national festivals, called games—the Olympian, Isthmian, Pythian, and Nemean. The Olympian games were considered so important that many Greeks dated their historical reckoning from the first Olympiad (the four-year period between sessions at the Olympian games) held in 776 BC. Related to religion, at least in origin, was the Amphictyonic League, an organization of Hellenic tribes that was established for the protection and administration of shrines. 

From Monarchy to Democracy 
Some unification of the city-states took place. Between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, Athens and Sparta became the two dominant cities of Greece. Each of these great states united its weaker neighbors into a league or confederacy under its control. Sparta, a completely militarized and aristocratic state, established its leadership mainly by conquest, and kept its subject states under strict rule. The unification of Attica was, however, carried on by mutual and peaceful agreement under the leadership of Athens, and the inhabitants of smaller cities were given Athenian citizenship. The hereditary kingship of Athens was abolished in 683 BC by the nobles, or Eupatridae, who ruled Athens until the mid-6th century BC. The Eupatridae retained complete authority by their supreme power to dispense justice, often in an arbitrary fashion. In 621 BC the statesman Draco codified and published the Athenian law, thereby limiting the judiciary power of the nobles. A second major blow to the hereditary power of the Eupatridae was the code of the Athenian statesman and legislator Solon in 594 BC, which reformed the Draconian code and gave citizenship to the lower classes. During the wise and enlightened rule (560-527 BC) of the tyrant Pisistratus, the forms of government began to take on elements of democracy. Hippias and Hipparchus, sons of Pisistratus, inherited their father's power, but they were considerably more despotic. Hippias, who survived Hipparchus, was expelled by a popular uprising in 510 BC. In the resulting political strife, the supporters of democracy, under the great statesman Cleisthenes, won a complete victory, and a new constitution, based on democratic principles, took effect about 502 BC. The beginning of democratic rule was the dawn of the greatest period of Athenian history. Agriculture and commerce flourished. Moreover, the center of artistic and intellectual endeavor, until that time situated in the cities of the Asia Minor coast, was rapidly transferred to thriving Athens. 

The Persian Wars 
The Greek colonies in Asia Minor had been conquered by Croesus, king of Lydia, in the early part of his reign (560-546 BC) and brought into the Lydian Empire. Croesus was a mild ruler, sympathetic to the Hellenes, and an ally of Sparta; the economic, political, and intellectual life of the colonies was greatly stimulated by Lydian rule. In 546 BC Croesus was overthrown by Cyrus the Great, king of Persia. Except for the island of S�mos, which ably defended itself, the Greek cities in Asia and the coastal islands became part of the Persian Empire. In 499 BC Ionia, assisted by Athens and Eretria, revolted against Persia. The rebels were, at first, successful, and King Darius I of Persia swore to avenge himself. He put down the revolt in 493 BC and, after sacking Miletus, reestablished his absolute control over Ionia. A year later Mardonius, the king's son-in-law, led a great Persian fleet to exact vengeance from Greece, but most of the ships were wrecked off Mount Athos. At the same time, Darius sent heralds to Greece, requiring tokens of submission from all the Greek city-states. Although most of the smaller states acquiesced, Sparta and Athens refused, and slew the Persian heralds as a gesture of defiance. Darius, enraged by the Greek insult as well as by the fate of his fleet, prepared a second expedition, which set sail in 490 BC. After destroying Eretria, the Persian army proceeded to the plain of Marathon near Athens. The Athenian leaders sent to Sparta for aid, but the message arrived during a religious festival, which prevented the Spartans from leaving. Nevertheless, the Athenian army, under Miltiades, won an overwhelming victory over a Persian force three times as large, and the Persians withdrew. Darius immediately began to ready a third expedition; his son, Xerxes I, who succeeded him in 486 BC, brought together one of the largest armies in ancient history. In 481 BC the Persians crossed the Hellespont strait over a bridge of boats and marched southward. The Greeks made their first stand in 480 BC at Thermopylae, where the Spartan leader Leonidas I and several thousand soldiers heroically defended the narrow pass. A treacherous Greek showed the Persians another path that enabled the invaders to enter the pass from the rear. Leonidas permitted most of his men to withdraw, but he and a force of 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians resisted to the end and were annihilated. The Persians then proceeded to Athens, capturing and burning the abandoned city. Meanwhile, the Persian fleet pursued the Greek fleet to Salamis, an island in the Gulf of Aegina (now known as the Gulf of Saronik�s) near Athens. In the naval battle that ensued, fewer than 400 Greek vessels, under the Athenian general and statesman Themistocles, defeated 1200 Persian vessels. Xerxes, who had watched the battle from a golden throne on a hill overlooking the harbor of Salamis, fled to Asia. In the following year, 479 BC, the remainder of the Persian forces in Greece were overwhelmed at Plataea, and the invaders were finally driven out.  

The Ascendancy of Athens 
As a result of its brilliant leadership in the Persian wars, Athens became the most influential state in Greece. Moreover, the wars had demonstrated the increasing importance of seapower, for the naval battle of Salamis had been the decisive engagement. Sparta, hitherto the greatest military power in Greece because of its army, lost its prestige to the Athenian fleet. In 478 BC a large number of Greek states formed a voluntary alliance, the Delian League, to drive the Persians from the Greek cities and coastal islands of Asia Minor. Athens, as a matter of course, headed the alliance. The victories of the league, then under the Athenian general Cimon, resulted (476-466 BC) in the liberation of the Asia Minor coast from Persia. Athens, however, began to exert its power over the other members of the league to such an extent that they became its subjects rather than its allies. The Athenians exacted tribute from their erstwhile confederates, and, when Naxos attempted to withdraw from the league, the fortifications of that city were razed. The period of Athenian domination during the 5th century BC has become known as the golden age of Athens. Under Pericles, who became leader of the popular party and head of the state in 460 BC, the city attained its greatest splendor. The constitution, reformed to further internal democracy, contained provisions such as payment for jury service, thereby permitting even the poorest citizens to serve. Pericles was determined to make Athens the most beautiful city in the world. The Parthenon, the Erechtheum, the Propylaea, and other great buildings were constructed. Greek drama reached its greatest expression with the plays of such dramatists as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comedy writer Aristophanes. Thucydides and Herodotus, an Ionian, became famous historians; Socrates became an influential philosopher; and the cultivation of intellect in Periclean Athens made the city famous as an artistic and cultural center. 

The Peloponnesian War 
Despite the excellent internal condition of the city, the foreign policy of Athens proved its undoing. The members of the Delian League were discontented and chafed under Athenian rule. Sparta, moreover, was envious of Athenian prosperity. A league between the cities of the Peloponnesus had existed since about 550 BC, under the domination of Sparta, and the Peloponnesian League began to oppose Athens actively. In 431 BC the inevitable clash between Athens and Sparta occurred. It was precipitated by Athenian aid to Corcyra during a dispute between Corcyra and Corinth, an ally of Sparta. Known as the Peloponnesian War, the struggle between the two great confederacies lasted until 404 BC and resulted in establishing Spartan supremacy in Greece. At the conclusion of the war, Sparta sponsored an oligarchy, known as the Thirty Tyrants, to rule Athens. Similar ruling bodies were established in the cities and islands of Asia Minor. Spartan rule soon showed itself as even harsher and more oppressive than that of Athens. In 403 BC the Athenians under Thrasybulus revolted, expelled the Spartan garrison that had supported the oligarchs, and restored their democracy and independence. Other Greek cities consistently rebelled against the control of Sparta. 

Shifting Alliances 
The Greek states began, individually, to seek aid from their traditional enemy, Persia. In 399 BC the marauding activities of Persia on the Asia Minor coast led Sparta to send an army there. Although the Spartan army met with some success, it was forced to return in 395 BC to oppose a coalition of Argos, Athens, Corinth, and Thebes. The resulting conflict, known as the Corinthian War, continued, mainly as small-scale warfare, until 387 BC, when Sparta, allying itself with Persia, imposed the Peace of Antalcidas on its unwilling subject states. By the terms of the Persian-Spartan settlement, the entire west coast of Asia Minor was ceded to Persia, and the city-states of Greece were made autonomous. Despite this agreement, Sparta in 382 BC invaded Thebes and captured the city of Olynthus in the north. The Theban general Pelopidas, supported by Athens, led an uprising three years later and expelled the Spartan occupation force. War between Sparta and Athens in alliance with Thebes was resumed, ending with the Battle of Leuctra, in 371 BC, in which the Thebans, led by Epaminondas, so completely defeated their enemies that Spartan domination came to an end. Thebes, by virtue of its victory, became the leading Greek state. The other states resented its leadership, and the ascendancy of Thebes inaugurated an unhappy period of civil unrest and economic misery resulting from internecine strife. Athens, in particular, refused to submit to Theban supremacy and in 369 BC became an ally of Sparta. At best insecure, the Theban control was dependent principally on the brilliant leadership of Epaminondas, and when he was killed in the Battle of Mantinea in 362 BC, Thebes again became just another state among many. 

Macedonian Supremacy 
During this period of strife in Greece, Macedonia, the northern neighbor of Thessaly, was initiating a policy of expansion that was destined to make it one of the greatest world powers in ancient history. Philip II, who became king of Macedonia in 359 BC, was a great admirer of Greek civilization, but he was well aware of its greatest weakness, the lack of political unity. Directly after he came to the throne, Philip annexed the Greek colonies on the coast of Macedonia and Thrace and determined to make himself master of the peninsula. Astute political craft and the force of Macedonian arms helped Philip to realize his ambitions, despite the opposition of many prominent Greek statesmen led by Demosthenes. By 338 BC, after winning the decisive battle of Chaironeia against Athens and Thebes, Philip was sufficiently powerful to call a congress of the Greek states. The congress acknowledged Macedonian supremacy in the peninsula and appointed Philip commander in chief of the Greek forces. A year later, a second congress declared war on Persia, the traditional enemy. Philip began at once to prepare for an Asian campaign, but he was assassinated in 336 BC. His son, Alexander, who was then 20 years old, succeeded him (see Alexander the Great). In 334 BC Alexander set out to invade Persia. During the next ten years, his conquests extended Greek influence as well as the Greek civilization and language throughout a Macedonian empire that ranged as far east as northern India and as far south and west as Egypt. By the time of Alexander's death in 323 BC, the culture of Greece had spread through most of the ancient world. 

Hellenistic Period 
Following the death of Alexander, the Macedonian generals began to partition his vast empire among themselves. The disagreements arising from this division resulted in a series of wars from 322 to 275 BC, many of which took place in Greece. Thus, one of the characteristics of the Hellenistic period, which lasted from the death of Alexander until the acquisition of Greece as a Roman province in 146 BC, was the deterioration of the Greek city-states as political entities and the gradual decline of Greek political independence as a whole. Nevertheless, the Hellenistic period was marked by the triumph of Greece as the fountainhead of culture, and its way of life was adopted, as a result of Alexander's conquests, throughout most of the ancient world. 

The Diadochi 
Of the kingdoms established by the generals of Alexander, called the Diadochi (Greek diadochos, "successor"), the most important were Syria under the Seleucid dynasty, and Egypt under the rule of the Ptolemies. The capital of Ptolemaic Egypt, Alexandria, which had been founded by Alexander in 332 BC, developed into a center of Greek learning rivaling and occasionally surpassing Athens. Every part of the Hellenistic world devoted itself to the cultivation of art and intellect. Such men as the mathematicians Euclid and Archimedes, the philosophers Epicurus and Zeno of Citium, and the poets Apollonius of Rhodes and Theocritus were characteristic of the age. So strongly was Hellenistic culture implanted that it became one of the most important elements in early Christianity. In 290 BC the city-states of central Greece began to join the Aetolian League, a powerful military confederation that had originally been organized during the reign of Philip II by the cities of Aetolia for their mutual benefit and protection. A second and similar organization, known as the Achaean League, became, in 280 BC, the supreme confederation of the cities in the northern Peloponnesus. Later other cities joined. Both alliances dedicated themselves to saving the other Greek states from domination by the kingdom of Macedonia. The Achaean League became much more powerful than its rival and tried to acquire control of all Greece. Led by the statesman and general Aratus of Sicyon, the league began a conflict with Sparta, which had joined neither alliance. In the war between the Achaeans and Sparta, the league was at first defeated, and forgoing its primary purpose, called on Macedonia for military aid, which was granted. The alliance then defeated Sparta, but from that time on it was dominated by Macedonia.  

Roman Interference 
In 215 BC Rome began to interfere in Greek affairs. Philip V of Macedonia allied himself with Carthage against Rome, but the Romans, acquiring the support of the Aetolian League, overcame the Macedonian forces in 206 BC and obtained a firm foothold in Greece. Rome, aided by both leagues, again defeated Philip in 197 BC, and Macedonia, completely subjugated, agreed to a peace with Rome by which the independence of the Greek city-states was recognized. The Greek city-states found that they had exchanged one master for another. In a last desperate attempt to free themselves, the members of the Achaean League resisted the demands that Rome made on it in 149 BC. The resulting war ended with the destruction of Corinth by Roman legions in 146 BC. The leagues were abolished and Greek territories came completely under direct Roman rule. Macedonia was annexed as a Roman province and governed by a Roman proconsul who also controlled the Greek city-states to the south. 

Roman and Medieval Greece 
For 60 years after 146 BC, Greece was competently administered by Rome. Some cities, such as Athens and Sparta, even retained their free status. In 88 BC, when Mithridates VI Eupator, king of Pontus, began a campaign of conquest in Roman-controlled territories, however, many cities of Greece supported the Asian monarch because he had promised to help them regain their independence. Roman legions under Lucius Cornelius Sulla forced Mithridates out of Greece and crushed the rebellion, sacking Athens in 86 BC and Thebes a year later. Roman punishment of all the rebellious cities was heavy, and the campaigns fought on Greek soil left central Greece in ruins. As a result, the country began to disintegrate economically. Athens remained a center of philosophy and learning, but its commerce became almost nonexistent. About 22 BC Augustus, the first Roman emperor, separated the Greek city-states from Macedonia and made the former a province called Achaea. 

Greek Renaissance 
Under the Roman Empire, in the first centuries of the Christian era, a Greek renaissance took place, particularly during the reign of the emperor Hadrian. With his contemporary, the wealthy Greek scholar Herodes Atticus, Hadrian beautified Athens and restored many of the ruined cities. In the middle of the 3rd century AD, however, this rebirth was checked by the Goths, who in 267 and 268 overran the peninsula, captured Athens, and laid waste the cities of Argos, Corinth, and Sparta. After 395 the Roman Empire was ruled by two coemperors, one in the Latin West and the other in the Hellenic East. By the 6th century a successor empire, known as the Byzantine, had evolved in the East. It included all of Greece and the Aegean region and was characterized by a mixture of Hellenic culture, Oriental influences from the Middle East, and Christianity. Greece itself became a neglected and obscure province. From the 6th to the 8th century, Slavonic tribes from the north migrated into the peninsula, occupying Illyria and Thrace. 

Duchy of Athens 
In the 13th century the ambition of the Frankish leaders of the Fourth Crusade interrupted the continuity of Byzantine rule. Constantinople fell to the Crusaders in 1204, and the conquerors, after sacking the Byzantine capital, established the Latin Empire of the East. They divided the Greek peninsula into feudal fiefs, of which the most prominent was the duchy of Athens. The Latin Empire fell in 1261, when Constantinople was reconquered by the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaeologus. During the next two centuries, the duchy of Athens was controlled successively by French, Spanish, and Italian rulers. In the 14th century the court of Athens was one of the most brilliant feudal courts of Europe. 

Ottoman Domination 
In 1453 Muhammad II, sultan of Turkey, captured Constantinople and then turned his attention to the Peloponnesus and Attica; by 1460 these parts of Greece had been incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. During the next two centuries the Turks drove the Venetians and other alien powers from the few remaining outposts they held on the coast of Greece and in the Greek islands. The process was finished with the Turkish capture of Crete in 1669. For a brief period (1699-1718) Venice regained control of the Peloponnesus, but otherwise Greece remained under firm Ottoman domination until the 19th century. Turkish rule was in many ways costly to the Greek people and in its later stages came to be corrupt and even brutal. However, some Greeks had a relatively privileged position within the empire. The Greek patriarch was the political as well as the spiritual head of all the Orthodox, and many Phanariots—so called after the Greek quarter of Constantinople—held influential positions as Ottoman administrators and political advisers. 

Spread of Nationalism 
A surge of Greek nationalism occurred in the latter part of the 18th century. The sentiment was considerably aided by Russia, which incited the Greek Orthodox Christians, coreligionists of the Russians, to revolt. In 1770 the Russian count Aleksey Grigoryevich Orlov landed a Russian fleet in the Peloponnesus and led an unsuccessful revolt against the Turks. Later, the French Revolution (1789-1799) influenced Greek patriots, who began to plan for a major rebellion. A literary revival accompanied the spread of nationalism. A powerful secret society, the Philik� Hetairia (Friendly Association), founded in 1814 to prepare for the coming revolution, collected funds and arms through its centers in the Balkan and eastern Mediterranean regions. In 1821 Alexander Ypsilanti, a former aide-de-camp of the Russian czar Alexander I and head of the Hetairia, entered Jassy, the capital of Moldavia (then Turkish territory), with a small force and proclaimed the independence of Greece. The revolt ended in disaster a few months later, because the czar refused to aid the revolutionary movement. During the abortive attempt by Ypsilanti, a general uprising occurred in the Peloponnesus under the leadership of Germanos, archbishop of Patras. 

War of Independence 
In the first phase (1821-1824) of the war for Greek independence, the Greeks fought virtually alone, aided only by money and volunteers from other European countries, where the Greek cause had aroused a great deal of sympathy. Among the Greek leaders were Markos Bozzaris, Theodoros Kolokotrones, Alexandros Mavrokordatos, and Andreas Vokos Miaoules. Mahmud II, sultan of Turkey, in 1824 asked aid of Muhammad Ali, viceroy of Egypt, who agreed to help in return for control of Crete and other Turkish possessions if he quelled the rebellion. The Egyptian troops pushed their way up the Peloponnesus, and by 1826 the entire southern peninsula was in their hands. The Greeks suffered from political as well as military weakness because of factional strife among their leaders. A temporary conciliation between them was effected in 1827, and a new republican constitution was approved in that year by a national assembly, which elected the Russian-Greek statesman Count Io�nnis Ant�nios Kapod�strias the first president of the Greek republic. Party quarrels began again almost immediately after this short-lived truce. 

The Powers Intervene 
Because of the strategic importance of Greece on the continent of Europe, the European powers agreed in 1827 to intervene militarily on behalf of the Greeks. The powers were particularly fearful of Muhammad Ali's potential menace to them, should he obtain further Mediterranean territory. France, Great Britain, and Russia first demanded an armistice, which the Turkish government, commonly known as the Porte, refused. The European powers then sent naval forces to Greece. The presence of the naval forces, and the efforts of Russia, in particular, forced the Porte to accept a settlement. In 1829 the Treaty of Adrianople terminated the Russo-Turkish War, which had grown out of both the Greek revolution and Russia's own aspirations in southeastern Europe. The defeated Porte consented to whatever arrangements the European powers might make for Greece. In 1830 France, Great Britain, and Russia issued the London Protocol, which negated the Greek constitution and declared Greece an autonomous kingdom under their united protection. The territory of the kingdom was considerably less than the Greeks had expected, the northern frontier being set only slightly north of the Gulf of Corinth. 

Modern Greece 
A period of great civil unrest followed the War of Independence. Factional strife persisted and the Greeks, who had envisioned their renascent country as commensurate with ancient Hellas, objected strenuously to the diminution of their territory. While the powers were trying to find a king for Greece, the administration of the country was left to Kapod�strias, who governed in a dictatorial fashion until he was assassinated in 1831. Civil war then broke out. At length, in 1832, Otto of Bavaria accepted the throne offered him by the European powers and in the following year was crowned Otto I, king of Greece. The political reorganization of Greece was undertaken by a Bavarian regency, Otto being only 17 years of age at his accession to the throne. The Bavarian regents denied the Greeks a constitution, burdened them with excessive taxation, and tried to set up a centralized bureaucracy. Although they were dismissed in 1835, the situation did not much improve. Greek resentment culminated in a bloodless revolution in 1843, after which the king was compelled to grant the country a constitution. Popular discontent with Otto increased in 1854, when the king, against the will of his people, acquiesced in the British and French occupation of Pirai�vs to prevent a Greco-Russian alliance during the Crimean War. In 1862 part of the Greek army revolted against Otto, and he was deposed in the same year by a national assembly with the approval of the powers. A national plebiscite chose Prince Alfred, second son of Queen Victoria of Great Britain, as king, but the British government rejected the offer and nominated Prince William George, second son of King Christian IX of Denmark. The prince was acceptable to the Greeks, and he was crowned George I in 1863. To demonstrate its approval, the British government ceded the Ionian Islands, a British protectorate since 1815, to the reconstituted monarchy. In the following year, a new, more democratic constitution granted universal male suffrage and a unicameral legislature. 

Struggle for Territory 
During the last decades of the 19th century, the major thrust of Greek foreign policy aimed at expanding the territory of the kingdom. Following the defeat of Turkey in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 and 1878, the Congress of Berlin recommended that Turkey readjust the northern frontier of Greece. Turkey refused, and Greece declared war in 1878. The great powers, however, intervened before major hostilities began and recommended that Turkey award Thessaly and part of Epirus to Greece. Turkey refused to give up all the stipulated territory. In 1885 Eastern Rumelia revolted against Turkish rule and was incorporated into Bulgaria. Greece at once took arms and demanded that Turkey adhere to the territorial recommendations of 1878. Again the powers forced Greece to disarm, this time by blockading the main Greek ports until Greece complied. The annexation of Macedonia and Crete then became the object of Greek agitation for territorial expansion. A secret military society, the Ethnike Hetairia (National Association), was founded in 1894 to foment insurrection in these Turkish provinces. When the Cretans revolted against their rulers in 1896, Greece came to their aid. A request from the powers that Greek forces withdraw from Crete was refused by the Greek government. Some months later members of the Ethnike Hetairia attacked Turkish posts in Macedonia, inciting Turkey to declare war, a conflict for which Greece was not prepared. After several weeks of fighting, the Greek army was reduced to a panic-stricken mob fleeing before the Turkish troops. Total disaster was prevented by action of the great powers, and Russia demanded that the Turks cease fighting. Greece, following this episode, was required to pay Turkey a large indemnity, which exacerbated the precarious state of Greek finances and gave the European powers added control because of the increase in the Greek foreign debt. In 1898 Turkey was compelled by the powers to withdraw all its forces from Crete, and Prince George, the second son of George I, was appointed high commissioner of Crete under the protection of the European powers. For the next ten years, Crete was shaken by internal disputes, resulting primarily from the refusal of the powers to permit union with Greece. Disagreements between Prince George and Eleutherios Venizelos, the pro-Greek political leader of Crete, led the prince to resign in 1906. Two years later the Cretan assembly proclaimed the long-desired union. The powers reluctantly withdrew their forces from the island and, in 1912, Cretan representatives sat for the first time in the Greek legislature. 

The Balkan Wars 
Meanwhile, the question of Macedonia was becoming more complicated, for Greece was not the only Balkan country desiring that region. Rising currents of nationalism in the Balkans, particularly in Serbia, Bulgaria, and Romania, were considerably stimulated by the gradual disintegration of the Turkish Empire, which was in such a decadent and weak state that it was called the "sick man of Europe." During most of the 19th century, the emerging Balkan states maintained peaceful relations with each other because of their mutual antagonism toward Turkey. They formed alliances, and a confederation of the Balkan states was contemplated. The disposition of Macedonia, however, aroused bitter disagreement. Conflicting political ambitions resulted in emphasizing the religious differences between Muslims and Christians, and disputes erupted among the various Balkan peoples. In 1903 a Slavic insurrection broke out in Macedonia, most of the rebels declaring their goal to be united with Bulgaria. Greece resolved to aid Turkey covertly and encouraged Greek guerrillas to cross the border and attack Slavs and Vlachs in Macedonia. Determined to restore order and assert its control, Turkey in 1912 dispatched troops to quell all the fighting groups. At this move, Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro laid aside their quarrels and, forming military alliances, declared war on Turkey (see Balkan Wars). Turkey was completely defeated in the First Balkan War fought during 1912 and 1913. By the terms of the Treaty of London, it relinquished all claims to Crete and its European territories, except for a small area including Istanbul. Dissension between the Balkan allies concerning the disposition of the former Turkish territory, however, led to the Second Balkan War, in which Greece and Serbia fought Bulgaria. The latter was defeated in a month. The Treaty of Bucharest in 1913 almost doubled the area and population of Greece, as part of Macedonia, including Thessalon�ki and Kav�la, was added to its territory. 

World War I 
Greece proclaimed its neutrality when World War I began in 1914. Strict neutrality, however, was impossible. Constantine I, who had succeeded his father, George I, as king in 1913, favored Germany. The leader of the pro-Allied faction was Prime Minister Eleutherios Venizelos, the Cretan leader who, after the union with Greece, had become head of the Liberal party and one of the foremost political figures in Greece. Twice in 1915 the Venizelos government sought to aid the Allies, but each time the king vetoed his move. During successive ministries, Constantine maintained relations with both the Allies and the Central Powers, refusing to commit himself openly. In 1916 Venizelos went to Salonika, where he established a Greek government in opposition to Constantine. The government was recognized by Great Britain and France. In 1917 the Allies forced the king to abdicate in favor of his second son, Alexander, Venizelos returned in triumph, and Greece entered the war on the Allied side. In the postwar territorial settlements, Greece received western Thrace from Bulgaria, eastern Thrace from Turkey, and many of the Aegean Islands. Greece also claimed Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey). Greek troops landed there in 1919 and engaged in violent clashes with the Turkish population and, later, with Turkish troops. King Alexander died in 1920. His younger brother, Paul, refused the throne, and a plebiscite returned King Constantine, despite the disapproval of the Allies. Because of the consequent loss of Allied support, the Smyrna expedition ended in a complete Greek rout in 1922. The Greek government ordered demobilization, but the army revolted and set up a military dictatorship under General Nicholas Plastiras. Constantine was forced to abdicate. He was succeeded by his eldest son, George II, who was virtually a puppet of the army. In 1923, by the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne, Smyrna reverted to Turkey, and more than 1 million Greek residents of Asia Minor were repatriated, as were the Turks resident in Greece. 

Republican Interim 
Strongly antiroyalist, the Greek refugees and the powerful military faction agitated ceaselessly against the king, who left Greece under pressure in 1923. After a plebiscite favoring a republican form of government, the parliament proclaimed Greece a republic in 1924. A long period of political instability followed. In 1925 General Theodoros Pangalos seized control of the government. A year later, as the sole candidate, he was elected president and became dictator of the country. In August 1926 Pangalos was overthrown in a coup d'�tat engineered by General Georgios Kondylis, who acted briefly as military dictator. In elections held a few months later, the republican majority was so small that a coalition government including the royalist Populist party had to be formed. The coalition government finished drafting and, in 1927, promulgated a republican constitution, work on which had been begun in 1925. But the government passed through successive crises and was beginning to lose its control when, in 1928, Venizelos returned to Greek politics. After being appointed prime minister by the president, Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis, Venizelos and his Liberal party won an overwhelming victory in the 1928 general elections. 

Restoration of the Monarchy 
For the next four years, the prime minister worked to stabilize Greece, both internally and in its foreign relations. In 1928 Greece signed a friendship pact with Italy and, a year later, a pact with Yugoslavia. A treaty with Turkey was signed in 1930. Domestically, however, Venizelos met with less success. Although he was a convinced supporter of constitutional monarchy, his patriotism compelled him to support the national republic. Thus, both the royalists and the more radical republicans resented him. A grave financial crisis was precipitated in 1932 by falling demand for Greek exports caused by the world depression of that time. The desperate financial situation was reflected in the diminished prestige of the Venizelos government and its defeat in the 1932 elections. For the next three years the increasingly strong royalist faction, led by Panyiotis Tsaldaris, and the Venizelists struggled for control of the government. A large part of the army, strongly republican, revolted in 1935 against the rising current of royalism. The rebellion was quelled by Kondylis, the leader of the rival military faction. Royalist military leaders forced the resignation of Prime Minister Tsaldaris who, although a royalist, had promised to defend the republic. Kondylis then assumed dictatorial powers for the second time and influenced the parliament to vote for a restoration of the monarchy. A plebiscite, organized and directed by the Kondylis government, sustained the vote. The republican constitution of 1927 was set aside, and a revised version of the monarchical constitution framed in 1911 was declared in force. George II was restored to the throne in late 1935. The political scene was complicated by the deaths of Kondylis, Venizelos, and Tsaldaris during the ensuing six months and the period was also marked by increasing social unrest and a growing Communist labor movement. In 1936 General Io�nnes Metaxas, who led the Free Opinion party and had the support of the army, took the situation in hand. By a coup d'�tat in August, he made himself dictator and proclaimed a state of martial law. The Metaxas dictatorship imposed rigid press censorship, abolished political parties, cracked down on the labor movement, and countenanced no opposition. 

World War II 
Because of the threat posed by the Italian occupation of Albania in 1939, the safety of Greece against Italian aggression was guaranteed by France and Great Britain. Despite these assurances, Greece was attacked in October 1940 by Italian troops from Albania. The Greek army, however, was unexpectedly successful. By December it had driven the invaders from the country and was in possession of a fourth of Albania. A complete Italian rout was averted by the arrival, in April 1941, of German troops, which overcame Greek resistance. Greece was forced to sign an armistice on April 23, and the Germans entered Athens four days later. The Greek government was in a state of collapse; Metaxas had died in January, and his successor committed suicide in a state of depression over the German occupation. A National Socialist government was then established at Athens. King George fled to Crete and, after the German occupation of that island, established a government-in-exile, first in Cairo and later in London. Greece suffered enormously from the German occupation. Famine and severe inflation developed by late 1943. Intense guerrilla warfare was waged by many organized resistance groups throughout the country. Of these groups, the largest, estimated as having the support of from 60 to 90 percent of the population, was the leftist Ethnikon Apeleftherotikon Metopon (EAM, or National Liberation Front), a combination of many political and other organizations, notably trade unions. The EAM had its own army, the Ethnikos Laikos Apeleftherotikos Stratos (ELAS, or National Popular Liberation Army). Less effective was the Ethnikos Demokratikos Ellenikos Syndesmos (EDES, or National Democratic Greek Union), a resistance organization with a more conservative political program. In late 1943, following the Allied invasion of Italy and the prospect of the liberation of Greece, the EAM and EDES began to fight each other for the eventual control of the country. The British first gave their support to the dominant EAM, but later, fearful of the Communist domination of that organization, strongly supported the EDES. The strife was only partially lessened when a coalition government for Greece was agreed upon in May 1944. 

Civil War 
In October 1944 the German army withdrew from Greece, and the new government entered Athens on October 18. Georgios Papandreou, the prime minister, ordered the ELAS to disband and disarm, but its leaders refused to do so. Tension increased, and the British brought in reinforcements for their own troops in Athens. Civil war between the ELAS and the government forces began in Athens in December, following an ELAS demonstration in which the Athenian police fired on the demonstrators. The ELAS controlled all of Greece except for a British-patrolled sector of Athens. The British aided the government forces, which gained military superiority, and in December 1944 Archbishop Damaskinos was installed as regent of Greece pending a plebiscite to determine the state of the monarchy. In February 1945 the ELAS finally agreed to a truce. In return for the dissolution of its army, the EAM was promised freedom to engage in political activity, and a nonpolitical Greek army was guaranteed. In October 1945 Greece became a charter member of the United Nations. The first Greek postwar general elections were held in March 1946. The result of the elections, a victory for the royalist Populist party, was bitterly contested by the EAM, which claimed that the election proceedings had been irregular. The plebiscite, held on September 1, 1946, again returned George II to the throne. A few months later George died and was succeeded by his brother, Paul I. The increasing strength of the insurgent Communist forces in northern Greece became a source of concern to the Greek government, which claimed that the guerrillas were receiving aid from Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia, three countries within the sphere of influence of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The disputes between these three countries and Greece were aggravated by their respective claims to territory lying along their common borders. By the terms of the peace treaties drafted at the Paris Peace Conference of 1946, Greece received the Dodecanese Islands from Italy and reparations of $45 million from Bulgaria. In February 1947, Great Britain, unable due to economic difficulties to extend further aid to Greece, asked the United States to assume British obligations to the beleaguered Greek regime. U.S. President Harry S. Truman subsequently initiated the policy known as the Truman Doctrine, sending military supplies and advisers to support government forces and relief supplies for civilians. Despite a strong government offensive in the spring and summer of 1948, the rebels succeeded in retaining their principal strongholds, especially those in the mountainous area along the northern frontier. Several of the major defense bastions of the rebels in the Grammos Mountains were captured by government troops in the summer of 1949; on October 16, the rebel leadership proclaimed that military operations against the government had been halted "to avoid the total destruction of Greece." 

The Unstable 1950s 
Rehabilitation of the Greek economy progressed steadily following the civil war. By the end of 1950 the rate of industrial production was nearly 90 percent of the 1939 rate. The Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) voted in 1951 to allow Greece and Turkey to join the organization. Governmental instability, resulting mostly from the multiplicity of political parties, dominated the Greek domestic scene until late in 1952. In elections then, the Greek Rally party, a right-wing group headed by Field Marshal Alexandros Papagos, won a parliamentary majority (239 out of 300 seats). A new cabinet, with Papagos as prime minister, assumed office on November 19. Papagos died in October 1955 and was succeeded by Constantine Karamanlis. On January 4, 1956, Karamanlis announced the formation of the new right-wing National Radical Union party to replace the Greek Rally party, which had disintegrated after the death of Papagos. In parliamentary elections in February the National Radical Union gained 165 of the 300 seats, although the Democratic Union, a coalition of opposition parties, received a majority of the popular vote. During the 1950s Greece ardently backed the enosis (union with Greece) movement on the island of Cyprus, which had been a British possession since 1878. A request made by the Papagos government that a plebiscite be held on the question of union was opposed by Great Britain, and Turkey insisted that if the British withdrew from Cyprus the island should be given to Turkey. In 1955, however, Greece, Great Britain, and Turkey opened talks on the Cyprus issue. In 1959 the three governments finally reached an agreement, under which Cyprus was granted its independence on August 16, 1960. 

Continued Ferment 
Late in 1961 a new party, the Center Union, consisting of a coalition of center parties, was formed under the leadership of Georgios Papandreou. When Karamanlis won a legislative majority in the general elections held on October 29, the party refused to recognize his new government, charging coercion of voters. Opposition was continued until, in mid-April 1962, supporters of the Center Union clashed with Athens police during a rally. Karamanlis warned that further attempts to arouse disorder would be repressed. A year later Queen Frederika and her daughter, Princess Irene, were heckled while on a visit to London by demonstrators demanding the release of pro-Communists and antimonarchists jailed in Greece during the civil war. To avoid a repetition of the incident, Prime Minister Karamanlis opposed a projected summer visit of the royal family to England. Because his advice was not heeded, he resigned. When elections were held November 3 the Center Union won by a narrow margin, and Georgios Papandreou was named prime minister. Declining to rely on Communist support to keep his government in power, he resigned the next month, but new parliamentary elections held in February 1964 gave the Center Union a working majority, and he again became prime minister. 

Constantine II 
After the death of Paul I on March 6, 1964, his son ascended the throne as Constantine II, and by 1965 the new monarch was embroiled in a mounting political crisis. Papandreou was subjected to a campaign of attacks by the right-wing opposition, which accused the government of taking "soft" stands on the activities of pro-Communist groups within Greece and on the repatriation of Greek nationals taken to the USSR and its satellites during the civil war. In addition, right-wing newspapers revealed the existence of an army group called Aspida (shield) that had been formed by officers with allegedly leftist tendencies. The government announced that it would purge the army of all political influence, and a decree was sent to Constantine enabling the prime minister to take over the ministry of defense. The king, fearing that a change in the army command might deprive him of support from high-ranking officers, refused to sign the decree. On July 15, 1965, Papandreou threatened to resign. Even before he did so, however, the king appointed a new prime minister, who failed to win parliamentary support. Other attempts to form a government also failed, until finally, on September 25, Deputy Premier Stephanos Stephanopoulos succeeded in winning parliamentary approval. After serving for a little more than a year Stephanopoulos lost the support of the National Radical Union and on December 21, 1966, resigned. He was replaced by Io�nnis Paraskevopoulos. Meanwhile, 28 army officers accused of being members of Aspida and of plotting to seize control of the government were court-martialed. Also implicated in the alleged plot was Andreas Papandreou, son of the former prime minister, but because of his parliamentary immunity he could not be tried. After the trial of the army officers, 15 of whom were convicted and sentenced to prison, the Center Union attempted to protect Andreas Papandreou by introducing a bill extending parliamentary immunity to the period between the dissolution of parliament and the holding of new elections. The National Radical Union opposed the bill, and as a result of the dispute withdrew its support from the government. Paraskevopoulos was replaced as prime minister on April 3, 1967, by Panayiotis Kanellopoulos, leader of the Radical Union. Faced with domestic turbulence, Kanellopoulos dissolved parliament on April 14 and ordered new elections for May. 

The Colonel's Coup 
On April 21, 1967, however, a group of army officers overthrew the government and seized power. Several thousand political figures, specifically leftists and Communists, were arrested. Constantine Kollias, chief prosecutor of the supreme court, was appointed prime minister. The military junta issued a series of decrees suspending most civil liberties, imposing censorship on news media, suspending political parties, and outlawing a host of organizations. After an abortive attempt in December to overthrow the junta, King Constantine went into exile in Italy. The junta then installed a new cabinet headed by Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos. General Georgios Zoitakis was named viceroy and regent. On March 15, 1968, Papadopoulos presented the draft of a new constitution, which was later revised and ratified by popular referendum. The regime thereafter continued its authoritarian course, and hundreds of opponents were arrested. After investigating complaints of the use of torture on political prisoners, the Human Rights Commission of the Council of Europe concluded that it was a "current administrative practice" of the government. Greece then withdrew from the council rather than face expulsion. The government succeeded, however, in establishing closer relations with Communist nations including the People's Republic of China in 1970. The United States resisted pressures to deny weapons to the Papadopoulos regime. In the early 1970s the government restored some civil rights that had been suspended after the junta took power. On June 1, 1973, it abolished the monarchy, proclaimed Greece a republic, and named Papadopoulos to the presidency, to serve until 1981. After his inauguration in August, he proclaimed a broad amnesty for political offenses and promised new elections in 1974. A civilian cabinet took office in October. 

Fall of the Junta 
Student antigovernment riots in the fall of 1973 led to the reimposition of martial law. Then, on November 25, the military removed Papadopoulos for failure to maintain order and named Lieutenant General Phaidon Gizikis president. Encouragement of a coup that only temporarily removed Archbishop Makarios from the presidency of Cyprus, followed by the Turkish invasion of the island, led the junta to step down in July 1974. Gizikis recalled Karamanlis from exile to form the first civilian government since 1967. After an election in November, Karamanlis, heading the New Democracy party, formed a new government; Gizikis resigned in December. A referendum on the restoration of the monarchy was defeated in December, and a new republican constitution was approved in June 1975. 

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