The art of poppy culling had continued from the Assyrians to the Babylonians, who in turn had passed their knowledge onto the Egyptians.

Opium is used with poison hemlock to put people quickly and painlessly to death, but it is also used in medicine.

The Ebers Papyrus describes a way to "stop a crying child" using grains of the poppy-plant strained to a pulp.

Spongia somnifera, sponges soaked in opium, are used during surgery.

Southern Africa (909 BCE – 819 CE): Iron Horizons, Cattle Pathways, and Forager Frontiers

Regional Overview

From the fog-shrouded Skeleton Coast to the Drakensberg’s storm-green heights, Southern Africa during the early first millennium BCE to the early first millennium CE was a continent in miniature — a landscape of deserts, grasslands, deltas, and highlands linked by the slow pulse of rivers and the rhythmic migrations of people and herds.
This epoch bridged two long worlds: the enduring forager cosmologies of the San and the iron-working, cattle-herding frontiers advancing southward from equatorial Africa.
By 819 CE, the region had become a broad ecological and cultural hinge between the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the central African tropics — a foundation upon which later kingdoms such as Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe would rise.

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Geography and Environment

Southern Africa divided naturally into two complementary environmental realms.

• The tropical west, encompassing the Okavango Delta, Caprivi–Zambezi wetlands, Etosha Pan, and Skeleton Coast, formed a watery-arid paradox — rich floodplains bordered by desert margins.

• The temperate south, spanning the Highveld, Drakensberg, Karoo, Namaqualand, and southern Zimbabwe plateau, offered grasslands and seasonal rivers ideal for mixed farming and herding.

Monsoon and Atlantic westerlies delivered alternating wet and dry pulses.
Flooded wetlands and stable aquifers nurtured dense fish and game populations; the Drakensberg and Limpopo valleys produced fertile soils for millet and sorghum once iron tools spread.
Climatic oscillations demanded versatility, and Southern African societies learned to move, diversify, and store.

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Societies and Political Developments

Forager Foundations and Pastoral Frontiers

At the dawn of this age, San and other forager bands occupied most of the subcontinent, moving between coastal shallows, mountains, and pans.
From the north, waves of Bantu-speaking agro-pastoralists entered through the Zambezi–Caprivi corridor, bringing ironworking, cereal cultivation, and livestock.
By the mid-first millennium CE, settled village clusters appeared along the Okavango’s backwaters and the Limpopo–Shashe drainage.
These farming and herding communities coexisted and traded with foragers, creating hybrid economies that fused new crops with ancient hunting knowledge.

Village Consolidation and Early Chiefdom Seeds

In the temperate interior, iron-age villages spread across the Highveld and southern Zimbabwe plateau, forming networks of kin-based hamlets that shared cattle enclosures and ancestral shrines.
Control of herds and exchange routes elevated some lineages into proto-chiefly status.
The southern Zimbabwe plateau — later the heart of Great Zimbabwe — already supported clustered settlements and localized craft specializations in pottery, smelting, and beadwork.
Meanwhile, mountain foragers of the Drakensberg and coastal groups along the Cape and Maputo basins maintained autonomy, adapting their subsistence to interaction with farming neighbors.

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Economy and Trade

Across both subregions, mixed economies blended cultivation, herding, fishing, and foraging.

• Tropical wetlands yielded sorghum, millet, yams, and floodplain vegetables; fish and waterfowl were dried for trade or storage.

• Temperate plateaus produced grain, livestock, and iron goods.

• Cattle and goats functioned as social capital and bridewealth, underpinning alliances.

Trade webs extended north to the Zambezi and east to the Indian Ocean:
copper, shells, and glass beads filtered southward; ivory, hides, and salt moved outward from the interior.
Though small in scale, these networks laid the infrastructure for later trans-Zambezi and Swahili-linked exchange.

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Technology and Material Culture

The introduction of iron metallurgy after about 500 BCE transformed subsistence and craft.
Smelters produced hoes, knives, and spearheads; furnaces dotted the Limpopo and Okavango valleys.
Circular huts with thatch roofs clustered around cattle kraals; reed-walled dwellings rose on flood mounds in the Caprivi.
Basketry, bead-making, and pottery flourished — decorated with incised or combed motifs derived from central African prototypes.
Fishing weirs, dugout canoes, and stone traps along deltas and coasts reveal a sophisticated aquatic technology complementing herding and farming.

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Belief and Symbolism

Spiritual life wove ancestral veneration with the older San trance traditions of transformation and rain-calling.
Villages honored lineage founders through hearth sacrifices and cattle offerings; foragers continued rock-painted rituals of the eland and rain animal.
Across the Okavango and Highveld, water and fertility spirits dominated oral myth, reflecting the ecological centrality of rainfall and flood.
Rock engravings near Etosha and the Limpopo recorded both hunting processions and cattle herding — visual testimony to the cultural convergence of forager and farmer cosmologies.

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Adaptation and Resilience

Resilience rested on ecological mobility and diversification.
When drought struck the Highveld, families moved stock to riverine pastures; during floods, wetland dwellers retreated to mounds and stored grain in pottery jars.
Foragers supplemented village diets with game and honey; iron tools opened new agricultural margins.
Trade provided redundancy, moving salt, fish, and grain between arid and fertile zones.
The coexistence of mobile and sedentary lifeways insulated the region from collapse despite climatic swings.

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Regional Synthesis and Long-Term Significance

By 819 CE, Southern Africa had matured into a dual ecological civilization:

• In the tropical west, wetland fishers and herders of the Okavango–Caprivi sustained rich but dispersed communities attuned to water cycles.

• In the temperate south, iron-farming chiefdoms and enduring forager enclaves created a dynamic cultural mosaic.

Together they formed the deep substrate for the southern Bantu world — mobile, inventive, and spiritually unified by reverence for ancestry and landscape.
Cattle paths, iron furnaces, and painted shelters were the era’s monuments: humble yet enduring signs of a region in transition from dispersed village economies to the monumental polities of the later first and early second millennia CE.

Temperate Southern Africa (909 BCE – 819 CE) Antiquity — Iron Farming, Chiefdom Seeds, and Great Zimbabwe Precursors

Geographic and Environmental Context:

Temperate Southern Africa includes:

• South Africa (Cape littoral, Highveld, Drakensberg, Karoo, Namaqualand).

• Lesotho and Eswatini.

• Most of Namibia and Botswana, except the far northern sectors (Caprivi, Etosha, Okavango, Skeleton Coast — those are in Tropical Southern Africa).

• Southern Zimbabwe and southwestern Mozambique (Maputo–Limpopo region).

Anchors: Cape littoral & fynbos, Drakensberg–Lesotho massif, Highveld grasslands (Witwatersrand, Free State), Namaqualand semi-desert, Kalahari southern margins, Great Karoo, Maputo–Limpopo basins, southern Zimbabwe plateau (Great Zimbabwe heartland).

• Southern Zimbabwe plateau, Limpopo basin, Highveld, Cape, Drakensberg.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

• Monsoon fluctuations; droughts episodic but buffered by mixed economies.

Societies & Political Developments

• Iron Age agro-pastoral villages spread across Highveld and Limpopo.

• Plateau sites in southern Zimbabwe became nuclei for later Great Zimbabwe.

• Forager–pastoral minorities persisted in Cape/Drakensberg.

Economy & Trade

• Sorghum, millet, cattle, goats, sheep; iron hoes, pottery.

• Regional exchange of beads, shells, livestock.

Technology & Material Culture

• Iron smelting widespread; decorated pottery; hut villages.

Belief & Symbolism

• Rock art now showed ritual herding scenes.

• Ancestor veneration central in farming villages.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

• Iron tools and crop diversity ensured resilience.

Transition

By 819 CE, temperate southern Africa sustained iron-farming chiefdoms, ancestral to Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe, while coast and Drakensberg preserved enduring San symbolic traditions.

Temperate Southern Africa (909–478 BCE): Early Iron Age Expansion and the Formation of Agro-Pastoral Landscapes

Geographic and Environmental Context

Temperate Southern Africa comprises South Africa (including the Cape littoral, Highveld, Drakensberg, Karoo, and Namaqualand), Lesotho, Eswatini, most of Namibia and Botswana south of the Caprivi–Okavango–Etosha region, southern Zimbabwe, and southwestern Mozambique. Broad grasslands, seasonal rivers, wooded savannas, interior plateaus, mountain escarpments, Mediterranean fynbos, and semi-arid basins created a mosaic of environments supporting diverse economies and settlement patterns.

Iron Farming Expands

Between 909 and 478 BCE, Early Iron Age farming communities continued spreading across the eastern Highveld, Limpopo basin, and southern Zimbabwe. Communities cultivated sorghum and millet while herding cattle, goats, and sheep, establishing permanent villages near dependable water sources and fertile soils. Iron-working technologies accompanied this expansion, allowing more effective woodland clearance and agricultural production without fundamentally altering the ecological balance.

Regional Diversity

While farming societies became increasingly common across the eastern interior, much of the western plateau, Karoo, Namaqualand, and Cape remained occupied primarily by San hunter-gatherers and Khoekhoe pastoralists. These societies maintained extensive seasonal mobility while adapting to highly variable rainfall and local ecological conditions. Interaction between farming and foraging communities produced exchanges of livestock, stone materials, hides, pigments, and local knowledge without eliminating regional cultural diversity.

Economy and Exchange

Agriculture, cattle husbandry, hunting, gathering, and localized trade formed mutually reinforcing economic systems. Livestock became increasingly important as stores of wealth and social prestige, while iron tools, pottery, shell ornaments, and decorative beads circulated through expanding exchange networks linking neighboring communities across the plateau and river corridors.

Belief and Landscape

Ancestor veneration became closely associated with family homesteads and cattle enclosures, reinforcing social continuity across generations. In western and southern regions, San rock art traditions continued flourishing, expressing rich ceremonial relationships among animals, landscapes, and spiritual experience that remained largely independent of farming societies.

Legacy of the Age

By 478 BCE, temperate southern Africa supported a growing network of Iron Age farming villages integrated with enduring pastoral and foraging traditions. These expanding agro-pastoral landscapes established the demographic and economic foundations upon which later chiefdoms would develop.

The First Sacred War, or Cirraean war, is fought in mainland Greece between the city of Kirrha and the Amphictyonic League of Delphi, led by the city of Sicyon.

The conflict arises due to Kirrha's frequent robbery and mistreatment of pilgrims going to Delphi and their encroachments upon Delphic land.

The war results in the defeat and destruction of Kirrha and the liberation of Delphi.

The war is notable for the use of chemical warfare at the Siege of Kirrha, in the form of hellebore being used to poison the city's water supply.

Temperate Southern Africa (477 BCE–243 CE): Agricultural Consolidation and Expanding Regional Exchange

Geographic and Environmental Context

Temperate Southern Africa continued to encompass diverse grasslands, savannas, mountain uplands, river basins, Mediterranean shrublands, and semi-arid interiors. Seasonal rainfall patterns encouraged flexible agricultural strategies while supporting extensive grazing systems across much of the Highveld and Limpopo watershed.

Growing Village Networks

Iron Age settlements became more numerous and increasingly stable throughout the eastern interior. Villages remained modest in scale but formed expanding regional networks connected by footpaths, river crossings, and seasonal grazing routes. Mixed farming systems diversified local production while reducing vulnerability to periodic climatic fluctuations.

Pastoral Wealth

Cattle assumed growing importance within social and economic life. Herds provided food, labor, bridewealth, ritual significance, and long-term stores of wealth. Carefully managed grazing practices linked settlements to surrounding grasslands, encouraging seasonal movement while maintaining productive pasturelands.

Regional Trade

Trade expanded steadily among neighboring communities. Marine shells from the Indian Ocean, decorative beads, iron implements, livestock, salt, and locally produced pottery moved through interconnected exchange systems stretching across the Limpopo basin and southern plateau. These interactions fostered increasing cultural continuity without producing centralized political authority.

Technology and Society

Iron smelting became firmly established throughout much of the eastern plateau. Agricultural tools improved cultivation efficiency, while specialized pottery traditions reflected growing regional identities. Villages remained largely autonomous, governed through kinship, lineage, and local leadership rather than formal states.

Legacy of the Age

By 243 CE, interconnected farming communities, expanding cattle economies, and increasingly sophisticated exchange networks had transformed the eastern interior into a mature Iron Age cultural landscape while preserving considerable ecological and cultural diversity across the wider region.

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Theramenes has himself dispatched to negotiate with Lysander when the Peloponnesians besiege Athens in the winter of 405-404.

He stays away for three months while Athens is being reduced to starvation.

An blockaded Athens, its grain supply cut off and its allies, except for Samos, in revolt, capitulates in April 404; Theramenes heads the embassy that negotiates the terms of capitulation to the Spartans.

Cleophon is tried and executed.

Athens surrenders its fleet, and is allowed to retain only a token twelve ships.

The Athenian empire is no more.

Submitting to the destruction of its fortifications, including the Long Walls, Athens suffers the rule of the Board of Thirty, the so-called Thirty Tyrants, an oligarchy organized and installed by Lysander to rule the conquered city.

A split develops between Theramenes, a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants, and Critias, another of the leaders.

Critias, the most radical of the Thirty, induces the board to put Theramenes to death by forcing him to drink hemlock.

The Sophists begin their grammatical analysis of Greek around 400 or a little earlier.

Contrary philosopher-educator Socrates, about seventy in 399, is accused by the Athenian government of impiety and of corrupting the youth of the city by questioning tradition.

The example of undisciplined and restless ambition displayed by the charming, brilliant, but unscrupulous Alcibiades, who could not practice his master's virtues, strengthens the charge.

On trial for his life before an Athenian jury, Socrates (according to Plato's later Apology, whose title is from the Greek word for defense) declares himself thoroughly innocent of the charges against him, countering that his accusers are motivated by resentment caused by his deflation of their pretended wisdom.

His own wisdom, he says, consists of knowing that he is not wise, and his relentless questioning of people's assumptions is prompted by an inner voice, a “daimon,” which must be obeyed, regardless of the consequences.

Instead of being punished by the state, it should reward him for acting as its "gadfly."

The unexamined life, says Socrates, is not worth living. (Xenophon offers a different account of the defense in his Apology of Socrates.)

The government convicts Socrates and orders him to take his own life by poison.

Following the trial, his friends arrange for him to escape, but rather than do wrong to the city by flouting its laws he remains in prison and suffers the death penalty. (Plato's Phaedro records the philosopher's death scene.)

Socrates' famously shrewish wife, Xanthippe, dies about the same time.

Plato, whose parents were both from distinguished Athenian families-his stepfather, an associate of Pericles, had been an active participant in the political and cultural life of Periclean Athens-had apparently been destined for an aristocratic political career.

The excesses of Athenian political life seem to have led him to abandon these ambitions, however.

Socrates, who had been a close friend of Plato's family, had a profound influence on the young man (as his writings will later attest).

Following Socrates' ingestion of a lethal dose of hemlock, his twenty-nine-year-old pupil retires from active Athenian life to begin traveling around the Mediterranean.

In addition, a new power had arisen in Thessaly, that of the energetic Jason of Pherae, an ally of Thebes.

Sparta's inability to respond to local Thessalian appeals against Jason proves that Spartan ambition in central Greece has finally ended.

A military despot on the Dionysius model, he is assassinated in 370; his eventual aims remain an enigma.

Diodorus Siculus tells us that upon the assassination of Jason, his brother Polydorus ruled for a year, but he was then poisoned by Alexander, another brother.

However, according to Xenophon, Polydorus was murdered by his brother Polyphron, who was, in turn, murdered by his nephew Alexander—son of Jason, in 369 BCE.

Plutarch relates that Alexander worshiped the spear he slew his uncle with as if it were a god.

Alexander governs tyrannically, and according to Diodorus, differently from the former rulers, but Polyphron, at least, seems to have set him the example.

The states of Thessaly, which had previously acknowledged the authority of Jason of Pherae, were not so willing to submit to Alexander the tyrant, (especially the old family of the Aleuadae of Larissa, who had most reason to fear him).

Therefore they apply for help from the young Alexander II of Macedon.