Piracy

Cretan Neolithic culture gives way to the bronze-based Minoan culture during a period of great unrest.

Crete begins to become an important center of civilization, possibly fueled by the introduction of the working of copper and bronze by emigrants from Anatolia or Syria.

The Minoan culture begins producing sculpture and pottery in approximately 2600 BCE, inaugurating what is known as the prepalatial (early Minoan) period.

The civilization is marked by the extensive use of sealstones and the development of writing.

The term "Minoan" was coined by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans after the mythic "king" Minos, who, along with his twin brother, Rhadamanthus, is the son of Europa, who had been impregnated by Zeus in the guise of a white bull.

After becoming ruler of Crete with the help of Poseidon, Minos built a powerful navy and used it to control an extensive Aegean empire, colonizing many of the islands and ridding the sea of pirates.

He married Pasiphae, the daughter of Helios, who bore him, among others, Androgeos, Ariadne, and Phaedra, and who was the mother of the Minotaur.

Minos was associated in Greek myth with the labyrinth, which Evans identified as the site at Knossos.

Minos successfully warred against Athens and Megara to obtain redress after his son Androgeos was killed by the Athenians.

In Athenian drama and legend, Minos became the tyrannical exactor of the tribute of children to feed the Minotaur.

The daughters of King Cocalus killed Minos in Sicily by pouring boiling water over him as he was taking a bath.

After his death, he became a judge in Hades.

Although Athens preserved a hostile tradition, the general account shows Minos as a powerful, just ruler, very closely associated with religion and ritual.

In light of excavations in Crete, many scholars consider that Minos was a royal or dynastic title for the priestly rulers of Bronze Age, or Minoan, Knossos.

What the Minoans called themselves is unknown.

It has sometimes been argued that the Egyptian placename "Keftiu" and the Semitic "Kaftor" or "Caphtor" and "Kaptara" in the Mari archives apparently refer to the Cretan capital.

Minoan society perpetuates women's preponderant influence in religion and social life and accords them equal political authority with men.

In sharp contrast with Sumerian women, Minoan women, members of a trading rather than a warrior society, draw strength both from their membership in corporate kinship groups and from their institutionalized ties with other women.

The Sea Peoples is the term used for a confederacy of seafaring raiders of the second millennium BCE who sail into the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, cause political unrest, and attempt to enter or control Egyptian territory during the late nineteenth dynasty, and especially during Year Eight of Ramesses III of the Twentieth dynasty.

The arrival of the Sea Peoples, around 1200 BCE, marks the end of the Bronze Age in the region and brings about new development of warfare, inaugurating the so-called Greek Dark Ages, which will prevail for nearly four centuries.

The Sea Peoples are held responsible for the destruction of old powers such as the Hittite Empire.

Because the invasions result in an abrupt break in ancient Near Eastern records, the precise extent and origin of the upheavals remain uncertain.

Principal but one-sided evidence for the Sea Peoples is based on Egyptian texts and illustrations; other important information comes from Hittite sources and from archaeological data.

The Egyptians wage two wars against the Sea Peoples: the first, in the fifth year of King Merneptah (reigned 1236 BCE to 1123 BCE), which would be 1231; the second, in the reign of Ramesses III (who reigned from about 1198 BCE to about 1166 BCE).

Tentative identifications of the Sea Peoples listed in Egyptian documents are as follows: Ekwesh, a group of Bronze Age Greeks (Achaeans; Ahhiyawa in Hittite texts); Teresh, Tyrrhenians (Tyrsenoi), known to later Greeks as sailors and pirates from Anatolia, ancestors of the Etruscans; Luka, a coastal people of western Anatolia, also known from Hittite sources (their name survives in classical Lycia on the southwest coast of Anatolia); Sherden, probably Sardinians (the Sherden, whose origins perhaps lay in Syria, acted as mercenaries of the Egyptians in the Battle of Kadesh, 1299 BCE); Shekelesh, probably identical with the Sicilian tribe later called Siculi; Peleset, generally believed to refer to the Philistines, who perhaps came from Crete and were the only major tribe of the Sea Peoples to settle permanently in Palestine.

Further identifications of other Sea Peoples mentioned in the documents are much more uncertain.

There is extensive Mycenaean trade with Cyprus and Müskebi on the Halicarnassus peninsula.

The LCIIC (1300-1200 BCE) is a time of local prosperity on Cyprus.

Cities such as Enkomi are rebuilt on a rectangular grid plan, where the town gates correspond to the grid axes and numerous grand buildings front the street system or newly founded.

Great official buildings constructed from ashlar masonry point to increased social hierarchization and control.

Some of these buildings contain facilities for processing and storing olive oil, such as Maroni-Vournes and Building X at Kalavassos-Ayios Dhimitrios.

A sanctuary with a horned altar constructed from ashlar masonry has been found at Myrtou-Pigadhes; other temples have been located at Enkomi, Kition, and Kouklia (Palaepaphos).

Both the regular layout of the cities and the new masonry techniques find their closest parallels in Syria, especially in Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra).

Rectangular corbelled tombs point to close contacts with Syria and Palestine as well.

The Cypriot syllabic script was first used in early phases of the late Bronze Age (LCIB) and is to continue in use for about five hundred years years into LC IIIB, maybe up to the second half of the eleventh century BCE.

The practice of writing spreads and tablets in the Cypriot syllabic script have been found at Ras Shamra, which was the Phoenician city of Ugarit.

Ugaritic texts from Ras Shamra and Enkomi mention Ya, the Assyrian name of Cyprus, which thus seems to have been in use already in the late Bronze Age.

Most scholars believe the Cypriot syllabic script was used for a native Cypriot language (Eteocypriot) that survived until the fourth century BCE, but the actual proofs for this are scant, as the tablets still have not been completely deciphered.

Copper ingots shaped like oxhides have been recovered from shipwrecks such as at Ulu Burun, Iria, and Cape Gelidonya, which attest to the widespread metal trade.

Weights in the shape of animals found in Enkomi and Kalavassos follow the Syro-Palestinian, Mesopotamian, Hittite, and Aegean standards and thus attest to the widespread trade as well.

Late Bronze Age Cyprus is a part of the Hittite empire but is a client state and as such is not invaded but rather merely part of the empire by association and governed by the ruling kings of Ugarit.

However, during the reign of Tudhaliya, the island is briefly invaded by the Hittites, either for to secure the copper resource or as a way of preventing piracy.

Shortly afterwards the island is reconquered by his son around 1200 BCE.

The Dorians migrate into the Balkan Peninsula through ancient Illyria, Epirus, and northeastern Macedonia.

A Greek-speaking people, the Dorians consist of three tribal groups: Hylleis, Dymanes, and Pamphyloi. (The Dorians themselves will come to consider Doris, north of modern Amfissa in central Greece, their homeland, and claim descent from the sons of Hercules.)

According to Thucydides, who professes little of Greece before the Trojan War except to say that it was full of barbarians and that there was no distinction between barbarians and Greeks, the Hellenes came from Phthiotis.

The whole country indulged in and suffered from piracy, and was not settled.

After the Trojan War, "Hellas was still engaged in removing and settling.” Some sixty years after the Trojan War, the Thessalians drove the Boeotians out of Arne into Boeotia and twenty years later "the Dorians and the Heraclids became masters of the Peloponnesus."

The lines were thus drawn between the Dorians and the Aeolians (here Boeotians) with the Ionians (former Peloponnesians).

People who speak the Doric dialect eventually come to live along the coast of the Peloponnesus, in Crete, southwest Asia Minor, various cities of Southern Italy and Sicily, all of which adds weight to the theory of Asia Minor as the origin of the Dorians.

Numerous historians link Doric, Northwestern Greek, and Ancient Macedonian.

The island of Delos, isolated in the center of the roughly circular ring of islands called the Cyclades, near Mykonos, had had a position as a holy sanctuary for a millennium before Olympian Greek mythology made it the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis.

By the time of the Odyssey, the island was already famous as the birthplace of the twin gods.

Sacred Delos from 900 BCE becomes a major cult center, where Dionysus is also in evidence, as well as the Titaness Leto, mother of the divine twins.

Investigation of ancient stone huts found on the island indicate that it has been inhabited since the third millennium BCE.

Thucydides identifies the original inhabitants as piratical Carians who were eventually expelled by King Minos of Crete.

Aegina was a colony of Epidaurus, to which state it was originally subject, according to Herodotus.

Its placement between Attica and the Peloponnesus made it a center of trade even earlier, and its earliest inhabitants came from Asia Minor.

Minoan ceramics have been found in contexts of around 2000 BCE.

The discovery in the island of a number of gold ornaments belonging to the latest period of Mycenaean art suggests the inference that the Mycenaean culture held its own in Aegina for some generations after the Dorian conquest of Argos and Lacedaemon.

It is probable that the island was not doricized before the ninth century BCE.

One of the earliest historical facts is its membership in the League of Calauria (Calaurian Amphictyony, circa eighth century BCE), which included, besides Aegina, Athens, the Minyan (Boeotian) Orchomenus, Troezen, Hermione, Nauplia and Prasiae, and was probably an organization of city-states that were still to some degree Mycenaean, for the purpose of suppressing piracy in the Aegean that had arisen as a result of the decay of the naval supremacy of the Mycenaean princes.

The economic success of Carthage and its dependence on shipping to conduct most of its trade lead to the creation of a powerful Carthaginian navy to discourage both pirates and rival nations.

Their naval strength and experience is an inheritance from the Phoenicians, but they have increased it because, unlike the Phoenicians, the Punics, as the Romans call the Carthaginians, do not want to rely on a foreign nation's aid.

This, coupled with its success and growing hegemony, brings Carthage into increasing conflict with the Greeks, the other major power contending for control of the central Mediterranean.

Theodorus of Samos, a Greek sculptor and architect from the Greek island of Samos is often credited, along with Rhoecus, with the invention of ore smelting and, according to Pausanias, the craft of casting.

He is also credited with inventing a water level, a carpenter's square, and, according to Pliny, a lock and key and the turning lathe.

Theodoru according to Vitruvius (vii, introduction), is the architect of the Heraion of Samos, a temple in the Doric Order.

In some texts, he is described, above all, as a great artist and in some statues he is depicted as a great inventor.

Herodotus, also from Samos, twice refers to Theodorus as "the son of Telecles," a Samian artist.

Herodotus credits Theodorus along with Rhoecus with improving the process of mixing copper and tin to form bronze, as well as being the first to use it in casting.

Elsewhere, he credits Theodorus alone for discovering the art of fusing iron and using it to cast statues.

Polycrates, tyrant of Sámos, has employed his one hundred-vessel fleet to transform his island into a major naval power, primarily through acts of piracy against the Persians.

In addition to the political and commercial preeminence that his reign has brought to Samos, Polycrates is also a patron of letters; the poet Anacreon lives at his court.

Polycrates makes an alliance with Egypt, but, when the Persians advance against Egypt in 525 BCE, he abandons his ally and sends a squadron of forty ships to join the Persian fleet.

He takes the opportunity to send his main political opponents with the squadron; they desert, however, and, supported by Spartans, attempt unsuccessfully to dislodge the tyrant.

Polycrates maintains his ascendance until about 522, when Oroetes, the Persian satrap of Sardis, lures him to the Ionian mainland and has him crucified at Magnesia ad Meandrum.

Darius of Persia then takes Samos and partially depopulates the island.

A military coalition of Greek city-states led by Sparta and known as the Peloponnesian League, also called the Spartan Alliance, is a major force in Greek affairs, forming the nucleus of resistance to the Persian invasions.

League policy, usually decisions on questions of war, peace, or alliance, is determined by federal congresses, summoned by the Spartans when they think fit; each member state has one vote.

A general Greek league against Persia is formed in 481.

Quarrels like that between Athens and Aegina must be set aside and help sought from distant or colonial Greeks such as the Cretans, Syracusans, and Corcyrans, whose extraordinarily large fleet of sixty ships (possibly developed against Adriatic piracy but also—surely—against Corinth) will be a prime asset.

Corcyra, however, waits on events, and Crete stays out altogether, while Syracuse and Sicily, now under the tyranny of Gelo, generally have barbarian enemies of their own to cope with, the Carthaginians.

Command of the army is given to Sparta, …

The Illyrians produce and trade cattle, horses, agricultural goods, and wares fashioned from locally mined copper and iron.

Feuds and warfare are constant facts of life for the Illyrian tribes, and Illyrian pirates plague shipping on the Adriatic Sea.

Councils of elders choose the chieftains who head each of the numerous Illyrian tribes.

From time to time, local chieftains extend their rule over other tribes and form short-lived kingdoms.

During the fifth century BCE, a well-developed Illyrian population center exists as far north as the upper Sava River valley in what is now Slovenia.

Illyrian friezes discovered near the present-day Slovenian city of Ljubljana depict ritual sacrifices, feasts, battles, sporting events, and other activities.