History

Creation
Everything originally came from Chaos, the empty void at the beginning of creation. From Chaos came five elements: Gaea (mother earth), Tartarus (the underworld), Erebus (the darkness), Eros (the power of love), and Night (the Darkness).

Mother Earth, Gaea, produced a son, Uranus, who was the sky. Then they had children. Rain fell from the sky onto the Earth, making plants grow; animals appeared from the rivers and ocean. Next, many strangely-shaped monsters and giants were born. Among these were three Cyclops. Uranus treated them cruelly and banished them to the Underworld. Later, some human-shaped giants, called Titans, were born; they later became the first gods and goddesses.

Mother Earth could not forgive her husband Uranus for his treatment of her first children and encouraged the Titans, lead by Cronos, to rebel against their father. He attacked and overpowered Uranus with a sickle and took power from him.

Cronos married his sister and became King of the Titans. They had five children but Cronos had been warned that one of them would kill him; so, he swallowed each one as it was born. To save her sixth child, Rhea tricked Cronos into swallowing a stone wrapped in baby's clothing and hid the child among some nymphs who brought him up safely. This child was Zeus. When he grew up, Zeus returned home in disguise and slipped a potion into Cronos' drink, making him choke. The children he had swallowed were coughed out, whole and safe. They were his daughters Hestia, Demeter, and Hera, and sons Pluto and Poseidon.

A fierce battle then took place. Zeus freed the Cyclops who made thunderbolts for him to hurl. They also made a forked trident for Poseidon, and a helmet that made its wearer invisible for Pluto. But, most of the Titans and giants sided with Cronos. After a terrible struggle the younger gods were victorious. The Titans were banished: one of them, Atlas, was made to hold up the heavens as punishment.

Zeus became ruler of the sky and king of all the gods. Poseidon was made king of the Ocean and Pluto of the Underworld. The gods made their home on Mount Olympus.


Ancient Times
Then the gods went about populating the world with humans and the non-human races. It is believed that all the races were once ruled by a single kingdom of "Sea people", which eventually fell, leaving all of the shattered kingdoms of the more recent past.

Of these King Minos, with the aide of Poseidon, came to rule on the isle of Crete at Knossos Many centuries ago. Zeus’ own son, he was known as being powerful, ruling over the Aegean isles and destroying the many pirates therein. After Minos’ son Androgeos was killed by the Athenians, King Minos went to war against and conquered both Athens and Megara.

King Minos at one point prayed to Poseidon to send him a white bull as a sign of approval for his reign. Minos promised to sacrifice the bull as a sign of his subservience. But when the bull came to him, he instead opted to keep it and sacrificed another from his herd. Poseidon did not care for this and, as punishment, caused Minos’ wife, Pasipha, to fall in love with the bull. Pasipha mated with the bull and gave birth to the Minotaur, which went on to cause massive terror and destruction to Crete.

Finally, they managed to capture the beast in a large underground labyrinth. Once Minos had conquered Athens, he forced seven youths and maidens from Athens, each year, to be brought to Knossos and thrown into the maze to be sacrificed to the Minotaur.

Then the legendary Theseus of Athens volunteered to be taken as a sacrifice. There, he entered the labyrinth and slew the Minotaur, thus ending the chain of terror. Eventually the rule of Minos and Minoan civilization fell while Theseus went on to become the King of Athens. Although centuries have now passed since Theseus’ reign, he is still a remembered hero.


Trojan Wars
Another mortal child of Zeus, this one a daughter, was the center of another great episode of history many centuries ago. Her name was Helen – the most beautiful woman in the world.

Peleus was the king of the Myrmidons, a race of people created from ants. He took the sea nymph Thetis as his bride and it was at their wedding that the incident began. Many gods attended the wedding, but Zeus did not invite his daughter Eris, because she was known for causing discord. Angry at being left out, Eris left a golden apple at the wedding on which was inscribed "for the fairest". When Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite saw it they began to bicker over who should have it. They went to Zeus but, not wanting to get involved, he decreed that the mortal Paris, king of Troy, decide who was the fairest.

Each goddess tried to bribe Paris. Athena promised to help lead Troy against the Greeks. Hera promised to make him ruler of the known world. Aphrodite promised to give Paris the most beautiful woman in the world. Paris chose Aphrodite. However, the most beautiful woman, Helen, was already married to Menelaus, the King of the Greek city of Mycenae.

Paris went to Mycenae and took Helen with him back to Troy. Furious, Menelaus gathered several allied kings, leaders, and other powerful figures and journeyed to Troy in a fleet of a thousand ships. Among them was the (nearly) invincible Achilles, the hero Ajax, and Odysseus himself. Leading the expedition was Menelaus’ brother Agamemnon.

They besieged the city, but it was a mighty fortress with walls many feet thick. The war raged for ten years and after the deaths of Achilles and Ajax, the Greeks were near giving up. Then Odysseus had the idea of smuggling their warriors inside the city walls with the use of a wooden horse. The Trojans, believing that the Greeks had retreated and left them a gift, took the horse inside the city. That night, the Greek force emerged and slew the Trojan army, burning the city to the ground. King Paris was killed and Helen was taken back to Greece with Menelaus, where they lived out their days together.


The Persian Wars
The conditions for the wars began about a century ago when several Greek cities lying along the western coast of Anatolia came under the control of the Lydians, ruled by King Croesus. Shortly after, Lydia was conquered by the Persian Empire. The Persians then placed tyrants over all of the conquered cities.

Aristagoras, the tyrant over the city of Miletus, had taken some political risks and was in danger of being punished by the Persians. Being an opportunists, he began a democratic revolt in Miletus and went to Greece to gather assistance. He first went to Sparta, which was the dominant Hellenic military power at the time. But Sparta was suspicious of Aristagoras’ motives and turned him down.

Athens, however, was willing to offer Aristagoras twenty ships. The war fighting raged until about five decades ago, when the Athenians captured and burned the former Lydian capitol of Sardis. At that point, all of the Greek city-states in Anatolia joined the revolt. But three years later the Persians restored control over the Greek cities and Athens lost interest and returned home.

However, the Persians were angered over the Athenian burning of Sardis and launched a counter attack four decades ago on Attica (the region containing Athens). The two forces met at Marathon in Attica. The Athenian army was lead by the formidable Persian soldier Miltiades, who had defected after angering the Persian king, Darius, and who knew well Persian tactics. This allowed the Athenians to defeat the Persian invaders. The battle of Marathon is considered the most important battle in Greek history, for had Athens failed, the Persian Empire would likely have gone on to defeat all of Greece.

But several years passed and Xerxes came into power in Persia. Determined to capture all of Greece once and for all, King Xerxes gathered an incredible army of 150,000 men and 600 ships. But over the years Athens had been building in preparation for a second attack. Using profits from a newly discovered silver mine, Athens had constructed a navy of 200 ships by about three decades ago.

When Xerxes gathered his army at the Hellespont, the narrow inlet to the Pontos Euxinos, most Greeks despaired of winning against his powerful army. Of several hundred Greek city-states, only thirty-one decided to resist the Persian army; these states were led by Sparta, Corinth, and Athens: the Greek League. Sparta was made leader of all land and sea operations.

The Greeks knew the Aegean Sea well and kept their ships in port at first, as many of the Persians’ ships were lost in the Aegean’s rough waters. Then the Greek fleet moved to intercept the Persians at sea, off the isle of Salamis. The Greeks knew that their boats were slow and weak compared to the Persians’, so they instead stripped down their boats and packed them full of soldiers. The soldiers then attacked the fleet hand-to-hand. The innovation allowed the Greeks to destroy most of the Persian fleet, forcing them to withdraw.

Without the aide of supplies and communication from their ships, the Persian land army was forced to retreat. Most people recognized the importance of the fleet maneuvers in winning against the Persians and it was Athens that provided the fleet. With a fear of a Persian return, most cities turned, not to Sparta, but to Athens for protection.


The Delian League
After the Persian wars, the city-states in Anatolia were in direct threat of Persian retribution. Although Sparta had a good land force, Athens’ powerful navy was of more importance in defense for these areas. So 28 years ago the Greek Anatolian cities, and those of the isles in the Aegean Sea, met on the sacred isle of Delos and formed an alliance with Athens that exists to this day - the Delian League. The Greek cities in Peloponnesus and some further north allied with Sparta. This situation has boosted Athens to its prominent status and created somewhat of a rivalry between the two city-states in our time.

The Delian League is a defensive alliance in which each city-state is equal, although Athens has become an unofficial leader. Under the leadership of Athenian ruler Cimon, the League has fought the Persians, freeing more of the Greek cities along western Anatolia, up until about 17 years ago. Throughout that time, the other city-states paid taxes to Athens in order to maintain it’s fleet. These taxes have made Athens wealthy and allowed it to build such wondrous structures as the Parthenon.

A couple of years ago, the small island city of Thasos grew tired of the taxes and revolted. Cimon crushed the rebellion but acted without the authority of the league. His actions were viewed as unfavorable and a democratic movement took place in Athens. This movement brought the current leader Pericles into office, who has made many reforms and instituted the broadest democracy ever in Athens. Cimon has since been banished from Athens by Pericles.