The Five Ages of Ancient Greece: From Bronze to Hellenistic

Ancient Greece has traditionally been periodized into five distinct eras, the Bronze Age, Iron Age, Archaic Age, Classical Age and Hellenistic Age. By looking at archaeology, art, architecture, literature, and other remains of the past, it is possible to determine what characterized each of these ages.

Bronze Age in ancient Greece

The Bronze Age is a period in history that lasted for around 3,000 years and saw significant advances in social, economic, and technological phenomena that made Greece the center of activity in the Mediterranean.

Historians typically identify the Greek Bronze Age as encompassing three distinct civilizations, which overlap in time and coincide with the major geographic regions of Greece. The Cycladic civilization developed on the islands of the Aegean, and more specifically around the Cyclades, while the Minoans resided on the large island of Crete.

Greek mainland in the Bronze Age

During this time, the Greek mainland was occupied by what historians refer to as the “Helladic” civilization, which, from the end of the 11th century BC, came to be known as the Mycenaean era. This period of time was also known as the “Age of Heroes” because it is the source of mythological heroes, such as Heracles, and epics like those of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

This “Helladic” period, named after Hellas, the Greek name for Greece, is divided into three subperiods: the Early Helladic period (c. 3,200-2,000 BC), a time of relative prosperity with the use of metals, and a surge in technological, economic, and social development. The Middle Helladic period (c. 2,000-1,700 BC) saw a more gradual development, including the evolution of megaron-type dwellings and cist grave burials.

The last phase of Middle Helladic, the Middle Helladic III (c. 1,750-1,675 BC), along with the Late Helladic period (c. 1,700-1,050 BC) coincide roughly with Mycenaean Greece.

It is not completely clear why, but the Mycenaeans outlived both the people of the Cyclades and the Minoans, and by the end of the 10th century BC had expanded their influence over the Greek mainland, the islands of the Aegean and Ionian seas, Crete, and the coast of Asia Minor.

The most prominent site was Mycenae, which gave its name to the civilization. Other hubs of power that emerged during the Bronze Age were Pylos, Tiryns, and Midea in the Peloponnese, Orchomenos, Thebes, and Athens in Central Greece, and Iolcos in Thessaly. Mycenaean settlements also appeared in Epirus, Macedonia, on islands in the Aegean Sea, on the southwest coast of Asia Minor, and Cyprus. Mycenaean-influenced settlements appeared in the Levant and Italy.

After 1,100 BC, Mycenaean civilization ceased to exist either because of internal trouble, the Dorian invasions, or through a combination of the two.

What is well known is that the endless destruction exacted on Mycenaean civilization took three hundred years to overcome and reverse. This period is known as the “Dark Ages” partly because the people of ancient Greece fell into a period of primitive sustenance with no notable evidence of cultural advancement and partly because the incomplete historical record makes it difficult to study.

Minoans

All three Bronze Age Greek civilizations shared certain characteristics but also showed a number of distinct practices in their individual cultures. The Minoans are usually considered the first advanced civilization of Europe, while Mycenaean culture had a significant influence with its myths and Greek language on what would later become Classical Greece.

The Minoan civilization of Crete flourished from around 3,000 BC to about 1,100 BC. Its name comes from Minos, either a dynastic title or the name of a specific ruler of Crete who has a place in Greek legend.

Crete grew to be the foremost site of Bronze Age culture in the Aegean Sea, earning its place as the first center of high civilization in that region, beginning at the end of the third millennium BC. It reached its height at around 1,600 BC and the later 15th century and was renowned for its great cities and palaces, extended trade throughout the Levant and beyond, and use of writing.

Its sophisticated art included elaborate seals, pottery, and, above all, delicate, vibrant frescoes found on palace walls. These frescoes display both secular and religious scenes, such as magical gardens, monkeys, and wild goats or fancifully dressed goddesses that testify to the Minoans’ predominantly matriarchal religion.

Cycladic cultures

In the third millennium BC, a unique civilization, known as the Early Cycladic culture (c. 3,200-2,300 BC), emerged with important settlement sites on Keros and at Halandriani on Syros.

During this period of ancient Greece in the Early Bronze Age, metallurgy developed at a rapid pace in the Mediterranean. It was particularly lucky for the Early Cycladic culture that their islands were rich in iron ores and copper, and that they offered a favorable route across the Aegean. Inhabitants would fish, build ships, and export their mineral resources, as trade flourished between the Cyclades, Minoan Crete, Helladic Greece, and the coast of Asia Minor.

Early Cycladic culture is typically divided into two main phases, the Grotta-Pelos (Early Cycladic I) culture (c. 3,200-2,700 BC) and the Keros-Syros (Early Cycladic II) culture (c. 2,700-2,400 BC). These names correspond to significant burial sites.

Sadly, very few settlements from the Early Cycladic period have been discovered with much of the evidence of the culture coming from objects, mostly marble vessels and figurines, that the islanders buried with their dead.

Iron Age Greece

The Iron Age, also known as the Greek Dark Ages, was a period in Greek history that ran from the end of the Mycenaean palatial civilization around 1,100 BC to the beginning of the Archaic Age around 750 BC.

It came on the heel of the Late Bronze Age civilizational collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean world around 1,200-1,150 BC, as the grand palaces and cities of the Mycenaeans were destroyed or abandoned. At roughly the same time, the Hittite civilization also suffered severe disruption with cities from Troy to Gaza being destroyed.

In Egypt, the New Kingdom fell into disarray, leading to the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt. Following the collapse, there were fewer, smaller settlements, suggesting widespread famine and depopulation.

In Greece, the Linear B script used by Mycenaean bureaucrats to pen the Greek language ceased to be used, and the Greek alphabet did not develop until the beginning of the Archaic period. Decoration on Greek pottery after around 1,100 BC does not have images of Mycenaean ware and is typically restricted to simpler, generally geometric styles.

During the Dark Ages of Greece, the old major settlements were abandoned (with the exception of Athens), and the population dropped significantly. Throughout these 300 years, the people of Greece lived in small groups that roamed constantly in accordance with their new pastoral lifestyle and livestock needs, while they left no written record behind leading to the conclusion that they were illiterate.

Later on in this era, between 950 and 750 BC, the Greeks once again learned to write, but this time using the alphabet of the Phoenicians instead of the Linear B script used by the Mycenaeans, bringing in vowels as letters. The Greek version of the alphabet eventually formed the base of the alphabet used for English today.

Archaic Greece

Archaic Greece was the era in Greek history that ran from around 800 BC right through to the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC. During this period, Greeks settled around the Mediterranean and the Black Seas as far as Marseille (present-day France) in the west and Trabzon (present-day Turkey) in the east. By the close of the archaic period, Greeks had formed a trade network that spanned the whole Mediterranean.

Pulling out of the Dark Ages, the archaic period began with a huge increase in the Greek population and brought about several changes that bolstered the Greek world at the end of the eighth century to a position completely unrecognizable from its beginning.

According to Professor Anthony Snodgrass from the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge, UK, the archaic period began with a “structural revolution” that “drew the political map of the Greek world” and established the poleis (Greek city states), and it came to a close with the intellectual revolution of the Classical period.

Developments in Greek politics, economics, international relations, warfare, and culture were made during this period, and it paved the way for the Classical period, both politically and culturally.

It was in this period that the Greek alphabet developed, the earliest surviving Greek literature was written, monumental sculpture and red-figure pottery began in Greece, and the hoplite became the core of Greek armies.

In Athens, the first institutions of democracy were implemented under Solon, and the reforms of Cleisthenes at the end of the archaic period brought in Athenian democracy as it was during the Classical period.

In Sparta, many of the institutions credited to the reforms of Lycurgus were introduced during the archaic age. Furthermore, the region of Messenia was brought under Spartan control, helotage was introduced, and the Peloponnesian League was founded and made Sparta a dominant power in ancient Greece.

Development of the polis

Perhaps the most significant political development of the archaic age was the rise of the polis, or city state, which became the predominant unit of political organization. Although several cities throughout ancient Greece fell under the rule of tyrants, this period also saw the implementation of law and systems of communal decision-making, with the earliest evidence for law codes and constitutional structures dating to this period. By the close of the archaic period, both the Athenian and Spartan constitutions appear to have developed into their classical forms.

The archaic period saw significant urbanization, and by Solon’s time, the word polis had acquired its classical meaning. Although, in this era, the political community aspect of the polis was still finding its full form, the polis as an urban center was a product of the eighth century.

The Classical Age

Perhaps the best-known period of ancient Greece is the Classical Age, which played out between the Persian Wars at the beginning of the fifth century BC and the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC.

The Classical Age was a time of heavy war and conflict—first between the Greeks and the Persians, then between the Athenians and the Spartans—but it was also an era of unprecedented political and cultural advancement in ancient Greece. The Parthenon and Greek tragedy arose in this period, along with the historian Herodotus, the physician Hippocrates, and philosopher Socrates.

It also gave rise to political reforms that are ancient Greece’s most enduring contribution to the modern world: the system known as demokratia, or “rule by the people.”

Greco-Persian Wars

With efforts spearheaded by Athens and Sparta, the Greek city-states were engaged in a huge war with the Persian Empire at the start of the fifth century BC. In 498 BC, the Greek armies sacked the Persian city of Sardis, and in 490 BC, the Persian king sent a naval fleet across the Aegean to attack Athenian soldiers in the Battle of Marathon.

The Athenians came out victorious, but the Persians kept coming. In 480 BC, the new Persian king sent an enormous army across the Hellespont to Thermopylae, where 60,000 Persian soldiers defeated 5,000 Greeks in the Battle of Thermopylae. This was when King Leonidas of Sparta was famously killed.

The following year, however, the Greeks beat the Persians for the final time at the Battle of Salamis.

The rise of Athens

The downfall of the Persians marked the start of Athenian political, economic, and cultural dominance. In 507 BC, the Athenian nobleman Cleisthenes removed the last of the tyrants and put in place a new system of citizen self-governance that he called demokratia.

In his political system, every male citizen older than 18 was eligible to join the ekklesia, or Assembly, the sovereign governing body of Athens. Other lawmakers were chosen randomly by lot rather than election.

In this early form of Greek democracy, officials were sworn to act “according to the laws [and] what is best for the people.”

Despite a new and fair(er) system of politics, Athens did not approach its relationships with other Greek city states with any kind of new fair-mindedness. To protect faraway Greek cities from Persian invasion, Athens organized a confederacy of allies which it called the Delian League in 478 BC.

Athens benefitted from this arrangement greatly in that most Delian League dues ended up in the city state’s own treasury, turning Athens into a wealthy imperial power.

Periclean Athens

Athens under Pericles, an Athenian general, is sometimes called the Golden Age of Athens. This great general put to use all the Delian League tribute money in the service of the citizens of Athens. He paid modest wages to jurors and members of the ekklesia so that, theoretically, everyone who was eligible could afford to participate in the public life of the demokratia.

Pericles also promoted the arts and literature in this age, and it is largely down to his efforts that Athens gathered the reputation of being the artistic, intellectual, and cultural center of ancient Greece.

He initiated an ambitious project that produced most of the surviving structures on the Acropolis, including the Parthenon. This scheme made the city more aesthetic as well as protected it, alongside giving its people work.

Pericles also pushed Athenian democracy so far that his critics called him a populist. He was descended, through his mother, from the powerful and historically influential Alcmaeonid family. He and several of his family members contracted the Plague of Athens in 429 BC, which weakened the city state during a long conflict with Sparta.

Hellenistic Age

The Hellenistic Age refers to the three centuries of Greek history between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the rise of Augustus in Rome in 31 BC.

When Alexander died, he left his enormous conquered territory without a clear line of succession, and his most powerful generals divided it up into several vast kingdoms. The new independent governments, along with the spread of Greek culture as far away as India, paved the way for dramatic changes to the perceptions Greeks held regarding themselves and the world around them.

The arts and other areas of life in ancient Greece had always been influenced by other cultures, but the vast expanses of territory gained during Alexander the Great’s conquests brought greater possibilities for further cultural exchanges in the Hellenistic Age.

This sharing led to a new cosmopolitanism in the Greek world and influenced the desire to understand, appreciate, and represent the diversity of individual peoples. Greater mobility made possible by territorial expansion also motivated people to seek a sense of purpose and belonging.

Philosophy and other intellectual pursuits, which developed rapidly during the Hellenistic period, provided a means of exploring one’s thoughts and seeing the world, and it was during this time that philosophers such as Epicurus and Diogenes of Sinope found their followers and influenced the succeeding generations.

Social and cultural changes also led to alterations in Greek religious practices. Individualistic mentalities led to a new fascination with mystery cults, which typically promised rewards in the form of a better afterlife.

New deities entered the minds of Greeks from areas such as Egypt and Syria, the result of cosmopolitanism and cultural exchange. Ruler-cults became commonplace as Hellenistic kings and queens started being worshipped alongside gods. In certain parts of the Hellenistic world, such as Egypt, which was ruled in the Hellenistic period by a family called the Ptolemies, a long tradition of ruler worship already existed, but in other regions, which had no such tradition, ruler worship was not taken up as quickly or as strongly.

The arts flourished in the Hellenistic period as artists explored new ways of representing emotional effects, individual experiences, and ornate details. Architecture was used as a way of expressing an interest in the dramatic through huge structures, as well as surprising vistas, such as at the sanctuary of Athena on the island of Lindos.

Religious buildings were commonly designed to give visitors a physical and emotional experience that matched their religious experience, evoking feelings of awe, revelation, and delight.

Hellenistic sculpture evidenced a new awareness of personality and introspection by conveying realism and human emotion instead of the detached idealism shown in the art of the Classical period.