History of Modern Greece

In this episode we explore the fifty years between the Persian Wars and the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, a period historians call the Pentekontaetia, the “Fifty Years.” In the aftermath of Greece’s victory over Persia, Athens rose from the leader of a defensive alliance into the dominant naval power of the Aegean, transforming the Delian League into what increasingly resembled an Athenian em...

In this episode we revisit the Persian Wars through the lens of Herodotus, the ancient writer often called the “Father of History.” Beginning in the intellectual ferment of the Axial Age, when thinkers across Eurasia were redefining philosophy and religion—including the teachings of Pythagoras in Greece and Zarathustra in Persia—we trace the rise of imperial power in the Near East with the Neo-Ass...

In this episode, we cover the events that led to Athenian democracy. How Oligarchs had taken control of the city and all the inhabitants, and the measures taken to restore peace and harmony to Athens. But it wasn't easy... Solon, the reformer, had to flee Athens, and when he returned, he found his cousin had turned the city into a tyrannical dictatorship. But that didn't stop the reforms...

The very first Olympic games was held in the year 776 BCE. And one of the first champions of these games was involved in starting a great war between Sparta and Messenia, that saw the enslavement of an entire group of people, and the rise of the military Spartans. This episode also covers the foundation of the Polis Byzantium, which went on to become one of the most relevant cities in the world fo...

 In this episode we discuss how the Phoenician Alphabet made its way to the Archaic Greek people, and how they instantly organized themselves into Polis States, and then overpopulated the tiny valleys they lived in which forced the more prosperous Polis' to fund expiations into the Mediterranean Sea to found colonies and spread throughout the sea, like lily pads in a pond. We will discuss all...

In this episode, we go over the most famous of all the Greek myths. And probably the Greek myth with the most impact on future generations. This is the myth that triggered Heinrich Schliemann to go searching for the ancient site. It is even said that when Alexander the Great went on Campaign to conquer Persia, he brought with him a copy of the Iliad. It also shaped the personality of the Greek peo...

In one of the greatest stories from ancient Greece, dubbed the 'Avengers' of Greek Mythology, it's a band of heroes, demigods, and kings that serve as a single crew under the command of Jason. It is Jason's mission to sail to the end of the world, to the kingdom of Cholkis, Ancient Georgia, to retrieve a golden fleece that is guarded by a dragon. In this adventure, they hop fro...

In our first episode of Greek Mythology, we cover the stories told by Hesiod in the Theogony. Throughout the Bronze Age, their stories were passed down from generation to generation by village elders and temple priests. Once the Ancient Greeks developed their own alphabet, Hesiod wrote down the Greek Myths, including the creation story, the Titans and Olympians, the devious adventures of Zeus and...

In this episode, we discuss the old paradigm vs the new. How long ago we just assumed that Dorians invaded Greece after the Sea Peoples sacked all the cities, but what we have realized later is that the Dorians were already there, but that massive populations moved around after the collapse, and this was caused by the unrest. We also cover the total destruction that was left around the world, and...

The Collapse of the Bronze Age has been studied by many scientists over the last century and new evidence has broken the old paradigm of the Sea Peoples. It was a catastrophic time to be alive, with Earthquake Storms, Sever Drought, Civil Unrest, and War. It was the Perfect Storm. The History of Modern Greece covers the events of the Greek People from the fall of Constantinople in 1453, to the Gre...

The world of the Bronze Age Greeks ended in catastrophe, but it was so long ago that it is difficult for archeologists to say for certain what happened to bring about the end of civilization.  One of the biggest clues that the entire civilization collapsed was the thick layer of ash that existed in every Bronze Age city. Every city burned down around the same time, in 1180 BCE. Once the clay table...

After an archeological discovery in the 2nd half of the 19th century,  historians found out that there was an even older ancient Greek Civilization that lived in the same region of the Aegean Sea a thousand years before the Ancient Greeks. This was a Bronze Age civilization of Greece. Their discovery is attributed to a German Archeologist named Heinrich Schliemann. He used the old stories of Homer...

The earliest known ancestors of the Modern Greek people are the Proto Indo-Europeans.  They are a hypothesized tribal people that existed 6000 years ago on the edge of the Eurasian Steppeland. It is theorized that the Greek people, as well as all the Indo-European languages, evolved from here. The Proto Indo Europeans were hypothesised by Sir William Jones in the late 18th century. The History of...

The first Bronze Age civilization the Proto-Greeks came into contact with was the Minoan Civilization. The Minoans were a powerful maritime empire that ruled the Aegean Sea for over a thousand years. But how do we know anything about the Minoans, aside from mythology, and who was it who discovered them? Join us in this episode, where we follow the adventures of Sir Arthur Evans as he uncovers the...

Welcome to the History of Modern Greece. In this introduction episode, we give an overview of the entire show and the purpose of our podcast. Most people have heard of Ancient Greece, and they know Greece is a country today, but very few people know how it evolved over the eons of time, from the days of the Bronze Age to the present day. Like most nations in the world today, Greece is relatively y...