Bronze Age · Classical · Hellenistic

A timeline of Ancient Greece

Travel through more than a millennium of transformation—from palace societies and city-states to empires and cosmopolitan kingdoms.

Explore ↓

Dates as doorways

History is not a straight line.
It is a field of turning points.

These moments are loaded from the historical archive. Many developments unfolded gradually, differently and unevenly across the Greek world.

8th century BCE

The Olympic Games

The Olympic Games were the most famous and prestigious athletic festival of the ancient Greek world. Held in honour of Zeus at Olympia in the western Peloponnese, the Games brought together competitors and spec…

c. 800–480 BCE

Archaic Greece

Ancient Greek history spans over a millennium, from the Bronze Age civilizations of the second millennium BCE through the Roman conquest in 146 BCE. This remarkable civilization, centered in the Greek peninsula…

480–323 BCE

Classical Greece

Classical Greece was a period of around 200 years (the 5th and 4th centuries BC)

323–146 BCE

The Hellenistic Period

The Age of Greek Cultural Expansion (323-146 BCE)

146 BCE–1453 CE

The Roman Empire in Greece

From Conquest to Cultural Synthesis (146 BCE - 1453 CE)

1453–1821 CE

The Ottoman Empire in Greece

Four Centuries of Turkish Rule (1453-1821)

499–449 BCE

The Persian Wars (499-449 BCE)

The Persian Wars marked a crucial turning point in Greek history, transforming a collection of competing city-states into a more unified civilization capable of resisting the largest empire in the ancient world…

c. 1260–1250 BCE