Part 30

Learn about Alexander the Great's Greece in Civilization V. Discover their unique units, civilization power, and historical context.

This section covers Alexander the Great's Greece, focusing on their unique units, civilization power, and historical background.

Leader: Alexander the Great

Unique Unit 1: Companion Cavalry (replaces Horseman)

Unique Unit 2: Hoplite (replaces Spearmen)

Unique Building: None

Civilization Power: HELLENIC LEAGUE - City-State influence is decreased at half its usual rate, and recovers at double the speed of normal civilizations.

History:

It is difficult to overstate the impact that Greece has had upon Western culture and history. Classical Greece has given birth to some of the greatest artists, philosophers, scientists, historians, dramatists and warriors the world has known. Greek warriors and colonists spread their culture throughout the Mediterranean and into the Near and Far East. The heirs to Greece, the Romans, further promulgated Greek thought throughout Europe, and from there it spread across the oceans and into the New World.

Greece and her people are credited with an astonishing number of inventions and discoveries, including the first theatrical performance, work of history, and philosophic treatise. The Greeks provided the West's first recorded sporting event, poem, and building dedicated to theatre. In politics, the Greeks created the world's first known democracy and republic. Greek influence is still all around us: today's doctors still take the Hippocratic Oath, and modern architects still look to classical Greek forms for inspiration. To a large degree, Western civilization is Classical Greek civilization.

Greece occupies a large, wide peninsula which juts south from the Balkans into the Eastern Mediterranean, between the Ionian Sea and the Aegean. The peninsula is almost bisected by the Gulf of Corinth, which opens into the Ionian Sea and runs east almost all the way across the landmass, leaving only a narrow isthmus connecting north and south. Greece is quite mountainous, with narrow fertile valleys separated by imposing hills and peaks. Summers are warm and winters are mild in the coastal lowlands, but snowfall is not uncommon in the mountains.

Historically the Aegean Sea has been a Grecian lake. Classical Greece dominated the hundreds of islands of the Aegean as well as the rocky coast of Anatolia (Turkey) to the east.

Little is known about the earliest inhabitants of Greece. They were all but destroyed during the Bronze Age, circa 1900 BC, when a large wave of Mycenaean tribes migrated into Greece from the Balkans. The new inhabitants were largely dominated by the Minoan civilization of Crete for some 500 years until approximately 1400 BC, when the Mycenaeans threw off Minoan control. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey date from the Mycenaean period. Although altered by time, they nonetheless provide at least a glimpse into Mycenaean warfare, politics, religion, and daily life.

Mycenaean civilization collapsed in 1100 BC, for reasons that are still under debate, but which might be linked to the influx of a yet another new group of immigrants from the north, the Dorians. For approximately 300 years following the Mycenaean collapse, Greece entered a period known as the "Greek Dark Ages," from which little written record survives.

The so-called "Archaic Period" begins in the mid-seventh century BC, at the end of the Greek Dark Ages. During this period the Greeks begin once again keeping records; however, the Mycenaean written language had been lost in the Dark Ages, so the Greeks borrowed from the Phoenicians, modifying their letters to create the Greek alphabet.

The first recorded date in Greek history is 778 BC, the year of the first Olympic Games. This earliest Olympics apparently consisted of one event, a foot race of some 200 yards in length, and it was won by Coroebus of Elis, a cook. The Games were held every four years. Over the next decades the Greeks added other events, including a 400 yard race, a marathon, wrestling, the javelin and discus, and eventually boxing and chariot racing.

The Archaic Period is marked by a great Greek colonization movement, in which a large number of communities sent out groups of citizens to colonize the islands and coastline of the Eastern Mediterranean. Exactly why the Greek citizens left their homes to form colonies is open to speculation; some think the settlers were motivated by greed, believing that they could more easily make their fortunes elsewhere, while other historians believe that population pressure was at least partly responsible. Over the next several centuries Greek colonies were formed on the coast of North Africa, Sicily, Mainland Italy, Anatolia, Egypt and the Middle East. The colonies tended to be independent, but they generally maintained close ties to the colonizing polis.

The term "polis" is used to denote the ancient Greek city-state. Traditionally the term denotes the classic Athenian-style political unit - a large central city dominating much smaller nearby towns and vil