Roman Greece

In the 2nd century BC Rome intervened ever more in the affairs of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Having defeated Macedon at Pydna (168 BC), in 146 BC it destroyed Corinth, which led the resistance of the Achaean League, and from then on Greece was under Roman control. In 27 BC Augustus made it the province of Achaea, with its capital at Corinth, rebuilt as a Roman colony.

Cultural conquest

The Latin poet Horace wrote that "captive Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought the arts to rustic Latium". Educated Romans spoke Greek, read Homer and Plato in the original, copied Greek statues (many Greek works are known only from Roman copies) and sent their sons to study in Athens, Rhodes and Alexandria. Cicero, Horace and Augustus himself studied in Greece.

Hard times

The conquest was not painless. In 86 BC the general Sulla sacked Athens, which had sided with King Mithridates of Pontus. Rome's civil wars were largely fought in Greece: at Pharsalus (48 BC) Caesar beat Pompey, at Philippi (42 BC) Antony and Octavian beat Caesar's assassins, and at Actium (31 BC) Octavian defeated Antony and Cleopatra and founded the city of Nicopolis to commemorate it.

Athens under the emperors

Athens became a university town and a place of memory. Many emperors were generous to it, none more than Hadrian (AD 117-138), a great admirer of Greek culture. He completed the gigantic Olympieion, the temple of Olympian Zeus begun six centuries earlier, built a library and a new quarter marked by the Arch of Hadrian. The wealthy Athenian Herodes Atticus gave the city the Odeon below the Acropolis, still used for summer concerts. In the 1st century AD Emperor Nero competed in the Olympic Games and, naturally, won every event he entered.

St Paul and Christianity

Between AD 49 and 52 the apostle Paul preached at Philippi, Thessalonica, Beroea, Athens and Corinth. In Athens he spoke on the Areopagus about the "unknown god"; to the communities of Corinth and Thessalonica he wrote some of his letters. Christianity spread slowly while the great pagan sanctuaries carried on.

The end of antiquity

In the 3rd century Goths and Heruli sacked Athens (AD 267). With Constantine, who inaugurated Constantinople in 330, power moved east. Emperor Theodosius banned pagan cults at the end of the 4th century: the last recorded games at Olympia date from 393, and the oracle of Delphi fell silent. In 529 Justinian closed the philosophical schools of Athens. Byzantine Greece had begun.

Places to visit

See also the Hellenistic age and the history of Athens.