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Achaeans
Achaeans people of ancient Greece, of unknown origin. In Homer, the Achaeans are specifically a Greek-speaking people of S Thessaly. Historically, they seem to have appeared in the Peloponnesus during the 14th and 13th cent. BC, and c.1250 BC they became the ruling class. There is no sharp line of ...
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Achaean League
Achaean League , confederation of cities on the Gulf of Corinth. The First Achaean League, about which little is known, was formed presumably before the 5th cent. BC and lasted through the 4th cent. BC Its purpose was mutual protection against pirates. The Achaeans remained aloof from the wars in Gr...
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Achaea
Achaea , region of ancient Greece, in the northern part of the Peloponnesus on the Gulf of Corinth. It lay between Sicyon and Elis. There the Achaeans supposedly remained when driven from other parts of Greece by the Dorian invasion. The small Achaean cities eventually banded together in the First ...
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Hellen
Hellen , in Greek mythology, ancestor of the Hellenes, or Greeks; son of Deucalion and Pyrrha. He was the father of Dorus, Xuthus, and Aeolus, who were the progenitors of the principal nations of the Greeks—the Dorians, the Ionians, the Achaeans, and the Aeolians.
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Sybaris
Sybaris , ancient city of Magna Graecia, S Italy, in Bruttium, on the Gulf of Tarentum (now Taranto). It was founded in 720 BC by Achaeans and people from Argolis, the Troezenians. It became a wealthy Greek city, and its inhabitants were reputed to live voluptuous lives, hence the word sybaritic. ...
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Dorians
Dorians people of ancient Greece. Their name was mythologically derived from Dorus, son of Hellen . Originating in the northwestern mountainous region of Epirus and SW Macedonia, they migrated through central Greece and into the Peloponnesus probably between 1100 and 950 BC, defeating and displaci...
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Aratus
Aratus d. 213 BC, Greek statesman and general of Sicyon, prime mover and principal leader of the Second Achaean League . His objective at first was to free the Peloponnesus from Macedonian domination, and he is credited with bringing into the confederation many of the principal cities of Greece. B...
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Iliad, The
Iliad, The, a Greek epic poem attributed to Homer, describing the war waged by Achaean princes against Troy for the purpose of recovering Helen, wife of Menelaus, whom Paris, son of King Priam of Troy, had carried off. In particular it deals with the wrath of Achilles, the special hero of the poem,...
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Aegean civilization
Aegean civilization , term for the Bronze Age cultures of pre-Hellenic Greece. The complexity of those early civilizations was not suspected before the excavations of archaeologists in the late 19th cent. The most remarkable of the cultures was perhaps that of Crete, which was flourishing by the beg...
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Polybius
Polybius , 203? BC-c.120 BC, Greek historian, b. Megalopolis. As one of the leaders of the Achaean League and a friend of Philopoemen , he was influential in Greek politics. Having advocated the neutral stand of the League in the war between Rome and Macedon, he was deported (167 BC) with a large...
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