Downfall of Ancient Greece

The Greeks are believed to have migrated southward into the Greek peninsula in several waves beginning in the late 3rd millennium BC. The history of Ancient Greece is often taken to end with the reign of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. After that Greece entered the Hellenistic age.

Ancient Greek history was written in two categories, either Pro-Athenian or Athenian. That is why more is known about the history and politics of Athens than any other city and almost nothing about some of the other areas of Greece.

By the 8th century BC, Greece was divided into many small self-governing communities due to Greek geography and by 750 BC had begun 250 years of expansion. To the east, the Aegean coast of Asia Minor was colonized first, followed by Cyprus and the coasts of Thrace, the Sea of Marmara and south coast of the Black Sea. Eventually Greek colonization reached as far north-east as present day Ukraine. To the west the coasts of Albania, Sicily and southern Italy were settled, followed by the south coast of France, Corsica, and even northeastern Spain. Greek colonies were also founded in Egypt and Libya. Modern Syracuse, Naples, Marseille and Istanbul had their beginnings as the Greek colonies Syracusa, Neapolis, Massilia and Byzantium.

By the 6th century BC Hellas had become a cultural and linguistic area much larger than the geographical area of Greece. Greek colonies were not politically controlled by their founding cities, although they often retained religious and commercial links with them. The Greeks both at home and abroad organized themselves into independent communities, and the city (polis) became the basic unit of Greek government.

First Crete, then in short order the other Greek city-states, adopted the formal practice of pederasty. From its ritual roots in Indo-European prehistory, the practice was elevated to prominence, influencing pedagogy, warfare and social life, and becoming a central feature of Hellenic culture for the next thousand years.

By the 6th century BC several cities had emerged as dominant in Greek affairs: Athens, Sparta, Corinth, and Thebes. Each of them had brought the surrounding rural areas and smaller towns under their control, and Athens and Corinth had become major maritime and mercantile powers as well. Athens and Sparta developed a rivalry that dominated Greek politics for generations.

The Persian Wars ending in the mid fifth century BC solidified Athenian dominance in Greek affairs. The The wealth of Athens attracted talented people from all over Greece, and also created a wealthy leisured class who became patrons of the arts. The Athenian state also sponsored learning and the arts, particularly architecture. Athens became the centre of Greek literature, philosophy and the arts.

Then the Peloponnesian War brought Spartan dominance and internal war to Greece. The result was the end of Spartan supremacy and the beginning of Theban dominance, which was short lived. It was time for the Kingdom of Macedon and Alexander the Great.

After Philip of Macedon was killed, he was succeeded by his 20-year old son Alexander. He captured rebelling Greek cities and united them. Then in 334 BC Alexander crossed into Asia, and defeated the Persians at the river Granicus. This gave him control of the Ionian coast, and he made a triumphal procession through the liberated Greek cities. After settling affairs in Anatolia, he advanced south through Cilicia into Syria, where he defeated Darius III at Issus (333 BC). He then advanced through Phoenicia to Egypt, which he captured with little resistance, the Egyptians welcoming him as a liberator from Persian oppression.

Darius was now ready to make peace and Alexander could have returned home in triumph, but he was determined to conquer Persia and make himself the ruler of the world. He advanced north-east through Syria and Mesopotamia, and defeated Darius again at Gaugamela (331 BC). Darius fled and was killed by his own followers, and Alexander found himself the master of the Persian Empire, occupying Susa and Persepolis without resistance.

Meanwhile the Greek cities were making renewed efforts to escape from Macedonian control. At Megalopolis in 331 BC, Alexander's regent Antipater defeated the Spartans, who had refused to join the Corinthian League or recognize Macedonian supremacy.

Alexander pressed on, advancing through what are now Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indus river valley, and by 326 BC he had reached Punjab. He might well have advanced down the Ganges to Bengal had not his army, convinced they were at the end of the world, refused to go any further. Alexander reluctantly turned back, and died of a fever in Babylon in 323 BC.

Alexander's empire broke up soon after his death, but his conquests permanently changed the Greek world. Thousands of Greeks travelled with him or after him to settle in the new Greek cities he had founded as he advanced, the most important being Alexandria in Egypt. Greek-speaking kingdoms in Egypt, Syria, Iran and Bactria were established. The Hellenistic age had begun.

After Alexander's death, his territory was divided up among his generals. Roxana, Alexander's widow, was pregnant at the time of his death. Nobody knew whether she would have a boy, a girl, or a stillborn child, or if the child would actually grow up. Alexander left a half-brother behind, Philip Arrhidaeus, who had something wrong with him... he may have been a half-wit. In practice, Philip was really only ruler in name only, with Alexander's most powerful generals carving up the land in various satrapies for themselves.

For the next several years, these generals fought among themselves in what amounted to civil war. The empire eventually settled down in separate, but nonetheless Greek, kingdoms. One of the most famous of these kingdoms was Egypt under the Ptolemys. The Ptolemy dynasty ruled out of Alexandria, where the famous library was built. For the most part, they retained their Greekness, but portrayed themselves as Pharaoh to the native Egyptians. The Seleucid dynasty covered a large area during this time, including Persia, Mesopotamia, and even north into areas that are now ruled by some of the former Soviet states. Pergamon and Macedon were the other two kingdoms that eventually were formed.

The Greek people during this time found opportunity by settling in these newly-conquered territories. When they settled in one of the cities in the Seleucid empire, for example, they could find a position of influence, whereas, if they stayed in Greece , they would probably continue the life of a simple farmer. Although the Greek people spread out over a wide area of land, they didn't have enough children to keep the population in Greece up. As a result, cities in Greece saw a population loss, rather than growth.

In our own time the whole of Greece has been subject to a low birth-rate and a general decrease of the population, owing to which cities have become deserted and the land has ceased to yield fruit, although there have neither been continuous wars nor epidemics.
. . . .

For as men had fallen into such a state of pretentiousness, avarice, and indolence that they did not wish to marry, or if they married to rear the children born to them, or at most as a rule but one or two of them, so as to leave these in affluence and bring them up to waste their substance, the evil rapidly and insensibly grew.

~ Polybius, The Histories, Book XXXVI, section V

This period of time was known as the Hellenistic period of Greece. Citizens were well-educated, and the library at Alexandria was filled with books of ancient knowledge. Their language and literature spread throughout the areas that Alexander had conquered.

When Polybius discusses how Greeks failed to have very many children, he adds that out of the children that were born, some of them were carted off to war, others died to disease. The cities became depopulated, and the resources dried up, leaving a feeble remnant of what it used to be. This left them vulnerable to Roman invasion.

Slavery in Greece

In ancient Greece, most jobs were done by slaves instead of free people. Most people who were slaves in Greece had been born free. They were sold into slavery by their parents when they were children, because their parents were too poor to take care of them. Or they were captured by kidnappers or as prisoners of war and sold as slaves. International trade also brought in slaves. A few slaves were the children of other slaves. Some slaves were Greek and some were Persians, Africans, Egyptians or Scythians.

There were a lot of jobs, and so about a third of the people living in ancient Greece were slaves. It is estimated that in Athens, the majority of citizens owned at least one slave, but the average was three or four per household. One census of Attica in 307 BC showed 21,000 inhabitants and 400,000 slaves!

Black Slave Slave on the right is most likely Scythian

Ethiopian slave attempting to break a horse

Classical Grecian civilization came to a fall because of the large scale importation of racially alien slaves from northern and sub-Saharan Africa. Unsurprisingly, the genetic evidence bears out the historical record.

It is important to bear in mind that these results do not imply that all modern Greeks are of mixed origin

The first major study of gene frequencies in Greece, Macedonia and Crete was completed in December 2000, titled "HLA genes in Macedonians and the sub-Saharan origin of the Greeks", and published by the journal "Tissue Antigens" that year.

Greeks were found to be related to sub-Saharan people of Ethiopia, Sudan and West Africa

The results show that Macedonians are related to other Mediterraneans and do not show a close relationship with Greeks; however they do with Cretans. One explanation is that the Macedonians and Greeks shared a similar genetic background until the Greeks mixed with the sub-Saharans.

A recent study of mtDNA in Greece revealed the presence of the HpaI morph 1 sequence, which is a Mongoloid marker, introduced either through slavery or the mixed race Ottoman occupation. The Middle Eastern Haplogproup HG9 runs at 28% in Greece.

Most of the people living in Greece today are not of the same pure blood as those who built the ancient civilization

A common denominator connecting all of these ancient Old World civilizations to their lost glory was the universal failure of their laws, traditions or proclamations to preserve the racial survival of their White creators

Initially strict segregation or separation of the races was followed. Then just a few, apparently innocuous compromises and exceptions were made. Eventually the racial stock of the White ruling class was diluted and replaced with a mongrelized people.

In 490 BC the Greek poet Theognis wrote about the racial decline of his own civilization. This is a portion from a poem entitled Eugenics: