Outbreak
Meanwhile in Crete the allied cities of Knossos and Gortys had gained control of the whole island, except for the Spartan colony of Lyttos which alone resisted. When the Rhodian navarch Polemocles returned from the war against Byzantium, the Knossians thought that he could be helpful to their efforts against Lyttos. So they asked the Rhodians for assistance and Polemocles arrived with three decked and three undecked ships.
Soon after his arrival, however, the people of Eleutherna accused him of assassinating a citizen, Timarchus, and, in response, they declared war on the Rhodians.
Meanwhile the Knossians and their allies had moved against Lyttos, but then, for some unknown reason, the alliance broke up and the Cretans began to quarrel with each other. Thus, the cities of Polyrrhenia and Lappa, along with some other communities, defected from the Knossians and allied with the Lyttians. [4]
Achaean intervention
Meanwhile, tensions on the mainland had risen between the Achaean League and the Aetolian League. As a result, in 220 BC the Social War broke out, which was to involve the Macedonian king Philip V of Macedon as he was a key ally of the Achaeans.
The Polyrrhenians then used the Aetolian interference in Crete as justification for asking Philip and the Achaeans for assistance against their common enemy. The Achaeans and Macedonians accepted them as allies and sent a mercenary force led by Plator to the island, consisting of 400 Illyrians, 200 Achaeans and 100 Phocians. [8]
With these reinforcements, the Polyrrhenians made great progress moving against Eleutherna, Kydonia and Aptera. They quickly forced these cities to abandon their Knossian allies and enter the opposition coalition. [9]
Thus the Knossians, in a short time, not only lost most of their allies, but also their hegemony over the island. Nevertheless they were still able to assist the Aetolian allies with 1000 archers in their war on the Greek mainland. The Polyrrhenians on the opposite side did the same by sending 500 Cretans to support Philip V. [10]
Outcome
The war continued for several years, but the further narration by Polybius is lost. Generally, the war went favourably for the enemies of Knossos. Thus the Aetolians were expelled from the island and by 216 BC Crete was more or less a Macedonian protectorate. [11] Two years later the Achaean strategos Aratus of Sicyon confirmed this outcome claiming that Philip V of Macedon enjoyed the faith of the Cretans and his ships ruled the Cretan Sea, while most of the island's strongholds obeyed his command. [12]
Among the mercenary leaders fighting on the island was a young Arcadian named Philopoemen, who acquired great fame and experience which would serve him well in his later years as strategos of the Achaean League. [13]
As a side effect of the conflict, Cretan mercenaries (the famed archers and the so-called Neocretans) are recorded all over the Hellenistic world, although none of the leaders (Cnopias of Allaria, Philon the Knossian, Eurylochus of Crete, Zelys the Gortynian at Raphia 217 BC; Lagoras, Kambylos and Bolis at the siege of Sardis 215/13 BC) can be traced directly to the civil war.
The Lyttians eventually returned to their homes and rebuilt their city on a nearby hill. [14]
The conflict over Crete was renewed in 205 BC, when Philip V of Macedon used the island as a base for naval raids against the Rhodians. In the Cretan War (205–200 BC), Philip's major allies in Crete were the cities of Hierapytna and Olous. Toward the end, when the Romans entered the coalition against Macedon, the Knossians sided again with the Rhodians and forced Hierapytna to surrender. As a result, the Rhodians took control over eastern Crete which allowed them to largely stamp out piracy in the area. Following the Second Macedonian War, in 197 BC, Philip V lost all former allies and all possessions outside Macedonia proper.
Year 205 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Scipio and Dives. The denomination 205 BC for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Philip V was king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon from 221 to 179 BC. Philip's reign was principally marked by the Social War in Greece and a struggle with the emerging power of the Roman Republic. He would lead Macedon against Rome in the First and Second Macedonian Wars. While he lost the latter, Philip later allied with Rome against Antiochus III in the Roman-Seleucid War. He died in 179 BC from illness after efforts to recover the military and economic condition of Macedonia and passed the throne onto his elder son, Perseus of Macedon.
The First Macedonian War was fought by Rome, allied with the Aetolian League and Attalus I of Pergamon, against Philip V of Macedon, contemporaneously with the Second Punic War against Carthage. There were no decisive engagements, and the war ended in a stalemate.
The Second Macedonian War was fought between Macedon, led by Philip V of Macedon, and Rome, allied with Pergamon and Rhodes. Philip was defeated and was forced to abandon all possessions in southern Greece, Thrace and Asia Minor. During their intervention, although the Romans declared the "freedom of the Greeks" against the rule from the Macedonian kingdom, the war marked a significant stage in increasing Roman intervention in the affairs of the eastern Mediterranean, which would eventually lead to Rome's conquest of the entire region.
The Achaean League was a Hellenistic-era confederation of Greek city-states on the northern and central Peloponnese. The league was named after the region of Achaea in the northwestern Peloponnese, which formed its original core. The first league was formed in the fifth century BC. The second Achaean League was established in 280 BC. As a rival of Antigonid Macedon and an ally of the Roman Republic, the league played a major role in the expansion of Rome into Greece. This process eventually led to the League's conquest and dissolution by the Romans in 146 BC.
Nabis was the last king of independent Sparta. He was probably a member of the Heracleidae, and he ruled from 207 BC to 192 BC, during the years of the First and Second Macedonian Wars and the eponymous "War against Nabis", i.e. against him. After taking the throne by executing two claimants, he began rebuilding Sparta's power. During the Second Macedonian War, Nabis sided with King Philip V of Macedon and in return he received the city of Argos. However, when the war began to turn against the Macedonians, he defected to Rome. After the war, the Romans, urged by the Achaean League, attacked Nabis and defeated him. He then was assassinated in 192 BC by the Aetolian League. He represented the last phase of Sparta's reformist period.
Hellenistic Greece is the historical period of the country following Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the annexation of the classical Greek Achaean League heartlands by the Roman Republic. This culminated at the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC, a crushing Roman victory in the Peloponnese that led to the destruction of Corinth and ushered in the period of Roman Greece. Hellenistic Greece's definitive end was with the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, when the future emperor Augustus defeated Greek Ptolemaic queen Cleopatra VII and Mark Antony, the next year taking over Alexandria, the last great center of Hellenistic Greece.
The AetolianLeague was a confederation of tribal communities and cities in ancient Greece centered in Aetolia in Central Greece. It was probably established during the early Hellenistic era, in opposition to Macedon and the Achaean League. Two annual meetings were held at Thermon and Panaetolika. The league occupied Delphi from 290 BC and steadily gained territory until, by the end of the 3rd century BC, it controlled the whole of central Greece with the exception of Attica and Boeotia. At its peak, the league's territory included Locris, Malis, Dolopes, parts of Thessaly, Phocis, and Acarnania. In the latter part of its power, certain Greek city-states joined the Aetolian League such as the Arcadian cities of Mantineia, Tegea, Phigalia and Kydonia on Crete.
Philopoemen was a skilled Greek general and statesman, who was Achaean strategos on eight occasions.
Demetrius of Pharos was a ruler of Pharos involved in the First Illyrian War, after which he ruled a portion of the Illyrian Adriatic coast on behalf of the Romans, as a client king.
Aratus of Sicyon was a politician and military commander of Hellenistic Greece. He was elected strategos of the Achaean League 17 times, leading the League through numerous military campaigns including the Cleomenean War and the Social War.
Gortyn, Gortys or Gortyna is a municipality, and an archaeological site, on the Mediterranean island of Crete 45 km (28 mi) away from the island's capital, Heraklion. The seat of the municipality is the village Agioi Deka. Gortyn was the Roman capital of Creta et Cyrenaica. The area was first inhabited around 7000 BC.
The Battle of Chios was fought in 201 BC between the fleet of Philip V of Macedon and the combined fleet of Rhodes, Pergamum, Byzantium and Cyzicus.
The Cretan War was fought by King Philip V of Macedon, the Aetolian League, many Cretan cities and Spartan pirates against the forces of Rhodes and later Attalus I of Pergamum, Byzantium, Cyzicus, Athens, and Knossos.
The Foreign War was fought between the forces of Knossos with the help of mercenaries under the ousted Phocian leader Phalaikos and the forces of Lyttos who received help from the Spartans under their King Archidamus III. The war took place in 346 BC.
The Laconian War of 195 BC was fought between the Greek city-state of Sparta and a coalition composed of Rome, the Achaean League, Pergamum, Rhodes, and Macedon.
Polyrrhenia or Polyrrenia, Polyrrhen or Polyrren (Πολύρρην) or Polyren (Πολύρην), or Pollyrrhenia or Pollyrrenia (Πολλύρρηνα), or Polyrrenion (Πολυρρήνιον) or Polyrrhenium, was a town and polis (city-state) in the northwest of ancient Crete, whose territory occupied the whole western extremity of the island, extending from north to south. It was an important Archaic Period settlement co-temporaneous with Lato and Prinias. Strabo describes it as lying west of Cydonia, at the distance of 30 stadia from the sea, and 60 from Phalasarna, and as containing a temple of Dictynna. He adds that the Polyrrhenians formerly dwelt in villages, and that they were collected into one place by the Achaeans and Lacedaemonians, who built a strong city looking towards the south. In the civil wars in Crete in the time of the Achaean League, 219 BCE, the Polyrrhenians, who had been subject allies of Knossos, deserted the latter, and assisted the Lyctians against that city. They also sent auxiliary troops to the assistance of the Achaeans, because the Knossians had supported the Aetolians. In a successful campaign they prevented their rival cities Knossos and Gortys from dominating the entire island and brought a large part over to the Macedonian coalition. Polyrrhenia continued to flourish in the Roman period, when the center shifted to its erstwhile port, Cisamus, and in this urbanistic configuration lasted into Byzantine times. A small town now occupies the site, where rock-cut tombs, ruins and an acropolis remain. A Roman aqueduct built in the age of Hadrian improved water supplies.
Lyktos, was a city in ancient Crete. During the Classical and Roman periods, it was one of the major settlements on the island. Its ruins are located near the modern-day village of Lyttos in the municipality of Minoa Pediada, Heraklion Regional Unit.
Eleutherna, also called Apollonia (Greek: Ἀπολλωνία), was an ancient city-state in Crete, Greece, which lies 25 km southeast of Rethymno in Rethymno regional unit. Archaeologists excavated the site, located on a narrow northern spur of Mount Ida, the highest mountain in Crete. The site is about 1 km south of modern town of Eleftherna, about 8 km north east of Moni Arkadiou, in the current municipality of Rethymno. It flourished from the Dark Ages of Greece’s early history until Byzantine times.
The Social War, also War of the Allies and the Aetolian War, was fought from 220 BC to 217 BC between the Hellenic League under Philip V of Macedon and the Aetolian League, Sparta and Elis. It was ended with the Peace of Naupactus.
