Thalassocracy thucydides biography

'Thalassocracy, as is well known, becomes a clear-cut idea in.
Thucydides, however, ignores all this and makes Agamemnon a thalassocrat, like Athens.
Eusebius and Thucydides preserve lists of powers holding sway over the sea, featuring a variety of marine powers from the Bronze Age to the Persian War.

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Ep. 012 – Minoan Thalassocracy

In today's episode, we'll take a look at the evidence from early Minoan history, beginning with pre-history and working up to the Neo-Palatial period. While the items we'll discuss are beautiful and tell us a lot about the artistic focus of Minoan culture, we'll also try to discern the line between fact and fiction when it comes to theories of a Minoan thalassocracy, or, the so-called Minoan 'empire of the sea.'

To be frank as we get underway today, the Minoan Civilization has been, thus far in our narrative, the biggest surprise to me personally. For some reason, in my mind the Minoans had always occupied a place of pseudo-familiarity, especially in comparison to the Harappan people we’ve looked at earlier: their name is familiar and the myths associated with them and King Minos are among the most recognizable in Greek mythology. I may have been a bit off-base in my admittedly ignorant assumptions about the Minoans, and my ignorance about the Harappan Civilization is sadly common in the West as well, though that’s no excuse. As I hope to con

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Thalassocracy

1 Thalassocracy CHRISTY CONSTANTAKOPOULOU “Thalassocracy” is the phonetic adaptation of a noun meaning “sea power” in Greek. Ancient Greek historians, and particularly THUCYDIDES, used the concept of “thalassocracy” as an analytical tool in investigating the past. Thucydides (1.4) saw early Greek history as a succession of thalassocracies, starting with the mythical figure of MINOS in CRETE. Some effort has been put into seeing Minoan thalassocracy in the archaeological remains of Minoan Crete and of the CYCLADES ISLANDS, but it is now accepted that this is a fifth-century historical construction rather than an accurate reflection of Minoan realities. The idea of a succession of thalassocracies is also present in the thalassocracy list of EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA, which is taken from DIODORUS OF SICILY’s lost seventh book (Diod. Sic. 7.11); and this in turn probably originated from a fifth-century source. As with Minoan thalassocracy, the earliest entries in the list cannot be used as evidence for the existence of any form of sea power in the Greek states; rather the li

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THE THALASSOCRACIES IN GREEK SOURCES

Eusebius and Thucydides preserve lists of powers holding sway over the sea, the thalassocracies.

Please note this is something of a legacy page and will be updated with new information in due time.

It is worth considering an admittedly late source, a list of "thalassocracies" preserved in Eusebius' Chronicon and originally appearing in Diodorus Siculus. The list, which was extensively studied by Molly Miller in the 1970s, claims to emend the names of powers with a seaborne hegemony along with the period during which the state exercised that power. The Phocaeans and Samians - both credited with far-flung feats of exploration and colonisation - are both mentioned as exercising thalassocratic power during the 5th century.

The list presents information dating between the Trojan War & Xerxes' expedition to Greece in 480 BC. The material for the latter centuries is as follows: -

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Phocians: 44 years - presumably incorporating the twenty years before and including their efforts to flee Harpagus the Mede in the