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Greece - History
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Greece Roman period
10-06-2013 18:33The period following the Roman victory in the Battle of Corinth until the reestablishment of the city of Byzantium and the naming of the city Constantinople by the Emperor Constantine as the capital of the Roman Empire in 330 AD is considered the period of Roman Greece.
The end of Greek political autonomy came in 146 BC with the sack of Corinth by the Romans, displaying the harsh tactics of Roman imperialism. Southern Greece came under the surveillance of Macedonia which was already a Roman province. The Aegean islands followed in 133 BC. In 88 BC Athens and other Greek cities revolted against the Romans but those revolutions were crushed by the Roman general Sulla. Therefore, the Greece remained under Roman rule.
The Roman cultured had been fundamentally influenced from Greece, being in fact Greco-Roman. Thus, the Greek language along with the worship of the same gods helped the Roman establishment in the Greek peninsula.
The Romans contributed in erecting new buildings and fortifications around Greece and especially Athens. The Roman Forum and the Tower of the Winds among others, were built. Hadrian, before he became emperor he served as an eponymous archon of Athens. He also built his Arch of Hadrian there.
During the first century AD Greece and much of the rest of the Roman Empire in the East, came under the influence of Early Christianity. The apostle Paul had preached in Macedon and Athens and Greece soon became one of the most highly Christianized areas of the empire.
During the reign of Theodosius I in the late 3rd century, the Roman Empire was divided in the Western and Eastern Roman Empire. Greece became part of the Eastern Roman Empire or what it was going to be called by scholars Byzantine Empire. Greece faced invasions from the Heruli, Goths, Vandals, Visigoths but under the protection of the empire managed to push the invaders back.
Recent archaeological discoveries shed light in the older scenarios, according to which Greece was raged of poverty and civil decay. On the contrary, the Greek peninsula was most likely one of the most prosperous regions of the Roman Empire. The institution of the city-states has remained prosperous until at least the sixth century and Greece may have been one of the most economically active regions in the eastern Mediterranean.
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