Talk:The Iron Age

Greece

Sparta

About 600 B.C., the Spartans reorganized their state into a type of authoritarian regime. Youths at the age of seven were taken for military training. They lived in the barracks, ate in common messes, and were trained in the spirit of war. The population was divided into citizens and non-citizens; the legal position of women was very low. The government consisted of a bicameral legislature said to have been based on the ideas of Lycurgus, the great Spartan lawgiver. The gerusia was the upper house. Its membership comprised twenty-eight elders and two kings. While the gerusia initiated legislation, the final decision rested with the lower house, the apella, which represented the citizens. Both houses were so selected and the citizens so defined, that the landed aristocracy kept a secure hold on the state. There were five magistrates, or ephors.

Athens

The other great Greek state, Athens, gradually developed from a monarchy, abolished in 683 B.C., and a tyranny, to a republican form of government. A struggle between the elements representing the nobility, led by Isagoras, and those representing the common people, led by Cleisthenes, culminated about 500 B.C. in a victory for the latter. The new period brought a series of social and constitutional reforms. The citizenry was enlarged to include the middle class and a popular organ of government, the Assembly, was definitely established whereby the citizenry, now dominated by the middle class, controlled the government. The government and the army were reorganized and a number of marked improvements were made over Solon’s earlier reforms of 594 B.C. The constitution, however, was not changed. The efforts by Sparta to assist the Athenian aristocracy to overthrow the new Athenian regime resulted in failure.

The Persian Wars

The period from 499-338 B.C. marked the third epoch in Greek history and was characterized by the Persian Wars and the struggles for power between the individual Greek states. From 499-490 B.C. the Greeks were preoccupied with the Persians. The disunity among them played into the hands of the Persians commanded by Darius, but at the Battle of Marathon, in 490 B.C., the Athenians won a decisive victory and forced the Persians to withdraw their forces into Asia. With the Persians temporarily out of the way, the Athenians were free to continue their development of democratic government through the middle class. On this occasion, the method of ostracism was introduced against politically undesirable individuals. The wars of Persia were resumed in 480 B.C. and ended in the defeat of the Greek forces at Thermopylae. The Persian forces of Xerxes occupied Attica and virtually destroyed Athens, forcing many inhabitants to flee. On the sea, however, the Greek navy organized by Themistocles turned the tide by defeating the Persians in the naval Battle of Salamis. A year later at Plataea (479 B.C.), the Greek forces won a decisive victory over the Persian troops led by Mardonius. Several island Greek cities revolted agains the Persians who were now in trouble everywhere and withdrawing. The combined fleets of Sparta, Athens, and the Greeks of Asia Minor captured Byzantium.

Classical Greece

The 5th century B.C. marks the apogee of ancient Greek greatness and the transference of leadership from Sparta to Athens. In 478-477 B.C. the Ionians, who now rejected Spartan leadership, came to an agreement with Athens to expel the Persians from Greek territories. This laid the basis for the Delian League (479-461 B.C.), named for Delos where the general assembly of the League was established. The smaller members of the League contributed money in place of naval and other assistance. The League ultimately fell under the complete control of Athens. Themistocles and Cimon became rivals for leadership in the new Athenian commonwealth. Cimon, in charge of the fleet of the League, won a victory over the Persians at the Eurymedon River, and occupied parts of the Thracian coast in 469 B.C. In Athens the two political groups, the aristocratic group headed by Cimon, and the democratic group headed by Pericles, continued the struggle. In 461 B.C., the democratic group won and Cimon was obliged to leave Athens. Meanwhile the treasury of the League was transferred from Delos to Athens. The contributions of the League now acquired the character of a tribute to Athens, and the Spartans and Boeotians launched a war against Athens (457-445 B.C.). In 452-451 B.C. an armistice was concluded between Sparta and Athens, making possible their joint naval expedition against the Persians. In 447 B.C. the Athenians were defeated at Corona while assisting the democratic elements against the aristocrats in the Boeotian cities. Two years late a thirty years’ peace was concluded between Sparta and Athens, and the Athenian and Peloponnesian Leagues were recognized as the two independent confederacies. Efforts on the part of Thucydides, who represented the aristocrats of Athens, to undermine the Pericles ended in failure. Thucydides lost and was banished from Athens. From 444-429 B.C., Athens was ruled by Pericles. The entire period of the Periclean political activity is known as the Age of Pericles, during which political, economic, and artistic Athens reached its apex. It was the Classical age in which Greek culture sponsored by Athens achieved lasting fame.

From 431-404 B.C., there was a series of invasions of Attica by the Peloponnesians, known as the Great Peloponnesian War. It was interrupted by the Peace of Nicias (421 B.C.), concluded for five years, each party giving up its conquests and prisoners of war. The renewed war ended in the defeat of Athens, in 404 B.C., whose democracy was replaced by an oligarchical form of government. The period from 404-371 B.C. inaugurated the era of Spartan hegemony, followed, after a war with Thebes (379-362 B.C.), by a period of Theban ascendency.

The Hellenistic Epoch

The period from 359-336 B.C. marked the rise of the Macedonian power. In 338 B.C. Philip of Macedon defeated the allied Greek armies and occupied Thebes, but not Athens. At Corinth, he convoked a congress and organized the Hellenic League. Sparta alone of the Greek states refused to join the League. Philip of Macedon was assassinated in 336 B.C., and was succeeded by his son, known as Alexander the Great, who inaugurated the Greco-Macedonian or Hellenistic epoch in Greek history (338-146 B.C.). The Greek hegemony passed to Alexander the Great and he assumed the leadership against the Persians after first reducing the rebellious Greek factions to his control. In 334 B.C., he defeated the Persians at the Granicus River, and the following year decisively defeated Darius at Issus, and thence advanced into Mesopotamia. During 332-331 B.C. he sent an expedition to Egypt, and there founded the city of Alexandria. In 327 B.C. he dispatched his armies to India and crossed into the Punjab. After the death of its founder, the Alexandrine Empire was divided among his successors. There emerged in its place five monarchies, each retaining a Hellenistic character: Egypt under the rule of the Ptolemies; Syria under the rule of the Seleucidae; Pergamon; Bithynia; and Macedonia. The ascendency of Macedonia was tempered by the formation in 290 B.C. of the Aetolian League, and later by the Achaean League, founded in 280 B.C. Eventually the Achaean League fell under Macedonian control and the Aetolian League, supported by Sparta, ultimately accepted an alliance with Rome.

From 215-205 B.C., Philip V of Macedon attempted to help the Carthaginians against Rome. The Romans prevented his crossing into Italy and procured the assistance of the Aetolian League, and of Pergamon as well as som of the other Greek states, including Sparta, in 210 B.C. The Greeks were forced to accept Roman terms in the Peace of Phoenice (205 B.C.). From 192-189 B.C., the situation changed and the Aetolians declared war on Rome while Philip supported Rome. The Aetolians were defeated and subjected to Rome. In the third and fourth Macedonians wars, 171-167 B.C. and 149-148 B.C. respectively, Rome defeated Macedon, made it a Roman province, and then gradually conquered a large portion of Alexander’s former Near Eastern empire. With no prospect of restoring their independence, the Greeks clung to the glorious traditions of their past. Their Roman conquerors respected their high cultural achievement and even helped to foster it. The Athenian university remained the chief university of the Roman Empire until it was closed by Justinian in the 6th century A.D. Greek scholars flooded Italy, and in turn the Romans, who appreciated Greek culture, visited Greece in growing numbers. In A.D. 330, Emperor Constantine transferred the Roman imperial seat to Constantinople, or Byzantium, and established Christianity as the religion of the state. The pagan religion of the Greeks, however, existed in some areas until 600. Since Christianity was best organized in the Near East, it was logical for Constantinople to be the seat of the Christian Church. The Latin language was the official language of the empire, but Greek was extensively used. The University of Constantinople, founded in 425, offered instruction in both Latin and Greek. With the fall of Rome in 476, the Eastern Roman Empire—whose Greek citizens were called Romaioi, citizens of Rome—gradually developed a new, Greek-dominated state, the Byzantine Empire, which lasted until its dissolution in 1204.

Byzantine Empire

The new state was far from a revival of the ancient city-states. It was a strongly centralized and theocratic state in which the ancient Athenian popular forum was replaced by a complex bureaucratic system. The history of the Byzantine Empire is one of continuous wars in the Balkans, southern Italy, and Asia Minor for the preservation of the empire. The position of the Empire was made worse by the incessant barbarian invasions that began with the 4th century—Visigothic, Gothic, Bulgarian, and Slavic, among others. The Slavs who infiltrated the empire in large numbers in the course of the 6th century were finally checked in the 9th century, and Christianized. In the beginning of the 6th century the Byzantine Empire produced a great leader in Emperor Justinian, whose main efforts were directed toward regaining the territories once belonging to the Roman Empire. His able military leaders fought the enemies on all sides of the empire, Persians in the east, Goths in Italy and Spain, Vandals in Africa. A temporary stability of the empire encouraged artistic revival of Byzantine art. In 537 the construction of the famous church of Hagia Sophia was completed. In the 7th century the Byzantine emperors were embroiled with the Lombards and Franks in the west and the Persians and Arabs in the east. During this period the army and state became Greek in every respect. But the religious dissension, the iconoclastic struggle, weakened the mepire from within and alienated it from the Church of Rome. The final separation of east and west, Constantinople and Rome, dates from 800, when Charlemagne was crowned Roman emperor. The final religious separation took place in 1054, when both the pope of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople excommunicated each other.

In the latter part of the 9th century emperors Nicephorus Phocas II (913-969) and John Zimisces (925-976) added a degree of stability and strength to the empire; in 1018 the Bulgarians were subjugated by Basil, “the Bulgar Slayer.” Following the latter’s death, the empire rapidly declined and, after a series of defeats by the Seljuk Turks, it never succeeded in regaining its past greatness. From the latter part of the 12th century and especially after 1204, when the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople, the empire declined beyond any possibility of recovery. In Constantinople a Latin dynasty was set up, lasting from 1204-1261. The Greek Church and its patriarch became subordinated to the archbishop of the Church of Rome. Greece was partitioned among the Frankish adventurers. In 1261, the exiled Byzantine rulers in Nicaea mustered enough strength to recapture Constantinople and restore their empire. Faced with a new enemy, the Ottoman Turks, and the medieval Serbian empire of Tsar Dushan, the Byzantine Empire lingered on precariously until 1453 when Constantinople was taken and occupied by Ottoman Turks. The latter gradually reconquered the Greek lands from the Frankish adventurers and distributed them among the Turkish warriors in the form of fiefs. Greece was subdivided militarily into six districts called sanjaks, each governed by a pasha, or governor. The Genoese and Venetians retained some Greek lands for one or two centuries after the fall of Constantinople. The Ionian Islands have remained until Venetian control, never having been occupied by the Turks.

Turkish Domination

During the Turkish domination, which lasted from the middle of the 15th century until the present, the Greeks, as Christians, were officially treated as an inferior race and were robbed of any opportunity for cultural development. Only a small Greek minority living in Istanbul, the Turkish name for Constantinople, made progress in commerce; some Greeks, the Phanariots, succeeded in holding high positions in the government. Although the Turks did not indulge in excessive or lasting anti-Christian activities, they exercised strict control over the Church hierarchy through the patriarch in Constantinople, who was appointed by the Porte, the Turkish government. However, the Greeks benefited from the fact that the patriarch was always their conational and that smaller church communities enjoyed a degree of local autonomy. The Church, more than any other institution, is credited with contributing to the preservation of Greek national and ethnical identities. During the Turkish domination, the towns of the ancient Greek homeland were reduced to occupied military posts. Almost the entire nation was made up of peasants working on the lands of Turkish feudal masters. In addition to delivering fixed amounts of crop yield to their overlords, the Greek peasants were compelled to pay to the government a special poll tax, the haratch, and a blood tribute of male youngsters for the Turkish standing army, the Janissaries.

Rome

The Ancient State

By the middle of the 4th century, the Romans had at last found themselves. With the achievement of governmental stability and an efficient military organization, they began a steady expansion which led to the domination of the Italian peninsula, then control of the western Mediterranean, and finally the conquest of Greece and the Near East.

The period from the first settlement at Rome down to about 350 B.C. might be labeled a prehistoric or semihistoric age. From 350 to the end of the Republic could be called an Age of Expansion, while the following Imperial Epoch admits of two divisions: the Principate (31 B.C.-A.D. 285) and the Autocracy, or Late Roman Empire (285-476).

The general sequence of events before 350 B.C. is fairly clear. The main element of the population of the little village of Rome was a Latin group identical in origin and culture with the other Latin tribes of the vicinity. The primitive Indo-European monarchy of the Homeric type prevailed, with the usual tendency for the large landholders to form an aristocracy which aimed at limiting the powers of the king. Some time after 700 B.C. the Etruscans from the north seized Rome and held it until after 500, when a revolution expelled the foreigners and brought the monarchy to an end.

The new republican government was dominated by landed aristocrats, a fact which provoked a long internal conflict between the ruling minority and the masses, but it was more significant at this time that Rome was surrounded by dangerous enemies: the Etruscans on the north and the Italian tribes on the east and south. For protection, the Romans entered into an alliance with a group of the neighboring Latin tribes known as the Latin League, and for over a century the Romans and Latins retained their freedom at the cost of eternal vigilance and almost continuous warfare. The turning point for the Romans came in the early third century when northern and central Italy was overrun by a great Gallic invasion from the north. This invasion shattered Etruscan power and, despite the fact that Rome was captured and sacked (390 B.C.), the Romans managed to weather the storm and emerged stronger and more united than ever. They began to overshadow the Latin League, friction developed and after sharp fighting around the year 335 B.C., the Latins were defeated and made subservient to Rome. After this, the defensive tactics were gradually changed to those of aggression. The Romans had learned that it was not enough merely to defeat their enemies; rather, it was found to be safer to annex neighboring communities in order that they might not become strong once more. Roman garrison colonies were established in conquered territory, and gradually the traditional Roman policy of “Divide and Rule” evolved.

By the last quarter of the third century B.C. the Romans controlled most of central Italy, a circumstance which brought them face to face with the powerful Samnites in the southern Apennines. When the Roman and Samnite spheres of influence thus collided, a new series of wars was precipitated. Roman victories led to contacts with the Greeks of south Italy, brought more fighting, and in the year B.C. found the Romans in possession of all of peninsular Italy.

Up to this point, it might be argued that the Romans were not imperialistic and that they were merely fighting for self-preservation; they must conquer or be conquered, and each new conquest brought them into contact with new enemies who had to be subdued, or Rome must perish. It is also possible that this was the situation in 265 B.C. when the Romans came face to face with the great Carthaginian Empire, which dominated the Western Mediterranean; many Romans may have so regarded the ensuing first two Punic Wars (264-241 and 218-201 B.C.). On the other hand, by acquiring the Greek states in south Italy, the Romans inherited the old feuds of Greeks and Carthaginians. Furthermore, the growth of business interests in Rome during the 3rd century was certainly responsible for a tendency toward imperialism which was manifested after the First Punic War and was quite obvious after 200 B.C.

The Mistress of the Western Mediterranean by the end of the 3rd century, with territory in Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and Spain, Rome was now a great power in international affairs. Thus, she soon found herself involved in the politics of the eastern Mediterranean. The Ptolemies of Egypt, the Pergamene kings of Asia Minor and many of the Greek states sought the protection of Rome from the aggressions of the powerful Macedonian kings and the Seleucid dynasty of Syria and Mesopotamia. New wars during the period 200-146 B.C. resulted in the annexation of Macedonia, the subjugation of Greece, the conquest of Carthage and the destruction of Seleucid power. Pergamum was willed to Rome in 133 B.C., while Egypt was a Roman protectorate finally annexed in 30 B.C. after the death of Cleopatra; Pompey the Great administered the death blow to the Seleucids in 63 B.C.

Back in Rome itself, many changes had occurred since the foundation of the Republic. During the early struggles in Italy, the need for manpower had brought a democratization of the government which reached its climax with the Hortensian Laws of 287 B.C., but the bitter Second Punic War, which saw the devastation of Italy by Hannibal, ruined the small farmers who had the greatest stake in Roman democracy. The Roman citizenry of the last two centuries of the republic were divided into three main groups: the great landholders (the senatorial class), who tended to monopolize public offices; the business men, the contractors, the tax farmers and the traders (the equestrian class), who fattened on the spoils of empire3; and the poorer citizens (the proletarians), who were concentrated in or near Rome itself. Essentially, these groups were parasites living off the empire, and it is not surprising that they fought among themselves for a greater share of the spoils. In the prolonged scuffle from 133 to 30 B.C., the local riots in Rome in the time of the Gracchi (133-121) became civil wars in Italy in the first quarter of the last century B.C. and then spread throughout the empire in the time of Pompey, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony and Octavian. The republic could not survive these disorders, and it thus gave way to the principate of Augustus, a compromise between the older system and the autocracy which Julius Caesar had tried to establish.

The conflict of the classes was not, of course, the only reason for the fall of the republic. It was also important that the republican government of Rome had been devised for a tiny city state, and although changes had occurred the alteration of the constitution had not proceeded at the same pace as the growth of empire. The new imperial government which evolved under Augustus (31 B.C.-A.D. 14) and his successors, with its long-term magistrate (the emperor or princeps) and its growing bureaucracy, was better adapted to keep the peace and administer the empire. Thus, two centuries of peace and prosperity followed before the principate lost its vitality and began to disintigrate.

Although there were revolts and civil wars which disturbed the empire during the first two centuries of the Christian Era, these events were not so harmful to the Roman dominions as they appeared to the historians of antiquity. The empire grew: the Gallic conquests of Julius Caesar were augmented by Claudius’ annexation of Britain (A.D. 43); the conquest of Spain, begun with the Second Punic War, was completed by Augustus; all of northern Africa was annexed; in Europe the northern imperial boundary was the Rhine and the Danume line until the conquest of Dacia by Trajan early in the 2nd century; in the Near East, Rome held Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine, although the Mesopotamian boundaries shifted with the waning and waxing of Parthian power.

Except for the major civil wars which followed the deaths of Nero (68-69) and Commodus (192-193), the emperors succeeded one another without two much confusion (despite the face that assassinations were common). The Julio-Claudian dynasty (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero) reigned until 68; the Flavian dynasty (Vespasian, Titus and Domitian), from 69-96. Then came the so called Good Emperors (Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius), who reigned from 96-180. Commodus, the only son of a “Good Emperor” to ascend the imperial throne, was eminently unsatisfactory. He reigned from the death of his father, Marcus Aurelius, until his assassination in 192.

During the period 193-235 there came the Severan Dynasty (Septimus, Caracalla, Heliogabalus and Alexander Severus), which occupied the throne as the principate turned towards autocracy. Economic decline, the rise of the Persians (Sassanians), and barbaric pressures on the frontiers brought new problems which the easy-going government of the early principate could not meet. Another difficulty was the growing resentment of the provincials toeward the favored position of Italy. Just as the Italians had once demanded (and received) equality with the Romans (in the Social War, 90-88 B.C.), so now the provincials wanted a comparable position. Along with this went a centrifugal tendency toward sectionalism or regionalism; the provinces thought of themselves first and the empire second.

Between A.D. 235 and 285 the Roman Empire almost disintegrated. Revolutions, civil wars, barbarian invasions, plagues and famines convulsed the Mediterranean world. At mid-century, independent states flourished in Gaul and the Near East, and the central government in Rome had little or no power. Emperors were set up and overthrown almost overnight. Beginning with the Emperor Aurelian (270-275), however, a series of strong rulers gradually restored order and unity, and the stage was set for the final phase which began with Diocletian (285-305).

The autocratic, even despotic, government which now took shape under Diocletian and Constantine the Great provided a temporary answer to Rome’s problems. The military was exalted above all else in order that the frontiers might be defended and internal order might prevail; economic life was regimented so that the state might be strong. Yet the empire could not be completely reunited; even Diocletian found it advisable to divide the empire into four major military and administrative divisions—after his time, there was a tendency to divide authority on an east-west basis. The culmination of this was reached at the death of Theodosius in 395, when the empire was formally split into two parts with the East, having its capital at Constantinople, going to his son Arcadius, and the West to his other son, Honorius.

The Eastern Empire, which became the Byzantine, was much more compact and economically more resilient than the West. As a result, it survived until 1453. But the Western Empire was already impoverished and almost impossible to defend against renewed barbarian pressures. Goths, Vandals and others overran Italy and the western provinces; a Vandal empire soon had its seat in North Africa; and Visigoths ruled in Spain. Rome was sacked by Alaric the Goth in 410, and again by the Vandals in 455. At last, German mercenaries placed their leader, Odoacer, on the western throne in 476.

For all practical purposes the Roman Empire came to an end with the accession of Odoacer. But the heritage of Roman civilization, although that civilization itself gradually disintegrated into the semibarbarism of the Dark Ages, largely informed what culture remained and was the most important basis, with Christianity, of the succeeding medieval period—and of all subsequent culture of the Western world. The language of Rome persisted in more or less pure form in the Church, in diplomacy and as a vehicle for transmitting learning. In the field of the arts, Rome, always less vigorously creative than Greece, had less influence. But Roman architecture inspired the only notable form, Romanesque, between its own day and the Gothic period, and experienced an important revival in the Renaissance which has persisted to the present time; Roman drama was a dominant influence in the great new dramatic art that developed in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries; and Roman philosophy and literary style have permeated Western Culture since the Middle Ages.

The most characteristic contribution of Roman civilization to its successors, however, was its laws and its organizational ability. In administering their vast empire, the Romans had developed and refined a body of laws and a system of government that to a large extent determined the subsequent history of the rising European states. Roman law, as finally expressed in the Corpus Juris of Justinian, affected even the barbarian codes and after the 11th century became the basis of modern European law.

The Roman genius was essentially a practical one, and although the material accomplishments of Roman civilization—their network of roads throughout the Empire and their gradually decaying public buildings and triumphal arches and settlements—may not have been their most significant contributions to later cultures, it was these that remained to be seen and to remind. Throughout the Empire it was scarcely possible to ignore the material evidence of Roman genius. In Rome, above all, although many of the structures of the ancient city were destroyed or gradually buried, much remained, and the memory of the past was kept alive in a more vivid sense than could be provided by any written record.

Post Empire

After the demise of the Empire in 476, the pope, who had established the primacy of the Bishop of Rome over the Christian Church, was left to confront the barbarians alone. King Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, while keeping Ravenna as his capital, sought to preserve the Senate and other ancient institutions in Rome, but that city continued to decline, and in the 6th century it was repeatedly taken and retaken by the Goths and Byzantines until after its seizure by Totila, it was for a time almost completely abandoned by its inhabitants. This marked the lowest ebb in the fortunes of Rome, when it shrank to a mere village nearly lost within the vast perimeter of the Aurelian walls.

Late in the 6th century conditions improved somewhat and the popes, nominally under Byzantine rule, organized the defense of the “Roman Duchy” against the Lombards. The iconoclasm of Emperor Leo the Isaurian (717-741) alienated his Italian subjects, and prepared the way for the intervention of the Frankish monarchs Pepin and Charlemagne, who conferred on the pope the territory of the Roman Duchy and the exarchate of Ravenna. On Christmas Day of 800 Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Roman Emperor in St. Peter’s, thus creating the Holy Roman Empire.

But the disintegration of the Carolingian Empire soon left the papacy without a powerful protector, confronting the opposition of the feudal lords and the republican tendencies of the citizens of Rome. There followed an epoch in which warring feudal factions, sometimes led by unscrupulous women making a mockery of the spiritual character of the papacy, used it as a political football, seating, unseating and even assassinating pontiffs, almost at will. During this period the city government was virtually autonomous, with a senator or patrician at the head and the citizenry organized into a militia.

The Holy See was redeemed from this sorry state by reformist popes, notably Gregory VII. However, by engaging in the investiture struggle with the Emperors, Gregroy brought new woes to Rome in the form first of imperial, then of Norman (1085), occupation and devastation. A commune arose in the 12th century, and for a time, under the leadership of Arnaldo of Brescia, pursued an antipapal policy. By 1155, the commune lost its autonomy and under Innocent III (1198-1216) the Senate was abolished and the city’s administration placed directly under papal supervision, with a single senator as his deputy. In 1266, Clement IV conferred this title on Charles of Anjou, to whom the foundation of the University of Rome is due.

The latter part of the 13th century was marked by struggles for power among the leading Roman families, such as the Colonna, Orsini, Annibaldi, Conti and Caetani, which involved the papacy itself, notably during the pontificate of the ambitious Boniface VIII, a Caetani who carried on a crusade against the Colonna. Boniface had all of Western Christiandom streaming to Rome for the great Jubilee of 1300, but in 1303 he was seized and insulted at Anagni by emissaries of Philip the Fair of France and died within a short time after finding Rome a French possession. The papacy was transferred to France in 1305 and from 1309 to 1377 the pontiffs, who were Frenchmen, resided at Avignon—the so called “Babylonian Captivity.”

During this absence of the popes, the Romans were left to their own devices and in 1347 acclaimed as tribune the reformer Cola di Rienzi, only later to kill him in a riot. Cardinal Albornoz, papal legate, managed to restore some order to the papal domain, but for 40 years after the return of Gregory XI to Rome in 1377 the city was upset by the Great Schism (1378-1417) and by various outside interventions.

The election of a Roman, Martin V, healed the schism and permitted the succeeding pontiffs to devote their attention to expanding their temporal possessions and to making of Rome the center of the intellectual and artistic life of the Renaissance. This they did largely by neglecting the strictly spiritual aspects of their calling and in some cases leading most unseemly lives, notably in the case of Alexander VI, who sought to further the interests of his children, Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia. Prominent popes of this era were Nicholas V (1447-1455), founder of the Vatican Library; Pius II (1458-1464), a great humanist; Sixtus IV (1471-1484), first of the “political popes,” who practiced nepotism on a wide scale but built a number of churches (including Santa Maria del Popolo) and decreed the construction of the Sistine Chapel; Julius II (1503-1513), who warred on neighboring states but laid the foundation stone for St. Peter’s and engaged the services of Raphael and Michelangelo; and Leo X (1513-1521), a Medici (son of Lorenzo the Magnificent), who first had to face the Lutheran Revolt. The Renaissance arrived late in Rome, but under these pontiffs it made up for lost time.

The Reformation was accompanied by a series of wars between the Hapsburg Empire and the French monarchy. In 1527 the German troops of Charles V thoroughly sacked Rome and Clement VII was for seven months held a prisoner of the Castel Sant’Angelo in retaliation for his having supported the French. The Counter-Reformation got under way, with Rome as its base, later in the 16th century, with Jesuits spearheading the attack on the Protestants. The papacy itself was reformed and the pontiffs, especially Pius IV (1559-1565) and Sixtus V (1585-1590), erected notable religious monuments to celebrate its restored prestige. The 17th century saw the construction of massive Baroque palaces, which bear the family names of various popes, such as Borghese, Barberini, Pamphili, Chigi, Rospigliosi, Altieri, Odescalchi and Corsini.

Italy

Roman Italy

Even with the rise of the Romans the cities retained many of their local differences and powers, and under republican Rome Italy was essentially a federation of self-governing cities. The decline of the glories and powers of the cities began with the rule of Hadrian, who ruled from A.D. 117-138. Imperial rule and administration gradually replaced local autonomy, and the decline of the cities set in.

At the end of the 3rd century the empire was in danger of disintegration from the attacks of the barbarians, and under Diocletian and Constantine the Great, it was finally transformed into a bureaucratic monarcy, at least on paper. Italy no longer had any special or individual place in the empire, and the establishment of a new seat of empire at Constantinople in 330 was symptomatic of the decline of Italy and symbolic of the increased importance of the East.

Barbarian Invasions & the Rise of the Church

During these years the Catholic Church was growing in membership and importance, and during the course of the 4th century it became the state church. Subsequently, from the time of Theodosius, paganism and heresy became crimes against the state. The death of Theodosius was followed by an administrative division of the empire into the Eastern empire, with its seat at Constantinople, and the Western. It had been customary to divide it in this fashion since the days of Diocletian, but now the division became permanent, although the political unity of the empire was maintained in theory. The empire of the West had largely been occupied by barbarian tribesmen. Italy had been invaded, but not until Odoacer was there a permanent occupation. In 476 Odoacer was proclaimed king by his Herulian soldiers, and although he in theory accepted the rule of the emperor at Constantinople, the year 476 is the date generally designated as the end of the Roman empire in the West.

In 493, Theodoric, leader of the Ostrogoths (East Goths), under commission from the Byzantine emperor, slew Odoacer and was in turn proclaimed king by the Ostrogoths. Later Emperor Justinian undertook the reconquest of Italy, and by 553 the Italian lands were ruled in the name of the emperor. But Italy was still to be invaded, this time by the Lombards, or Longobardi, whose influence was both long and widespread. They were a Germanic people who first made their home on the banks of the Elbe in northern Germany and then migrated to the middle Danube in the latter half of the second century, and gradually came down toward Italy. In 568, within three years after the death of Justinian, the Lombards swept down into Italy, following the track of earlier Germanic invaders from the Balkans into northern Italy, and soon occupied the great plain between the Alps and the Apennines, ever since called Lombardy. They made no pretense of alliance with the empire, as had the Ostrogoths, and they confiscated the estates of the Italians. Roman civilization, though tempered by the previous numerous invasions, had survived them all. Now, however, the continuity of Roman civilization was at last broken, or at least severely strained. By the beginning of the 7th century the Lombards had conquered all of Italy except the territories around Ravenna, Rome, Naples and the extreme south, which were still ruled by representatives of the emperor. The Lombard kingdom itself was very loosely united, and there was no longer even the pretense of the unity of Italy, a unity that was never to be recovered.

As temporal unity wanes, the power of the papacy waxed. As the emperor lost power and prestige, the papacy gained both. Under Gregory the Great, who ruled as pope from 590 to 604, the Catholic Church increased in spiritual and temporal power. Forced to negotiate with the Lombards, Gregory made himself the actual ruler of Rome and the land around it, and, at the same time, pressed his claims to universal authority over the Catholic Church with the greatest vigor. His success over the Frankish bishops was not marked, but, a precedent was set, at least by claim.

In 725 a serious quarrel arose between state and church when Emperor Leo the Isaurian (717-741) attempted to increase taxation and forbade the presence of pictures or images (icons) of the saints in the churches. In the resulting “iconoclastic controversy,” the pope was the champion of both Catholic orthodoxy and Italian independence. The Lombards, not immediately involved in the quarrel, took advantage of the situation to increase their power at the expense of the emperor. Rome itself was saved, in part because the Lombards had gradually been converted to Catholicism. By 751 Rome was all that remained of imperial Italy, save for the Greek province at the southern tip. The pope still recognized the overlordship of the emperor, but refused to bow on the matter of icons.

The popes had appealed to the Franks for support, and finally Pepin, king of the Franks, made two successful expeditions against the Lombards in 754 and 756. On the latter date Pepin forced the Lombards to give the pope the territory from Rome to Ravenna, clear across central Italy. Called the “Donation of Pepin,” this was to become an independent principality under the rule of the papacy, known as the Papal States, or the States of the Church.

The Lombards soon succeeded in regaining most of this territory, and in 773 Pope Hadrian called upon Pepin’s son and successor, Charles, for help. Charles the Great, or Charlemagne, marched into Italy, defeated the Lombards, in 774 declared himself king of the Lombards and renewed the Donation of Pepin. In 800 Charlemagne was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III. Though the immediate practical effect was negligible, an empire had been proclaimed, an empire that was linked to the Roman Catholic Church. Within three generations, however, the Carolingian empire had disappeared, broken up into separate kingdoms. Although in Italy the imperial title lingered for a while, during the next century there came about the breakup of political authority and the destruction of almost all economic ties that involved any considerable distance. Society was now in its feudal and manorial age.

Medieval Italy

Italy, for half a century, was in a condition of chaos. Powerful nobles prevented unity under either the Lombards or the pope, and the Saracens had conquered Sicily and were ravaging southern Italy. In 951, Otto the Great invaded Italy and, in 962, had himself crowned Holy Roman emperor. The Holy Roman empire of Otto was considered a revival of the Carolingian Empire, just as the latter had been regarded as a continuation of the ancient Roman empire.

The people of medieval Europe had inherited two great traditions from Roman antiquity: that of a universal church and a universal state. The pope ruled the former, and Charlemagne, then Otto, governed the latter. But the attempt to rule both in Germany and Italy was ruineous for the kings who attempted it. lthough there were other reasons as well, an important cause of the disunity of both Germany and Italy, which has lasted since, was that the German rulers would not relinquish their desire to control Italy. They were unable to achieve this, and the efforts they expended prevented them from gaining control of Germany. For nearly a century, form the coronation of Otto the Great to the death of Henry III in 1056, the emperors were the dominant members of the papal-imperial partnership, which claimed the right of universal rule over all Christendom. The struggle between the popes and the emperors continued for more than two centuries and finally ended with the destruction of imperial authority.

The situation in Italy was further complicated by the invasions of the Normans in southern Italy, beginning with the landing at Salerno of a band of Norman knights on their way home from a pilgrimage. And in 1059 Pope Nicholas II, hard pressed in Rome by a revolt, gave Robert Guiscard the title to the lands in southern Italy which he had conquered.

The conflict between church and state was a struggle over spiritual values as well as temporal property. Many churchmen were also wealthy landowners who owed allegiance to the emperor; and it was true, also, that the emperor had in the past deposed popes and chosen their successors. At the same time the papacy asserted the supremacy of spiritual over temporal power. By the Concordat of Worms (1122) what may be called a division of the ceremony was agreed upon. The emperor was to invest bishops and abbots with the insignia of their secular office (that is, their fief), and the pope was to invest them with the ring and staff which symbolized their spiritual authority. In Italy, where the emperor had lost real authority, imperial investiture was to follow consecration.

In their contest with the imperial power, the popes found allies in the Lombard cities. Since the middle of the 11th century, the Italian towns had been growing rapidly as a result of the great revival of international trade, and by the middle of the 12th century, the cities of the Lombard plains were centers of commerce and industry. With the growth of their economic strength there also grew the demand for political power, and after a bitter struggle the Lombard cities, organized as the Lombard League, won almost complete self-government, expressed in the Peace of Constance (1183). Although the pope did not acquire any extra power, the weakening of the emperor seved to enhance the pope’s power. The popes, however, soon suffered a severe loss when Emperor Henry VI (1190-1197) won a victory over the Sicilian nobles who had been supported by the pope, who then lost his temporal power over the Papal States, except for the duchy of Rome.

Just as the fortunes of the papacy seemed at their lowest ebb, Innocent III became pope, and his pontificate (1198-1216) marked the highes point of papal power. His temporal power was great, and his assertions of the sovereignty of the papacy over the church and secular government were greater still. He fought with the emperors, excommunicated Otto IV (1198-1215) twice and made an alliance with Frederick II (1211-1250) who, after Innocent’s death, fought with both the papacy and the Lombard cities. From 1254 to 1273 there was no generally recognized emperor, and the papacy had at last triumphed, at least to the exten ot temporarily destroying the empire and of leaving it permanently weakened. The papacy’s power over French and English rulers had now almost completely disappeared, but the popes had helped to prevent Italy from being united under the emperor. Italy was disunited and was to remain so, to be racked by civil as well as international conflict.

At this time, however, the power of the papacy began to wane, especially during the seventy-two years (1305-1377) that the popes were at Avignon, where they were under the influence of the French government. Finally, in 1377, the popes returned to Italy. There the pope was an Italian prince; there, because the land was not united, political force could not so effectively be brought to bear against him; and there the pope cound be independent head of the church, though with severely restricted powers.

Renaissance Italy

Though not politically unified, Italy underwent in the 14th and 15th centuries a profound, if gradual transformation. The character of European civilization was changed in many aspects during this period, but in very few places did the changes equal those in Italy. Italy was the land of opportunity. Political unrest, the riches in this hub of world trade, and its history finally gave rise to a ferment out of which rose the Renaissance, the rebirth of the civilization of Greece and Rome. Men, in seeking to escape the present, tried to restore a golden past.

Growing wealth had created in Italy a society that was urban, worldly in its interests and highly individualistic. Cities dating from a Roman past, which had never completely died out, were revived as a result of the great rise in trade and industry. Furthermore, the quarrels between the emperors and popes had enabled the cities, by playing off one side against another, to win freedom from outside control. Except for the south, the cities began to dominate the countryside. The feudal lords had to renounce, in effect, their own way of life, if they were to participate in the intellectual and economic advantages offered by the cities.

Politically, however, feudal anarchy was replaced by political chaos. Except for the southern kingdom of Naples, the Italian Peninsula was divided into a hose of petty city-states which were almost completely independent of emperor or pope. Conquest and amalgamation took place, but many of the Italian cities were too evenly matched, neither agreements nor force operating to unify them, and Italy remained disunited. But the sharp internal divisions within the cities and the need for presenting a unified front against outside enemies served to bring on the end of many republican governments and to make easy the despot’s rise to power. Men weary of instability sought or accepted the rise of these despots or tyrants who, though they ruled with the help of hired mercenaries (condottieri), nevertheless sought to win the respect and admiration of their people.

A marked expansion of the greater states at the expense of the lesser ones took place in this period, so that by 1494 only five great states and a few lesser ones remained of the scores of city-states that had dotted the map of Italy at the beginning of the Renaissance.

The duchy of Milan, the republics of Florence and Venice, the Papal States and the kingdom of Naples were the most important entities in the Italian Peninsula. Under the leadership of the House of Sforza, Milan became one of the richest states in Italy, and a centre of art and learning.

Just as Milan dominated the Lombard Plain and the Alpine passes to northern Europe, so did Venice, built on lagoons, command the Adriatic Sea. Cut off from the mainland and the tangled feuds of Italian politics, Venice, through its geographical position, was the natural middleman in the trade between the East and Western Europe. Venice was ruled by an oligarchy of wealthy families who elected a doge (or life president) who in turn ruled with the aid of a senate and council of ten. By the treaty of 1454, signed with Milan, Venice’s claim to a mainland state in eastern Lombardy and around the head of the Adriatic was recognized.

The city of Florence retained the outward trappings of a republican form of government, but frequent revolutions, party feuds and control by an oligarchy consisting of a small group of wealthy families conditioned its inhabitants to accept, beginning in 1434, the rule of the Medici. The republican form of government was retained, but in reality Cosimo de Midici and his successors ruled as despots. The high point was reached under Lorenzo the Magnificent (reigned 1469-1492). Poet, patron of art and learning, statesman and diplomat, Lorenzo raised the prestige of the Medici name to its highest point.

The Papal States, stretching across central Italy and including Romagna, which extended up the eastern coast almost to the borders of Venezia, was nominally ruled by the pope. Actually, the territory was not centralized, and numerous petty despots set up governments which were virtually independent. Many of the Renaissance popes were as worldly as the Italian princes and maintained luxurious courts. Nicholas V (1447-1455), who originated the Vatican library, and Pius II (1458-1464) did much to help revive Classical learning. The high point of the Renaissance was reached under the popes Julius II (1503-1513) and Leo X (1513-1521).

Most backward of all the Italian states was the kingdom of Naples, which included all of Italy south of the Papal States, and which at times included the kingdom of Sicily. Here, in contrast to most of the rest of Italy, feudalism still survived as a powerful force. Rent by dynastic struggles between the French family of Anjou and the Spanish family of Aragon, with little of the commerce and industry which characterized the north, the kingdom of Naples developed comparatively little during the Renaissance.

The uneasy peace between these five states, maintained by an ever shifting balance of power, cemented by a series of marriages, was interrupted by the beginning of foreign invasions in 1494. The foreign invaders came into a land which had witnessed a growth of culture perhaps unparalleled in the memory of mankind. The literary works of Dante Alighieri, of Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) and of Giovanni Boccaccio have furnished inspiration and models for literary figures since that time.

Painting was developed to the highest degree of perfection. Giotto, who was among the first to break away from the formalized technique of earlier religious painting, and Leonardo da Vinci, remembered as an artist, poet, musician, engineer and practical scientist, Raphael, Michaelangelo and scores of others whose glory is dimmed only by their greater contemporaries, created the most splendid works of art.

The wealth and civilization of Italy drew foreigners from afar, and internal divisions served to whet the greedy appetites of would-be invaders. In 1494, Charles VIII of France began what was to be a series of futile wars in Italy, lasting for more than a half a century. Futile for France, which neglected the more profitable aim or rounding out its borders to the northeast within the natural frontiers of the Rhine and the Alps, the wars were also destructive for Italy, which paid dearly for its lack of unity. Alliances, counter-alliances and the independent action of foreign states brought the Spanish, French and Germans, in addition to Swiss auxiliaries, into Italy. In 1527 Rome was sacked, and by the Treaty of Barcelona in 1529 the pope and Charles V came to terms; in the same year, by the Treaty of Cambrai, France relinquished to Spain its claims in Italy.

Italy as the Pawn of Europe

The decline of Italy set in after 1530. From then on, Italy had no independent history of its own; it was a pawn for contending powers, and the theatre for devastating wars. The Italians suffered the hardships of war, even though those wars were fought largely with alien armies, and they could gain nothing from the military events, however these were decided. Shifting trade routes and political strife weakened the states of Italy, and Italy ceased to be a determining factor in European history.

Though the temporal powers of the papacy varied in proportion to its actual political domain, it continued to gain ecclesiastical and spiritual power, especially in Italy. To counteract the effects of the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent formulated anew in 1562-63 the tenets of Catholic doctrine, while the decisions of the Council in defining the essential features of Catholicism emphasized the impossibility of a union between Catholicism and Protestantism. The pope emerged with greater power in the Church, and Catholic power was restored in Italy, though weakened elsewhere.

With the waning of the Renaissance, Italian culture lost the predominant position which it had held for two centuries. New national cultures had emerged in the countries of Western Europe inspired and influenced the heritage of the Renaissance. Now Italian culture came to be influenced by developments in other countries in the fields of philosophy, science, literature and the arts. Thought in Italy became more restricted. The condemnation of Galileo, and the burning of Bruno had a disastrous effect on independent and original thinking in Italy.

Spanish control over much of the Italian Peninsula, dating from the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis (1559), was challenged by France during the reign of Louis XIV. Louis sought to take the place of Spain in Italy.

Egypt

Egyptian Revival

The new leader of the Egyptians was Psammeticus (or Psametik) of Sais, in the western Delta, who had been appointed governor by the Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal. After the Assyrian yoke had been cast off, Psammeticus unified Egypt once more and became the first ruler of the XXVI, or Saite Dynasty. The Saite period of Egyptian history (663-525 B.C.) represents a temporary revival of Egypt as a world power, a role which she was to share with the Neo-Babylonians, Medes and Lydians. Although the Saite culture is often criticized for its sterile archaism—an attempt to recreate the glories of the Empire—it is nevertheless interesting, especially in its literary aspects. The greatest prosperity of the Saites was during the reign of Ahmoses II (569-525 B.C.), when Egypt traded not only with the Near East but also with the rising Greek states of Asia Minor, the Aegean islands and European Greece. Many professional Greek soldiers found employment in the Egyptian armies of this period.

In the end, however, Egypt, like Media, Lydia and Babylonia, was incorporated into the expanding Persian Empire. In 525 B.C. Cambyses, the son of Cyrus the Great, fought his way past Pelusium and into the Nile Valley. Egypt was organized as a Persian satrapy and had to submit to the indignity of having a Persian governor and Persian garrisons stationed throughout the land. Despite several revolts in which the Egyptians temporarily expelled the Persians, Egypt remained a Persian province until the coming of Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.

Rule of the Ptolemies

When Alexander died in 323 B.C., the rich prize of Egypt was taken by one of his generals, Ptolemy, son of Lagus. Successfully holding Egypt against his rivals, Ptolemy eventually took the title of King about 306 B.C., and his descendants ruled Egypt as the successors of the Pharaohs until the death of Cleopatra in 30 B.C. Under the Ptolemies, Egypt was once more an imperial state controlling Cyrene, Cyprus and southern Syria. In the Ptolemiac period all Egypt was turned into a vast plantation, which was operated for the benefit of its Macedonian rulers. The land, the chief source of wealth, was considered the property of the king. Some land he retained and rented out for cultivation by the royal serfs (the Egyptian peasantry); other land, given to the nobles or to military (mostly Greek and Macedonian) colonists, was subject to taxation. The external trade of the country was a state monopoly, while all internal trade was taxed. There were also numerous lucrative state monopolies: salt, papyrus, linens, oils, mines and banks. For the administration of this great business enterprise, an extensive bureaucracy was built up. While foreign affairs, the armed forces, and the administration of justice were handled by ministers with great authority, the financial affairs were under the supervision of an official called the dioecetes, whose bureau directed the activieits of the royal officials in the provinces (nomes) and their territorial subdivisions. Agricultural production was carefully planned in advance of each growing season, and it was possible to estimate the revenues long before they were received.

Alexandria, the great city in the Delta founded by Alexander, was made the capital of Egypt as well as the center of literary and scientific activity in the Hellenistic world. In the Library and the Museum at Alexandria famous scholars and scientists—Euclid, Eratosthenes, Aristarchus and many more—lived and worked under Ptolemaic patronage.

In Ptolemaic times, Greek was the official language of Egypt, and although the natives retained their own language, they acquired a veneer of Greek culture and began to assume Greek names in addition to their Egyptian ones.

Roman Exploitation

Under the Romans after 30 B.C., Egypt was the private possession of the Roman emperor and was governed by a special equestrian prefect appointed by him. The bureaucracy of the Ptolemaic period was retained and amplified by the Romans, who exploited Egypt more thoroughly than the Ptolemies had done. As a matter of fact, the tribute exacted by the Romans was four times that received by the Ptolemies. In addition to duties on imports and exports, taxes and assessments paid in coin, there were fifty varieties of taxes paid in kind, and two hundred miscellaneous taxes. Thus, Egypt sent to Rome a revenue equivalent to twenty million dollars a year, in addition to five million bushels of wheat, as an annual tribute.

Alexandria, organized as a municipality on the Greek order, was a large city with a population of perhaps 300,000 in the Roman period. Cosmopolitan, with a large foreign population, the city was the scene of numerous riots and disorders; the Jewish colony was large and cordially hated by the pagans; anti-Jewish riots were common.

In the 3rd century of the Christian Era, Egypt began to show definite effects of the Roman exploitation; productivity declined, and the peasants often fled from their holdings. In the time of Zenobia of Palmyra, Egypt was temporarily attached to that state. In the reign of Diocletian a serious Egyptian revolt was quelled with great difficulty. Independence was declared by Achilleus (L. Domitius Domitianus) in A.D. 296, and Diocletian was forced to punish the Egyptians severely when he retook the country in 297. After this, Egypt was divided into three provinces, a number which later was increased to five.

In the 3rd century also, the new Christian faith gained many converts in Egypt. As a result, widespread Roman persecutions of the Christians, especially those instigated by Decius and Diocletian, caused much suffering in Egypt. After Christianity was graned equality with the other religions in the Roman Empire under Constantine the Great, Egypt, and especially Alexandria, became an important Christian centre. It was in Egypt in the 4th century that there originated the famous controversy between the orthodox Christians and the Arians which was to divide the Christian world for many centuries. On the orthodox side was the young Alexandrian deacon, Athanasius, later Bishop of Alexandria, and on the other side was the Alexandrian presbyter, Arius. As time passed, the native Egyptian church, the Coptic, became more and more a nationalist organization which was hostile to Greek influences.

Moslem Occupation

During the Byzantine period, Egypt was governed by Constantinople, but the hold of the Eastern Roman Empire over the country was gradually weakened. Early in the 7th century, the Persians penetrated as far as Egypt and had to be expelled by the Emperor Heraclius. Then, with the rise of Islam, Egypt was lost.

In December 639, the Ommiad commander, Amr-ibn-al-As, led an army from Palestine into Egypt. By September 642, conquest was complete, the Byzantine government having agreed to a fixed payment of tribute in return for the Moslem promise to leave the Christians in possession of their churches and not to interfere in the administration of their communal affairs. From this time, Egypt was a province of the Eastern caliphate and was ruled by governors. However, in 868 Egypt was given in fief to a Turkish general Bayikbeg who entrusted Egypt to his stepson Ahmad ibn Tulun. The latter founded a quasi-independent dynasty known as the Tulunid. The period of Tulunid power ended in 935 when Muhammed ibn Tughj conquered Fostat and established the rule of the Ikshidite Dynasty.

Fatimids

In 969, Egypt was invaded from the west by Jauhar el-Kaid, a Fatimid general, and Cairo was made the capital of the Fatimid caliph Mo’izz. Under the first two Fatimid caliphs, Egypt enjoyed a sound administration, but with the third, al-Hakim (985-1021), there began a period of repressive government and an increasingly bad economic situation. Although during the reign of al-Hakim’s grandson, al-Mustansir (1036-1094), his general, Badr al-Jamali, restored order within Egypt, he was unable to prevent the Seljuks from usurping Fatimid power in Syria and Palestine. Jerusalem was recovered from the Turks, but it was lost again in 1099 to the Crusaders, who also obtained other Fatimid territory in Palestine. The Fatimid rulers were by this time too weak to cope with the combined problems of the Seljuk Turks, the Crusaders, and the internal strife in Egypt, and the last of the Fatimid caliphs, Adid, was forced to ask for help from Nureddin (1118-1174), Seljuk ruler of Syria. In 1169, Adid appointed a powerful Seljuk general, Shirguh, as vizier of Egypt.

Seljuks & Ayyubids

Shirguh was succeeded, on his death two months later, by his nephew Saladin (1138-1193), who still professed to be only a deputy of Nureddin. Saladin, with the help of Nureddin, kept the Franks out of Egypt, deposed the caliph Adid, and gradually substituted the Sunnite form of Islam for the previously dominant Shiite form. After the death of the ex-caliph, he was given the prefecture of Egypt as deputy of Nureddin, and after the latter’s death in 1174, he took the title of Sultan, which officially started the Ayyubid Dynasty, in Egypt. By 1183, he had extended his rule to include North Syria. The rest of his life is notable primarily for his wars with the Crusaders. He died in 1193, only a few months after a temporary peace between the Franks and the Moslems had been established.

Mamelukes

The heirs of Saladin ruled Egypt and varying parts of his empire, until they were supplanted in 1250 by the Mamelukes, the name given to the enfranchised slaves who, under the Ayyubids, had made up the court and officered the army. The period of the Mamelukes lasted until 1517, and was marked by a succession of wars, internal struggles for power, and general tumult. The first period of Mameluke rule was under the Bahri Mamelukes (to 1382), the second under the Burji Mamelukes.

Egypt Under the Ottomans

A long struggle between the Egyptian and Ottoman sultanates ended in the defeat of the Egyptians in 1517. After that time, Egypt has been nominally a part of the Ottoman Empire. However, even after the conquest the Mamelukes retained their power, and Egypt’s importance to the Ottoman Empire, apart form the tribute which it paid, was mainly that it served as a base of operations for the maintenance of Ottoman power over Syria and Arabia.