Three millennia of Hellenism in Anatolia and on the Black Sea — from the Aeolian and Ionian migrations that followed the Bronze Age collapse to the Treaty of Lausanne and the population exchange of 1923. A geographic chronicle of the cities, kingdoms, councils and catastrophes that shaped Greek life east of the Aegean.
In the wake of the Bronze Age collapse, Greek-speaking refugees from Thessaly, Boeotia and Attica cross the Aegean and settle the western coast of Anatolia, founding the cities that will become Aeolis and Ionia.
Three millennia of Hellenism in Anatolia and on the Black Sea — from the Aeolian and Ionian migrations that followed the Bronze Age collapse to the Treaty of Lausanne and the population exchange of 1923. A geographic chronicle of the cities, kingdoms, councils and catastrophes that shaped Greek life east of the Aegean.
In the wake of the Bronze Age collapse, Greek-speaking refugees from Thessaly, Boeotia and Attica cross the Aegean and settle the western coast of Anatolia, founding the cities that will become Aeolis and Ionia.
Milesian colonists found Sinope on the central Pontic coast; within a generation Sinope herself plants Trapezus to the east, anchoring Greek settlement along the entire southern shore of the Black Sea.
The twelve cities of Ionia formalise their religious and political federation around the sanctuary of Poseidon Heliconius on the Mycale promontory, the cultural and economic heart of the Greek east.
After the fall of Croesus's Lydia, Cyrus's general Harpagus reduces the Ionian cities one by one, ending their independence and placing them under Achaemenid satraps.
Aristagoras of Miletus rouses the Ionian cities against Persia and sails to Greece for help; Athens and Eretria send ships, and the burning of Sardis ignites the long Greco-Persian war.
After the Ionian fleet is destroyed at Lade, the Persians take Miletus by storm, slaughter its men, enslave its women and children, and end the great age of Ionian civilisation.
The Spartan-Persian treaty of Antalcidas concludes that 'the cities in Asia belong to the King', formally ceding the Greek east back to the Achaemenids in exchange for Persian backing against Athens and Thebes.
Alexander of Macedon lands at the Hellespont, defeats the Persian satrapal army at the Granicus, and proclaims the liberation of the Greek cities of Asia.
Mithridates I Ktistes, a minor Persian dynast at Cius, slips away during the chaos following the Battle of Corupedium and proclaims himself king of Pontus, founding a dynasty that will dominate northern Anatolia for two centuries.
Eumenes I throws off Seleucid suzerainty at Sardis and establishes Pergamon as an independent power, beginning the Attalid dynasty that will transform western Anatolia into a centre of Hellenistic art and learning.
On his deathbed the last Attalid king bequeaths his kingdom to the Roman people; after suppressing the revolt of Aristonicus, Rome organises the province of Asia, the wealthiest in the empire.
Mithridates VI of Pontus orders the simultaneous massacre of every Italian and Roman citizen in the Greek cities of Asia Minor; perhaps eighty thousand are killed in a single day.
After driving Mithridates to suicide in the Crimea, Pompey settles the affairs of Anatolia, annexing Pontus to Bithynia and ending the great age of Hellenistic kingdoms.
Tiberius deposes the last client king Archelaus, annexes Cappadocia as an imperial province, and brings Greek civic life to the high plateau where it had till then been only a veneer.
Paul of Tarsus settles at Ephesus for over two years; from this base the Greek of Asia Minor becomes the first vehicle of Christian preaching, scripture and liturgy.
Constantine convenes the first ecumenical council in the Bithynian city of Nicaea; the Nicene Creed defines the orthodoxy of the Christian world and Asia Minor becomes its theological heartland.
The fourth ecumenical council at Chalcedon defines the two natures of Christ; the rejection of the definition by the Oriental churches creates the schism that will outlive the empire.
Alp Arslan defeats and captures the emperor Romanos IV at Manzikert in eastern Anatolia; the central plateau, the heart of Byzantine Greek-speaking civilisation for seven centuries, lies open to Turkmen tribes.
Three weeks before the Latin sack of Constantinople, two grandsons of Andronikos I seize Trebizond with Georgian help; the small Pontic state will outlive Constantinople herself by eight years.
Mehmed II besieges Trebizond by land and sea; the last Greek-speaking sovereign state of the East, David Megas Komnenos surrenders after a month, and the last Greek empire ends.
Greek merchant families of the Phanar quarter consolidate their hold on the Ecumenical Patriarchate and on the dragomanate; through these offices the Greek east of the Ottoman Empire is administered by Greeks for nearly two centuries.
The Committee of Union and Progress forces the restoration of the constitution; initial hopes for Ottoman pluralism give way within a few years to a militant Turkish nationalism that targets the Greek and Armenian populations of Anatolia.
The Ottoman government deports the male Greek population of the Pontus into labour battalions in the interior; mass starvation, summary executions and concentration in the Anatolian highlands kill an estimated three hundred thousand Pontic Greeks between 1914 and 1923.
Under Allied authorisation a Greek army lands at Smyrna and is welcomed by the city's Greek population; the Megali Idea of recovering the Greek homelands of Asia seems within reach, and the long retreat of Hellenism on the Anatolian coast briefly reverses.
Mustafa Kemal's forces break the Greek front in August and reach Smyrna on 9 September; within a week the Greek and Armenian quarters are in flames and the three-thousand-year history of Greek Asia Minor effectively ends.
The Treaty of Lausanne formalises the compulsory exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey; some 1.2 million Orthodox Christians are uprooted from Anatolia, ending the continuous Greek presence in Asia Minor that began with the Aeolian and Ionian migrations three thousand years earlier.