Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: When was Syracuse founded by the Greeks?
Syracuse was founded in 734 or 733 BC by Greek settlers from Corinth and Tenea, led by the "oecist" (colonizer) Archias. There are many attested variants of the name of the city including "Syrakousai", "Syrakosai" and "Syrakō". A possible origin of the city's name was given by Vibius Sequester citing first Stephanus Byzantius in that there was a Syracusian marsh () called "Syrako" and secondly Marcian's "Periegesis" wherein Archias gave the city the name of a nearby marsh; hence one gets "Syrako" (and thereby "Syrakousai" and other variants) for the name of Syracuse, a name also attested by Epicharmus. The settlement of Syracuse was a planned event, as a strong central leader, Arkhias the aristocrat, laid out how property would be divided up for the settlers, as well as plans for how the streets of the settlement should be arranged, and how wide they should be. The nucleus of the ancient city was the small island of Ortygia. The settlers found the land fertile and the native tribes to be reasonably well-disposed to their presence. The city grew and prospered, and for some time stood as the most powerful Greek city anywhere in the Mediterranean. Colonies were founded at Akrai (664 BC), Kasmenai (643 BC), Akrillai (7th century BC), Helorus (7th century BC) and Kamarina (598 BC).
The island of Sicily contained the Elymians, Sikans and the Siculi living in respective communities before the Phoenicians had started their colonisation of Sicily after 800 BC. The Phoenicians had initially planted trading posts all over the coast of Sicily, but never penetrated far inland and ultimately withdrew without resistance to the western half of the island (concentrating in the cities of Motya, Panormus and Soluntum) with the arrival of the Greek colonists after 750. The Ionian Greeks took the lead in colonising Sicily among Greeks when they planted Naxos in 735, and spread north and west along the island coast until the city of Himera was founded in around 648, bordering the Phoenician territory of Soluntum. The Dorian Greeks founded Syracuse in 734 and spread south then west along the coastline until Selinus was founded around 654, bordering the Phoenician territory of Motya. While the Ionian Greeks on the whole had friendly relations with the native Sicilians and the Phoenicians, the Dorian Greeks were comparably more aggressive, pushing inland at the expense of the natives to expand the Greek domain. Conflicts among the Greeks colonies and between the natives and Greeks erupted, but these were localised mostly affairs without any decisive results or intervention from non Sicilian powers. The Phoenicians and Carthaginians traded with everyone in Sicily and on the whole all the island colonies prospered. This prosperity caused some of the Greek cities to start to expand their territories again, ultimately leading to the events known as "Sicilian Wars".
Syracuse China was a manufacturer of fine china. The company was founded in 1871 as Onondaga Pottery Company (O.P. Co.). In the late 19th century, the company changed its name and began producing fine china, for which it found a strong market in hotels, restaurants, and railroad dining cars. The company closed in 2009 when it was bought out by Libbey, Inc. of Toledo, Ohio. Syracuse China is still manufactured today, however, all production was moved out of North America.
Naxos was the first Greek colony in Sicily, settled in 734 BC on Sicel land. From that date Sicels had been the victims of Greek aggression. Leontini was the next colony, settled by Naxos, where the Greeks promised to live in peace with the Sicels. The Greeks at Leontini got colonists from Megara (who later founded Megara Hyblea) to drive the Sicels out of that city. On the other hand, Sicels also lived on friendly terms with Greeks, Hippocrates had hired Sicel mercenaries to fight both Sicels and Greeks and slaughtered the Sicel mercenaries when convenient, Sicels and Greeks of Camarina also banded together to fight Syracuse, and much of Greek culture was absorbed by Sicel communities. The Greeks joined hands to defeat Ducetius, a Sicel warlord who tried to create a united Sicel state in the 440s. Dionysius had attacked the Sicels towns of Herbessus, Henna and Herbita prior to starting the war with Carthage, so the Sicels had cause to hate him.
Constantinople (; ) was the capital city of the Roman/Byzantine Empire (330–1204 and 1261–1453), and also of the brief Crusader state known as the Latin Empire (1204–1261), until finally falling to the Ottoman Empire (1453–1923). It was reinaugurated in 324 from ancient Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine the Great, after whom it was named, and dedicated on 11 May 330. The city was located in what is now the European side and the core of modern Istanbul.
Cyrus II of Persia ( "Kūruš"; New Persian: "Kuruš"; ; c. 600–530 BC), commonly known as Cyrus the Great  and also called Cyrus the Elder by the Greeks, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, the first Persian Empire. Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanded vastly and eventually conquered most of Western Asia and much of Central Asia. From the Mediterranean Sea and Hellespont in the west to the Indus River in the east, Cyrus the Great created the largest empire the world had yet seen. Under his successors, the empire eventually stretched at its maximum extent from parts of the Balkans (Bulgaria-Paeonia and Thrace-Macedonia) and Eastern Europe proper in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east. His regal titles in full were The Great King, King of Persia, King of Anshan, King of Media, King of Babylon, King of Sumer and Akkad, and King of the Four Corners of the World. The Nabonidus Chronicle notes the change in his title from simply "King of Anshan", a city, to "King of Persia". Assyriologist François Vallat wrote that "When Astyages marched against Cyrus, Cyrus is called ‘King of Anshan’, but when Cyrus crosses the Tigris on his way to Lydia, he is ‘King of Persia’. The coup therefore took place between these two events."
When Cyrus of Persia defeated Croesus of Lydia in the middle of the 6th century BC, Miletus fell under Persian rule. In 499 BC Miletus's tyrant Aristagoras became the leader of the Ionian Revolt against the Persians under Darius the Great, who quashed this rebellion and punished Miletus by selling all of the women and children into slavery, killing the men, and expelling all of the young men as eunuchs, thereby assuring that no Miletus citizen would ever be born again. A year afterward, Phrynicus produced the tragedy "The Capture of Miletus" in Athens. The Athenians fined him for reminding them of their loss.
Socrates (c. 436 BC – 401 BC) was a Greek mercenary general from Achaea who traveled to Persia to fight at the Battle of Cunaxa. Xenophon describes him as brave in war and a reliable friend. Socrates was summoned by Cyrus, with whom he was already connected, to bring as many troops as he could muster under the pretense that Cyrus intended to attack Tissaphernes. Socrates had previously been besieging Miletus alongside Pasion the Megarian. Socrates brought Cyrus about 500 Hoplites. Socrates and the other troops were only later told that Cyrus intended to seize the Persian throne from his brother Artaxerxes. Socrates fought at the Battle of Cunaxa and the Greek forces were able to drive the Persians into retreat, but Cyrus and his force faced heavy casualties and Cyrus himself was killed in battle.
While there is evidence that the hill was inhabited as far back as the fourth millennium BC, it was Pericles (c. 495 – 429 BC) in the fifth century BC who coordinated the construction of the site's most important present remains including the Parthenon, the Propylaia, the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike. The Parthenon and the other buildings were damaged seriously during the 1687 siege by the Venetians during the Morean War when gunpowder being stored in the Parthenon was hit by a cannonball and exploded.
Sumer () is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia, modern-day southern Iraq, during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze ages, and one of the first civilizations in the world along with Ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley. Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, Sumerian farmers were able to grow an abundance of grain and other crops, the surplus of which enabled them to settle in one place. Prehistoric proto-writing dates back before 3000 BC. The earliest texts, from c. 3300 BC, come from the cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr; early cuneiform script emerged around 3000 BC.
The first endeavour to build a sanctuary for on the site of the present Parthenon was begun shortly after the Battle of Marathon (c. 490–488 BC) upon a solid limestone foundation that extended and levelled the southern part of the Acropolis summit. This building replaced a "hekatompedon" (meaning "hundred-footer") and would have stood beside the archaic temple dedicated to "Athena Polias" ("of the city"). The Older or Pre-Parthenon, as it is frequently referred to, was still under construction when the Persians sacked the city in 480 BC and razed the Acropolis.
Group C
The original Academy of Plato had been destroyed by the Roman dictator Sulla in 86 BC. Several centuries later, in 410 AD, a Neoplatonic academy was established that had no institutional continuity with Plato's Academy, and which served as a center for Neoplatonism and mysticism. It persisted until 529 AD when it was finally closed by Justinian I. Other schools in Constantinople, Antioch, and Alexandria, which were the centers of Justinian's empire, continued.
Athens, after a tyranny in the second half of the 6th century, established ancient Europe's first democracy as a radical solution to prevent the aristocracy from regaining power. A citizens' assembly (the Ecclesia), for the discussion of city policy, had existed since the reforms of Draco; all citizens were permitted to attend after the reforms of Solon, but the poorest citizens could not address the assembly or run for office. With the establishment of the democracy, the assembly became the de jure mechanism of government; all citizens had equal privileges in the assembly. However, non-citizens, foreigners living in Athens, slaves and women had no political rights at all. After the rise of the democracy in Athens, other city-states founded democracies. However, many retained more traditional forms of government. As so often in other matters, Sparta was a notable exception to the rest of Greece, ruled through the whole period by not one, but two hereditary monarchs. This was a form of diarchy.
The Greek campaign was launched primarily because the western Allies, particularly British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, had promised Greece territorial gains at the expense of the Ottoman Empire, recently defeated in World War I. The armed conflict started when the Greek forces landed in Smyrna (now Izmir), on 15 May 1919. They advanced inland and took control of the western and northwestern part of Anatolia, including the cities of Manisa, Balıkesir, Aydın, Kütahya, Bursa and Eskişehir. Their advance was checked at the Battle of Sakarya in 1921 by forces of the Turkish national movement. The Greek front collapsed with the Turkish counter-attack in August 1922, and the war effectively ended with the recapture of Smyrna by the Turkish forces and the Great Fire of Smyrna.
The Baroque church of Saint Therapon dominates at the port with its impressive style.In 2015 the island of Lesbos began to draw international attention because of what has been popularized as the European refugee crisis. Facing economic crises, oppressive governments, violence, and war, thousands of people from Syria, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, and other countries have decided to leave their homes and seek safety in Europe. As the capital of Lesbos, the city of Mytilene has become a primary entry point for refugees and migrants who seek to pass through Greece to resettle elsewhere in Europe.
Several Oxyrhynchus Papyri fragments were found to contain parts of the Republic, and from other works such as Phaedo, or the dialogue Gorgias, written around 200-300 CE. Fragments of a different version of Plato's Republic were discovered in 1945, part of the Nag Hammadi library, written ca. 350 CE. These findings highlight the influence of Plato during those times in Egypt.
The Ptolemaic Kingdom was founded in 305 BC by Ptolemy I Soter, a "diadochus" originally from Macedon in northern Greece who declared himself pharaoh of Egypt and created a powerful Macedonian Greek dynasty that ruled an area stretching from southern Syria to Cyrene and south to Nubia. Scholars also argue that the kingdom was founded in 304 BC because of different use of calendars: Ptolemy crowned himself in 304 BC on the ancient Egyptian calendar, but in 305 BC on the ancient Macedonian calendar; to resolve the issue, the year 305/4 was counted as the first year of Ptolemaic Kingdom in Demotic papyri.
The reign of Cyrus the Great lasted c. 30 years. Cyrus built his empire by first conquering the Median Empire, then the Lydian Empire, and eventually the Neo-Babylonian Empire. He led an expedition into Central Asia, which resulted in major campaigns that were described as having brought "into subjection every nation without exception". Cyrus did not venture into Egypt, and was alleged to have died in battle, fighting the Massagetae along the Syr Darya in December 530 BC. He was succeeded by his son, Cambyses II, who managed to conquer Egypt, Nubia, and Cyrenaica during his short rule.
Roman engineers build monumental arches, amphitheatres, aqueducts, public baths, true arch bridges, harbours, dams, vaults and domes on a very large scale across their Empire. Notable Roman inventions include the book (Codex), glass blowing and concrete. Because Rome was located on a volcanic peninsula, with sand which contained suitable crystalline grains, the concrete which the Romans formulated was especially durable. Some of their buildings have lasted 2000 years, to the present day. Roman society had also carried over the design of a door lock with tumblers and springs from Greece. Like many other aspects of innovation and culture that were carried on from Greece to Rome, the lines between where each one originated from have become skewed over time. These mechanisms were highly sophisticated and intricate for the era.
Chalcedon originated as a Megarian colony in 685 BCE. The colonists from Megara settled on a site that was viewed in antiquity as so obviously inferior to that visible on the opposite shore of the Bosphorus (with its small settlements of Lygos and Semistra on Seraglio Point), that the 6th-century BCE Persian general Megabazus allegedly remarked that Chalcedon's founders must have been blind. Indeed, Strabo and Pliny relate that the oracle of Apollo told the Athenians and Megarians who founded Byzantium in 657 BCE to build their city "opposite to the blind", and that they interpreted "the blind" to mean Chalcedon, the "City of the Blind".
In November 1910, Spiros Matzukas, Grecian soldier, orator, singer and poet visited the city, "preaching a new and greater Greece, and pleading for funds to increase that country's fighting power." Despite the fact that no publicity preceded his visit, other than dispatching of several messengers to the Greek families throughout the city, "more than 300 sons of Greece" gave the speaker a "rousing welcome" when he appeared in Genesee Hall. Within a short time he had received US$1,220 in cash from contributions of the "loyal Greeks" of Syracuse to their nation." Matzukas arrived from Rochester and was met by a delegation of the Greek merchants and businessmen of the city. The committee in charge of the meeting included; C. N. Constas, Nicholas Valentine, Nicholas Vanson, Speros P. Chaconas, John Alexander and John Cannelos. Although "practically every Greek in the United States" was familiar with his mission, Matzukas repeated the story of his work and explained that his plan was to secure enough donations from Greeks "resident in other than their own country," with which to add a modern battleship named "America" to the Greek navy.
Carthage was Palermo’s major trading partner under the Phoenicians and the city enjoyed a prolonged peace during this period. Palermo came into contact with the Ancient Greeks between the 6th and the 5th centuries BC which preceded the Sicilian Wars, a conflict fought between the Greeks of Syracuse and the Phoenicians of Carthage for control over the island of Sicily. During this war the Greeks named the settlement Pánormos (), meaning "all port" due to its large anchorage, from which the present name of the city developed. The Phoenicians began using the Greek name on the city's coinage from the 5th centuryBC. It was from Palermo that Hamilcar I's fleet (which was defeated at the Battle of Himera) was launched. In 409 BC the city was looted by Hermocrates of Syracuse. The Sicilian Wars ended in 265 BC when Carthage and Syracuse stopped warring and united in order to stop the Romans from gaining full control of the island during the First Punic War. In 276 BC, during the Pyrrhic War, Panormos briefly became a Greek colony after being conquered by Pyrrhus of Epirus, but returned to Phoenician Carthage in 275 BC. In 254 BC Panormos was besieged and conquered by the Romans in the first battle of Panormus (the Latin name). Carthage attempted to reconquer Panormus in 251 BC but failed.
The original city of Syracuse stood on the island Ortyga with some structures around the Agora in the mainland before the Sicilian Expedition in 415 BC, when walls were built around the Tycha and Archadina areas. After Dionysius finished adding to the existing structures, Syracuse possessed walls with the greatest circuit in the Greek world.
A committee representing the Greek residents of the city met at 357 South Salina Street on February 16, 1910 to prepare plans for the organization of a Greek society. Nicholas Valentine, a local resident who was "prominent in the movement" noted there were 500 Greeks living in Syracuse. It was felt that "a society of this kind would further the interests of the Greeks."