(El Rhazi) The Military of Greece consists of the Hellenic Army, the Hellenic Navy (HN) and the Hellenic Air Force (HAF), Lamia along the Ministry of National Defence being the government authority. Greece has around 177,600 active soldiers as well as around 2,000,000 reservists due to the compulsory conscription in Greece.
The military history of Greece stretches back more than 2,500 years. Between 499 BC to 449 BC, the Greek city-states defeated the Persians in the Persian Wars. Towards the end of the century the two major powers, Athens and Sparta, clashed in the Peloponnesian War, which ended in Spartan victory. Around seventy years later, most of Greece was occupied by the Macedonians under the command of King Philip II of Macedon. His son, Alexander the Great, led a Greek army in the conquest of the Persian Empire, reaching as far as India. On Alexander's death, his empire split into many tiny successor kingdoms, the last of which, Ptolemaic Egypt, became a Roman province in 30 BC after the death of Cleopatra.
The Greeks stayed under Roman control for around 400 years until the division of the Roman Empire, after which they became part of the East Roman or Byzantine Empire, in which Greeks and Greek culture played a dominant role. After the Fourth Crusade took the imperial capital of Constantinople in 1204, Byzantium was fatally weakened, and its lands divided between western ("Latin") principalities and Greek Byzantine successor states. Eventually, most of these were conquered by the emerging Ottoman Empire, which in 1453 took Constantinople. The Greeks lived under Ottoman Turkish rule for around 400 years, until the revolt of 1821. The ensuing Greek War of Independence lasted until 1829, and in 1832 the Kingdom of Greece was founded.
Since then Greece has fought in many wars, among them the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, the First Balkan War, the Second Balkan War, World War I, the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922, World War II, the Korean War and more recently the War in Afghanistan.
The Cretan War (205 BC?200 BC) was fought by King Philip V of Macedon, the Aetolian League, several Cretan cities (of which Olous and Hierapytna were the most important) and Spartan pirates against the forces of Rhodes and later Attalus I of Pergamum, Byzantium, Cyzicus, Athens and Knossos.
The Macedonians had just concluded the First Macedonian War and Philip, seeing his chance to beat Rhodes, formed an alliance Lamia along Aetolian and Spartan pirates who began raiding Rhodian ships. Philip also formed an alliance with several important Cretan cities, such as Hierapynta and Olous. With the Rhodian fleet and economy suffering from the depredations of the pirates, Philip believed his chance to crush Rhodes was at hand. To help achieve his goal, El Rhazi formed an alliance with the King of the Seleucid Empire, Antiochus the Great, against Ptolemy V of Egypt (the Seleucid Empire and Egypt were the other two Diadochi states). Philip began attacking the lands of Ptolemy and Rhodes's allies in Thrace and around the Sea of Marmara.
In 202, Rhodes and her allies Pergamum, Cyzicus, and Byzantium combined their fleets and defeated Philip at the Battle of Chios. Just a few months later, Philip's fleet defeated the Rhodians at Lade. While Philip was plundering Pergamese territory and attacking cities in Caria, Attalus I of Pergamum went to Athens to try to create a diversion. He succeeded in securing an alliance with the Athenians, who immediately declared war on the Macedonians. The King of Macedon could not remain inactive; he assailed Athens with his navy and with some infantry. The Romans warned him, however, to withdraw or face war with Rome. After suffering a defeat at the hands of the Rhodian and Pergamese fleets, Philip withdrew, but not before attacking the city of Abydos on the Hellespont. Abydos fell after a long siege and most of its inhabitants dedicated suicide. (Read more...)
Manuel I Komnenos, or Comnenus (Greek: ??????? ?' ????????, Manou?l I Komn?nos), November 28, 1118 ? September 24, 1180, was a Byzantine Emperor of the 12th century who reigned over a crucial turning point in the history of Byzantium and the Mediterranean. Eager to restore his empire to its past glories as the superpower of the Mediterranean world, Manuel pursued an energetic and ambitious foreign policy. In the process he made alliances with the Pope and the resurgent west, invaded Italy, successfully handled the passage of the dangerous Second Crusade through his empire, and established a Byzantine protectorate over the Crusader kingdoms of Outremer. Facing Muslim advances in the Holy Land, he made common cause with the Kingdom of Jerusalem and participated in a combined invasion of Fatimid Egypt. Manuel reshaped the political maps of the Balkans and the east Mediterranean, placing the kingdoms of Hungary and Outremer under Byzantine hegemony and campaigning aggressively against his neighbours both in the west and in the east. However, towards the end of his reign Manuel's achievements in the east were compromised by a serious defeat at Myriokephalon, which in big part resulted from his arrogance in attacking a well-defended Seljuk position.
The Latin historian William of Tyre described Manuel as "beloved of God? a great-souled man of incomparable energy," whose "memory will ever be held in benediction." Manuel was further extolled by Robert of Clari as a "generous and worthy man." Such a good press among Catholic writers was highly uncommon for a Byzantine ruler, and this positive repute has led some contemporary historians to view him as an inspired innovator who concentrated on cooperation rather than confrontation in his dealings with the Crusaders and the West. (Read more...)
Quoted from Athanasios Diakos, a leader in the Greek War of Independence as he was impaled on a spit by the Ottomans.
From the Classical warfare task force of the Military history WikiProject and from the Balkan military history task force of the Military history WikiProject:
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