Every recorded land and sea battle of the Greek city-states and kingdoms, from the first battles known from the sources, c. 700 BCE, to the last Greek kingdoms: where each was fought, against whom, and who won. With the win–draw–loss record of every state or people that fought at least five.
Pick a period, or drag the year slider to see the battles of any 20 years; Play runs through them from 700 BCE. Each dot is a place, its area the number of battles there, and its slices the opponents, starting at 12 o’clock and running clockwise in the order of the legend. Diamonds are sea battles; dashed rings are battles placed only within their region, in the colour of the most frequent opponent. Nearby dots merge as you zoom out and split as you zoom in. Hover or tap a dot for its battles; select it to list them with their full records.
Every state or people that was a principal belligerent in at least five of the 713 battles. Only principal belligerents count, not minor allied contingents; a state on both sides of a civil-war battle is not counted for it, and the 2 battles with unknown results are left out. Select a row to list its battles.
Thebes includes the Boeotian League. Macedon is whoever held Macedon, Alexander included. Antigonids: Antigonus I, Demetrius, and Antigonus Gonatas until he took Macedon in 277. Pontus and Bithynia are counted as Greek kingdoms. Antony’s legions at Actium and Alexandria are counted with the Ptolemies, not with Rome.
Select a row for the full record. Years are BCE unless marked CE; most dates before 500 BCE are approximate. Results give the winner first, with the principal belligerents only. A hollow marker means that only the region of the battle is known.
The nine images of the set, made for X: the map, Greece and the West enlarged, the win–draw–loss table, and the list in six parts with footnotes.
A pitched land or sea battle, attested in an ancient source, with a Greek state as a principal belligerent. Sieges are left out unless a distinct battle was fought during them (a sortie, a relief battle, a harbour battle), and so are skirmishes, raids, ambushes of foragers and captures of a city without a fight. Mythical and legendary battles are left out (the Trojan War, the Seven against Thebes, the First Messenian War); archaic battles known only from late sources are kept where modern scholarship broadly treats them as historical, with the doubt in the note.
Greek city-states, leagues and tyrannies anywhere: Greece, Asia Minor, Sicily and Italy, Massalia, Cyrene, the Black Sea and Cyprus. Macedon and Epirus. The Hellenistic kingdoms: Seleucid, Ptolemaic, Antigonid, Lysimachus, Attalid Pergamon, Greco-Bactria, the Indo-Greeks and the Bosporan kingdom. And, as Hellenized kingdoms, Pontus, Bithynia, Cappadocia and Commagene, so that the Mithridatic Wars count. Battles in which Greeks were only mercenaries or minor contingents of a non-Greek power are left out.
Each battle takes the colour of its non-Greek principal belligerent, on either side: Romans, European peoples, Asian and African peoples, Persians and Lydians, or Carthaginians (where there are several: Romans first, then Persians, Carthaginians, Asian and African, European). A battle with no non-Greek principal is Greek v Greek, blue. Greek allies of a non-Greek power do not change the colour: Plataea in 479 is a battle against the Persians. Each place is drawn as a small pie: its area grows with the number of battles there, and the slices give the number against each opponent, starting at 12 o’clock and running clockwise in the order of the legend. A slice can hide under a neighbouring dot on a crowded map; zoom in to see it.
The victor is the side that won on the battlefield: it held the field, routed the enemy or destroyed the fleet. Strategic outcomes and disagreements between the sources are in the notes. A draw is an indecisive battle, or one that both sides claimed with no clear verdict from modern scholarship. Only principal belligerents are counted: the leading states and the allies the sources treat as major. Minor contingents are listed with each battle but not counted.
Ten research batches by period and theatre, each following the same written rules and citing the ancient sources for every battle, then an independent fact-check of every row in five passes. The fact-check corrected results, dates and positions (several sea battles had been placed on land, and land battles at sea), removed entries that were not battles, and added battles that had been missed. Positions are approximate for most battles: 250 can be placed only within their region, and only 31 sites are known exactly.
The nine images were made for X in the house style of the series, 3200 × 1800 pixels: the overview map with the number of battles per 20 years, Greece, the Aegean and the West enlarged, the win–draw–loss table, and the list in six parts, with footnotes on the disputed battles.
Every battle with its date, war, place, coordinates, sides, allies, commanders, result, sources and notes, as a CSV table, as JSON, or as a spreadsheet with the win–draw–loss table; and the table alone as CSV.
Sources: Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Diodorus, Polybius, Arrian, Plutarch, Livy, Appian, Pausanias, Justin, Josephus and 1–2 Maccabees, among others, cited battle by battle; for what counts as a battle, the battle lists of the standard works (the Oxford Classical Dictionary, the Cambridge Ancient History, the Barrington Atlas) and of English Wikipedia. Map: Natural Earth; today’s borders dashed.
Where the rules left room for judgement, this is how it was settled. The map, the table and the list follow the call shown; the alternative is given so that readers can weigh it.