739 cities, from the Mycenaean palaces to the eve of the War of Independence in 1821, each dated by its first Greek evidence, with what that date rests on: a palace or Linear B tablets, an excavated Early Iron Age town, a recorded foundation, or only a first mention.
Pick a period to see the cities whose first Greek evidence falls in it, in colour, with the earlier ones in grey; colour them by how they became Greek or by their dialect. Hollow dots are doubtful as cities or as sites; dashed rings are places whose site is unknown. In the timeline, hatched bars are cities dated only by a first mention. Hover or tap a dot for its name; select it for the full record. Zoom with the buttons or by double-clicking.
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Select a row for the full record. * after a date: the date is disputed (see the record). “Date from” says what the date rests on; “first mention” means the city is at least that old. ? after a name: doubtful as a city or as a site. † a mixed town: Greek beside another language. Grey town names are villages.
The images: the overview map, the map by dialect, one map per period, two statistics cards, the list by region, and the doubts and decisions.
A self-governing city (a polis), a city in Hierocles’ list of the cities of the empire (c. 527), or a bishop’s see before 1460, whose people spoke Greek; not a village, an Attic deme, a fort or castle, or a sanctuary. For the Ottoman and Venetian centuries, 1460–1821, a town counts: a see, the seat of an Ottoman kadi or a Venetian governor with a town round it, or a community of note with trade, schools or ships (Hydra, Kozani, Ampelakia), with Greek speakers. Towns of the Greek state after 1821 (Ermoupoli, 1822) are left out. The site must lie in present-day Greece: the mainland, Crete, every island and Athos.
Each city is dated by its first Greek evidence: a Mycenaean palace or Linear B tablets on the site (9 cities); an excavated settlement, from the Early Iron Age on, that continued into the city (111); a recorded foundation (51); or, failing these, the first mention, in Homer’s Catalogue of Ships, Herodotus, the Athenian tribute lists, coins, inscriptions, the lists of bishops, Ottoman registers or travellers (568). Towns of the Ottoman and Venetian centuries are dated from their first record as towns. For those 568 the date is a lower bound: the city is at least that old. So the map and the charts show when most cities enter the record, not when Greek arrived; the hatching in the timelines marks them.
Every city on the list was Greek-speaking. Each is also placed in its ancient dialect area, the dialect of the area where it stands or, for a colony, of its founders: Attic; Ionic (Euboea, the Cyclades, Chios, Samos, Thasos and the Chalcidic colonies); Aeolic (Lesbos, Thessaly, Boeotia); Arcadian; Doric (Laconia, the Argolid, Corinth, Megara, Messenia, Crete, Rhodes and the Dodecanese, Corcyra); and Northwest Greek, the dialect group of Macedonia (Aigai, Pella, Dion, Beroia, Edessa), of Epirus (Dodona, Passaron, Kassope, Gitana) and of Aetolia, Acarnania, Phocis, Locris, Elis and Achaea. Texts in Macedonian include the Pella curse tablet (4th century BC); in Epirote, the oracle tablets of Dodona and the decrees of the Molossians. These are the dialects of the cities that became Greek by 31 BC. Rome’s foundations and the towns that became Greek later are given the Greek of their own time: Koine under Rome (30 BC – AD 329), medieval Greek (330–1460) and early modern Greek (1460–1821). Non-Greek towns that became Greek are places with positive evidence of another language: Thracian and Bottiaean towns, the bilingual towns of Athos (Thucydides 4.109), Tyrrhenian-speaking Lemnos, Eteocretan Praisos, Amphilochian Argos; later Aromanian Metsovo and the Ottoman towns of Giannitsa, Genisea and Karditsa. A mixed town (†) needs positive evidence of Greek speakers beside another language: the Arvanite towns of Hydra, Spetses and Poros, Ottoman Tripolitsa.
120 places are marked doubtful (?), as cities or as sites: hollow dots on the maps, or dashed rings where the site is unknown. Eleven dates are disputed and carry a note (*), among them Athens and Iolkos (the palaces), Kos, Torone, Mende, Megara, Aigai, Beroia and Karystos. Frankish towns are kept only where a Greek-speaking town is attested (Glarentza, Andravida, both doubtful); castles with a Latin bishop are left out. Kastellorizo, 120 km east of Rhodes, is drawn in an inset box. The last card sets these out.
“On the site” means that the built-up area of today’s town or village covers or adjoins the ancient city, within about 1 km. A name is “kept” if it continues a Greek name the city bore before 1821, ancient, medieval or Ottoman-era (Thiva, Larisa, Arta, Volos from Golos, Kozani); “given back” if the modern Greek state restored the ancient name after another had replaced it (Edessa, Amfissa, Lamia, Sparti, Aigio); otherwise “another name”. Regional-unit capitals and municipal seats are those of the Kallikratis reform (2011, as amended in 2019).
The empire ruled from Constantinople is called here by the name its own people used, the Roman Empire, and its centuries are simply “medieval”. Modern historians usually call it “Byzantine”, a label made current by Western scholars from the 16th century, long after the empire fell; its people never used it, so it is avoided on this page. Cities go by their usual English or Latin form, with the Greek name beside it; the town on the site today is given in its present Greek form.
Ten research batches by region drew up the list from the Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis, Homer’s Catalogue, the tribute lists, Hellenistic and Roman evidence, Hierocles, the Notitiae and the council lists, seeded from the Pleiades gazetteer (1,463 settlements in Greece) and the sees of the councils. Eight checks followed: seven by region (omissions, wrong entries, dates, consistency) and one on Hierocles and the sees; three more recorded what stands on each site today, and four more added the towns of 1460–1821. Six more then went through Macedonia, Epirus, Thrace, the Ionian islands and Aetolia-Acarnania again against the gazetteers of Papazoglou, Hatzopoulos and Hammond, and a seventh assigned the dialects. About 650 places were considered and left out, each with a reason. Much of the work rests on the standard works as known to the researchers; the doubtful entries and the dates resting on a first mention should be read accordingly.
The full table of 739 cities with every field, the sources and the notes: as a CSV table (opens in Excel), as JSON, or as a spreadsheet with a summary, the disputed dates and the places left out with their reasons.
Sources: M. H. Hansen and T. H. Nielsen, An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (2004); Homer’s Catalogue of Ships; the Athenian tribute lists; G. M. Cohen, The Hellenistic Settlements in Europe, the Islands and Asia Minor (1995); Hierocles, Synecdemus; the Notitiae Episcopatuum and the acts of the councils; the Barrington Atlas and the Pleiades gazetteer; excavation reports and handbooks for individual sites. Map: Natural Earth; today’s borders dashed.