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Rhamnous and Sounion became especially important in the late 5th century BC, when the Spartans followed the advice of the traitorous Athenian Alcibiades and seized the strategic hill of Dekeleia, north of Athens, in 412BC. Having thus cut off the city's major food supply, the Spartans forced the Athenians to seek alternative routes for their vital shipments of Evia grain and other foodstuffs. Rhamnous' twin harbours replaced the more northerly port of Oropos and served as a naval base from which Athenian warships could safeguard the newly crucial shipping lanes that extended around Cape Sounion to Piraeus... Visible at Rhamnous...

The Warriors of ParosEarliest Polyandria (Soldiers' burials) found in Greece offer clues to the rise of Classical Greek City-States and Phalangeal War Tactics. by Foteini Zafeiropoulou and Anagnostis Agelarakis Soldiers' bones in urns-evidence of a forgotten battle fought around 730 BC. Did these men perish on their island home of Paros, at the center of the Aegean Sea, or in some distant land? The loss of so many, at least 120 men, was certainly a catastrophe for the community, but their families and compatriots honored them, putting the cremated remains into large vases two of which were decorated with scenes...

Y. pestis was the notorious culprit behind the sixth century's Plague of Justinian, the Black Death, which killed 30%-50% of the European population in the mid-1300s, and the Third Pandemic, which emerged in China in the 1850s. Earlier putative plagues, such as the Plague of Athens nearly 2,500 years ago and the second century's Antonine Plague, have been linked to the decline of Classical Greece and the undermining of the Roman army. However, it has been unclear whether Y. pestis could have been responsible for these early epidemics because direct molecular evidence for this bacterium has not been obtained from...

Typhoid May Have Caused Fall of Athens, Study Finds Nicholas Bakalar for National Geographic News February 27, 2006 An ancient medical mystery—the cause of a plague that wracked Athens from 426 to 430 B.C. and eventually led to the city's fall—has been solved by DNA analysis, researchers say. The ancient Athenians died from typhoid fever, according to a new study. Scientists from the University of Athens drew this conclusion after studying dental pulp extracted from the teeth of three people found in a mass grave in Athens' Kerameikos cemetery. The mass grave was first discovered in 1994 and was dated...

Secret of ancient Athens plague is being unraveled Kerameikos, Athens’s ancient cemetery, has yielded conclusive evidence as to the nature of the plague that decimated a third of the population of the ancient city and influenced the outcome of the Peloponnesian Wars. Scientists at Athens University’s School of Dentistry have used molecular biology to help solve the riddle of one of history’s biggest mysteries.Greek scientists find typhoid after excavating graves By Dr Manolis Papagrigorakis (1) Recent findings from a mass grave in the Ancient Cemetery of Kerameikos in central Athens show typhoid fever may have caused the plague of Athens,...