Aegina

Early History

• 

  Aegina is a stony, infertile island with a surface of just over eighty square kilometers, south of Athens and east of Corinth in the Saronic Gulf. There is little water.
• Occupied in the Neolithic; perhaps from the east, because the name Aegina looks Anatolian
• 1700-1500 BCE: Aegina Treasury (gold hoard)
• Imitation of Cretan pottery
• Late Mycenaean cult for a god that was later called Zeus Hellanios on the highest mountain; another Mycenaean mountain cult is Aphaea
• Late Bronze Age collapse
• Resettled from the Epidauros; original name of the island was Oenone ^note[Herodotus, Histories 5.83; 8.46; Pausanias, Guide to Greece 2.29.5.]
• Becomes independent from Epidauros^note[Herodotus, Histories 5.83.]
• Early naval power; trade network to Andalusia^note[Herodotus, Histories 4.152.] and Naucratis in Egypt;^note[Herodotus, Histories 2.178.] early silver coins (turtle)
• The real city in the west; double harbor
• Aeacus believed to be the founder of the city
• Grain imported from Athens; Solon's laws against grain trade may have been direct against Aegina, which becomes an entrepôt of the Pontic grain trade
• c.570: First temple of Aphaea
• Conflict with Samos^note[Herodotus, Histories 3.59.]
• c.510: Temple of Aphaea, western façade (Trojan War)
• Conflict with Sparta; intervention by Cleomenes^note[Herodotus, Histories 6.50, 6.61, 6.64, 6.73.]

Aegina, Temple of Aphaea, West pediment, Trojan War	Aegina, Temple of Aphaea, West pediment, Trojan War	Aegina, Temple of Aphaea, West pediment, Trojan War: Paris	Aegina, Temple of Aphaea, West pediment, Trojan War
Aegina, Temple of Aphaea, East pediment, Laomedon's expedition to Troy	Aegina, Temple of Aphaea, East pediment, Laomedon's expedition to Troy	Aegina, Temple of Aphaea, East pediment, Laomedon's expedition to Troy, Heracles	Aegina, Temple of Aphaea, East pediment, Laomedon's expedition to Troy

Classical and Hellenistic Age

• 

  c.490: Temple of Aphaea, eastern façade
• Conflict with Athens, which gets support from Corinth; defeated in a naval battle^note[Herodotus, Histories 6.87-94.]
• c.480: Persian War; thirty trieres in the battle of Salamis^note[Herodotus, Histories 8.46; 8.90-93.]
• Temple of Apollo in the town
• 456 oligarchic member Delian League^note[Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 1.108.]
• Repairs to aqueduct (date?)
• 431: Archidamian War; city evacuated by the Athenians, who settled their own people on the island; people to Thyrea/Cynuria, where killed in 424

• 

  404: Return of the few survivors
• Spartan, Theban, Macedonian, Achaean, Aetolian inflence
• 211 island sold by the Aetolians to Pergamon
• Stadion and theater renewed/built by Attalus II Philadelphus of Pergamon
• 133 Pergamene bequest to Rome

Roman Age

• Few references
• Aegina appears to have become Athenian in some way, because the emperor Augustus gave the island its independence again.^note[Cassius Dio, Roman History 54.7.1.]
• 267 CE Invasion of the Heruli; wall; temple of Apollo becomes fort
• sIII: Jewish settlement
• First half fourth century: Christian community
• Joint bishopric with Ceos
• The temple for Zeus Hellanios on the highest mountain became a small church for the prophet Eliah.
• Plundered by the Arabs; refuge for Corinthians in the age of the Slavic invasions of Greece