This is the History of the World Podcast with me Chris Hasler

And you're listening to volume three, the classical world

episode 39

The Battle of Actium. So, In today's episode we go back to the Balkan Peninsula and Greece.

All of the Greek lands were now part of the Empire of the Roman Republic,

but not always.

The area of Greece that we are discussing during this episode is on the west coast,

north of the Peloponnese and south of the island of Corfu.

It is a very notable body of water called the Amration Golf which is very noticeable on a map of Greece.

It is an enclosed body of water that stretches into the Balkan Peninsula by approximately 40

kilometers. The entrance to this body of water is via a 700 metre long channel which leads into the Ionian sea.

So simply picture what looks like a massive inland lake accessible by a very narrow

waterway into the vast expanse of the Mediterranean Sea. The settlement called Actium was on the south side promontory of the entrance to the

Gulf and it's also important to remember this geography when we come to the actual battle itself.

It is likely that this area of Greece was under the influence of people of the Mycenaean culture during the second millennium

B.C. we know that the Mycenians had sea trade and so it is possible that they used the Gulf to their advantage in this area of their culture.

But we do not have any direct evidence of this,

that certainly the amount of settlements of Mycenaean remains excavated suggests that this was a prosperous area.

As we might expect, there is very little evidence about the areas around the Gulf in the direct aftermath of the late Bronze Age collapse.

But there is evidence of human occupation by various tribes and mythological references in the writings of Homer.

The area directly to the south of the entrance to the Gulf in the ancient world is referred to as Akarnania.

And it is considered that the dialect of this area was a type of Dorian, which links it closely

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