Rome ends Greek independence at Corinth
What happened
The Achaean League, a federation of Greek city-states that had grown to control most of the Peloponnese, found itself increasingly at odds with Rome after allying with the losing side in Macedonia's wars against Roman expansion. In 146 BCE, after the League refused Roman demands and declared war, the Roman general Lucius Mummius defeated the Achaean army and captured Corinth, one of Greece's wealthiest cities. Mummius sacked the city completely, selling its surviving population into slavery, and dissolved the Achaean League outright. Greece was reorganized as a Roman province, ending, in the same year Rome also destroyed Carthage, roughly four centuries of Greek city-states acting as genuinely independent political powers.
Why it matters
Rome's conquest did not end Greek culture. Roman aristocrats went on studying Greek philosophy, collecting Greek art, and educating their sons in Greek language and rhetoric, so thoroughly that Greek thought and style ended up shaping the culture of the very empire that had just conquered it politically.
How we know
Roman military and political records of the Achaean War, along with archaeological evidence of Corinth's destruction layer and its nearly century-long abandonment before Julius Caesar refounded it as a Roman colony, confirm both the severity of the sack and Corinth's genuine, lasting depopulation afterward.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Achaean League · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- Ancient Rome → · The same year Rome absorbs Greece, it also destroys Carthage, ending the Punic Wars