They had a lot of influence from 600BC to 200BC, but "control" is debateable. Their trading networks stretched from their colonies on the Black Sea coast to Massila in southern France, but it was always in competition with other cultures-the Etruscans in northern Italy, the Phoenecians and Carthaginians in the Levant and central Med. respectively.
It was pretty up and down, the Athenians had control of the Aegean and Black Sea trade sewn up from 478-404, for example, but at the same time the Carthaginians were founding colonies in Sardinia and Spain.
The Hellenistic "Diodochi" or successors of Alexander were too busy fighting each other to protect the seaways, and from 320BC-200BC there was a gradual increase in pirates, especially in and around Cillicia (now southern Turkey`s Med. coast). With the fall of the Macedon in 196BC, the Romans took over most of the trade networks.
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