History of Athens
The history of Athens is the longest of any city in Europe: Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 3,000 years. It became the leading city of Ancient Greece in the first millennium BC. Its cultural achievements during the 5th century BC laid the foundations of western civilization. During the Middle Ages, Athens experienced decline and then a recovery under the Byzantine Empire. Athens was relatively prosperous during the Crusades, benefiting from Italian trade. After a long period of decline under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Athens re-emerged in the 19th century as the capital of the independent Greek state.
Origins and setting
The name of Athens in Ancient Greek was Athḗnai ( Ἀθῆναι, IPA /ʔa.ˈtʰɛː.nai/, pronounced roughly At-he-nai). This is a plural form: the city was called (in what would translate into English as) "The Athenses" since it was originally a group of villages which coalesced into a city. The name has no definite etymology in Greek. The Greeks believed the city was named for its protectress, the goddess Athena, but it is equally possible that the goddess took her name from the city. Athens began its history as a Neolithic hill-fort on top of the Acropolis ("high city"), some time in the third millennium BC. The Acropolis is a natural defensive position which commands the surrounding plains. The settlement was about 8 kilometers inland from the Saronic Gulf, in the centre of the Cephisian Plain,. a fertile dale surrounded by hills. To the east lies Mount Hymettus, to the north Mount Pentelicus and the plain to the gulf, passing slightly to the west of the Acropolis. A ridge runs down the centre of the plain, of which Mount Lycabettus, outside the city to the east, is the far to end as it was never too far from the point to then to the west Mount Aegaleus.
The River Cephisus flowed in ancient times through the city. Ancient Athens occupied a very small area compared to the sprawling metropolis of modern Athens. The walled ancient city encompassed an area measuring about 2 kilometers from east to west and slightly less than that from north to south, although at its peak the city had suburbs extending well beyond these walls. The Acropolis was just south of the centre of this walled area. The Agora, the commercial and social centre of the city, was about 400 meters north of the Acropolis, in what is now the Monastiraki district. The hill of the Pnyx, where the Athenian Assembly met, lay at the western end of the city.
One of the most important religious sites in Athens was the Temple of Athena, known to us as the Parthenon, which stood atop the Acropolis, where its evocative ruins still stand. Two other major religious sites, the Temple of Hephaestus (which is still largely intact) and the Temple of Olympian Zeus or Olympeion (once the largest temple in Greece but now in ruins) also lay within the city walls.
However the most important religious site was the Erechthion named after a legendary Athenian king. It was considered the most important, religious-wise, as it houses many sacred shrines. The most important is the legendary fig tree which Athena planted herself to win the devotation of the Athenian populace.
At its peak, in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, Athens and its suburbs probably had approximately 300,000 inhabitants. Of these a large number were slaves or foreign residents (known as metoikoi or metics), who had no political rights, and paid for the right to reside in Athens. Perhaps only 10 or 20% of the population were adult male citizens, eligible to meet and vote in the Assembly and be elected to office. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC the city began to lose its population as Greeks migrated to the newly-conquered Hellenistic empire in the east.
Early history
The Acropolis of Athens was inhabited from Neolithic times. By 1400 BC Athens had become a powerful centre of the Mycenaean civilization. Unlike other Mycenaean centres, such as Mycenae and Pylos, Athens was not sacked and abandoned at the time of the Doric invasion of about 1200 BC, and the Athenians always maintained that they were "pure" Ionians with no Doric element. However, Athens lost most of its power and probably dwindled to a small hill fortress once again.
By the 8th century BC Athens had re-emerged, by virtue of its central location in the Greek world, its secure stronghold on the Acropolis and its access to the sea, which gave it a natural advantage over potential rivals such as Thebes and Sparta. From early in the 1st millennium BC, Athens was a sovereign city-state, ruled at first by kings (see Kings of Athens). The kings stood at the head of a land-owning aristocracy known as the Eupatridae (the "well-born"), whose instrument of government was a Council which met on the Hill of Ares, called the Areopagus. This body appointed the chief city officials, the archons and the polemarch (commander-in-chief).
During this period Athens succeeded in bringing the other towns of Attica under its rule. This process of synoikia – bringing together in one home – created the largest and wealthiest state on the Greek mainland, but it also created a larger class of people excluded from political life by the nobility. By the 7th century BC social unrest had become widespread, and the Areopagus appointed Draco to draft a strict new lawcode (hence "draconian"). When this failed, they appointed Solon, with a mandate to create a new constitution (594 BC).
Reform and democracy
The reforms of Solon dealt with both economic and political issues. The economic power of the Eupatridae was reduced by abolishing slavery as a punishment for debt, breaking up large landed estates and freeing up trade and commerce, which allowed the emergence of a prosperous urban trading class. Politically, Solon divided the Athenians into four classes, based on their wealth and their ability to perform military service. The poorest class, the Thetes, who were the majority of the population, received political rights for the first time, being able to vote in the Ecclesia (Assembly), but only the upper classes could hold political office. The Areopagus continued to exist but its powers were reduced.
The new system laid the foundations for what eventually became Athenian democracy, but in the short term it failed to quell class conflict, and after 20 years of unrest the popular party led by Peisistratus, a cousin of Solon, seized power (541 BC). Peisistratus is usually called a tyrant, but the Greek word tyrannos does not mean a cruel and despotic ruler, merely one who took power by force. Peisistratus was in fact a very popular ruler, who made Athens wealthy, powerful, and a centre of culture, and founded the Athenian naval supremacy in the Aegean Sea and beyond. He preserved the Solonian constitution, but made sure that he and his family held all the offices of state.
Peisistratus died in 527 BC, and was succeeded by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus. They proved much less adept rulers, and in 514 BC Hipparchus was assassinated after a private dispute over a young man (see Harmodius and Aristogeiton). This led Hippias to establish a real dictatorship, which proved very unpopular and was overthrown, with the help of an army from Sparta, in 510 BC. A radical politician of aristocratic background, Cleisthenes, then took charge. He was the one who established democracy in Athens.
The reforms of Cleisthenes replaced the traditional four "tribes" (phyle) with ten new ones, named after legendary heroes and having no class basis: they were in fact electorates. Each tribe was in turn divided into three trittyes while each trittys had one or more demes (see deme) - depending on the population of the demes -, which became the basis of local government. The tribes each elected fifty members to the Boule (Ancient Greece) or Council of State, who governed Athens on a day-to-day basis. The Assembly was open to all citizens and was both a legislature and a supreme court, except in murder cases and religious matters, which became the only remaining functions of the Areopagus. Most offices were filled by lot, though the ten strategoi (generals) were for obvious reasons elected. This system remained remarkably stable, and with a few brief interruptions remained in place for more than 500 years, until Roman times - far longer than any modern democracy has yet survived.
Classical Athens
Early Athenian Military History
Prior to the rise of Athens, the city of Sparta considered itself the leader of the Greeks, or hegemon. In 500 BC Athens sent troops to aid the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, who were rebelling against the Persian Empire (see Ionian Revolt). This provoked two Persian invasions of Greece, both of which were defeated under the leadership of the Athenian soldier-statesmen Miltiades and Themistocles (see Persian Wars). In 490 BC the Athenians defeated the first invasion at the Battle of Marathon. In 480 BC the Persians returned, and captured and burned Athens, but the Greeks defeated them at the naval Battle of Salamis. Sparta's hegemony was passing to Athens, and it was Athens that took the war to Asia Minor. These victories enabled it to bring most of the Aegean and many other parts of Greece together in the Delian League, an Athenian-dominated alliance.
Artists and philosophers
The 5th century BC marked the zenith of Athens as a centre of literature, philosophy (see Greek philosophy) and the arts (see Greek theatre). Some of the greatest names of Western cultural and intellectual history lived in Athens during this period: the dramatists Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides and Sophocles, the philosophers Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, the historians Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, the poet Simonides and the sculptor Pheidias. The leading statesman of this period was Pericles, who used the tribute paid by the members of the Delian League to build the Parthenon and other great monuments of classical Athens. The city became, in Pericles's words, "the school of Hellas [Greece]."
Peloponnesian War
Resentment by other cities at the hegemony of Athens led to the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC, which pitted Athens and her increasingly rebellious sea empire against a coalition of land-based states led by Sparta. The conflict marked the end of Athenian command of the sea.
Athenian coup of 411 BC
The democracy was briefly overthrown by a coup in 411 BC due to its poor handling of the war, but quickly restored. The war ended with the complete defeat of Athens in 404 BC. Since the defeat was largely blamed on democratic politicians such as Cleon and Cleophon, there was a brief reaction against democracy, aided by the Spartan army (the rule of the Thirty Tyrants). In 403 BC, democracy was restored and an amnesty declared.
Corinthian War
During the 4th century BC Athens regained some of her power, re-establishing a modified Delian League. Its former allies soon turned against Sparta. Argos, Thebes, Corinth allied to Athens fought against Sparta in the indecisive Corinthian War (395 BC - 387 BC). Finally Thebes destroyed Sparta in 371 BC in the Battle of Leuctra. Then the Greek cities (including Athens and Sparta) turned against Thebes whose dominance was stopped at the Battle of Mantinea (362 BC) with the death of its military genius leader Epaminondas.
Loss of independence
By mid century, however, the northern kingdom of Macedon was becoming dominant in Greek affairs, despite the warnings of the last great statesman of independent Athens, Demosthenes. In 338 BC the armies of Philip II defeated the Greek cities at the Battle of Chaeronea, effectively ending Athenian independence. Further, the conquests of his son, Alexander the Great, widened Greek horizons and made the traditional Greek city state obsolete. Athens remained a wealthy city with a brilliant cultural life, but ceased to be an independent power. In the 2nd century BC, after 200 years of Macedonian supremacy, Greece was absorbed into the Roman Republic (146 BC).
Athens remained a centre of learning and philosophy during 500 years of Roman rule, patronised by emperors such as Nero and Hadrian. But the conversion of the Empire to Christianity ended the city's role as a centre of pagan learning: the Emperor Justinian closed the schools of philosophy in 529. This is generally taken to mark the end of the ancient history of Athens.
Ottoman Athens
Finally, in 1458, Athens fell to the Ottoman Empire. The city's population declined and by the 17th century it was a mere village. Great damage to Athens was caused in the 17th century, when Ottoman power was declining. The Venetians attacked Athens in 1687. A shot fired during the bombardment of the Acropolis caused a powder magazine in the Parthenon to explode, and the building was severely damaged. After capturing the Acropolis the Venetians employed material from its ancient buildings in repairing its walls. The following year the Turks set fire to the city. Ancient monuments were destroyed to provide material for a new wall with which the Turks surrounded the city in 1778. Between 1801 and 1805 Lord Elgin, the British resident at Athens, removed reliefs from the Parthenon (see Elgin marbles for more detail.)
In 1822 a Greek insurgency captured the city, but it fell to the Turks again in 1826. Again the ancient monuments suffered badly. The Turks remained in possession until 1833, when they withdrew and Athens was chosen as the capital of the newly established kingdom of Greece. At that time the city was virtually uninhabited, being merely a cluster of buildings at the foot of the Acropolis, where the fashionable Plaka district now is.
Modern Athens
Athens was chosen as the Greek capital for historical and sentimental reasons, not because it was a large city: there are few buildings in Athens dated between the Byzantine Empire and the 19th century. During the reign of King Othon (1832–1862) a modern city plan was laid out and public buildings erected. The finest legacy of this period are the buildings of the University of Athens, the Greek National Library and the Greek National Academy on Panepistimiou Street.
Athens experienced its first period of explosive growth following the disastrous war with Turkey in 1921, when more than a million Greek refugees from Asia Minor were resettled in Greece. Suburbs such as Nea Ionia and Nea Smyrni began as refugee camps on the Athens outskirts. Athens was occupied by the Germans during World War II and experienced terrible privations during the later years of the war. In 1944 there was heavy fighting in the city between Communist forces and the royalists backed by the British. (see Greek Civil War)
After World War II the city began to grow again as people migrated from the villages and islands to find work. Greek entry into the European Union in 1981 brought a flood of new investment to the city, but also increasing social and environmental problems. Athens had some of the worst traffic congestion and air pollution in the world. This posed a new threat to the ancient monuments of Athens, as traffic vibration weakened foundations and air pollution corroded marble. The city's environmental and infrastructure problems were the main reason Athens failed to secure the 1996 centenary Olympic Games.
After this, both the city of Athens and the Greek government, aided by European Union funds, undertook major infrastructure projects such as the new Athens Airport and a new metro system. The city also tackled air pollution by restricting the use of cars in the centre of the city. As a result, Athens was awarded the 2004 Olympic Games. Despite the scepticism of many observers, the games were a great success and brought renewed international prestige (and tourism revenue) to Athens.
Notable Athenians
- Aeschylus
- Alcibiades
- Aristophanes
- Cimon
- Cleisthenes
- Cleon
- Demosthenes
- Ephialtes
- Euripides
- Herodotus
- Empress Irene
- Miltiades
- Nicias
- Pericles
- Pheidias
- Pisistratus
- Theseus
- Plato
- Simonides
- Socrates
- Solon
- Sophocles
- Themistocles
- Thucydides
- Xenophon
Ancient sites in Athens
- The Acropolis, with the Parthenon
- Agora
- Arch of Hadrian
- Areopagus
- Cerameicon
- Lysicrates monument
- Philopappos monument
- Pnyx
- Temple of Hephaestus
- Temple of Olympian Zeus
- Tower of the Winds
