History of Ancient Athens
According to Greek tradition, Athens was founded by the Attic king Cecrops, and all of Attica was united under Athenian rule by Theseus in the 13th century B.C. Athens does, in fact, date back to the Mycenaean era that preceded the Dorian invasion of Greece about 1100 B.C. The invaders were repelled from Attica, and Athens escaped being conquered. Refugees from the Dorians crowded into the Attic peninsula, and some crossed the Aegean Sea to Asia Minor where they settled the region of Ionia.
Little is known about Athens during Greece's so-called Dark Ages—the period after the Dorian conquest. All Attica had been incorporated into the Athenian city-state probably by the end of the eighth century B.C. The government had evolved from rule by a king to rule by three archons, chosen by the Areopagus. The ruling class consisted of landed aristocrats. The peasants, struggling to grow grain in poor soil, lived in poverty and were reduced to serfdom when they could not pay their debts.
Athenian law was codified by Draco in the seventh century B.C. Meanwhile, the condition of the poor was so bad that Athens was threatened with revolution. About 594 Solon became archon and instituted many reforms, including cancellation of debts, planting the hillsides in vineyards and olive groves, and giving prosperous merchants and farmers a part in government.
A struggle for political power among various factions followed, but in 546 B.C. Pisistratus, a leader of one of the factions, gained control and governed the city as a tyrant (illegal ruler) until 527. Rule by tyrant continued until about 510. Inspired by cultural achievements in Ionia, with which close contacts were maintained, Athens in the Age of Tyrants entered an era of cultural development.
Under a liberal leader, Cleisthenes, a constitution was drawn up in the last years of the sixth century B.C. The Council of Five Hundred was established and given many of the powers of the Areopagus. The board of 10 generals and the device of ostracism had their beginnings about the time of Cleisthenes. (For details of the governmental system, see subtitle Life in Classical Athens: Government, in this article.)
In the mid-sixth century B.C. Ionia had come under Persian rule. The Ionians revolted in 499 and, with Athenian aid, had some temporary success. The Persians put down the revolt, however, and in 490 sent an army into Attica. An Athenian victory at Marathon ended the first invasion, but there was a second in 480. Athens was destroyed, but a Greek navy composed mainly of Athenian ships then defeated the Persians at Salamis.
After the Persian Wars Athens held a predominant position in Greece. It was strongly fortified and kept in top fighting form by its ruling generals, including Themistocles, Cimon, and Pericles. The Athenian fleet swept pirates from the Aegean Sea. A mutual defense organization, the Delian League, was organized by the Athenian statesman Aristides in 477 B.C. Powerful and prosperous, Athens became increasingly autocratic in its foreign affairs. In 443 it reorganized the Delian League into the Athenian Empire.
With the wealth gained by tribute and from the silver mines of Mount Laurium, Pericles ordered handsome buildings to be constructed under the direction of the sculptor Phidias. Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles wrote their tragic dramas; Herodotus, his History. Socrates and Anaxagoras taught philosophy.
Sparta and the other Greek city-states watched Athens' growth with apprehension. War between the Athenian Empire and the Peloponnesian League, headed by Sparta, broke out in 431 B.C. It ended in 404, with Athens' complete defeat and dissolution of its empire. Sparta spared the city from destruction, however, and Athens' cultural life continued much as before. The fourth century was the age of Plato, Xenophon, Isocrates, Demosthenes, and Aristotle. When in 339 B.C. Philip of Macedon brought his army into Greece, Athens joined with Thebes to oppose him, but fell to defeat at Chaeronea in 338.
Athens was regarded as the center of art and learning throughout the era of Macedonian rule. When Rome annexed Greece in 146 B.C., only Alexandria, Egypt, rivaled Athens in intellectual activity. In 88 B.C. Athens joined Mithridates, king of Pontus, in a revolt against Rome. Two years later the Roman general Sulla captured Athens, inflicting great damage on it. The war wrecked the Athenian economy. Only in philosophy did the city remain preeminent.
It became fashionable for Romans to study in Athens. Several Roman emperors, notably Hadrian, did much to restore the city. Then a raid by barbarian Goths in 267 A.D. brought new destruction. The founding in 330 of Constantinople as the new capital of the Roman (later Eastern Roman, or Byzantine) Empire furthered Athens' decline, as Constantinople became the center of the new Eastern Christian culture. The Visigoths under Alaric held Athens briefly in 396. In 529 the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian closed the pagan School of Athens, and the community sank into oblivion.
