Athens was the leading city of classical Greece. A myth states how Athens acquired its name. Both Athena and Poseidon wanted to be its patron, so they offered the city one gift each. Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and created a spring. This symbolized naval power, but the spring was salty, so not very useful to the citizens. Athena gave an olive tree, symbolizing peace and prosperity, which also provided food, oil, and wood, so the citizens named the city after Athena.

The walled ancient city of Athens occupied only about one mile from east to west and slightly less than that from north to south. (But “polis” refers not just to the center of the city proper, but also the occupied territory surrounding it.) The Acropolis is just south of the center. The Agora, the marketplace and social center of the city, was about 1,300 feet north of the Acropolis.

The major temples in Athens were the Temple of Athena (the Parthenon), in the Acropolis, the Temple of Hephaestus (which is still there) and the Temple of Olympian Zeus (now ruined).

At the beginning of the Peloponnesian War the citizens numbered 40,000, making with their families a total of 140,000. Noncitizens numbered 70,000, while there were about 150,000 to 400,000 slaves.

The Persian Wars

By the 6th century BC, Athens was wealthy, powerful, and a cultural center. The Athenian navy was supreme in the Aegean and beyond. By 510, however, the latest rulers were overthrown with the help of Sparta. A radical politician, Clisthenes, then established democracy in Athens.

Beginning in 499 BC, Athenian troops were dispatched to bring support to Asia Minor’s Ionian Greeks, who staged a rebellion to overthrow the Persian Empire. The Persians then tried twice to invade Greece. Later the Athenians defeated the first wave of Persians under the command of King Darius at the Battle of Marathon in 490. Finally, in the year 480, the Persians regained their foothold following the rule of Darius’s son Xerxes. IN response, Athens and its allies defeated the enormous Persian navy in the Battle of Salamis.

Athens was now the leader of the Greek city-states. Athens allied much of the Aegean and parts of Greece in the Delian League, which it dominated. The era, beginning at the Persian Wars’ end and extending to the Macedonian conquest, symbolized Athens’ posture as the world center of literary arts, philosophical debate, and the arts. Its leading statesman, Pericles, intelligently built upon the Delian League’s tributes and constructed the Parthenon.

Greek Wars

Other cities resented Athens, which subsequently fueled the Peloponnesian War in 431, where Athens broad sea empire fought against Sparta’s alliance of land states. Athens lost the war, and it also lost its dominance over the sea.

Interestingly, but not unpredictably, the former allies who supported Sparta turned against the empire. Ironically, Athens’s previously hated enemies Corinth and Thebes converged to become political and military allies. Thebes, Corinth, and Athens fought with Sparta during the stalemate Corinthian War (395 BC - 387 BC). Athens established a Second Athenian League. In 371, after years of fighting, Thebes eventually defeated Sparta. After that, the other Greek cities, with the inclusion of Sparta and Athens, betrayed Thebes, which was defeated in 362 BC.

Macedon

Soon after that, the northern kingdom of Macedon grew in its regional power, which had been predicted by the great statesman Demosthenes in his attempts to warn the Athenians. Subsequently, in the year 338 BC, the Philip of Macedon’s military crushed the Greek states in the Battle of Chaeronea. Philip’s son, Alexander the Great, created an empire. Soon the traditional Greek polis was rendered obsolete, as the Macedonian empire grew stronger and more prominent. While Athens still maintained its foothold as a cultural capital, its independence and political power were stripped. Interestingly, 200 years later, Greece was transferred from the Macedonian power to the empire of the Roman Republic.

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