History of Athens

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The history of Athens is the longest of any city in Europe: Athens has been almost continuously inhabited for at least 3,000 years. It was the birthplace of democracy and 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.

1 Origins and setting
2 Early history
3 Reform and democracy
4 Classical Athens
5 Byzantine Athens
6 Ottoman Athens
7 Modern Athens
8 Notable Athenians
9 Ancient sites in Athens
10 See also
11 External links

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Origins and setting

The name of Athens in Ancient Greek was Athḗnai (Ἀθῆναι, IPA /ʔa.ˈtʰɛː.nai/, pronounced roughly At-heh-nigh). 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 8km 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 to far from the point to then

Image:Ac athensmap2.jpg to the west Mount Aegaleus. The River Cephisus flowed in ancient times through Ancient Athens occupied a very small area compared to the sprawling metropolis of modern Athens. The walled ancient city encompassed an area measuring about 2km 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 400m 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.

The most important religious site in Athens was the Temple of Athena the Virgin, 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.

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.

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Early history

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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).

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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.

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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 abolished Solon's four classes and replaced them with ten "tribes", named after legendary heroes and having no class basis: they were in fact electorates. Each tribe was in turn divided into ten Demes, which became the basis of local government. The tribes each elected fifty members to the Boule 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.

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Classical Athens

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 came back, 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.

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]."

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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 democracy was briefly overthrown in the summer of 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.

During the 4th century BC Athens regained some of her power, re-establishing a modified Delian League and defeating Sparta in alliance with Thebes (369 BC). 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 Empire (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.

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Byzantine Athens

During the period of the Byzantine Empire Athens was a provincial town, and experienced fluctuating fortunes. In the early years many of its works of art were looted by the emperors and taken to Constantinople. Furthermore, although the Byzantines retained control of the Aegean and its islands throughout this period, during the seventh and eighth centuries direct control did not extend far beyond the coast. From about 600AD the city shrank considerably due to barbarian raids by the Avars and Slavs, and was reduced to a shadow of its former self. As the seventh century progressed, much of Greece was overrun by Slavic peoples from the north, and Athens entered a period of uncertainty and insecurity. Image:Athens Church.jpg From the late 8th century, the Empire began to recover from the devastating impact of successive invasions, and the reconquest of Greece began. Greeks from Sicily and Asia Minor were brought in as settlers. The Slavs were either driven out or assimilated. By the middle of the 9th century, Greece was Greek again, and the city began to recover. Just as other cities benefited from improved security and the restoration of effective central control during this period, so Athens expanded once more.

The invasions of the Turks after the battle of Manzikert in 1071 and the ensuing civil wars largely passed the region by, and Athens continued its provincial existence unharmed. When the Byzantine Empire was rescued by the resolute leadership of the three Comnenus emperors Alexius I, John II and Manuel Comnenus, Attica and the rest of Greece prospered. Archaeological evidence tells us that the medieval town experienced a period of rapid and sustained growth, starting in the eleventh century and continuing until the end of the twelfth century. The 'agora' or 'marketplace', which had been deserted since late antiquity, began to be built over, and soon the town became an important centre for the production of soaps and dyes. One of the quarters of the city was named 'Konkhyliarai' after its fishers for purple, and a dyehouse with vats and basins has been discovered by archaeologists. The growth of the town attracted the Venetians, and various other traders who frequented the ports of the Aegean, to Athens. This interest in trade appears to have further increased the economic prosperity of the town.

The 11th and 12th centuries are said to be the Golden Age of Byzantine art in Athens. Almost all of the most important Byzantine churches around Athens were built during these two centuries, and this reflects the growth of the town in general. However, this medieval prosperity was not to last: During the period 1204 to 1458 Athens was fought over by the Byzantines and the French and Italian knights of the Latin Empire. The French knights of the de la Roche family gained the title Duke of Athens. Later, Catalan and Sicilian adventurers ruled the city for some parts of the 14th century. (For fuller details see Duchy of Athens.)

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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 the Greek insurgents captured the city, but it fell to the Turks again in 1826. Again the ancient monuments suffered badly. The Turks remained in possession till 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.

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Modern Athens

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Athens was chosen as the Greek capital for historical and sentimental reasons, not because it was a functioning city: there are few buildings in Athens dated between the Roman 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 humiliation, 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.

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