4 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.6 Morris, Ian. 2009. “The Greater Athenian State.” In The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium, edited by Ian Morris and Walter Scheidel, 99–177. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
7 Pébarthe, Christophe. 2008. “Quand Athènes dominait le monde grec: l’empire oublié (477–404).” In Les empires, Antiquité et Moyen‐Âge, Analyse comparée, edited by Frédéric Hurlet, 33–55. Rennes: PUR.
8 Samons, Loren J. 2000. Empire of the Owl: Athenian Imperial Finance. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
FURTHER READING
1 Constantakopoulou, Christy. 2007. The Dance of the Islands: Insularity, Networks, the Athenian Empire, and the Aegean World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2 Ma, John, Nikolaos Papazarkadas, and Robert Parker, eds. 2009. Interpreting the Athenian Empire. London: Duckworth.
ATHENS (Ἀθῆναι, αἱ)
KELCY SAGSTETTER
United States Naval Academy
GEOGRAPHY AND TOPOGRAPHY
Ancient Athens consisted of both the city and the Attic peninsula, which extends southward into the AEGEAN SEA (BA 59). Inhabitants of the numerous towns and villages (demes) in the Attic countryside were as much Athenian citizens as those who dwelled in the urban center (Houby‐Nielsen 2009). The city itself was on a large coastal plain in northwest Attica, ringed by mountains, and grew up around the ACROPOLIS, a 156 meter‐high bluff at the southwestern end of the classical city (Hurwit 1999, 3–11). This was the location of the fortified citadel and main religious sanctuary of classical Athens, though numerous other TEMPLES AND SANCTUARIES surrounded the base of the hill (Wycherly 1978, 175–202). To the northwest of the Acropolis lay the AGORA, an open space that served as both civic center and marketplace (Camp 2001, 1–10; Wycherly 1978, 27–103). About 500 meters northwest of the Agora was the potters’ quarter, or Kerameikos, which also served as a cemetery (Wycherly 1978, 253–60).
Figure 8 Artist’s reconstruction of the Athenian acropolis in the late fifth century BCE. Charlotte M. Yonge (1882). A Pictorial History of the World’s Great Nations from the Earliest Dates to the Present Times, Vol. 1. New York, Selmar Hess (drawing by Friedrich Thiersch, 88).
To the southwest of the Agora is the AREOPAGUS, or “Hill of Ares.” This was the meeting place of the powerful council of elders that took its name from the location. Southwest of the Areopagus is the Pnyx, a huge theater carved from the rock where the ASSEMBLY gathered. PEIRAEUS, the great port of Athens, is approximately seven kilometers to the west on a rocky peninsula featuring three natural HARBORS, which were instrumental in the operation of the Athenian fleet and crucial to Athens’ extensive sea‐borne TRADE. In 479 BCE, at the urging of THEMISTOCLES, the Athenians built WALLS around the entire city, eventually including two Long Walls between the city and Peiraeus. This allowed access to the SEA while protecting the city from attacks by land (Thuc. 1.90–93, 107; Conwell 2008; Camp 2001, 3–10; Wycherly 1978, 7–25, 261–66).
BRONZE AGE
As evidenced by pottery finds on and around the Acropolis, Athens has been inhabited continuously since the Neolithic period (3000–2800 BCE). Despite the pride later Athenians took in being autochthonous, or “sprung from the soil,” non‐Greek toponyms and archaeological finds suggest that these indigenous inhabitants were not Greek. Substantial changes in material culture suggest that Greek‐speakers did not arrive in Attica until around 2000 BCE, with many Bronze Age Mycenaean sites on the Attic peninsula dating from 1400 onward. By 1250 the Acropolis at Athens was fortified with a huge circuit wall of polygonal blocks so massive that later Athenians imagined they were built by Cyclopes, or giants, suggesting the presence of a Mycenaean palace like those described in HOMER and found at MYCENAE, PYLOS, and TIRYNS. Tradition holds that around this time the mythical king THESEUS effected a political unification of Attica, or synoecism (Plut. Thes. 24; Hall 2014, 243–55). The lack of contemporaneous FORTIFICATIONS at any of the other Bronze Age sites in Attica leads Camp (2001, 16–19) to speculate that the other palaces had indeed become politically subordinate to Athens.
DARK AGE
Around 1200 BCE the Athenian palace and other sites in Attica suffered a steep population decline, though they seem to have escaped the violent destruction of other major Bronze Age sites, ushering in the period known as the Dark Age (Camp 2001, 12–20; Hurwit 1999, 67–84). Like most other places after the Bronze Age collapse, Athens decreased drastically in population and wealth. There was a slow but steady recovery from the tenth to the eighth centuries, followed by a sharp increase in the seventh century, a period which also saw increasing contact with the Near East (Miller 1997, 63–88, 243–57; Wiesehöfer 2009; Camp 2001, 20–22).
ARCHAIC AGE
A series of violent political upheavals characterized the seventh century. Around 632, a popular Olympic victor named CYLON attempted to take over Athens as tyrant (Hdt. 5.71; Thuc. 1.126; Plut. Sol. 12, 17). He and his supporters occupied the Acropolis, but the Athenians surrounded his forces, who sought sanctuary at a statue of ATHENA. The magistrates promised clemency if they surrendered, but instead slaughtered them at the urging of the leaders of the influential Alcmaeonid family (Plut. Sol. 12; Fornara and Samons 1991, 1–24).
Cylon’s surviving partisans carried on a feud against the ALCMAEONIDAE in a conflict so violent that the entire city teetered on the brink of civil war (Plut. Sol. 12). Finally, in 621/0, the Athenians appointed Dracon to quell the STASIS ([Arist.] Ath. pol. 4; Plut. Sol. 17). The result was a LAW code famous for its harshness, which only worsened the strife (Stroud 1968; Gagarin 1981). In 594/3, the Athenians appointed SOLON as mediator, with a particular mandate to address the growing conflict between the aristocrats and the common people over inequities in landowning practices (Plut. Sol. 25; [Arist.] Ath. pol. 5–10; Hall 2014, 214–20).
Solon’s first reform, known as the seisachtheia, or "shaking‐off of burdens," canceled debts and abolished debt‐slavery. He also reformed the court system, giving all citizens the right of appeal, and created a council of 400, to which each of the four ancestral tribes contributed 100 members. He then divided the citizens into four classes based on agricultural wealth and passed wide‐ranging legislation relating to public and private matters, which he published on rotating, white‐washed cylinders called axones in front of the Royal Stoa in the Agora ([Arist.] Ath. pol. 7; Plut. Sol. 23; Leao and Rhodes 2015; Ruschenbusch 1966; Stahl and Walter 2009, 143–49).
Solon’s reforms were unpopular—the poor were dissatisfied because they wanted Solon to redistribute land in addition to canceling debts, while the rich were unhappy because of the losses they sustained in the seisachtheia. Solon left town under uncertain circumstances, and the city devolved once more into political chaos for almost three decades (Hdt. 1.29; [Arist.] Ath. pol. 11–13; Plut. Sol. 25–29).
TYRANNY
Tensions
