Classical Athens

Things happened, and the rest is history

1. 01

   The reforms of Cleisthenes

   Event

   What happened

   In 508 to 507 BCE, after the expulsion of the tyrant Hippias, the Athenian aristocrat Cleisthenes wins popular support and reorganises the citizen body. He replaces the four old tribes, based on kinship, with ten new tribes made up of local units called demes, drawn from the coast, the city and the inland districts. Each tribe supplies fifty members to a new Council of Five Hundred, which prepares business for the Assembly of citizens.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The reforms broke the hold of aristocratic families on local politics and gave ordinary citizens a regular part in government. Herodotus describes the new system as isonomia, equality before the law. Ostracism, a vote to send a leading man into exile for ten years, is traditionally linked to this period, though its first known use came later, in 487 BCE. Athens successfully resisted a Spartan attempt to undo the changes. Later reforms, such as those of Ephialtes and Pericles in the 460s and 450s BCE, built on this base, and modern historians often call Cleisthenes the founder of Athenian democracy, though they debate how democratic his own system was.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryHerodotus. Histories, books 5 and 6. Greek history, c. 430 BCE.Book 5 tells of the fall of the tyrants and the reforms of Cleisthenes.
   2. PrimaryAristotle (attributed). Constitution of the Athenians. Greek treatise, c. 330 to 320 BCE.Chapters 20 to 22 describe the new tribes, demes and Council.
   3. BookOber, Josiah. The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.Includes essays on Cleisthenes and the origins of democracy.
2. 02

   The Athenian empire and the rise of Pericles

   Event

   What happened

   After the Greek victories over Persia in 480 to 479 BCE, Athens takes the lead in a new alliance of Aegean cities, founded in 478 to 477 BCE and later called the Delian League. Member states supply ships or pay tribute, and the treasury is first kept on Delos. In 454 BCE it is moved to Athens. In the 460s and 450s BCE Ephialtes and then Pericles reduce the powers of the old council of the Areopagus and introduce pay for jury service. Athens uses the league's funds and its fleet to dominate the Aegean.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Historians broadly agree that these years made Athens both a naval empire and a more fully democratic city, since the rowers of the fleet came from the poorer citizens who gained political weight. From the 440s BCE tribute paid by the allies helped to fund building on the Acropolis, including the Parthenon, begun in 447 BCE. Athens became the centre of drama, art and philosophy that the entry describes. The growing power of Athens and its treatment of allies alarmed Sparta and its friends. How far this alone caused the Peloponnesian War, which began in 431 BCE, is debated, but Thucydides names Athenian growth as the truest cause.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryThucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, book 1. Greek history, late 5th century BCE.Chapters 89 to 118 give the rise of Athenian power and the league, the so-called Pentecontaetia.
   2. PrimaryAristotle (attributed). Constitution of the Athenians. Greek treatise, c. 330 to 320 BCE.Chapters 23 to 27 describe the league, Ephialtes and the reforms of Pericles.
   3. BookMeiggs, Russell. The Athenian Empire. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.Standard study of the league and its change into an empire.
3. 03

   Athena, Poseidon and the naming of Athens

   Myth

   The legend

   Athena and Poseidon both want to be patron of the city of Cecrops, king of Attica. Poseidon strikes the Acropolis rock with his trident and a spring of salt water appears. Athena plants an olive tree. The gods of Olympus, or the citizens, judge her gift the better, and the city is named Athens after her.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The story is told in later Greek sources such as Apollodorus and Pausanias, and it was shown on the west pediment of the Parthenon, which was built between 447 and 432 BCE. It explains why Athena was the city's protector and why the Acropolis held an olive tree and a salt spring, both shown to visitors in antiquity. The Erechtheion, on the Acropolis, housed the sacred olive and the marks said to be left by Poseidon. The name Athens in fact predates Greek religion as we know it from the classical age, and the goddess may well take her name from the city rather than the reverse. Olive oil was indeed a major Athenian product, and the prize amphorae of the Panathenaic Games were filled with it.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryPausanias. Description of Greece, book 1 (Attica). Greek travel account, 2nd century CE.Describes the Acropolis, the Parthenon pediments, the olive and the salt spring.
   2. PrimaryApollodorus. Library, book 3. Greek mythological handbook, 1st or 2nd century CE.Gives the contest of Athena and Poseidon under Cecrops.
   3. BookBeard, Mary. The Parthenon. London: Profile Books, 2002.Accessible account of the temple and its sculpture.
4. 04

   Theseus and the founding of the Athenian state

   Origin story

   The legend

   Theseus, son of King Aegeus, sails to Crete and kills the Minotaur in the labyrinth. Back in Attica he gathers the scattered villages into one city with a single council in Athens. In this way Athens becomes a united state, and he is remembered as its founder.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The tale of Theseus is told by later writers such as Plutarch, who wrote his Life of Theseus around 100 CE using older Athenian traditions. The Minotaur is a myth, though the palace at Knossos in Crete did exist and was a major centre of the Bronze Age. The union of Attica, called synoecism, is a real process, but it was gradual and probably took place in the early first millennium BCE. Theseus became a civic hero especially in the early fifth century BCE. In 475 BCE, the general Cimon is said to have brought bones thought to be his back from the island of Skyros, which linked the legend to the new Athenian empire.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryPlutarch. Life of Theseus. Greek biography, c. 100 CE. Parallel Lives.Gives the unification of Attica and the return of the bones by Cimon.
   2. BookThucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, book 2. Greek history, late 5th century BCE.Book 2 mentions the unification of Attica under Theseus.
   3. BookWalker, Henry J. Theseus and Athens. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.Study of how the Theseus myth was used in Athenian politics.
5. 05

   Harmodius and Aristogeiton, the tyrant-slayers

   Heroic tale

   The legend

   In 514 BCE two friends, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, kill the tyrant Hipparchus at the Panathenaic festival. They are executed, but the Athenians honour them as the men who freed the city and gave it democracy. Statues of them stand in the Agora, and they are sung about at banquets.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The killing is real, and Thucydides, writing about a century later, corrects the popular version. He says Hipparchus was only the brother of the ruling tyrant Hippias, who remained in power. The motive was a private quarrel, not a political plan. Hippias was driven out in 510 BCE with help from a Spartan army, and Cleisthenes' reforms followed in 508 to 507 BCE. The Athenians still set up a bronze group of the pair soon afterwards, the first public statues paid for by the state, and they were taken as a symbol of democracy. When the Persians carried the group off in 480 BCE it was replaced by a new one.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryThucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War, books 1 and 6. Greek history, late 5th century BCE.Book 6 sets out the real events and rejects the popular version.
   2. PrimaryAristotle (attributed). Constitution of the Athenians. Greek treatise, c. 330 to 320 BCE.Account of the tyranny, its end and the reforms of Cleisthenes.
   3. BookOber, Josiah. The Athenian Revolution: Essays on Ancient Greek Democracy and Political Theory. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
6. 06

   Socrates and the oracle at Delphi

   Heroic tale

   The legend

   A friend of Socrates asks the oracle at Delphi whether anyone is wiser than Socrates, and the priestess answers that no one is. Socrates, who thinks he knows nothing, questions the leading men of Athens to prove the oracle wrong. He finds that they only think they are wise. In the end he is put on trial, condemned, and drinks hemlock rather than give up his questioning.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The oracle story comes from Plato's Apology, which claims to give Socrates' speech at his trial in 399 BCE, though it is Plato's own version. Socrates wrote nothing, so we know him through Plato, Xenophon and the comic playwright Aristophanes, whose accounts differ. The charges were impiety and corrupting the young. The trial took place not long after the Peloponnesian War, when the city was uneasy about men who had been close to Socrates, including Critias, a leader of the Thirty Tyrants. A jury of several hundred citizens voted to convict him, and he died in prison soon afterwards.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryPlato. Apology. Greek dialogue, early 4th century BCE.The story of the oracle and the speech at the trial.
   2. PrimaryXenophon. Memorabilia. Greek work on Socrates, 4th century BCE.A second account of Socrates and the charges.
   3. BookStone, I. F. The Trial of Socrates. Boston: Little, Brown, 1988.
7. 07

   Over the door of Plato's Academy

   Popular belief

   The legend

   Above the entrance to Plato's Academy, the school he founded outside Athens, a sign reads: let no one ignorant of geometry enter. Anyone who wants to study there must first prove they know mathematics. The motto is often quoted as showing how Plato valued reason.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The saying is not found in Plato's own writings. It appears in sources written centuries after his death, such as the commentaries of Philoponus and other late antique writers, and many scholars doubt that it was ever carved over a door. Plato did found the Academy around 387 BCE in a grove outside the city walls, and it remained active for many centuries. He did give mathematics a prominent place in his thought, and in the Republic geometry is part of the training of future rulers. Among those who studied at the Academy for some twenty years was Aristotle, who left after Plato's death in about 347 BCE and later founded his own school, the Lyceum.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryPlato. Republic, book 7. Greek dialogue, c. 375 BCE.Mathematics as part of the education of rulers.
   2. BookDillon, John. The Heirs of Plato: A Study of the Old Academy (347 to 274 BC). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003.
   3. BookFowler, David. The Mathematics of Plato's Academy: A New Reconstruction. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.Discusses the evidence for mathematics at the Academy.