According to mythology, Poseidon (Roman Neptune, the sea god) vied with Athena the goddess of wisdom to win the confidence of the Athenian people. Poseidon gave them a spring and a horse; Athena gave them the olive tree, symbol of peace and harmony.
By Athenian tradition, the city was founded in ancient times by Cecrops, who was later deified in the shape of a serpent with a human torso. From Cecrops stems the cult of the owl, with which Athens is still associated. Erechtheos, a descendent of Cecrops, established the cult of Athena, associated with the olive and the owl, on the site on the north side of the Acropolis where the temple named for him still stands.
Archeological evidence documents fortification of the city as early as the 13c. B.C.E. The fortification of the acropolis may have coincided with the union of several kingdoms in Attica, the "county-like" area surrounding Athens. Such a union formed part of Athenian tradition, was attributed to Theseus (11c. or 12c.B.C.E., if real at all), and was celebrated annually in the great festival known as the Panathenaia.
Archeology reveals evidence of Mycenean traditions in Attica that survived, perhaps thanks to Athenian unity, successive invasions by Boeotians and Dorians. By the mid 11c. B.C.E. Athens was vital enough to launch its own migrations, settling communities on the coast of Asia Minor in Ionia, in what is now southwestern Turkey.
Already in the 9c. B.C.E. Attica was producing excellent and refined pottery in "geometric" style. By the 7c.. B.C.E. taste had changed to favor what to us may appear a more primitive but vigorous style known as "Early Attic." Writing was in use from circa 700.
As elsewhere in ancient Greece, an aristocracy of wealthy landowners gradually supplanted the monarchy. Disputes arose regularly between the aristocracy and the wider citizenry. Repeated efforts to address problems of landlessness and poverty met with mixed success. By the late 7c. B.C.E. the problem of distribution of land and wealth was threatening to undermine the stability of Athens. Peasants who had no other source of funds turned to the short-sighted practice of offering their land, or even their freedom, or that of their children, as collateral for loans at usurious rates. This had the predictable effect of creating a subclass of unpropertied Athenians and even of Athenian slaves. According to tradition, Draco was granted extraordinary powers as lawgiver (621/20?) and set down the first written Athenian laws. Aristotle reports that Draco established the principle that hoplites or armored footsoldiers would be franchised citizens, but there is some dispute about this, as there is about whether or not he should be credited (or blamed) for establishing a criminal code that set death as the penalty for most offences. This is the origin of our word "draconian."
In 594/93 Solon was chief archon, and either during this term of service (or as some indications suggest, about twenty years later) he instituted important reforms. He cancelled all debts for which land or personal liberty were the collateral and freed debt-enslaved Athenians (both at home and abroad.) He outlawed the practice of borrowing against the security of an Athenian, and introduced a number of democratic and economic reforms, including codifying the rights of Assembly of all adult male citizens (ekklesia) and providing for a magistracy legally independent of the aristocratic rulers. But even these reforms did not bring stability.
After more than thirty years of political instability and strife, Pisistratus declared himself tyrant, first in 561 for about five years and then in the mid 540's. This second tyranny lasted until 510 when his son and successor Hippias was overthrown. It was during the 6c. that Athens etsablished itself as a cultural center. Attic pottery virtually droves its rivals from the marketplace. Poetry and sculpture flourished and artists began to migrate to Athens. The economy enjoyed strong growth, led by agriculture, manufacturing, and trade. Foreign immigrants (the so-called metics) swelled the population of the city.
Conservative aristocrats tried to regain control of Athens after the overthrow of Hippias, but they failed. With the reforms of Cleisthenes Athens became a real democracy. It also became imperialistic, to the increasing concern of its neighbors. Athens' heroic efforts in the two wars with the Persians (490 and 480/479) contrasted sharply with the timid reactions of Sparta, already famous for its military prowess and the presumptive leader when it came to war. Sparta's failure to take the lead in the second Persian war that climaxed in a naval battle in the harbor jut outside Athens ceded de facto power and leadership of the allied eastern Greek city-states to Athens, which was swift to seize the advantage. In 477 Delian League was formed with membership of Athens, most of the Aegean islands, and the Greek cities of Thrace and Asia Minor. From the start Athens was the dominant member. (Athenian pretensions even extended to supporting an Egyptian revolt against Persia, 459-54, but Persia set clear limits to what it would tolerate as an Athenian Empire which Persia in effect recognized in the peace of 448. Athens had crushed the revolt of a few small states that attempted to secede from the Delian League and consolidated its power and authority by military build-up (enlarged and improved fleet), by levying tribute taxes, by supporting democracies against oligarchies, by treating Athens as the "capital city," and by imposing its coinage (minted from its own silver mines) on its client states. in this period Athens also founded a number of "cleruchies" which were colonies established on conquered soil whose citizens maintained Athenian citizenship. You no longer had to make you home in Athens to be an Athenian. Athenian cleuchies of the period were established as far away as Italy. In 445 Sparta and the Peloponnesians formally acknowledged the Empire.
This was the famous Age of Pericles. It was he who called the general congress of all Greek city-states in 448/47 to propose the rebuilding of damaged temples, freedom of the seas, and a general peace. A distrustful Sparta opposed Pericles' plan, but he was intent on carrying out the public works program unilaterally, if the other Greek states would not cooperate. He was commission for the construction of the Parthenon (begun in 447) and oversaw the renovation of the Acropolis. [View Ancient Athens.] With the ostracism of Thucydides (son of Melesias, not the historian) in 443, Pericles was left without serious rival in Athens and was reelected strategos (a member of a sort of joint chiefs of staff) every year until the plague claimed his life in 429. Athens was at this time the undisputed cultural center of the Greek world, with a vigorous economy, a fast-growing population (which may have reached 300,000 people, the vast majority of them not citizens) and a roster of poets, dramatists, potters, sculptors, painters, orators, and (of course) philosophers that is justly famous to this day.
As Thucydides famously remarked, "the growth of the power of Athens and the fear that this raised" in Sparta, Corinth and their allies led to the Peloponnesian War. In 431 the Peloponnesian League declared war on Athens, and, by 404, Athens' walls were in ruins, its treasury on the verge of bankruptcy, and its affairs in the hands of a caretaker government (the Thirty Tyrants) imposed by Sparta. This event coincided withÑin fact, precipitatedÑthe trial and death of Socrates. Yet Athens recovered swiftly. Within a year the Thirty had been deposed and the democracy restored. Wihin ten years Athens had rebuilt its fleet, rebuilt the Long Walls from Athens down to Piraeus, and regained independence from Sparta. The maritime economy again grew strong and in general 4c B.C.E. Athens was prosperous and vibrant. This was the period of late comedy and tragedy, oratory, science, the plastic arts and, above all, Plato, Aristotle, and the establishment of philosophical schools. But by the end of the century, military and political power bypassed Athens, thanks first to Alexander the Great and ultimately to the power of Rome.