The earliest buildings date from the Late Bronze Age, particularly about 1200 BC when the Acropolis was the citadel. Around its top was built a massive wall of cyclopean masonry (a type of construction using huge blocks without mortar). The construction of this wall probably marks the union of the 12 towns of Attica (the department in which Athens lies) under the leadership of Athens, an event traditionally ascribed to Theseus. The palace of the king was in the area of the later Erechtheum, but almost no traces of it have been identified. The town, insofar as it was outside the Acropolis, lay to the south, where wells and slight remains of houses have been found. The principal cemetery lay to the northwest, and several richly furnished chamber tombs and many smaller ones have been discovered in the area that later became the Agora.

This change from citadel to sanctuary is also reflected in the arrangement of the entrance at the west. Instead of a winding path suitable for defense, there was, from about the middle of the 6th century BC, a broad ramp, designed as a ceremonial approach, leading up to the gate. This basic change of attitude toward the Acropolis must mean that the whole lower town was surrounded by a fortification wall and the Acropolis was no longer needed for defense. The ancient historians Herodotus and Thucydides tell of such a wall, but no trace of it has been found, and its course and date are uncertain.

In the lower town, too, the 6th century was a period of growth and change. The old Agora, below the western approach to the Acropolis, was now inadequate, and a new one was therefore laid out in the low ground to the northwest. This was accomplished by demolishing houses and filling in wells and gullies, to create a broad, open square, which was used for gatherings of all sorts: political, judicial, religious, and commercial. Dramatic contests were held there, too, before the construction of a separate theatre. Various public buildings and shrines were erected around the borders of the square, including the Basileios (Royal) Stoa, where the archon Basileus, one of the chief magistrates of the city, had his headquarters; the Old Bouleuterion (or Council House); and a large enclosure (100 square feet) that probably housed the Heliaia, the largest of the popular lawcourts. At the southeast corner of the square a fountain house received water from outside the city through a conduit of terra-cotta pipes.

In 480 BC this flourishing city was captured and destroyed by the Persians. The Acropolis buildings were burned and the houses in the lower town mostly destroyed, except for a few that had been spared to house the Persian leaders.

For 30 years after the Persian destruction, the Athenians built only fortifications and some secular buildings in the Agora, notably the Stoa Poikile, or Painted Colonnade, with its famous paintings by Polygnotus and Micon, one of which represented the Battle of Marathon. The Tholos, the round building that served as the headquarters of the executive committee of the council, was also built at this time. Lack of attention to the Acropolis was partly the result of the oath, sworn before the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC, that sanctuaries destroyed by the barbarians would not be rebuilt but left as memorials of their impiety. In 449 BC, however, peace with Persia was at last officially established, and the oath was annulled. Athens, moreover, had ample funds, for the silver mines in the Laurium (Lavrion) Hills of southern Attica were in full production. These mines had always been exploited, but in 483 BC a big strike was made, the proceeds of which were used to build the ships that won the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. Thereafter, the mines remained productive throughout the 5th and 4th centuries, providing Athens with the sinews of its strength in the great Classical age. Another source of revenue was the tribute that the allies had been paying, as members of the Delian League, to prosecute the war against Persia. Athens had been collecting and administering this money and, even though the war was officially over, continued to collect it in spite of the protests of the allies, who degenerated into subjects of Athens. Pericles deemed it proper, over the protests of his opponents, to use this money on beautifying the city; in this way he could keep the money in circulation and provide jobs for the whole population. Thus began one of the largest and most enduring works programs in history.

In a period of 40 years the Acropolis was entirely rebuilt in gleaming white marble quarried from Mt. Pentelicus, 10 miles north of the city. The first great work was the Parthenon, begun in 447 BC and finished, except for some details, in 438 BC. The architects were Ictinus and Callicrates, and Phidias was in charge of the whole artistic program. The building was considerably larger than was usual, having eight columns across the ends and 17 on the long sides, against six by 13 for the average temple. It was richly decorated with sculpture, having a running frieze all around the top of the cella (the walled-in chamber within the colonnade) wall outside, and sculptured metopes and sculptured pediments. Inside the cella stood the cult statue, the great gold and ivory figure of Athena, the work of Phidias. No sooner was the main work on the Parthenon completed than the Propylaea was begun. This was the monumental gateway with five doors at the head of the approach, designed by the architect Mnesicles. Its large outer vestibule was covered by a marble ceiling, supported by marble beams with a free span of 18 feet, about which Pausanias wrote, "The Propylaea has a ceiling of white marble which in the beauty and size of the stones remains supreme even to my time." Work on the Propylaea was nearly finished when it was stopped by the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 432 BC, but, as things began to go well for Athens, the little temple of Athena Nike was erected on the bastion in front of the Propylaea, perhaps in 425 BC. Around the time of the Peace of Nicias (421 BC) the Erechtheum was begun. This was a small Ionic temple of highly irregular plan, which housed various early cults and sacred tokens. When the building was about half-finished, work was suddenly interrupted, probably because of the disastrous Athenian expedition to Sicily (415-413 BC), but it was resumed in 409, and the building was completed in 406. The final defeat of Athens two years later put an end to all building, but the Acropolis had been completed, and in later centuries only secondary buildings and monuments were added.

In the second half of the 5th century there was also some building activity in the lower town. Even before the Parthenon, work was begun on the temple of Hephaestus (the god of fire), the Theseum, which still stands on a low hill. In the Agora itself, a new Bouleuterion was built, and two colonnades, the Stoa of Zeus and the South Stoa, were constructed. On the south slope of the Acropolis, next to the theatre, Pericles built an odeum, a large enclosed concert hall, its roof supported by a forest of columns. Of the theatre itself there are no identifiable remains, but the arrangements were no doubt quite simple, and it is known that a theatre existed on this spot from the late 6th century BC because of the old temple of Dionysus (the god of wine) nearby, which dates from the same period. A sanctuary of Asclepius was founded on the south slope of the Acropolis in 420 BC.

Athens was slow in recovering from its defeat in the Peloponnesian War, but in 394 BC its admiral, Conon, won a decisive naval victory over Sparta off Cnidus, on the west coast of Asia Minor. As a result he rebuilt the Long Walls, which the Spartans had demolished to the music of flutes 10 years before, believing they were inaugurating the freedom of Greece. The walls of Piraeus were also rebuilt, and those of the city were repeatedly strengthened in the course of the 4th century, notably by the addition of a ditch, or moat, as protection against siege machinery.

Apart from military works, there was little building in 4th-century Athens until the years 338-322 BC, when the orator Lycurgus was in control of the state finances and there was great activity. On the Pnyx, the broad-backed hill west of the Acropolis where the Athenian popular assembly had met since the reforms of Cleisthenes in the 6th century, a large auditorium was constructed. At the same time, two large stoas were started on the terrace above. The Theatre of Dionysus was rebuilt and greatly enlarged, with stone seats to accommodate the crowds. (Lycurgus did another service to the theatre by having definitive copies made of the old plays.) The Panathenaic stadium was also built about then, partly with state funds and partly by private contributions; the land was donated by a certain Deinias, and one Eudemus of Plataea provided 1,000 yoke of draft animals to level the ground. The period was one of lavish private expenditure in other fields as well. The tripods won in choral contests were displayed on elaborate monuments, sometimes even resembling small temples; the best preserved of these is that of Lysicrates (334 BC), a small round building with six Corinthian columns. Tombs also became increasingly elaborate, often portraying the whole family in high relief. In 315 BC a stop was put to all this extravagance by the sumptuary laws of Demetrius of Phalerum.

Meanwhile, the philosophy schools flourished. Plato (c. 428-348/347 BC) established himself in the Academy, a gymnasium that had existed since at least the 6th century BC in the great olive grove about a mile west of the city. Plato himself had a house and garden nearby. Aristotle and his Peripatetics occupied the Lyceum, another gymnasium, just outside the city to the east, and his successor Theophrastus lived nearby. Antisthenes and the Cynics used the Cynosarges gymnasium to the southeast of the city. Zeno held forth in the heart of the city, in the Stoa Poikile, in the Agora, and his followers were therefore known as Stoics. Epicurus and his followers had a house and garden in town.

Apart from its temples and public buildings and its great avenues, however, Athens seems to have made a poor impression. A 3rd-century-BC visitor complained that the city was dry and ill-supplied with water, that it was badly laid out because of its great antiquity, and that most of the houses were mean. The streets were in fact narrow and winding, and the houses, it is true, presented a blank wall to the street except for the entrance door, but then they were built around a central courtyard, off which the various rooms opened. There was often an upper story, and the court had a well. Water brought in by the aqueducts was not considered good because it was hard (containing salts of magnesium or calcium) and caused rheumatism. Waste water was carried off in an elaborate system of underground drains beneath the streets.

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