Athens

The city-state of Athens: its lawgivers, tyrants and democracy, its empire, and its culture.

Category: States

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1. c. 621 BCE
   Draco's laws at Athens (traditional)

   Athens's first written laws are attributed to Draco in 621/620 BCE. They distinguish murder from involuntary homicide but punish most crimes harshly, hence "draconian". Solon later repeals all but the homicide law. Some scholars doubt Draco was real.

   Greek city-statesAthensPolitics📍 Athens
2. 594 BCE
   Solon's reforms at Athens

   Archon in 594 BCE, Solon repeals Draco's laws except the homicide law. Tradition says he cancelled debts, freed enslaved Athenians and divided citizens into four classes by wealth. Modern historians stress that the sources are late and debate the details.

   Greek city-statesAthensPolitics📍 Athens
3. 561 BCE
   Pisistratus seizes power in Athens

   After a staged injury wins him a bodyguard, Pisistratus takes the Acropolis in 561 BCE and becomes tyrant of Athens. Rival factions drive him out twice over the following years.

   Greek city-statesAthensPolitics📍 Athens
4. 546 BCE
   Pisistratus wins Athens for good

   In 546 BCE Pisistratus returns from exile with Eretrian cavalry and mercenaries, lands at Marathon and defeats the Athenians at Pallene. He rules until his death in 528 or 527, and his sons Hippias and Hipparchus follow.

   Greek city-statesAthensPolitics📍 Athens
5. c. 534 BCE
   Thespis wins the first tragedy contest (traditional)

   Tradition says that in 534 BCE tragedy competitions begin at Athens's City Dionysia and Thespis wins the first. Ancient writers make him the first actor. The works attributed to him are considered forgeries.

   Greek city-statesAthensLiterature📍 Athens
6. 514 BCE
   Hipparchus is assassinated

   In 514 BCE Harmodius and Aristogeiton kill Hipparchus, brother of the tyrant Hippias. The plot fails to end the tyranny, and Hippias's rule turns harsher.

   Greek city-statesAthens📍 Athens
7. 510 BCE
   Hippias is expelled from Athens

   In 510 BCE Spartan hoplites help the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Hippias. The Spartan king Cleomenes I then backs Isagoras in the struggle for power that follows.

   Greek city-statesAthensSpartaPolitics📍 Athens📍 Sparta
8. 508 BCE
   Cleisthenes's reforms: the birth of Athenian democracy

   In 508 BCE, after Isagoras fails, Cleisthenes replaces the four kinship tribes with ten tribes based on residence, expands the council to 500 and introduces sortition. He is called the father of Athenian democracy, though he called it isonomia.

   Greek city-statesAthensPolitics📍 Athens
9. 498 BCE
   Sardis is burned

   In 498 BCE Ionian and allied forces burn Sardis, the satrapal capital. Persian cavalry catches them at Ephesus, and Athens and Eretria withdraw.

   Persian WarsAchaemenid PersiaGreek city-statesAthens📍 Sardis
10. 490 BCE
    Battle of Marathon

    An Athenian army of about 9,000 under Miltiades, with 1,000 Plataeans, defeats the Persian landing at Marathon in 490 BCE, conventionally dated 12 September. Herodotus counts 192 Athenian dead and 6,400 Persian; modern estimates of Persian dead are lower.

    Persian WarsAchaemenid PersiaGreek city-statesAthens📍 Marathon
11. 481 BCE
    The Hellenic League is formed

    In late autumn 481 BCE a congress at Corinth unites the Greek states resisting Persia, Athens and Sparta among them. The Spartan Eurybiades is given command of the fleet.

    Persian WarsGreek city-statesAthensSpartaAchaemenid Persia📍 Corinth
12. 480 BCE
    Battle of Artemisium

    While Thermopylae is fought, the Greek fleet under Eurybiades and Themistocles fights an inconclusive three-day battle with Persia off Artemisium. Storms wreck much of the Persian fleet. News of Thermopylae forces the Greeks to withdraw to Salamis.

    Persian WarsAchaemenid PersiaGreek city-statesAthens📍 Cape Artemisium
13. 480 BCE
    Persians sack Athens

    In 480 BCE the Persians take Boeotia and Attica and burn Athens. Mardonius retakes and destroys it again in 479.

    Persian WarsAchaemenid PersiaAthensGreek city-states📍 Athens
14. September 480 BCE
    Battle of Salamis

    On 26 or 27 September 480 BCE, Themistocles lures the Persian fleet into the narrow strait off Salamis, where its numbers count for less. The Greeks win decisively and Xerxes withdraws to Asia, leaving Mardonius in Greece.

    Persian WarsAchaemenid PersiaGreek city-statesAthensSparta📍 Salamis
15. August 479 BCE
    Battle of Plataea

    On 27 or 28 August 479 BCE a Greek army under the Spartan regent Pausanias defeats Mardonius at Plataea, and Mardonius is killed. The Persians lose control of Attica and Boeotia and withdraw from Greece. Herodotus's casualty figures are not credited.

    Persian WarsAchaemenid PersiaGreek city-statesSpartaAthens📍 Plataea
16. 478 BCE
    The Delian League is founded

    In 478 BCE Athens leads a new alliance of Greek states against Persia after Sparta withdraws, with its treasury on Delos. Members provide ships or pay a tax, and most pay. It gradually becomes an Athenian empire.

    Persian WarsGreek city-statesAthensAchaemenid Persia📍 Delos📍 Athens
17. 472 BCE
    Aeschylus stages The Persians

    In 472 BCE Aeschylus, who fought at Marathon and Salamis, stages The Persians, the earliest surviving play, about the Persian defeat. It wins first prize.

    Greek city-statesAthensLiteratureAchaemenid Persia📍 Athens
18. 468 BCE
    Sophocles defeats Aeschylus

    In 468 BCE Sophocles wins first prize at the Dionysia over Aeschylus. Seven of his plays survive complete. According to Aristotle he adds a third actor according to Aristotle.

    Greek city-statesAthensLiterature📍 Athens
19. c. 466 BCE
    Battle of the Eurymedon

    Cimon's Athenian-led fleet destroys a Persian fleet at the mouth of the Eurymedon in Pamphylia, then routs the Persian army on land. The date is 466 or 469 BCE. It keeps Persia out of the Aegean for years.

    Persian WarsAchaemenid PersiaGreek city-statesAthens
20. 465 BCE
    Thasos revolts; the League becomes a hegemony

    Thasos leaves the Delian League in 465 BCE over a dispute about its mines, and Sparta declines to help. After a long siege it surrenders, loses its walls, ships and mines, and pays tribute. Thucydides sees this as the League turning into a hegemony.

    Greek city-statesAthens📍 Thasos
21. c. 461 BCE
    Ephialtes curbs the Areopagus

    Around 461 BCE Ephialtes strips the aristocratic Areopagus of most of its powers, and Cimon is ostracised. Ephialtes is killed the same year. Pericles emerges as the leading figure of the democracy.

    Greek city-statesAthensPericlesPolitics📍 Athens
22. c. 460 BCE
    Athens backs Inaros's revolt in Egypt

    Around 460 BCE Athens sends ships to support the Egyptian rebel Inaros II against Persia. The expedition ends in a disastrous defeat and Inaros is executed.

    Persian WarsAchaemenid PersiaGreek city-statesAthens
23. 460 BCE
    First Peloponnesian War

    Athens fights Sparta and its allies, mostly Corinth, from about 460 to 445 BCE. Sparta wins at Tanagra (458 or 457), and Athens wins at Oenophyta and takes most of Boeotia. A truce in 451 holds only a few years before the Thirty Years' Peace.

    Greek city-statesAthensSparta📍 Athens📍 Sparta
24. 458 BCE
    Aeschylus's Oresteia

    In 458 BCE Aeschylus stages the Oresteia, the only complete tragic trilogy to survive: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides. He dies at Gela in Sicily in 456 or 455.

    Greek city-statesAthensLiterature📍 Athens
25. c. 456 BCE
    Anaxagoras brings philosophy to Athens

    Around 456 BCE, or perhaps earlier, Anaxagoras of Clazomenae settles in Athens and becomes a friend of Pericles. He teaches that mind (nous) set the world in order, and leaves Athens for Lampsacus around 434.

    Greek city-statesAthensGreek philosophyPericles📍 Athens
26. 454 BCE
    Delian League treasury moved to Athens

    In 454 BCE Pericles moves the League's treasury from Delos to Athens, officially for safety from Persia. Plutarch reports that rivals accused him of diverting funds to building projects such as the Parthenon.

    Greek city-statesAthensPericles📍 Athens📍 Delos
27. 451 BCE
    Pericles's citizenship law

    In 451 BCE Pericles passes a law limiting Athenian citizenship to those with an Athenian father and an Athenian mother. Around this time he also supports pay for jurors in the Heliaia.

    Greek city-statesAthensPericlesPolitics📍 Athens
28. c. 449 BCE
    The Peace of Callias (disputed)

    Around 449 BCE Athens and Persia reportedly make peace through Callias: Ionian cities autonomous, no Persian warships in the Aegean. Whether the treaty existed is disputed, since Thucydides never mentions it. The Greco-Persian Wars fade out around this time.

    Persian WarsAchaemenid PersiaAthensGreek city-states📍 Athens
29. 447 BCE
    The Parthenon is built

    Begun in 447 BCE under Pericles, the Parthenon is substantially finished by 438, with its sculpture continuing to about 432. Ictinus and Callicrates design it and Phidias oversees the work and its gold-and-ivory Athena. It is paid for largely from Delian League funds.

    Greek city-statesAthensPericles📍 Parthenon📍 Athens
30. c. 446 BCE
    The Thirty Years' Peace

    In winter 446-445 BCE Athens and Sparta make a peace meant to last thirty years. Athens keeps the sea and Sparta the land, Megara returns to the Peloponnesian League, and disputes are to go to arbitration. It lasts about fifteen.

    Greek city-statesAthensSparta📍 Athens📍 Sparta
31. 440 BCE
    Samian War

    In 440 BCE Athens besieges Samos for about eight months and forces it to surrender.

    Greek city-statesAthensPericles📍 Samos
32. 431 BCE
    Euripides stages Medea

    In 431 BCE Euripides presents Medea at the Dionysia, where it places third. He first wins a prize only in 441, and eighteen or nineteen of his plays survive. He dies in Macedon in 406.

    Greek city-statesAthensLiterature📍 Athens
33. 431 BCE
    Peloponnesian War

    Athens and Sparta and their allies fight from 431 to 404 BCE. Thucydides blames Athens's growth and Spartan fear. Persia's support for Sparta from 413 and Lysander's victory at Aegospotami end it. Athens surrenders in 404 and the Delian League is dissolved.

    Greek city-statesAthensSpartaPeloponnesian War📍 Athens📍 Sparta
34. April 4, 431 BCE
    The Peloponnesian War breaks out

    On 4 April 431 BCE Thebes attacks Plataea, an Athenian ally. Sparta then votes that Athens has broken the Thirty Years' Peace and King Archidamus II invades Attica, starting the Archidamian War. Athenians shelter inside their walls.

    Greek city-statesAthensSpartaPeloponnesian WarThebes📍 Plataea
35. c. 430 BCE
    Pericles's Funeral Oration

    In winter 431-430 BCE Pericles delivers the funeral oration for the first Athenian war dead, praising Athens's democracy. We know it only through Thucydides, and scholars debate how far the words are his own.

    Greek city-statesAthensPericlesPeloponnesian WarPolitics📍 Athens
36. 430 BCE
    Plague of Athens

    A plague strikes crowded Athens in 430 BCE and returns in 429 and 427-426, killing an estimated quarter of the population. Its cause is unknown: typhus, typhoid and others have been proposed. It saps Athenian strength and morale.

    Greek city-statesAthensPeloponnesian War📍 Athens
37. 429 BCE
    Pericles dies

    Removed as general and fined in 430 BCE, Pericles is re-elected in 429 but dies that year, reportedly of the plague, after losing two sons to it. Cleon leads a more aggressive Athenian policy afterwards.

    Greek city-statesAthensPericlesPeloponnesian War📍 Athens
38. c. 428 BCE
    Plato is born

    Plato is born in Athens in about 428-427 BCE, though sources put it anywhere between 428 and 423. A follower of Socrates, he writes philosophical dialogues and founds the Academy.

    Greek city-statesAthensGreek philosophyPlato📍 Athens
39. 425 BCE
    Pylos and Sphacteria

    In 425 BCE Demosthenes fortifies Pylos, and Athens traps about 420 Spartan hoplites, 120 of them Spartiates, on Sphacteria and takes them to Athens. Cleon rejects Spartan peace offers. The capture shakes Sparta, whose elite class is small.

    Greek city-statesAthensSpartaPeloponnesian War📍 Pylos
40. 423 BCE
    Aristophanes stages The Clouds

    In 423 BCE the comic playwright Aristophanes presents The Clouds, which caricatures Socrates, and it comes third. Only a revised version survives. Eleven of his forty plays remain, the only complete Old Comedy.

    Greek city-statesAthensLiteratureSocrates📍 Athens
41. 422 BCE
    Battle of Amphipolis

    In 422 BCE the Spartan Brasidas, who had taken Amphipolis, and the Athenian Cleon, trying to retake it, both die in the fighting. Both sides are exhausted, and the Peace of Nicias follows.

    Greek city-statesAthensSpartaPeloponnesian War📍 Amphipolis
42. March 421 BCE
    Peace of Nicias

    In March 421 BCE Athens and Sparta end the first half of the war, restoring prewar conditions with exceptions. It is meant to last fifty years, but Sparta's allies reject it and militants take over in both cities. Thucydides counts about seven years.

    Greek city-statesAthensSpartaPeloponnesian War📍 Athens📍 Sparta
43. 416 BCE
    Athens takes Melos

    In 416 BCE Athens besieges Melos and takes it that winter, executing the men and enslaving the women and children. Thucydides's Melian Dialogue, where Athenian envoys say the strong do what they can, is his reconstruction, not a transcript.

    Greek city-statesAthensPeloponnesian War📍 Melos (Milos)
44. 415 BCE
    The Sicilian Expedition

    From 415 to 413 BCE Athens sends a great force against Syracuse under Nicias, Alcibiades and Lamachus. Alcibiades is recalled and defects to Sparta. Spartan help under Gylippus turns the siege, and the Athenian army and fleet are destroyed.

    Greek city-statesAthensSpartaPeloponnesian War📍 Syracuse
45. June 411 BCE
    The oligarchic coup of 411 at Athens

    In June 411 BCE an oligarchy of the Four Hundred overthrows Athenian democracy, after the Sicilian disaster and with Alcibiades promising Persian money. The fleet at Samos refuses to obey it. The Four Hundred give way within months to the Five Thousand.

    Greek city-statesAthensPeloponnesian WarPolitics📍 Athens📍 Samos
46. 406 BCE
    Arginusae and the trial of the generals

    In 406 BCE Athens beats the Spartan fleet at Arginusae, but a storm prevents the rescue of drowning sailors. Six of the eight generals are tried together by the assembly and executed. Socrates, presiding, refuses to put the motion to a vote.

    Greek city-statesAthensSpartaPeloponnesian WarSocrates📍 Athens
47. 405 BCE
    Battle of Aegospotami

    In 405 BCE the Spartan Lysander destroys or captures nearly the whole Athenian fleet on the Hellespont and has about 3,000 prisoners executed. Conon escapes with nine ships. Athens, cut off from its grain supply, is starved into surrender.

    Greek city-statesAthensSpartaPeloponnesian War📍 Hellespont (Dardanelles)
48. 404 BCE
    Athens surrenders to Sparta

    Starved and without a fleet, Athens surrenders in spring 404 BCE: March by one source, 25 April by another. Sparta spares the city but the Delian League is dissolved and the city's walls are demolished.

    Greek city-statesAthensSpartaPeloponnesian War📍 Athens
49. 404 BCE
    The Thirty Tyrants rule Athens

    Installed by Sparta after the surrender, the Thirty rule Athens for about eight months in 404-403 BCE. Led by Critias, they execute some 1,500 people without trial by Aristotle's and Isocrates's count, and force Theramenes to drink hemlock.

    Greek city-statesAthensSpartaPolitics📍 Athens
50. 403 BCE
    Athenian democracy is restored

    In 403 BCE Thrasybulus leads exiles against the Thirty, and Critias dies in the fighting. The Spartan king Pausanias brokers the Amnesty of 403, which restores democracy and pardons most citizens.

    Greek city-statesAthensSpartaPolitics📍 Athens
51. 403 BCE
    Athens adopts the Ionic alphabet

    In the archonship of Eucleides (403/402 BCE) Athens officially adopts the Ionic alphabet, on a decree credited to Archinus. It had been used informally for years, and some later inscriptions still use the old Attic letters. It becomes the standard Greek alphabet.

    WritingGreek city-statesAthens📍 Athens
52. c. 400 BCE
    Thucydides writes the History of the Peloponnesian War

    Exiled from Athens after failing to save Amphipolis in 424, Thucydides writes a history of the war from 431 to 411, where it breaks off. He revises it after 404, relies on eyewitnesses and leaves the gods out. His speeches are reconstructions.

    Greek city-statesAthensLiteraturePeloponnesian War📍 Athens
53. 399 BCE
    The trial and death of Socrates

    In 399 BCE an Athenian jury convicts Socrates of impiety and corrupting the youth and sentences him to death. He drinks hemlock. Our main accounts are by his followers Plato and Xenophon. Historians still debate the real motives.

    Greek city-statesAthensSocrates📍 Athens
54. 395 BCE
    Corinthian War

    From 395 to 387 BCE Thebes, Athens, Corinth and Argos, funded by Persian gold, fight Sparta. Sparta wins at Nemea and Coronea (394), but Persia's fleet destroys the Spartan navy at Cnidus. The war ends with the King's Peace.

    Greek city-statesAthensSpartaThebesAchaemenid Persia📍 Sparta📍 Thebes
55. 394 BCE
    Battle of Cnidus

    In 394 BCE the Athenian Conon and the Persian satrap Pharnabazus destroy the Spartan fleet at Cnidus, ending Sparta's naval ambitions. Next year Conon, with Persian money and ships, helps Athens rebuild its Long Walls.

    Greek city-statesAthensSpartaAchaemenid Persia📍 Cnidus
56. c. 383 BCE
    Plato founds the Academy

    Around 383 BCE Plato founds the Academy in Athens, sometimes dated about 387, a school that lasts for centuries. The order of his dialogues cannot be fixed exactly. He visits Syracuse three times, in the 380s, 366 and 361.

    Greek city-statesAthensGreek philosophyPlato📍 Athens
57. 378 BCE
    The Second Athenian League

    Athens founds a new alliance against Sparta in 378-377 BCE. Unlike the Delian League, it has no tribute, no garrisons and one vote per city, and meets in Athens. It begins to dissolve after Leuctra.

    Greek city-statesAthens📍 Athens
58. 357 BCE
    The Social War: Athens loses its allies

    In 357-355 BCE Chios, Rhodes, Kos and Byzantium revolt against Athens and win. The Second Athenian League falls apart and most allied cities become independent.

    Greek city-statesAthens📍 Athens
59. 357 BCE
    Philip takes Amphipolis

    In 357 BCE Philip besieges and captures Amphipolis, which Athens had long claimed. He keeps it, though he had agreed to lease it to Athens, along with Pydna.

    MacedonPhilip II of MacedonGreek city-statesAthens📍 Amphipolis
60. c. 351 BCE
    Demosthenes delivers the First Philippic

    Around 351 BCE the Athenian orator Demosthenes urges Athens to prepare against Philip II. In 349 the Olynthiacs press Athens to help Olynthus.

    Greek city-statesAthensMacedonPhilip II of Macedon📍 Athens
61. 346 BCE
    Philip takes Thermopylae; peace with Athens

    In 346 BCE Philip seizes Thermopylae, Phocis surrenders and its cities are broken up. Athens makes peace with him. Macedon takes the two Phocian seats in the Amphictyonic council.

    MacedonPhilip II of MacedonGreek city-statesAthens📍 Thermopylae
62. August 338 BCE
    Battle of Chaeronea

    In August 338 BCE Philip II defeats Athens and Thebes in Boeotia, with his 18-year-old son Alexander commanding the left wing. Thebes's Sacred Band is wiped out. Philip becomes master of Greece.

    MacedonPhilip II of MacedonAlexander the GreatGreek city-statesAthensThebesWar📍 Chaeronea
63. 335 BCE
    Aristotle founds the Lyceum

    Back in Athens about 335 BCE, Aristotle founds the Lyceum, where the Peripatetic school grows. Of his works about a third survive, mostly lecture notes: the Organon, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics and Poetics.

    Greek city-statesAthensGreek philosophyAristotle📍 Athens
64. 323 BCE
    Lamian War

    On news of Alexander's death, Athens and other Greek states revolt against Macedon in 323 BCE. Antipater is besieged at Lamia, but wins at Crannon in August 322. Athens gets a garrison and an oligarchy; its citizen body falls from about 21,000 to 9,000.

    Greek city-statesAthensMacedonHellenistic kingdomsWarAlexander the Great📍 Crannon📍 Athens
65. 322 BCE
    Aristotle dies at Chalcis

    In 322 BCE, charged with impiety after Alexander's death, Aristotle leaves Athens and dies that year at Chalcis in Euboea. His logic remains dominant until the 19th century.

    Greek city-statesAthensGreek philosophyAristotle📍 Athens
66. 322 BCE
    Theophrastus succeeds Aristotle at the Lyceum

    Aristotle's will names Theophrastus his successor and leaves him his library and the originals of his works. Theophrastus leads the Peripatetic school for some 35 years. A well-known tale that the books lay in a cellar in Scepsis is plausible but not established.

    AristotleGreek philosophyGreek city-statesAthens📍 Athens
67. October 12, 322 BCE
    Demosthenes dies

    On 12 October 322 BCE, hunted by Antipater's agents after the Lamian War, Demosthenes takes poison at a sanctuary of Poseidon on Kalaureia (Poros) to avoid capture. He was about 62.

    Greek city-statesAthensMacedon📍 Athens
68. c. 306 BCE
    Epicurus founds the Garden

    About 306 BCE Epicurus, back in Athens, founds his school, the Garden. He teaches that the goal of life is freedom from pain and disturbance, that the world is atoms in void, and that the gods do not meddle in human affairs. He dies in 270.

    Greek city-statesAthensGreek philosophy📍 Athens
69. c. 300 BCE
    Zeno of Citium founds Stoicism

    About 300 BCE Zeno of Citium begins teaching in Athens at the Stoa Poikile, a painted colonnade, from which Stoicism takes its name. Cleanthes and Chrysippus carry the school on; Chrysippus is said to have written over 300 books on logic.

    Greek city-statesAthensGreek philosophy📍 Athens
70. 86 BCE
    Sulla takes and sacks Athens

    In 86 BCE Sulla storms Athens, which had joined Mithridates, and the city is heavily damaged and looted. He then wins at Chaeronea and Orchomenus, ending Pontic control of Greece.

    Roman RepublicSullaMithridatic WarsGreek city-statesAthens📍 Athens
71. c. 200
    Alexander of Aphrodisias heads the Peripatetic school at Athens

    About 200 CE Alexander of Aphrodisias heads the Peripatetic school at Athens and dedicates On Fate to Septimius Severus and Caracalla (198-209). His commentaries on Aristotle are later translated into Arabic and quoted by Maimonides. Pomponazzi revives his view of the soul.

    AristotleGreek philosophyRoman EmpireAthens📍 Athens