A population as large as that of classical Athens could be supported only by the regular importation of food 2 from abroad, which had to be financed by trade and other revenues. It was originally surrounded by an ancient Cyclopean wall said to have been built by the Pelasgians. [10] In other words, the Athenian imperialist democracy knew how to open the safety valve, but it does not appear to have been desperate to get rid of an excess underclass. By 431 BC Athens probably had 40,000 residents, and its harbor town Piraeus another 25,000. The discussion of metics omits further recent contributions by R. F. Kennedy, D. Kamen, and J. Sosin, among others. The silver mines of Laurion contributed significantly to the development of Athens in the 5th century BC, when the Athenians learned to prospect, treat, and refine the ore and used the proceeds to build a massive fleet, at the instigation of Themistocles.[8]. In addition the Long Walls consisted of two parallel walls leading to Piraeus, 40 stadia long (4.5 miles, 7 km), running parallel to each other, with a narrow passage between them and, furthermore, a wall to Phalerum on the east, 35 stadia long (4 miles, 6.5 km). Chapter 6, “Immediate Implications of Population Change: War and Food” (but see above on this “change”), entails a dense summary of the fifth-century Attic population’s food requirements. 'θi.na]) during the classical period of ancient Greece (480–323 BC)[1] was the major urban centre of the notable polis (city-state) of the same name, located in Attica, Greece, leading the Delian League in the Peloponnesian War against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. We have also to deal with the fact that the institutions that E. E. Cohen sees as emblematic of the fourth century, such as commercialization and banking, probably emerged already in the fifth, albeit without the participation of women and slaves. The Acropolis was just south of the centre of this walled area. Bryn Mawr PA 19010. They established themselves near the crag, which later would become the Acropolis. [2] Demography and Democracy: The Number of Athenian Citizens in the Fourth Century B.C. He executed a large number of public works projects and improved the life of the citizens. During the winter of 338 BC /337 BC Macedonia, Athens and other Greek states became part of the League of Corinth. Sparta's hegemony was passing to Athens, and it was Athens that took the war to Asia Minor. In 499 BC, Athens sent troops to aid the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, who were rebelling against the Persian Empire (see Ionian Revolt). BMCR provides the opportunity to comment on reviews in order to enhance scholarly communication. Since many citizens were incapable of exercising political rights, due to their poverty or ignorance, a number of governmental resources existed … Fifth-century Syracuse was roughly the same size as Athens, and a century later had between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants. By 432 BC, Athens had become the most populous city-state in Hellas. Given the current state of our evidence, the author’s assumption that fifth-century Athens was on the road to perdition, as well as his comment that “the upheavals of the Peloponnesian War…can be seen as purgative” for an otherwise ruinously unequal society (243), cannot, I think, constitute the final word on the subject. The Hellenic League led by the Spartan King Leonidas led 7,000 men to hold the narrow passageway of Thermopylae against the 100,000–250,000 army of Xerxes, during which Leonidas and 300 other Spartan elites were killed. Comments are moderated. This content was originally written for an undergraduate or Master's program. The Legal and Social Condition of the Enslaved Population in Classical Athens. Athens remained a wealthy city with a brilliant cultural life, but ceased to be an independent power. ), The Athenian Empire (Edinburgh 2008): 14-40, at pp. Resentment by other cities at the hegemony of Athens led to the Peloponnesian War in 431, which pitted Athens and her increasingly rebellious sea empire against a coalition of land-based states led by Sparta. Population and Economy in Classical Athens - by Ben Akrigg March 2019. In the classical period, Athens was a centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum,[2][3] Athens was also the birthplace of Socrates, Plato, Pericles, Aristophanes, Sophocles, and many other prominent philosophers, writers and politicians of the ancient world. Hence, he gave his name to the Athenian Golden Age. Cleisthenes disliked the Spartan rule, along with many other Athenians, and so made his own bid for power. Xerxes had built himself a throne on the coast in order to see the Greeks defeated. to 400 B.C, the population in ancient Greece rose. Pericles – an Athenian general, politician and orator – distinguished himself above the other personalities of the era, men who excelled in politics, philosophy, architecture, sculpture, history and literature. Citizens, Metics, and Slaves: The population of Athens was made up of three distinct groups: citizens, or men who were of Athenian birth and free-born; metics, or foreigners who lived in Athens but who had no citizenship rights, and slaves It is estimated that in 431 B.C. The author also now attends to the issue of the wealth distribution of Attica, discussing previous arguments by R. Osborne, L. Foxhall, and G. Kron. Approximately 140,000; Approximately 40,000 men were citizens; and slaves (about 40,000). There were many gates, among the more important there were: Among the more important streets, there were: The period from the end of the Persian Wars to the Macedonian conquest marked the zenith of Athens as a center of literature, philosophy (see Greek philosophy) and the arts (see Greek theatre). Most offices were filled by lot, although the ten strategoi (generals) were elected. The war ended with the complete defeat of Athens in 404. Athenian democracy was briefly overthrown by the coup of 411, brought about because of its poor handling of the war, but it was quickly restored. [5] This point is well taken. Slaves- Slaves were at the base of the social structure.It was estimated that around 400 B.C. [3] Hansen, in turn (above, n. 2), exploited the superior life tables of Coale and Demeny. Hippias exiled 700 of the Athenian noble families, amongst them Cleisthenes' family, the Alchmaeonids. To sum up my conclusions at the outset, I would observe that much more space is given to question 1 than to question 2, and that when the author turns to the bigger picture, the results must, given the state of the evidence, remain ambiguous. In 338 BC the armies of Philip II defeated Athens at the Battle of Chaeronea, effectively limiting Athenian independence. Sparta's former allies soon turned against her due to her imperialist policies, and Athens's former enemies, Thebes and Corinth, became her allies. The summit of the Acropolis was covered with temples, statues of bronze and marble, and various other works of art. This was due to healthy standards of living and an increase of medical inventions. Athens is one of the oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for perhaps 5,000 years. The conflict marked the end of Athenian command of the sea. ")[11], Coordinates: .mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}37°58′N 23°43′E / 37.97°N 23.72°E / 37.97; 23.72, Delian League ("Athenian Empire") shown in yellow, Athenian territory shown in red, situation in 431 BC, before the, Corinthian War and the Second Athenian League (395–355 BC), "Greece uncovers 'holy grail' of Greek archeology", "Ancient History in depth The Democratic Experiment", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Classical_Athens&oldid=1000515633, 4th-century BC disestablishments in Greece, Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text, Pages using infobox country or infobox former country with the symbol caption or type parameters, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, ~250,000 (men with civil rights: ~30,000), This page was last edited on 15 January 2021, at 12:12. The Parthenon, a lavishly decorated temple to the goddess Athena, was constructed under the administration of Pericles.[9]. Athens - Athens - History: The site of Athens has been inhabited since the Neolithic Period (before 3000 bce). Evidence for this has come from pottery finds on and around the Acropolis but particularly from a group of about 20 shallow wells, or pits, on the northwest slope of the Acropolis, just below the Klepsydra spring. Here several alternative scenarios present themselves. Classical Athens population in the year 432 BCE was composed of about 50,000 free male citizens, 50,000 free male non-citizens (citizens under the age of 18 and residents without Athenian parentage), 100,000 free females and 115,000 slaves for a total of about 315,000 people. ), Communities and Networks in the Ancient Greek World (Oxford 2015): 155-76. Slaves were the lowest class in Athenian society, but according to many contemporary accounts they were far less harshly treated than in most other Greek cities. The methodology of earlier scholars has been criticised in general terms but their conclusions have not been seriously challenged. This set a mo… ), Debating the Athenian Cultural Revolution: Art, Literature, Philosophy, and Politics 430-380 BC (Cambridge 2007): 27-43; “Demography and Classical Athens,” in C. Holleran and A. Pudsey (eds. [10] See the useful tables of T. Figueira, “Colonisation in the Classical Period,” in G. R. Tsetskhladze (ed. The leading statesman of this period was Pericles, who used the tribute paid by the members of the Delian League to build the Parthenon and other great monuments of classical Athens. The public opinion of voters could be influenced by the political satires written by the comic poets and performed in the city theaters. The methodology of earlier scholars has been criticised in general terms but their conclusions have not been seriously challenged. Athenian democracy was established in 508 BC under Cleisthenes, after the tyranny of the Peistratids and the rule of Isagoras.This system remained remarkably stable, and with a few brief interruptions remained in … [5] See W. Scheidel, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton 2017). Around the tenth century B.C., the settlers … On the other hand, Akrigg rightly emphasizes that the single legal category “metic” comprised a heterogeneous population of wealthy Greeks, freedpeople, and non-Greek traders and laborers. (Herning 1985). [4] Embracing the Immigrant: The Participation of Metics in Athenian Polis Religion (5th-4th Century BC) (Stuttgart 2014). Simultaneously the Athenians led an indecisive naval battle off Artemisium. The question just posed roughly maps on to Akrigg’s stated concerns: 1) to show that the population was in fact in that range, as scholars have previously suggested but have left relatively unexplored; and 2) to “show why such an account is necessary…and to persuade the reader that this subject…is an important part of the history of the city” (1). Its beauty was chiefly due to its public buildings, for the private houses were mostly insignificant, and its streets badly laid out. However, Akrigg’s further speculations that fifth-century imperial Athens was on a path of unsustainable economic inequality are harder to maintain. On the west end of the Acropolis, where access is alone practicable, were the magnificent Propylaea, "the Entrances," built by Pericles, before the right wing of which was the small Temple of Athena Nike. In 480 the Persians returned under a new ruler, Xerxes I. It is surprising that given the sheer number of people living in those times, only little remains of their constructs. The society was divided into several sections such as citizens, freedman, upper class people, slaves, women etc. Chapter 7, “Beyond Food and Fuel,” brings us to possible implications of Athens’ mid-fifth-century population boom and subsequent contraction. Ben 3. [4] Did the average Athenian really view the family of Cephalus—wealthy, pro-democratic metics from Syracuse—as closer to slaves than citizens? That provoked two Persian invasions of Greece, both of which were repelled under the leadership of the soldier-statesmen Miltiades and Themistocles (see Persian Wars). Expressions of thanks or praise should be sent directly to the reviewer, using the email address in the review. Population and Economy in Classical Athens This is the first comprehensive account of the population of classical Athens for almost a century. In 490 the Athenians, led by Miltiades, prevented the first invasion of the Persians, guided by king Darius I, at the Battle of Marathon. Praise “Insults in Classical Athens examines a decidedly understudied subject that is vast and multifaceted, successfully introducing the reader to the complexities and reasons why further study is necessary and important. It is published as part of our mission to showcase peer-leading papers written by students during their studies. Athenian democracy was established in 508 BC under Cleisthenes following the tyranny of Isagoras. Of the temples, the grandest was the Parthenon, sacred to the "Virgin" goddess Athena; and north of the Parthenon was the magnificent Erechtheion, containing three separate temples, one to Athena Polias, or the "Protectress of the State," the Erechtheion proper, or sanctuary of Erechtheus, and the Pandroseion, or sanctuary of Pandrosos, the daughter of Cecrops. Sosin, among others C.E was 65,000,000 total beginning with J. 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