The Rise of Athens

The poverty of the land of Greece brought with it three consequences. It bred a fierce individualism, a cantankerous refusal to agree with those living on the other side of mountains; states were many and tiny and Athens was one of the largest. Unable to feed their growing numbers, the Athenians became seafarers, although sailing was dangerous in the windy winters. Around the eighth century they joined other Greek statelets in exporting surplus citizens to new settlements around the Mediterranean littoral and importing grain from the Black Sea and elsewhere in growing quantities.

The citadel of Athens was the Acropolis, or “high city,” an almost impregnable outcrop that rises one hundred and fifty meters above sea level. There is evidence of human occupation as early as 5,000 B.C., but we hear little of the place during the age of the Mycenaean monarchs.

The Athenians held that they belonged to an ethnic group called the Ionians, who had always lived in Greece (the word derives from Ion, a legendary king of Athens). Not long after the traditional date of the fall of Troy towards the end of the second millennium, another group called the Dorians, Greek speakers but with their own cultural customs and dialect, came down from the north and settled in Greece. Under pressure from these newcomers, some Ionians emigrated to Asia Minor where they settled and prospered. Athens argued that she was “the eldest land of Ionia” and felt some ongoing responsibility for her cousins overseas.

How many of these beliefs are true cannot now be told and we have no choice but to open our narrative with instructive fiction rather than irretrievable fact.

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The future of Athens was determined by a goddess, Pallas Athena, and by a king called Theseus, whose legendary character traits express, for good or ill, Athenian identity.

It was as well not to cross Athena’s path. From the moment of her birth she emanated power. Her father, Zeus, had sex with Metis, the divine personification of Wisdom, but then had second thoughts. Fearing that their child would grow up to be more intelligent than he was himself, he opened his mouth wide and swallowed Metis up. Nine months later he experienced a raging—literally, it would turn out, a splitting—migraine. He ordered his son Hephaestus, god of metalwork, to strike his head with an ax, hoping that this would relieve the pain. The divine blacksmith obeyed and out jumped Athena from the crack in his skull, adult and fully armed.

She was a perpetual virgin and tomboy. As goddess of war, she could vanquish in combat her half brother Ares (the Roman Mars), lord of battles who delighted in the slaughter of men and the sack of towns. However, Athena took no pleasure in fighting and preferred to settle disputes by discussion and mediation. She patronized crafts and the making of clothes.

She is unique among the Olympians in having a city named after her. She regarded Athens as hers following a quarrel with the sea god and brother of Zeus, Poseidon. As a mark of possession, he thrust his trident into the Acropolis and a spring of seawater sprang out from the rock (it still flows today). Later, Athena laid her own claim in a more peaceful manner, by planting the first olive tree alongside the spring. A furious Poseidon challenged her to a duel, but Zeus insisted on peaceful arbitration. A court of Olympian gods awarded the prize to Athena. Poseidon resentfully sent a tsunami to flood Attica, so she took up residence in the city and kept it under watchful guard.

From early times the Athenians welcomed the goddess with open arms. She was foster mother to one of the first kings, the semi-divine Erechtheus. From his vantage point in the eighth century, Homer celebrated

the Athenians from their splendid citadel in the realm of the magnanimous Erechtheus, a child of the fruitful Earth who was brought up by Athena Daughter of Zeus and established by her in her own rich shrine, where bulls and rams are offered to him yearly in due season by Athenian youths.

The Athenians learned from their tutelary goddess that military force was an invaluable arm of policy, but that it should be tempered by metis, wisdom or, in its less complete sense, ingenuity and craftiness.

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Aegeus, legendary king of Athens during the Mycenaean age, was childless, but on his travels he enjoyed a one-night stand with an attractive princess. He suspected, or perhaps just hoped, that he had made her pregnant, so he hid a sword and a pair of sandals under a rock. Before leaving, he told the woman that if she gave birth to a son she should show him where they were when he grew up, and tell him to take them with him to Athens.