The historical origins are of course enveloped in the mists of mythology. Built by Cecrops in the remote Pelasgian age, the city was enlarged by Erectheus, who, half-man, half-serpent, was buried in a temple on the Acropolis afterwards known as the Erectheion. Later, the legendary hero, Theseus, united the independent states of Attica into a single body, making Athens the capital of the state.
In the age of recorded history, Solon was the first politician to attend to the city's finances by putting the agriculture of Attica on a proper footing. In the 6th century B.C., the tyrant Pisistratus, a sound economist and administrator, raised Athens from the status of a country town to that of a city of international importance. He also erected temples and public buildings, and encouraged the development of poetry and drama, which revived public interest in the epics of Homer. Clisthenes completed the work of Solon and Pisistratus by carrying through a complete reform of the constitution.
The Persian invasion of Greece at the beginning of the 5th century B.C., culminating in the total defeat of the invaders at Marathon, Salamis and Plataea, inaugurated a new era in the history of Athens, which had been reduced to ashes by Xerxes, the Persian king, on the eve of the destruction of his own fleet at Salamis. The prestige of Athens, which had resisted and routed the Asiatic hordes, now naturally stood very high in the Greek world. Under Themistocles, celebrated for his statesmanship, vanity and final treachery, the security of the city was ensured by surrounding it with fortified walls, and its chief port was transferred from the open roadstead of Phaleron to the security of the admirable harbours of the Piraeus. The process of construction and embellishment continued under Cimon.
For its architectural splendour, however, Athens is chiefly indebted to Pericles. It was indeed in the golden Periclean age of Athenian democracy that the Parthenon, the Erectheion and the Propylaea of the Acropolis were built. The rapid development of Athens as a maritime power, begun under Themistocles, continued, and a virtual Athenian empire was soon established over the Aegean.
The Peloponnesian War, in which Athens and Sparta fought for the supremacy of Greece, and in which Athens was finally defeated in 404 B.C., brought an end to the Classical Age. But during those miraculous years, the little state had produced an unparalleled succession of geniuses. To name only a few: statesmen such as Themistocles, Pericles and the glamorous though unreliable Alcibiades; Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides among the dramatists, and Phidias and Myron, masters of the art of sculpture; historians of the calibre of Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon; as well as an entire galaxy of architects, poets and comic writers. As for the philosophers-Socrates and Plato, above all-their teachings have never ceased to influence Western thought and civilization to this day.
Little more than ten years after the defeat of Athens, however, a naval victory over the Spartans off Cnidos enabled the Athenians to turn their thoughts once more to the improvement of their city. During the period of Lycurgus's adroit management of finances, (not to be mistaken for Lycurgus the lawgiver, of Sparta) the theatre of Dionysus and the Stadium were completed.