The bookends to this chapter are two watersheds, the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial system and the Battle of Salamis (ca. 1200–480 BC). The chapter explores the landscape of the living and the dead, the emergence of the Athenian polis, and the broader issue that determined and defined the period.

This chapter surveys the major Athenian inscriptional genres as well as their placement and distribution over time, and attempts to convey what it might have meant to a passerby to experience the ‘inscribed’ city.

This chapter deals with the Athenian buildings aimed at hosting dramatic performances or related to the world of the theater, one of the most important and enduring legacies of ancient Greece to the Western world. The Late Classical Theater of Dionysos at the southern slopes of the Acropolis (second half of the fourth century BC) and the neighboring Odeion of Perikles (mid-fifth century BC) soon became tangible symbols of the city’s wealth and power.

Besides providing a brief illustrated account of Athens’ influential and widely disseminated Athena/owl silver coinage, this chapter surveys the huge silver mining and processing industry of southeast Attika, the role of coinage in the public and private economies of Athens and in international trade, and the minting of a bronze coinage for use at the Eleusinian festival.

The Athenians believed in the importance of the rule of law and implemented this ideal through their legal procedures. The courts of Athens were based on the principles of equality before the law, fairness in procedure, no punishment without law, and the accountability of officials.

In the shadows of its Classical past, Athens during the Roman period saw a number of changes at the hands of imperial or local individuals, particularly for political and ideological, religious, and cultural and educational motivations. This chapter explores how the city grew and developed under the Romans, creating a unique urban space that expressed a multifaceted identity.

The rediscovery of Athens by Western travelers from the fifteenth century onwards led to an international fascination with the ruins of the city and their relationship with descriptions in ancient literature. The publications and manuscripts of these journeys preserve crucial documentation for the remains of Athens, its temples, topography, and inscriptions, much of which has been lost over the subsequent centuries.

Though millennia of building and rebuilding in the city center have affected archaeologists’ ability to recover domestic architecture and assemblages from the Archaic and Classical periods, the evidence which does survive provides a window into the daily lives of ordinary Athenians. Ancient Athenian houses hosted many activities, including family life, ritual practice, and craft production.

Inhabited from the Stone Age to the present, Athens is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. We know it best from the Classical period (500–300 bc), because in addition to its impressive archaeological remains, such as the Parthenon, a vast variety of informative inscriptions and texts, from philosophical dialogues to comic jokes, attests to its importance. The names of its most famous citizens – Aischylos, Aristophanes, Perikles, Plato, Sokrates, Solon, Themistokles, Thucydides – are not unfamiliar to the educated public. Long after Pindar (fr. 76), Athens remained well known in European history as the “bulwark of Greece,” having routed the Persian menace not only once at Marathon, but also a second time at Salamis. Many of the institutions invented by the Athenians – democracy and theater being the obvious ones, but also practices such as jury pay, impeachment, and a ‘tomb for the unknown soldier’ – are still with us today.

This chapter studies working life at Athens, sketching the range of occupations in the Athenian economy, from farming in the countryside to artisans, vendors, and purveyors of services in the city.

This chapter explores the complex relations between the city of Athens (asty) and its large territory (chora), which formed the two essential entities of the Greek polis.