Athens in the 5th Century PDF

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Athens in the 5TH century The city

Main features of the city:  The Acropolis is the rocky outcrop in the centre of the city. Originally it was a fortress, to which people of the city could retreat in the event of attack. By the 5th century, it had become a religious centre. (The Parthenon, its most famous structure, was completed in 432BC.)  The Areopagus was a smaller hill, where the courts were located.  The Agora was the commercial centre of the city.  The hill of the Pnyx is where the Athenian Assembly (Ecclesia) met. All adult male citizens could vote and stand for elected office.  The Eridanos River was the city’s main source of water.  There were about 40,000 citizens in the city in the middle of the 5th century – all males. When their families are added to the total, this took the number to 140,000. There were a further 70,000 metics in the city (free people who were not citizens), plus between 150,000 and 400,000 slaves. So less than half the population were free, and only ten percent could vote.  Athens controlled all the towns in Attica.

The Acropolis The pictures below show how good a defensive position the Acropolis would have been. The temple that is now on top is the Parthenon.

The Piraeus Walls The Piraeus Walls were built to link Athens with its port, Piraeus. Once these were constructed, Athens could not successfully be blockaded by land, as supplies could be brought into the city by sea.

The political system Up until the end of the 6th Century, Athens was ruled by tyrants (effectively dictators), but all this changed when Cleisthenes became leader in 510 BC. He set up a system of democracy in the city. He divided the city into ten ‘tribes’ (or electorates), each of which elected fifty members to the Boule, a council which governed Athens on a day-to-day basis. Any citizen could be elected to the Assembly, which served as parliament and court, except for murder and religious matters. These were dealt with by the Areopagus.Most government posts were filled by lot (random selection from among a list of candidates), but the city’s ten generals (the strategoi) were all elected. This system lasted until 338 BC, when Athens was conquered by Philip of Macedon (father of Alexander the Great)....