Having taken the most glorious part in these terrible struggles Athens now became the natural leader of the Greeks in the war of retaliation. In 474 this leadership found expression in the foundation of the Attic and Delian naval league. The zenith of the Athenian power coincided with the rebuilding of the city, which progressed rapidly in spite of the opposition of the Spartans. The fortification both of the city and its harbour, which the genius of Themistokles had removed to the Piræus, was taken in hand with special vigour, and in 460–445 the ‘Long Walls’ were erected, stretching from the Piræus and from Phaleron to Athens itself. Next, under the rule of Perikles, arose the magnificent buildings on the Acropolis. A colossal statue of Athena Promachos in gold and ivory, by Phidias, was erected out of the Persian booty in 438, when the cella of the great Parthenon also was probably completed. In 437–432 were erected the stately Propylaea, and lastly the Erechtheion, begun probably soon after the peace of Nikias (421) but not completed till 407.
The Athenian democracy had attained its fullest development and its widest sway when the long-standing antagonism of Sparta led to open war between the rival states in 431. In the second year of the war Athens was visited by a terrible plague, which carried off, among many others, Perikles, the only man of genius powerful enough to control the democracy, the deterioration of which may be dated from his death. After many vicissitudes, including the disastrous campaign in Sicily undertaken by the advice of Alkibiades (comp. p. [163]), the Peloponnesian war ended in 404 with the utter humiliation of Athens. The fortifications of the city and the Piræus had to be demolished, the fleet to be given up, and an oligarchic government, that of the ‘Thirty Tyrants’, to be endured at the bidding of Sparta. In 403 Thrasyboulos restored the democracy; in 393 Konon won a naval victory over the Spartans at Knidos, and rebuilt the Long Walls; but all this was but a brief and feeble reflex of the ancient glory of the state. In vain Demosthenes exhorted his fellow-citizens to vigorous resistance against Philip of Macedon; when they at last roused themselves it was too late. In 338 Greek independence received its death-blow on the battle-field of Chæronea.
Although Athens never again recovered her political importance her material prosperity survived almost unimpaired for several centuries more. In the year of the battle of Chæronea began the judicious financial administration of the orator Lykourgos, who completed the theatre previously begun on the S.E. slope of the Acropolis, built the Stadion, and filled the arsenals and harbour of the Piræus with military stores and with ships. After a fruitless revolt in 322 (the ‘Lamian War’) Athens was garrisoned with Macedonian troops. Yet Athens continued to live and thrive on the intellectual heritage stored up within her walls ever since the days of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. As the home of the greatest poets of antiquity, as the seat of the far-famed schools of philosophy and rhetoric founded by Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, and as a great centre of art and architecture, she still had many visitors and admirers. Foreign patrons lavished gifts upon her or erected sumptuous buildings in the city. To Ptolemy Philadelphos of Egypt (281–246) she owed a gymnasion with a library, to the Pergamenian kings handsome colonnades, and to the Syrian king Antiochos IV. Epiphanes (175–164) the Olympieion.
The dominion of Macedonia was followed by that of Rome, in spite of the nominal declaration of the independence of Greece made by the consul Flamininus in 196 B.C. After the overthrow of the Achæan League, of which Athens was a member, and the destruction of Corinth in 146 Greece and Macedonia were formed into a Roman province. Athens had to pay heavily for the ill-considered help it afforded Mithridates, King of Pontus, who chose Greece as the battle-field on which to contest with Rome the sovereignty of Asia. The city was stormed and sacked by Sulla in 86 B.C., and the fortifications of the Piræus were finally demolished. The city was, however, favoured by Cæsar and the Roman emperors. The chief buildings of this period are the Tower of the Winds, the Market Gate owing its origin to donations made by Cæsar and Augustus, the statue of Agrippa, the round temple of Roma and Augustus, the new marble steps of the Propylæa, and the monument of Philopappos.
A new period in the history of art was inaugurated by Hadrian (A.D. 117–38), the friend of Greece, to whom countless statues were erected under the titles of the Olympian, the Founder, the Liberator. A whole quarter of the city, to the S.E. of the castle, was called after him, as may still be read on Hadrian’s Arch. In this quarter rose the temple of Zeus completed by him. In the old town he founded a library, a gymnasion, and a pantheon, and Athens is still supplied with water by his aqueduct. At the same period Herodes Atticus (101–77), a rich citizen, built the odeion named after him. Lastly Marcus Aurelius (161–80), from whose time dates the description of the city by Pausanias, summoned new teachers to the Athenian school of philosophy. From that period begins the gradual stagnation and decay of the city.
In 267 Athens was captured by the Heruli and Goths. In 395 and 396 Alaric with his Visigoths appeared before its gates, but spared it on payment of tribute. From the 5th cent. onwards numerous works of art were removed from Athens to Constantinople, as had been partly done by Constantine himself, to grace the buildings of New Rome. In 529 Justinian gave the death-blow to the intellectual life of Athens by closing the schools of philosophy. Athens sank to the position of a Byzantine provincial town. In 1019 Basil II. held a triumphal festival in the Parthenon, which had long been used as a church. In 1040 the Northmen under Harald Haardraade took the Piræus by storm.
After the conquest of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders in 1204 (p. [542]) Athens fell into the hands of Frankish nobles known as dukes after 1258. At length, in 1456, after a vigorous defence, Athens was captured by the Turks, and thenceforth belonged to the pashalik of Negroponte (Eubœa). But two events in the next three centuries and a half deserve mention; it was attacked by the Venetians in 1466 and it was captured and occupied for a short time by their general Francesco Morosini in 1687. On the latter occasion the Parthenon, hitherto uninjured, was blown up, while the Propylæa had already been destroyed by an earlier explosion (comp. p. [513]). Athens then fell into complete oblivion and had to be rediscovered by the explorers and scholars of the 19th century.
The Greeks began their war of independence in 1821, and in 1822 captured the Acropolis of Athens. The Turks, however, stormed the town in 1826, and in 1827 took the Acropolis also after a brave resistance. The whole of Hellas thus fell again under the Turkish yoke. But the Great Powers now intervened. In 1833 the Acropolis was evacuated by the Turks, and entered by the Bavarian troops of the new king, Otho. In 1834 Athens was made the capital of the new kingdom, and since 1835 has been the seat of government. This distinction it owes to its historic fame, its site being geographically and economically unfavourable for a great modern city. It has attracted neither wholesale trade nor industry, and Attica itself is by no means productive.
Books. Of the extensive literature on Athens the following books may be useful to the traveller: Stuart’s and Revett’s ‘The Antiquities of Athens’ (4 vols.; rev. ed., 1825–30); Leake’s ‘Topography of Athens’ (London, 1821); Wordsworth’s ‘Athens and Attica’ (4th ed., 1869); Dyer’s ‘Ancient Athens’ (London, 1873); Harrison’s and Verrall’s ‘Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens’ (London, 1890); E. A. Gardner’s ‘Ancient Athens’ (London, 1902).