ASIANOVERLAND.NET WINTER EUROPEAN DAY 24/197:  EPIDAVROUS TO ATHENS, GREECE

“DAY 24, 4/1/81

Athens is one of the world's oldest cities, with human presence recorded in the 11th millennium BC and recorded history spanning over 3,400 years.

Classical Athens was a powerful city-state, centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, and the cradle of Western civilization as well as the birthplace of democracy.

Athens is known for the introduction of democracy by Cleisthenes in 508 BC, when Athens was a naval power with a large fleet. Athens supported the rebellion of the Ionian cities against Persian rule. In the Greco-Persian Wars Athens, together with Sparta, led the coalition of Greek states that defeated the Persians, decisively at Marathon in 490 BC, and crucially at Salamis in 480 BC. However, this did not prevent Athens from being captured and sacked twice by the Persians within one year, after a heroic but ultimately failed resistance at Thermopylae by Spartans and other Greeks led by King Leonidas.

The decades that followed were the Golden Age of Athenian democracy, during which Athens was the leading city of Ancient Greece, with its cultural achievements laying the foundations for Western civilization. The playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides flourished in Athens, as did the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the physician Hippocrates, and the philosopher Socrates.

Led by Pericles, who promoted the arts and fostered democracy, Athens embarked on a huge building program via the construction of the Acropolis of Athens (including the Parthenon), as well as empire-building with the Delian League. Originally an association of Greek city-states to continue the fight against the Persians, the league became a vehicle for Athens' own imperial ambitions. The resulting tensions led to the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), in which Athens was defeated by its rival Sparta.

By the mid-4th century BC, the northern Greek kingdom of Macedon became dominant in Athenian affairs. In 338 BC the armies of Philip II defeated an alliance of Greek city-states including Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea, effectively ending Athenian independence and starting Macedonian dominance.

The classical era is still visible in Athens, represented by ancient monuments and works of art, the most famous being the Parthenon, a key landmark of early Western civilization. The city also retains numerous Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman monuments. Athens is home to the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery.

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