Ancient Athens Timeline

Greek city-states in Ionia rebelled against Persian rule. Athens and Eretria sent ships to aid the rebels, and their burning of Sardis drew Persia's attention toward mainland Greece, setting the stage for the Persian Wars.

Image source: Ionian Revolt

Athenian forces under Miltiades decisively defeated a larger Persian invasion force at Marathon. The victory preserved Athenian independence, boosted Greek confidence, and inspired the legend of the runner Pheidippides and the modern marathon race.

Image source: Battle of Marathon

A rich new vein of silver was discovered in the mines at Laurion. Urged on by Themistocles, the Athenians voted to use the windfall to build two hundred triremes, creating the navy that would save Greece at Salamis.

Image source: Mines of Laurion

Themistocles lured the Persian fleet into the narrow straits of Salamis, where the smaller Greek navy destroyed Xerxes' forces. The victory forced the Persian king to withdraw, though fighting continued the following year.

Image source: Battle of Salamis

A large Greek army led by Spartan Pausanias crushed the remaining Persian land forces at Plataea, ending Xerxes' invasion of Greece and securing Greek freedom for generations.

Image source: Battle of Plataea

Athens formed an alliance of Greek city-states to continue fighting Persia and liberate the Aegean. Members contributed ships or money to a treasury kept on Delos, but over time Athens transformed the league into its own empire.

Image source: Delian League

After a disastrous expedition to Egypt, Athens transferred the league's treasury from Delos to Athens, officially converting allied contributions into tribute that funded Athenian power and its building program.

Athens and Sparta concluded a peace treaty intended to last thirty years, recognizing each other's spheres of influence. It held only until 431 BC, when disputes over Corcyra and Potidaea ignited the Peloponnesian War.

Image source: Thirty Years' Peace

War broke out between Athens and its empire and the Spartan-led Peloponnesian League. Pericles' strategy relied on the Long Walls and naval power, but a devastating plague soon struck the overcrowded city.

Image source: Peloponnesian War

Seeking to rebuild its naval power, Athens formed a new maritime alliance with guarantees against the abuses of the old empire. It revived Athenian influence until the Social War of the 350s weakened the city again.

Image source: Second Athenian League

Pericles dominated Athenian politics for three decades, expanding democracy by paying for public office, funding monumental building programs, and making Athens the cultural and intellectual center of the Greek world.

Image source: Pericles

Traveling teachers called sophists taught rhetoric across Athens, while Socrates pioneered relentless questioning in the streets of the city. His method laid foundations for Western philosophy through his students Plato and Xenophon.

Image source: Socrates

Under the supervision of sculptor Phidias and architects Ictinus and Callicrates, Athens built the Parthenon, a marble temple to Athena Parthenos that became the supreme monument of classical Greek architecture.

Image source: Parthenon

An Athenian jury convicted Socrates of impiety and corrupting the youth. He drank hemlock as prescribed, becoming a martyr for free thought whose death haunted his student Plato and shaped Western philosophy.

Image source: Trial of Socrates

Plato established a school in a grove sacred to the hero Academus outside Athens. The Academy became antiquity's most famous center of learning, enduring for centuries and training thinkers including Aristotle.

Image source: Platonic Academy

Returning to Athens, Aristotle opened the Lyceum, a school where he lectured while walking the covered walkways, giving his followers the name Peripatetics. It rivaled Plato's Academy as a center of research.

Image source: Lyceum (classical)

A mysterious epidemic killed perhaps a third of Athens' population, including Pericles himself. Thucydides recorded its horrors, and the loss of manpower and leadership crippled Athens' war effort.

Image source: Plague of Athens

Athens launched a massive armada to conquer Syracuse in Sicily. Mismanaged after Alcibiades' recall and Nicias' hesitancy, the entire force was destroyed or captured, a catastrophic blow from which Athens never fully recovered.

Image source: Sicilian Expedition

War-weary after military disasters, wealthy Athenians briefly overthrew the democracy and installed an oligarchy of four hundred men. Democratic forces at Samos resisted, and full democracy was restored within months.

The Spartan admiral Lysander surprised and annihilated the last Athenian fleet in the Hellespont. With its navy gone and grain routes cut, Athens was starved into surrender the following year.

Image source: Battle of Aegospotami

Athens capitulated, dismantled its Long Walls, and accepted a Spartan-imposed oligarchy of thirty men led by Critias. Their bloody reign provoked democratic exiles under Thrasybulus to rise up and restore democracy in 403 BC.

Image source: Thirty Tyrants

Philip II transformed Macedonia into a military superpower and steadily encroached on Greek affairs. In Athens, the orator Demosthenes delivered his Philippics warning against the growing Macedonian threat.

Image source: Philip II of Macedon

Philip II's Macedonian army crushed a coalition of Athens and Thebes. The defeat ended the era of independent Greek city-states; Athens joined Philip's League of Corinth while retaining nominal local autonomy.

Image source: Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC)

After Alexander the Great's death, Athens led a Greek uprising against Macedonian rule. Its defeat at Crannon ended Athenian democracy in practice, imposed a Macedonian garrison, and closed the age of the free polis.

Image source: Lamian War