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Description
Strap in y'all this is a long one.

The Greek city-state of Athens is often touted as the birthplace of democracy, the first nation in Western society to institute a government run and elected by the people. The American grade school curriculum will make it sound as though this was a utopian golden age of prosperity and opportunity, but as we'll see later, this is a half-truth at best. First, let's start at the beginning: archaeology tells us that the area has been inhabited by humans since at least the Stone Age, but actual continuous settlement didn't begin until around 3000 BCE. So sorry, conspiracy theorists, there was no "Athens" to go to war with Atlantis 11,000 years ago. There wasn't even a Greece that far back, or Proto-Indo-European even, for that matter. Of course, the real origins of Athens are still obscured by legend. Usually, tradition places a half-man, half-serpent named Cecrops as the first king of Athens, ruling sometime around the mid-16th century BCE. It is said that the gods Poseidon and Athena held a race for possession of the city, and while Poseidon won the race and even literally staked his claim by cracking open the earth with his trident, Athena countered by… planting an olive tree. A council was called by Zeus, and Cecrops ultimately decided that no no, tree is definitely better than the saltwater spring Poseidon created, and thus made her the patron goddess of the city now called "Athens" in her honor. Of course, if there's one thing Greek mythology teaches us, aside from Zeus can't keep it in his pants, it's that it is never ever beneficial to one's health to piss off the god of the sea. The plain of Attica was flooded by the god, but I guess it eventually receded so… it's all good? Interestingly, the spring Poseidon created is named for an alternative founding figure named Erechtheus, who is also a half-man, half-serpent demigod, mentioned in the Iliad. This is either evidence of an archaic myth split into separate traditions by later authors, or of the handiwork of our reptilian overlords. You decide.

The centerpiece of the city, the acropolis, got its start as a Mycenaean fortress, sometime between the 14th and 13th centuries BCE. The hero Theseus, of minotaur-slaying fame, is said to have become king of a united Attica around this same time. Afterwards, though, Athens's true nature as a minor city-state really shines through. Records of the city are scant and other major powers didn't really seem to bother dealing with a stuck-up middle-of-nowhere town like Athens. It's not even particularly clear when Athens abolished its monarchy and instituted its specific brand of democracy. A man named Codrus is usually stated to be the last king of Athens, his reign ending in the 11th century BCE, but sources can't seem to agree if the people who succeeded him counted as kings or as Archons. An "Archon" was actually one of three positions in the Athenian government: the Basileus, who oversaw religious administration, the Polemarch, who handled foreign policy and the army, and the "Eponymous Archon", who as far as I can tell was basically just smiled and waved on behalf of the city. These were usually filled by wealthy aristocrats, conveniently voted in by wealthy aristocrats, conveniently the only ones who could do the actual voting. Originally this was a position held for life, then in 753 BCE the term was restricted to ten years, then again in 683 BCE it was shortened to just one year.

So where does the actual rule by the people come in? How did Athenian democracy work? Well… it was complicated, and a little strange. My summary will be an extremely simplified version, and keep in mind that Athenian democracy had an obnoxious tendency to change up its rules depending on the time period, so feel free to add to or correct me below. As I understand it, the main body of the Athenian government was the Ecclesia, a general assembly which, after the reforms of Solon in 594 BCE, was open to any male citizen who wished to participate. Here the participants could voice any of their concerns according to the daily agenda set by the Boule, a council of a few hundred judges randomly elected by drawing lots between former Archons. Of course, the position of Archon was only open to citizens of the two wealthiest classes of Athenian society, so the poorer landowners would never get the opportunity to serve on the actual governing body. That's of course to say nothing of the entire female population, folks who didn't own land and were stuck in crippling debt, immigrants from foreign lands, or Athens's enormous slave population. None of these people were even permitted to participate in the Ecclesia, and thus never had their voices heard. In total, only 10 to 20% of Athens's population was actually allowed to be heard. Man, a republic that claimed to represent the voice of the people while actually being built on slavery, misogyny, hypocrisy, and is rigged to keep a handful of wealthy families in power at the expense of the laboring majority? That sure does sound like it sucks. I mean could you imagine living under a system like that? Could you even ha ha… heh eh… hhhhhhhgh…

After emerging as a major player following the repulsion of the Achaemenid Empire from Greece in the 5th century BCE, Athens became a naval superpower. They established the Delian League, a confederation of islands in the Aegean which on paper was to protect one another from Persian influence, and in reality was to line Athens's pockets. The League's treasury was moved from Delos to Athens in 454 BCE, and Athens essentially bullied its "companions" into submission. It was this resource it milked to wage war against Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. This was how, even under Spartan siege, the famous general and statesman Pericles was able to keep Athens nice and cozy and stocked full of nerds such as Hippocrates, Thucydides, and Socrates. Of course, it only served to prolong the inevitable. Athens was eventually overpowered by Sparta by 404 BCE, and the enemy stocked the Athenian government full of puppet oligarchs. While Athens would continue to be a major player on the scene for the next couple centuries, it would never again reach the height of power and prestige it once had before the war. The rise of Thebes in the 5th century BCE, and Macedon in the 4th, ultimately doomed Athens back into obsolescence. It's only the capital of modern Greece today because after the establishment of an independent Greek nation in 1834, the people looked back on its classical prestige with nostalgia, though it needed quite a bit of restoration to make it suitable for such an important position again.

Design notes, you know, as much as I love Assassin's Creed, it gets really annoying when it becomes so popular that it drowns out any independent reference images. Like I go to find Athenian hoplites, and all I get is an onslaught of screenshots from the game-who-shant-be-named. They're not bad depictions, especially when compared to how they do the Immortals dirty, and I mean it's not like this is an Assassin's Creed specific problem. 300 did the same thing to the Spartans, and Braveheart did the same thing to medieval Scots. But still, it can be annoying to have to shove all this popular culture material out of the way to find actual historical references. This can even happen when I'm trying to research the biographies of certain figures and realize halfway through the article they're just summarizing a distinct mission from one of the games and didn't bother to look deeper than that. I could barely find any references to Athens even favoring blue, though in all fairness I think this is more a symptom of the requirements of game design or movie adaptation. In real life, in a world where men were expected to buy their own armor and weapons, they didn't really bother too much with their nation's "brand" as it were. A helmet was a helmet and a spear was a spear, regardless of if it was red or blue. I think the tendency to depict Athenians in blue stems from modern Greece associating itself with those distinctive colors, and therefore we retroactively assign those colors to Athens since as we discussed, modern Greece tends to consider that the golden age. I couldn't find anything confirming that for certain though, so take my hunch with a grain of salt.

Description
Strap in y'all this is a long one.

The Greek city-state of Athens is often touted as the birthplace of democracy, the first nation in Western society to institute a government run and elected by the people. The American grade school curriculum will make it sound as though this was a utopian golden age of prosperity and opportunity, but as we'll see later, this is a half-truth at best. First, let's start at the beginning: archaeology tells us that the area has been inhabited by humans since at least the Stone Age, but actual continuous settlement didn't begin until around 3000 BCE. So sorry, conspiracy theorists, there was no "Athens" to go to war with Atlantis 11,000 years ago. There wasn't even a Greece that far back, or Proto-Indo-European even, for that matter. Of course, the real origins of Athens are still obscured by legend. Usually, tradition places a half-man, half-serpent named Cecrops as the first king of Athens, ruling sometime around the mid-16th century BCE. It is said that the gods Poseidon and Athena held a race for possession of the city, and while Poseidon won the race and even literally staked his claim by cracking open the earth with his trident, Athena countered by… planting an olive tree. A council was called by Zeus, and Cecrops ultimately decided that no no, tree is definitely better than the saltwater spring Poseidon created, and thus made her the patron goddess of the city now called "Athens" in her honor. Of course, if there's one thing Greek mythology teaches us, aside from Zeus can't keep it in his pants, it's that it is never ever beneficial to one's health to piss off the god of the sea. The plain of Attica was flooded by the god, but I guess it eventually receded so… it's all good? Interestingly, the spring Poseidon created is named for an alternative founding figure named Erechtheus, who is also a half-man, half-serpent demigod, mentioned in the Iliad. This is either evidence of an archaic myth split into separate traditions by later authors, or of the handiwork of our reptilian overlords. You decide.

The centerpiece of the city, the acropolis, got its start as a Mycenaean fortress, sometime between the 14th and 13th centuries BCE. The hero Theseus, of minotaur-slaying fame, is said to have become king of a united Attica around this same time. Afterwards, though, Athens's true nature as a minor city-state really shines through. Records of the city are scant and other major powers didn't really seem to bother dealing with a stuck-up middle-of-nowhere town like Athens. It's not even particularly clear when Athens abolished its monarchy and instituted its specific brand of democracy. A man named Codrus is usually stated to be the last king of Athens, his reign ending in the 11th century BCE, but sources can't seem to agree if the people who succeeded him counted as kings or as Archons. An "Archon" was actually one of three positions in the Athenian government: the Basileus, who oversaw religious administration, the Polemarch, who handled foreign policy and the army, and the "Eponymous Archon", who as far as I can tell was basically just smiled and waved on behalf of the city. These were usually filled by wealthy aristocrats, conveniently voted in by wealthy aristocrats, conveniently the only ones who could do the actual voting. Originally this was a position held for life, then in 753 BCE the term was restricted to ten years, then again in 683 BCE it was shortened to just one year.

So where does the actual rule by the people come in? How did Athenian democracy work? Well… it was complicated, and a little strange. My summary will be an extremely simplified version, and keep in mind that Athenian democracy had an obnoxious tendency to change up its rules depending on the time period, so feel free to add to or correct me below. As I understand it, the main body of the Athenian government was the Ecclesia, a general assembly which, after the reforms of Solon in 594 BCE, was open to any male citizen who wished to participate. Here the participants could voice any of their concerns according to the daily agenda set by the Boule, a council of a few hundred judges randomly elected by drawing lots between former Archons. Of course, the position of Archon was only open to citizens of the two wealthiest classes of Athenian society, so the poorer landowners would never get the opportunity to serve on the actual governing body. That's of course to say nothing of the entire female population, folks who didn't own land and were stuck in crippling debt, immigrants from foreign lands, or Athens's enormous slave population. None of these people were even permitted to participate in the Ecclesia, and thus never had their voices heard. In total, only 10 to 20% of Athens's population was actually allowed to be heard. Man, a republic that claimed to represent the voice of the people while actually being built on slavery, misogyny, hypocrisy, and is rigged to keep a handful of wealthy families in power at the expense of the laboring majority? That sure does sound like it sucks. I mean could you imagine living under a system like that? Could you even ha ha… heh eh… hhhhhhhgh…

After emerging as a major player following the repulsion of the Achaemenid Empire from Greece in the 5th century BCE, Athens became a naval superpower. They established the Delian League, a confederation of islands in the Aegean which on paper was to protect one another from Persian influence, and in reality was to line Athens's pockets. The League's treasury was moved from Delos to Athens in 454 BCE, and Athens essentially bullied its "companions" into submission. It was this resource it milked to wage war against Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. This was how, even under Spartan siege, the famous general and statesman Pericles was able to keep Athens nice and cozy and stocked full of nerds such as Hippocrates, Thucydides, and Socrates. Of course, it only served to prolong the inevitable. Athens was eventually overpowered by Sparta by 404 BCE, and the enemy stocked the Athenian government full of puppet oligarchs. While Athens would continue to be a major player on the scene for the next couple centuries, it would never again reach the height of power and prestige it once had before the war. The rise of Thebes in the 5th century BCE, and Macedon in the 4th, ultimately doomed Athens back into obsolescence. It's only the capital of modern Greece today because after the establishment of an independent Greek nation in 1834, the people looked back on its classical prestige with nostalgia, though it needed quite a bit of restoration to make it suitable for such an important position again.

Design notes, you know, as much as I love Assassin's Creed, it gets really annoying when it becomes so popular that it drowns out any independent reference images. Like I go to find Athenian hoplites, and all I get is an onslaught of screenshots from the game-who-shant-be-named. They're not bad depictions, especially when compared to how they do the Immortals dirty, and I mean it's not like this is an Assassin's Creed specific problem. 300 did the same thing to the Spartans, and Braveheart did the same thing to medieval Scots. But still, it can be annoying to have to shove all this popular culture material out of the way to find actual historical references. This can even happen when I'm trying to research the biographies of certain figures and realize halfway through the article they're just summarizing a distinct mission from one of the games and didn't bother to look deeper than that. I could barely find any references to Athens even favoring blue, though in all fairness I think this is more a symptom of the requirements of game design or movie adaptation. In real life, in a world where men were expected to buy their own armor and weapons, they didn't really bother too much with their nation's "brand" as it were. A helmet was a helmet and a spear was a spear, regardless of if it was red or blue. I think the tendency to depict Athenians in blue stems from modern Greece associating itself with those distinctive colors, and therefore we retroactively assign those colors to Athens since as we discussed, modern Greece tends to consider that the golden age. I couldn't find anything confirming that for certain though, so take my hunch with a grain of salt.