THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS:
The site of the Athenian Acropolis dominates the surrounding city. The cliffs leading up to it are fairly steep and it is an obviously defensible location. As such, it was originally, in Mycaenean times (Late Bronze Age) a citadel where the local king had his home and fortress. From here he could control the surrounding countryside. Later (in the Geometric Greek period)_it became the center of an expanding city and was where many of the city’s religious buildings were located, particularly the Temple of Athena, dedicated to the main patron of the city of Athens. As the city grew it required its own defensive walls below the Acropolis, so the original, defensive function of the Acropolis was abandoned.
When the Persians invaded Greece, after they defeated the Spartans at Thermopylae, they captured Athens and destroyed the Acropolis around 480 BC. The Athenians, despite their loss of their city, continued fighting the Persians. A reluctant alliance between the previously hostile cities of Sparta and Athens finally drove the Persians out and what was left of Athens was retaken. This victory of a rather small, resource-poor nation of squabbling city states over the strongest and richest empire of the time is an amazing feat. It can partly be attributed to the superior training of the Greek troops, but mainly it is due to good luck on the Greeks’ part.
The Greek city states, always nationalistic to a fault, became even more so after their surprising victory over the Persians. Ultimately, this nationalism would fuel the constant squabbling among the proud city states of Greece that meant that Greece would never be a great Empire. But in the immediate aftermath of the Persian War, Athens became a proud, strong world power. Under the leadership of Pericles, the Acropolis was rebuilt using money pilfered from the Delian League which Athens had formed as a united front against future Persian aggression but used for its own self-interest. Rebuilding began around 450 BC. Pericles’ patronage of great artists and architects, namely Phidias, Ictinus and Callicrates, meant that the new Acropolis would be one of the greatest complexes ever built. The architecture of most of the buildings (excepting the interesting but awkward Erechtheum) is planned to mathematical perfection, and the sculpture was carried out by a man who was responsible for one of the wonders of the ancient world (Phidias, who made the Statue of Zeus for Olympia).
Given that each building within the Acropolis—the Propylaea (entrance), the Parthenon (dedicated to Athena), the Temple of Athena Nike (Victorious Athena, in honor of the defeat of the Persians)—is nearly perfect in form, it is surprising that the overall effect is a somewhat haphazard arrangement of buildings that all seem oriented in different directions. This may partly simply reflect the asymmetry of the hill it is built on. It also reflects the fact that many of the buildings were rebuilt on sites that were sacred from long before, so the location, orientation and, perhaps, the size of each building may have been limited by religious considerations. This is most noticeable in the odd little building called the Erechtheum which seems almost to be three or four separate temples all tumbled together.
After its rebuilding, the Acropolis became not only the religious, but also the nationalistic focus of Athens, symbolizing its Imperial power. Next to the Acropolis was the Aeropagus where the Athenian men (those with money!) debated and decided political issues. Below the Acropolis was the Agora, the market which was the economic center of Athens. Together, these three centers were the heart of the ancient city, uniting commerce, Democracy (of a rather oligarchic form) and religion. To complete the picture, on the other side of the Acropolis from the Agora an amphitheater was built where plays of many of the famous Greek dramatists (Sophocles, Aristophanes, etc) would have been first performed.
Athens’ pride (perhaps even hubris) led to an unnecessary conflict with rival Sparta which Sparta eventually won. Athens declined somewhat after this, but was still recognized as a center of learning and culture well into Roman times. Repeated invasions by Goths and other Germanic and "Scythian" tribes around AD 220 devastated all of Greece, including Athens. Finally, the closing of all the Philosophical schools in AD 529 by the Emperor Justinian, who saw them as Pagan leftovers in the increasingly Christian Roman Empire, took away the last reason for Athens’ reputation, turning it into a backwater. Later Muslim rulers, the Ottoman Turks, used the Parthenon for storing gunpowder. When a Venetian bombardment hit this powder, the Acropolis was severely damaged.
The Greeks won their independence from the Turks in 1833, and in their revival of nationalistic fervor, Athens was made their capital and the Acropolis rebuilt in its present form. Unfortunately, many of the best decorations, including the marble friezes of the Parthenon, wound up in British hands and are missing from the reconstructed site. Currently, the greatest problem facing the Acropolis is damage by the rather horrible smog that enshrouds Athens.
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