This settlement was about 8km inland from the Saronic Gulf, in the centre of the Cephisian Plain, a fertile dale surrounded by hills. To the east lies Mount Hymettus, to the north Mount Pentelicus and to the west Mount Aegaleus. The River Cephisus flowed in ancient times through the plain to the gulf, passing slightly to the west of the Acropolis. A ridge runs down the centre of the plain, of which Mount Lycabettus, outside the city to the east, is the highest point.
Ancient Athens occupied a very small area compared to the sprawling metropolis of modern Athens. The walled ancient city encompassed an area measuring about 2km from east to west and slightly less than that from north to south, although at its peak the city had suburbs extending well beyond these walls.
The Acropolis was just south of the centre of this walled area. The Agora, the commercial and social centre of the city, was about 400m north of the Acropolis, in what is now the Monastiraki district. The hill of the Pnyx, where the Athenian Assembly met, lay at the western end of the city. The most important religious site in Athens was the Temple of Athena the Virgin, known to us as the Parthenon, which stood atop the Acropolis, where its evocative ruins still stand. Two other major religious sites, the Temple of Hephaestus (which is still largely intact) and the Temple of Olympian Zeus or Olympeion (once the largest temple in
Greece but now in ruins) also lay within the city walls. At its peak, in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, Athens and its suburbs probably had about 300,000 inhabitants. Of these a large number were slaves or foreign residents (known as metoikoi or metics), who had no political rights. Perhaps only 10 or 20% of the population were adult male citizens, eligible to meet and vote in the Assembly and be elected to office. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC the city began to lose population as Greeks migrated to the newly-conquered Hellenistic empire to the east.
The Acropolis of Athens was inhabited from Neolithic times. By 1400 BC Athens had become a powerful centre of the Mycenaean civilisation. Unlike other Mycenaean centres, such as Mycenae and Pylos,
Athens was not sacked and abandoned at the time of the Doric invasion of about 1200 BC, and the Athenians always maintained that they were "pure" Ionians with no Doric element. However, Athens lost most of its power and probably dwindled to a small hill fortress once again. By the 8th century BC Athens had re-emerged, by virtue of its central location in the Greek world, its secure stronghold on the Acropolis and its access to the sea, which gave it a natural advantage over potential rivals such as Thebes and Sparta. From early in the 1st millennium BC,
ancient Athens was a sovereign city-state, ruled at first by kings. The kings stood at the head of a land-owning aristocracy known as the Eupatridae (the "well-born"), whose instrument of government was a Council which met on the Hill of Ares, called the Areopagus. This body appointed the chief city officials, the archons and the polemarch (commander-in-chief).
During this period
ancient Athens succeeded in bringing the other towns of
Attica under its rule. This process of synoikia bringing together in one home - created the largest and wealthiest state on the Greek mainland, but it also created a larger class of people excluded from political life by the nobility. By the 7th century BC social unrest had become widespread, and the Areopagus appointed Draco to draft a strict new lawcode (hence "draconian"). When this failed, they appointed Solon, with a mandate to create a new constitution (594 BC).
