The citadel of Athens was the Acropolis, or “high city,” an almost impregnable outcrop that rises one hundred and fifty meters above sea level. There is evidence of human occupation as early as 5,000 B.C., but we hear little of the place during the age of the Mycenaean monarchs.
The Athenians held that they belonged to an ethnic group called the Ionians, who had always lived in Greece (the word derives from Ion, a legendary king of Athens). Not long after the traditional date of the fall of Troy towards the end of the second millennium, another group called the Dorians, Greek speakers but with their own cultural customs and dialect, came down from the north and settled in Greece. Under pressure from these newcomers, some Ionians emigrated to Asia Minor where they settled and prospered. Athens argued that she was “the eldest land of Ionia” and felt some ongoing responsibility for her cousins overseas.
How many of these beliefs are true cannot now be told and we have no choice but to open our narrative with instructive fiction rather than irretrievable fact.
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The future of Athens was determined by a goddess, Pallas Athena, and by a king called Theseus, whose legendary character traits express, for good or ill, Athenian identity.
It was as well not to cross Athena’s path. From the moment of her birth she emanated power. Her father, Zeus, had sex with Metis, the divine personification of Wisdom, but then had second thoughts. Fearing that their child would grow up to be more intelligent than he was himself, he opened his mouth wide and swallowed Metis up. Nine months later he experienced a raging—literally, it would turn out, a splitting—migraine. He ordered his son Hephaestus, god of metalwork, to strike his head with an ax, hoping that this would relieve the pain. The divine blacksmith obeyed and out jumped Athena from the crack in his skull, adult and fully armed.
She was a perpetual virgin and tomboy. As goddess of war, she could vanquish in combat her half brother Ares (the Roman Mars), lord of battles who delighted in the slaughter of men and the sack of towns. However, Athena took no pleasure in fighting and preferred to settle disputes by discussion and mediation. She patronized crafts and the making of clothes.
She is unique among the Olympians in having a city named after her. She regarded Athens as hers following a quarrel with the sea god and brother of Zeus, Poseidon. As a mark of possession, he thrust his trident into the Acropolis and a spring of seawater sprang out from the rock (it still flows today). Later, Athena laid her own claim in a more peaceful manner, by planting the first olive tree alongside the spring. A furious Poseidon challenged her to a duel, but Zeus insisted on peaceful arbitration. A court of Olympian gods awarded the prize to Athena. Poseidon resentfully sent a tsunami to flood Attica, so she took up residence in the city and kept it under watchful guard.
From early times the Athenians welcomed the goddess with open arms. She was foster mother to one of the first kings, the semi-divine Erechtheus. From his vantage point in the eighth century, Homer celebrated
the Athenians from their splendid citadel in the realm of the magnanimous Erechtheus, a child of the fruitful Earth who was brought up by Athena Daughter of Zeus and established by her in her own rich shrine, where bulls and rams are offered to him yearly in due season by Athenian youths.
The Athenians learned from their tutelary goddess that military force was an invaluable arm of policy, but that it should be tempered by metis, wisdom or, in its less complete sense, ingenuity and craftiness.
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Aegeus, legendary king of Athens during the Mycenaean age, was childless, but on his travels he enjoyed a one-night stand with an attractive princess. He suspected, or perhaps just hoped, that he had made her pregnant, so he hid a sword and a pair of sandals under a rock. Before leaving, he told the woman that if she gave birth to a son she should show him where they were when he grew up, and tell him to take them with him to Athens.
A baby duly arrived, whom she named Theseus. When a young adult he learned about the tokens from his mother, who gave him Aegeus’s message. He did as he was told and lifted up the rock with ease. He refused to take ship to Athens, although it was the safest method of travel. Instead, looking for adventure, he set off by land to Athens. En route he sought out and destroyed a number of dangerous opponents. The first of them wielded a large club, which Theseus carried about with him ever afterwards, rather as Heracles, whom he greatly admired, invariably wore the skin of a lion he had killed. Next came Sinis the Pine-bender, who tied travelers to two pines he had bent down to the ground; he then let them go, tearing the victims apart.
Feeling randy, Theseus chased after Sinis’s pretty little daughter, who had very sensibly run away. Plutarch reports that he
looked for her high and low, but she had disappeared into a place which was overgrown with shrubs and rushes and wild asparagus. The girl in her childish innocence was imploring the plants to hide her; and promising that if they saved her, she would never trample them down or burn them. Theseus called her and gave her his word that he would not harm her but treat her with respect—and she came out.
Once he had caught her, he took her to his bed. After she had borne him a son, he married her off to some nonentity. Throughout his life Theseus was a sexual predator.
After this diversion he resumed his Heraclean labors. Next on his list was the terrifying Crommyonian sow; some said she was not a pig but a depraved murderess who was “nicknamed the Sow because of her life and habits.” Either way, Theseus killed her. He then dispatched the robber Sciron. His modus operandi had been to stick out his feet to passersby on a narrow cliff path and to insist they wash them. While they were doing so he tipped them into the sea. Of other challengers the most alarming was Procrustes, who forced travelers to fit onto his iron bed; if they were too tall he cut off their legs and if too short stretched them as on a rack until they were the right size.
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At long last Theseus made it to Athens. He was unknown to anyone there. His tunic was unusually long and touched his feet. His hair was plaited and, according to an ancient commentator, “nice-looking.” He passed a temple construction site and the builders jeered at him. What, they bantered, was a marriageable girl doing wandering about on her own? Theseus said nothing, but took the oxen from the men’s cart and flung them over the temple’s half-built roof. He was not a man to suffer fools gladly.
Strangers in ancient Greece were routinely given a hospitable welcome and the king offered Theseus a meal in his palace on the Acropolis. His wife, the celebrated witch Medea—back from the Black Sea with the Argonauts—knew who Theseus was. Fearful that her position would be threatened by the arrival of a son, she persuaded the aged and infirm Aegeus to have this potentially troublesome foreign guest poisoned at dinner.
For his part the young man thought it best to reveal his identity to his father tactfully; when the meat was served he drew his sword as if to cut off a piece, hoping that the king would recognize it. Aegeus saw the weapon and immediately acknowledged his son’s identity. We may assume that the food was removed. After beating off some competitors for the succession to the throne, Theseus became heir apparent. Medea left town.
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Not long afterwards collectors of human tribute arrived from Crete. Largest of the Greek islands, it was the center of a great maritime civilization that flourished from about 2,700 to the fifteenth century. Modern archaeologists have called it Minoan after the mythical king of Crete, Minos.
His son died a mysterious but violent death while on a visit to Athens, possibly at the hands of Aegeus. Minos was enraged with grief. He fought and won a war of revenge against Athens and in compensation for his loss demanded the handover every nine years of seven young men and seven young women, chosen by lot. They were sent to Crete and imprisoned in a labyrinth where a monster half man and half bull lived, called the Minotaur. He was the product of an extramarital liaison between Minos’s wife, Pasiphae, and a white bull with whom she had become infatuated. He killed all the captives.