Copyright © 2016 by Anthony Everitt
Maps copyright © 2016 by David Lindroth, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Everitt, Anthony, author.
Title: The rise of Athens: the story of the world’s greatest civilization / Anthony Everitt.
Description: First edition. | New York: Random House, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016014843| ISBN 9780812994582 | ISBN 9780812994599 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Athens (Greece)—History.
Classification: LCC DF285 .E94 2016 | DDC 938/.5—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016014843
Ebook ISBN 9780812994599
randomhousebooks.com
Cover design: Anna Bauer Carr
Cover painting: Leo von Klenze,
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Contents
Three’s Company
Chapter 1: National Hero
Chapter 2: A State of War
Chapter 3: The Persian Mule
The Invention of Democracy
Chapter 4: The Shaking-Off
Chapter 5: Friend of the Poor
Chapter 6: Charioteers of the Soul
Chapter 7: Inventing Democracy
The Persian Threat
Chapter 8: Eastern Raiders
Chapter 9: Fox as Hedgehog
Chapter 10: Invasion
Chapter 11: “The Acts of Idiots”
Chapter 12: “O Divine Salamis”
The Empire Builders
Chapter 13: League of Nations
Chapter 14: The Falling-Out
Chapter 15: The Kindly Ones
Chapter 16: “Crowned with Violets”
The Great War
Chapter 17: The Prisoners on the Island
Chapter 18: The Man Who Knew Nothing
Chapter 19: Downfall
Chapter 20: The End of Democracy?
A Long Farewell
Chapter 21: Sparta’s Turn
Chapter 22: Chaeronea—“Fatal to Liberty”
Chapter 23: Afterword—“A God-Forsaken Hole”
PREFACE
As a small child I devoured a Victorian storybook that told tales of Greek and Roman mythology. I read every word, except for the sickly sweet poems that were scattered across its pages.
My paternal grandmother noticed my interest in the ancient world and bought me three Penguin Classics, then a new publishing enterprise. She chose E. V. Rieu’s versions of Homer’s
For a span of two hundred years in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the ancient Athenians pioneered astonishing advances in almost every field of human endeavor. They invented the only real or complete democracy (the word itself is Greek) that has ever existed outside the classical age. Whereas we merely elect representatives to act on our behalf, citizens then met in assembly and took every important decision themselves. (I need to enter a reservation here: the franchise was limited to adult males and so excluded two large social groups—women and slaves.)
The Athenians believed in reason, and its power to solve the mysteries of the human condition and of nature. They established the concepts and language of philosophy, and raised issues with which today’s thinkers still wrestle. They pioneered the arts of tragedy and comedy, architecture and sculpture. They invented history as the accurate narration and interpretation of past events. With their fellow-Greeks they developed mathematics and the natural sciences.
