The Acropolis had been scheduled for the treatment too, but apparently it was to take place at the time of the full moon when the Athenians themselves, out of respect for the natural beauty of the occasion, were wont to forgo their own usual nocturnal illumination.

Many illustrious Athenians, including Cimon, Miltiades, Alcibiades and the historian Thucydides, traced their descent from Ajax.

The identification of Ajax with the family of Aeacus was chiefly a matter which concerned the Athenians, after Salamis had come into their possession, on which occasion Solon is said to have inserted a line in the Iliad ( 2. 557 – 558 ), for the purpose of supporting the Athenian claim to the island.

Hipparchus, brother of the tyrant Hippias, was killed by Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who were subsequently honored by the Athenians for their alleged restoration of Athenian freedom.

* In 406 BC, after years of defeats in the wake of the annihilation of their vast invasion force in Sicily, the Athenians at last won a naval victory at Arginusae over the Spartans.

It does seem clear that possession of slaves allowed even poorer Athenians — owning a few slaves was by no means equated with wealth — to devote more of their time to political life.

The victorious Roman general, Publius Cornelius Sulla, left the Athenians their lives and did not sell them into slavery ; he also restored the previous government, in 86 BC.

In some other respects the Athenians were not the old popular rulers they had been at first ; and if they had more than their fair share of service, it was correspondingly easy for them to reduce any that tried to leave the confederacy.

The Athenians also arranged for the other members of the league to pay its share of the expense in money instead of in ships and men, and for this the subject city-states had themselves to blame, their wish to get out of giving service making most leave their homes.

Around the same time, due to encouragement from influential speaker Themistocles, the Athenians also constructed the Long Walls connecting their city to the Piraeus, its port, making it effectively invulnerable to attack by land.

In fact, according to Isocrates, the Athenians and their allies lost some 20, 000 men in the expedition.

This was the Athenians ' main ( public ) reason for moving the treasury of the League from Delos to Athens, further consolidating their control over the League.

However, an understanding was definitely reached, enabling the Athenians to focus their attention on events in Greece proper.

The Athenians were preparing to make reprisals, in spite of the advice of the Delphic oracle that they should desist from attacking Aegina for thirty years, and content themselves meanwhile with dedicating a precinct to Aeacus, when their projects were interrupted by the Spartan intrigues for the restoration of Hippias.

According to accounts which vary in some of the details, in 340 BC the Byzantines and their allies the Athenians were under siege by the troops of Philip of Macedon.

Despite the fact that their actions were ultimately fruitless, the Eretrians and in particular the Athenians had earned Darius's lasting enmity, and he vowed to punish both cities.

Herodotus implies the Athenians ran the whole distance to the Persian lines, shouting their ululating war cry, " Ελελευ!

All this was evidently much to the surprise of the Persians ; "... in their minds they charged the Athenians with madness which must be fatal, seeing that they were few and yet were pressing forwards at a run, having neither cavalry nor archers ".

Indeed, based on their previous experience of the Greeks, the Persians might be excused for this ; Herodotus tells us that the Athenians at Marathon were " first to endure looking at Median dress and men wearing it, for up until then just hearing the name of the Medes caused the Hellenes to panic ".

The enemy directly in their path ... realised to their horror that Athenians, far from providing the easy pickings for their bowmen, as they had first imagined, were not going to be halted ...

The Athenians had honed their style of fighting in combat with other phalanxes, wooden shields smashing against wooden shields, iron spear tips clattering against breastplates of bronze ... in those first terrible seconds of collision, there was nothing but a pulverizing crash of metal into flesh and bone ; then the rolling of the Athenian tide over men wearing, at most, quilted jerkins for protection, and armed, perhaps, with nothing more than bows or slings.

The Athenians pursued the Persians back to their ships, and managed to capture seven ships, though the majority were able to launch successfully.

Thus the Spartans killed over 200 of the Plataean defenders " among which were 25 Athenians " according to Thucydides.

The Athenians sent 8, 000 hoplites, led by Aristides, along with 600 Plataean exiles to join the Allied army.

In 371 BC at a Panhellenic congress of the Lacedaemonian allies, he voted in support of the Athenians ' claim and joined other Greeks in voting to help Athens to recover possession of Amphipolis.

In 459 BC, Athens took advantage of a war between its neighbors Megara and Corinth, both Spartan allies, to conclude an alliance with Megara, giving the Athenians a critical foothold on the Isthmus of Corinth.

Thucydides reports that the Corinthians condemned Sparta's inactivity up to that point, warning the Spartans that if they continued to remain passive while the Athenians were energetically active, they would soon find themselves outflanked and without allies.

After the death of Pericles, the Athenians turned somewhat against his conservative, defensive strategy and to the more aggressive strategy of bringing the war to Sparta and its allies.

With winter approaching, the Athenians were then forced to withdraw into their quarters, and they spent the winter gathering allies and preparing to destroy Syracuse.

More battles ensued and again, the Syracusans and their allies defeated the Athenians.

With the treasury and emergency reserve fund of 1, 000 talents dwindling away, the Athenians were forced to demand even more tribute from her subject allies, further increasing tensions and the threat of further rebellion within the Empire.

Under Gylippus, the Syracusans and their allies were able to decisively defeat the Athenians on land ; and Gylippus encouraged the Syracusans to build a navy, which was able to defeat the Athenian fleet when they attempted to withdraw.

The Athenians, unaware that they were allies, attacked them.

The Athenians, under their general Tolmides, with 1000 hoplites plus other troops from their allies, march into Boeotia to take back the towns revolting against Athenian control.

In the ensuing Battle of Potidaea, the Athenians are victorious against Corinth and its allies.

Allied with Syracuse at the time of the fateful intervention of Athens in the west in 427, Lipara withstood the assault of Athenians and their allies.

Lysander then undertook the major project of creating a strong Spartan fleet based at Ephesus which could take on the Athenians and their allies.

Lysander was able to gain a huge fortune from his victories against the Athenians and their allies.

In his speech Alcibiades predicted ( over-optimistically, in the opinion of most historians ) that the Athenians would be able to recruit allies in the region and impose their rule on Syracuse, the most powerful city of Sicily.

* The Athenians and their Greek allies ' siege of the Macedonian ruler, Antipater, in Lamia is relieved by Leonnatus with an army of 20, 000 infantry and 1, 500 cavalry.

The people of Syracuse are ethnically Dorian ( as are the Spartans ), while the Athenians, and their allies in Sicily, are Ionian.

The Athenians and their allies, with 14, 000 men under the command of Myronides, meet the Spartans at Battle of Tanagra.

They ask their allies from the Persian Wars, including the Athenians, to help.

At Sparta, with representatives of all of Sparta's allies present, Theramenes and his colleagues negotiated the terms of the peace that ended the Peloponnesian War ; the long walls and the walls of Piraeus were pulled down, the size of the Athenian fleet was sharply limited, and Athenian foreign policy was subordinated to that of Sparta ; the treaty also stipulated that the Athenians were to use " the constitution of their ancestors ".

The Persians in the region, and their allies, made for Sestos, the strongest town in the region, and the Athenians laid siege to them there.

* Chians: Staunch allies of the Athenians, they merit a mention in prayers ( line 879 ).