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.

Themistocles seems to have realised that for the Greeks to survive the coming onslaught required there to be a Greek navy which could hope to face up to the Persian navy, and he therefore attempted to persuade the Athenians to build such a fleet.

The Athenians attempted to curb the growing power of Macedonia, but were limited by the outbreak of the Social War.

As a result of this victory, Sparta defeated the Athenians and so attempted to carve out her own empire in the Aegean.

Mindarus was forced to flee to a nearby beach, and vicious fighting ensued on land as the Athenians attempted to drag off the Spartan ships.

It is possible that the Athenians had attempted to negotiate with the Persians previously.

Even then the generals refused to order the fortification of the promontory, and Demosthenes was similarly rebuffed when he attempted to appeal directly to the troops and subordinate commanders ; only when the boredom of waiting out the storm overcame the Athenians did they set to work building fortifications.

Landing in great force on a weakly defended point, the Athenians swamped the beachfront defenses and moved inland, harassing the Spartans with missile fire whenever they attempted to come to grips with the Athenian hoplites.

When the Peloponnesian fleet began moving along the south shore of the Corinthian gulf, however, aiming to cross over to Acarnania, the Athenians followed along the north shore and attacked them once they passed out of the Gulf into the open sea and attempted to cross from the south to the north.

" For some reason, he chose not to obey this order, and attempted to implement a stratagem that he thought would give the Athenians a victory.

There is a story that Protagoras, too, was forced to flee and that the Athenians burned his books.

The Athenians attacked first, believing themselves to be the stronger and more experienced army, and after some unexpectedly strong resistance, the Argives pushed back the Syracusan left wing, causing the rest to flee.

The fighting was evenly contested for a great length of time, but towards evening the arrival of Alcibiades with Athenian reinforcements tipped the balance in favor of the Athenians, and the Peloponnesians were forced to flee back to their base at Abydos, suffering heavy losses along the way.

The age limit, the same as that for office holders but ten years older than that required for participation in the assembly, gave the courts a certain standing in relation to the assembly ; for the Athenians of the court were not only older, but were wiser, too.

Aeschylus's work was so respected by the Athenians, that after his death his were the only tragedies allowed to be restaged in subsequent competitions.

In 1693 Morosini resumed command, but his only acts were to refortify the castle of Aegina, which he had demolished during the Cretan war in 1655, the cost of upkeep being paid as long as the war lasted, by the Athenians, and to place it and Salamis under Malipiero as Governor.

The dead of Marathon were awarded by the Athenians the special honor of being the only ones who were buried where they died instead of the main Athenian cemetery at Keramikos.

The Lacedaemonian citizens ( Sparta ) were renowned for their lifelong combat training and almost mythical military prowess, while their greatest adversaries, the Athenians, were exempted from service only after the 60th year of their lives.

All Julian could do was sit it out in Naissus, the city of Constantine's birth, waiting for news and writing letters to various cities in Greece justifying his actions ( of which only the letter to the Athenians has survived in its entirety ).

For a time during this conflict, Athens controlled not only Megara but also Boeotia ; at its end, however, in the face of a massive Spartan invasion of Attica, the Athenians ceded the lands they had won on the Greek mainland, and Athens and Sparta recognized each other's right to control their respective alliance systems.

At the start of the war, the Athenians had prudently put aside some money and 100 ships that were to be used only as a last resort.

" Examining the trial of Socrates, he argues that " his crime, namely, the independence of his thought, rendered a service not only to humanity but to his country " as " it served to prepare a new morality and faith that the Athenians needed ".

The origins of this sport is claimed to be derived from the Athenians when Themistocles, marching his army against the Persians, chanced upon two cocks fighting and charged his army saying “ Behold, these do not fight for their household gods, for the monuments of their ancestors, for glory, for liberty or the safety of their children, but only because one will not give way to the other .” Inspired, his army defeated the Persians and after ordained by law, cockfighting was annually practiced as " an institution partly religious and partly political at Athens, and continued there for the purpose of improving the seeds of valour in the minds of the Athenian youth ".

It seems that the story of the Golden Fleece had little resonance for Athenians of the Classic age, for only two representations on Attic painted wares of the fifth century have been identified, a krater at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a kylix in the Vatican collections.

The Athenians marched on Thebes and conquered the city but inflicted no additional damage, taking only what they came for, the five bodies.

Pausanias tells us that he forbade the sacrificing of any living creatures to the gods, as well as any sort of other offering, only allowing cakes formed into the shape of an ox with horns, called by the Athenians Pelanous, which signifies an ox.

When the servile Athenians, feigning to share the emperor's displeasure with the sophist, pulled down a statue which they had erected to him, Favorinus remarked that if only Socrates also had had a statue at Athens, he might have been spared the hemlock.

Without sufficient funds to build another fleet, the Athenians could only wait as Lysander sailed westward across the Aegean towards their city.

Pericles and his mistress Aspasia associated with and had not only great Athenians but also foreigners from within Greece and even outside Greece.

When Xenocrates was unable to pay the new tax on metics ( foreign residents ) c. 322 BC, and the Athenians threatened him with slavery, he was only saved ( according to one story ) when Demetrius purchased his debt and paid his tax.

The games were divided into games for Athenians only, and games for Athenians and any other Greeks who wanted to participate.

These games in which only the Athenians were allowed to participate were somewhat different.

He is happy to discuss their plight with them and meanwhile one of them has a brilliant idea — the birds, he says, should stop flying about like idiots and instead should build themselves a great city in the sky, since this would not only allow them to lord it over men, it would also enable them to blockade the Olympian gods in the same way that the Athenians had recently starved the island of Melos into submission.

Athenians could only reach it through Boeotia, enemy territory ( 189 ).

Though the Athenians have at this time joined the Theban forces, they were still outnumbered by the Spartans ; their combined forces numbering only at 1, 700 cavalry, 12, 000 hoplites, and around 5, 000 light infantry.

Herodotus records that 6, 400 Persian bodies were counted on the battlefield ; the Athenians lost only 192 men ,, though these numbers are highly doubtful.

The Athenians counter that only the strong have a right to indulge in hope ; the weak Melians are hopelessly outnumbered.

In the harbour, the Athenians were successful, losing only three ships while the Syracusans lost eleven.

In the Constitution of the Athenians ( Athenaion Politeia ), Aristotle uses politeia for eleven states of the Athenian government up to his own time, from the absolute monarchy of Ionia and the tyranny of the Thirty to the democratic Assembly and selection by lot of Pericles's time and his own.

Plutarch mentions that the Athenians saw the phantom of King Theseus, the mythical hero of Athens, leading the army in full battle gear in the charge against the Persians, and indeed he was depicted in the mural of the Stoa Poikile fighting for the Athenians, along with the twelve Olympian gods and other heroes.

* 430 BC: The Plague of Athens resulted in the deaths of many thousands of Athenians, including leading citizens such as Pericles.

This was held between " the governing body and the few ," not before the people, leading the Athenians to imply that the Melian elite was afraid that the people might support the Athenian position.

On the right of these lines, leading the advance into the gulf, were the twenty best and fastest ships in the fleet, which had been assigned the job of preventing the Athenians from escaping when the Peloponnesians attacked.

Soon after this battle, the Athenians and Corinthians fought again at the Battle of Potidaea, leading to a formal declaration of war from Sparta.

* 430 BCE: The Plague of Athens resulted in the deaths of many thousands of Athenians, including leading citizens such as Pericles.