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.

It was said to have been named after the Greek town of Aegae, or after Aegea, a queen of the Amazons who died in the sea, or Aigaion, the " sea goat ", another name of Briareus, one of the archaic Hecatonchires, or, especially among the Athenians, Aegeus, the father of Theseus, who drowned himself in the sea when he thought his son had died.

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.

To the Athenians it seems what had to be guarded against was not incompetence but any tendency to use office as a way of accumulating ongoing power.

Many Athenians prominent earlier in the century would have lost citizenship, had this law applied to them: Cleisthenes, the founder of democracy, had a non-Athenian mother, and the mothers of Cimon and Themistocles were not Greek at all, but Thracian.

Xanthippus, the Athenian commander at Mycale, had furiously rejected this ; the Ionian cities were originally Athenian colonies, and the Athenians, if no-one else, would protect the Ionians.

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.

After the Persian crisis had subsided, the Athenians incorporated many of the unfinished temple's architectural members ( unfluted column drums, triglyphs, metopes, etc.

Herodotus had no Athenian victories to record after the initial success, and the fact that Themistocles was able to carry his proposal to devote the surplus funds of the state to the building of so large a fleet seems to imply that the Athenians were themselves convinced that a supreme effort was necessary.

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 Athenians and Eretrians had succeeded in capturing and burning Sardis, but were then forced to retreat with heavy losses.

A stalemate ensued for five days, before the Athenians decided to attack the Persians because, under the cover of night, some of the Persian fleet had set sail for Athens.

Cleomenes's attempts to restore Isagoras to Athens ended in a debacle, but fearing the worst, the Athenians had by this point already sent an embassy to Artaphernes in Sardis, to request aid from the Persian Empire.

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.

This passage is undoubtedly problematic ; the Athenians had little to gain by attacking before the Spartans arrived, and there is no real evidence of this rotating generalship.

When Datis surrendered and was ready for retreat, the Ionians climbed the trees and gave the Athenians the signal that the cavalry had left.

From a strategic point of view, the Athenians had some disadvantages at Marathon.

In order to face the Persians in battle, the Athenians had had to summon all available hoplites ; and even then they were still probably outnumbered at least 2 to 1.

The Athenians initially had no need to seek battle, since they had managed to confine the Persians to the plain of Marathon.

Tactically, hoplites were vulnerable to attacks by cavalry, and since the Persians had substantial numbers of cavalry, this made any offensive maneuver by the Athenians even more of a risk, and thus reinforced the defensive strategy of the Athenians.

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

However, he successfully reasserted his authority in the Aegean by defeating an alliance of Thebans and Athenians at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE, while in the same year, Philip destroyed Amfissa because the residents had illegally cultivated part of the Crisaian plain which belonged to Delphi.

W. Liebeschuetz argues that the Athenians were " wrong and deluded " because of their lack of morality in Melos ' destruction but also that " the Athenians were also perfectly right that the Melians ' own interest required that they should yield to the Athenians since they had not the strength to resist successfully.

It was unsuccessfully besieged by the Athenians in 432 BC and again, after seceding from the Macedonian kingdom, in 410 BC by Archelaus I who successfully captured the city and transferred its population further inland, possibly at the site of modern Kitros ; however, the old site was re-peopled in the early 4th century.

Of all the causes of defection, that connected with arrears of tribute and vessels, and with failure of service, was the chief ; for the Athenians were very severe and exacting, and made themselves offensive by applying the screw of necessity to men who were not used to and in fact not disposed for any continuous labor.

Athenians decided to stop the construction of the Olympieion which was related with the tyrant Peisistratus and his sons and instead used the Piraeus limestone destined for the Olympieion to build the Older Parthenon.

Especially during the Fourth Century BC, after the restoration of democracy from oligarchical coups, the Athenians used the drawing of lots for selecting government officers in order to counteract what the Athenians acutely saw as a tendency toward oligarchy in government if a professional governing class were allowed to use their skills for their own benefit.

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.

This may have been triggered by Miltiades's prosecution, and used by the Athenians to try and stop such power-games amongst the noble families.

After decapitating the beast, Theseus used the string to escape the Labyrinth and managed to escape with all of the young Athenians and Ariadne as well as her younger sister Phaedra.

The Athenians used several calendars, each for different purposes.

Though notably, while Athenians tended to refer to metics by their name and deme of residence ( the same democratic scheme used for citizens ), on their tombstones freeborn metics who died in Athens preferred to name the cities from which they had come and of which they were citizens still.

The Athenians considered their dialect as uncultured and used the word σόλοικος to refer to incorrect speech, hence the English word solecism.

It survives on potsherds used by Athenians when voting for the death penalty.

Plutarch was of the view that the Athenians were so angered by this cynical manoeuvring that the ostracism was never to be used again.

* Cranaus: A mythological king of Athens, his name is used as an epithet for Athenians ( line 123 ).

He argues that the Melian Dialogue was not humanitarian at all because of the brutality the Athenians used against Melos.

The Boeotians constructed a strange device, which according to the description in Thucydides ( 4. 100 ) seems to be a kind of flamethrower, and used this weapon to set fire to Delium and chase away the Athenians.

The Attic calendar was an exclusively local phenomenon, used to regulate the internal affairs of the Athenians and with little relevance to the outside world.

Athenians lived in fact under a number of simultaneous calendars, used to fix days for different purposes.

In another ' stratagem ', Polyaenus suggests that Philip deliberately prolonged the battle, to take advantage of the rawness of the Athenian troops ( his own veterans being more used to fatigue ), and delayed his main attack until the Athenians were exhausted.

During this period, the word " democracy " ( Greek: δημοκρατία – " rule by the people ") was first used by the Athenians to define their new system of government.

To preserve these principles the Athenians used lot for selecting officials.

Under the pre-existing legal status, according to the account of the Constitution of the Athenians attributed to Aristotle, debtors unable to repay their creditors would surrender their land to them, then becoming hektemoroi, i. e. serfs who cultivated what used to be their own land and gave one sixth of produce to their creditors.