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Virtue & Power

Timeline

Classical Athens Timeline

A chronology of the Athenian golden age — from the reforms that built the democracy through the age of Pericles and the disaster of the Peloponnesian War to the trial of Socrates.

In the two centuries between Solon and Aristotle, Athens invented democracy, built the Parthenon, fought the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, and produced the philosophy and drama that shaped the West.

  1. 594 BCE

    Solon's reforms lay the legal ground of the democracy.

  2. 561–510 BCE

    The tyranny of Peisistratus and his sons.

  3. 508 BCE

    Cleisthenes' reforms establish the democracy.

  4. 490 BCE

    Athenian victory over Persia at Marathon.

  5. 480–479 BCE

    Salamis and Plataea; the Persian invasion repelled.

  6. 478 BCE

    Foundation of the Delian League — the basis of the Athenian empire.

  7. 461–429 BCE

    The ascendancy of Pericles.

  8. 447–432 BCE

    The Parthenon built on the Acropolis.

  9. 431 BCE

    Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War; Pericles' Funeral Oration.

  10. 430–426 BCE

    The plague at Athens; death of Pericles (429).

  11. 415–413 BCE

    The Sicilian Expedition ends in catastrophe.

  12. 404 BCE

    Athens surrenders to Sparta; the Long Walls demolished.

  13. 403 BCE

    Democracy restored after the Thirty Tyrants.

  14. 399 BCE

    Trial and execution of Socrates.

  15. 387 BCE

    Plato founds the Academy.

  16. 335 BCE

    Aristotle founds the Lyceum.

Athens lost its empire and its independence, but the democracy, drama and philosophy of its golden age became the permanent inheritance of the West.