From Persians to Visigoths: The Four Times Ancient Athens Was Sacked

Athens was sacked 4 times during antiquity. Credit: Unsplash

Ancient Athens was invaded and sacked 4 times, starting with the Persian penetration successful 480 BC and ending with the demolition by the Visigoths successful 396 AD.

The glory of Athens and its salient presumption among the city-states of Ancient Greece was envied by many, adjacent by different Greeks. Especially successful the 5th period BC erstwhile the metropolis was astatine the pinnacle of its grandeur nether the regularisation of Pericles.

First, it was the Persian kings who wanted to grow their empire further West. Then it was the Romans who yet took the full of Greece nether their control. Finally, erstwhile the Roman Empire declined, it was barbaric tribes from the North that descended to southeast Europe to loot.

When the Persians sacked Athens

After the humiliating demolition of the Persian service of King Darius successful the archetypal Achaemenid penetration of Greece astatine the Battle of Marathon successful 490 BC, his son, Xerxes, wanted revenge. In 480 BC, helium gathered a immense service numbering hundreds of thousands of men and crossed the Hellespont determined to conquer Greece.

Despite the losses astatine Thermopylae, the awe-inspiring Persian service forged up to Boeotia and Attica without uncovering immoderate resistance. Parallel to the onshore forces, the Persian fleet was heading to Piraeus to onslaught from the sea.

By the clip the Persians had crossed into Greece, the evacuation of Athens had already begun. The Oracle of Delphi had advised that Athenians should fly earlier the monolithic Persian service reached the metropolis gates and trust connected their “wooden wall”, which General Themistocles took to mean the Athenian fleet. Most of the Athenians moved to Troezen successful the Peloponnese.

In September 480 BC, the Persian fleet arrived successful Faliron Bay. A tiny fig of Greeks who barricaded themselves successful the Acropolis were rapidly defeated, and Xerxes ordered his men to pain the city. The Acropolis was plundered and destroyed, including the Old Temple of Athena and the Older Parthenon. All Athenians who had stayed successful the metropolis were slaughtered.

Immediately aft the Persian sack of Athens, the Greek fleet nether the bid of Themistocles lured the Persian fleet into the Strait of Salamis. The wide understood that if they mislaid here, past each of Greece would beryllium unfastened to invasion. The Greek fleet managed to destruct hundreds of Persian ships with a nonaccomplishment of lone 40 of their ain 200, forcing the force to a humiliating retreat.

Xerxes led the remaining Persian fleet backmost to Ionia and near his general, Mardonius,  to enactment successful Greece and implicit the conquest with an service of an estimated betwixt 70,000 and 120,000 soldiers. The finest units of the Persian service stayed to conquer the remainder of Greece.

Meanwhile, the Greeks had fled Athens for the 2nd clip and built a antiaircraft partition crossed the Isthmus of Corinth which separates bluish Greece from the Peloponnese, and asked for the assistance of the Spartans.

Mardonius knew that warring the Spartans would suffer galore of his men, truthful helium led his service to Athens again and razed the metropolis completely.

The 2nd Persian sack of Athens made the Spartans recognize that it would beryllium to their disadvantage to fto the Persians participate the Peloponnese and hazard their beforehand to their homeland, truthful they decided to state with the Athenians and different Greeks and conscionable the Persians northbound of Attica.

The 2 armies met astatine Plataea successful Boeotia successful the Autumn of 479 BC. The agreed Greeks crushed the Persian forces, sidesplitting Mardonius successful the process, and kicking them retired of Greece for good. After the victorious battle, the Athenians started to rebuild their city.

The Romans conquer Athens

Roman wide Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a scrupulous and ruthless warrior who aboriginal became a politician, marched to Athens successful 87 BC aft burning towns and looting invaluable votive statuary and different works of creation from the sanctuaries astatine Epidaurus, Olympia, and Delphi.

The battle connected Athens and Piraeus, from the autumn of 87 BC until the outpouring of 86 BC, was a objection of Roman conflict strategy and power. Sulla ordered immense earthworks to chopped disconnected the Athenians from the onshore side. In addition, siege towers, battering rams, and catapults were constructed to breach the metropolis walls. The Romans bombarded the metropolis with siege engines, damaging the Royal Stoa, the Tholos, and particularly the confederate broadside successful the South Stoa II.

The Athenians responded with flaming arrows, burning galore of the Romans’ siege engines. According to Plutarch, Sulla chopped down each of the Academy’s ineffable olive trees that were dedicated to Athena to stitchery timber for their replacement. To forestall the Romans from acquiring much timber to besiege the Acropolis, the Athenians themselves burned down the mostly woody Odeion of Pericles connected the South Slope.

The siege had chopped disconnected proviso routes to Athens and the Athenians were starving. They were reduced to boiling down their leather shoes and lipid bags and harvesting edible weeds connected the slopes of the Acropolis.

Sulla yet broke done the metropolis walls connected March 1, 86 BC, determination adjacent the Kerameikos. The ruthless wide unleashed his service connected the helpless Athenians. They massacred the citizens, torched residential areas, and looted the city’s wealth. Plutarch reports that humor flowed successful the streets and retired the Dipylon Gate. The Acropolis continued to defy for a fewer much weeks but yet fell arsenic well. The Athens tyrant, Aristion, was captured and executed. After the massacre and the destruction, Athens sank into a play of terrible economical decline.

Ancient writers including Plutarch, Appian, Pausanias, and Pliny the Elder study that aft conquering Athens, Sulla seized the city’s treasures, statues, paintings, and prized dedicatory shields that adorned the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios successful the Agora. He adjacent took down respective gigantic marble columns from the unfinished Olympieion and shipped them backmost to Rome to beryllium utilized successful the Capitoline temple of Jupiter.

The Herulian invasion

In 267 AD, a people coming from Germany, the Heruli, moved down to Attica and attacked Athens. The metropolis was precocious fortified with a caller partition arsenic tribes from the North similar the Scythians and the Goths were eyeing Athens.

The Herulians, though, managed to sack Athens and destruct a ample portion of it, including the wall. Public buildings were destroyed and a ample portion of the metropolis suffered, particularly astir the Acropolis. Recent archaeological probe recovered debris successful the eastbound extracurricular the 3rd period wall, the alleged ‘Valerian’ wall.

It seems that the residential districts to the northbound and to the southwest of Athens were not harmed by the Heruli. However, a large portion of the Ancient Agora was destroyed. The Kerameikos country suffered large harm arsenic well.

An Athenian historian, Publius Herenius Dexippus (Greek: Δέξιππος) , gathered 2,000 men and managed to thrust retired the Heruli and instrumentality backmost Athens. It was Dexippus himself who aboriginal recounted the events successful 2 of his works that survived lone successful fragments, Chronicle and Scythian History. It was his works that aboriginal historians based their ain accounts of the Herulian invasion.

Works of restoration took spot aft the penetration and by the extremity of the 4th century, Athens had undergone a transformation, arsenic aboriginal excavations suggest.

When the Visigoths sacked Athens. King Alaric enters Athens. Painting by Allan Stewart Public Domain

The Visigoths Sack Athens

Alaric (c. 370-411 AD) was the archetypal king of the Visigoths from 395 to 410 AD. He joined the Roman service nether Emperor Theodosius and helped decision the Franks. He was soon disappointed by his deficiency of designation by the Romans.

After the decease of Theodosius and the disintegration of the Roman armies successful 395, helium named himself king of the Visigoths. As the person of the lone effectual service remaining successful the Balkans, helium sought Roman legitimacy, ne'er rather achieving it. So helium turned himself against Rome.

Alaric’s forces marched down to Greece on the coast. Alaric sought to unit a caller bid upon the Romans. In 396 helium marched done Thermopylae and yet reached Athens. It was casual for his service to sack Athens. Archaeological grounds shows that the Visigoths caused wide harm to the city.