SPECIAL POLITICS AND COLONIZATION IN ARCHAIC ATHENS
During the Archaic period of ancient Greek history, Athens seems relatively unimportant. While city-states like Chalcis, Eretria, Corinth, and Miletus were establishing colonies throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea, Athens seems to have undertaken what is termed ‘internal colonization’, content with the land of Attica. Yet, by the beginning of the sixth century BC, we see Athenians striving to exert control over much of the Aegean.
Early Athens
Athens at the beginning of the sixth century BC was vastly different from Athens of the fifth century BC, which most people will be familiar with. For one, while Athenians claimed the unification of Attica was completed by Thesus, as Thucydides records (2.14-16), this was a later fabrication to legitimize Athens’ regional power by projecting the unification into the mythic past. Rather than a unified state, Archaic Athens was divided between several aristocratic families who
