This chapter provides an overview of the debate surrounding the population of Athens in the Classical period, and the methodologies used to estimate it. It further summarizes some of the key social, economic, political, and religious groups and divisions in Classical Athenian society and how these interacted with each other and with questions of belonging and identity in the polis.

The food and drink consumed by ancient Athenians and the setting and rules around its consumption reveal a great deal about their society. This study investigates both what they ate and how they ate it; the result provides a lens through which to view their social hierarchies and values.

City streets, fortification walls, and gates were key elements of Athenian topography that structured urban space throughout the history of the city, directing circulation both under urgent circumstances and in everyday life. With their continuous repairs and modifications, they remained a fixed point and the backbone of the urban fabric.

According to a variety of ancient sources (texts, inscriptions, archaeology, visual arts), animals were a common sight in the city of Athens. Their behaviors, characteristics, and relationships to humans revolve around the thematic categories of everyday life, mythology and religion, and performance and competition.

This chapter offers an introduction to Athens’ associations – groups of people who came together for some purpose, but which were neither families nor central state institutions. After broaching some problems of definition, it provides a gazetteer of some of the city’s better-known associations; it then provides a narrative of Athens’ associations over time, and closes with a brief discussion of the question of what relationship these groups had with Athens’ democratic form of government.

The ancient Athenians held two major Panhellenic festivals: the Great Panathenaia in celebration of the goddess Athena and the Great Mysteries in honor of Demeter. This chapter compares and contrasts the rituals of these two festivals in relation to the topography and monuments of Athens, focusing on how the celebrations drew together different parts of the community of Athens.

The family was the basis of the Athenian polis, both structurally and conceptually. This chapter supports and investigates that claim by engaging with evidence from three different perspectives: law, drama, and funerary monuments.

This chapter explores water management in ancient Athens, including the local climate and natural resources of water in the city, underground water installations (e.g. wells, cisterns, aqueducts, and drains), and fountain-houses and bathing facilities. The archaeological evidence is supplemented by inscriptions and ancient texts referring to water legislation, illustrating the role of water in cult and in many other aspects of everyday life.

This chapter deals with sculpture in Athens and Attica in the Archaic and Classical periods. Marble sculpture was introduced to Athens from the Cyclades in the late seventh century. Bronze became the dominant medium for sculpture from the late sixth century on.

Throughout the many centuries of their existence, the Academy, the Peripatos, the Garden, and the Stoa complemented and competed with each other in promoting distinctive ways of being in the world. The development of their philosophical thought amid the historical and topographical realities of ancient Athens turned their adherents into enduring models of how people should think, act, live, and die.

This chapter studies the four branches of the Athenian armed forces. For each branch, it discusses the legal and social positions of branch members, the means by which they were recruited and called up, and the history and the organization of their branch.

Drawing on textual and material evidence, this chapter sketches the topography of different kinds of sex within the built environment of classical Athens. It also examines the role that the social and political structures of the city played in the sex lives of its citizens.

This chapter details the distribution and organization of cemeteries along roads leading out of the ancient city walls and provides an overview of the monuments that adorned burials and plots. In addition, the various types of industrial workshops, sanctuaries, and other structures that populated these cemeteries are discussed.

This chapter explores the history of the Akropolis, the focal point of the cult and the architectural display of the Athenian city-state. It presents of all the buildings with their architectural innovations and sculptural decoration, delving into their meaning and the objectives of their creators.

This chapter traces the life, both public and private, and the career of an Athenian aristocrat of the Late Archaic and Early Classical period, through a combination of textual and archaeological sources, including a major dedication in the Agora and inscriptions on vases praising his beauty in his youth.

In 1833, Athens became the capital of the newly created Kingdom of Greece after some 600 years of foreign domination. The creation of the new capital city from its ruins called upon the talents of local and foreign planners, architects, archaeologists, and philhellenes, who emphasized its Classical heritage and cultural achievements, often at the expense of the practicalities of government and the concerns of the local population.

The bookends to this chapter are two watersheds, the collapse of the Mycenaean palatial system and the Battle of Salamis (ca. 1200–480 BC). The chapter explores the landscape of the living and the dead, the emergence of the Athenian polis, and the broader issue that determined and defined the period.