Athens in 218 B.C.

Athens — Spring 218 BC · The Free and Neutral City.

Athens — the violet-crowned city of Attica, schoolmistress of Hellas, living now upon a past no other city can rival. A century and a half since her empire fell, she is no longer a power of the spear: she keeps a studied neutrality, taking no part in the wars that rack the rest of Greece. On the rock of the Acropolis the Parthenon and the colossal bronze Athena still crown the city; below it the Agora bustles, and in the groves outside the walls the philosophers teach — the Academy of Plato, the Lyceum of Aristotle, the Stoa, the Garden of Epicurus. Her great festival, the Panathenaia, still draws all Hellas. Since the Chremonidean War she has bowed to Macedon, whose garrisons held the Piraeus and the border-forts for two generations; but in 229 BC, with the help of Aratus and the Achaeans, she bought back her freedom and dismissed the soldiers. Now she is courted by kings — the Ptolemies above all — honoured everywhere, and careful to give offence to none.

Athens in 218 BC trades on glory, not on arms. The generation that fought the great wars is long dead; the empire is a memory carved on the Acropolis. Since the Chremonidean War broke her last bid against Macedon, she has kept her head down — and when Macedon’s grip slackened, she did not seek to lead Greece again but only to be left alone. In 229 BC, with Aratus and the Achaeans helping her raise the price, she paid off the garrison commander Diogenes and won back the Piraeus, Munychia, Salamis and Sounion: free at last, and resolved to stay clear of every quarrel. She joins no league and makes no war. Instead she pays court to the kings who shower her with gifts — to the Ptolemies most of all, who endow her with grain and a new gymnasium — and grants them honours, says Polybius, without measure or dignity. To the rest of Greece she is a museum and a university: revered, visited, and quietly irrelevant to the war now gathering.