Athe'nian (^ASrrivalog, Acts xviii, 21, rendered "of Athens" in ver. 22, also in 2 Mace, vi, 7 ; ix, 15), an inhabitant of the city of Athens (q. v.).
Atheno'bins (A9r/v6j3ioc.'), a "friend" of the Syr- ian king Antiochus (VII) Sidetes, sent by him as a special ambassador to Simon, the Jewish high-priest.
to demand possession of the chief fortresses of Pales- tine ; which being refused, the envoy, although great- ly impressed with what he saw of the splendor of Jeru- salem, yet returned enraged to his master (1 Mace, xv, 28-36). Josephus, however, gives a somewhat differ- ent account of the negotiation (Ant. xiii, 7, 2 ; War, i, 2, 2), and does not name Athenobius. See Antiochus. Ath'ens ('A&ijvat, plural of 'A&fivn, Minerva, the tutelary goddess of the place), mentioned in several passages of Scripture (2 Mace, ix, 15 ; Acts xvii, 15 sq. ; xviii, 1 ; 1 Thess. iii, 1), a celebrated city, the capital of Attica and of the leading Grecian republic, and the seat of the Greek literature in the golden pe- riod of the nation (M idler, Topog. of Athens, trans, by Lockhart, Lond. 1842; Kruse, Hellas, Lpz. 1826, II, i, 10 sq.; Leake, Topography of Athens, Lond. 1841, 2d ed. ; Forchhammer, Topograj hie von Athen, Kiel, 1841 ; Wachsmuth, Hellen. Alterth. i, 1783 sq. ; Grote, Hist. of Greece, vi, 20 sq. ; Wordsworth, Athms and Attica, Lond. 1836; Stuart and Revelt. Antiquities of Allans, Lond. 1762-1816,4 vols., and later; DodweJl, Tout through Greece, Lond. 1819; Pittakis, Ai izaXatal 'A3?j- rcn, Athens, 1835 ; rrokesch, Dcnkiriirdigkeitrr, Stutg, 18C6, ii ; Mure, Journal of a Tour in Greece, Edinb. 1842, ii ; Conybeare and Howson, Life and Epistles of St. Paul, i, 344 sq.), belonged in the apostle's time to the Roman province of Achaja (q. v.). The inhabi- tants had the reputation of being fond of novelty (Acta xvii, 21; comp. iElian, Var. Hist, v, 1%5 ; Demosth. Phil, i, 4; Schol. ad Time, ii, 38; ad A.ristoph. Pint. S38; see Wetstein, ii, 567), and as beirig remarkably zealous in the worship of the gods (Arts xvii, 16; comp. Pausan. i, 24, 3; Stral o, x. 471; Philostr. Apol. vi, 3; iv, 19; /Elian, Var. Hid. v, 17; Himer.
in Phot. cod. 243 ; see Eckhard, A thence superstition, Viteb. 1618); hence the city was full of temples, al- tars, and other sacred places (Liv. xlv, 27). Paul visited Athens on his second missionary journey from Bercea (Acts xvii, 14 sq. ; comp. 1 Thess. iii, 1), and delivered in (but not before) the Areopagus (q. v.) his famous speech (Acts xvii, 22-31).— Winer, i, 111.
The earlier and more obscure period of the Grecian province named Attica reaches down nearly to the final establishment of democracy in it, and even then the foundations of her greatness were already laid. The infertile soil and dry atmosphere of Attica, in connection with the slender appetite of the people, have been thought favorable to their mental develop- ment ; the barrenness of the soil, moreover, prevented invaders from coveting it ; so that, through a course of ages, the population remained unchanged, and a moral union grew up between the several districts. To a king named Theseus (whose deeds are too much mixed with fable to be narrated as history) is ascribed the credit of uniting all the country towns of Attica into a single state, the capital of which was Athens. The population of this province was variously called Pelasgian, Achaian, and Ionian, and probably corre- sponds most nearly to what was afterward called /Eolian (Prichard, Phys. Hist, of Man, iii, 4S4). When the Dorians, another tribe of Greeks of very different temperament, invaded and occupied the southern pen- insula, great numbers of its Achaian inhabitants took refuge in Attica. Shortly after, the Dorians were repulsed in an inroad against Athens, an event which
ATHENS
512
ATHEXS
has transmitted to legendary renown the name of King ■Codrus, and thenceforward Athens was looked upon as the bulwark of the Ionian tribes against the bar- barous Dorians. Overloaded with population, Attica now poured forth colonies into Asia, some of which, as Miletus, soon rose to great eminence, and sent out numerous colonies themselves, so that Athens was reverenced as a mother of nations by powerful chil- dren scattered along the western and northern coasts of Anatolia. Dim tradition shows us isolated priest- hoods and elective kings in the earliest times of Atti- ca ; these, however, gradually gave way to an aris- tocracy, which in a series of years established them- selves as a hereditary ruling caste. But a country "ever unravaged" (such Avas their boast) could not fail to increase in wealth and numbers; and after two or three centuries, while the highest commoners press- ed on the nobles, the lowest became overwhelmed with debt. The disorders caused by the strife of the former were vainly sought to be stayed by the insti- tutions of Draco; the sufferings of the latter were ended, and the sources of violence dried up by the en- actments of Solon. Henceforth the Athenians revered the laws of Solon ()'o7<oi) as the groundwork of their whole civil polity ; yet they retained by the side of them th" ordinances of Draco (9t<jjici) in many matters pertaining to religion. The date of So- lon's reforms was probably B.C. 594. The usurpation of Pisistratus and his sons made a partial breach in the constitution; but upon their expulsion, a more serious change was ef- fected by Clisthenes, head of the noble house of the Alcmoeonidae (B.C. 508), almost in the same year in which Tarquin was expelled from Rome. An entirely new organization of the Attic tribes was framed, which destroyed what- ever remained of the power of the nobles as an order, and established among the freemen a democracy, in fact as well as in form. Out of this proceeded all the good and all the evil with which the name of Athens is associated ; and though greatness which shot up so suddenly could not be permanent, there can be no difficulty in deciding that the good greatly preponderated. Very soon af- ter this commenced hostilities with Persia; and the self-denying, romantic, successful bravery of Athens, with the generous affability and great talents of her statesmen, soon raised her to the head of the whole Ionian confederacy. As long as Persia was to be feared, Athens was loved ; but after tasting the sweets of power, her sway degenerated into a despotism, and created at length, in the war called the Pelopon- nesian, a coalition of all Dorian and ^Eolian Greece against her (B.C. 431). In spite of a fatal pesti- lence and the revolt of her Ionian subjects, the naval skill of Athenian seamen and the enterprise of Athe- ni m commanders proved more than a match for the hostile confederacy; and when Athens at last fell ( I!.''. I'll), she fell by the effects of internal sedition inure truly than by Spartan lances or Persian gold, or even by her own rash and over-grasping ambition. Th • demoralizing effects of this war oa all Greece were infinitely the worst result of it, and they were transmitted to succeeding generations. It was sub- stantially a civil war iii every province ; and, as all the inhabitants of Attica were every summer forced to take refuge in the few fortresses they possessed, or in Athen- itself, the simple countrymen became trans- formed mt,, a hungry and profligate town rabble. From th- earliest times the Ionians loved the lyre and the song, and tin' hymns of poets formed the staple of Athenian education. The constitution of Solon ad- mitted and demanded in the people a great knowledge of law, with a large share in its daily administration. Thus the acutcness of the lawyer was grafted on the imagination of the poet. These are tlie two intellec- tual elements out of which Athenian wisdom was de-