Imperial democracies are rare in history – and Athens was the first, for the Athenian Empire was acquired and consolidated with the ascendancy of the world's first democracy. To speak of an Athenian " empire " is to transfer the Latin term and concept of imperium to the hegemonic rule exercised by the Athenians over other Greeks. With some reservations, the word "empire" may be applied to the rule of the Athenians over the Aegean Sea and coastline during the fifth century. The traditional dates for the Athenian empire run from the formation of the Delian League under the hegemony (hegemonia) of Athens (478) to the Athenian defeat and surrender (404) to her arch-rival and political antithesis, Sparta. These dates also correspond to what would be the first of two centuries of literary and intellectual flourishing, known to posterity as the 'classical' age of ancient Greek history. The vibrant and unique genius of that era – embodied by such fifth-century luminaries as Themistokles, Sophocles, Perikles, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Alkibiades, and Sokrates – engendered accomplishments in politics, drama, and the arts which served as the seminal soil into which fourth-century philosophers and orators – like Xenophon, Plato, Isokrates, Demosthenes, and Aristotle – sank their roots. Surpassed in scope and longevity by the PERSIAN EMPIRE, which Athens had initially sought to oppose and thereby rose to prominence among the Greeks; dwarfed in her conquests by the MACEDONIAN EMPIRE, which brought an end to Athenian freedom and democracy (as well as to the Persian Empire), Athens in the fifth century acquired an empire of unrivaled power and prestige whose lasting effect upon the culture of western civilization can hardly be overestimated – the legacy of the Roman Republic and ROMAN EMPIRE notwithstanding. Literary and material evidence for the Athenian empire is abundant. The penetrating historia, or inquiry, of the great war waged between the Athenians and their allies and a coalition of Peloponnesians led by the Spartans, known as the Peloponnesian War (431-404), written by Thucydides, an Athenian citizen and general, remains the principal source of contemporary literary evidence for the Athenian empire. Additional sources include an extant treatise on the Constitution of the Athenians (attributed to an 'Old Oligarch'), the comedies of Aristophanes, and the Hellenika of Xenophon the Athenian (a continuation of Thucydides' unfinished account of the Peloponnesian War, and a history of Greek affairs down to 362). Fourth-century sources range from philosophers (Plato and Aristotle), to orators (Isokrates and Demosthenes) – to name just a few. Material evidence for reconstructing the history and character of the fifth-century Athenian empire has been brought to light in the last century by work in the fields of archaeology, numismatics, epigraphy, art and architectural history.

The birth of democracy in classical Athens was driven by the aim of balancing opposed social forces engaged in bitter infighting. The solution found by the statesman Cleisthenes was a fresh constitutional framework, based on a strong relationship between spatial control and citizenship. As a consequence of the framework, the source of political power no longer resides in bloodline and fortune, but has moved to the land itself. Athenian space is therefore political in nature. Such an archetypal connection between place and governance is worthy of attention, since the political outcome of spatial control is one of planning’s major concerns.

The dissertation explores the phenomenon of long-running border wars, which are believed to have been ubiquitous in Archaic Greece. Two most famous confrontations are examined in depth: the war between Eretria and Chalcis over the Lelantine Plain, and the struggle between Sparta and Argos over the territory of Thyreatis. It is suggested that in the Archaic period these disputed territories were contested in recurrent ritual battles. The battles took place in the framework of peace agreement between the neighboring cities, so that the disputed territory constituted a sacred common space for the opposing cities. The participants in ritual battles belonged to the social class of hippeis, for whom the battles both expressed their local identity and reaffirmed the Panhellenic values, underlying aristocratic inter-polis ties. The ritual battles reenacted mythical destructive confrontations, which were imagined to result in death of all combatants; however, the ritual battle themselves, which were normally non-lethal, were led according to strict rules and represented the enactment of the hoplite ideal. The tradition of the aristocratic ritual battles began to break down in the middle of the sixth century, when, following the adoption of a more aggressive style of warfare, the border territories that had been ritually contested became annexed by one city-state. However, the myths of confrontations between neighboring cities did not lose their ideological power. In the Classical period, these myths constituted a contested ideological territory in the inter- and intra-polis struggles between democratic and oligarchic political camps. In particular, the myths about the confrontation between neighboring cities were adopted by democratic regimes as their foundational narratives.

This is the original English version of this article, which has now appeared in a somewhat abbreviated, French version in C.Calame and P. Ellinger (eds), Du récit au rituel par la forme esthétique. Poèmes, images et pragmatique cultuelle en Grèce ancienne, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2017, 271-304