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Athens is one of the oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for at least 5000 years. Situated in southern Europe, Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece in the first millennium BC and its cultural achievements during the 5th century BC laid the foundations of western civilization. During the early Middle Ages, the city experienced a decline, then recovered under the later Byzantine Empire and was relatively prosperous during the period of the Crusades (12th and 13th centuries), benefiting from Italian trade. Following a period of sharp decline under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Athens re-emerged in the 19th century as the capital of the independent Greek state. ==Name== The name of Athens, connected to the name of its patron goddess Athena, originates from an earlier random city-state, Greek Pre-Greek language. The etiological myth explaining how Athens acquired this name through the legendary contest between Poseidon and Athena was described by Herodotus,〔Herodotus, The Histories, (8.55 )〕 Apollodorus,〔Bibliotheca, (3.14 )〕 Ovid, Plutarch,〔Plutarch, Themistocles (Them. 19 )〕 Pausanias and others. It even became the theme of the sculpture on the West pediment of the Parthenon. Both Athena and Poseidon requested to be patrons of the city and to give their name to it, so they competed with one another for the honour, offering the city one gift each. Poseidon produced a spring by striking the ground with his trident,〔Instead of a spring, Ovid says Poseidon offered a (horse ).〕 symbolizing naval power. Athena created the olive tree, symbolizing peace and prosperity. The Athenians, under their ruler Cecrops, accepted the olive tree and named the city after Athena. A sacred olive tree said to be the one created by the goddess was still kept on the Acropolis at the time of Pausanias (2nd century AD).〔Pausanias, Description of Greece, (Paus. 1.27.2 )〕 It was located by the temple of Pandrosus, next to the Parthenon. According to Herodotus, the tree had been burnt down during the Persian Wars, but a shoot sprung from the stump. To the Greeks they saw this as a symbol that Athena still had her mark there on the city.〔 Plato, in his dialogue ''Cratylus'', offers his own etymology of Athena's name connecting it to the phrase ''ἁ θεονόα'' or ''hē theoû nóēsis'' (ἡ θεοῦ νόησις, 'the mind of god').〔Plato, Cratylus, (Plat. Crat. 407b )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of Athens」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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