The Acropolis rock was settled long before written history. In 508 BCE the reforms of Cleisthenes gave Athens a government by its citizens, the first democracy.
After the victory over Persia, Pericles rebuilt the Acropolis. The Parthenon, dedicated to the goddess Athena, was built between 447 and 432 BCE. In the same century Socrates questioned the young men of the Agora, and Plato and Aristotle followed.
Athens lived on under Romans, Byzantines and Ottomans, and became the capital of modern Greece in 1834.
