Major mints: Athens, Eleusis; islands, Euboea, Salamis.

Attica includes the territory of the most famous Greek city of all, namely Athens. At the height of its power, in the late fifth century BC. Athens ruled over a considerable empire, and this period saw the flourishing of Classical Greek culture. Much of it vanished in the various disasters which Athens has experienced, including the devastation of the Parthenon in the seventeenth century; but enough remains to give us some idea of the glory that was Greece.

Athens is the city about which we know the most, simply because it was the city in which writers flourished, and of whose writings most has been preserved. Athens was the city of Herodotos and Theucidides, of Aschylos and Aristophanes, of Socrates and the Sophists, and compared with these leading lights the best of the rest seem rather dim.

Stories about the legendary history of the city indicate a long history before the time of the Trojan War, and indeed Stone Age material has been found in the area. Its great early hero was Theseos, whose exploits against all sorts of evil-doers, from the Minotaur to the Amazons.

Athens as a city was dedicated to Athena Parthenos (the Virgin); hence the main temple in the city was the Parthenon. The religious and administrative center was the strong natural fortress known as the Acropolis, whose buildings have the power to impress after twenty-four centuries of decay. The well-known coins have as types the head of Athena and the owl, the bird sacred to her.

Eleusis was famous for its cult of Demeter and Persephone, and its mysterious rites. This cult dates from Bronze Age times at least; his was the site at which it was believed that Hades had carried Persephone down into the underworld.

The island of Euboea, like the rest of Attica, was under Athenian control from an early date, though its allegiance was often unwilling. Its main town, Eretria, is famous mainly as the founder of Corcyra. The island of Salamis is best known for the sea-battle of 480, when the Greek fleet decisively beat the Persians in the narrow strait there.