In prehistoric times Attica was a region that contained many tiny independent villages. Much later, in the great days of Athens, stories were told of the legendary King Theseus who, it was said, had united all the villages into one state. It's capital was Athens. It's citizens still mostly country dwellers were all Athenians.
             The focus of the unified state was the great rock of Athens- the Akropoli (high-city). From the were splendid views over land and sea. But the Athenians did not value the views for the same reason the tourists do today. They needed the views to tell them when an enemy was approaching.
             In every Greek State, so Aristotle tells us, there were a few rich people and a large number of the poor. Rich and poor usually plotted against each other. Sometimes they even fought in a civil war. Greek called this quarrel stasis. Many states were weekend by it.
             The Athenians, pleased with the system that gave every citizen a place in the government, did their best to make their plan work. The old quarrels began to be forgotten, and the experiment was a success. Cleisthenes invented democracy.
             Athens had moved with amazing speed. All the charges, from Draco's harsh laws to the new democracy, had been made in less than two years. But there were some things that remained the same, and one of them was slavery. Prisoners of war, especially barbarians, were sold as slaves in every Greek City. There were many of them in Athens- a few on the farms, some in the mines, and the rest in the city. In some cities, slaves were treated with savage cruelty, but in Athens they had a better time of it, and there were laws to curb the harshness of bad tempered masters. The Spartans said the when you meet a slave and it master one could not tell who is what. The Athenians however, knew that there was a difference. A slave was a man that had so little pride that he let himself be captured, giving
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