Attica is a historical region that encompasses the city of Athens, the capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea. The modern administrative region of Attica is more extensive than the historical region and includes the Saronic Islands, Cythera, and the municipality of Troizinia on the Peloponnesian mainland. The history of Attica is tightly linked with that of Athens, which, from the classical period, was one of the most important cities in the ancient world.
During antiquity, the Athenians boasted about being ‘autochthonic’, which is to say that they were the original inhabitants of the area and had not moved to Attica from another place. The traditions current in the classical period recounted that, during the Greek Dark Ages, Attica had become the refuge of the Ionians, who belonged to a tribe from the northern Peloponnese. Supposedly, the Ionians had been forced out of their homeland by the Achaeans, who had been forced out of their homeland by the Dorian invasion. Supposedly, the Ionians integrated with the ancient Atticans, who, afterward, considered themselves part of the Ionian tribe and spoke the Ionian dialect. Many Ionians later left Attica to colonize the Aegean coast of Asia Minor and to create the twelve cities of Ionia.
During the Mycenaean period, the Atticans lived in autonomous agricultural societies. The main places where prehistoric remains were found are Marathon, Rafina, Nea Makri, Brauron, Thorikos, Agios Kosmas, Eleusis, Menidi, Markopoulo, Spata, Aphidnae and Athens. All of these settlements flourished during the Mycenaean period.
According to tradition, Attica comprised twelve small communities during the reign of Cecrops, the legendary Ionian king of Attica. Strabo assigns these the names of Cecropia, Tetrapolis, Exacria, Decelea, Eleusis, Aphidna, Thoricus, Brauron, Cytheris, Sphettus, Cephissia, and Phalems. These were said to have been later incorporated in an Athenian state during the reign of Theseus, the mythical king of Athens. Modern historians consider it more likely that the communities were progressively incorporated into an Athenian state during the 8th and the 7th centuries BC.
Until the 6th century BC, aristocratic families lived independent lives in the suburbs. Only after Peisistratos’s tyranny and the reforms implemented by Cleisthenes did the local communities lose their independence and succumb to the central government in Athens. As a result of these reforms, Attica was divided into approximately a hundred municipalities, the demes, and also into three large sectors: the city, which comprised the areas of central Athens, Ymittos, Aegaleo and the foot of Mount Parnes, the coast, that included the area between Eleusis and Cape Sounion and the area around the city, inhabited by people living on the north of Mount Parnitha, Penteliko and the area east of the mountain of Hymettus. Principally, each civic unit would include equal parts of townspeople, seamen, and farmers. A “trittýs” (“third”) of each sector constituted a tribe. Consequently, Attica comprised ten tribes.
Attica, a place in Greece, has belonged to the independent Greek state. From 1834, Athens was refounded and made the new Greek capital (moved from Nafplio in Argolis), and people from other parts of Greece gradually began to repopulate Attica. The most dramatic surge came with Greek refugees from Anatolia following the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey under the Treaty of Lausanne. Today, much of Attica is occupied by urban Athens. The modern Greek region of Attica includes classical Attica as well as the Saronic Islands, a small part of the Peloponnese around Troezen, and the Ionian Island of Kythira.
