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Athens
City (pop., 1991: 772,000), capital of Greece. It is located inland near its port, Piraeus, on the Saronic Gulf in E Greece. The source of many of the West's intellectual and artistic conceptions, incl. that of democracy, Athens is generally considered the birthplace of Western civilization. An ancient city-state, it had by the 6th cent. BC begun to assert its influence. It was destroyed by Xerxes in 480 BC, but rebuilding began immediately. By 450 BC, led by Pericles, it was at the height of its commercial prosperity and cultural and political dominance, and over the next 40 years many major building projects, incl. the Acropolis and Parthenon, were completed. Athens' "Golden Age" saw the works of the philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; the dramatists Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Euripides; the historians Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon; and the sculptors Praxiteles and Phidias. The Peloponnesian Wars with Sparta ended in Athens' defeat in 404, but it quickly recovered its independence and prosperity. After 338 BC Athens came under Macedonia's hegemony, which was lifted with the aid of Rome in 197 BC in a battle at Cynoscephalae. It became subject to Rome in 146 BC. In the 13th cent. Athens was taken by the Crusaders. It was conquered in 1456 by the Ottoman Turks, who held it until 1833, when it was declared the capital of independent Greece. Athens is Greece's principal center for business and foreign trade. Its ruins and many museums make it a major tourist destination.


Athos
Mountain, N Greece. Reaching a height of 6,670 ft (2,033 m), it occupies Aktí , a promontory of the Chalcidice Peninsula. It is the site of a semiautonomous republic of 20 monasteries and dependencies (skí tes). Organized monastic life began there in 963, when St. Athanasius the Athonite founded the first monastery. By 1400 there were 40 monasteries. Long regarded as the holy mountain of the Greek Orthodox Church, it was declared a theocratic republic in 1927. Its churches and libraries house a rich collection of Byzantine art and ancient and medieval manuscripts.


Atreus
In Greek legend, the son of Pelops. Atreus became king of Mycenae and drove out his brother Thyestes. Plagued by a curse on the house of Pelops, Atreus murdered his own son Pleisthenes and was eventually killed by the nephew he had raised as a son. Two more sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus, fought in the Trojan War.

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