First Published in 2005. Between the early sixth and the late fifth century a transformation took place in the fortunes of Athens. Unimportant in the affairs of Greece at the beginning of the sixth century she drew her livelihood from a peasant economy which had become depressed and chaotic. A century later she was leading the Greek confederate states against the forces of Persia itself. By the middle of the fifth century she was the richest, the most powerful, and the most feared state in Europe: visible signs of her wealth and power were the structures, then beginning to rise, which were to make her the wonder of her own age and of millennia to come. It is the aim of this study briefly to document, and if possible to explain this transformation, as far as the surviving data permit.