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This chapter focuses on the identities created for other residents (Athenian women and girls, male metics and their daughters and Athenian boys, beardless youths and ephebes) and non-residents (especially colonies and allies). In comparison to those of the male Athenians, the identities of other residents and non-residents of the city were not nearly as complex, in part because these other groups had limited opportunities for participation in the celebration. While the identities of Athenian boys, beardless youths and ephebes focused on their position as citizens-to-be or as the newest citizens who were prepared to fight for the city, the identities for the other groups focused on their service to the goddess. The participation of both non-residents and residents also marked them as members of the community of “all the Athenians” and allowed them to create identities as members of this group. International visitors had a significant role to play as excluded non-members who contrasted with members of the community. Thus, how one took part in the Great Panathenaia was instrumental in determining what it meant to be a member of “all the Athenians” who were celebrating the Great Panathenaia.
From about 460 the western part of the hill was dominated by Phidias' colossal bronze Athena Promachos. The prompt replacement of the statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton by a new pair made by Critius and Nesiotes, may be seen in this light. In the sixth and early fifth centuries the Athenians had endeavoured to make modest provision for the instruments of government, especially in the time of Cleisthenes. The great Doric temple, which stands miraculously preserved on the hill overlooking the Agora from the west, was under construction at the same time as the Parthenon, probably in the middle 440s. Doric was the dominant order in fifth-century Athens, but in the latter part of the century Ionic was used to design buildings which offered a wonderful contrast. Incidentally an Attic type of column-base was developed, with a concave moulding between two convex.
The campaigning season of 479 opened to a sense of uneasy calm for the Persians a continuing drain of resources or a secure frontier in the west. The first forces to move were the naval on either side. The Egyptian marines had been left with Mardonius and the land forces. A high proportion of Greek vessels and their crews have been drawn from Asiatic Greece. On Alexander's empty-handed return, Mardonius at once determined to march south, urged on by his Thessalian friends, especially the Aleuadae of Larissa whose regime depended on him. In Boeotia the Thebans urged him to make his base among them, and to try what bribery could do. For the Athenians, Xanthippus proposed to remain and liberate the Chersonese. In the end the force divided, the Peloponnesians sailing home as they desired, while Xanthippus crossed to the Chersonese and began the siege of Sestus.
Before Cyrus marched against Croesus, he had made overtures to the Asian Greeks, of whom the Ionians were the most important. the tragic incompatibility and failure of understanding between Persia, the highest manifestation of oriental imperialism, and the still developing bourgeois culture of the Greek cities. Cyrus' son Cambyses, continuing his father's agenda, in 525 assailed Egypt, and as a prelude to this, a great matter, for which his courtiers praised him, he 'won the sea'. Mardonios pressed on to where his fresh army and fleet awaited him, at the crossing into Europe. Greek objectives were now to deny forward positions to the enemy, should Xerxes try again; to reopen trade-routes, and, in Homeric style, revenge. Even during the great wars, but much more as the dust of conflict settled, Greeks and Persians were getting to know each other as human beings. A new epoch opened after Athens lost an army and fleet before Syracuse in Sicily.
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