Athens and the Aegean were at the centre of the economic life of the Greek world in the late archaic and classical period. Like the other cities of the Aegean, Athens actively exploited its territory, but the specific characteristic of its economy was the presence of the Laurium mines, which gave it an unbeatable natural advantage over the other players. In the Hellenistic period, the Aegean cities were only one of the many players on the international landscape, and they had lost their pre-eminence, although to a certain extent the city of Rhodes succeeded Athens in its role of platform for international trade, and the little island of Delos ended in being for a while the main hub of trans-Mediterranean trade.

Chapter Three: Imperial Transitions (129 BCE–31 BCE) clarifies that it was the civic body that outlasted the fall of the Seleucid Empire and weathered Roman annexation. For much of this transitional period, the dysfunction of the final Seleucid kings and the subsequent hands-off attitude of the Roman generals and governors present within the city and Levant allowed or forced the Antiochians into managing their own internal affairs. In the early years of Roman rule in particular, it is difficult to claim that Antioch served as a provincial capital, because so much of the city was defined by the far more restricted authority of the citizens themselves.

This chapter is about the history, the monuments and the people of Piraeus, the arsenal, and the commercial center of the Athenian empire. The proposed reconstruction of the residential quarters and the harbor installations of this model city designed by Hippodamos, the father of city-planning, is based on recent archaeological research.