Series synopsis

In this two-part series, historian Bettany Hughes charts the remarkable rise of ancient Athens from small city state to imperial democratic power, and it’s equally extraordinary collapse just a century later.

Democracy, liberty and freedom of speech are celebtrated as the touchstones of Western civilisation. This series explores their origins. What we want to remember about Athens is that it was enlightened and egalitarian. We choose to forget that in the name of democracy, Athens followed a policy of aggressive overseas expansion and persecuted some of its leading intellectuals. As well as inspiring the West, Athenian democracy was built on slavery and was the place that first introduced the full face veil for women. Despite its legacy which lasts to this day, democracy in ancient Athens didn't flourish but quickly died.

Episode 1 charts the epic story of Athens' victory in one of the greatest sea battles of the ancient world, when the Athenian triremes defeat Xerxes' mighty Persian fleet at Salamis, and reveals the real story of the building of the greatest monument of this first democracy - the Parthenon - as a symbol of Athenian power. Episode 2 looks in detail at the extraordinary new ideas of the new democracy, against the powerful and dramatic story of Socrates, celebrated as one of the authors of the new thinking but who ultimately pushed even democracy beyond its limits and was put to death by his own city.