Athens serves in the work as a test case for the political problem of conquering a city accustomed to freedom. Its decisive significance lies in the claim that a free community does not simply become obedient when its institutions are replaced: the memory of self-government remains an active source of resistance, capable of turning against a conqueror whenever his power weakens.

Athens Under Spartan Control

Athens appears first in the comparison between the methods used by Sparta and Rome to govern acquired free cities. Sparta held Athens and Thebes by establishing oligarchies, placing political authority in the hands of a limited group rather than preserving broad popular self-rule. This arrangement could impose control for a time, but it did not create a durable allegiance. Athens and Thebes were eventually lost, demonstrating that a conqueror's locally installed government may depend more on external force than on a settled transformation of political loyalties.

The Spartan example makes Athens part of a larger contrast between provisional domination and lasting possession. An oligarchy created by a conquering power can govern only while it retains sufficient protection and authority. Once that support falters, the city's prior political identity can reassert itself. Athens therefore represents not merely a conquered place but a political order whose suppressed freedom remains available as a language of opposition.

Freedom, Memory, and Rebellion

The work argues that a city accustomed to living under its own laws and in freedom can be held by three broad methods: destruction, the ruler's personal residence, or the preservation of its laws under a dependent local government. Athens is important because the text treats the first and second methods as the safest in the case of republics. A free city possesses a stronger vitality, a fiercer hatred, and a keener thirst for revenge than a population long accustomed to princely obedience.

The underlying danger is historical memory. A free city can shelter rebellion beneath the names of liberty and ancient laws, and neither the passage of time nor benefits granted by the conqueror necessarily erases those memories. The example of Pisa rising against the Florentines after a century of servitude reinforces the point: political freedom may be suppressed without being forgotten. In this argument, Athens stands for the persistence of an old civic identity beneath imposed institutions.

Comparison with Subject Monarchies

Athens is contrasted with territories that had lived under a prince before conquest. When such a principality loses its ruling line, its citizens, accustomed to obedience and deprived of their traditional ruler, may lack both the habit and the organization needed to choose a leader among themselves. A foreign conqueror can therefore more readily win them over, especially if the old dynastic structure has disappeared.

A free city is different because its political memory gives its inhabitants a stronger basis for collective opposition. The contrast also clarifies why the kingdom of Darius, conquered by Alexander the Great, could remain secure after Alexander's death: Darius's realm was organized around a single sovereign and his servants, rather than around numerous hereditary lords or autonomous civic traditions. Alexander the Great first had to defeat Darius utterly, but once Darius died, the country presented no independent ruling centers except those created by the successors' own ambition and jealousy.

Athens in the Work's Political Argument

Athens helps establish a general rule about political persistence. The difficulty of retaining a conquered territory does not depend simply on the conqueror's merit; it depends on the institutional character of the acquired state. Alexander the Great could secure Asia because its centralized form made the destruction of the ruling line politically decisive, whereas a free city such as Athens retained a civic principle that could outlast defeat and imposed administration.

The city consequently embodies the tension between legal continuity and political conquest. To leave a free city's laws intact may appear moderate, but those laws can preserve the very identity that makes resistance possible. To govern through local oligarchs may reduce immediate administrative costs, yet it can also expose the conqueror to the weakness of a government that lacks independent legitimacy. Athens thus functions as a historical warning: where liberty has once structured communal life, control requires either radical destruction or continuous, personal domination, because the old political order remains a latent rival to the new one.