Herulian Sack of Athens

In 267 AD, a Germanic people called the Heruli, sailing from the Black Sea with a large fleet, raided Greece and captured and plundered Athens. Much of the city was burned and destroyed, including buildings in the Agora and the area around it. The Athenians fought back. The historian Dexippus, an Athenian aristocrat, gathered around 2,000 men and led guerrilla attacks against the raiders from the surrounding hills, and a Roman fleet later helped drive them away. Dexippus wrote an account of these events, though only fragments survive. The attack changed Athens permanently. In the years that followed, the Athenians built a new, much smaller defensive wall, known as the post-Herulian wall, enclosing only a small area north of the Acropolis. They reused stones from ruined buildings and monuments in its construction. The rest of the ancient city was largely left outside the defenses. Athens slowly recovered as a center of philosophy and learning, but it never regained its former size and splendor. Remains of the post-Herulian wall can still be seen today.