Aegina was a colony of Epidaurus, to which state it was originally subject, according to Herodotus.

Its placement between Attica and the Peloponnesus made it a center of trade even earlier, and its earliest inhabitants came from Asia Minor.

Minoan ceramics have been found in contexts of around 2000 BCE.

The discovery in the island of a number of gold ornaments belonging to the latest period of Mycenaean art suggests the inference that the Mycenaean culture held its own in Aegina for some generations after the Dorian conquest of Argos and Lacedaemon.

It is probable that the island was not doricized before the ninth century BCE.

One of the earliest historical facts is its membership in the League of Calauria (Calaurian Amphictyony, circa eighth century BCE), which included, besides Aegina, Athens, the Minyan (Boeotian) Orchomenus, Troezen, Hermione, Nauplia and Prasiae, and was probably an organization of city-states that were still to some degree Mycenaean, for the purpose of suppressing piracy in the Aegean that had arisen as a result of the decay of the naval supremacy of the Mycenaean princes.

Croesus' relations with Greece are close, and his bimetallic system may owe something to the fact that Greece has itself now produced its first silver coins.

The oldest are of the island of Aegina, with, obverse, a turtle-associated with Aphrodite-and, reverse, an incuse square. (Tradition—e.g., in Julius Pollux, the second-century-CE Greek scholar, and elsewhere—regards these as struck by Pheidon of Argos in virtue of his supremacy over Aegina; but the coins are too late to claim association with him in Aegina. They begin no earlier than the late seventh century, when Aeginetan maritime ascendancy is growing, incidentally spreading the Aeginetan weight standard for coinage, based on a drachma of about six grams, over much of the Peloponnese and also the Aegean, where similar currency is produced in the islands.)

Aegina, inhabited since around 3000 BCE, in Neolithic times, becomes a leading maritime power during the sixth century BCE because of its strategic position, and its silver coins become currency in most of the Dorian states.

The pediment of the Doric temple at the shrine of Aegina’s native goddess Aphaia, constructed around 500, contains marble sculptures of Athena and heroes in combat (now famous as the Aegietan marbles), exemplifying a gradual shift from earlier portrayals of monsters to scenes of fighting.

The temple’s interior columns, which had to reach a greater height than the exterior colonnade, are constructed in two tiers.

The floral acroteria and bold pedimental sculptures are also carved from marble, which sculptors have introduced during the past couple of decades.

Aegina's economic rivalry with Athens has led to wars and to the island's close collaboration with Persia.

Corinth and Athens, both of which have naval outlets in the Saronic Gulf, have a shared interest in containing the power of Aegina, the greatest other power in that gulf, the “star in the Dorian Sea,” as the poet Pindar, who lives from about 520 CE to 438 BCE, is to call Aegina.

The Greeks in addition recognize, with a prize for valor, the conspicuous bravery of the tiny Aeginetan contingent (only about forty ships) at the battle of Salamis.

In the repulse of Xerxes I it is possible that the Aeginetans played a larger part than is conceded to them by Herodotus.

The Athenian tradition, which he follows in the main, would naturally seek to obscure their services.

As it is to Aegina rather than Athens that the prize of valor at Salamis is awarded, the destruction of the Persian fleet appears to have been as much the work of the Aeginetan contingent as of the Athenian (Herod. viii. 91).

There are other indications, too, of the importance of the Aeginetan fleet in the Greek scheme of defense.

In view of these considerations, it becomes difficult to credit the number of the vessels that is assigned to them by Herodotus (thirty as against one hundred and eighty Athenian vessels).

Aegina, which the Athenians had attacked and besieged in 459 BCE, is reduced in the following year and forced to pay tribute, though the Athenians may make some vague undertaking about autonomy.

The pretense that Athens is merely leading a voluntary association of willing Ionian cities in need of protection can hardly survive the reduction of Aegina, a great city of the Archaic age, whose proud Dorianism and traditions of seafaring and hospitality are stressed in lines of great beauty by Pindar in his Nemean Odes and elsewhere.

The central Greek line of Athenian expansion is bound to bring a collision with Sparta, which enters the war in 458 in response to …

Hostilities between Athens and Aegina resume at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, and the Athenians deport all of Aegina's population and replace them with Athenian settlers in 430.

The remnants of the Aeginans deported at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War are allowed to return from exile in 404 BCE after the defeat of Athens, but Aegina will never recover from the blow.

The Pergamese fleet sails back to their base at Aegina and the Rhodians set out to conquer all the Macedonian islands from Aegina to Rhodes, successfully assaulting all except Andros, Paros and Cythnos.