Tours: The Agora of Athens

Walk through Athens' most popular meeting place, and discover its vibrant markets and monuments.

Opening RemarksThe Agora of AthensPainted StoaTradeApollo PatroosThe Hephaisteion

• 'Aspasia: Greetings, wanderer, and welcome to the Agora of Athens.

("Who are you?")

• Aspasia: My name is Aspasia. Though I am not original from Athens, I have climbed to the top of its social ladder using my wit and intellect. I've even earned the love of Perikles, one of the most powerful men in the city. The mind truly is a beautiful thing.

("What do you think of this place?")

• Aspasia: I love this agora! Where else could you find a fish merchant and an extravagant jewelry seller within a few feet of each other? It's that kind of variety that makes city life so rich and exciting.

("Let's begin the tour.")

• Aspasia: The agora is the beating heart of any Greek city. It is a place where all types of people may gather, from citizens and foreigners, to magistrates and philosophers. All manner of business is conducted here, including political meetings, legal proceedings, and trade. When you finish exploring, come find me, and we can talk more. See you soon, wanderer.

View of the Agora with Akropolis in background / 2005

The agora was the civic center of Athens, but it wasn't only frequented by politicians and city officials.

The area housed a market where people could purchase food and other goods from merchants.

It was also frequented by philosophers, who used the public space to establish schools and pass on their teachings to students.

Religion had its place as well. Temples dedicated to Hephaistos and Apollo were located in the agora, along with Altar of the Twelve Gods and the Monument of the Eponymous Heroes.

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The Panathenaic Way is the Athenian agora's main street. It runs from the Dipylon gate up to the Akropolis.

Its name is derived from the Panathenaic Festival held every four years in honor of the city's patron goddess, Athena. At first, the festival was only religious, but over time it expanded to include athletic events and cultural competitions as well.

The Panathenaic Way hosted the climax of the festival: a procession that ran all the way up to the Temple of Athena on the Akropolis. However, the road was also uses for some of the festival's athletic events, including chariot races and footraces.

Porcelain statuette of Zeno of Kition, founder of the Stoic school / 1813 (Modern period)

The Painted Stoa, or Stoa Poikilè, derived its name from the panel paintings on its wall.

The paintings were created in the 5th century BCE by famous artists like Polygnotos, and depicted Greek military victories like the Battle of Marathon.

The stoa served as a public meeting place for citizens, but it was especially popular with philosophers, who used the space to pass on their teachings.

In 301 BCE, the philosopher Zeno of Kition chose the Stoa Poikilè as the location for his school of philosophy, the appropriately dubbed "Stoicism".

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Greek painting goes back to at least the Minoan civilization. Some astonishing examples of the art of that time have even survived, including several from Minos' palace in Knossos.

At first, wall paintings were mostly found in temples or public buildings, but they have started to appear in private buildings in the 5th century BCE.

Most painters were considered artisan, but some became very renowned. Polygnotos was the first of these famous painters. He painted large compositions of events such as the sack of Troy for the Stoa Poikilè, in addition to creating works for the Lesche of the Knidians in Delphi.

Polygnotos and his two contemporaries, Mikon and Panainos, began what is considered to be the great period of Greek painting.

Group of bakers kneading bread / 525-475 BCE (Archaic Greece)

Trade in the agora was supervised by magistrates.

There were five Agoranomoi who kept order in the market, controlled the quality of goods, and collected market dues.

This provided revenue to the city and helped pay the magistrates and those in charge of maintaining order.

The market benefitted everyone. Customers brought what they needed, merchants made their living, and city officials received the money they needed to keep the wheels of democracy turning.

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The agora offered a variety of products for purchase. Many merchants were grouped together by the category of their products into what was called circles, or guilds. Slaves, who made up an important section of Athen's population, were also available in the agora.

However, trade was not limited to the agora. Several craftsmen and sculptors lived on the slopes of the Areopagos hill, potters and manufacturers worked in the Kerameikos neighborhood, and metalworkers were stationed around the Hephaisteion.

Those selling products could be professional merchants (kapeloi), artisans selling their own products directly, or even peasants selling their surplus.

Marble statue of Apollo, Roman copy of a bronze Greek original from the 4th cent. BCE, attributed to Leochares

The original Temple of Apollo Patroos was built around 535 BCE by Peisistratos, but was destroyed by the Persians during their invasion a few decades later.

It long remained in ruins, except for the altar, which was left standing as a reminder of the Persians' sacrilege.

Eventually, a new temple was built in the 4th century BCE.

Inside was a statue made by Euphranor, the same artist who painted in the Stoa of Zeus.

The temple held special significance in Athens, as it was connected to the origin of the city's people.

The name "Patroos", meaning fatherly, referenced the belief that Apollo was the father of Ion, founder of the Ionian Greeks from whom all Athenians are descended.

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The Ionians were one of the four major Greek tribes, along with the Dorians, the Aeolians, and the Achaeans.

The Ionians spread from Ionia, a region on the east coast of the Aegean Sea. They also founded several colonies, mostly in Sicily and South Italy.

Athenians claimed that Attika was the motherland of all Ionians, and that Ion, the eponymous hero of the Ionians, was an Athenian by way of his mother. According to mythology, Ion was the son of Creusa, who herself was the daughter of Erechtheus - the mythical king of Athens.

Temple of Hephaistos / 2016

The Temple of Hephaistos overlooks the aogra from the Kolonos Agoraios hill.

Today it is one of the best preserved temples in Greece, owing to its conversion to a church in the Middle Ages.

But while this transformation preserved the structure, it also damaged the surrounding sculptures.

The temple was dedicated not only to Hephaistos, the god of metallurgy, but also to Athena Ergane, goddess of arts and crafts.

Nearly every part of the Hephaisteion was lavishly decorated with depictions of famous mythological events, like the labors of Theseus.

The Theseus scenes gave the temple the nickname "Theseion" – a name that lives on today as a city district in Athens.

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Because the Hephaisteion was dedicated to Hephaistos, the gods of metallurgy, and Athena Ergane, the goddess of crafts and weaving, it is no surprise that many metalworking shops were installed on the same hill as the temple, all of which contain evidence of the production of weapons and armor.

Similarly, as Athena was also the patron goddess of potters, the pottery quarter - known as the Kerameikos - was also just behind the Hephaisteion.

BouleuterionPrytaneionHeliaiaMarketJudicial CourtMintClosing Remarks

Conversation scene / 440-430 BCE (Classical Greece)

The Bouleuterion was another building in the agora that contributed to the democratic process.

It housed the Athenian council of citizens, the boule.

This council of 500 was composed of fifty members from each Greek tribe, all of whom served a one year term. They were chosen by lot from among citizens over thirty.

Every month, one group of fifty was chosen to lead the boule's executive committee, the prytaneis.

The prytaneis met every day of the month and called meetings of the full council in the Bouleuterion, where they sepnt their time discussing bills.

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Athens' democratic system ensured a rotation of the people who held key functions. For example, each tribe held the prytany for one month, and magistrates were elected for one-year terms. However, there was also a procedure that was put in place to banish citizens believed to be a threat to the state. This procedure was known as an ostracism, and was originally put in place to prevent the rise of possible tyrants.

Every year, in the sixth prytany, the assembly asked Athenians if they wished to hold an ostracism. If they voted yes, the ostracism would be held later on, during the eighth prytany.

The ostracism vote was held in an enclosure in the agora, and supervised by the archontes and the Boule. To vote, a citizen put the name of the candidate they wished to ostracize on a pottery fragment called an ostraka, then dropped the ostraka into an urn. The ostracism was considered valid if a minimun of 6,000 people voted, and the man with the largest number of votes was ostracized.

The otracized man was given ten days to leave the city, and had to remain in exile for ten years. However, he did not forfeit his citizenship and property, and could even be recalled by the assembly in the case of an emergency, which happened to Kimon in 461 BCE.

Famous politicians who were ostracized include Xanthippos, Themistokles, Alkibiades, and Thucydides, who used the time provided by his exile to write his "History of the Peloponnesian War".

Obol of Athens similar to those used to pay the misthos / 440-430 BCE (Classical Greece)

The Prytaneion was one of the most important buildings in the agora, as it was the headquarters of the prytaneis.

The prytaneis was the executive committee of the Boule, who ran the city's daily operations.

The prytaneis dined in the Prytaneion, and seventeen of them slept onsite to ensure there were always officials available to deal with emergencies.

The Prytaneion also housed the official weighs and measures of the city.

The fire of Hestia, which provided sacred fire for all public sacrifices, was also located there.

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The prytaneis were magistrates from the Boule's Council of 500. The council was evenly divded amongst the ten Athenian tribes, with each tribe having fifty members.

The prytaneis were in charge of the Prytaneion. They held their position for one-month term called prytany, after which a new tribe would be chosen for the prytaneis.

Every day, one member of the prytaneis was chosen by lot to be the epistates - the president of the council. No member was allowed to hold this office more than once.

In 406 BCE, a great loss of ships and men in the Battle of Arginousai angered the Athenians, who demanded punishment without due process for the generals involved in the battle. However, the philosopher Sokrates was the epistates at the time, and refused to vote on the matter, stating that he would never perform an action that wasn't in accordance with the law.

Heliast's tablet bearing his name, his deme, and the seal of Athens / 4th cent. BCE (Classical Greece)

The Heliaia was the most important court in Athens, and was presided over by a group of judges called heliasts.

Judging was a regular part of an Athenian citizen's life, with trials happening almost every day.

Heliasts were chosen randomly based on two factors: first, that they were on the official list of 6,000 potential heliasts. Second, that they were present at court on the day of the trial.

A stipend of two obols was established by Perikles to compensate for the loss of work while on heliast duty, and also to encourage participation in the judiciary process.

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During the 5th century BCE, the regime of Athens implemented an important innovation to encourage participation in the city's democracy.

At the instigation of Perikles, a special allowance called the "misthos" was created. At first, the misthos was only given to bouleutes and heliasts (judges), but in the 4th century BCE, a misthos ekklesiastikos was created for participation in the Athenian assembly.

The misthos was a payment that allowed even the poorest citizen to perform public functions. Strangely, even though there were democratic regimes elsewhere in Greece, the misthos system only existed in Athens.

Greek scale / 5th-1st cent. BCE (Classical or Hellenistic Greece)

In the agora, an Athenian could buy and sell many different products.

The permanent retail market was divided into sections according to the category of merchandise.

Merchants and craftsmen who worked in the market could be citizens, foreigners, or even freed slaves.

They sold everything from food and clothes, to jewelry and slaves.

With so much variety, competitions was fierce, and that competition helped regulate the market's prices.

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Weights and measures varied from city to city. As a result, transactions in the Agora had to respect the official weights and measures of Athens, which were kept in the Bouleuterion. Consequently, merchants were required to visit the Bouleuterion to test their measuring devices against the city's official standards.

The weight system was closely linked to the weight standard of coinage. The basic unit was the obol (0.72g), but there were others, including the drachma (4.3g), the mina (430g), and the talent (25.86kg).

There were also units for liquid volumes, such as the medimnos (c. 52l), which was used to calculate grain transactions, and the metretes (c. 40l), which was used to measure wine.

Special magistrates known as Metronomoi were appointed to supervise the adequate use of weights and measures in the agora.

Bust of Sokrates / 5th cent. BCE (Classical Greece)

The Heliaia wasn't only the court in Athens. This other court was located next to the South Stoa.

Historians believe it to be a court based on the discovery of a nearby box containing seven bronze ballots.

These ballots were used by jurors to give their verdicts.

The reason trials were so common in Athens might have been related to their democratic regime, which promoted the individual's right to demand reparations for injustice.

However, not all legal matters were settled in this fashion.

If a claim was small enough, it was settled individually by a magistrate.

Public trials were reserved for more serious offenses, such as murder, theft, and political crimes.

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Athens' most famous judicial affair is probably the trial of Sokrates in 399 BCE. The philosopher was accused of impiety against the pantheon of Athens and corruption of the city's youth. The events of Sokrates' trial have been related by two of his disciples: Plato and Xenophon.

It's possible that the accusations against Sokrates were politically motivated, as many of his friends—including Kritias, Charmides, and Alkibiades—were against the city's democracy, which was already in jeopardy after Athens' defeat in the Peloponnesian War. Furthermore, even though he denied it, Sokrates was often associated with the sophists, who were being used as scapegoats for the loss of Athens' traditional values.

Whatever the reasons for the accusations, Sokrates was found guilty, and since the law provided no specific penalty for his offenses, both the accusers and the accused were required to suggest a possible sentence. Sokrates proposed to be fed in the Prytaneion, while his accusers demanded the death penalty. Always committed to following the law, Sokrates accepted the fatal verdict and was executed by drinking hemlock.

Lot of tetradrachms / 2007

The mint was where the city made its coinage.

It is believed that Athens' mint was in the city's agora, as modern excavations have turned up small disk-shaped pieces of metal used to make coins.

Much of the silver required for minting coinage came from the Laurion silver mines.

Athens was so dependent on the mines that when they lost them during the Peloponnesian War, the city was forced to melt down a gold statue of Athena to mint gold coins and avert a monetary crisis.

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In Ancient Greece, every city-state struck its own coinage. This meant that the coins of one city only had legal value in their own territory. Consequently, if someone travelled to another city, they needed to exchange their own foreign coins for local currency.

The need for currency exchange explains the prevalence of money-changers in the agora and in ports like Piraeus. Much like today, money-changers made a profit from their exchanges.

Unfortunately, with the invention of coinage also came the invention of counterfeiting. Counterfeit money was such a problem in Athens that the city appointed a special magistrate called the arguroskopos (silver-examiner) to inspect coins in the agora. If forgers were caught, they faced the death penalty.

• Aspasia: You have now experienced the agora, following in the footsteps of countless Athenians before you. I hope the trip has impressed upon you how important this place was to trade, politics and law. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

("I'm ready for the quiz.") ("Take on the next suggested tour.") ("Take me on a random tour.") ([LEAVE] "That's all for now.")

• Aspasia: Farewell, wanderer. May we see each other again soon.

Gallery

• File:Assassin's Creed Discovery Tour- The Agora of Athens - Ep. 11 - Ubisoft -NA-