If you look around the Athenian Agora, you will discover that there are five interesting places waiting for you to explore them.
The stoa, a gift from the King of Pergamon (2nd cent. BC), was reconstructed in the 1950s. Where once it had shops, now it houses the agora museum. Note the juror selection device, ceramic baby seat and pot-sherd ostracism ballots, scratched with “Themistocles”. Also, shoe nails and eyelets from the shoemaker’s shop and small vials, perhaps for poison.
© Corbis / Smart Magna
If you enjoy getting off the beaten track, seek out this obscure ruin, where Socrates likely spent his final days. Located in the agora’s wild southwestern area, down a narrow path (Street of the Marble Workers), over a tiny bridge crossing a deep ancient drain, this building once featured a single gateway, guards’ quarters and a central corridor flanked by small cells.
At the front of the Heliaia (law courts), this mechanism, once used for timing law suits and trials, consisted of a water reservoir with a drain, topped with a measuring device that indicated the falling water level and the passage of the time. The tank had to be refilled after 17 hours. Lengths of trials varied (up to one day), but individual litigants’ speechers were closely timed.
This preserved section of pavement, near the agora’s Acropolis entrance, marks the path of the Panathenaic Way, the avenue followed every four years by the celebrants of Athena’s great festival. The Way began at the Kerameikos’ Dipylon Gate, crossed Athens’ central square diagonally and led up to the Acropolis, now carrying on its worn stones traces of many ancient feet.
John Leonard | October 8th, 2015
If you look around the Athenian Agora, you will discover that there are five interesting places waiting for you to explore them.
The stoa, a gift from the King of Pergamon (2nd cent. BC), was reconstructed in the 1950s. Where once it had shops, now it houses the agora museum. Note the juror selection device, ceramic baby seat and pot-sherd ostracism ballots, scratched with “Themistocles”. Also, shoe nails and eyelets from the shoemaker’s shop and small vials, perhaps for poison.
© Corbis / Smart Magna
If you enjoy getting off the beaten track, seek out this obscure ruin, where Socrates likely spent his final days. Located in the agora’s wild southwestern area, down a narrow path (Street of the Marble Workers), over a tiny bridge crossing a deep ancient drain, this building once featured a single gateway, guards’ quarters and a central corridor flanked by small cells.
At the front of the Heliaia (law courts), this mechanism, once used for timing law suits and trials, consisted of a water reservoir with a drain, topped with a measuring device that indicated the falling water level and the passage of the time. The tank had to be refilled after 17 hours. Lengths of trials varied (up to one day), but individual litigants’ speechers were closely timed.
This preserved section of pavement, near the agora’s Acropolis entrance, marks the path of the Panathenaic Way, the avenue followed every four years by the celebrants of Athena’s great festival. The Way began at the Kerameikos’ Dipylon Gate, crossed Athens’ central square diagonally and led up to the Acropolis, now carrying on its worn stones traces of many ancient feet.
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