The Greek Agora is the best-known example of an ancient city located to the northwest of the Acropolis and bounded on the south by the hill of the Aeropagus.
On the west, by the hill known as the Agoraios Kolonos, it remained in use either as an assembly, as a commercial center, or as a residential area for about 5.000 years. Consequently, the area has undergone countless building, destruction,destruction and rebuilding cycles, and today this strata of history has been distilled through excavations to expose the Agora’s
The word agora comes from the verb ageiro that is to say gather together and it was a inseparable part of every ancient Greek city. Social and cultural activities, commercial transactions, theatrical performances, religious festivals, musical contests, and sports activities were held in Agora.
For the city of Athens, Agora formed the center for political gathering and the public expression of opinions, where the most important administrative and judicial functions of Athenian democracy were carried out. Inscribed pillar-shaped stelae horoi placed at its entrances bound the public space of the Agora.
Human habitation begins in the Late Neolithic period (3000 BC). Wells have been found, and the area was used as a cemetery from the Mycenaean period, 1600–1200 BC, until the Protogeometric. Geometric period: 1100-700 BC. In the 6th century, the ancient Agora became the center. Of the city’s public life. In 594 BC, Solon divided the citizens of Athens into four classes in accordance with their agricultural income.
From 545 to 510 BC, Peisistratos and his sons installed a tyranny. Kleisthenis divided the Athenian citizens into ten tribes, each participating equally in governing the state.
During this period, the open square of the Agora was filled with public buildings and sanctuaries. From 478 BC, Pericles dominated the Athenian political scene. The construction of the Hephaisteion occurred almost simultaneously with that of the Parthenon. Belong within the imposing building program of Pericles. East of the Hephaesteion, four rows of stone seats, the edrana, or synedrion, were built.
During the Peloponnesian War, the Stoa Zeus Eleutherios, the new Bouleuterion, South Stoa, and the mint were built. A private residence, identified as the house-workshop of Simon the Cobler, a friend of the philosopher Socrates, was also built in the 5
The site of the Ancient Agora is crossed by the famous Panathenaic Way, which began at the Dipylon in the Kerameikos and concluded at the entrance to the Acropolis. It served the needs of the political and commercial center of the city from the 6th century BC to the 6th century AD. A poros stone channel for collecting rainwater ran parallel to the road.
The procession in honor of Athena passes by this road during the celebration of the Great Panathenaea every four years. At the great Panathenaea There were musical, equestrian, and gymnastic contests. In the apobates dromos, the mounted and fully armed horseman stands beside the charioteer.
Leapt from the chariot while it was in motion continued by racing the moving chariot. At a run and finally mounted the chariot again. The anthippasia was a type of cavalry battle in which Athenian ephebes took part, divided. By tribes. The audience watched the events seated on wooden grandstands. On either side of the Panthenaic Way were commercial and administrative buildings, altars, temples, and statues on pedestals.
The Odeion of Agrippa
It was a magnificent building with a long rectangular stage, a semicircular orchestra, and an amphitheater. Its epistyle was supported by six colossal statues of mythical beings: three tritons with fish tails and three giants with snake tails. The Gymnasium was a large building complex that covered the ruins of the Odeion part of the Middle Stoa and South Stoa.
Continuing westward is the temple of Ares, which houses the worship of Ares, Athena, and Aphrodite. We continue to the west, and a small deviation southward takes us to the Altar of Zeus. Across from the altar of Zeus Agoraios, we encounter the monument of the Eponymous Heroes.
Under the paving of the west road runs the main section of the Great Drain. In the early 4th century BC in order to collect rainwater and effluents from the area. Two branches were added to the main section of the channel, directly south of the Tholos.
A large section of the latter branch is visible along the street of the Marble Workers. Objects employed as cover plaques included marble inscriptions, funerary stelae, and statues. Like that of the emperor Hadrian. Following the west road, we see on our left the small temple of Apollo Patroos. This was an ionic temple with pronaos, cella, and an adyton. The colossal cult statue was created by the Corinthian sculptor Euphranor.
Beside the temple of Apollo Patroos is the small, single-chambered temple of Zeus Phratrios and Athena Phratria. South of the temple of Apollo Patroos, two wooden ramps on either side of two omphaloi lead to the stairway to Hephaesteion. The omphaloi are associated with the worship of Apollo Pythios.
From the small open space that has been created in the area of the omphaloi we can see the Metroon.
The Metroon was built atop the remains of two earlier buildings, the Old Bouleuterion and an even older building complex. The hilltop of Kolonos Agoraios is dominated by the Temple of Hephaestus and Athena Ergane.
A doric peripheral temple with pronaos, cella, and opisthodomos. Particular emphasis was given. To the decoration of its eastern side, which carries ten metopes with the labors of Heracles While the labors of Theseus adorn the four eastern metopes of its long sidesa at the bottom of the stairs, we see the Tholos, or Skias. It was the most important building on West Road.
It had six columns on its interior and may have had a conical roof. The Tholos was the seat of the fifty Prytaneis. Directly north of the Tholos are preserved a very small number of remains from the new Bouleuterion and its monumental Ionic Propylon.
As we cross over the Great Drain to our east, we find the ruins of the house workshop of Simon the Cobbler, where Socrates met his students. East of the cobbler’s and at a lower level, we can see an exact copy of marble horos. Continuing along our route to the east, we arrive at an open space where we can view the remains of the civic offices.
We can also get an overall picture of the Middle Stoa. The largest building in the area. The restored Stoa of Attalos was the gift of Attalos II, king of Pergamos, to the city of Athens. It was a two-story commercial building with a double colonnade in front, while on its interior, it had 21 shops arrayed on each floor. On the ground floor, there is the exterior colonnade. It consisted of 45 columns of the doric order, and the interior colonnade had 22 unfluted ionic columns. Right outside the terrace of the Stoa, we will see the foundations of a bema, from which the orator spoke to the crowd.
As we approach the north end of the Stoa of Attalos we meet the foundations of an elegant.
Part of the church was built on the earlier Nymphaion. Four building phases can be identified. Originally, it was a cross in square with a dome apses on four sides and a narthex on its west. The dome was supported by four columns, and the exterior walls had horizontal dentil bands and ceramic decoration with Kufic lettering.
THE MUSEUM EXHIBITS.
The oldest exhibits include vases, figurines, stone tools, and pottery from the Neolithic Period (3000 BC) and the early and middle Bronze Ages. Two intact Neolithic vases with biconical bodies. They have an orange-red burnishing. The stone statuette of a woman lying on her back with slightly raised head, shoulders, and knees. A small hand-made spouted vase preserving geometric decoration and a Minyan-Ware Cup cantharos made from a hard gray clay are dated to 1800 BC.
A high-footed kylix and a small, three-handed bowl with painted decoration of six lilies with volute-shaped petals and triple pistils. A clay prochous with a beaked spout covered by an octopus was found in a Mycenaean chamber tomb. A high-footed kylix and a small, three-handed bowl with painted decoration of six lilies with volute-shaped petals and triple pistils. A clay prochous with a beaked spout covered by an octopus was found in a Mycenaean chamber tomb.
The unusual oinochoi dating to the 8th century BC with intersecting clay tubes on its body was found in a male burial, and its function is not clear. An impressive pyxis with three horses on its lid was a funerary gift from the 8th century BC. A protogeometric tomb of a warrior included a cremation pit, his bent sword, weapons, an axe, a dogger, a chisel, spearheads, the iron bit of a horse, and clay vases. (900 BC)
The geometric tomb of an adult female presents a burial consisting of the cremation pit, bronze fibulae and pins, gold rings and earrings, a necklace, and a rare clay box-shaped Pyxis. Within the casting pit of a bronze-working establishment east of the Hephaisteion, part of a mold for the length of a bronze statue was found dated to the Archaic period. The product of an attic workshop is the vase in the shape of a young male athlete kneeling and tying the victor’s band around his head. (540-530 BC). A clay votive plaque depicts a female Chthonian deity flanked by two snakes. The kleroteria were a type of machine made of wood or stone composed of a stele, on the façade of which were notches arranged in vertical columns and horizontal rows.
Together with a metal tube equipped with a funnel. Prospective jurors placed their bronze tickets inside the slots of the columns. White and black metal balls were then placed in the funnel and tossed into the tube at random. This procedure continued until the number of requisite jurors was complete. The clay klepsydras were a type of water clock used to calculate the time of speakers during trials in ancient Athens.
Bronze jurors’ ballots were found inside a ballot box.(4th century.)
Bone eyelets, hobnails, and a clay Kylix base preserving the incision ΣΙΜΩΝΟΣ were discovered in a building near Tholos. To protect itself against would-be tyrants, the Athenian democracy had a method of voting. Ostracism was established by Cleisthenes. Ostracism took its name from the ostraka, the pieces of broken pottery on which Athenian citizens inscribed the name of the politician they considered dangerous for the democratic government.
The small bronze head of a Nike was found in a well on the western side of the Agora.(420-415 ) The head was supported on a body. A cylindrical clay container that served as a public measure for fruits and nuts. Two rectangular clay plaques from the 4th century BC and the disc-shaped lead symbols of armor. That served for the distribution of state armaments to thetes and slaves in case of mobilization. A bronze shield that belonged to one of the 292 Lacedaemonians captured during the battle of Sphakteria in 425 BC.
The fragments of a bronze equestrian life-size statue include a bronze sword and the rider’s left foot. Herms were four-sided stone stelae made of stone, surrounded by the head of a bearded Hermes. A clay alabastron with black figure decoration of a winged figure, Iris, Nike, or Artemis. The marble statuette of Heracles from the 3rd century AD. Terracotta figurines, toys, and the horse on four wheels. the rattles in the shape of a cock, a cat, and others.
The statue of a young Satyr (mid of 2nd century AD)
The colossal statue of Aphrodite of Parian marble. A votive relief in the shape of a cave,in which Hermes is delivering over the infant Dionysos to three Nymphs.Zeus,Demeter,Appolp,Artemis and Pan with Achelous are watching. 4th century BC. A votive relief commemorating the victory of the tribe of Leontis in an equestrian contest.
A marble base for a votive monument with the depiction of an apovatis race. In the area of ancient Agora there are many different species of trees like : Almond trees,Apollonian Laurels,Blue leaved Wattles,Olive trees,Aleppo-pines,Plane-trees. Oak-trees,Holm-Oaks,Bitter Oranges,Fig-trees,White Popplars,Judas-trees,Mediterranean. Cypresses,Jellybean-trees,Japanese Pagodas,Carob-trees. There is also a rich flora of bushes,climbing and herbaceous plants.
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