Athenian Agora

Θα παρουσιαστεί η επιτελεστική (performative) διαδρομή που πραγματοποίησε η Αγγελική Σβορώνου στον Αρχαιολογικό Χώρο της Αρχαίας Αγοράς της Αθήνας την Άνοιξη του 2018. Η έμπνευση για τη δράση αυτή προήλθε από την έρευνα της Σβορώνου στο Φωτογραφικό Αρχείο της Αμερικάνικης Σχολής Κλασικών Σπουδών Αθήνας (ASCSA) για τη διδακτορική της διατριβή. Η «συνάντηση» της με το εκπληκτικό αυτό φωτογραφικό υλικό το οποίο απεικονίζει μια εξαφανισμένη περιοχή της Αθήνας, της δημιούργησε απρόσμενα συναισθήματα και στάθηκε η αφορμή για μια διαφορετική θεώρηση της αντικειμενικότητας και της σκοπιμότητας τόσο της αρχαιολογικής έρευνας όσο και της φωτογραφικής αποτύπωσης. Στόχος της καλλιτεχνικής αυτής δράσης είναι να διερευνήσει τα όρια της μνήμης του χώρου και να καταγράψει τις περιοχές επικάλυψης του πραγματικού ως παρόν και του φανταστικού ως παρελθόν, ορίζοντας έτσι μια γεωγραφία του μυαλού και του συναισθήματος.

"This study gathers and interprets the earliest extant references to architects in ancient Greek philosophy, as found in select works of Plato and Aristotle.  Throughout this review, Plato and Aristotle [are] shown to consistently present architectonic agents as exemplary civic and intellectual leaders, acting in awareness of their own (and others’) limits, with knowledge of the most appropriate archē, and with a view to the most comprehensive aims—the common good. This discloses an alternative and more accurate etymology of architects: not as master-builders but as leaders and makers of beginnings (archai). The aim of this essay has been not only to rediscover the discursive beginnings for a renewed philosophy of architecture, but to suggest how these philosophical 'archai' might help present-day architects reimagine the full relevance of their still contested role."

Greek and Roman temples are often very similar in both appearance and function and yet at other times they can be vastly different. This essay compares Greek and Roman temples in both their architectural and functional capacities. It then focuses on two particular temples, the Metroon in the Athenian Agora and the Temple of Cybele on the Palatine Hill in Rome. While both of these temples are dedicated to the same deity and are situated in prominent civic positions, they are nevertheless very different, architecturally and functionally.

Nessuno più di Aristotele ha studiato la democrazia ateniese. Di quella che è stata la forma storica più rilevante dell’idea democratica Aristotele ha voluto comprendere l’evoluzione, la storia: perciò ha pensato il confronto, in prospettiva diacronica, delle manifestazioni dell’idea democratica che giudicava le più significative e intellegibili della storia ateniese. A guidare la ricerca aristotelica sulla democrazia ateniese è un assunto rilevante del suo pensiero politico: ogni costituzione (politeia, nel suo linguaggio) è conoscibile attraverso la concezione che esprime riguardo a «ciò che è giusto». È l’idea (eidos) della giustizia, anzi della giustizia come uguaglianza, a definire il carattere di un regime politico. Aristotele ha cercato l’idea democratica prioritariamente nella forma di volta in volta assunta dal dispositivo della cittadinanza. Nel caso della democrazia ateniese, l’evoluzione viene seguita dalla fase dell’emergenza dell’idea di cittadinanza democratica, agli inizi del VI secolo, fino a quando le regole stabilite rispetto alla definizione del gruppo dei cittadini e delle loro spettanze hanno ricevuto una forma stabile. Un ciclo compiutosi nel corso del secolo e mezzo che separa i provvedimenti adottati in materia di cittadinanza da Solone e da Pericle.

Democracy has never been more popular. It is successfully practiced today in a myriad of different ways by people across virtually every cultural, religious or socio-economic context. The forty-five essays collected in this companion suggest that the global popularity of democracy derives in part from its breadth and depth in the common history of human civilization. The chapters include exceptional accounts of democracy in ancient Greece and Rome, modern Europe and America, among peoples’ movements and national revolutions, and its triumph since the end of the Cold War. However, this book also includes alternative accounts of democracy’s history: its origins in prehistoric societies and early city-states, under-acknowledged contributions from China, Africa and the Islamic world, its familiarity to various Indigenous Australians and Native Americans, the various challenges it faces today in South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia, the latest democratic developments in light of globalization and new technologies, and potential future pathways to a more democratic world. Understanding where democracy comes from, where its greatest successes and most dismal failures lie, is central to democracy’s project of inventing ways to address the need of people everywhere to live in peace, freedom and with a say in the decisions that affect their lives.

To the left of the Panathenaic Way as it winds up the steep northern slope of the Athenian Akropolis lies the City Eleusinion, a sanctuary of Demeter and Kore, linked ritually with Eleusis. When the Eleusinian Mysteries were held each September, the Sacred Objects brought on foot by priestesses from Eleusis were deposited in the City Eleusinion and kept there while the festival began and during the initial rituals in the Agora and in Piraeus. The Eleusinion and its Temple of Triptolemos are noted by Pausanias (although he was forbidden in a dream to describe it thoroughly). Excavations by the American School of Classical Studies in Athens during the late 1930s and 1950s uncovered the forecourt of the sanctuary, and the architecture, inscriptions, sculpture and other finds are presented in this volume. The book includes a chapter on the plemochoe, a ritual vessel used in the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Athens was a city of the written word. The public bodies of Athens and Attica and individual residents inscribed more words on stone than the citizens of any other Greek city. There are well over 20,000 Attic inscriptions on stone, and the production is continuous from the archaic period through to the end of antiquity. The sheer quantity of the material endows the epigraphical record with historical potential of a character distinctly different from any other Greek city. Together with the rich literary record — a disproportionate quantity of the literary evidence for ancient Greece, especially of the classical period, was produced by Athenians or Athenian residents — it enables the history of Athens to be written across a span of time and in a depth and detail that is unique in the Greek world and otherwise usually possible only for more modern polities. [A revised version of this chapter was posted on academia.edu on 25 Nov. 2019]

This paper presents a Late Antique column-neck fragment, stored at the archaeological site of the so-called Hadrian’s Library. Its anthemion decoration points towards a strong influence from the Erechtheion. Moreover, its restored dimensions almost fit those of the semi-columns of the Erechtheion’s West Façade, as well as those of a column-neck fragment from the Athenian Agora, initially attributed by T. Leslie Shear Jr. to the Aphrodite Ourania Temple and lately by Alexandra Lesk to the Apollo Patroos Temple. On this occasion of the publication of the column-neck from the Hadrian’s Library area and its relation to the Erechtheion, also based on the well-known connections between the Erechtheion and Apollo Patroos Temple, the latter’s plan is reexamined, rejecting Heiner Knell’s hexastyle prostyle proposal and confirming Homer Thompson’s and John Travlos’ initial reconstruction as tetrastyle in antis.

During 1970s archaeological excavations taking place in the north-west corner of the ancient Athenian
Agora, a little shrine, subsequently known as the “crossroads shrine”, was recovered. Initially identified with
the so called Leokorion, it has been subsequently attributed to other cults, on the base of the typology of the
votives and of its peculiar topographical position. Through the analysis of the votive deposit and the way the
deposit itself has formed, in relationship with the particular topographical and geo-morphological profile of
the area, this contribution aims to offer a different reading of the development of this cult that, even if not
definitive, suggests a new interpretative line of the crossroads shrine.
Presso l'angolo nord-occidentale dell'antica Agorà di Atene è stato individuato, durante gli scavi degli anni
settanta del secolo scorso, un piccolo recinto sacro conosciuto con il nome di “recinto dell'incrocio”. Inizialmente
identificato con il cosiddetto Leokorion, è stato successivamente variamente attribuito ad altri culti, sulla
base della tipologia dei votivi e della sua particolare posizione topografica. In questo contributo, partendo
dalle testimonianze materiali trovate all'interno del deposito votivo e dall'analisi del modo di formazione
del deposito stesso, in relazione con la posizione topografica e gli aspetti geomorfologici dell'area, si propone
una diversa lettura dello sviluppo di questo culto che, sebbene non definitiva, suggerisce una nuova linea
interpretativa del recinto dell'incrocio.

This study presents two deposits of bronze statuettes discovered in the Athenian Agora. Both groups were found with material associated with the Herulian sack of AD 267/8. The author proposes that these statuettes were used in the service of domestic cults. The Greek, Roman, and Egyptian deities represented illustrate the diversity of domestic cult activities current in Athens during the mid-3rd century AD. While the deposits provide some evidence for Roman domestic cult practices in Athens, it is clear that Greek cult practices remained the dominant tradition.

The election of Solon as Archon in Athens at the beginning of the 6th century BC brought about significant revisions to both the sacrificial calendar and the code of civil laws. Dr Valdés Guía’s work represents a detailed analysis of the background and implementation of Solon’s major reforms that were to put an end to the stasis of the City, by means of a fresh definition of the internal and external frontiers of the polis, at a crucial moment in Athens’ consolidation as a city-state.

This paper discusses evidence on one of the archaeological ghosts of the classical Athenian agora: the Stoa of the Herms. The monument is famous for the three inscribed herms placed inside, set up to celebrate the conquest of Eion in the early fifth century. Traditionally, modern scholarship associates the stoa and its herms – commonly referred to as the 'Eion herms' – with Cimon, son of Miltiades, and employs relevant sources to postulate a complex, related Athenian celebration and contemporary reception of the monument. The archaeological remains of the building are unidentified. I will discuss literary evidence and propose a reconsideration of the historical coherency of the tradition on the Stoa of the Herms. My aim is to highlight how focusing on the context of each relevant source is essential in order to understand and interpret this monument. I will thus address a case study on Greek art, public architecture and cultural reception which is known, essentially, through distant, literary sources alone.

The relief fragment Athens, NM Inv. 2636 was confiscated in 1904 in Piraeus. The preserved segment of the relief is dominated by the figure of a warrior with a shield, who moves left towards a cult image of Apollo set upon a base and holding a bow in his left hand. At the right-hand edge of the segment the right foot is preserved of another figure, who the warrior turns his head back to. The warrior is recognized as being Neoptolemos, fleeing from his persecutors to the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi. Technical details establish securely that the fragment comes from a relief frieze that was situated inside a sanctuary of Apollo Pythios in Athens. It is known that in Athens Apollo Pythios was also worshipped as Apollo Patroos, whose temple was erected on the Agora. Given the tradition that the gilding of the altar of Apollo Patroos was financed by the very wealthy Athenian Neoptolemos, son of Antikles, we propose the hypothesis that the same man may also have borne the cost of producing the statue, which would account for the choice of the Neoptolemos myth for the relief decoration of the statue base. The latter conjecture necessarily leads to the probable provenance of the confiscated fragment being the Athens Agora.


Das Relieffragment Athen, Nationalmuseum Inv. 2636 ist im Jahre 1904 im Piräus beschlagnahmt worden. Den erhaltenen Abschnitt der Darstellung beherrscht die Gestalt eines Kriegers mit Schild, der sich nach links auf ein Kultbild des Apollon zubewegt, das auf einer Basis steht und einen Bogen in der linken Hand hält. Am rechten Rand ist der rechte Fuß einer weiteren Gestalt erhalten, zu der der Krieger seinen Kopf zurückwendet. In der Kriegergestalt wird Neoptolemos erkannt, der vor seinen Verfolgern ins Heiligtum des Apollon in Delphi flieht. Technische Details führen zu dem gesicherten Ergebnis, dass das Fragment von einem Relieffries stammt, der sich im Inneren eines Heiligtums des Apollon Pythios in Athen befunden hat. Bekanntlich wurde Apollon Pythios in Athen auch als Apollon Patroos verehrt, dessen Tempel auf der Agora errichtet wurde. Anhand der Überlieferung, die Vergoldung des Altars des Apollon Patroos sei von dem sehr reichen Athener Neoptolemos, Sohn des Antikles, finanziert worden, wird die Hypothese aufge- stellt, dass derselbe Mann auch die Kosten für die Herstellung der Statue übernommen haben könnte, wodurch sich die Wahl des Neoptolemosmythos für den Reliefschmuck der Statuenbasis erklären würde. Die letztgenannte Annahme führt nahezu zwangsläufig zur wahrscheinlichen Herkunft des beschlagnahmten Fragments von der Athener Agora.

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This article examines a group of about one hundred Attic Black-Glaze vases, mainly drinking vessels, dating to the late 4th and 3rd century BC. They all bear an  inscription, generally the name of a deity in the genitive, as well as West Slope decoration. After examining their shapes and decoration, I analyse the inscriptions themselves in order to try to understand the significance and use of these drinking cups.

Tanning was of great importance in Classical Athens, but the evidence for that looks quite meager. The owners of tanneries were rich and in uential citizens (democratic leader Cleon was one of them), but their reputation was poor and they were an easy target for playwrights’ cruel pranks (as is really common in Aristophanes’ works).
Beginning with the analysis of the lex sacra IG I3 257, which bans tanners from polluting the Ilissos river upstream of a sanctuary of Herakles, this paper presents the epigraphical and archaeological evidence related to tanning activities and attempts to offer a topographical approach to the localization of leather workshops, drawing attention to some features typical of this kind of production facilities.

This article has two objectives. First, and in particular, it seeks to reinterpret the ostracism procedure of early democratic Athens. Since Aristotle, this has been understood as a rational, political weapon of collective defense, intended to expel from Athens a disproportionately powerful individual. In this article, by putting emphasis on the materiality, gestures, and location of ostraka-casting, I propose instead that the institution can more fruitfully be understood as a ritual enactment of civic unity. Second, and more generally, I hope to explore the frames within which early Athenian democracy is placed: while Greek kingship and tyranny (i.e.“primitive” polities) have been very successfully explored through anthropological and cross-cultural comparison, Greek democracy for the most part has remained in the domains of
the institutional historian and political theorist. Taking a phenomenological and comparative approach, this article asks how the citizens of early democratic Athens experienced and
comprehended their new sovereignty and the invented procedures of mass decision-making through which it was expressed.

This article is the third in a series publishing the Hellenistic freestanding
sculpture from the Athenian Agora. A statuette of Agathe Tyche (1) is
apparently the last in a century-long sequence that begins with the impressive
ex-Aphrodite, S 37; a woman wearing a headscarf (2) joins a small group of
such pieces, including the famous “Slipper-Slapper” from Delos; six small
heads and one archaistic kore (3–9) complement those Aphrodites published
in Part 1 of this series; the Artemis (10) is identified as Artemis Boulaia,
worshipped by the Boule from ca. 270; an Athena and Pan (11, 12) complete
a trio of sculptures from a Hellenistic workshop in the Industrial District; and
a small female herm (13) from the “Bone Well” is shown not to be Aphrodite
Ourania, as often assumed, but a domestic statuette of Eileithyia, and reasons
are proposed for its presence in the well.

This exquisite and beautifully produced booklet is no. 26 in the popular series of the Athenian Agora Picture Books. It aims to introduce lay audiences and students to the lives of Athenian women based on information from literary and archaeological sources. Written in a concise, accessible, and engaging style, this little volume is packed with useful information and coloured illustrations of finds primarily from the Agora excavations. The booklet is divided into several short sections that survey many aspects of women's lives: in the house, as wives, mothers and household managers; in ritual, as participants and audience; in production and trade, as workers and merchants; in leisure, as male companions.

This paper explores the structure and mechanics of the Greek agora by focusing specifically on three urban contexts in the Peloponnese from the eighth century B.C.E. through the Late Classical period (Argos, Elis and Megalopolis). Although largely underrepresented in established discourses on the Greek agora, the diverse archaeological evidence from the Peloponnese has the potential to recalibrate traditional narratives, helping to formulate a more nuanced appreciation of Greek commercial and civic space independent from an athenocentric model.

It is argued here that the Peloponnesian experience offers new perspectives into the urban integration, structure and use of the Greek agora because of divergent conditions from city to city. Rather than articulate a universal model of the Greek agora, this paper demonstrates that there is often great variation among agoras, even among cities within a single region of the ancient Mediterranean. In fact, none of the Peloponnesian agoras included in this study are exactly alike. This is because the Greek agora responded to unique urban conditions within a particular context. Its spatial mechanics and social structure are never exactly replicated elsewhere. Ultimately this leads to the conclusion that there cannot be just one definition of the Greek agora, but many.