Agoras

The agora lay at the heart of the ancient Greek city. It was centrally located, served as a communal meeting place, and witnessed a variety of public activities, including economic transactions, judicial and administrative proceedings, and religious practices.

The term agora derives from the verb ageiro, meaning “to gather together.” In the Odyssey, when Telemachus assembles the men of Ithaca to announce his plans to go in search of his father, Odysseus, Homer uses both the noun agora and the verb ageiro to describe the assembly. As the Greek city-states took shape during the period from 800 to 600 B.C.E., a public place of assembly became a necessary feature of the city's layout. In Athens and other mainland cities, this area often lay below an earlier citadel, the acropolis, but in the colonial cities of Ionia, Sicily, and southern Italy, the agora was often purposefully laid down at the center of an orthogonal grid.

The agora was a religious space. Its boundaries might be marked by monumental gateways or inscribed stones, as at Athens. Within the boundaries of the agora, altars, small sanctuaries, and even temples were dedicated to the various gods who oversaw the welfare of the state. The Athenian agora, for example, housed an altar to the twelve Olympian gods and was ringed by temples such as the famous Hephaisteion, [Page 22]still standing, and the temple of Apollo Patroos, where a statue was dedicated to the god by Athenians seeking his protection against the terrible plague of 431 B.C.E. Each year in August, the entire citizen body assembled for a procession that crossed the agora before heading up to the Acropolis. This celebration was the Panathenaea, a festival in honor of Athens' patron goddess, Athena. The route of the procession through the middle of the agora and past the principal buildings of the democracy shows that the agora brought the Athenian community together as both a religious and a civic body.

As a civic space, the agora was often fitted out with law courts, council chambers, and state archives. It was in these buildings that the official versions of the city's laws were put on public display and here that magistrates were examined both before taking and leaving office. Preliminary judicial inquiries were conducted in the agora, as for example when Socrates had to present himself before a magistrate on the charges of corruption and impiety. Law courts for full trials, which might involve juries of more than 1,000, were built on the edge of the agora.

Major buildings, whether temples, stoas (covered porticoes), or civic buildings, tended to be placed along the sides of the agora, leaving the central space open. In this space, hundreds of stalls were set up, and the range of economic activities taking place suggests that the agora was like a huge bazaar. Sausage sellers, money lenders, candle makers, metal workers, perfumiers, shoemakers, and potters all congregated in parts of the agora. Watching over everything were state officials, who ensured that fair weights and measures were used and that grain was sold at fair prices. Thus in the economic activities of daily life as much as in civic and religious functions, the agora was central to the ancient Greek community.

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