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The Agora at Athens and the Greek Market PlaceAuthor(s): Homer A. ThompsonSource: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Dec., 1954), pp.9-14Published by: Society of Architectural Historians

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THE AGORA AT ATHENS ANDTHE GREEK MARKET PLACEHOMER A. THOMPSON

THE AGORA AS AN architectural form began to claim theserious attention of Greekdesigners a good deal later thanthe temple or the sanctuary. Throughout its developmentas an architectural type it tolerated rather more varietyand freedom than did they, naturally enough since theagora was a more complex creation and one more subjectto local conditions both of custom and of physical setting.Onemay, however,detect in the history of the agora as ofthe templeand the sanctuarya consistent and logical pro-gression toward a design well calculated to satisfy a givenset of aestheticfeelings and humanneeds.These needs were many and complex. The agora, liter-ally "the gathering place," was the focal point of com-munity life in the Greek city state. A sizable square sit-uatednormallytoward the centreof thecity, it servedearlyas a meeting place for political assemblies, and was laterbordered by buildings to house the civic administrationand the courts of law. The open area served as a marketplace at all times; permanentshops came to be erected onits periphery. Templeswere included among the buildingson its borderswhile small, open-air sanctuariesand altarsfrequently occurred within the square. It was the normalvenue for the festal processions in which Mediterraneanpeople have always delighted; it was also the scene ofdramaticcontests and athleticdisplays.In the shadycolon-nades thatgraduallycameto enclose the squarethe citizenspasseda large part of their informal social life and it wasin this settingthat the early philosophers,notablySokratesand Zeno, did much of their teaching. In later times theintellectual life was more consciously fostered by the in-clusion of libraries and lecture halls in the equipment ofthe agora.Thepublicbuildingswerethemselvesfrequentlyof finedesign, andthey werecommonlyadornedwith sculp-ture and paintings which, combined with the monumentsthat eventuallystood in groves within the square,made ofthe agora a national art gallery freely open to all men atall times.The concentrationof so many departmentsof publiclifewithin so small an area no doubthad much to do with theextraordinary ntensity of civic consciousness in the GreekHOMER A. THOMPSON is the director of the Agora excavations ofthe American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

city state. This consideration alone would justify our givingsome attention to the physical features of the agora, par-ticularly in its relation to the other elements of the city plan.I should like to illustrate my few observations by refer-ence to two examples of agorai. The first will be drawnfrom Priene, a city of normal size which was laid out afreshin the mid-fourth century B.C. The other illustration I shalltake from Athens, one of the largest and most distinguishedof the city states, where the design of the Agora graduallyevolved through a period of some 800 years.Let us turn first to Priene. On the map you will find iton the west coast of Anatolia, down toward the southwestcorner of the peninsula. Perched on a shoulder of Mt.Mykale, the town had the rugged mountain as a citadel atits back while it looked southward toward the sea and thealluvial plain of the River Maeander, from which it drewits livelihood. The excavations and admirable publicationscarried out by German scholars over the past sixty yearshave given us a remarkably complete picture of the town:houses for its four or five thousand inhabitants grouped inrectangular blocks, the city wall pierced by one gate on thewest and two on the east side, the temple of the patron god-dess Athena on its lofty terrace, two gymnasia and even astadium within the walls and, toward the very centre of thetownsite, the Agora.A glance at the plan will show at once that the design ofthe townsite is a studied creation largely of one period.This makes more significant the careful choice of a centralsite for the Agora, readily accessible from all quarters ofthe city and almost equidistant from the three gates. Theprincipal street of the city passed through the square closeto its north side in a way convenient for ordinary trafficand particularly effective for the movement of processions.The sanctuary of Athena which lay to the northwest of theAgora was sufficiently remote to have formed an independ-ent focal point; the temple itself was barely visible fromthe square. A lesser sanctuary, probably of Zeus, closelyadjoined the east end of the square; it too maintained itsindependence, not being directly accessible from the Agora.The Ekklesiasterion, or meeting place of assembly andcouncil, as also the Prytaneion or town hall, were discreetlyset back from the square along its north side so as to be

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spared some of the inevitable clamor of the marketplace.The Agora of Priene was originally nearly a regularsquarein outline (Fig. 1). The northeastextension formedby the eastward enlargementof the North Stoa is of lateGreek imes. Of late date also is the open area to the west ofthe main square, identified as a provision market by thediscovery of massive marble counters. You will note theveryadequateseries of shops alongthe east,west and southsides of the square. In each case the row of shops wasfrontedby a colonnade of generouswidthskillfully alignedwith thestreets andso disposedas to unify thosethreesidesof the square.It would be hard to imagine a more conven-ient arrangement or shopping.The northcolonnade, a giftto the city from the prince of a neighboring state, was ofmore monumentalproportions. Its roof was supported bytwo rows of columns. Most of the rooms at its back wereprobably used as shops and public offices; one was cer-tainly a sanctuary.From an inscriptionwe learn thatpublicbanquetswere sometimes served in this building. The ter-rain in the area of the square sloped down from north tosouth. Much of the difference in level was taken up by acontinuous flight of six steps along the south edge of thebroad terrace which fronted the North Stoa. Seated onthese steps, or strolling on the terrace, the citizens com-manded a splendid view of the square, packed with itsmonuments,and on festival days thousands of them couldenjoy to the full the processions that must have movedalong the broad through street.Priene had long been on intimatetermswith Athens andthe new foundation of c. 350 B.C. was carried out underAthenian influence. One can easily imagine that the care-fully planned and orderly design of the new city and, notleast, the compact layout of its Agora represented theAthenian ideal of the period. We shall see, however, thatthe Agora of Athens itself at this time still fell far short ofany such ideal.It is time now to turn to the "mothercity," Athens.TheAthenians,unlike the people of Priene, have never had oc-casion to change their townsite. From the very beginning,by which I mean the Neolithic period, the settlementhascentred around the steep-walled, broad-topped, well-wateredhill calledthe Acropolis (Fig. 2). Near the summitone may still see the remains of the royal palace of theBronzeAge whichwas in its day theseat of administration.Thereafterone can tracea gradualdescentof the accommo-dation for government. We know that the Prytaneion orTown Hall and also the official residence of at least one ofthe three original magistrates lay on the north slope ofthe Acropolis. These foundationswill date from the estab-lishment of the aristocratic form of governmentthat suc-ceeded the monarchy in the early Iron Age. The actualstructureshave not yet come to light, but we know themfromthe pages of Aristotle and Pausanias.The constitutional reforms carried out by Solon at the

beginning of the sixth century B.C. led to the more activeparticipationof the people in the processes of governmentand in matters judicial. This development was naturallyaccompaniedby a furtherdescent of the seat of governmentfromthe rugged slopes of the Acropolis to the level land atits north foot, a region which had for hundreds of yearsbeen used as a burial ground and for scattereddwellings,in this respectresemblingthe Forum Romanum.The areahas been laid bare through the excavations carried out bythe AmericanSchool of ClassicalStudies since 1931. Here,deep beneath the foundations of later structures,have ap-pearedtheremains of buildingsof the time of Solonwhich,there is good reason to believe, served the administrativeand judicial bodies of that time and so representthe be-ginnings of the Athenian Agora.The site had many natural advantages: a smooth pieceof land withineasy reachof thecitadel andof thesurround-ing farmland with enough slope to assure drainage andwith a spring or two to provide good drinkingwater.Here,then,was to be the civic centreof the city-statefrom c. 600B.C. until the barbarian incursions of the third centuryafter Christ.

The plan will make clearer the place of the Agora in theoverall design of the town (Fig. 3). The Acropolis formedthe hub of the wheel-shapedcity, the circuit wall being therim. The Agora, lying at the northwest foot of the Acro-polis, was crossed diagonally by the principal street of thecity which led in from the main gate, the Dipylon, andcarriedone up to the hilltop.I have said that the Agora was for some eight centuriesthe centre of civic life. Yet I wish to avoid the impressionofcomplete rigidity and permanence.One of the most inter-esting aspects of the history of the area is the coming andgoing of institutions and the physical facilities that servedthem. In the beginningit would appearthat the Agora hadserved all the many departmentsof communitylife whichI listed at the outset. In the course of time, however,moresuitable accommodationwas found for some of these ac-tivities elsewhere.After the reforms of Kleisthenes, for in-stance, as the political assembly assumed new importanceandbeganto meetmore regularlyandfrequently, t movedsouth to the Pnyx whereit found a betterslopefor its audi-torium and a less noisy setting. That was about 500 B.C.At aboutthe sametime, Attic drama,advancingrapidlyinboth form and popularity under the genius of the youngAischylos, gave up its old meetingplacein the openmarketsquarein favor of the southside of the Acropoliswherethesteep slope facilitated seating and at the same time pro-vided shelter against the north wind. This was to be thesite of what we know as the Theatre of Dionysos.But let us turn to the north side of the Acropolis and tothe Agora proper. I should like to attempt an extremelybrief review of the developmentof the square, pausing atseveral of the more significantpoints in its historyto com-

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ment on certain aspects of its arrangement. The plan be-fore us shows the Agora as it was c. 200 B.C. (Fig. 4). Letme warn the reader, however, that this plan, as also thelater ones which are reproduced here, is defective on thenorth side. The north edge of the Agora falls outside thepresent zone of excavation so that its exploration must waitfor the future. From the literary references and from thediscovery of isolated blocks, we may be sure that muchof this side was closed, from about the middle of the fifthcentury B.C. onward, by the Stoa Poikile, the Painted Stoa,where Stoic philosophy was first taught and from which ittook its name.

In the long interval between the first beginnings of c. 600B.C. and the time represented by this plan, i.e., c. 200 B.C.,one public building after another had been added as occa-sion demanded. Throughout this period the alignment ofthe individual buildings and of the sides of the plaza wasdetermined chiefly by the course of the principal old thor-oughfares which had served the area long before the con-struction of any monumental buildings. Thus the buildingsof the west side were made to face on a north to south road-way; those on the south side were set with their backs to astreet which ran from east to west outside the plaza. Theorientation of the great square peristyle at the northeastcorner was taken from a thoroughfare which ran from eastto west within the limits of the Agora and which was bor-dered on the north, we believe, by the Painted Stoa. The re-sult was an irregular and somewhat incoherent plan, at leastas seen on paper. I have little doubt that these defects, ifone should so describe them, were less apparent in actual-ity, among other reasons because of planting in the square.We are told that Kimon, the great statesman of the mid-fifth century, adorned the Agora with plane trees, and theancient authors mention several other individual trees aswell as groves around certain buildings and sanctuaries.I would urge that this be kept in mind as an exceedinglysignificant element in the setting of the ancient Agora, justas a single great tree or a row of trees may give much of itscharacter to the square of a modern Greek town.Another factor which would have mitigated the bleak-ness suggested by the drawn plan was water. Water wasavailable in two large fountain houses set on the highground at the southeast and southwest corners of thesquare. From these fountain houses fresh water was car-ried down into the square in pipelines to supply drinkingfountains while the waste was led off in open stone runnelsto be used for watering the groves and trees and animals.Those earliest public buildings of which I have spokenstood near the south end of the west side of the square, andit is significant that throughout antiquity the southwestcorner of the square remained the focal point of adminis-trative activity. The executive branch of government wasaccommodated in a group of three buildings at which weshall look more closely later. In our excavation campaign

FIG. 1. Priene, the Agora. (von Gerkan,Griechische Stidteanlagen, Fig. 11)

FIG. 2. The Athenian Agora, August 1953. View toward the south-east. (American School of Classical Studies at Athens)

FIG. 3. Plan of northwest Athens, second century A.D. (AmericanSchool of Classical Studies at Athens)The Agora at Athens and the GreekMarketPlace 11


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FIG. 4. The Athenian Agora, c. 200 B.C. (American Schoolof Classical Studies at Athens) FIG. 5. The Athenian Agora, c. 100 B.C. (American Schoolof Classical Studies at Athens)

FIG. 6. Model of the west side of the Athenian Agora. View from thesoutheast. (American School of Classical Studies at Athens)

FIG. 7. The Athenian Agora, second century A.D. (AmericanSchool of Classical Studies at Athens)12 Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, XIII, 4


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of 1953 we found reason to believe that the principal law-court, the Heliaia, met in the great enclosure second fromthe west on the southside, whilethe spacious stoa or colon-nade to the east of it was probably intended to shelterthejurymen in case of rain, since in the court they sat underthe open sky. We are now inclined to believe that theenigmatic cloister-likebuilding at the northeastcorner ofthesquareaccommodatedanotherof the several knownlawcourts. The delightful miscellany of the south side is com-pleted by the national mint at the east end of the row. Toreturnto the west side, the group of administrativebuild-ings toward the south was balancedby the smallTempleofApollo and the elegant Stoa of Zeus at the north. Observethe broadgap left betweenthe two groupsto permita clearvista of theTempleof Hephaistoson the hilltopto the west.A perspicacious foreigner who visited Athens at aboutthe period of this plan recorded his admiration of thetemples, the Odeion and various other monuments of thecity, but he had not a word to say about the Agora. Onecan well imagine that at this time the Athenian Agora ap-peared old-fashioned and mean by comparison with thoseof some of the great new cities of the Greekeast. Withinfifty years,however,there was initiated a brilliantprogramwhich was to effect a radical transformation of the oldsquare and to make it one of the most impressive, conven-ient and attractive n the ancientworld. It is worth notingthat one of the major units in this program was certainlycontributed by King Attalos II of Pergamon (159-138B.C.), one of thosenewcities of theeast, and a second unitalso was probably a royal gift.The essence of the remodelling was the division of thesprawlingold squareinto two areas, both nearly rectangu-lar in outline: a large plaza to the north, obviously to bethe principal public square, and a lesser square to thesouth which we have come to think of as the CommercialAgora ormarket-placeproper (Fig. 5). The actualdivisionbetweenthe twosquareswaseffectedby a screen wall alongthe median line of the enormous two-aisled colonnadewhich we call the Middle Stoa. The greater and the lessersquare would presumablycorrespondto what Aristotle inhis Politics referredto as the "Freemen'sAgora,"and the"CommercialAgora,"respectively.Thereare severalparal-lels in the Hellenisticcities for this sensible separation offunctions, but nowhere was it arranged more effectivelythan here.I should like to drawattentionto two otherpoints in thelayout of the Agora as it emerged from this remodelling.The first has to do with thetwohugecolonnades,the MiddleStoa thatseparated he two squares,and the Stoa of Attalosthat closed the east side of the greater square.The Stoa ofAttalos, to be sure, had a row of 21 shops on each of itstwo floors, but the greater part of this building, like thewhole of the Middle Stoa, was designed primarily as apromenade.Such shelteredpromenadeswere ideally suited

to the nature of normal social and businesslife in a Greekcity. They must have been especially welcome on festivaldays, above all on that day when the Panathenaic Proces-sion swept up through the square toward the Acropolison the broad street to which it gave its name. With thisfunction in mind, the man who laid out the stoas ingeni-ously exploited the natural configuration of the terrain.In this area the land slopes gently down both towardthe north and toward the west. The south end of the Stoaof Attalos and the east end of the Middle Stoa were bothalmostexactly on a level with the PanathenaicWay whereit passed between them. Since the floors of the two longbuildingswere, of course, horizontal,their outerends rosehigh abovethe floor of the adjacentsquare.Onewill realizethat thousands of citizens standing on the floors or on thespacious terraces of these buildings might thus have had aperfectview of passing processions,just as on normaldaysthey could enjoy from the same positions the prospect ofthe monument-studded laza.Let us consider one other group of buildings as theyappearedafter the great remodellingof the second centuryB.C.This is the complex of administrativebuildingsat thesouthwestcornerof the square.It comprisedthe Tholos orround club house of the Councillors, dating from c. 470B.C., the Bouleuterion or CouncilHouse of the late fifthcentury, and the Metroon or State Archives of the mid-second century. Crowdedand crampedthey may seem onpaper. But no one could deny the practicalconvenience ofsuch close proximity. And one might well pause to admirethe skill with which the architectof the Metroon,by meansof a porch of generouswidth,pulled togetherthe disparateelements in the rear: a temple of the Mother of the Gods,flanked on either side by repositories for statepapers and,at the north, a large, two-storeyed apartmentwhich maywellhaveserved as the officeand club house of some boardof magistrates. I wonder, too, whether it was merely bychance that the CouncilHouse was set back where it wasshielded by the great bulk of the Metro6n from the noiseof thepublic square.Themodel of the west side of the Agora as seen from thesoutheast (Fig. 6) will suggest again that what appearstobe clutterin the drawnplanmaynot have been so offensivein reality,particularlywhen screenedby theplantingwhichis attested, for instance, by a marble inscription foundnear the Tholos.In this same view I would ask you to observe how thesplendidold templeon thehilltop, surroundedby its formalgarden, continued to be respected. The broad gap wasmaintained to the east of it in the line of buildings at thefoot of the hill, and it no doubt continued to be regardedas the chief architecturalglory of this part of the city, adistinctionwhich it retainseven today.We descend, finally, to the Roman period. The plan ofFig. 7 showsthe Agora at the height of its development n

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thesecondcenturyafterChrist.The basic frameworkestab-lished in the second century B.C. still stands out beneaththe many accretionsof the Roman period. Of the later ad-ditions let me name only a very few. Outsidethe southeastcorner of the square you will note a small library built byT. Flavius Pantainosc. 100 A.D. A great burstof buildingactivity whichoccurred in the time of Augustus appearstohave been due largely to the direct initiative of membersof the ruling family. At this time the Temple of Ares, afifth-century isterof theTempleof Hephaistos,wasmovedfrom its original site, still unrecognized,and re-erected nthe northwestcorner of the square, its altar securing greatprominenceat the side of the PanathenaicWay. There isreason to believethat fromnow on the cult was shared withone of the young princes of the imperial family. We knowfor a fact that it was Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus,who erected the Odeion exactly on the axis of the oldsquare, setting it close against the terrace of the MiddleStoa. The essentially Roman character of this building isapparentnot only from its axial placing, so analogous tothat of the temple in a Roman imperial forum, but also

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL OTEGeneral

R. E. Wycherley, How the Greeks Built Cities, London, 1949,especially Chapter IV: an illuminating sketch.R. Martin, Recherches sur l'Agora Grecque, Paris, 1951: athorough collation of the literary and archaeologicalevidence.PrieneT. Wiegand and H. Schrader, Priene, Berlin, 1904, Chapter VI:the original publication.

from its scale, aggressively disproportionate to that of itsvenerable neighbors. Let me point out that the lower storeyof the building is so high as to have put the octastyle upperstorey almost exactly on a level with the Temple of Hephais-tos on its natural hilltop.While these new elements were being thrust into theheart of the old square, additional space for practicalmarket purposes was being provided with the help of finan-cial assistance from Julius Caesar and from the EmperorAugustus. The new facilities took the form of a great closedperistyle a hundred metres or so to the east of the earlierCommercial Agora (Fig. 3). A century and a half later stillthe Emperor Hadrian added his splendid library just to thenorth of the Market of Caesar and Augustus; it too com-prised a peristyle court in front of a block of library rooms.In these great colonnaded courts, with their high outerwalls and monumental entrance ways, we recognize an ad-vanced phase in a line of development that can be tracedfar back through the history of the Greek agora.

INSTITUTEFOR ADVANCED TUDY

M. Schede, Die Ruinen von Priene, Berlin and Leipzig, 1934,Chapter V: a brief account embodying the results ofsubsequent studies.Athenian AgoraReports on the excavations conducted since 1931 by the Ameri-can School of Classical Studies have appeared regu-larly in Hesperia, the Journal of the School.The results have been summarized by I. T. Hill, TheAncient City of Athens, London, 1953, Chapters V-X.M. Lang and C. W. J. Eliot, The Athenian Agora: A Guide tothe Excavations, Athens, 1954.

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