Moderately Democratic Ground
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2008
1
76
148
Trip End
Dec 09, 2008
Athens,
Attica,
Greece
Thursday, October 16, 2008
We started at the Pnyx, a stretch of land where thousands of Athenian citizens (but not women, slaves, or foreigners) gathered to make policy and vote. Indy pointed to the rock below our feet, "Here we're standing on moderately democratic ground."
We walked up to the Areiopagus, also called Mars Hill. This is a high, slippery rock outcropping where the law court for murder trials was held in antiquity. Archaeologists think there was no structure built on the rock, because ancient Athenians believed that murderers were ritually unclean and the "miasma" of their pollution could not be cleansed from an enclosed space.
In addition to trying human beings for murder, the law court at the Areiopagus also heard cases against knives and roof tiles that had killed people, In one memorable story, Man A of Thassos detested Man B so much that when Man B died, Man A hit Man B's memorial statue with a whip every night. Eventually, the statue broke and killed Man A. Man A's relatives took the statue to trial on the Areiopagus. The statue was convicted and sentenced to banishment, a sentence that was carried out by dumping the statue into the sea. Things started going very badly in Thassos with plagues and economic hardships, so they consulted the oracle at Delphi, and they received the message that in order for the situation to improve, the statue would have to be restored to its original place.
Indy dropping knowledge at the top of Mars Hill
So the people of Thassos retrieved the convict statue.Of course, the Areiopagus was also the place where the apostle Paul addressed the Athenian Council as told in Acts 17 of the New Testament. There is a bronze plaque on the rock with the text of Paul's speech. My feet have walked where Paul walked. My eyes have seen what Socrates saw. There is no picture on the internet or in an encyclopedia that can replicate the feeling of experiencing these things firsthand.
We descended from the Areiopagus into the ancient Greek agora, not to be confused with the Roman agora with the Tower of the Winds we saw last week. Two different places. The agora was the marketplace, meeting place, and discussion place for Athenian citizens. In the agora stands the Stoa of Attalos, a long building that we would equate with a strip mall - a series of shops side by side. The American archaeologists were in charge of excavating and restoring the stoa building, so they had to buy all the modern homes that had been built over the ancient agora, buy the displaced people new houses elsewhere, and reconstruct the stoa from the stones in the area, some of which had been repurposed to build the modern houses.
My favorite monument in the agora was the Temple of Hephaestus and Athena Ergane (Athena of the Workers, especially weavers). This is the best-preserved Doric temple in Greece. The frieze running around the top of the inside columns depicts a battle between the centaurs and men, caused when the centaurs were invited to a man's wedding, and got too drunk at the reception. The centaurs decided to abduct all the women, and the humans had to fight the centaurs to rescue the women.
Indy pointed out the stone foundations of the prison of Socrates in the workshop of Simon the Shoemaker. We went back to the Stoa of Attalos to see the pieces in the museum. I finally got to see a water clock, and we saw the artifacts from the prison of Socrates, including hobnails from the shoes, bone eyelets for the sandal thongs, and the tiny "shot glasses" that held the hemlock for convicted prisoners. After the visit was over and we were walking back in time to study for our Greek quiz, philosophy major Papia commented on the prison of Socrates, "Seeing that was the reason why I came to Greece."
