The business and social center of an ancient city was the
agora or market place. The Athenian Agora lay in the hollow north of the
Areopagus and Acropolis. The square was shaded by rows of plane trees and lined
with covered colonnades. In the great days of the city, when the Agora was
filled with countless altars and shrines, it presented a most varied and
attractive scene.
PUBLIC BUILDINGS
Not all the splendid structures in Athens were confined to
the Agora and the Acropolis. On a slight eminence not far from the Agora, rose
the so- called "Theseum," a marble temple in the Doric order.
Another famous temple, the colossal edifice known as the Olympieum, lay at some
distance from the Acropolis on the southeast. Fifteen of the lofty columns with
their Corinthian capitals are still standing. The theater of Dionysus is
in a fair state of preservation. Beyond this are the remains of the Odeum, or
"Hall of Song," used for musical contests and declamations. The
original building was raised by Pericles, in imitation, it is said, of the tent
of Xerxes. The present ruins are those of the structure erected in the second
century A.D. by a public-spirited benefactor of Athens.
