Day 4 - The Agora

It was raining a little this morning but since it was our last full day in Athens we were not going to be dissuaded in our quest to see the last obligatory thing on our to-do list: the Ancient Agora. Cutting a path through some of the oldest parts of the city, we went looking for the ground where Socrates, Plato and the Apostle Paul trod.

Our path led us through the winding lanes of the Anafiotika, or "Little Anafi" - a place where Islanders from Anafi came to Athens and built a whole whack of white plaster houses just like in the Greek islands. The place is a small little tight-knit burrough in the middle of a busy city and nowadays is traditionally used by the rich as an island cottage without leaving the city. It's also at the very base of the Acropolis. Hard to find better real estate than that, I think.

The rain picked up enough for us to decide it would be good to stop for breakfast. I took this shot because, like many other cafes and restaurants we'd been in this week, colourful garlands and pictures of clowns were decorating everything. As if every restaurant in Athens were being used for a 6 year old's birthday party. Turns out there was some big party - one local described it as a Greek Halloween, but I think it's more masks than haunting and ghouls - that evening. We got a video of a band marching past our hostel that night, but I'm reluctant to try to post it online. We can show it around when we get back. 

 Our path took us past Hadrian's library again. In his day, the intellectual centre had moved from the Agora to this place only a few hundred metres away.

Foreground: Hadrian's Library. Background: you darn well better know by now what that is.

Mars Hill, as seen from the southern edge of the Agora. Paul could practically have shouted down at them if he'd wanted to.

 Today the Agora is largely in ruins. It's been wrecked, rebuilt and wrecked half a dozen times since Socrates' day and only in the pas 100 years did some nosy and uptight Americans seal off the place and start properly excavating. Some of the ruins have been permanently lost by the metro tracks just south of this point.

The most impressive building is, of course, not a real one. The Stoa of Attallos has been painstakingly reconstructed from ancient sources where it once stood, and now houses the Agora Museum (full of little bits and pieces they wanted to keep indoors) and the American Classical Society (or something like that. The excavation teams, anyway). In its day, the Stoa would have been like a mall, with space for a number of shops and stalls on its porches and in the walled interior.

This is an ancient Greek baby's potty. Yeah. Cool, huh?

I know these look like just any broken clay pieces, but these are genuine ostraka - broken pieces of clay with people's names scratched on them. In the newborn Athenian democracy, they were so frightened that a popular leader could rise to power and re-instate the tyranny of past days that every year they would vote using broken clay shards. Whoever's name was written down the most times was banished from the city for a year (I think). And check out who people wanted to kick out: Pericles, the leader who brought us the Parthenon. Themistokles, a major general in the Peloponesian wars.

This is a clepsydra - a water clock Athenian speakers had to time-limit their speeches. Skilled orators maxed out their time by being good to the last drop.

A Spartan shield, left behind at a major battle and put on display in the Athenian agora to mock their cowardice. Because hoplite shields were so heavy, the only way to retreat was to drop your shield and run. Hence, abandoning your shield was the universal symbol of cowardice. This is why Spartan warriors were often sent to battle with the words "Come back with your shield, or on it".

The Temple of Hephaistios looks to me like it was built around the same time as the Parthenon. It has similar structural and decorative components: Doric columns, Metopes, and a frieze.

I know I keep taking photos of the Acropolis, but there are a lot of good vantage points of it and it kinda sticks out.

This is a statue of Hadrian. Check out the breastplate. Athena and two winged Nikes are standing gloriously atop the Roman she-wolf suckling the infants Romulus and Remus. This thing is a walking propaganda piece: Athens was only great and victorious when standing on the sure foundation of Rome.
Then again, Athens had a lot to be grateful to Hadrian for. The Greek-loving emperor (and I mean in more ways than one; his companion Antinous was, reportedly, a handsome young greek boy) invested huge amounts of Imperial money into building a new and great Athens in his day.

That's kinda the end of the photos. The rest of the story's a bit mundane. We grabbed some to-go gyros at a local chow stop and trekked back to the hostel. I finished my book, we played travel monopoly, and we watched a small musical parade go past our window. I think we struck a really nice balance between exploration and relaxation this trip, and though we were ready to come back to London, it was hard to say goodbye to Athens. Hopefully, it's not goodbye forever.