Chapter III. The Agora and its Denizens.




13. The Buildings around the Agora.--Full market time![*] The great
plaza of the Agora is buzzing with life. The contrast between the
dingy, dirty streets and this magnificent public plaza is startling.
The Athenians manifestly care little for merely private display,
rather they frown upon it; their wealth, patriotism, and best
artistic energy seem all lavished upon their civic establishments
and buildings.

[*]Between nine and twelve A.M.

The Agora is a square of spacious dimensions, planted here and
there with graceful bay trees. Its greatest length runs north and
south. Ignoring for the time the teeming noisy swarms of humanity,
let our eyes be directed merely upon the encircling buildings. The
place is almost completely enclosed by them, although not all are
of equal elegance or pretension. Some are temples of more or less
size, like the temple of the "Paternal Apollo" near the southwestern
angle; or the "Metroon," the fane of Cybele "the Great Mother
of the Gods," upon the south. Others are governmental buildings;
somewhat behind the Metroon rise the imposing pillars of the Council
House, where the Five Hundred are deliberating on the policy of
Athens; and hard by that is the Tholos, the "Round House," with a
peaked, umbrella-shaped roof, beneath which the sacred public hearth