The Agora of Athens – A Public Forum

The Athenian market was the place for public debate and learning.

Aug 17, 2009

The open-air market of ancient Athens was more than just the place to do one's shopping; it was the center for political, philosophical and civic debate.

The word Agora (pronounced `Ah-go-RAH’) is Greek for `open place of assembly’ and, early in the history of Greece, designated the area in the city where free-born citizens could gather to hear civic announcements, muster for military campaigns or discuss politics. Later, the Agora defined the open-air, often tented, marketplace of a city (as it still does in Greek) where merchants had their shops and where craftsmen made and sold their wares. It was also, however, the center of the city's life and the most popular forum for public learning and debate.

The Marketplace of Athens

Retail traders (known as Kapeloi) served as middle-men between the craftsmen and the consumer (today’s `salesmen’) but were largely mistrusted in ancient times as unnecessary parasites (in his Politics Aristotle states that the Kapeloi served a “kind of exchange which is justly censured; for it is unnatural and a mode by which men unfairly gain from one another”). These retail traders were mostly metics (not free-born citizens of the city, today known as `legal aliens’) while the craftsmen could be metics or citizens or even slaves who had become skilled artisans and had purchased their freedom.

In the Agora of Athens there were confectioners who made pastries and sweets, slave-traders, fishmongers, vintners, cloth merchants, shoe-makers, dress makers, and jewelry purveyors. A special, separate, `potters market’ was reserved for the buying and selling of cookware as that was considered solely the provenance of women and was frequented by female slaves on task for their mistresses or the poorer wives and daughters of Athens.

The Market as Public Forum

It was in the Agora of Athens that the great philosopher Socrates questioned the market-goers on their understanding of the meaning of life, attracting a crowd of Athenian youth who enjoyed seeing the more pretentious of their elders made fools of. In this marketplace, one day, the young poet Aristocles son of Ariston heard Socrates speaking, went and burned all his works, and became the philosopher known as Plato (whose philosophical dialogues, coupled with his founding of the Academy, the first University, and his role as the teacher of Aristotle, who then was tutor to Alexander the Great, would ultimately change world understanding).

Socrates was not the first, nor would he be the last, to use the Agora to advantage in spreading his views on life and the world. The great Sophist Protagoras taught in the Agora before Socrates did (for, it is said, high fees) and the Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope made his home there, in a discarded bathtub. Aristophanes, the great comic playwright, seems to have modeled a number of his characters on people he overheard shopping and arguing in the Agora. The great statesman Pericles spoke in the marketplace and many of the most important proclamations of the city were posted there and, of course, argued over.

In Rome the agora would serve in much the same way as it did in Greek city-states and the Roman satirist Juvenal as well as the Latin poet Horace, and other writers, found much of their inspiration in watching and listening to those who gathered for shopping in the open-air market.

The copyright of the article The Agora of Athens – A Public Forum in Greek History is owned by Joshua Mark. Permission to republish The Agora of Athens – A Public Forum in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.