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AGORA (A-guhr-uh)
In
ancient Greece, a marketplace
Common
clues: Shopping
hub of old Athens; Pythagorean square?; Old Greek hangout; Athens
market; Greek marketplace; Ancient marketplace; Old public square
Crossword
puzzle frequency:
6 times a year
Frequency
in English language:
42732 / 86800
News:
Made
in Greece
Video:
Athens
Greece with Bill Fitzgerald
An
agora, translatable as marketplace, was an essential part of an
ancient Greek polis or city-state. An agora acted as a
marketplace and a forum for the citizens of the polis. They arose
along with the poleis after the fall of Mycenaean civilization,
and were well established as a part of a city by the time of
Homer (probably the 8th century BC).
Izmir
Agora
The
most well-known agora is the Ancient Agora of Athens. Agora Open
Air Museum of Izmir is one of the well-preserved agoras in the
world.
The
ancient Athenian agora has been excavated by the American School
of Classical Studies since 1931. In the 1950s, the Hellenistic
Stoa of Attalos was reconstructed on the east side of the agora,
and today it serves as a museum and as storage and office space
for the excavation team. Another building that has been rebuilt,
using a large amount of its original material, is the Doric
temple on a hill overlooking the west side of the agora, the
so-called Hephaisteion (previously misidentified as a temple of
Theseus and now generally identified as a Temple of Hephaistos),
built around 449 BCE.
The
word agoraphobia, the fear of critical public situations, derives
from agora in its meaning as a marketplace.
This
article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia
article "Agora".
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