West Side Of The Ancient Athens Agora

One approaches the site of the ancient Agora today by descending a wide stairway to the right of the temple. At the edge of the plateau, the American School of Classical Studies which conducted the excavations has put up a chart assisting visitors to find their way around the site and Poros Greece Hotels.

Some of the first public buildings from Solon’s rule were constructed on the west side of the Agora thereby creating the nucleus of Athens’ administrative centre. The Bouleuterion (Council House) was built first together with the adjacent Prytaniko; the first sewage ducts were installed and the boundaries of the site were marked with inscribed stelae. During the 6th century, buildings had been erected on top of pre-historic graves, and were covered over in turn by subsequent structures.

The first building we meet, to the left at the bottom of the steps, is the raised floor of the Tholos. In the 6th century a rectangular edifice with an internal colonnaded courtyard was built on this site and used as a refectory by the assembly members. It was called the Prytaniko to distinguish it from the initial Prytaneion which must have been still in use when the old agora was situated on the slope of the Acropolis. The Prytaniko was destroyed during the Persian wars and replaced by the Tholos, which then became the official Prytaneion. This circular structure was absolutely dependent on the adjacent Bouleuterion, the seat of the Assembly of the Five Hundred. The annually elected members were always divided into groups of 50 representatives from each tribe and in this form they presided on a rotating basis for a period of 36-39 days. This period was called the “prytaneia”, during which the members had the right to free meals at the Prytaneion, where they performed their duties. About one-third of them remained there continuously, even at night, in the event that some emergency decision had to be made. Every day near sunset, the prytaneis drew lots from among themselves to choose the epistatis (supervisor), who was the supreme archon for 24 hours, as he held the state seal and the keys to the state archives.

The Prytaneion was in essence the administrative seat of the Republic of Athens because the prytaneis had full control over military, political and financial matters. They even had the right to express criticism of the newly elected officials. They received ambassadors from other cities, studied the reports of the strategoi (military leaders), assigned contracts for public works and organised the sales of property seized from penalized citizens. The weights and measures of the state were kept in the Prytaneion; another duty exercised by the prytaneis was to keep close check on the measures of weight used in the market to prevent profiteering. They also had the power to arrest dishonest tax collectors and to take judicial decisions to impose fines of up to 500 drachmas. But the most significant task of the prytaneis was to prepare the bills to be passed; first the bills went to the Boule for drafting and then to the Assembly of the Deme for final approval.

The enormous weight attached by the Athenians to the duties of the prytaneis can be seen in Socrates’ defence, in which the philosopher cited his earlier refusal to pass a death sentence, by withdrawing from the Tholos while he was serving his term as prytanis during the rule of the Thirty Tyrants. In this way, Socrates believed that he had performed an act of resistance to oppressive power, even though he knew that his punishment for refusing to perform his duty would be exemplary. He himself proposed, with a large measure of irony, that the most appropriate sentence for the charges against him would be to oblige him to eat forever in the Prytaneion, near the citizens who already enjoyed this privilege.