The Dunham Family: The Agora

For your consideration is a pictorial journey of the ancient Agora.

We actually passed right by it on our way to the Acropolis without even knowing it. It is very unassuming until you actually walk into it. The Agora is actually the place where Paul gave his "Men of Athens..." sermon from Acts 17. Apparently he gave it on the Areopagos rock, but I couldn't find it. Poopies. However, I did walk on the same ground as Paul. Awesome! Anyways, here is a tour of the Agora. Enjoy thyself.

This is the "entrance" to the Agora, which is right off the Panathenaic Way. If you feel like going to the Acropolis post below, I used the same picture (above) in that post. You go straight up to the Acropolis, or you veer right to go into the Agora. All those people are going into the Agora.

These statues signify the entrance to the Odeon of Agrippa, which was a theater built by a Roman official of the 1st Roman emperor Augustus. Not much remains other then these statues. In fact, I would have never know what this was if not for my trusty guide book. Only 3 statues remain.

Here is a closeup of one of the statues. At least he's not naked. Although, he is sportin' the Micheal Phelps' low-rise merman look. All joking aside, I had to majorly zoom in to get a close pic of this dude, as you can see in the pic above, the wall they were standing on was at least 10 feet tall. The statues themselves were another 12-15 ft. high. Very, very tall. For a sense of scale, that is Steven standing at ground level there to the right. Also, it would have taken 2 to 3 people holding hands to encircle these statues.

This is taken farther in the Agora, looking towards the back, with the Acropolis in the distance. These were marketplaces, and offices, and fountain houses, parliaments, temples...you name it. Without my guide book it would have been more like--little rocks, and big rocks, and more rocks...

This is a pic of the Great Drain, which shunted all the water towards a river when there was a heavy rain. I'm not sure why, but I thought that was pretty cool.

Here is some Roman emperor's statue. I don't remember exactly what the sign said---maybe Augustus or Hadrian? That floating, dismembered arm belongs to some German guy who was sprechen sie deutsch-ing to his friends about our beheaded Roman.

After a fun uphill hike, we got to "best preserved Classical temple in Greece"---the Temple of Hephaestus. About 5 or 6 of these would fit in the Acropolis, to give you a sense of scale. It was a very peaceful site, and not nearly as many people wandering around.

Here's the front, I think.

This picture is very interesting to me for several reasons...
First, it shows how they "roofed" these temples. Those lattice-looking are made of the same rock (I'm assuming marble) as the rest of the temple. And, they were at least 4 inches thick.
Second, who in the heck set fire to this place? Do you see all the black on the inside of the temple? At first I thought it was lichen or mold or something...then I realized...it was ash!! Well, it certainly wasn't for a lack of trying, but it obviously didn't do much good other then to blacken the stone.

Here we are posing for a pic. The Temple of Hephaestus in in front of us and the Acropolis is in the background.

I took this pic from where we were standing in the previous photo. Do you see those huge cavernous holes in the Acropolis rock? Whoa. As Steven so succinctly put it...."that's bad."