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Updated: May 1, 2025
Projecting from the hill and hewn out of it, still stands a solid rectangular block, called the Bema or pulpit, from whence the orators addressed the multitude in the area before them. The position of the Bema commanded a view of the Propylaea and the other magnificent edifices of the Acropolis, while beneath it was the city itself studded with monuments of Athenian glory.
Projecting from it at the centre, and hewn out of the same rock, is the bema or stone platform from which the great orators from the time of Themistocles and Aristides, and perhaps of Solon, down to the age of Demosthenes and the Attic Ten, addressed the mass of their fellow-citizens.
Hermas had often been carried on those "Tides of music's golden sea Setting toward eternity." But to-day his heart was a rock that stood motionless. The flood passed by and left him unmoved. Looking out from his place at the foot of the pillar, he saw a man standing far off in the lofty bema.
Of what punishment, then, must not those be worthy, who by their own wilfulness and self-confidence bind again to Caucasus the fair Titan, the friend of men?" "By Apollo!" said Alcibiades, "this language is more fit for the tripod in Delphos, than for the bema in the Pnyx. So fare-thee- well, thou Pythoness!
Demosthenes, as he advanced towards manhood, perceived with indignation the conduct of his guardians, for which he resolved to make them answerable when the proper opportunity should arrive, by accusing them himself. His first attempt to speak in public proved a failure, and he retired from the bema amidst the hootings and laughter of the citizens.
Different from the man of unruffled brow who ruled from the bema was he who paced the state cabin of the Nausicaä a few nights after the evacuation. For he at least knew the morn would bring Hellas her doom. There had been a gloomy council that afternoon. They had seen the Acropolis flame two days before. The great fleet of Xerxes rode off the Attic havens.
His perseverance was crowned with success; and he who on the first attempt had descended from the bema amid the ridicule of the crowd, became at last the most perfect orator the world has ever seen.
Xenagoras paused with the smile of him who performs a sad but necessary duty, removed the wreath, and descended the Bema. “Quit Attica without a blow! Our fathers’ fathers’ sepulchres, the shrines of our gods, the pleasant farmsteads, the land where our Attic race have dwelt from dimmest time!” The thought shot chill through the thousands.
Sophia, where, to convince the Greeks that their Orthodox empire was extinct, the sultan ordered a moolah to ascend the Bema and address a sermon to the Mussulmans announcing that St. Sophia was now a mosque set apart for the prayers of true believers. The fall of Constantinople is a dark chapter in the annals of Christianity.
For this reason the thirty tyrants destroyed the bema, or tribune on the place of public assembly, which was built looking towards the sea, and built another which looked inland, because they thought that the naval supremacy of Athens had been the origin of its democratic constitution, and that an oligarchy had less to fear from men who cultivated the land.
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