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Updated: May 4, 2025
Occasionally a two-faced bust of Hermes stood before a portal, or a marble lion’s head spouted into a corner water trough. All Athenian streets resembled these. The citizen had his Pnyx, his Jury-Court, his gossiping Agora for his day. These dingy streets sufficed for the dogs, the slaves, and the women, whom wise Zeus ordered to remain at home.
About a quarter of a mile south-west stood the Pnyx, the place where the public assemblies of Athens were held in its palmy days, and a spot that will ever be associated with the renown of Demosthenes and other famed orators. The steps by which the speaker mounted the rostrum, and a tier of three seats for the audience, hewn in the solid rock, are still visible.
The hand that hath borne us up, It guides us and guards us still. Athena, the child of Zeus, She watches and knows no fear. The city rests safe from harm Beneath her protecting spear.’ Thus trusting in Athena, we will meet the foe at Salamis and will destroy him.” “Who wishes to speak?” called the herald. The Pnyx answered together.
No traces of the Agora, which occupied the shallow valley between the Pnyx and the Acropolis, remain. It was the heart of the city, and was adorned with numerous public buildings, porticoes, temples and statues. It was often thronged with citizens gathered for purposes of trade, discussion, or to hear and tell some new thing.
It is so commanding that he who stands on the westmost pinnacle can look across the windy hill of the Pnyx, across the brown plain-land and down to the sparkling blue sea with the busy havens of Peiræus and Phalerum, the scattered gray isles of the Ægean, and far away to the domelike crest of Acro-Corinthus.
The little boys could not yet thoroughly explain themselves; they always talked together and in foreign languages, interrupting each other, and never agreeing as to dates. Solomon John accounted for his appearance in Smyrna by explaining that when he received his father's telegram in Athens, he decided to meet them at Smyrna. He was tired of waiting at the Pnyx.
The multitude entered the Pnyx through two narrow entrances pierced in the massy engirdling wall and took seats at pleasure; all were equals—the Alcmæonid, the charcoal-seller from Acharnæ. Amid silence the chairman of the Council arose and put on the myrtle crown,—sign that the sitting was opened. A herald besought blessings on the Athenians and the Platæans their allies.
She had been brought up in learned seclusion from the interests of actual life, and had been accustomed to think of heroic deeds and great principles as something antithetic to the vulgar present, of the Pnyx and the Forum as something more worthy of attention than the councils of living Florentine men.
He is nearer to us; he speaks our thoughts, not those of our fathers; he does not cringe before the gods and fate; he fights with them; he loves men, knows them, and laments them; his art is more elaborate, his feelings warmer, his pictures more life-like than those of the ancients. But now I should like to speak of Pericles." "Stop, Socrates! In the Pnyx or the Agora, but not here!
The Persian shadow shall come, shall go, and again we shall be happy in beautiful Athens.” “Athena grant it!” prayed Hermione. “We can trust the goddess,” returned Glaucon, not to be shaken from his happy mood. “And now that we have paid our vows to her, let us descend. Our friends are already waiting for us by the Pnyx before they go down to the harbours.”
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