Science: Stoa of Rockefeller

The agora of ancient Athens was the nearest thing to the birthplace of Western civilization. Primarily a market place, it served as university, town meeting, news and gossip center, gathering place for poets, artists and philosophers. For years archaeologists of the American School of Classical Studies have been excavating at the site of the agora, removing some ten feet of dirt. Last week they were busy restoring the Stoa of Attalus, one of the agora’s main buildings.

The Stoa, a long, two-story promenade of white marble, was given to Athens by Attalus II, King of Pergamum (159-138 B.C.). On the second floor were 42 small shops, presumably serving the Athenian carriage trade. The ground floor behind the row of tall columns was a social and cultural center, where poets, philosophers and politicians met. With the help of about $1,000,000 of Rockefeller money matched by a like amount from other U.S. sources, the restorers are gathering the surviving stones. They are sure that they know enough to duplicate accurately almost the entire building.

The philosophers and poets are gone, and the 42 little shops will never again sell the subtle art work of the classical age. But by approximately 1957, visitors to Athens may stroll under the columns and imagine what the place was like when the Apostle Paul, who also strolled in the Stoa, chided the lively Athenians for spending “their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.”