Stoa of Attalos

The last area of Sunday's cultural touring was the Ancient Agora of Athens. Perhaps its greatest attraction is the Stoa of Attalos, a long building to the left when you enter from the north. Attalos was a king of Pergamon (in present day Turkey) who had received his education in Athens, and so gave the city this magnificent structure. It was destroyed by barbarians in AD 267, but rebuilt by the American School of Classical Studies in the 1950s. The money came from the Rockefeller family.

Overview of the Stoa.


Cool perspectives from different sides of the stoa.




Apollon. "Oh father of all of us, Paian, Apollo, destroyer and healer, hear".


The goddess Aphrodite. The Romans knew her as Venus.
"Not as thine, not as thine was our mother, a blossom of flowering seas,
Clothed round with the world's desire as with raiment, and fair as the foam,
And fleeter than kindled fire, and a goddess, and mother of Rome.
For thine came pale and a maiden, and sister to sorrow; but ours,
Her deep hair heavily laden with odour and colour of flowers,
White rose of the rose-white water, a silver splendour, a flame,
Bent down unto us that besought her, and earth grew sweet with her name.
For thine came weeping, a slave among slaves, and rejected; but she
Came flushed from the full-flushed wave, and imperial, her foot on the sea.
And the wonderful waters knew her, the winds and the viewless ways,
And the roses grew rosier, and bluer the sea-blue stream of the bays."


The birth of the god Hermes. Notice the resemblance to a certain nativity scene.