Square Peristyle

The Square Peristyle is the modern name for a structure on the east side of the Ancient Agora of Athens, built around 300 BC and demolished in 150 BC to make way for the Stoa of Attalus. It probably served as Athens' law courts during the Hellenistic period.

Description

North wall of the Square Peristyle, rebuilt as the back wall of South Stoa II.

The structure stood on the east side of the Agora, next to the Panathenaic Way. In the early Hellenistic Age, it would have dominated the view of the Agora. It was a square building with sides of 58.56 metres in length, surrounding a central courtyard, which was lined with columns in the Doric order. The north side is aligned with an east-west cross-road, the southwest corner touched the Panathenaic Way. There was a large entrance on the west side and a small one on the east. The building was never completed; in some areas the foundations were not even laid.

The north wall was one of the best-preserved sections, since it acts as a retaining wall and was thus incorporated into the stoa of Attalos and the Post-Herulian Wall. It survives to a height of nine courses. The lower courses were set in the bedrock and made of soft, creamy poros which was meant to be covered over by soil so that it was not visible. The upper section has made from hard grey poros. The superstructure, above the retaining wall was made of mudbrick. Much of the wall was relocated to form the back wall of South Stoa II, where it is most easily visible.

The west wall is totally missing for the middle 17 metres of its length. It appears that no foundations were ever laid. In the north part of the wall, two courses of soft, white poros were preserved, many of them repurposed from a predecessor structure, Building A. The south part of the wall is made of brick-red conglomerate blocks, preserved in only a single course.

The foundation trench for the east wall is preserved for almost its entire length, but almost all of the stone blocks, which were brick-red conglomerate, have been repurposed. There is a three metre gap at the middle of the wall. The foundation trench for the south wall was roughly dug, but then allowed to fill up with dirt by 275 BC; no stones were ever laid. A row of shops was subsequently erected on the area where this wall would have stood.

History

The Square Peristyle was preceded by a set of structures known as Buildings A-D, built in the late fifth century, replacing earlier private houses. Building A was built between 415 and 400 BC, Building B around the same time, Building C around 340 BC, and Building D around 325 BC. The structures were probably law courts, since small finds in Building A include bronze voting ballots for jurors. The construction of A may have been part of the process of Athenian legal reform begun in 410 BC after the overthrow of the regime of the Four Hundred. This process involved the law courts and included efforts to avoid corruption, such as the allocation of jurors to their courts on a daily rather than an annual basis. An open area to the south of Building A was probably used for the complicated allotment procedure undertaken every morning when the courts were in session. Townsend suggests that the construction of a physical building may have had the important role of giving "material substance to an otherwise all too abstract process" and proposes that Building A may have housed the Helaea court. A, B, and C may be the "first, middle, and third of the new courts," mentioned by Agora XIX P26, an inscription from 342/1 BC.

Construction of the Square Peristyle was begun around 300 BC. While Buildings A-D were being demolished, a fifth structure, Building E, was erected between C and D in what would become the central courtyard of the peristyle, to act as a temporary replacement for the law courts.

When the decision to construct the Stoa of Attalos was made around 150 BC, the Square Peristyle was systematically demolished, including most of the foundations. The material was used to build the new South Stoa II on the south side of the Agora. Leftover stones were used for the East Building, the Rectangular Peribolos, and later structures throughout Athens. The remains of the foundations were largely hidden under the Stoa of Attalos; those remnants to the west of the Stoa were swept away when the area was levelled in the late first century BC.

Excavation

Detection of the Square Peristyle was difficult because its remains are beneath the foundations of the Stoa of Attalos. The area of the Stoa of Attalus was first excavated by the Greek Archaeological Society in 1859-1862 and 1898-1902, but only one of their soundings encountered part of the Square Peristyle, which was interpreted as a fountain house. The excavations of the Agora undertaken by the American School of Classical Studies began 1933, but did not seriously investigate the area in the period before World War II. Most of the excavation of the area was undertaken by Homer Thompson and Eugene Vanderpool between 1949 and 1955, with a few further trenches dug in 1955, 1956, and 1958.

The excavations overlapped with the reconstruction of the Stoa of Attalos, which began in 1953. This meant that excavations had to be carried out quickly. Since the completion of the Stoa in 1956, most of the remains of the Square Peristyle are no longer visible or accessible, but a section of the northern wall is still visible in the Stoa's basement. The southwestern corner is outside the stoa and has never been excavated, but has probably been destroyed by the roots of trees planted in the area in the 1950s.

Bibliography

• Townsend, Rhys F. (1995). Agora XXVII: The East Side of the Agora: The Remains beneath the Stoa of Attalos. Princeton, NJ: American School of Classical Studies at Athens. pp. iii–248.