The Athenian Prytaneion discovered?

ABSTRACT

The author presents that the Athenian Prytaneion, individual of the city's most important civic buildings, was located in the peristyle manifold beneath Agia Aikaterini Square, near the ancient road of the Tripods and the remembrancer of Lysikrates in the late Plaka. This thesis, which is consistent with Pausanias's topographical account of ancient Athens, is supported by means of archaeological and epigraphical evidence. The identification of the Prytaneion at the eastern lower extremity of the Acropolis helps to construct again the map of Archaic and Classical Athens and illuminates the testimony of Herodotos and Thucydides.

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The Prytaneion is the oldest and greatest in quantity important of the civic buildings in ancient Athens that have remained not to be found to us until the near (1) For the Athenians the Prytaneion, or town hall, the office of the city's chief official, symbolized the foundation of Athens as a city-state, its construction forming an integral part of Theseus's legendary synoecism of Attica (Thuc 2152; Plut Thes. 243) Like other prytaneia through every part of the Greek world, the Athenian Prytaneion showed what has been termed the real "life of the polis," housing the belonging to all hearth of the city, the "inextinguishable and immovable flame" of the goddes Hestia. (2) As the ceremonial center of Athens, the Prytaneion was the site of one as well as the other public entertainment for honored citizens and a law court for homicide trials. (3) In providing the sacred fire for all public sacrifices, the shrine of Hestia in the Prytaneion serv as the starting point for many of the city's religious processions, or pompai, including the eisagoge that initiated the City Dionysia. (4) The Prytaneion, together with all of the state buildings of early Athens, stood nearest to the city's original civic center the so-called advanced in years or Archaic Agora, which remained in use lengthy after the foundation of the city's next to the first agora, the Classical Agora of the Athenian democracy. (5) At least for the poetically or aristocratically minded Athenian, this was the Kekropian Agora, the "sacrifice-celebrating omphalos of the city," and the site of the venerable Altar of Pity. (6)

As is the case with the Prytaneion, the location of the city's original agora is unknown. (7) Because this site apparently not at any time received any architectural or monumental embellishment, it will almost certainly remain archaeologically invisible. (8) Consequently many of the greatest in quantity important episodes or aspects of early Athenian history--such as Solon's determined outcry against the loss of Salamis, Peisistratos's disarmament of the Athenian populace, and the original setting of the Panathenaic festival--unfold across a blank map of the city. (9) An understanding of the precise where-abouts of the neighboring Prytaneion may, however, provide the best and perhaps the sole topographical clue. The discovery of the Prytaneion itself, from one side the identification of a preserv site, would also be an important contribution to the archaeological record of of greece prytaneia generally, as only three of these buildings have been identified with certainty. (10) smooth more importantly, since the establishment of the Prytaneion, with its immovable sacred hearth, would have occurr early in the initial formation of the Athenian state, its discovery would afford us the exciting possibility of uncovering the earliest layers of the city and its history. (11) The at hand study aims to recover a significant part of the map of early Athens (Fig. 1) drawing together all possible lines of argument and evidence--historical, antiquarian, archaeological, and epigraphical--in establishing the location of the Prytaneion.

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Given the detailed topographical account of the records of ancient Athens that appears in the work of Pausanias, it may have the appearance surprising that the location of the Prytaneion has not at any time been securely identified. Depending upon how Pausanias's text is read, the Prytaneion has been variably ascribed to the northern or eastern/southeastern sides of the Acropolis. The scholarly consensus of the last sum of two units centuries favored a northern location. This view has changed since the 1980 however, when the shrine of Aglauros, which Pausanias placed directly above the Prytaneion, was discovered in a cave upon the eastern slopes of the Acropolis (Fig. 2) (12) Moreover, just below the site of the Aglaurion, the of greece Archaeological Service has partially denudeed an extensive building complex, initially builded in the 5th century BC that is a likely candidate for the Anakeion, the Athenian shrine of the Dioskouroi. (13) The identification of the Aglaurion and possibly the Anakeion, sum of two units sites that Pausanias places in shut up proximity to the Prytaneion, now makes an eastern or, more specifically, a southeastern location far more probable. (14)

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It is argued here that the Prytaneion may be identified in the colonnaded remains preserv below Agia Aikaterini Square, only a short distance from the record of Lysikrates and the ancient road of the Tripods (Figs. 3 4) Situated directly between the testimonial of Lysikrates and the Arch of Hadrian, and standing at what must have been single of the most important intersections of Classical Athens, this site has periodically been re-established as one of the largest building complexe of the ancient city. novel salvage work by the of greece Archaeological Service, discussed below, has demonstrated that the site is older and more architecturally significant than previously thinking with some of the remains dating to the Late Archaic or Early Classical period. The adjacent area was embellished with an important public square--an ancient counterpart of the novel Lysikrates Square--which featured prominent buildings, at least single cult center, and many preserv choregic memorials dating from the Classical period onward. greatest in quantity importantly for the thesis of this research the epigraphical record of the site consistently throw backs the many aspects of the Prytaneion's public life, including a large dedication to Hestia, the solitary such votive preserved from ancient Athens.