Athens (Hastings' Dictionary)

St. Paul having sent Timo- theus away, ' thought it good to be left at Athens alone' (1 Th 3"). I'"rom Ac 17 we learn what he did and said during his solitary stay. Leaving aside the history of A., I shall describe the aspect of this famous city in St. Paul's epoch. St. Paul, like Apollonius of Tyana, landed at the Piraeus, and, like him, would have walked to A.

by the new road, called Hamaxitos, which ran north of the ancient roadway, already encumbered with the ruins of the great wall of Pericles. Pausanias, in his description of A. (L 1. 4), and PhilostratUB,* relate that along this road were raised at intervals altars to the unknown gods. St. Paul marked these, and worked them into his argument against polytheism, addressed upon the Areopagus to the Stoics and Epicureans. On his left hand, as he entered the PirseuB gat« of the city, St.

Paul skirted the Ceramicus or ancient burial-ground, where we still see, bared by recent excavations, some of the old sculptured tombstones ; to look upon which is a revelation to us of the noble and, in its calm self-restraint, almost divine regret with which, in the fourth century B.C., Athenian workmen could depict death and the last farewells of mortals. Innumerable booths of olive, fruit, and fish sellers were no doubt set up then as now round the entrances to the city. St.

Paul would push his way past these, and, leaving to his left the noble temple of Theseus, which remains intact in its grandeur, he would enter the Agora. Here his eye fell on portico after portico, painted by the brush of famous artists, and adorned with the noblest statues. But St. Paul would not have admired these so much as the tower and water- clock of Andronicus, telling out to him the hours of his solitary waiting.

This still stands to-day, along with a few ruinous arcades, the sole remnant of an architectural splendour which eclipsed that of the Piazza del Duomo of Pisa, or of the Piazza di San Marco of Venice. The impression which the latter makes on one of us to-day might be compared with that of which St. Paul would have been sensible as he entered the Athenian Agora ; if at least he could, in spite of his Semitism, have felt the charm of the highest plastic art.

The Agora was dominated on its south side by the abrupt hill of Mars and the still more impressive heights of the Acropolis, and it was such a place of resort as is to-day the Piazza San Marco at Venice. There St. Paul found himself amidst the throng of ' all the Athenians and strangers who spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.'

In the Stoa Poecil6 he met with the successors of Zeno, the Stoics, with whom, as with the Epicureans, he, like a second Socrates, ' disputed daily.'

And perhaps when he wearied of these discussions, and of the noise of the rich men's slaves chaffering over their purchases, or of the porters thronging round, of the quack doctors and barbers, he may have passed on by the Via Tripodum and have gained the theatre of Dionysus on the south side of the Acropolis, there to witness, perhaps, the performance of a play of Euripides or Menander ; or he may, from the other end of the Agora, have gone up by the temple of the Furies to the Acropolis, and have mounted the steps of the Propylsea of Mnesicles, whose columns still remain to awe us with their sublime harmony.

Having thus gained the platform of the Acropolis, he would wander through a forest of the most perfect statues, pacing round that most glorious shrine and monument of all, the temple of the virgin goddess Athene, whose power and attri- butes were destined with the triumph of St. Paul's new gospel, and, after an epoch briefer than that which had already elapsed since its erection, to pass on by seeming inheritance to the Blessed Virgin of the orthodox Greek Church. • PhiloatraUis, Vit.

Apollon^ 6. 2: emstiornff ^kt ri rtfl icttfMt^ 0tttAi lifivtrtu. This, o' oourae, referl to St. Paul's own day. ATHENS ATONEMENT 197 St. Paul ' disputed in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons ' (Ac 17"). It has been thought tliat the site of this synagogue may lie fixed by a hlab found in the ancient district of "Koropus at the foot of Hymettus, bearing the legend : aiJTTj ij ruXrj roO Kvpiov, SIkoioi tiffeXeuaoyrai ir aiVj (Ps 118-").

* But this is a monument only of the third or fourth century, and is of Cliristian origin. Other slabs, however, have been recovered in A. bearing Jewish inscriptions, and marking the burial-places of Greek Jews. And we have in the writings of the Jew I'liilo, by a single generation earlier than St. Paul, and, lilce him, an ardent apostle of monotheism, some graphic allusions to A., whither, no doubt, he went, like Horace, as to the chief centre of art and philosophy. For A.

was the university city of the Roman world, OS it was also the focus from which the sacred rays of learning radiated to Tarsus, Antioch, and Alexandria. In his youthful essay on the theme that every good man is free, Philo declares the Athenians to be the keenest-sighted mentally of the Greeks {'EXXtJvwi' (5^i'5cp\-^aTaToi hi6.voia.v), and says that A. is to Greece what the pupil is to the eye, or the rea.son to the soul.t And in the.

se words, which follow in the same context, he doubtless describes a scene which he had actually witnessed — ' II was only yesterday that the actors were exhibiting tragedy, and were reciting those famous lines of Euripides — *' For Freedom is a name all precious, Even if a man hath tittle thereof, Let htm estc-em himself to have great riches."

Then I beheld that all the spectators stood up on tiptoe with excitement, and with loud cheers and sustained cries prolon^^ed their applause of the sentiment no less than their applause of a poet, that not only glorified Freedom in deed, but glorified it« very name.' Such was the impression which A. made on a cultured Jew, who yet reprobated not less keenly than St. Paul the worship by man of the works of his own hands ; and we may well believe that St.

Paul's heart also beat high as he entered so famous a city. Contemporary writers give the Athenians the same characteristics of over-religiousness and versatile curiosity as does St. Paul. One of these witnesses is himself a .lew, namely Josephus the historian, who declares (Contra Ap. ii. 12) the Athenians to be the most pious of the Greeks {tovs euire^eaTiTovs Tuir 'EXXiji'wi'). Testimony of like effect is rendered by Livy, xlv.

27 : Athenas inde plenas quidem et ipsas uetustate famjp, multa tarnen uisenda habentes ; arcem, portus, niuros I'ir.-eeura urbi iungentes. . Simulacra Deonun honiinumque, omni genere et materiie et artium insignia. Petronius Arbiter, Sat. c. 17, unkindly hints that it was easier to find gods in A. th.an men : Utique nostra regio tam pnesentibus plena est Numinibus, ut facilius po.ssis Deum, quam hominem inuenire.t Nor was the desire of the Athenians to hear something new unnatural.

For theirs w.as a city without commerce, but wliose traditicms anil nicmories led many who had leisure and liked discussion to resort thither. Among Alciphron's IvCtters (ii. 3) is one by Menander the poet, relating how he had declined the invitation of Ptolemy to leave A. and settle in Alexandria. In this <liuriningyef< d'esprit we get a iiicttire of A. in its decailence, which shows how ilidiglitful a place it was to live in for religious persons of leisure and cultivation. • See Inter.

Attic, (rt. Romnn(r. 404 knd Sf>4H-3M7. fCf. HWlon, Paraitite Rtgaintii, Iv. 240: ' Athens the eye of Greece, mother of arts.* 1 Philostr. I'lf. Apollonii Tpanat, Iv. 10, says of his prophet that he rr,» ul, Of TOiiiTttt imXi-it. iti.S^ ci>.»OuTen rtvt 'AOr^t^iout ilSif. vrif itii, J,iA<£«T«. The experiences of Apollnnius — a tnore 8)>iritijal teacher than most — irt Athens were curiously limilar to those of his contemporary St. Paul. LrrBRATniB. — Conybeare and Howson, ch. x.

; Wordsworth's Athmt and Atti.'a\ and the classical works of Leake, Grote, Thirlwall, Curtius, Wachsmuth, Gregorovius, Stadt Athen xjti Mittetalter ; A. Mommsen, Atkentx VhrUtiaiux. F. C. CONVBEARE.