Author Description

The great public square known as the Agora was the living heart of ancient Athens, where citizens met formally to administer civic affairs, and informally to trade or discuss politics or to take part in religious processions and athletic displays. In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the Agora was the scene of some of the finest political, philosophical, and artistic achievements in the first flowering of Western civilization. John M. Camp brings together the results of sixty years' work by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Drawing on the wealth of excavated evidence, richly supplemented by literary and inscriptional references, Professor Camp tells the story of the Agora from Neolithic to medieval times.