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Altar of Zeus Agoraios

4th-century BC religious buildings and structuresAncient Agora of AthensDestroyed templesTemples in ancient AthensTemples of Zeus

The Altar of Zeus Agoraios (meaning Zeus of the Agora) is an altar dating to the 4th century BC located north-west of the Ancient Agora of Athens, constructed from white marble, 9m deep and 5.5m wide.It was one of the first objects to be discovered inside the Agora during the excavations of 1931. Evidence of marks done by masons from the Augustan period show that it was moved from an initial source later identified as the Pnyx located outside the ancient Agora.One of the excavators of the Agora, T. L Shear Jr., noted: it may not be coincidence that Zeus, whose special task it was to govern the political assemblies of the Athenians, should depart the Pnyx at just the time when Augustus is said to have curtailed sharply the powers of those same assemblies.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Altar of Zeus Agoraios (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Altar of Zeus Agoraios
Οδός Παναθηναίων, Athens

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N 37.9752 ° E 23.7225 °
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Αρχαία Αγορά

Οδός Παναθηναίων
105 55 Athens (1st District of Athens)
Attica, Greece
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Temple of Ares
Temple of Ares

The Temple of Ares was a sanctuary dedicated to Ares, located in the northern part of the Ancient Agora of Athens. The Temple was identified as such by Pausanias but the ruins present today indicate a complex history. Ares had a temple somewhat like Athena's. The foundations are of early Greece construction and date, but fragments of the superstructure, now located at the western end of the temple, can be dated to the 5th century BC. From the fragments archaeologists are confident that they belonged to a Doric peripteral temple of a similar size, plan and date to the Temple of Hephaestus. Marks on the remaining stones indicate that the temple may have originally stood elsewhere and was dismantled, moved and reconstructed on the Roman base - a practice common during the Roman occupation of Greece. The temple probably came from the sanctuary of Athena Pallenis at modern Stavro, where foundations have been found but no temple remains are present. Pausanias described the sanctuary in the 1st century: [At Athens] is a sanctuary of Ares, where are placed two images of Aphrodite, one of Ares made by Alkamenes, and one of Athena made by a Parian of the name of Lokros. There is also an image of Enyo, made by the sons of Praxiteles. About the temple stand images of Herakles, Theseus, Apollo binding his hair with a fillet, and statues of Kalades, who it is said framed laws for the Athenians, and of Pindaros, the statue being one of the rewards the Athenians gave him for praising them in an ode. However, as the Roman Empire had adopted Christianity as the official religion of the empire, in the late third and early fourth centuries, probably under the Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire by Emperor Theodosius I, the temple of Ares was destroyed and looted.