`Where also alters of unknown gods are erected' (Hou kai agnoston daimonon bornoi hidruntai).

Athens was a `free' city, that is to say, free to live under its ancient constitution and to make new laws, providing

of course that the interests of Rome were not touched. From the inscriptions, we gather that in the apostle's time the

constitution of Athens consisted of three estates, the Areopagus, the Council of Six hundred, and the People, the

Areopagus taking precedence. The words `Areopagus' (Acts 17:19) and `Mars' Hill' (Acts 17:22) are really the

same, one being Greek and the other Latin and English.

Before we go further, we shall be well advised to go back to the record in Acts 17, and discover its structure, so

that we may have the backbone of the argument in our minds, as we consider each of the individual items in turn.

A 17:15-17.  Paul bears witness at Athens.

B 17:18.

The philosophers encounter him.

C 17:18-21.

Jesus and the resurrection. `Some said ... other some'.

D 17:22-23.

The Unknown God. Agnosto.

a 23-25. The Creator. No need of temples.

E 17:23-29.

The creature. We are His

The Creator. No graven image.

Times of ignorance. Agnoias.

`That man' and the resurrection. `Some mocked, others said'.

B 17:33,34.  A philosopher cleaves to him.

Paul departs from Athens.

Paul's encounter with the philosophers, and the conversion of at least one of them, Dionysius the Areopagite, is

evidently the important feature of the passage. Paul's preaching of Jesus and the resurrection was the doctrine that

struck these philosophers as something `new', and his double reference to `ignorance' (17:23,30), coming from one

whom they had esteemed a `Babbler', must have impressed them.

We read that the apostle's spirit was `stirred within him' as he saw the city `wholly given to idolatry'- or, as the

margin has it, `full of idols' (Acts 17:16). A writer of ancient times, Petronius, said of Athens that `it was easier

there to meet a god than a man', and Paul would have been horrified to see that they had even erected a statue of

the High Priest of Israel, Hyrcanus. Statues in every conceivable attitude, size and material met the beholder's gaze

at every turn. There were more statues in Athens, said Pausanias, than in the whole of Greece.

True to one part of his commission the apostle `disputed in the synagogue with the Jews', but he also

remembered that he was the apostle to the Gentiles, and so we find him `in the market place daily', disputing with

them that met him (Acts 17:17). Three topographical features of Athens must be understood if we are to follow the

apostle's steps intelligently: the Agora, the Areopagus, and the Acropolis. The Agora (or market place) lay at the

foot of the hill that dominates the city. In the Agora was the Painted Porch, which gave its name to the Stoic school

of philosophy which met there. The Areopagus was the rocky elevation a little removed from the Agora, and

obtained its name from the legend that Mars was tried there by an assembly of the gods for murder. On the top of

this hill was a platform about 60 yards long and 24 yards broad, the platform being approached by a flight of steps.

At the top of the steps were two stones, one called the Stone of Impudence, upon which Paul would have taken his

stand. A rock-cut bench accommodated the assembled judges. Here, some centuries earlier, Socrates had answered

to the charge of corrupting the Athenians with strange gods and new doctrines, and had been condemned to death.

The Acropolis, an isolated rock rising from the centre of the city, is not mentioned by name in the Acts, but it

must have been included in the apostle's sweeping reference to `temples made with hands' and `art and man's

device'. It was the heart of the city, and was to the Greek what Mount Sion was to the Hebrew. Aristides, the

rhetorician, fancifully expresses the attitude of the Athenians to the Acropolis by saying that it was the middle of

five concentric circles of a shield, of which the outer four were Athens, Attica, Greece, and the world. At the

Acropolis were temples and shrines in one jewelled heap; here also stood the Parthenon, the Temple of the Virgin,