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 jeweled

heap; here also stood the Parthenon, the Temple of the Virgin, regarded as the jewel

upon the girdle of the earth, an architectural marvel. The visitor to the British Museum

should not fail to examine the collection known as the "Elgin marbles", where portions of

this and other temples from the Acropolis may be seen.

In the Agora, the Apostle encountered "certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of

the Stoics". With regard to the Epicureans, Dr Churton observes:

Cicero reports that Epicurus said "Death is nothing to us, for what is dissolved is

insensible", while Tertullian writes: Nihil esse post mortem, Epicuri schola est: "After

death is nothing is the teaching of Epicurus."

The Stoics, on the other hand, were pantheists and fatalists. They taught that the Deity

pervades the matter of the world, just as honey fills the comb of the hive.  They

undermined the doctrines of Providence, and personal responsibility, and judgment to

come, and also believed that under the One God, Who ruled above, were divine beings,

called demons, who acted as mediators. The doctrines of the two schools have been

summed up in the words "Pleasure" and "Pride".

It is interesting to note that Seneca, who was a Stoic, speaks as follows: