Altar of the Twelve Gods

[11] A milestone, c. 400 BC, found near the gate to the Acropolis reads: "The city set me up, a truthful monument to show all mortals the measure of their journeying: the distance to the altar of the twelve gods from the harbor is forty-five stades".

"[13] Pindar may have been referring to the Altar of the Twelve Gods and its central status, as is supposed by many scholars,[14] when (probably sometime during the first half of the fifth century BC) he wrote:[15] Possibly as early as its founding, the Altar may have been the zero point from which the herms, erected by Hipparchus, marked the halfway points of the roads from Athens to its demes.

[27] Also discovered abutting the west wall, was a Pentelic marble statue base inscribed on its front:[28] thus identifying the enclosure as that of the Altar of the Twelve Gods.

[29] As of 1992, "nearly nine-tenths" of the Altar lay buried beneath the Athens-Piraeus Electric Railway, with only the southwest corner of the enclosure visible.

[31] Once the Altar was exposed, archaeologists and a group promoting the revival of ancient Greek polytheism filed legal injunctions to prevent replacement of the tracks of the Athens-Piraeus Railway.

[32] The Altar's rectangular enclosure or peribolos, was roughly square, 9.5m per side, with its north-south axis oriented just to the west of north.

[40] A second-century AD inscription indicates a reserved seat for the priest of the Twelve Gods in the Theater of Dionysus.