Stoa Poikile

The Stoa Poikile (Ancient Greek: ἡ ποικίλη στοά, hē poikílē stoá) or Painted Portico was a Doric stoa (a covered walkway or portico) erected around 460 BC on the north side of the Ancient Agora of Athens.

[1] It was built by one Peisianax, a brother-in-law of Kimon, in the 460s BC,[2] and it was therefore originally known as the "Peisianactean Stoa" (ἡ Πεισιανάκτειος στοά, hē Peisianákteios stoá).

[4][5] Demosthenes, Aeschines, and other authors point to the painting of the Battle of Marathon as a key memorial of Athens' ancestral valour.

[7] According to Diogenes Laertius, was the site where the oligarchic government of the Thirty Tyrants "made away with" 1400 Athenian citizens in 403 BC.

[8] The late third-century BC comedian Theognetus refers to "trifling arguments from the Poikile Stoa" in a joke about philosophers.

[8] The second century AD epistolographer Alciphron refers to "the unshod, cadaverous people who spend their time in the Poikile" and to "chattering philosophers making trouble there.

[15] In the Imperial period, it was also a site of street entertainment; the second-century AD novelist Apuleius reports watching sword swallowers and gymnasts there.

The foundation consisted of three steps of hard, fine-grained poros of very fine workmanship, joined very precisely with iron double-T clamps sealed in place with lead.

[30] Inside, there was an interior colonnade of narrow Ionic columns with poros shafts and marble capitals, which supported the ridge of the roof.

[2] By the second century AD, bronze statues of Hermes Agoraeus, Solon, Seleucus, and others stood in front of the stoa.

[34] The stoa contained four famous paintings, which have not survived, but are mentioned by many authors, particularly the 2nd-century AD travel writer Pausanias.

Here is also a portrait of the hero Marathon, after whom the plain is named, of Theseus represented as coming up from the under-world, of Athena and of Heracles.

Of the fighters the most conspicuous figures in the painting are Callimachus, who had been elected commander-in-chief by the Athenians, Miltiades, one of the generals, and a hero called Echetlus, of whom I shall make mention later.In the Hellenistic period a gate was built over the north–south street, which abutted on the stoa's west wall and aligned perfectly with its front anta.

[41] The foundations of this gate are formed of poros blocks and consist of two large piers, with a 2.5 metre gap of hard-packed gravel for traffic.

[47] The foundations of the stoa were discovered during new American excavations in the northwestern corner of the Agora at 13 Hadrianou Street, which took place between 1980 and 1982 under the leadership of T. Leslie Shear, Jr. [de].

This discovery disproved Shoe Meritt's theory, since the measurements of the foundations do not match the architectural fragments from the Late Antique wall.