Thousands of coins have survived from antiquity, but little evidence exists about the mints which produced them. Only two mints are known, one at modern Porto Heli in the Argolid, and the other at Olbia in South Russia. Now, half a dozen workmen can be seen every day at the Agora, at the foot of the Acropolis, slowly uncovering what is believed to have been the mint of ancient Athens.
The bus trip from Athens to London had been all that was promised: fifty hours for fifty-five dollars, non-stop. My two sisters and I and a friend had set off in good spirits with four chickens, forty hard-boiled eggs, five pounds of raisins and nuts, and innumerable oranges. Except for occasional grouses about the temperature of the interior of the bus and one thirteen-hour stretch when our stoical driver chose not to stop, all went well. So a month later in London, faced with a choice of how to get back to Athens, I succumbed to my dislike of flying and decided to do it again. Alone this time. I called and got the last seat on a bus leaving the next day.
Classical Athens saw the rise of an achievement unparalleled in the history of mankind. Pericles, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Plato, Demosthenes, Thucydides and Praxiteles. . . the statesmen and playwrights, historians and artists, philosophers and orators who flourished here during the fourth and fifth centuries B. C. when Athens was the most powerful city-state in Greece, were collectively responsible for sowing the seeds of Western Civilization. When its influence waned, Athens remained a cultural mecca, a centre for the study of philosophy and rhetoric until the sixth century A.D. Throughout antiquity Athens was adorned with great public buildings, financed first by its citizens, and later with gifts from Hellenistic kings and Roman emperors. Nowhere is the history of Athens so richly illustrated as in the Agora, the marketplace which was the focal point of life…
