If this has been a morning when the Ecclesia has been in session, nothing unusual has occurred at first in the busy Agora, except that the jury courts are hardly in action, and a bright flag is whipping the air from the tall flagpole by the Pnyx (the Assembly Place).  Then suddenly there is a shouting through the Agora.  The clamor of traffic around the popular flower stalls ceases; everybody who is not a slave or metic (and these would form a large fraction of the crowd of marketers) begins to edge down toward one end of the Agora.  Presently a gang of Scythian police-archers comes in sight.  They have a long rope sprinkled with red chalk wherewith they are “netting” the Agora.  The chalk will leave an infallible mark on the mantle of every tardy citizen, and he who is thus marked as late at the meeting will lose his fee for attendance, if not subject himself to a fine.  So there is a general rush away from the Agora and down one of the various avenues leading to the Pnyx.

132.  The Pnyx (Assembly Place) at Athens.—­The Pnyx is an open space of ground due west from the Acropolis.  It originally sloped gently away towards the northeast, but a massive retaining wall had been built around it, in an irregular semicircle, and the space within filled with solidly packed earth sloping inwards, making a kind of open air auditorium.  It is a huge place, 394 feet long, and 213 feet at the widest.  The earthen slope is entirely devoid of seats; everybody casts himself down sprawling or on his haunches, perhaps with an old himation under him.  Directly before the sitters runs a long ledge hewn out of the rock, forming, as it were, the “stage” side of the theater.  Here the rock has been cut away, so as to leave a sizable stone pulpit standing forth, with a small flight of steps on each side.  This is the “Bema,” the orator’s stand, whence speak the “demagogues,"[*] the molders of Athenian public opinion.  In front of the Bema there is a small portable altar for the indispensable sacrifices.  In the rear of the Bema are a few planks laid upon the rock.  Here will sit the fifty “Pryantes” in charge of the meeting.  There is a handsome chair for the presiding officer upon the Bema itself.  These are all the furnishings of the structure wherein Athens makes peace and war, and orders her whole civil and foreign policy.  The Hellenic azure is the only roof above her sovran law makers.  To the right, as the orators stand on the Bema, they can point toward the Acropolis and its glittering temples; to the left towards the Peireus, and the blue sea with the inevitable memories of glorious Salamis.  Surely it will be easy to fire all hearts with patriotism!

[*]A “demagogue” (=people-leader) might well be a great statesman, and not necessarily a cheap and noisy politician.

133.  The Preliminaries of the Meeting.—­Into this space the voters swarm by hundreds—­all the citizens of Athens, from twenty years and upward, sufficiently interested to come.  At each crude entrance stands a crops of watchful LEXIARCHS and their clerks, checking off those present and turning back interlopers.  As the entering crowds begin to thin, the entrance ways are presently closed by wicker hurdles.  The flag fluttering on high is struck.  The Ecclesia is ready for action.