Pnyx

This guide to the Pnyx in Athens traces the bare hillside where, from the late sixth century BCE, as many as six thousand ordinary citizens gathered to vote by show of hands on war, peace and law. You'll hear about the bema, the original stone platform where Pericles, Aristides and Themistocles once stood, and about Demosthenes returning to that same spot generations later to warn Athens about the rising power of Macedon. Athens enforced attendance so strictly that latecomers caught in the market could be marked with a rope dipped in wet red paint.