The Academy
Contents
Location
The Academy is an area of c. 1200 ft. in diameter that is located outside the city walls, about a mile from the Dipylon Gate to the northwest of the astu. (Baltes p.6) On the west of the Academy is the river of Cephissus, to the north east is the deme of Colonus Hippias, and to the south is the district of Kerameikos, known for its pottery production. The Academy is approached from the city by a long and unusually wide road, known as the Dromos, that was used for ceremonial purposes on religious festival days. (Paga p.169-70.) Along the sides of this road were stelia, erected to memorialize fallen Athenian soldiers. (Baltes p.6) The Academy is most closely associated with the philosopher Plato, who belonged to the nearby deme of Collytus. (Kalligas p.2.)
Above: Plan of astu and Academy area (Click)
The Academy as a Religious Sanctuary
The earliest evidence of human habitation in the Academy area dates back to the early Helladic period (2,300-2,200 BCE). (Panayiotopoulos and Chatziefhimiou p. 31.) According to Plutarch (Theseus 32), the area derives its name from Academus (or Hecademus), a mythical hero was given the land as a reward for helping the Dioscuri (the twins Castor and Pollux) find their sister Helen after her abduction by Theseus.
The area was also sacred to Athena. (Baltes p.6.) By the time of Peisistratus, the Academy had become established as an important religious sanctuary. Pausanias (1.30.1-2) reports the existence there of a number of altars. In addition to one to Athena, there were altars to Eros, Prometheus, the Muses, Hephaestus, Hermes, and Heracles. Pausanias mentions an altar to Eros at the entrance of the Academy that was be dedicated by Charmus, a contemporary of Peisistratus, while Plutarch records what might be another altar to Eros that was dedicated by Peisistratus himself. (Marchiandi p.18, 21. )
The Academy also played a role in the annual pan-Hellenic Festival of the City (Great) Dionysia. This festival is often said to have been established (or revived) by Peisistratus in the 530s BCE, but the evidence is tenuous. (Osborne, p.213). The day immediately before the festival began, the cult statue was taken out of its astu sanctuary and transported to one at the Academy, where it was bathed and given new clothes. On the first day of the Festival, a procession (pompe) was held in which the cult statue was transported along the Dromos and back into the astu to commemorate its first transfer from Eleutherai to Athens.
Above: Terracotta amphora showing Dionysos between satyrs abd maenads.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Click)
Above: Astu temple of Dionysos Eleutherios. Paga, p.147.
The Academy as a Gymnasium
The Academy underwent further development in the decades immediately after the death of Peisistratus in 528/7 BCE. According to the Suda, Hipparchus, the son of Peisistratus, built a public gymnasium on the site, together with a wall enclosing it. (Panayiotopoulos and Chatziefhimiou p.35.) The purpose of the gymnasium was to the provide education, both physical as well as cultural, to the young. (Camp p.149.) Plutarch (Cimon 13.7-8) says that Cimon (510-450 BCE) further developed the Academy “from a waterless and parched” area into “an irrigated grove with clean streets and shaded walks” by building an aqueduct from the river Cessiphus. (Panayiotopoulos and Chatziefhimiou p.37.)
By this time the Academy also had a “Sacred Grove” of olive trees grown from shoots of the Sacred Tree on the Acropolis to which Athena gave birth during the contest with Poseidon for possession of Attica. (Marchiandi p.22.)
Pictured above: Water pipes in the alley behind the Stoa Poikile, with the large pipe at the right leading towards the Academy. 470-460 BCE. Camp, p.64.
Plato’s Academy
After the trial and death of his teacher Socrates in 399 BCE, Plato left Athens because he “feared the savageness of the tyrants.” (Diogenes Laertius, 2.106) On his return to Athens in 387 BCE, at the time of the King’s Peace that concluded the Corinthian War, Plato purchased land in, or close, to the sanctuaries and gymnasium of the Academy using money collected by his friends. (Kalligas p.2. Also Dillon p.52-3.) He built a house there, and established a school with himself as scholarch or headmaster, thus adding a stronger intellectual dimension to the existing gymnasium. Plato also dedicated a shrine to the Muses in the Academy olive grove (Diogenes Laertius, 4.1).
Plato seems to have taught in his own house as well as in the public gymnasium, in one of the pillared halls or in an exedra. (Baltes p.7. Also Watts p.108.) There is record of only two female students; all the rest were men. (Baltes p.12.) Students were not charged fees, but were expected to pay for their own living expenses. (Baltes p.12.) Though relatively little is known about what went on inside Plato’s Academy, it is likely that Plato wrote many of his Dialogues as study texts to be read out loud and debated. (Baltes p.17.) There is also evidence that Plato allowed his followers considerable intellectual independence. (Watts p.110.) In 367 BCE, Aristotle arrived from Stagira to become a student of Plato. On his death in 347 BCE, Plato was buried in the Academy (Diogenes Laertius 3.41).
Above: Raphael’s The School of Athens (1509-11). Fresco in the Apostolic Palace, Vatican City. (Click)
The Academy after Plato
After Plato’s death, his school continued under a succession of scholarchs. Aristotle left the Academy to establish his own school at the Lyceum when he was passed over as scholarch in favor Speusippus, Plato’s nephew. (Watts p.111.) Despite Aristotle’s departure, however, Plato’s school of philosophy retained its reputation for the next nine hundred years, and well after the decline of Athens as a political power in the Hellenistic and later Roman periods. (Camp p.170.) Plato’s school of philosophy was finally abolished by the Emperor Justinian in 529 CE. (Marchiandi p.28.)
The buildings of Plato’s Academy, however, did not endure so long. They were vandalized first in 202 BCE when Philip V of Macedonia laid siege to Athens. According to Plutarch (Sulla 12), the buildings were then totally destroyed by Sulla in 86 BCE, and its olive trees were cut down in order to construct siege weapons. (Panayiotopoulos and Chatziefhimiou p.40.)
Archaeological Overview
In 1956, Stavropoulos excavated an apsidal building of the Helladic period that as a stone foundation with mudbricks above.(Panayiotopoulos and Chatziefhimiou p.31.) In 1966, a horos (boundary stone) was found in situ with the inscription “boundary of the Hekademia” marking an entrance onto a road leading either to the city or Hippias Colonus. (Camp p.64. Also Panayiotopoulos and Chatziefhimiou p. 36.) On the basis of the style of the lettering used in the inscription, this horos has been dated to the late 6th or early 5th c. BCE.(Kalligas p.2.) In 1971 a marble relief was found showing a ram-bearing Hermes at a site close to the horos. (Panayiotopoulos and Chatziefhimiou p.37.)
Pictured above: The boundary horos of the Academy,. C. 500 BCE. Width. 0.29; height 0.84m.
Found on the SE corner of the intersection of Aimonos and Tripoleos Streets. (Click)
From Panayiotopoulos and Chatziefhimiou p. 45.
No physical evidence has so far been found of the altars mentioned by Pausanius. But excavations just south of the Helladic building have uncovered a seven room building, again with mudbricks above stone foundations, that has been dated to the Geometric period. (Panayiotopoulos and Chatziefhimiou p. 31.) Due to its similarity with the Sacred House of Eleusis, this building is usually interpreted as a sacred place for the worship of Academus. (Panayiotopoulos and Chatziefhimiou. p. 32) Excavations have also found evidence of the wall of Hipparchus as well as terra-cotta sections of the aqueduct built by Cimon. (Camp. p.64.)
In the late 1950s, excavations by Stavropoulos also revealed the so-called “Square Peristyle,” a large (40 x 40m) columned building with stone foundations and a mudbrick superstructure. This structure is usually dated to the 4th or 3rd c. BCE but its function is unclear.
Excavations have also been carried out at what has been identified as a “gymnasium” at the southern end of the Academy site. There is still no consensus, however, as to whether this building is the one in which Plato taught, or a later one erected after Sulla destroyed the original. (Lygouri-Tolia, p.62.) The excavated gymnasium was first dated to later Roman times, then revised to the 1st c. CE, but some scholars have more recently suggested a dating at the beginning of the 4th c. BCE. The excavated building, however, is not a palaestra (like the Lyceum), with the implication that it was always intended for scholarly purposes rather than athletic activities
Fragmentary remains have also been found of several Roman buildings of the 1st c. CE. In particular, the “Veneta Farm” has been excavated on a site just outside the temenos of the Academy to the north.
Works Cited
Baltes, Matthias (1993)
Camp, J. (2001)
Dillon, John. (1983)
Kalligas, Paul. (2020)
Marchiandi, D. (2020)
Baziotopoulou-Valvani, E., Kararasmanis, V. (eds.) (2020)
Lygouri-Tolia, E. (2020)
O’Sullivan, L. (2002)
Paga, J. (2020)
Panayiotopoulos, M. and Chatziefhimiou, T. (2020)
Watts, Edward. (2007)
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