The water in Athens came from wells and springs and fountains, many of which were at the street corners, and it was the task of the slave maidens to draw the water from the fountain and to carry it home in vessels which they carried on their heads.
It is evident that Athens was a city very different from a well-equipped modern city, and that it lacked a great deal of what we consider necessary. But the Athenian of the fifth century B.C. had extraordinarily little use for things, and he laid no stress on comfort. He was content to have houses without drains, beds without sheets or springs, and rooms as cold or as hot as the open air. He could tell the time without a clock, cross the sea without a compass, fasten his clothes (or rather his two pieces of cloth) with two pins instead of rows of buttons, and wear sandals without stockings or even go barefoot. He warmed himself over a pot of ashes, judged law-suits in the open air on a cold winter's morning, studied poetry without books, learned geography without maps, and politics without a newspaper. The Athenians were civilized without being comfortable.[[1]] Of course much of this simple life was possible because of the climate, and modern standards of cleanliness need in no way conflict with a simple life; nevertheless it is the glory of the Athenians that they not only believed but practised the belief, that the things of the mind and spirit are greater than those of the body.
The daily life of Athens centred in the Agora. If the streets approaching it were mean and dirty, the Agora itself, the centre of public life, was wide and spacious and surrounded by dignified and beautiful buildings. In shape it was a great open square, two sides of which were taken up with public buildings and temples. On the remaining sides were the Stoas or Porches. These consisted of a roof supported by a row of columns in front and a wall at the back. Each stoa was a covered walk, protected from the glare of the sun, the biting of the cold wind, and from the rain, and whatever the weather might be, the Athenian could always find a pleasant sheltered place where he could walk and talk with his friends. One of these Porches was known as the King's Porch. It was used as one of the law-courts, and on the wall at the back were inscribed the laws of Solon, and it was here that every archon had to take his oath of office. The most frequented of the stoas was the Painted Porch, so called because its wall was decorated with frescoes, one of which was a great painting of the battle of Marathon.
The centre of the Agora was a great open space, part of it free for the public to walk in, and part of it full of booths and stalls where was sold everything needed by the Athenians.
There were three classes of people in Athens: the citizens, who were all free-born Athenians; the foreign residents who were called metics; and the slaves. In outward appearance there was often very little difference between them, but only the citizens might vote, and they alone had any privileges. The metics were generally well-to-do; they were merchants and bankers and helped very largely to create the wealth which made Athens great.
The morning life of Athens centred in the Agora, but when the afternoon came, this was gradually deserted, and the Athenians who had gathered there earlier in the day went along the roads that led out of the city to the different Gymnasia. These were originally places devoted to the games practised by all Athenians, but they gradually became used more as parks, where the young men played games and the older men watched and talked. The Academy was the greatest of the gymnasia, and philosophers used to frequent it, and with their pupils discuss all the many things in which the keen and adventurous minds of the Athenians were interested. Plato, one of the greatest of the philosophers, was a well-known figure at the Academy.
Rising above the city, watching over it and guarding it, was the Acropolis, crowned by temples and statues. A great statue of Athena looked down upon the city at her feet, at the busy Agora and the public buildings in which the government of the state was carried on, at the narrow streets lined with the houses of the citizens, and, beyond the walls, at the pleasant roads leading, on one side, out to the gymnasia and the country beyond, and, on the other, down to the harbour busy with the trade of Athens and where the galleys went in and out on their voyages all over the Mediterranean world.
II. ATHENIAN DRESS
A visitor to the Agora in the morning would have found Athenians of all kinds going about their daily business and he would have had opportunity to see how they dressed. The morning crowd in the Agora consisted almost entirely of men; to see Athenian women a stranger would have to be invited to their houses, a rare privilege but seldom accorded, or to have visited Athens during a festival, when women were allowed to take part in the great processions which went up to the shrine of Athena on the Acropolis. But men of all classes could be seen every day in the Agora: the working-man going to his work, the countryman selling the produce of his farm, slaves doing the daily marketing for the household, and men of leisure walking about and talking to their friends.