Rhetoric and the architecture of empire in the Athenian agora

Abstract

The various political regimes of ancient Athens established and legitimated their power through civic architecture and public rhetoric in the agora. A study of the parallel developments of architectural and rhetorical form , supported by previously published archaeological evidence and the well documented history of classical rhetoric, demonstrates that both served to propel democracy and, later, to euphemize the asymmetrical power structures of the Hellenistic and Roman empires. In addition, civic architecture and rhetoric worked in unison following analogous patterns of presentation in civic space. Civic imperial architecture in the agora may be thus understood to function as the stageset and legitimator of imperial political rhetoric in the agora.