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THE GODS OF POLITICS IN EARLY GREEK CITIES

to call the ‘‘colonies’’ of Sicily and elsewhere. To be on the safe side, Nausithoos built
great ramparts of stone around his city; he shared out parcels of land, for which lots were
drawn; and he designed a magnificentagora, made of well-hewn stone, flanked by a
temple for Poseidon. It was as if this god had an unquestionable right to the rank of
poliad(or city) deity. Athena, who arrived to guide Odysseus as he made his way to the
city of Nausicaa, was careful to go no further than a small sacred grove, situated well
outside the precinct of Poseidon’s realm.
The town laid out on the Phaeacian shore was strangely like the city of Megara
Hyblaea in Sicily, whose foundations archaeologists have patiently reconstructed. The
future city was plotted on virgin soil by its founder around 730b.c. In its center, a space
was immediately marked out for theagora, the public area that would be completed one
century later. Another site, close to theagora, seems to have been chosen to accommodate
several sanctuaries, which were then gradually built. The land of the city founded by
Megara was initially divided up into more or less regular allotments, according to the
method followed by Nausicaa’s grandfather.
Meetings in assembly, for the purpose of deliberation according to the rule of ‘‘debat-
ingproandcontra,’’ such as those described in theIliad, followed practices with an easily
observable ceremonial that makes it possible for us to determine the role and place of the
gods within the space of theagora. As the great work by Franc ̧oise Ruze ́(De ́libe ́ration et
pouvoir dans les cite ́s grecques, Paris, 1997) describes, from Nestor down to Socrates, the
space of deliberative speech took the form of a circle or a semicircle. Whoever wished to
speak for ‘‘the common good’’ would advance to the middle,es meso ̄n, where he would
be handed the scepter that conferred authority upon his words so long as hisagora(in
the sense of speech) concerned what theOdysseycalls ‘‘a public matter’’ (ti demio ̄n). It all
thus began amid a gathering of warriors, men who set as much store by the art of speech
as by the martial arts (which is not the case in all warrior societies). The altar, with its
gods, set up by the Achaeans at the center of their semicircle of ships, was to be longer-
lasting than the siege of Troy, for the Greek-speaking gods were to continue to be involved
in the founding practices of cities and of these special places devoted to ‘‘the political
domain.’’ Two divine powers were always directly involved in the planning of a new city.
First, Apollo, known as a founder, anArche ̄gete ̄s. Hard on his heels came Hestia, the Greek
Vesta, with her sacrificial fire. Apollo was the god of Delphi. Any would-be founder had
to go to consult him. Apollo was revered as a god of paths and of reliable plans, and he
liked to accompany human founders, keeping an eye on them. Being an architect and a
geometrician, Apollo the Founder was the patron of the art of city planning, dividing the
territory into allotments of land, building roads and sanctuaries (teme ̄ne), and marking
out the space for theagora.
There could be no city without anagora, no city without altars and sacrificial fire. In
many cases, immediately upon disembarking the founder would consecrate an altar to his

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