AREOPAGO (ὁ ὄρειος πέγας “hill of Mars”). — A rocky hill of Athens, southwest of the Acropolis, where, according to mythology, Mars cleared himself of the murder of Alirrozio, son of Neptune. A Council (βουλή) resided there, and later (from the time of Aristotle) a tribunal charged with safeguarding public morality and the constitution of the State. S. Paolo, having arrived in Athens (v.), disgusted by the city’s idolatry, after debating with Jews and proselytes in the synagogue, engaged Epicureans and Stoics in the agora concerning Jesus and the Resurrection. He was led by them to the A. (Act. 17, 19. 22: the term a. probably designates here not a place but an assembly) as a proclaimer of foreign divinities (ἔξνα δαυτόνια) and of a new doctrine (κατὴ διδάχη); thus Socrates had been accused of introducing δαυτόνια κατὰ into Athens (Plato, Apol. Socr., 26b, 27c). In his discourse (Act. 17, 22-31), the Apostle does not address judges with a personal apologia, but a large public, including the wise men of Athens, adapting himself to the Hellenic mentality. V. AGNOSTOS THEOS.
Appealing to Athenian religiosity, which had multiplied temples and statues (especially in the agora), Paolo promises to solve the enigma and satisfy the longing that he had seen expressed on an altar dedicated to an unknown god. Pausanias and Philostratus (2nd century) mention three altars to unknown divinities (in the plural; S. Girolamo, In epist. ad Titum, 1, 12, believes that Paolo rendered it in the singular) in or around Athens and at Olympia; one was discovered (1909) at Pergamum, and in Rome, on the Palatine, the inscription “sei deo sei deivare”.
Paolo proclaims the one God, creator of the invisible and infinite universe, who from one man produced all peoples, so that men might find him, since God is the intimate vivifier of each person: “in Him we live, move, and are,” Aratus had said (v.); and, more obscurely, another poet, the Stoic Clement of Assos, sang in his hymn to Zeus: “of Him we are offspring.” After this introduction, Paolo states the evangelical theme and then develops it (condemnation of idolatry, God’s mercy, conversion in order not to incur the sanctions of his judgment, redemption in a Man who died and rose again); but before he had finished, he was interrupted by mockery concerning the “Resurrection.” Few were converted in that frivolous and pretentious environment, Dionigi (v.) and a distinguished woman, Damaride (Act. 17, 16-32).
E. Curtius, Paulus in Athen, in Sitzungsber. Akad. Wissenschaft. zu Berlin, 26 (1893), pp. 925-38, and in The Expositor, 7th series, 4 (1907), pp. 436-55, holds that in Paolo’s time the a. met in the royal hall (royal portico), in the agora, where Demosthenes once spoke. This hypothesis, highly probable, is now accepted by many, although it was challenged by M. Dibelius.
E. Norden, Agnostos Theos, Leipzig 1913 (reprinted 1929), denied the historicity of Paolo’s discourse, attributing it to a late compiler (A.D. 90-120) inspired by Apollonius of Tyana’s writing περὶ θυστῶν. The daring thesis was accepted by R. Reitzenstein, P. Corssen, J. Weiss, J. Wellhausen, W. Jäger, O. Weinreich, and A. Loisy, but was thoroughly refuted by A. Harnack, Die Rede des Paulus in Athen, in Texte und Untersuchungen, 39, 1, Leipzig 1913; by A. Wikenhauser, Die Apostelgeschichte und ihr Geschichtswerk, Munich 1921, pp. 369-94; by Th. Zahn, Die Apostelgeschichte des Lukas, II, Leipzig 1921, pp. 599-631, 870-882; by L. Murillo, Paulus et Pauli scrispta, I, Rome 1926, pp. 41-48; and by E. Jacquier, Actes des Apôtres, Paris 1926, pp. cclxxi-cclxxxi, who defend the authenticity of the discourse with historical, archaeological, psychological, and literary arguments.