1. The Agora Museum collection is focused on artifacts found:
   1. across Greece that date to the Archaic Period
   2. in Athens and dated to the Classical Period
   3. at the agora site dated from prehistoric to the early Christian period
   4. all of the above
2. What is an aryballos? (The Agora Museum holds one of the finest and most artistic examples in existence.)
   1. A flask used to store oil or perfume—associated with the gymnasium
   2. A type of votive offering—found at religious sites
   3. A public proclamation—carved in stone and set up in the agora
   4. A public message board—used for announcements or conscription lists
3. In the Agora Museum, there is a stele recording the “Law Against Tyranny.” What did this law proclaim?
   1. that any form of government was permissible in Athens (e.g., democracy, monarchy, oligarchy) except rule by a tyrant.
   2. that tax rates under tyrannical rule in Athens rise to a level that would be unpopular with the citizenry.
   3. that Pericles was to be exiled because he was becoming too powerful.
   4. that anyone attempting to subvert democratic rule could be killed and the assassins held blameless.
4. The Greeks had a mind-numbing variety of pottery shapes and types. This museum has a good selection of everything from perfume bottles to wine-mixing bowls to jewel boxes. What name did the Greeks use for large jars used for storing and shipping wine or olives?
   1. Alabastra
   2. Amphora
   3. Pyxis
   4. klepsydra
5. One of the rarest and most precious holdings of the Agora Museum is a relic of Sparta—captured during the Peloponnesian War. What is it?
   1. A Spartan helmet
   2. The scepter of a Spartan general
   3. A Spartan shield
   4. Remains of the red cloak worn by Spartan soldiers
6. In the museum, there is a display of “ostraka” (from which we derive our word “ostracism”). What does this display highlight?
   1. Broken shards of pottery with names scratched upon them
   2. Stone thresholds with welcome messages carved into them
   3. Boundary markers for the Athenian agora banning non-citizens from entry
   4. Public proclamations carved on stone plaques and set up in the agora
7. In the museum, we frequently come across the name of the man who prepared Athens for the Persian invasion of 480 b.c. (by insisting they build a navy), saved Athens (and all of Greece, for that matter) by wily strategy and bold generalship, and was thanked for his troubles with exile and a death sentence just a few years later. Who was this man?
   1. Pericles
   2. Kimon
   3. Themistocles
   4. Pheidias
8. In the museum, there is a well-preserved (and extremely rare) example of a kleroterion. What was the purpose of this ancient device?
   1. To time speeches given before the people or juries.
   2. To calculate the seasonal position of stars.
   3. To determine standardized weights and measures for the city of Athens.
   4. To randomly select jury members to guard against corruption of the legal system.
9. Pottery and, particularly, pottery decoration is very useful to scholars for dating artifacts. The museum has excellent examples of different styles and techniques that were popular at different times. Of these displays, what “style” of pottery painting was the ‘latest and greatest’ development in Greek artistic technique?
   1. Geometric
   2. Black figure
   3. Red figure
   4. Lost wax technique
10. The Greeks loved their wine and had a whole series of vessels dedicated to preparing, serving, and drinking it. The museum has several fine examples on display. Which of the following were wine-related vessels?
    1. Krater—large drinking cup
    2. Kylix—small drinking cup
    3. Oinochos—mixing bowl
    4. All of the above

1) c
The Agora Museum is a collection dedicated to artifacts excavated from the agora itself. These artifacts range in date from prehistoric finds (urns and implements dated from the second and third millennium b.c.) to the early Christian era (statues, jewelry, and pottery up to the 5^th century a.d.). In many ways, the holdings of this collection document the day-to-day lives of ordinary Athenians: the shopping, voting, worshiping, legal, and governmental realities of people who lived 2500 years ago. Most museums display the detritus of the rich and famous. The Agora Museum gives us a more intimate look at the lives of the hoi polloi.

2) a
An aryballos is a flask used to store oil or perfume. It is associated with athletes and the gymnasium. After exercise, young men would scrape the sand, dirt, and sweat from their bodies with a strigil and then rub oil and perfume (poured from the aryballos) on themselves. This particular flask is more than a container. It is a piece of art in itself. It is fashioned in the likeness of a kneeling athlete, binding a victory ribbon around his head.

3) d
The “Law against Tyranny” proclaimed that anyone attempting to subvert democratic rule should be killed and the assassins held blameless. Athenian democracy—the rule of the “demos” (people)—was an unusual, almost unique, form of government in the ancient world. The Athenians considered it so precious, so fragile, that they went to extreme lengths to protect it. “Ostracism” was used in the 5^th Century b.c. to guard the city against any politician who was deemed to be too powerful, who threatened to gather the reins of power into his own too-eager hands. The Law against Tyranny was enacted to the same purpose in 4^th Century Athens.

4) b
Amphora. These large, conical-shaped jars seem impractical to us moderns. They couldn’t stand on their own (having pointed bottoms) and were top-heavy. But they stacked nicely in the bottom of cargo ships, conformed to the curved sides of the hull, and—lodged in against each other—held steady and secure in all kinds of weather.

5) c
The rarest artifact from Sparta held in the Agora Museum is a Spartan shield. If you remember your Greek history, the Spartans were a military machine. They were also Athens’ opponents in the Peloponnesian War. In a rare victory for the Athenians, at a little place called Sphacteria, hundreds of these shields were captured when (uncharacteristically) a Spartan force surrendered rather than be slaughtered by a much larger Athenian army. These shields were proudly displayed in the Painted Stoa (located in the agora). This particular shield bears the crudely inscribed words, “The Athenians from the Spartans, at Pylos” (a town near Sphacteria). It was found at the bottom of a cistern in the agora.

6) a
“Ostraka” were broken shards of pottery. Rather than being tossed aside, the ancients scratched words through the glazing, using them for shopping lists, messages, and (most significantly) ballots. When the Athenians voted to exile a too-powerful politician, they wrote names of likely candidates on these pottery shards. (For this reason, the process came to be called “ostracism.”) The Agora Museum has a large collection of these ostraka. If you look closely, you can find there the names of the most prominent citizens of classical Athens: “Pericles,” “Kimon,” and “Themistocles.”

7) c
Themistocles. This brilliant, arrogant, brusque general bullied Athens to build a navy. While the Spartans were dying at Thermopylae, he persuaded the Athenians to abandon their city and flee to the island of Salamis—to live to fight another day. His strategy and craftiness resulted in the tide-turning victory over the Persians at the battle of Salamis. Seven years later—still resentful of the destruction to their beloved city, jealous of Themistocles’s gifts and power—the people of Athens ostracized Themistocles. Archaeologists have discovered over 500 ostraka with Themistocles’s name scratched on them

8 ) d
The kleroterion in the Agora Museum was a device used to randomize the jury selection process. Jury selection has always been vulnerable to corruption by bribes, threats, and jury-tampering. To minimize this, the Athenians randomized the selection of jurors, protecting the courts (at least in theory) from rigged trials.

9) c
Red figure. Pottery painting falls roughly into three major categories. Geometric is the earliest—from about 900 b.c. on—and consisted of decorations using bands of repeated patterns. Later, potters began to experiment with glazing techniques in which the foreground (faces, bodies, robes) was painted with a “slip” made of watery clay and potash. In firing, the painted surfaces turned black—hence the name “black figure.” Later still, Athenian potters painted the background, rather than the figures, which left faces and bodies the color of the clay … a more realistic “red figured” look. The “lost wax” technique refers to bronze casting, not pottery.

10) d
All of the above. Because wine was central to Greek hospitality and culture (think of the Symposium), the accouterments for doing so were many and varied. A great variety of ceramic (and bronze) vessels were dedicated to storing, pouring, straining, mixing, and drinking wine. Greeks always drank their wine watered—often three parts of water to one part of wine. Drinking wine “straight” was seen as an uncivilized and dangerously subversive practice.