John Camp lectures on the ποικίλη στοά, or Painted Stoa, in the northwest area of the Athenian agora. Originally it was called the Stoa of Peisianax, after the man who dedicated it. It was constructed sometime between 475 and 450 BC, and discovered in excavations in 1981. Behind him—in the swamp—you can see the westernmost wall of the building. The eastern end was recently discovered and is under excavation, while most of the building still lies beneath modern buildings. It was decorated with several important paintings (hence its later name, ποικίλη), none of which survive, having been removed by a Roman leader at the end of the fourth century AD according to Synesius. The famous painting of the battle of Marathon by Panainos is described by Pausanias (1.15.4):
The last part of the painting is the men who fought at Marathon; the Boiotians from Plataia and men from all over Attica are coming to grips with the barbarians: things are about equal. But in the heart of the battle the barbarians are in flight, pushing each other into the marsh, and the painting ends with the Phoenician ships, and with Greeks slaughtering barbarians as they jump into them. The hero Marathon, from whom the level ground got its name, is standing there, with Theseus rising out of the earth, and Athena and Herakles. The people of Marathon think themselves the first to believe Herakles was a god. In the picture of the fighting, you can most clearly make out Kallimachos, who was chosen to be chief Athenian general, and General Miltiades, and the divine hero Echetlos, whom I shall recall later.
Etymological note: the philosopher Zeno and his students met here so often that they became known as the Stoics, from whose philosophy, of course, we get our adjective stoic.
