Rebuilt Shed

The gods who controlled the destinies of ancient Athens were enshrined on the high hill called the Acropolis, but the common people who made the city truly immortal were content to congregate just below, in a vast marketplace known as the Agora. There, in 25 crowded acres which served them as a combination shopping center and community forum, the free and free-speaking people of Athens pursued a favorite pastime which consisted, in the words of St. Paul, of "nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing." A favorite meeting place in the ancient Agora was the huge and handsome Stoa of Attalus, a shedlike structure of classic, colonnaded beauty which was presented to the city by Attalus. King of Pergamum, in gratitude for the lessons learned in Athens in his student days.

Young Shantytown. In 267 A.D., some 400 years after its construction, the Stoa, like most of Athens, was razed to a crumbling ruin of broken marble and ashes by invading hordes of Herulian barbarians from the north. During the 18-odd centuries that followed, its remains were lost beneath the accumulation of ages, and the once lively Agora itself became a depressing shantytown whose drab life gave no hint of past glories. In 1922, with the help of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the Greek government decided to do something about it. It took nearly a decade to complete the necessary arrangements, and the work, once begun, was interrupted by war. But by 1946, with the help of American money --$1,135,000, most of it donated by John D. Rockefeller Jr.--the excavation and exploration of the Agora was seriously under way.

In the midst of it, one of the archaeologists in charge suggested, almost as a joke, that it might be nice, while they were at it, to reconstruct the Stoa of Attalus in its entirety, as a kind of museum to house whatever relics might be found. The idea caught on like wildfire, and once again Mr. Rockefeller offered to match with one of his own every dollar raised to complete the project.

Architects drew up plans based on the findings of the archaeologists. Limestone and marble were brought in from the quarries at Piraeus and Mt. Pentelikon that had supplied materials for the original building. Even the clay for the new roof tiles was dredged from the same clay beds on the outskirts of Athens. Only in the heart of the building (where they could not be seen) were new materials, such as reinforced concrete, used to give added strength.

One Sour Note. Last week the newly reconstructed Stoa of Attalus stood completed, its 92 marble pillars gleaming with unaccustomed whiteness beneath the clear blue Athenian sky. A bevy of American and Greek scholars, statesmen and other dignitaries, including King Paul and his pert, pretty Queen Frederika, gathered at the site to dedicate the rebuilt remembrance of the past. And in all the polite and grateful words spoken, there was only one sour note. Greek Professor Anastasios Orlandos, his nation's highest authority on ancient monuments, was unable to attend, but he sent a note of dissent.

The new Stoa is not a restoration at all, but just a reconstruction, he gruffed, and the gleaming white of its new columns makes an ugly contrast with the weathered beauty of the marbles on the ancient buildings. He asked to have either the white colonnade of the Stoa colored or the Agora covered with green trees, disagreed with the "functionalistic American's" plan to use the Stoa as a museum. Many of the Greeks gathered at the old birthplace of free speech shuddered at their professor's breach of form, but American Professor John L. Caskey, head of the American school, took it in stride. "Everyone," he said stoically, ''is entitled to his opinion."

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