At the time of Paul's visit to Athens, that city was no longer important as a political seat; Corinth was the commercial and political center of Greece under the Roman Caesars. But Athens was still the university center of the world. Athens could boast of its great philosophers—Pericles, Demosthenes, Zeno, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, and Euripides—men who established patterns of thought that have affected human learning for centuries.
But Athens was long past its zenith when Paul visited it. It was now four hundred years after the golden age of Greece, and, though Athens was still a center of art, beauty, culture, and knowledge, the city had lost all political importance.
According to Luke, Paul paid only one visit to Athens. While he waited for Silas and Timothy to join him, he traveled through the ancient city and was appalled by the high degree of paganism he found there. An ancient proverb claimed that there were more gods in Athens than there were men. That was the testimony of Paul too. Luke recorded that everywhere Paul looked, he could see that, "...the city was given over to idols." (Acts 17:16)
Finally, he had the opportunity to address the philosophers on Mar's Hill, where he proclaimed to them the, "...God, who made the world and everything in it." (Acts 17:24)
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