agora

The report is the initial phase of an ambitious effort to map the modern agora, referring to the lively assembly places of ancient Greece often considered to be the birthplace of democracy.

Futel describes its mission as preserving “public telephone hardware as a means of providing access to the agora for everybody,” using a Greek term for central public space.

“We offer the program online, but we always anticipated giving students the opportunity to be in a public square or a Roman forum or Greek agora,” said Louise Mirrer, the Historical Society president and C.E.O.

But term limits transformed Sacramento not into a Greek-style agora of free men, but a swamp where Republican fortunes have sunk ever since like a mastodon in the La Brea tar pits.

Then there was the Umayyad mosque, built on the site of a Hellenistic agora, called after the dynasty that founded it in the eighth century but its surviving fabric coming from later periods.