As early as the 5th century b.c. the poet Pindar in a dithyramb (Fragment 75, line 5) called the Athenian Agora “glorious, richly decorated,” and so it was, the setting for justly famous works of art, many of them sculpted from marble. Its buildings had marble decoration and housed dedications in the form of marble statues and reliefs. Its northwestern corner was crowded with marble herms and cavalry dedications on sculpted marble bases. In the Roman period the Agora and its neighborhood were dotted with marble portraits of emperors and other members of the imperial family, philosophers, magistrates, priests, and victorious athletes. Coveted Greek “antique” sculpture as well as contemporary portraits were displayed in private houses on the slopes near the square. The finds from the Agora excavations (1) demonstrate that generations of marbleworkers, many of them working in and around the Agora, made Athens an important center for the production of marble sculpture until its sack by the Herulians in a.d. 267.