noun
definition
In Ancient Greece, a walkway with a roof supported by colonnades, often with a wall on one side; specifically, the Great Hall in Athens.
Examples of stoa in a Sentence
The remains of two temples of Dionysus have been found adjoining the stoa of the theatre, and an altar of the same god adorned with masks and festoons; the smaller and earlier temple probably dates from the 6th century B.C., the larger from the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 4th century.
The Stoa consisted of a series of 21 chambers, probably shops, faced by a double colonnade, the outer columns being of the Doric order, the inner unfluted, with lotus-leaf capitals; it possessed an upper storey fronted with Ionic columns.
A portion of its western front, adorned with monolith unfluted Corinthian columns, is still standing - the familiar " Stoa of Hadrian "; another well-preserved portion, with six pilasters, runs parallel to the west side of Aeolus Street.
It might seem, indeed, that Stoicism indicates a falling off from Plato and Aristotle towards materialism, but the ethical dualism, which was the ruling tendency of the Stoa, could not long endure its materialistic physics, and took refuge in the metaphysical dualism of the Platonists.
Thirdly, it can justly claim the honour of Plato's name, since it expressly goes back to him for its metaphysics, directly combating those of the Stoa.
In the interpretation of myths Neoplatonism followed the allegorical method, as practised especially by the Stoa; but the importance it attached to the spiritualized myths was unknown to the Stoic philosophers.
But the spiritual development had shot far ahead of the political; even the Stoa occupied a height far beyond the reach of anything in the political sphere.
Not long afterwards we find the citizens receiving the present of a gymnasium from Ptolemy, and building in his honour a stoa or portico; but the city never recovered altogether from the disasters of the siege, and Cicero describes it as almost deserted.
An early terrace wall supports a precinct in which are a stoa and some remains of temples; these were excavated by the British School at Athens in 1894, but very little was found.
His official residence was the Stoa Basileios, and his wife, as officially representing the wife of Dionysus, was called Basilinna.
Sculpture was also found in excavating the Stoa of the Giants and the Roman agora.
On the northern side of this terrace, between the second temple and the Cyclopean supporting wall, a long stoa or colonnade runs from east to west abutting at the west end in structures which evidently contained a well-house and waterworks; while at the eastern end of this stoa a number of chambers were erected against the hill, in front of which were placed statues and inscriptions, the bases for which are still extant.
Immediately below the second temple at the foot of the elevation on which this temple stands, towards the south, and thus facing the city of Argos, a splendid stoa or colonnade, to which large flights of steps lead, was erected about the time of the building of the second temple.
At the western extremity of the whole site, immediately beside the river-bed, we again have a huge stoa running round two sides of a square, which was no doubt connected with the functions of this sanctuary as a health resort, especially for women, the goddess ?1.16 I.
Finally, immediately to the north of this western stoa there is an extensive house of Roman times also connected with baths.
Properly therefore it stands in marked antithesis to that fairest growth of old Hellas, the Academy, which saw the Stoa rise and fall - the one the typical school of Greece and Greek intellect, the other of the Hellenized East, and, under the early Roman Empire, of the whole civilized world.
By the old Stoa is meant the period (c. 304-205 B.C.) down to the death of Chrysippus, the second founder; then was laid the foundation of theory, to which hardly anything of importance was afterwards added.
Here the Stoa shows signs of a development of doctrine.
With the Middle Stoa we enter upon a period at first of comparative inaction, afterwards of internal reform.
None of the ancient systems fell so rapidly as the Stoa.
Yet even on this point it learned something from the Stoics; the Neoplatonic conception of the action of the Deity on the world and of the essence and origin of matter can only be explained by reference to the dynamic pantheism of the Stoa.