Areopagus

Proper noun

Areopagus

1. (Ancient Greece) The supreme judicial and legislative council of ancient Athens.
   • When the great emergencies of the state required his presence and attention, he was engaged in conversation with the philosopher Plotinus, wasting his time in trifling or licentious pleasures, preparing his initiation to the Grecian mysteries, or soliciting a place in the Areopagus of Athens.1776, Edward Gibbon, chapter X, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume I, London: […] W[illiam] Strahan; and T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC
   • At its end, Orestes’ disordered brain envisages the sable-robed demons coiled about with snakes who are to stand as his accusers before the high court of the Areopagus, inaugurated by the daughter of Zeus, the goddess of wisdom, to adjudge his unhappy case.1924, Herbert Weir Smyth, “VI. Orestea. I: Agamemnon”, in Aeschylean Tragedy, page 152
2. A prominent rock outcropping located northwest of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece.
   • All hands were on deck, all the afternoon, with books and maps and glasses, trying to determine which “narrow rocky ridge” was the Areopagus, which sloping hill the Pnyx, which elevation the Museum Hill, and so on.1869, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXXII, in The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims’ Progress; […], Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company. […], →OCLC