Architectural arrangements of the bouleuterion terrace in Metropolis to honour the city’s euergetai and their clues as to the location of the Agora

Abstract In the course of archaeological excavations at Metropolis between 1999 and 2004 when the hall of the city council (boule) was unearthed, an important inscription now referred to as the ‘Apollonios Decree’ was discovered on the bouleuterion terrace. This inscription decrees that a statue honouring Apollonios is to be erected ‘in that part of the Agora where it will be the most conspicuous’. Ongoing excavations have revealed a concentration of sculptures in the same area, further strengthening the hypothesis that the Agora was located on the bouleuterion terrace. The present study was undertaken to better understand and interpret the functions of this part of the site based on the findings of excavations on the northern side of the bouleuterion in 2018. It also aims to ascertain if this is the area referred to in inscriptions as the place where public benefactors (euergetai) were honoured with boule-decreed statues, to determine if the statue dedicated to Apollonios of Metropolis was indeed located here, and to propose a possible location for the as-yet unidentified Metropolitan agora.