Agora Designs

where merchants kept stalls or shops to sell their goods amid colonnades. From this twin function of the agora as a political and commercial space came the two Greek verbs ἀγοράζω, agorázō, "I shop", and ἀγορεύω, agoreúō, "I speak in public". The word agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces or public situations, derives from the meaning of agora as a gathering place. The Forum was the Roman equivalent of the agora and the word is often used in older texts to refer to Greek agoras.