Early in Greek history (10th-8th centuries BC), free-born citizens would gather in the agora for military duty or to hear statements of the ruling king or council. Later, the agora also served as a marketplace, where merchants kept stalls or shops to sell their goods amid colonnades. This attracted artisans who built workshops nearby. From these twin funcions of the agora as a political and commercial space came the two Greek verbs agoratso, “I shop”, and agoreuo, “I speak in public”.