Acts 17:20

For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean. (Now all the Athenians and the strangers sojourning there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.)

The Areopagus ... "may stand either for the Hill of Mars, simply as a locality, or for the Court which sat there, the oldest and most revered tribunal in Athens."[35] It is likely that some of the members of the Court were there, perhaps many of them, when Paul spoke.

Mars' Hill ... was named after the mythical god of war who "was tried here for murdering the son of Poseidon (Neptune) the sea-god, in one of the many squabbles of the gods."[36] A temple dedicated to Mars had been on this hill in very ancient times. Strange that the Prince of Peace should have been proclaimed on that ancient hill of the war god.

Either to tell or to hear some new thing ... This grave fault of the Athenian populace in regarding things simply for their novelty was denounced by their own greatest orator. "In his first Philippic, Demosthenes said that when they should have been up and doing, they went around asking, Is there any news?"[37]

[35] E. H. Plumptre, op., cit., p. 114.

[36] Orrin Root, op. cit., p. 136.

[37] A. C. Hervey, op. cit., p. 61.