Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 17:21

"(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.)" — Acts 17:21 (ASV)

Luke’s comment about the Athenians “doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas” is paralleled in the evaluation of his fellow Athenians by Cleon, a fifth-century B. C. politician and general, and by Demosthenes (384–322 B. C.).