Every Greek city had one. A flat open space, ringed by colonnades and shrines, where citizens gathered to argue, vote, buy, sell, hear news, lodge complaints, and watch each other in public. The agora is where the polity happened in the open, before politics retreated indoors.
In the Odyssey, Telemachus calls the Ithacan agora in Book 2 — his first attempt to act like an adult, summoning the men of Ithaca to demand the suitors leave. He fails. The square becomes the mirror that shows him how alone he is, how absent his father has been, and how much work the next twenty years will require.
The Retold reuses the word for the platform’s community space — same intent: a place where readers can gather and speak openly to each other.