The Areopagus sermon refers to a sermon delivered by the Apostle Paul in Athens, at the Areopagus, and recounted in Acts 17:16–34. The Areopagus sermon is the most dramatic and most fully-reported speech of the missionary career of Saint Paul and followed a shorter address in Lystra recorded in Acts 14:15–17.
The Areopagus (/æriˈɒpəɡəs/) was a principal council of ancient Athens, later serving mainly as a judicial body responsible for cases of homicide, wounding, and certain religious offenses. It met on a rocky outcrop called the “Hill of Ares,” northwest of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, from which it took its name. Its English name comes from the Late Latin composite form of the Greek name Areios Pagos, translated "Hill of Ares" (Ancient Greek: Ἄρειος Πάγος). The war god Ares was supposed to have been tried by the other gods on the Areopagus for the murder of Poseidon's son Halirrhothius, a typical example of an aetiological myth.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (or Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite) was a Greek author, Christian theologian and Neoplatonic philosopher of the late 5th to early 6th century, who wrote a set of works known as the Corpus Areopagiticum or Corpus Dionysiacum. Through his writing in Mystical Theology, he has been identified as the "progenitor of apophatic or negative theology."
The author pseudepigraphically identifies himself in the corpus as "Dionysios", portraying himself as Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian convert of Paul the Apostle mentioned in Acts 17:34.