#dipteral

Olympieon (Temple of Olympian Zeus)

Athens, Greece

124-131 CE

Temple of Olympian Zeus was a Corinthian Octastyle Dipteral Temple deciated to "Olympian" Zeus, a name originating from his position as head of the Olympian gods. During the Roman period the temple, which included 104 colossal columns, was renowned as the largest temple in Greece and housed one of the largest cult statues in the ancient world. 

The construction of the Temple of Zeus Olympios began in the archaic period by Peisistratus and his descendants (520 BCE). It was designed to look like the huge temples of Asia Minor. It would be a Doric temple with a foundation size of 41m x 108m. It would have eight columns in two rows in the narrow sides and 21 in the long ones. However, with the arrival of  Democracy, it was considered as a symbol of tyranny and the construction stopped.

In the Hellenistic years, the king of the Seleucid Empire, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, ordered in 174 BCE the reconstruction of temple. The assigned architect was the Roman Cossutius who modified the initial plan of the building. The temple would now be of Corinthian order. In the narrow sides it would have three rows of 8 columns each, while in the long ones, there would be two rows of 20. It would have 104 columns in total. However, the works stopped again after the death of Antiochus, in 164 BCE.

In 86 BCE, when the Romans besieged Athens, general Sylla took two columns of the unfinished temple to decorate the temple of Jupiter in Campidoglio, in Rome. A third effort for the completion of the temple made by Augustus, was unsuccessful.

Finally, the emperor Hadrian accomplished the project in 131 CE. He respected the initial plan of Cossutius even keeping some of his columns which still stood. The columns were 17 metres high and had a diameter of 2m. A wall was built around the temple along which, dozens of his portraits were placed as offerings by all the cities of Greece. In the interior of temple there was one gold and ivory statue of Zeus and one of Hadrian himself.

The temple was deserted after suffering serious damage from their Heruli invasion in 267 CE. Afterwards it was used as a quarry, as the marble was used to manufacture lime.

The ancient writer and traveler Pausanias visited the Olympieion a few years after its completion and described it:

“Hadrian the Roman emperor dedicated the temple and the statue, one worth seeing, which in size exceeds all other statues save the colossi at Rhodes and Rome, and is made of ivory and gold with an artistic skill which is remarkable when the size is taken into account

Before the entrance to the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus, stand statues of Hadrian, two of Thasian stone, two of Egyptian.

Before the pillars stand bronze statues which the Athenians call “colonies.” The whole circumference of the precinct is about four stades, and they are full of statues; for every city has dedicated a likeness of the emperor Hadrian, and the Athenians have surpassed them in dedicating, behind the temple, the remarkable colossus.

On a pillar is a statue of Isocrates (…) there are also statues in Phrygian marble of Persians supporting a bronze tripod; both the figures and the tripod are worth seeing.”