Random photos: Temple of Olympian Zeus
A friend and I visited Greece in November 2004, a couple of weeks after the Presidential election. Since the election dominated the news in Europe just like it did here, we heard the same question over and over from the locals: "What do you think about the election?"
My answer was always the same: "I'm not happy about it."
Their response was always the same: "We aren't either."
Anyway, one of the few remaining ancient sites in Athens is the Temple Of Olympian Zeus, which sits across a major thoroughfare from the Acropolis.
The temple was the largest in Greece and one of the largest in the ancient world. The first temple on the site was constructed around 600 BC; the temple whose ruins are visible today was begun in the 500s BC but wasn't completed until the 100s AD, under the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (they stopped building on it for a few hundred years because it was considered tacky to build a temple that large). Here's a shot of the entire temple complex, taken from atop the Acropolis:
Very little of it remains today, but the parts that do stand are mighty impressive.
In front of the temple complex stands a two-tiered arch; it's at the end of the street leading away from me in the picture. This arch was built under the orders of Hadrian as part of the temple's completion, and he was present for its dedication. He had overseen a large and costly expansion of the city of Athens under Roman rule; he wanted to make the point to the Athenians that the Romans were their new overlords, but they intended to remain respectful of Greek and Athenian history.
Toward that end, the bottom half of the arch is in the Roman style, while the top half is in a classical Greek style (Corinthian, in this case). This represented the marriage of the two cultures. The arch stands on the border between the ancient Greek and newer Roman parts of the city. The side of the arch facing the Acropolis bears an inscription which reads, "This is the city of Theseus." On the other side, facing the temple and the new Roman developments, the inscription reads, "This is the city of Hadrian and not of Theseus."
Yes, I'm making a not-too-subtle point: occupying forces must understand and be respectful of the occupied culture. So there.
This temple was enormous. To appreciate the scale of it, note the size of the base and the columns relative to the person in this picture:
Some interesting details remain:
The collapsed column in this shot fell in an earthquake in the 1850s:
Click any of the above images to see a larger version. The rest of my photos of the temple are here.