Located approximately 11 miles south of the ancient port city of Miletus on the western coast of modern-day Turkey, the temple and ruins of Apollo at Didyma was the fourth largest temple in the ancient Greek world. The temple’s oracle played a significant role in the
religious and political life of both Miletus and the greater Mediterranean
world; many rulers, from Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) to the Roman emperor Diocletian (244-313 CE) visited or sent delegations to this oracle
seeking the guidance and favour of Apollo. The oracle played a significant role
in initiating the “Great Persecution” of Christians under Diocletian and the
temple was later converted into a church during the 5th or 6th century CE.
In the early
years of the second century B.C., a stadium was erected to the south of the
temple to accommodate games associated with the festival of Apollo Didymeus.
That the temple itself was never completed is reported by Pausanias (Paus.
7.5.4), and is apparent from a number of unfinished columns at the site. The
Emperor Gaius Caligula intended to complete the temple (Suet. Gaius 21).
Certain elements of the temple, such as Ionic capital fragments, architrave
fragments, corner capitals with busts of deities, and the frieze with Medusa
heads, date to the second century A.D., and are witness to the intermittent
periods of construction at the temple over the centuries. In A.D. 262/3 the
temple was besieged by Goths, who failed to capture it. Later, the eastern part
of the temple was converted into a fort. In 1493, an earthquake caused the
collapse of all but three of the structure's columns.
As far as
the date of the design of the temple, if the Paionios of Ephesus mentioned by
Vitruvius is the same architect who worked on the Artemision at Ephesus, he
will have been free to design the Didymeion
after completing the fourth-century Artemision (in ca. 330 B.C.?) Building
inscriptions from ca. 299/98 B.C. refer to Seleucid funding of the construction
of the temple, and indicate that work had begun; there are no building accounts
from the period before 300 B.C. The dates and careers of Paionios and Daphnis
are uncertain, and it is unclear how much time intervened between the planning
of the temple and its actual construction. Inscribed building accounts suggest
that the temple was substantially complete by ca. 250 B.C., when oracular
pronouncements were made; certainly work continued at the Didymeion over the centuries, as attested by
the style of carving of various elements. The adyton
pilaster capitals and intervening frieze of griffins and lyres are dated to the early second century
B.C. (Voigtländer 1975a, 112-121). The frieze of Medusa heads and foliage from
the exterior of the temple is dated stylistically to the Hadrianic period, as
are the corner capitals with figural decoration from the peripteros Pülz 1989, 47-64.
SOURCES
·
Hammond,
N. G. L. (1998). "The Branchidae at Didyma and in Sogdiana". The
Classical Quarterly. 48 (2): 339. doi:10.1093/cq/48.2.339. JSTOR 639826. Note
2.
·
Jump
up^ Clement Alexandrinus. Protrepticus, 3.45.2-3.
·
Robert
Parker, reviewing Fontenrose 1988 in The Classical Review New Series 39.2
(1989), p 270
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