Temple Apollo at Didyma

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