Temple at Samos

Greek

            The Temple at Samos was a large sanctuary to the Greek goddess Hera Greece’s southern region of Samos. The sanctuary was located around 6 km southwest of the ancient city in a marshy river basin of the nearby sea. The core myth at the heart of the construction of this temple is the birth of the goddess Hera. It is believed that the goddess was born under a lygos tree (the chaste-tree). This explains the reason why the cult image of Hera used to be ceremonially bound with the branches of lygo during the annual Samian festival known as the Toneia. Today, this temple is treasured not only by the Greek but everyone in the world. This came as a result of it being designated as A JOINT UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1992 together with the nearby Pythagoreion (Whitley, 2001).

            The Greek built this temple at the mouth of River Imvrasos as they believed that the region was connected with the worship of Hera. This was despite the fact that the ground was not stable. The other factor that led to this temple being constructed in this region was the belief that the goddess Hera was born and raised in this area. Historically, this is the largest temple ever built in Greece and was constructed in a faithful manner by Polykrates to replace the previous model designed by Theodoros and Rhoikos of Samos that was destroyed by an earthquake. The new temple was stronger than the previous one as in 500 BC, it still posed on 115 columns close to the Ireon (Whitley, 2001). Today, the temple stands on just a single half colossal octastyle dipteral column that has been conserved on the northeastern corner. The fact that the temple barely exists today has led to many Greeks believing that Hera has moved to another place.

            Despite the temple barely in existence, a continuous frieze that adorned the top walls of the cella and pronoas can still be seen today. Here, we can see that a triple row of columns screened the short sides of the temple whereas the capitals of the temple’s outer peristalsis were in the normal volute design. On the other hand, the inner peristalsis of the temple was based on the Ionic Kyma model. At the same time, the bases of columns and other blocks that belonged to the previous Heraion can still be seen today. Through these architectural designs, we can see that that the Temple at Samos exclusively belonged to people and its development was inseparable with the city’s political history.

References

Whitley, J. (2001). The archaeology of ancient Greece. New York: Cambridge University Press.