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Tempo E, Parco Archeological di Selinunte e Cave di Cusa, Selinunte, Sicily-00119

Temple E, Archaeological Park of Selinunte and Cave of Cusa

 

From Wikipedia:

 

Temple E, also known as the Temple of Hera, at Selinus in Sicily is a Greek temple of the Doric order. It is found on the hill to the east of the city's acropolis. Temple E is also known as the Temple of Hera because an inscription found on a votive stela indicates that it was dedicated to Hera; however, some scholars argue that it must have been dedicated to Aphrodite on the basis of structural parallels. It was built towards the middle of the sixth century BC on top of the foundations of a more ancient building. It is the best conserved of the temples of Selinus but its present appearance is the result of anastylosis (reconstruction using original material) performed—controversially—in 1959, by the Italian archaeologist Jole Bovio Marconi.

 

Selinunte was one of the most important of the Greek colonies in Sicily, situated on the southwest coast of that island, at the mouth of the small river of the same name, and 6.5 km west of the Hypsas river (the modern Belice). It was founded, according to the historian Thucydides, by a colony from the Sicilian city of Megara Hyblaea, under the leadership of a man called Pammilus, about 100 years after the foundation of Megara Hyblaea, with the help of colonists from Megara in Greece, which was Megara Hyblaea's mother city. The date of its foundation cannot be precisely fixed, as Thucydides indicates it only by reference to the foundation of Megara Hyblaea, which is itself not accurately known, but it may be placed about 628 BCE. Diodorus places it 22 years earlier, or 650 BCE, and Hieronymus still further back in 654 BCE. The date from Thucydides, which is probably the most likely, is incompatible with this earlier date. The name is supposed to have been derived from quantities of wild celery (Ancient Greek: σέλινον, translit. (selinon)) that grew on the spot. For the same reason, they adopted the celery leaf as the symbol on their coins.

 

Selinunte was the most westerly of the Greek colonies in Sicily, and for this reason they soon came into contact with the Phoenicians of western Sicily and the native Sicilians in the west and northwest of the island. The Phoenicians do not at first seem to have conflicted with them; but as early as 580 BCE the Selinuntines were engaged in hostilities with the non-Greek Elymian people of Segesta, whose territory bordered their own. A body of emigrants from Rhodes and Cnidus who subsequently founded Lipara, supported the Segestans on this occasion, leading to their victory; but disputes and hostilities between the Segestans and Selinuntines seem to have occurred frequently, and it is possible that when Diodorus speaks of the Segestans being at war with the Lilybaeans (modern Marsala) in 454 BCE, that the Selinuntines are the people really meant.

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Uploaded on November 17, 2020
Taken on February 18, 2018