Last updated Temple E, also called the Temple of Hera
Temple E at Selinus in Sicily is a Greek temple of Magna Graecia 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[1] indicates that it was dedicated to Hera;[2] however, some scholars argue that it must have been dedicated to Aphrodite on the basis of structural parallels.[3] It was built towards the middle of the fifth century BC on top of the foundations of a more ancient building.[4] 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.
The peripteral temple belongs to the period of transition from the archaic to the classical period. It has a peristyle 25.33 wide x 67.82 metres long with six columns at the front (hexastyle) and fifteen on the long sides. The columns are each 10.19 metres high with numerous traces of the stucco which originally covered them. As a result, the floorplan is unusually elongated. It is a temple characterised by multiple staircases creating a system of successive levels: ten steps lead to the entrance on the eastern side, after the pronaosin antis another six steps lead into the naos and finally another six steps lead into the adyton at the rear of the naos. Behind the adyton, separated from it by a wall, was the opisthodomos in antis. There are many of the optical illusions typical of the Doric order: the strong tapering of the columns at their ends (entasis), contraction at the corners, and widening of the final metopes, for example.[5]
A Doric frieze at the top of the walls of the naos consisted of metopes depicting people, with the heads and naked parts of the women made of Parian marble and the rest from local stone. These metopes date to around 470 BC and show evidence of the evolution towards the classical style.[6] Four metopes are preserved: Heracles killing the AmazonAntiope, the marriage of Hera and Zeus, Actaeon being torn apart by Artemis’ hunting dogs, Athena killing the GiantEnceladus, and another more fragmentary one perhaps depicting Apollo and Daphne. All of them are kept in the Antonino Salinas Regional Archeological Museum.
↑ Enzo Lippolis, Monica Livadiotti, Giorgio Rocco, Architettura greca: storia e monumenti del mondo della polis dalle origini al V secolo, 2007, pp. 833-834, ISBN8842492205.
↑ Enzo Lippolis, Monica Livadiotti, Giorgio Rocco, op. cit., 2007, p. 834.
↑ Gisela M. A. Richter, L'arte greca, tr. it. di Mila Leva Pistoi, Einaudi, Torino 1969, p. 87.
In ancient Greek religion, Hera is the goddess of marriage, women, and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology, she is queen of the twelve Olympians and Mount Olympus, sister and wife of Zeus, and daughter of the Titans Cronus and Rhea. One of her defining characteristics in myth is her jealous and vengeful nature in dealing with any who offended her, especially Zeus's numerous adulterous lovers and illegitimate offspring.
Selinunte was a rich and extensive ancient Greek city of Magna Graecia on the south-western coast of Sicily in Italy. It was situated between the valleys of the Cottone and Modione rivers. It now lies in the comune of Castelvetrano, between the frazioni of Triscina di Selinunte in the west and Marinella di Selinunte in the east.
Ancient Greek architecture came from the Greeks, or Hellenes, whose culture flourished on the Greek mainland, the Peloponnese, the Aegean Islands, and in colonies in Anatolia and Italy for a period from about 900 BC until the 1st century AD, with the earliest remaining architectural works dating from around 600 BC.
The Doric order is one of the three orders of ancient Greek and later Roman architecture; the other two canonical orders were the Ionic and the Corinthian. The Doric is most easily recognized by the simple circular capitals at the top of the columns. Originating in the western Doric region of Greece, it is the earliest and, in its essence, the simplest of the orders, though still with complex details in the entablature above.
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