![]() The famous work of Hesiod, called Theogony (meaning “birth of the Gods” in Greek), presents a complete cosmogony. The only access to the site of the Olympeion and the Parilissia Sanctuaries is from the gate house on Vasilissis Olgas Avenue.Greek mythology starts at the beginning of the world! The Greek Gods that existed then were the Primordial Gods. The area south of the Olympeion comprises the Parilissia Sanctuaries (sanctuaries located by the Ilissos river) and was unified with the existing archaeological site of the Olympeion during the Unification of the Archaeological Sites of Athens project. There was also a bronze statue of Zeus, a temple of Cronos and Rhea, and a very old sanctuary of the Olympian Earth. Historian Pausanias mentions particularly two statues of the Emperor Hadrian in Thassos marble and two others in Egyptian marble or alabaster. On the large platforms all around the temple there was a multitude of statues, votive offerings and other works of art. It was probably due to the fact that before leveling the ground for the construction of the terrace, the ground was originally much inclined towards Ilissos river. The site of the Olympieion is connected with a well-known legend, that it was at this place that the last waters of the deluge of Deucalion had disappeared. During the dark days of the Turkish occupation a stylite installed his cell on one of the isolated columns of the great temple. ![]() During the Middle Ages this grand temple underwent the hardest trials until one unfortunate day an earthquake laid it down in ruins. Sylla, the greater destructor of Athens, carried away to Rome some of the columns together with numerous other masterpieces of Greece. It was Emperor Hadrian who was meant to complete -with all due magnificence- this venerable work and inaugurate it in 129, amidst Panhellenic feasts, instituted on that occasion. After the death of King Antioch in 165 the construction was once more stopped, followed by a new pillage of material lying on the ground. The Turks calcined all the columns that had been lain on the ground as a result of earthquakes. Of this immense building which contained a real forest of columns, no more than 16 are now standing, crowned by their architraves one column was pulled down during the Turkish occupation and transported in pieces for the erection of a mosque, still to be seen in Monastiraki Square and the 18th was thrown down by a violent storm in 1852. The grandeur of it was so manifest that the contemporary historian Titus Livius wrote that "the temple of Zeus the Olympian, in Athens is the only one in the world worthy of the majesty of the God. In 174 BC Antioch IV Epiphanes, King of Syria and a fervent friend of Athens, resumed the interrupted work on the plans of the Roman architect Cossutius, who enlarged the temple and made it more magnificent by adopting marble over porous stone. The temple itself measured at the base 107 m (353.5 ft) in length by 41 m in width therefore, along with the temples of Ephesos, Selinous and Agrigent, there were the largest temples of their time. The architrave of 3 fillets is composed of 2 beams 2.25 m high and 6 m. ![]() 124 Corinthian columns in all, 17.25 m (56 ft) in height, 1.7 m (5,5 ft) diameter, below at the summit. It was a dipteros (two-winged) octastylos (8-columned), that is, it had 5 rows of 20 columns at the sides and 3 rows of 8 columns at the two fronts, East and West. The temple stood in the middle of the terrace. Another principal, and impressive, entrance of the temple, not in existence anymore, was on the West. from the North-Eastern angle this propylon 10.5 m broad and 5.4 m deep, somewhat resembled the Agora Gateway erected under Augustus. The entrance to this enclosure was attained by means of a propylon with four Doric columns, situated 45 m.
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