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The Olympeion

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The Olympeion
 
Now,
it sits alone with but little of it left in an open field of brown and
bare soil in the center of the busy city, like a wound in the green
parks around it. The empty space seems out of place in crowded Athens.
The greatest temple in all of Hellas, The Olympeion. It's on the tour
and only a few blocks from The Acropolis, a short walk; many visit it.
There isn't much to see, 15 of its columns standing and a 16th on the
ground where a storm toppled it in 1852. Like all of the antiquities
of Athens there is scaffolding around it, but one can easily see the
scope of the thing; it was enormous. It has a history of its own dating
back to before there was an Athens and continuing to the time of The
Emperor Hadrian. At a glance your mind re constucts the size of the
building: it was very big indeed. Its history recalls the whole story
of ancient Hellas from the beginning to the end.
It was a place sacred to Zeus before the
time of memory, simply an open space where sacrifice was offered to the
king of the Gods. It was in the time of the dictators when Peisistratos
ordered a temple to be built here and the work began, it would continue
off and on, for 700 years. When the last tyrant, Hippias was overthrown,
the construction began by Peisistratos stopped for the first time.
Athens changed. These kinds of great works
became out of fashion with the democratic Greeks; they thought them huberistic
and un democratic. The Olympeion sat there unfinished, a reminder of
past tyrannies. Philip II of Macedon rose to power in the 4th century
BCE and after him, his son, The Great Alexander. The Olympeion sat still
unfinished. Silent and accusatory, it waited for a hundred years in the
shadow of the Acropolis until, once again the world around it changed.
And then in Hellenistic times, the era
of the great god kings came to pass. They advertised their magnificence
with colossal works throughout the Mediterranean world. Great buildings
and gigantic statues appeared to trumpet to the world of the wealth and
power of their builders. It was only a matter of time before someone's
eye should fall upon the unfinished Olympeion. The power and wealth of
Athens had long ago slipped by, but it remained the center of Hellenistic
culture. What better place to display a great king's world influence
than Athens, itself?
It was in this time that the temple once
again came to the eye of a tyrant. What better opportunity for a great
king? Here was already begun a temple to the king of the gods, bigger
than The Parthenon, and in the heart of Athens.

In
174 BCE. Antiochos IV who styled himself, Epiphanes (god made manifest),
resumed construction on The Olympieion. He was known for his devotion
to Zeus as the chief god in his vast kingdom in The Near East and the
opportunity was an appropriate way for him to display his wealth and
power in Athens. He engaged a Roman architect named, Decimus Cossutius
to re design and build the temple. It is for this reason that the building
has a curious out of place look in Athens, the style is very much Roman.
The existing Ionic structure was scrapped in favor of the more ornate
and eastern Corinthian architecture so favored by the Romans. Antiochos
reigned for only 12 years and upon his death his kingdom was racked by
internal succession wars and the work once again was halted. Again The
Olympieion stood silent, without a roof, waiting.
Once again a powerful autocrat looked
upon The Olympieion as an opportunity to associate himself with both
Zeus and Athens. This time it was Hadrian, emperor of Rome and a Hellenophile.
He not only completed the great temple, but also placed into it two gigantic
chryselephantine statues side by side, Zeus , king of the gods and Hadrian
emperor of Rome. The message was obvious. The Olympieion was complete
after all the centuries of work. From the start only autocrats had worked
upon it. It stood as a monument to strong totalitarian power.
 
There are no surviving images, but it
is not difficult to re construct the plan. It was in the usual manner
of a Greek Temple, rectangular and raised upon a platform. The corinthian
columns were of white pentelic marble from the nearby quarries. From
the bases it can be ascertained that there were 104 of them measuring
55.75 feet in height and 6.5 feet in diameter, a proportion not designed
for great stability In earthquake prone Greece, it was doomed from the
beginning. there were 48 columns in triple rows (tripteral octastyle)
under the pediments and 56 in double rows (dipteral eikosastyle) along
the sides. The roof most likely of dressed stone would have been at a
low angle and as a result there would have been triangular pediments
probably highly decorated. It would certainly have been impressive, but
then that was the idea.
 
No one knows what happened to it. There
is no record of it's destruction and none of its use. It was simply an
aggrandizement of autocratic power and the people of the city could have
had little interest in it other than the prestige value of the thing.
It most certainly would have fallen piece by piece in earthquakes. It
was never kept in repair after there were no more autocrats interested
in associating themselves with Zeus. In the Christian era which closely
followed, the stones were most likely used for other constructions. The
building had an ill fate from the beginning.

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