Nikon D7200, 12-24mm f/4G lens @14mm f/11, aperture priority. |
"Dedicated to Olympian Zeus, the Olympieion was situated on the bank of the river Ilissus southeast of the Acropolis. It was built on the site of an ancient Doric temple, the foundation of which had been laid out by the tyrant Pisistratus, but construction was abandoned several decades later in 510 BC when his son Hippias, whose rule had become increasingly despotic, was expelled from Athens and a democracy established (he would return twenty years later with the Persians at Marathon, Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, VI.54ff). Aristotle cites the temple and the pyramids of Egypt as examples of how rulers subdue their populations by engaging them in such grandiose projects. Kept poor and preoccupied with hard work, there was not the time to conspire (Politics, V.11). Over three centuries later, in 174 BC, Antiochus IV Epiphanes (king of Syria and the 'vile person' of Daniel 11:21) commissioned the Roman architect Cossutius to begin work again on the same ground plan. He did so 'with great skill and taste,' says Vitruvius, constructing a temple 'of large dimensions, and of the Corinthian order and proportions' (On Architecture, VII, Pref.15, 17). Of all the works of Antiochus, the Temple of Jupiter Olympius or Olympian (as the Romans called it) was the 'only one in the world, the plan of which was suitable to the greatness of the deity' (Livy, History of Rome, XLI.20). But when the king died a decade later, the temple still was 'left half finished' (Strabo, Geography, IX.1.17), although it extended at least to the architrave of the columns still standing at the southeastern corner." — James Grout, Encyclopaedia Romana |
