Heraion of Samos

About

The Heraion of Samos was a large sanctuary to the goddess Hera, on the island of Samos, Greece, 6 km southwest of the ancient city of Samos (modern Pythagoreion). It was located in the low, marshy basin of the Imbrasos river, near where it enters the sea. The late Archaic temple in the sanctuary was the first of the gigantic free-standing Ionic temples, but its predecessors at this site reached back to the Geometric Period of the 8th century BC, or earlier, and there is evidence of cult activities on the site from c. 1700 BC onwards. The ruins of the temple, along with the nearby archeological site of Pythagoreion, were designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1992, as a testimony to their exceptional architecture and to the mercantile and naval power of Samos during the Archaic Period.

The core myth at the heart of the cult of Hera at Samos is that of her birth. According to the local tradition, the goddess was born under a lygos tree ( Vitex agnus-castus, the "chaste-tree"). At the annual Samian festival called the Toneia, the "binding", the cult image of Hera was ceremonially bound with lygos branches, before being carried down to the sea to be washed. The tree still featured on the coinage of Samos in Roman times and Pausanias mentions that the tree still stood in the sanctuary.

Little information about the temple is preserved in literary sources. The most important source is Herodotus, who refers to the sanctuary's temple repeatedly, calling it "the largest of all the temples that we know of." He includes it among the three great engineering feats of Samos, along with the Tunnel of Eupalinos and the harbour mole at Pythagoreio. Otherwise, most of the sources are scattered references in works written long after the heyday of the sanctuary. Pausanias, whose Periegesis of Greece is our key source for most of the major sites of mainland Greece, did not visit Samos.

Archaeological evidence shows that the area was the site of a settlement in the Early Bronze Age and cult activity at the site of the altar may have begun in late Mycenaean period. The first temple of Hera was constructed in the eighth century BC. The peak period of prosperity in the sanctuary began in the late seventh century with the first phase of monumental building, which saw the construction of the Hekatompedos II temple, the south stoa, two colossal kouroi, and the Sacred Way, which linked the sanctuary to the city of Samos by land.

In the second quarter of the sixth century BC, there was a second even greater phase of monumentalisation, with construction of the monumental altar, the North and South Buildings, and the Rhoikos Temple. This was quickly followed by a third phase of monumentalisation which saw the North Building expanded and the beginning of work on a third, even larger temple to replace the Rhoikos Temple. This peak period coincides with the period when Samos was a major power in the Aegean, culminating in the reign of the tyrant Polycrates. In the Classical period, Samos came under Athenian domination and activity in the sanctuary almost completely ceases. A revival of activity took place in the Hellenistic period, which continued under the Roman Empire. Worship of Hera ceased in AD 391, when the Theodosian edicts forbade pagan observance. A Christian church was built on the site of in the fifth century AD and the site was used as a quarry throughout the Byzantine period.

Throughout the sanctuary's thousand-year history, its hub was the altar of Hera (7) and the successive temples opposite it, but it also contained several other temples, numerous treasuries, stoas, a sacred way, and countless honorific statues and other votive offerings.

The Sacred Way was a road running from the city of Samos to the sanctuary, which was first laid out around 600 BC. Where the Sacred Way crossed the Imbrasos river, a large earthen dam was built to support the road and reroute the river. Previously, the sanctuary had been reached by sea and the main entrance was on the southeastern side, near the coast, but the construction of the Sacred Way led to a reorientation of the sanctuary, with the main entrance now being on the northern side of the temenos.

The Sacred Way played a central role in religious processions and its prominence is shown by the numerous votive offerings which lined its route and the fact that many of the sanctuary's structures share its alignment. It was repaved in the third century AD with the costly stone slabs which are visible today.

There were a succession of monumental temples built on roughly the same site to the west of the altar. From archaeological excavation many construction phases are known, identified in part through fragments of roof tiles.

The first temple, the Hekatompedos (I) (4) or hundred-foot temple marks the first monumental construction on the site, in the eighth century BC. This was a long, narrow building made of mudbrick, with a line of columns running down the centre to support the roof structure. It was rebuilt in the late seventh century, at the same time as the construction of the Sacred Way and the South Stoa. This second form is known as Hekatompedos (II) and was roughly 33 metres (108 ft) long. The walls were built of limestone rather than mudbrick; the east end was left open. There were two rows of interior columns along the side walls, meaning that there was a clear view along the central axis from the entrance to the cult statue. There may have been a colonnaded porch at the east end to mark the entranceway and a peripteral colonnade running around the outside, but this is not certain.

A much larger temple was built by the architects Rhoikos and Theodoros and is known as the Rhoikos temple (2). It was about 100 metres (330 ft) long and 50 metres (160 ft) wide. At the front there was a deep roofed pronaos with a square floor plan, in front of a closed cella. Cella and pronaos were divided into three equal aisles by two rows of columns that marched down the pronaos and through the temple. A peripteral colonnade surrounded the temple, which was two rows deep (dipteral). There were twenty-one columns on each long side, ten columns along the back side, and eight along the front side. The columns stood on unusual torus bases that were horizontally fluted. The temple formed a unit with the monumental altar of Hera to the east, which shared its alignment and axis. Many columns were unfluted ; perhaps this was left for a later date, as it was normally done after they were erected. No capitals survive from this temple, but some early Ionic order features are present.

For a long time, the date of this temple was disputed, but excavations in 1989 revealed that work began on it at some point between 600 and 570 BC, and was completed around 560 BC. It stood for only about a decade before it was destroyed around 550 BC, when it may have been toppled by an earthquake or dismantled because the marshy ground and poor foundations made it dangerously unstable. Much of its stone was reused in the construction of its successor, the Great temple.

The Rhoikos temple was the first of the massive Ionian temples, like the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, which would be built in western Asia Minor and the Aegean during the Archaic and Classical periods. Helmut Kyrieleis observes that it "must have had central significance for the development of monumental Ionic architecture" for this reason.

After the destruction of the Rhoikos temple, an even larger one was built approximately 40 metres (130 ft) to the west, which is known as the "Great Temple" or the "Polycrates Temple" (1), after the famous tyrant of Samos who ruled around the time of its construction. This temple was 55.2 metres (181 ft) wide and 108.6 metres (356 ft), one of the largest floor plans of any Greek temple.

The first foundations of the cella were laid in the second half of the sixth century and are usually associated with the reign of Polycrates. The foundations of the peripteral colonnade and the pronaos were not laid until around 500 BC. Construction continued into the Roman period, but this temple was never wholly finished. The cult statue was eventually transferred to the Roman temple, though other statues and votives continued to be stored in it.

The geographer Strabo, who wrote at the beginning of the first century AD, describes the temple:

On the right as one sails to the city is the Posideion... on the left is a suburb that is near the Heraion, and the Imbrasos River. The Heraion is an ancient sanctuary with a large temple and is now a picture gallery. Apart from the number of paintings placed there, there are other picture galleries and some shrines full of ancient art. It is open to the air and full of the best statues, of which there were three colossal works of Myron situated on a single base. Antonius took them away, but Sebastos Caesar put two back on the same base - the Athena and the Herakles - yet transferred the Zeus to the Capitolium, having erected a small shrine for it.

In Byzantine times, the temple served as a quarry, so that it was eventually dismantled to the very foundations, leaving only the foundations and a single column shaft, which seems to have been retained as a navigation point for ships.

At some point in the Roman period, a smaller Roman Temple (5) was built to house the cult image to the east of the Great temple, which remained under construction. In the fifth century AD, this temple was demolished and the stone was used to build a church on the site.

There is archaeological evidence of activity at the site of the altar (7) from the late Mycenaean period, but the first structure was built in the ninth century BC. This rough and undecorated stone structure measured 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) x 1.25 metres (4.1 ft).