The Temple of Zeus

One hundred and fifty yards southeast form the foot of the Acropolis at Athens are sixteen columns of the Corinthian order, six and a half feet in diameter and sixty feet high. This is all that remains of the largest temple ever erected to Zeus (Jupiter Olympius), and the second largest ever erected by the Greeks, being exceeded only by the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. Legend ascribes its foundation to Dukalion, the Greek Noah, who here witnessed the waters of the flood subside. There is still shown an opening in the ground through which the deluge disappeared.

The earliest historical edifice erected here dates 530 B. C.; but the dimensions were so enormous that it was scarcely begun when the Persians destroyed the city, and it was not completed until the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, in 130 A. D. Thus this temple, constructed entirely of Pentelic marble, was nearly seven hundred years in building. The entire circuit of the temple platform measured two thousand three hundred feet. The length of the building was three hundred and fifty-four feet, its breadth one hundred and seventy-two feet. The peristyle consisted of one hundred and twenty columns. Such vast dimensions would alone be sufficient to prove these columns to have belonged to that temple which was the largest ever erected in honor of the supreme pagan deity, and one of the four most magnificent ever erected by the ancients. First, the temple of Diana, at Ephesus; second, the temple of Apollo, at Miletus; third, the temple of Ceres and Proserpine, at Eleusis; lastly, the temple of Jupiter Olympius, at Athens.

The later history of this magnificent temple is obscure; it is almost impossible to conceive how and where the enormous masses of Pentelic marble, of which the temple was constructed, have disappeared, but it is quite certain that they have been transported to other sites and lands. The gods themselves deserted their costly temple, not many centuries later, for the God whom St. Paul preached from Mars' Hill. About 420 A. D. the worship of heathen deities ceased in Athens. One hundred years later the Emperor Justinian closed the Schools of Philosophy, and Christianity became the religion of the Greeks.

In the time of the Emperor Hadrian, 76 to 138 A. D., a new period of Athenian art sprang up. Hadrian was hailed by the Greeks as their liberator. A part of Athens was named for him, Hadrianople. Here he founded a library, a gymnasium, a pantheon, and completed the temple of Zeus. Great men again flocked to Athens; her glory was revived. Thousands of pilgrims from every land once more turned their steps towards "the mother of arts and eloquence."

The Arch of Hadrian still stands as his memorial. It is an isolated monument fifty-nine feet high, forty-four feet wide, with an archway of twenty feet. The inscription in Greek reads, on one side: "This is Athens, the old city of Theseus;" on the other side: "This is the city of Hadrian, not of Theseus."