The temple was dedicated to
Apollo Epikourios ("Apollo the helper"). It sits at an elevation of 1,131 metres architect at Athens of the
Parthenon. The ancient writer
Pausanias praises the temple as eclipsing all others in the
Peloponnesos except the
Temple of Athena Alea at
Tegea by the beauty of its stone and the harmony of its construction. Pausanias described it in the 2nd century AD: :Phigalia is surrounded by mountains, on the left by the mountain called Kotilios . . . The distance from the city to Mount Kotilios is about forty stades. On the mountain is a place called Bassai, and the temple of Apollon Epikourios (the Helper), which, including the roof, is of stone. Of the temples in the Peloponnesos, this might be placed first after the one at Tegea for the beauty of its stone and for its symmetry. Apollon received his name from the help he gave in time of plague, just as the Athenians gave him the name of Alexikakos (Averter of Evil) for turning the plague away from them. It was at the time of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians that he also saved the Phigalians, and at no other time; the evidence is that of the two surnames of Apollon, which have practically the same meaning, and also the fact that Iktinos, the architect of the temple at Phigalia, was a contemporary of Perikles, and built for the Athenians what is called the Parthenon. My narrative has already said that the tile image of Apollon is in the market-place of Megalopolis. It was in use until the 4th- or 5th-century AD, when all pagan temples were forcibly closed during the
persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire. Probably because of the remoteness of the site, the temple remained unusually well-preserved. Depictions by artists, which begin in the early 19th century, show the
pteron or external
colonnade standing complete, and the
architrave nearly so. The internal walls were a mass of fallen blocks, but relatively few had been removed for reuse, the normal fate of these conveniently sized pieces. , 2 =
Adyton, 3 =
Naos, 4 =
Pronaos Construction and decoration The temple is aligned north–south, in contrast to the majority of Greek temples which are aligned east–west; its principal entrance is from the north. This was necessitated by the limited space available on the steep slopes of the mountain. To overcome this restriction a door was placed in the side of the temple, perhaps to let light in to illuminate the cult statue. The temple is of a relatively modest size, with the
stylobate measuring 38.3 by 14.5 metres containing a
Doric peristyle of six by fifteen columns (
hexastyle). It has been proposed that there was a central space in the roof left open to admit light and air but there is no proof of this feature. The temple was constructed entirely out of grey
Arcadian
limestone except for the
Bassae Frieze which was carved from
marble (probably in ancient times colored with paint). Like most major temples it has three "rooms" or porches: the
pronaos, plus a
naos and an
opisthodomos. The
naos may have housed a
cult statue of Apollo, although it is also surmised that the single 'proto-Corinthian' capital discovered by
Charles Robert Cockerell and subsequently lost at sea, may have topped the single column that stood in the centre of the naos, and have been intended as an aniconic representation of Apollo Borealis. The temple lacks some optical refinements found in the
Parthenon, such as a subtly curved floor, though the columns have
entasis. The Corinthian
capital is the earliest example of the order found to date. It was relatively sparsely decorated on the exterior. Inside, however, there was a continuous Ionic frieze showing Athenians in battle with
Amazons and the
Lapiths engaged in battle with
Centaurs.). Cockerell decorated the walls of the
Ashmolean Museum's Great Staircase and that of the
Travellers Club with plaster casts of the same frieze.
Re-discovery and removals by the British has its own room at the
British Museum. The temple had been noticed first in November 1765 by the French architect J. Bocher, who was building villas at
Zante and came upon it quite by accident; he recognized it from its site, but when he returned for a second look, he was murdered by bandits.
Charles Robert Cockerell and
Carl Haller von Hallerstein, having secured sculptures at
Aegina, hoped for more successes at Bassae in 1811; all Haller's careful drawings of the site were lost at sea, however. In 1812, British antiquaries explored the remains. They took sculptures including 23 slabs from the Ionic
cella frieze to Zante. They had been given permission to explore by
Veli Pasha, the Ottoman
governor of the Peloponnese, who was bribed to relinquish his claim on the finds, and the frieze was bought at auction by the British Museum in 1815. Conservation work is currently being carried out under the supervision of the Committee for the Conservation of the Temple of Apollo Epikourios of the Greek Ministry of Culture, which is based in Athens. == See also ==