Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae, Greece.

Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae, Greece.

This famous temple to the god of healing and the sun was

built towards the middle of the 5th century B.C. in the

lonely heights of the Arcadian mountains. The temple, which

has the oldest Corinthian capital yet found, combines the

Archaic style and the serenity of the Doric style with some

daring architectural features.

The temple was dedicated to Apollo Epikourios ("Apollo the helper").

It was designed by Iktinos,architect at Athens of the

Temple of Hephaestus and the Parthenon.

The ancient writer Pausanias praises the temple as eclipsing

all others but the temple of Athena at Tegea by the beauty

of its stone and the harmony of its construction.

It sits at an elevation of 1,131 metres above sea level on

the slopes of Kotylion Mountain.

The temple is aligned north-south, in contrast to the

majority of Greek temples which are aligned east-west;

its principle 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 allow worshippers

to face east or let light in to illuminate the 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). The roof left a central

space open to admit light and air. The temple was constructed

entirely out of grey Arcadian limestone except for the frieze

which was carved from marble. Like most major temples

it has three "rooms" or porches: the pronaos, plus a naos

and an opisthodomos. The naos most likely once housed

a cult statue of Apollo. The temple lacks some optical

refinements found in the Parthenon, such as a subtly curved

floor, though the columns have entasis.

Fragment of a metope, depicting an Amazon, displayed

at the British Museum. The temple is unusual in that it has

examples of all three of the classical orders used in ancient.

Greek architecture: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian.

Doric columns form the peristyle while Ionic columns

support the porch and Corinthian columns feature in the interior. 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

Greeks in battle with Amazons and the Lapiths engaged in

battle with Centaurs. This frieze's metopes were removed

by Charles Robert Cockerell and taken to the British Museum in 1815.

(They are still to be seen in the British Museum's Gallery 16,

near the Elgin Marbles.) Cockerell decorated the walls of

the Ashmolean Museum's Great Staircase and that of the

Travellers Club with plaster casts of the same frieze.

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.

The site was explored in 1812 with the permission of Veli Pasha,

the Turkish commander of the Peloponnese, by a group of British

antiquaries who removed twenty-three slabs from the Ionic cella

frieze and transported them to Zante along with other sculptures.

Veli Pasha's claims on the finds were silenced in exchange for a

small bribe, and the frieze was bought at auction by the

British Museum in 1815. This frieze's metopes were removed

personally by Charles Robert Cockerell.

Cockerell decorated the walls of the Ashmolean Museum's

Great Staircase and that of the Travellers Club with plaster casts

of the same frieze. The frieze sculptures were published in

Rome in 1814 and officially, by the British Museum in 1820.

Other hasty visits resulted in further publications.

The first fully published excavation was not begun until 1836;

it was carried out by Russian archaeologists under the

direction of Carlo Brullo. Perhaps the most striking discovery

was the oldest Corinthian capital found to date. Some of the

recovered artefacts are on display at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.

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