In the 1930s, men digging a field in eastern Krete made a stunning discovery: the undisturbed remains of a very early temple. Along the back wall, the excavators found a stone box filled with bones and goats’ horns, which reminded them of the Keraton or horn altar at Delos (below). Upon this boxlike altar stood three figures made of bronze sheets hammered over a wood core. The largest, just under a meter tall, is a nude figure of Apollo, while the two clothed female figures, about half the size of the Apollo, must be Artemis and Leto. (Apollo’s sister and mother are regularly worshiped with him, and this group is known as the Apolline triad.) These Late Geometric figures, contemporary with the temple, are unique examples of early Greek cult images. The back wall also supported a bench that held pots, a lamp, and terracotta figurines. A bronze gorgon mask hung on the wall or was propped on the bench. The temple continued in use for centuries, safeguarding its heirloom contents, before it was abruptly abandoned in the Hellenistic period. Epigraphic evidence shows that the city of Dreros had an important cult of Apollo Delphinios, probably to be assigned to this sanctuary.9
The tribes of Aitolia in northwest Greece worshiped Artemis and Apollo above all the other gods. They met at the rural sanctuary of Thermon, another truly venerable cult site where excavators have uncovered what may be the earliest Apollo temple on the Greek mainland. It did not appear, as we might expect, on the future site of a large and prosperous polis. Instead, Aitolia lacked a centralized government and was considered a cultural backwater during the Classical period. Yet in the late Bronze Age, it had been part of the Mycenaean civilization, and it escaped the violent upheavals of the centuries after the Mycenaean collapse. A mysterious building called Megaron B, dating to well before 800, served as a center for ritual feasts and perhaps as a temple. Among the earliest votive objects is a Syro-Hittite “smiting god” statuette of the eighth century. The seventh-century Thermon temple, constructed atop Megaron B, had walls of mudbrick, while its columns and
Figure 7.2 Bronze cult statues from Dreros, Krete: Apollo, Artemis, and Leto, eighth century. Ht of Apollo 0.8 m. Heraklion Museum. Photo used by per-
Mission.
Entablature were wood. The roof was decorated with gorgon masks. The surviving terracotta metopes, rare examples of early Greek painting, show that the temple was Doric in style. They depict the myth of the Nightingale and Swallow (Prokne and Philomela) and the Apolline triad of Apollo, Leto, and Artemis (who had her own temple here), as well as more gorgons, whose traditional function as architectural ornaments was to repel enemies.10
World History
