A Deal with Athens

Up the neighboring hill, the temple faces in the direction of the sea–or in the direction of the gods on Mount Olympus... The Sicilians at Segesta agreed to build this greek temple in collaboration with Athens in exchange for Athens taking on another powerful Sicilian town on the opposing coast which was currently threatening Segesta's interests. Between them, Erice and Segesta could control a good third of Sicily, but they needed help from powerful Athens.

To please Athens, the Sicilians started building this temple, starting with the most visually appealing bits–the columns. When Athens challenged Segesta's opposition, they actually lost, so Segesta simply stopped constructing the temple.
This left the temple in an interesting state, which makes it easy for us to identify clues about how temples were constructed. All of the columns were upright, with a connecting frame on the top, but the columns themselves were unfinished, with individual segments of the stack still visible and the long furrows undone. Each segment of a column has a square hole in t he center which allows it to be stacked on a sturdy piece of wood to hold everything together and to provide flexibility during earthquakes. A shallower cut around the base of the column provided a measurement of how deep the fluting should go. A new experimental method placed each column on top of a pad of soft lead–this may contribute to the temple's remarkable stability through earthquakes over the years.

In finished temples, a roof is added to the whole structure and an inner room is constructed at the back for the statue of the god to whom the temple is dedicated and for a vault containing the temple's treasures. This temple at Segesta, unfinished, remained accessible from all sides and open to the elements. Under Roman rule, there would have been funds to finish the temple (when the romans were tolerant of other religions), but the locals preferred the flat and open space of the unfinished temple for their own ceremonies and rituals.

Optical Illusions
The columns themselves are somewhat bulged in the middle to make them appear straight from a distance–which is how the gods view them. The better the temple looked from a distance, the better it looked to the gods...

The base of the temple at the steps is curved to make it appear a perfect rectangle from a distance.

Other notes
This temple is slightly longer than it traditionally should be. It has 14 columns on the long end instead of the 13 it should have with a short end of 6. Most temples have dimensions of X by (2X+1) columns.

The steps are unfinished–some blocks are missing because construction stopped early. There are also 'tabs' on the stones which were used to help maneuver them. These tabs should have been sheared off in the finished product.

Blocks of stone were raised and lowered by manpower, with ~20 people all walking in a giant hamster wheel, winding ropes attached to the stones up and down.

The surrounding vegetation was chock-a-block FULL of snails. I was surprised at their numbers in this dry environment and even more surprised at their numbers IN GENERAL. I've never seen so many. It was an invasion!

The white stuff on that branch, the stuff that looks like beads? All snails.

Matt & Me

Dear Aphrodite, Please Don't Let Me Die At Sea.

We got most of Wednesday to take a break from the talks at the workshop by going on an excursion to the temple of Segesta.

This is what we learned from the tour guide on the way there:

Erice was an important religious center because of its temple, dedicated to Aphrodite/Venus. The founder of the town was (by legend) supposed to have escaped the Trojan War & fled with his followers to Erice, where he set up a temple dedicated to his 'mother', the goddess of fertility.

At this temple, girls were trained from ~6 years old as 'priestesses' who would practice ritual prostitution from ~12 years to ~24 years. Sailors on shore would make trades in town & then send a representative to buy a very expensive gift to present to the temple. They would then sleep with one of the priestesses as a ritual of worship within the temple, under the open sky, where the gods could see. They believed when they 'reached a state of ecstasy', they could offer a prayer to Venus that she might protect them while at sea. Bringing pleasure to the priestess brought pleasure to the gods, though I have serious concerns about how pleased the child prostitute could be. With enough money, priestesses could be 'rescued' for marriage.

At Segesta, we traveled up to the site of former cities on a hill a little above that on which the temple sat. The city/town's location was highly defensible, as two rivers passed before it, providing natural barriers. From the hill, you could see the bay & Erice (supposedly–or the massive bonfires Erice would build each night).

The temple of Segesta

The oldest settlements (or remains) at the site appeared to be the Byzantine tombs or the muslim town. This latter was a rare find in Sicily– the foundations of a mosque finding Mecca. When the Normans arrived & conquered the hill, I think they left the mosque alone (unusually), and instead turned their ever-destructive forces towards dismantling a lot of the greco-roman housing & stonework (including the acropolis) in the area. They appropriated the dismantled stone to build their Norman castle & accompanying donkey stables. Niiiiiice one guys.

Restoration efforts have re-used some of the stolen stone, but where the stones are small & numerous instead of large and flat, you can see what the Normans took.

Large flat stones from the acropolis

The acropolis

Further ruins of the dismantled acropolis. Smaller stones indicate Norman construction.  

The final site on the former city was a half-circle amphitheater. This half-circle shape is different from Greek amphitheaters, which enclosed more than 180˚ for better sound capture. This amphitheater once had a tall theater stage closing off the opening, but as with everything else, the Normans dismantled it. 

I'm unsure where in the timeline the Romans fall, but they allowed classic greek plays at the theater for a long time until they instituted Christianity as the official religion. At this point, they banned the plays & named the actors sinful for calling to Zeus and the Pantheon all the time, even if only as part of the play.

As an aside–the guide kept pointing out different plants in the area with special significance. Here's a couple:

Mandrake Root–used for love potions

I've forgotten what plant this is and what significance it held. 

Next: The Temple on the neighboring hill.