1.8: Temples and Churches

While differentiating between our modern conception of religion and that of the Ancient world, it is helpful to understand how they addressed and housed their deities. The Parthenon marbles’ depiction of Athene’s birth originally framed the upper pediment of the Parthenon, demonstrating the goddess’s significance to the city named in her honor.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): [This full-scale recreation of the Parthenon resides in Nashville, Tennessee, and it shows the Olympic family and the birth of Athene on the pediment. CC SA 4.0, Wikimedia]

Below the pediment are metopes, finely detailed architectural panels featuring bas-reliefs. The metopes feature images of young Athenian women carrying the pelops, a ceremonial length of intricately decorated cloth that would be wrapped around Phidias’ statue of Athene. This scene captures a key moment from the Panathenaea [pan-athee-NEE-a], a festival of rituals, athletic, poetic and artistic competitions that honored the goddess. Other panels of the metope reflect the Olympians, and Apollo, who turns to his uncle Poseidon, while his twin, Artemis, sits to their right. The scene memorializes the two Athenian defeats of the Persian invaders, which occurred c. 490 BCE and again in 480 BCE (Harris and Platzner 17-18, 1022).

The Temple of Athene, the Parthenon, sits in the center of what was once a complex of smaller temples upon the Acropolis, including the Erichtheum [e-RIK-thee-um], one of the few surviving structures, which was constructed to house Poseidon’s salty spring in addition to Athene’s original gifted olive tree and the first wooden statue of the goddess. The Erichtheum takes its name from Erechtheus [e-REK-thee-uhs], a prehistoric ruler who may have founded the Panathenea and may have been a direct descendant to Erichthonius [erik-THON-e-us], the mythic son of Athene.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): The Acropolis, meaning “high place” is the highest hill in Athens, and consists of a complex of temples (built and rebuilt after numerous destructive battles), including the largest temple—the Parthenon—and the smaller temple of Erechtheum, to the left of the Parthenon. CC BY SA 4.0, Wikimedia.

Modern churches are places of worship, where congregants might experience community, edification and the spirit of a monotheistic religion, but they do not profess to house a deity in a physical sense. Greek temples, conversely, were places where the gods could visit their worshipers, find physical respite from the obligations of Olympus, and receive the sacrifices of the offerants all in physical form. The myths we study occasionally explain the construction of temples as the edicts of the gods, such as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, or the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo. Differing from other modern houses of worship, ancient temples weren’t built to seat a congregation nor to hold sermons. The interior was the sacred space of the god, where prized offerings were housed, while sacrificial offerings were made on the exterior of the sanctuary. Those who officiated at such sacrificial rituals tended to be from the premier families in the communities, and in a rare nod to equality, a majority of Greek cities sanctioned both female and male priests, each presiding at their respective gender deities’ rites.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): “The Building of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus” by Hendrick van Cleve III. One of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World, the Temple of Artemis was designed to awe visitors as the earthy home of celestial beings. Philo of Byzantium remarked that the goddess’s stunning temple anchored “the heavenly world of immortality . . . [down to] the earth” (11). Public Domain Wikimedia.