Sunlight At Sounion The Ancient Greek Temple Of Poseidon Royalty-Free Stock Photography

Cape sounio is the southermost tip of Attica GREECE is a significant strategic point, whence the city-state of Athens controlled the sea passage to the Aegean sea and Piraeus central port 5 century b.c. In a maritime country like Greece, the god of the sea occupied a high position in the divine hierarchy. In power, Poseidon was considered second only to Zeus Jupiter, the supreme god of the Olympian pantheon. His implacable wrath, manifested in the form of storms, was greatly feared by all mariners. In an age without mechanical power, storms very frequently resulted in shipwrecks and drownings. The temple of Poseidon was constructed in 444–440 BC, over the ruins of a temple dating from the Archaic period. It is perched above the sea at a height of almost 60 metres 200 ft. The design of the temple is a typical hexastyle, i.e., it had a front portico with six columns.[9] Only some columns of the Sounion temple stand today, but when intact it would have closely resembled the contemporary and well-preserved Temple of Hephaestus beneath the Acropolis, which may have been designed by the same architect. As with all Greek temples, the Poseidon building was rectangular, with a colonnade on all four sides. The total number of original columns was 34: 15 columns still stand today. The columns are of the Doric Order. They were made of locally quarried white marble. They were 6.10 m 20 ft high, with a diameter of 1 m 3.1 ft at the base and 79 cm 31 inches at the top.