I am traveling by car on the winding coastal road from Athens to Sounion in southern Attica. Along the way, I read the names of places on the road signs that I have heard of but have not yet visited in detail: Vouliagmeni, Lagonisi, Saronida, Anavyssos, Palaia Fokaia. The hills to my left rise up, dry and brownish-green like a Cycladic landscape, while the old holiday apartment buildings, lined up along the road, exude a general sense of decline. My final destination is Cape Sounion, the southernmost tip of Attica. After the turn towards Legrena, the columns of the sacred temple of Poseidon appear in the distance, standing proudly for the last 25 centuries at the highest point of the hill where the fortress of Sounion once stood. Here, in the municipality of ancient Attica that belonged to the Leontida tribe, pilgrims flocked to honor both “Souniaratos” Poseidon as well as Athena “Souniada,” the two gods who eternally compete for the protection of the city of Athens.

I approach the entrance to the archaeological site and climb up to the windswept platform overlooking the Aegean Sea, at the top of Cape Kolones—as sailors and early foreign travelers called the cape of Sounion. We owe the latter the illustrations that have survived from the era before archaeological exploration, as well as the recording of folk traditions associated with the ruined monument. These legends have always attracted antiquities dealers and treasure hunters who, together with natural phenomena and the passage of time, have “handed down” to us the remnants of a bygone era of grandeur.

Historical Background

Sounion has been inhabited since prehistoric times, as evidenced by the existence of tombs dating back to the Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium BC), while the oldest written source for this area is found in Homer’s Odyssey, in which Sounion is described as the “sacred cape of the Athenians,” a reference that proves that the area was a center of worship as early as the 8th century BC. According to the ancient Greek poet, Menelaus buried here Phrotes, the helmsman of his ship who was killed on their return from Troy.

During the latter part of the 7th century BC, in the years following the legislation of the tyrant Draco, something very important happened in Attic art, a bold change characterized by a shift towards the monumental. The figure of the ‘kouros’, the dynamic young man, makes its appearance and quickly dominates. Kouroi adorned shrines and luxurious tombs like votive offerings. Thus, some kouroi, supernatural in size, were erected at Sounion around 600 BC, outside the first sacred temples of Poseidon and Athena. These young men—contemporaries of the wise Solon—look ahead with freshness and impetuosity, marking the beginning of a new phase in the history of the sanctuaries of Sounion, and especially the sanctuary of Poseidon.

The neighbouring silver mines at Lavrio, where mining was carried out by slaves, played an important role in the economic prosperity of Attica and Sounion at that time. For this reason, there was a significant slave market here, whose slaves were used by the mine tenants, and some of them, when they gained their freedom, remained in the municipality as citizens of Sounion.

The mining wealth of Lavreotiki brought profits to the Athenians, with which the general Themistocles built the fleet that gave him victory over the Persians in the Persian Wars. The latter, however, left behind them (480 BC) a series of destroyed buildings, including the buildings of the Athenian acropolis and the two sanctuaries of Sounion. Herodotus, the historian from Halicarnassus, reports that after their victory over the Persians, the Greeks sent one of the captured Phoenician ships and set it up in the sanctuary of Poseidon at Sounion, thus honoring the god who had favored their victory at sea.

After the Persian Wars, the establishment of the Athenian alliance (478 BC) marked the beginning of the classical heyday of Pericles’ Athens, which became an important commercial and industrial center, while its population grew rapidly. Subsequently, the transfer of the alliance treasury from Delos to Athens (454 BC) provided favorable financing for the decoration of the city and its acropolis. At the same time (444-440 BC), the newer classical monument of Poseidon at Sounion was built, which was probably part of Pericles’s building program.

During the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC), the Athenians decided to reinforce the fortifications at the tip of the Sounion promontory to protect their grain ships, due to Spartan domination of the communication route between Euboea and Athens via Oropos. Thus, Athens, ensuring safe passage by sea outside the cape, secured the transport of necessary supplies, mainly grain from Euboea, to feed the Athenians (421 BC).

After the Hellenistic period and until the 1st century BC, Sounion and its sanctuaries seem to have fallen into significant decline. An example of this abandonment was the fact that during the reign of the Roman leader Augustus (31 BC-14 AD), the temple of Athena was moved to Athens and erected in the Agora, where some of its architectural elements have been found today. In the 2nd century AD, Pausanias crossed the area by sea and incorrectly states in his “Attica” that the sanctuary of Poseidon is dedicated to the goddess Athena. The Greek traveler and geographer also mentions the neighboring Makronissos, which he calls the island of Helen, as according to one version, Helen of Menelaus disembarked there on her return from Troy.

Since the 17th century, foreign travelers have been visiting Sounion to view the ruined sanctuary with a romantic mood. Many of them carved their names on the temple—a popular custom since the early Christian years—the most famous being the English Lord Byron, who visited the area in 1810. The first attempts to record and document the monuments of Sounion were made in 1797 by members of the Dilletanti Society, followed by the French expedition led by Blouet in 1829. Scientific research and excavation of the Temple of Poseidon began in 1884 by the German archaeologist-architect Doerpfeld. Subsequently, archaeologist Valerius Stais and archaeologist-architect Anastasios Orlandos of the Greek Archaeological Society were the ones who studied, systematically excavated, and shaped the current image of the sanctuary, the wall, and the settlement. Stais was the one who discovered the location of the temple of Athena and corrected the mistaken belief regarding the deity worshipped at the sanctuary of Poseidon.

Sanctuary of Poseidon

The entrance to the fortified tip of Cape Sounion—only part of which was occupied by the enclosure of the sanctuary of Poseidon—does not coincide with the ancient one, which was located on the northwest side of the fortress, i.e., a long way from the current entrance to the archaeological site, which is located in an opening in the eastern wall. The highest point of the cape—the acropolis—is the artificially leveled area of the sanctuary, which had its own enclosure (60 by 80 meters). On the north side of the enclosure was the only entrance, through a magnificent marble and poros propylon, impressive for its time. To the west of it was a small guardhouse and a poros portico (25 by 9 meters), the rear wall of which formed the northern wall of the enclosure of the temple, while its southern side had 8 or 9 Doric columns. Later, a second portico, smaller in size (12 by 4.5 meters), was built on the western side of the sanctuary enclosure, forming a right angle with the first. The two porticoes served as resting places for pilgrims, who were protected there from the rain, sun, and strong winds that blow in the area.

The temple’s base (31 by 13.5 meters) was built at the highest point of the acropolis and is 6.5 meters above the level of the enclosure’s propylon. Before the construction of the classical temple, an older, unfinished archaic temple stood in almost the same position, which was destroyed by the Persians (480 BC). Excavations show that this limestone temple was innovative for its time, which is why several of its design principles were used 50 years later in the temple that survives today.

The classical temple had a pronaos, a cella, and an opisthodomos, while its peristyle consisted of 34 Doric columns (arranged in a 13 by 6 pattern, with the corner columns counted twice), approximately 6 meters high. The building was constructed entirely of white marble from Agrileza, a local quarry located 4 kilometers north of the cape, which does not contain iron, unlike Pentelic marble, so it doesn’t change color over time. The metopes on the exterior of the temple were undecorated, but there were decorated pediments on the exterior and a frieze on the interior, with themes taken from the Gigantomachy, the Centauromachy, and the labors of Theseus. The revered statue of Poseidon, about which no findings or information have been preserved, was located in the cella of the temple, while the “treasure” of the sanctuary and other offerings were kept in the opisthodomos, which had no direct connection to the cella.

The architect of the monument remains unknown today, but scientific research through a comparative study of temples of the period has concluded that the architect of the sanctuary of Poseidon also designed the temple of Hephaestus and Athena (Theseion) in the Athenian Agora, the temple of Ares in Acharnai—which was moved to the Agora of Athens during Roman times—and the temple of Nemesis in Ramnounta in Eastern Attica.

Today, visitors to the archaeological site can see 16 columns and two pilasters of the pronaos, while the name of Lord Byron is engraved on the pilaster on the right as one “enters” the temple. Several archaeological finds from the area, such as the two archaic kouroi found buried in the enclosure of the sanctuary of Poseidon, as well as architectural and decorative elements from the monuments of Sounion, are kept and exhibited at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Parts of the temple are also found in England, Germany, and Italy, as a result of visits by foreign “archaeology enthusiasts” and travelers in more recent times.

The Fortress of Sounion

The temple of Poseidon covers a small part (in the southeast) of the walled area of the cape, a total area of 35 acres that constituted the fortress of Sounion. The north and east sides of the fortress were fortified with a 300-meter-long poros stone wall (which can be divided into two almost equal sections sections) and 3.5 meters wide, as well as 11 towers along the wall, while the south and west sides are naturally fortified by the sea. The main entrance to the fortress was located at the western end of the northern wall, near the sea. Next to it, inside the walls, two dry docks (sloping trenches, measuring 21 by 12 meters in total) had been built, carved into the rock, for the hoisting and repair of warships. Outside the walls, west of the shipyards, in the area of today’s sandy beach of Legrena, were the port, the settlement and the cemetery of the ancient municipality of Sounion, while inside the walls a 4-meter-wide road has been found that connected the main entrance of the fortress with the sanctuary of Poseidon. On both sides of the road, which was excavated to a length of 90 meters, the remains of buildings that served the soldiers of the guard, the priests, and the citizens of the municipality have been uncovered.

Sanctuary of Athena

Northeast of the fortress of Sounion, on a low hill about 500 meters away, is the site of the sanctuary of Athena, as well as that of the older sanctuary-hero, on the northern part of the hill, which was dedicated to the worship of Phrotes, the helmsman of Menelaus’s ship. Due to the transfer of the temple of Athena to the Athenian market during the Roman period, very few remains of these sanctuaries are left today. However, visiting them offers a wonderful view of the top of the cape and the sanctuary of Poseidon.

The temple of Athena was probably built in 470 BC, within a polygonal enclosure, from Agrileza marble, and measured 19 by 14.5 meters. The building was described by the Roman architect Vitruvius (1st century BC) as “irregular,” as its peristyle (23 unfluted columns) extended only on two sides of the rectangular temple. Outside the temple of Athena there was a small temple which was probably dedicated to the goddess Artemis, who was considered the patroness of metallurgists, a belief that linked the temple to the neighbouring mines of Lavreotiki.

I am standing next to the sanctuary of Poseidon, the restrictions of the archaeological site do not allow me to stand on the pillar of the ancient monument, at the highest point of the promontory, which I read somewhere is 73 meters above sea level. On one side, Makronissos lies in the sea, this barren land of medieval pirates and the tortured souls of political prisoners of modern times, while behind it, Kea emerges. On the other side, the rocky islet of Patroklos stands guard and sees off the ships that sail eternally in the waters of the Saronic Gulf. Further away, in front of the western summer sun, the mass of Aegina looms faintly. If I had supernatural vision, I would see the temple of Athena Afaia from here. I turn back toward the tip of the cape, toward the Aegean Sea, and let my gaze wander toward the blue expanse, where the islands are scattered like a child’s forgotten marbles. I wonder from which rock Aegeus, the mythical king of Athens, committed suicide when he saw the “forgotten” black sails of the ship carrying his son, the victorious Theseus, from Minoan Crete?

I descend towards the parking lot, the light is fading and it is time to return to the noble city, a metropolis that both Poseidon and Athena wanted to rule. Poseidon drove his trident into the rock of the Athenian acropolis, causing an explosion of seawater, while Athena planted the city’s first olive tree right next to it. Poseidon demanded that the dispute be settled by a duel between them, but thanks to Zeus’s intervention, the battle never took place. The matter was settled when the council of gods awarded Athens—definitively and irrevocably—to Athena, the goddess of wisdom who taught the arts to humans. I take one last look at the majestic columns of Poseidon and think that here at Sounion, the two gods lived peacefully side by side. Poseidon even had the best location and the most important sanctuary of the two in the area, being the true protector—the equivalent of Saint Nicholas in Christianity—of those who dared to cross the stormy waters of the Aegean Sea.

Bibliography:
1. Papathanassopoulos, G. – Papathanassopoulos, A., Sounion and Lavreotiki, Herodotus, 2018.
2. Tataki A., Sounion – The Sanctuary of Poseidon, Athens Publishing, 2003.