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Apollo was linked to the ancient Anatolian sungod Lairbenos and the god of oracles Kareios. But pagan worship also centered on Cybele, Artemis, Pluto and Poseidon. Now only the foundations of the Hellenistic temple remain. The temple stood within a peribolos (15 by 20m) in Doric style (a court enclosed by a wall, especially one surrounding a sacred area) . As the back of the temple was built against the hill, the peribolos was surrounded on three sides by marble Doric order columns.
The new temple was reconstructed in the 3rd century in Roman fashion, but also by recycling the stone blocks from the older temple. It has a smaller area, and now only its marble floor remains.
The temple of Apollo has deliberately been built over an active fault passing underneath, giving rise to the cave of the Plutonium, as shown by seismological investigations. Temples dedicated to Apollo were often built over sites with geological activity, such as his most famous temple, the temple at Delphi.
When the Christian faith was introduced as the official religion in the fourth century, this temple underwent a number of destructions. Part of the peribolos was dismantled to make room for a large Nympheum. |
