The history of Greek sites and temples

Anyone visiting Greece and all the countries that over two thousand years ago were 
settled by the Greeks will, in a good many places, come across ruins or at least traces of
Hellenic temples and sanctuaries.

The Greek Temples in Ancient Years were the focal point of ancient life. These are regarded by the modern tourist as monuments Worth looking at, and their scenic position delights him just as their formal beauty  and technical perfection arouse his admiration. Many visitors have, however, only  vague notions of the history and religious functions of these places. Yet nothing less than knowledge of them will, beyond their aesthetic effect, induce these stone witnesses of a distant past to speak, and tell about one of the most wonderful phenomena in man  kind's spiritual life: Greek religion. It is in this light that Greek temples and sanctuaries,  particularly those displayed here in the plates, will be interpreted on the following  pages. 

True, this means limiting ourselves to a selection of famous cult centres still  impressive today; but even if it were possible to present a survey of all the known sanctuaries, it would only embrace a fraction of those that once existed in the Hellenic world. For the Greeks considered everything to be full of gods, as Thales, the earliest of the philosophers, attested; and wherever they sensed an active deity, whose favour they needed and whose wrath was to be feared, they dedicated the site to him and to his adoration. 

The presence of gods or demigods might be felt on towering mountain heights  or on a headland overlooking the storm-lashed sea; in mysterious woodland thickets,  ravines, and caves, the solemn stillness of a grove, or the middle of a sunny, fertile field.  From ancient graves heroes buried in the distant past wrought good or ill, while the defence of forts and cities, the activities of street and market, the deliberations of governing bodies and decisions of public assemblies could none of them do without the proximity of guardian and guiding deities. And for these a dwelling had to be prepared.

As a result, countryside and settlement abounded in sacred precincts, each of which, as the property of a god, represented so to speak a piece cut off (temenos) from the land of the community, and was therefore often surrounded by a wall. 

A sacrificial altar or an  offering table formed the earliest and on many cult sites also the only equipment, even when the gods had long been conceived in human form and been given bodily presence in many places by means of an image. If, however, a god lived as it were physically at a certain spot, he required a dwelling suited to his high dignity. For the first temples, built during the eighth century B.C., and also for all later ones, whether surrounded by an ambulatory or developed architecturally in some other way, the ancient megaron (great hall), with its rectangular enclosed space and its open porch supported in front by columns, continued to provide the model. Indeed, it was not unusual for a place of worship in this form to arise on the actual foundations of an old megaron. The new building was the abode of the deity present in the cult image, not the room where believers met for the collective observance of rites; nor was it in general a place of sacrifice.

On the contrary, the altar usually stood before the entrance to the temple, in which one only set foot to pray in the god's presence or place bloodless offerings on a table. Larger and durable gifts were set up around the temple, or else housed in special treasuries, which, as divine property, themselves took the form of little temples. In addition to these sacred treasures and monies, for which in the larger temples a room set behind the naos could also serve as a depository, there were others of a profane order, placed in the god's protection by communities or individuals. For it was considered a grave sacrilege, which the deity would certainly punish, to remove objects or people by force from a holy precinct. There, since earliest times, the persecuted and the condemned had been able to find refuge. 

The rites observed in Greek sanctuaries were many and varied, corresponding to the diversity of human desires and the differences between the gods themselves. Sacrifice was, of course, universal, whether the deity received bloodless gifts such as farm produce or a cake, or whether some specially chosen animal was slaughtered before him, and part of the flesh burned in accordance with a prescribed ritual. There was one ritual when the sacrifice was intended for the powers of the underworld and death, but quite another when it concerned the gods of light. In the first case, people were not allowed to eat of the oblatory flesh, since they would otherwise have been dedicating themselves to death, whereas when offerings were made to the celestial gods, the sacrificial feast played an important role.