The architect had to overcome the fact that the temple was built on the ruins of another Archaic temple dedicated to Apollo, embodying some of its features, yet applying the Classical style, a novelty of the time. Pausanias records the temple as being one of the most beautiful and harmoniously built in the Peloponnese.
Ancient temples were built in three distinct styles (called “orders”), namely the Doric, the Ionic and the Corinthian orders. The Doric order columns have no base (stylobates) to separate them from the platform, are plain and robustly made, and their shaft is decorated with 20 concave grooves and topped by a smooth capital. Ionic columns normally stand on a base. The capital of the Ionic column has characteristic paired scrolling volutes that are laid on the molded cap ("echinus") of the column, or spring from within it, in a single plane or angled out on the corners. The Corinthian order columns were characterized by a slender fluted shaft and an ornate capital decorated with acanthus leaves and scrolls.
The Temple of Epikourios Apollo is the only Greek temple to combine all three orders: It is Doric, peripteral, distyle in antis, with pronaos, cella, adyton and opisthodomos, with fifteen columns on the long sides and six columns on its short ones. The temple is thus longer than most of the temples of Antiquity, usually featuring 13 columns on the long sides when having six columns on the short ones. Besides the general architectural style, there are five pairs of Ionic half-columns inside the cella, having supported the roof and, among them, to the south, there stood a single column topped with the earliest known Corinthian capital, perhaps an un-iconic representation of the god or, alternatively, an aesthetic accentuation of the room the actual hypothetical statue should have stood. This capital, though in place and shown in the drawings of the first travelers to visit the temple in modern times, was later destroyed by plunderers, in their effort to carry away to Europe parts of the decoration of the tremple, and only some fragments are today preserved in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
Due to the intense seismic activity of the region and the unstable underground as well as the heavily unfavorable climatic conditions of the region, the temple has suffered serious damage; plunderers of archaeological treasures have also had their important contribution to this process. |
