Adapted and modified from: http://www.gottwein.de/Hell2000/bassai01.htm

Bassai

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Bassai bedeutet "Waldtal" oder "Waldschlucht", ein Bezeichnung, die gut die Einsamkeit ausdrückt, in der sich der Tempel des Apollon Epikurios, des "Helfenden Apollon" in 1130 m Höhe erhebt. Deswegen wurde der auch erst 1765 wieder entdeckt. Er ist trotz der häufigen Erdbeben in diesem Gebiet relativ gut erhalten (nach dem Hephaisteion in Athen am zweitbesten) und befindet sich zur Zeit seit dem letzten Erdbeben wegen umfassenden unter einem Zeltdach:

Click on Pausanias' description of Bassai: Pausanias in Arkadien

Nach Pausanias war der Anlass seiner Weihung eine Pestepidemie im Jahre 420 v. Chr, die in Athen bereits 429 ausgebrochen war, (aber nach neueren Forschungen nie nach Phigalia gelangte!). Pausanias muss sich also geirrt haben, und eine andere Erkärung für den Tempel müßte gefunden werden. Es gab bereits einen Vorgängertempel (ebenfalls nach Süden ausgerichtet!) aus der Zeit um 575 v. Chr und ein Heiligtum der Artemis/Aphrodite befindet sich auf dem Berg Kotilon oberhalb des Apollo Tempels. Architekt des Apollo Tempels war Iktinos, der den Tempel nach dem Parthenon in Athen und der grossen Halle in Eleusis baute - ein ungewöhnlicher Architekt für die abgelegene Provinz. Daraus lässt sich für die Erbauung des Tempels auf eine Zeitspanne zwischen 428 - 420 v. Chr. schließen. 

Liegt der Hauptreiz des Tempels in seiner abgelegenen urwüchsigen Umgebung, so hat er auch baugeschichtlich Besonderes zu bieten: Er ist ungewöhnlich lang und hat eine Peristasis von 6 x 15 statt der üblichen 6 x 13 Säulen. Ein Grund kann die Ausrichtung des Vorgängertempels sein, oder das zusätzliche Adyton zwischen Cella und Opisthodom, das genau diese beiden zusätzlichen Interkolumnien tief ist. Allerdings ist auch der Pronaos mit zwei Jochbreiten tiefer als unbedingt nötig, so dass wohl die Länge des Tempels eher dem Wunsch des Architekten als der Not gehorcht. Die Überlänge des Heratempels in Olympia (6 x 16 Säulen) versteht man gewöhnlich als Folge der früharchaischen Bauzeit.

Weiterhin die besondere Gestaltung der Cella, die zugunsten einer einheitlichen Raumwirkung auf die Dreischiffigkeit verzichtete.

Die beiden inneren Säulenreihen sind nur als Halbsäulen ausgebildet und mit Mauerzungen mit den Cellawänden verbunden: auf beiden Seiten je fünf ionische Halbsäulen. Statt der beiden Seitenschiffe entstehen so Nischen (vgl. den Heratempel in Olympia). 

 Zwischen den beiden hintersten Halbsäulen befand sich eine freistehende Mittelsäule (ohne statischen Zweck) mit dem ersten korinthische Kapitell, das aus der Architektur bekannt ist  (es gibt nur noch eine Zeichnung aus dem 19.Jhrdt. davon).

Ungewöhnlich ist die Ausrichtung des Tempels nach Norden, die man aus der Bodenbeschaffenheit allein nicht erklären kann. Ein Hinweis auf diese Ausnahme liefert der Artemis/Aprodite Tempel auf dem Berg Kotilon, der auch nord-südlich ausgerichtet ist.

Die Apollo Statue rückt aus der Cella in ein zusätzliches Adyton zwischen Cella und Opisthodom, während die korinthische Säule, die anscheinend keine tragende Aufgabe hatte und frei stand, den Platz des Bild des Gottes (der Göttin?) einnahm. Das Adyton hat eine eigene Außentür nach Osten, durch die die Apollo Stutue nach Osten schaut; es steht also quer zur Ausrichtung des Tempels. Auch die Bodenplatten des Adytons sind anderes gerichtet. Die Cella ist zwischen den beiden hintersten ionischen Innensäulen und der korinthischen Säule zum Adyton hin geöffnet. 

Skulpturenschmuck:

Der Fries: Im Innern verlief auf dem Architrav über den ionischen Halbsäulen ein dramatischer Fries aus 23 Platten, die Szenen aus den Kentauren- und Amazonenkämpfen darstellten. Weil die Cella nur vom Eingang her beleuchtet wurde, kann der Fries kaum in hellem Licht gelegen haben. Die Platten wurden offensichtlich auf Grund einer Änderung des Bauplans (Einbau des Adyrons?) nachträglich verkürzt. Sie befinden sich im Britischen Museum in London.  Abbildungen des Frieses .

Die Außenmetopen waren glatt, ohne Schmuck. Über den Schmalseiten der Cella befanden sich am Pronaos und Opisthodom je 6 Metopen mit Götterdarstellungen. Die Giebelfiguren wurden wahrscheinlich eine Beute der Römer. Pausanias (8, 14, 9) berichtet, dass zu seiner Zeit (2. Jhr AD) das Kultbild Apollons bereits in Megalopolis auf der Agora stand.

An attempted explanation of the pecularities of the temple in Bassai

from: Rolf Gross, On the Way to Arcadia, 1962 (click here for the Full text )

....The temple is unusually well preserved and full of puzzles. Pausanias tells us that the temple was built by Iktinos around 420 BC. One has to know that Iktinos was the most famous architect of classical Greece, who had built the Parthenon in Athens and the Hall of Mysteries at the sanctuary of Eleusis. At once one asks in surprise, why should such a great architect have taken on a commission for a building in this, according to Pausanias, most barbarous part of Greece? And why should anyone have wanted to build a temple on this rugged mountain ledge, hours from the next inhabited place?

Already in the second century AD, when Pausanias visited the site, the temple was neglected and its four meter-high, precious wood and ivory image of Apollo had been removed to the market of the newly rich city of Megalopolis. Pausanias offers an explanation for this temple that one finds repeated in all text books: The good people of Phigalia, a marketplace six hours further down, had had it built to commemorate their rescue from a plague, and dedicated it to Apollo Epikouros, Apollo the Saviour. However, historical investigations have shown that the plague of 420 BC never reached Phigalia, and that the only epidemic that could have devastated the area occured much later. Since then the archaeologists have been arguing the date of the building, and some even dismiss Pausanias story wholesale including the authorship of Iktinos.

To say it right away, I believe, Pausanias invented the story of the plague to explain Apollo's epithet Epikouros. Iktinos, however, appears to to be the only architect who could have designed such an ideosyncratic building.

Among the visible inconsistencies is the fact that the building is oriented not toward the East, as is the normal convention, but towards the South. Equally unusual and obviously related to this orientation, is a door in the eastern wall of the cella, which, say the archaeologists, had the purpose of allowing the morning sun to fall on to the image of the god. But then one discovers the pediment of the image, not in the center of the cella, its usual place, but off-center, near the wall opposite to the door. It appears that the god had been made to look east over the mountains of Arcadia, somehow as the resolution of the entire "wrong" orientation of the building. Certainly a puzzling, seemingly arbitrary design for a great architect.

The unusual position of the image has a simple explanation. We know from the sketches of a 19th-century visitor to the site, that a five meter high column stood at the end and in the center of the cella, precisely, where the great images were normally placed, and this column was crowned by a Corinthian capital, the earliest such capital in Greek art history. This column appears to have had no supporting function in the building.

Thus it appears that the venerated old replica of the god had to make way for an otherwise architecturally useless column. The first puzzle has been replaced by a second, even more enigmatic one, - or, strange thought, could this column have been the venerated object?

Behind the temple of Apollo rises, moderately high, Mount Kotilon, which can be climbed in fifteen minutes. From its top one has a far reaching view of the mountains of Arcadia. Towards the East the view is bounded by Mount Lykaios, where Zeus had an altar as Zeus Lykaios, "Zeus of the Wolves" - of which, according to Pausanias, there were many in the area. To the West one overlooks the mountains of the Mynthias and senses the plain where Phygalia is located, and on a clear evening, the Kyparissian Sea glistens in the setting sun. The South, across several mountain ranges, is controlled by the threatening block of Mt. Ithome that dominates the almost one hundred kilometer distant plain of Messenia. The horizon behind Ithome, one discovers on a clear day, forms the Messenian Sea. Thus one can see the "two seas" from the center of the only land in Greece that had no access to the ocean.

A further reading of Pausanias, reveals the existence of another, older sanctuary on Mt. Kotilon, dedicated to Aphrodite and Artemis. After a little search we found the site. There is only an indication of the foundations of the small temple and perhaps the altar plate. 

A natural megaron cradles the temple, which too opens towards the South. If one now takes another careful look at the orientation of the Apollo temple, one discovers that the axis of both temples meet precisely on Mt. Ithome! Mt. Ithome, however, carried several very archaic sanctuaries, where until classical times human sacrifices were offered to Zeus and Artemis - naturally young men. The same seems to have been the practice at the altar of Zeus Lykaios. There is even archaeological evidence for this. Pausanias reports with horror that in his time at many places in these wild mountains sacrifices were offered, about which he would prefer not to speak. "It gives me no pleasure," he writes, "to inquire after these old rites. Maybe, they have to remain the way they have always been since time immemorial."

However, the human sacrifices practiced on Mt. Ithome and Lykaios prove, that, there, Zeus and Artemis were only the patriarchal caretakers of sanctuaries that had once belonged to the Great Goddess in one of her terrible incarnations.

It becomes apparent that the location of the temple of Apollo in this lonely wilderness had a deeper reason: The place was a sacred site long before the temple's construction, and it lay at the intersection of several "force lines" that connected it with a number of other old power spots. In their "wrong" direction, both the sanctuary of Artemis-Aphrodite and the Apollo temple follow the forces that gave them their power, the earth-bound signs of the Great Goddess.

We now recognize the column in the temple. It is the Sacred Tree of the Great Goddess, the symbol that one finds above the Lion Gate in Mycene and on Mycenian seal rings. Thus the main "image" in the temple of Bassai was an abstract symbol, and Apollo was relegated to stand apart, to watch from the side lines

Pausanias has more to say that helps to clear this mystery. He writes that his reason for visiting this remote part of Greece had been his intention to search for the dark Arcadian cult of "Demeter Erinyes." Eventually he found the last remnants of the cult in a cave in the mountains between Phygalia and Bassai. The cave has not been identified, but Pausanias gives a description of the Arcadian myth underlying the cult.

During the time of her desperate and confused wanderings in search of her abducted daughter Kore, alias Persephone, Demeter was raped in an Arkadian meadow by Poseidon in the shape of a stallion. From this forced coupling sprang a daughter Despina and a mysterious stallion named Asterion. Because of this rape and her great confusion, Demeter temporarily lost her mind and turned into a raving Erinye.

Thus in Arcadia a cult of a terrifying version of the Goddess's triad was celebrated: Despina, the Mistress, as maid, Demeter Erinyes as mother, and a third aspect "about whom," according to Pausanias, "one could not speak." Possibly it was a horse-headed Hekate as old woman. But there are also indications that Demeter-Despina had a horse head. This terrible, revengeful trio, demanding atonement from the men who had violated them, haunted the mountains of Arcadia: In Arcadia the Goddess devoured men.

Pausanias also mentions a cult of Despina Epikouraia, a "helpful mistress" in temples in Megalopolis and Lykosoura, where during his time "the Mysteries were celebrated according to the Attic Rites," by priests imported from Eleusis. Today we know that these were rather late sites. Was Bassai the first attempt to reform the terrible powers of this ancient Arcadian Triad with the help of Apollo?

I argue that such a reading of the architecture and the myth offers the simplest explanation of Apollo's epithet Epikouros and the location of the temple far from town.

The nature of the Arcadian Goddess was so terrible, her power so pervasive that Apollo could only stand aside in Bassai, looking East through the side door seeking the assistance of Zeus Lykaios. The dread of and reverence for this Goddess lay so deep, that nobody was willing to face the consequences of removing her presence completely from the sanctuary. Thus, in a sanctuary that may have originally been dedicated to Despina, the good people of Phigalia called on Apollo for help to appease these ur-forces of Arcadia with his clarity, to break the female magic and to rescue man from the sensual arbitrariness of the virgin Goddess.

If one now looks at the architecture of the temple one gains, with this knowledge in mind, a renewed respect for the genius of Iktinos who dared to face these dangerous forces and cast their complex symbolism into a rational architectural form. The clarity of his temple design reflects that of Apollo.