Temple of Athena at Troy

Troy (reconstruction)
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Name and Location

The lands between the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara and the Edremit Bay were called Troas or Troad in ancient times. Archologists discovered many ancient sites in this particular corner of Asia Minor. The most important of all is Troy which probably either took is name from the area or gave its name to the region. It may well be possible that this well known ancient settlement mentioned in the Iliad as Troia, Ilion or Ilios took these names from the two kings, Tros and Ilos.

Map of Troad and Phrygia
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Aerial view of Troy
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The Mycenaean Temple of Athena

The earliest settlement at Troy was in the Early Bronze Age at ca. 3000 B.C.E. This small fortified settlement was destroyed by fire and was followed by Troy II (2500-2200 B.C.E.). Settlement continued throughout the Bronze Age at the site. The latest prehistoric levels are Troy VI (1800-1275 B.C.E.) and Troy VII (1275-1100 B.C.E.) and scholars debate which of these levels represent the city of Priam and scene of the Trojan War.

The settlement of the Mycenaeans in mainland Greece in places unprotected by the sea forced them to build citadels rather than palaces. Their penchant for monumental architecture, encouraged by the military character of their buildings and their taste for symmetry, was expressed in the central megaton with its columns and pillars.

Megaron
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Most probably the Mycenaean Temple of Athena follows these principles. The facade testifies the Mycenaean taste for symmetry and sobriety. The base consists of cut-stone blocks with irregular joints; these support courses of unfired brick held together by ties of wood; which help stabilize the building and inject rhythm into the facade. The entrance has a covered vestibule (promos), entirely fronted with wood and framed by the walls of the domos (main chamber). Windows with wooden grilles admitted daylight into the domos.

Troy VI (reconstruction)
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Inside the main chamber is the cultic statue of the Goddess and the Palladium, that ancient sacred image of Pallas which, as one version has it, fell from heaven.

The cultic statue of Athena
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According to one description, the Palladium, carries in the right hand a raised lance, in the left a distaff and spindle, showing the duality of aspects of the Goddess. Coins from Troy show the statue equipped in this way in accordance with ancient tradition.

The Palladium
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Often the duality exists also in the number of chosen maidservants of the Goddess. On the oldest representation, the Mycenaean painted plate, one sees two devotees or priestesses, and we know of two maidens who were designated for sacrifice and - provided they escaped - were consecrated to Athena. So it was with the two virgins who, in these archaic times, were sent from Lokri to Troy as atonement for the crime which Aias committed against the Palladium. The Trojan men meanwhile, waited and lay in ambush, and spying the maidens killed them. The Lokrians then had to send two other virgins to replace the ones sacrificed. If the Lokrian maidens remained unrecognized and reached the Temple of Athena, they became maidservants of the Goddess. They kept the temple cleaned up, went about barefooted and wearing only one garment, and were allowed to do this only at night. Moreover, they were allowed neither to step in front of the Goddess nor to leave the Temple. This second ordinance is not transmitted to us very clearly.

The Trojan War

But the most important event related with the Mycenaean Temple of Athena at Troy is the War of Troy narrated by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey.

This war started because the Trojan Paris had preferred the Goddess Aphrodite to the Goddesses Hera and Athena. When Paris kidnaped Helen and took her to Troy these latter two Goddesses supported the Greeks against the Trojans.

During this war, after the Goddess Athena wounded the God Aries and he ran to Mt. Olympus, the Trojans were forced to return to the city. At that moment of crisis, one of the brothers of Hector, expert in discussing the will of the Gods, instigated him to go, as soon as possible, to the city and give advice to the queen, their mother, to offer to the Goddess Athena the most beautiful robe she had and to implore mercy to the Goddess, with fervent prayers. Hector understood the wisdom of the advice and rushed to the palace.

He spoke to her, and his mother, entering the palace, called her servants, and sent them to reunite all the noble women of the city. Herself descended to the scented room where were the robes completely embroided... Hecuba chooses one of those robes to offer to Athena, the most beautiful by its embroidery, and the biggest; it shone as a star, even though it was hidden under all the others. She walked to the Temple followed by many noble women.

When they arrived at the Temple of Athena, on the acropolis, the doors of the Temple were opened by Teano of beautiful faces, daughter of Cises, and wife of Antenor, tamer of horses: It was she who the Trojans had made priestess of Athena. All of them, with a long cry, raised their hands to Athena. Teano took the robe and placed it over the knees of Athena of beautiful hair; then, supplicating, she requested to the Daughter of the Great Zeus:

-Venerated Athena, preserver of the cities, divine between the Goddesses, break the spear of Diomedes, and concede us that he himself fall in front of the doors of our city, so that we can immediately immolate to You, in Your Temple, twelve young cows, each one year old, if You have pity of the city, of the Trojan women and of their children.

This was their prayer; but Pallas Athena turned Her head. Iliad 6

As we saw before, the maidservants are two virgins offered by the Lokri, but the priestess is a married woman elected by the city.

But Troy didn't fall due to victory in battle. At a certain moment the Greeks took acknowledgment that there was inside the Temple of Athena a very sacred statue of Pallas Athena, the Palladium, and there was a general belief that while the Trojans kept it under their power the city of Troy could not be taken by the attackers. Having in mind this belief, the two greatest Greek chiefs still alive, Ulysses and Diomedes, decide to try to steal the Palladium.

In a very dark night, Diomedes climbs the wall of the city with the help of Ulysses and when he finds the Palladium inside of the Temple he takes it out and brings it to the camp.

Diomedes with the Palladium
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With this great stimulus the Greeks decide not to wait more time and to get some way to finish the war. Ulysses, with his cleverness (metis) imagines the wooden horse device as an offering to appease Goddess Athena from the stealing of the Palladium.

The Trojan Horse
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The Trojans don't suspect the trick and push the wooden horse through the doors of the city until the Temple of Athena is reached. Thinking the war is over and the graces of Athena are again given to them, they return in peace to their homes, which never happened in the last ten years.

During the night the Greek warriors leave the Wooden horse, open the doors of the city and Troy is completely destroyed.

The warriors leave the Wooden horse
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But the Greeks victory was also the cause of their destruction. Cassandra, one of the daughters of king Priam, was a prophetess. She warned the Trojans that the Greeks were hidden inside the wooden horse but they didn't believe her. When the Greeks sacked the city, Cassandra went to the Temple of Athena, seized the cult statue of the Goddess and implored Her protection. Ajax (not Ajax the Great) pulled her from the statue and dragged her out of the sanctuary were she was violated.

Ajax seizes Cassandra
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Not a single Greek protested against this sacrilege. The wrath of Athena was without limits. She went to Her uncle Poseidon:

-I ask your help for my revenge!- She said. -Give to the Greeks a very biter return to Greece. Shall the waters wave in wild turmoil under their ships! Shall the dead flood the bays and pile on the beaches and on the reefs!

Poseidon promptly agreed to fulfill the wish of Athena. The terrible storm that fell over the Greek fleet returning to Greece, destroyed the great majority of the ships.

When Aeneas escaped from the ruins of Troy, he took with him the Palladium to Italy and later to Rome itself, where it became known as "the luck of the city", faithfully guarded by the college of Vestal virgins.

The Archaic Temple of Athena

Following the end of the Late bronze Age there was a 400 year hiatus at the site until it was resettled at ca. 700 B.C.E. by Greek colonialists, possibly from Lesbos or Tenedos. The Early Iron Age city (Troy VIII) was founded with the name Ilion.

It is not known when the Archaic Temple of Athena at Troy was built, nor what was its style, but the principal order of Greek architecture found in Asia Minor and the Aegean Islands was the Ionic one. These stone buildings did little more than reproduce the proportions and elements of earlier wooden structures. The order is characterized by the lack of gratuitous ornament and this formal purity; only its scroll-shaped capitals, retains a hint of oriental decoration.

Most probably the Archaic Temple of Athena followed these principles. It was a prostyle temple, the columns were at one end of the building only, creating the pronaos (the antechamber) with the door to the naos or cela (the inner sanctum). The facade had a plain tympanum and a continuous frieze. The columns were slender and stand on ringed bases; they had twenty-four flutes and culminate in a scrolled capital.

C.a. 546 B.C.E. following the Persian conquest of all Ionia, Troy fell under Persian domination. In 480 B.C.E. Xerxes halted at Troy to sacrifice a thousand oxen before crossing the Hellespont into Greece.

Troy only left Persian control when the liberation of Asia Minor by Alexander the Great in 334 B.C.E.

At that date Alexander the Great went to Troy immediately after crossing into Asia Minor to make an offering to Goddess Athena in the Temple. There he promised to build a new Temple to the Goddess and left his armor as a gift to Her.

The Hellenistic Temple of Athena

Following the death of Alexander in 323 B.C.E., his general, Lysimachus, his successor in Thrace, had a new Temple of Athena built in the city. Much of the original settlement area was disturbed with the construction of the new sanctuary, a theater, palestra, and extended city walls.

This Hellenistic Temple was partly destroyed in 85 B.C.E. during Fimbria's sack of Troy.

Maybe after the victory at Zela over Pharnace (47 B.C.E.) Julius Caesar, who believed himself to be a direct descendant of king Priam, visits the city, and prayed at the sanctuary.

The Roman Temple of Athena

In the reign of Augusts (27 B.C.E. - 14 C.E.) the city and the sanctuary of Athena underwent a large rebuilding program. An odeum, a bouleuterion, and other buildings were added to the city.

The sanctuary was a vast assemblage of buildings. Crossing the Propylaea, the Sacred Square and the Stoa was reached. In the center of the Sacred Square was the large Temple of Athena. The Temple was of peripteral or dipteral type, surrounded by a single or double exterior colonnade, the perirtasis (peristyle). Remains found by Schiemann prove the Temple to be of the Doric order.

Facade sculptures fell the tympanum, and the plain architrave was crowned by a frieze in which the geometrical form of the triglyph and the relief's of the metopes were seen to alternate.

Metope and triglyph
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The columns were robust and massive, resting directly on the stylobate (the "top step" of the Temple base) and culminated in a circular echinus and square abacus. The shalf had between sixteen and twenty flutes.

In 355 C.E. the site was visited by the Emperor Julian. He was a king who offers frequent sacrifice and knew the Homeric poems in detail, a source of enhancement for his own life and writings. In those writings we meet the piety for the Gods, for whom the Gods are manifest protectors, "standing beside" him to help him through life. Julian hints at his youthful encounter with the Gods and his personal "ascent" to heaven, where They had commissioned his task among men. Julian tells this because it stands for a serious truth, his own sense of divine company and guidance, based on a personal Homeric encounter. It is this "company" which is stressed repeatedly in the speeches to or about him which are made by the orator Libanius. The Gods, he says, assist Julian in his marches to war; Zeus is his protector, Athena his "fellow worker". But Libanius insists on a more personal note: You alone have seen the shapes of the Gods, a blessed observer of the Blessed Ones... you alone have heard the voice of the Gods and addressed them in the words of Sophocles, 'O voice of Athena' or 'O voice of Zeus'...

On the heights of the great mountain behind Antioch, Julian had indeed seen Zeus himself, while sacrificing in his honor. The Gods are his "friends and protectors", Libanius insists, "just as" Athena had once stood by Homer's Achilles in the plains of Troy.

Present state

The platform for the Temple of Athena, fragments of its coffered ceiling and fragments of a marble Doric capital can still be seen on site.

The platform
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Ceiling fragment
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Clickable Plan
Clickable Plan of Troy
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GALLERY

Map of Troad, Phrygia and Mysia.
Notice the Temples of Goddess Athena.


Map of Troy in the Homeric times.
The doted line points where the coastline is today.


Clickable Plan of Troy.

Aerial view of Troy from South.
Notice the Odeon in the first plan. Behind the Odeon is the entrance to the Temple (the Propylaeum). And behind the Propylaeum is the Temple of Athena.


Reconstruction of Troy VI.
The Temple of Athena is the large building to the right.


The Trojan horse.
During the night the Greek warriors leave the Wooden horse, open the doors of the city and Troy is completely destroyed.


The Fall of Troy.
Represented on the large metope of the neck is the Wooden Horse - the wheels on which the large construction was moved can be seen. Visible inside the square openings in its belly are the heads of the warriors, unmistakable, holding their spears and shields in front. Some warriors already stand on the wall of Troy, which is denoted by a relief horizontal line.

  • The Mykonos pithamphora. Second quarter of the 7th century BCE. Mykonos Archaeological Museum. Mykonos Island, Greece.

The Wooden horse at the entrance of the site.
Troy, Turkey.


Facade of the Megaron.
The facade testifies to the Mycenaean taste for symmetry and sobriety.

  • The base consists of cut-stone blocks with irregular joints; these support courses of unfired brick held together by ties of wood, which help stabilize the building and inject rhythm into the facade.
  • The entrance has a covered vestibule (pronaos), entirely fronted with wood and framed by the walls of the 'domos' (main chamber). This arrangement later emerged as an integral aspect of the design of Greek Temples.
  • Windows with wooden grilles admitted daylight into the 'domos'.

Excavation of Athena's Temple at Troy by Schliemann.
This drawing was made by Heinrich Schliemann himself.


The platform for the Temple of Athena from SE.
Troy IX.


The platform for the Temple of Athena from West.
Troy IX.


Fragment 'in situ' of coffered ceiling from the Temple of Athena.
Troy, Turkey.


Corner block of a frieze of metopes and triglyphs depicting Helios.
This relief metope depicting Helios is the best preserved of all the metopes from the Temple of Athena at Troy. The sun God's team of four horses is shown tempestuously charging out from the sea. A diadem-like rayed halo surrounds the God's head. The sweeping surge of the team is emphasized by the deep, fluttering folds of Helios' garments and the diagonal, echeloned arrangement of the horses.

  • Marble, h. 85.8cm, w. 2.012m (w. of metope 86.3cm). From the Temple of Athena at Troy. After 300 BCE Discovered by Heinrich Schliemann. Berlin, Pergamum Museum 9582.

Diomedes with the Palladium.
In a very dark night, Diomedes climbs the wall of the city with the help of Ulysses and when he finds the Palladium inside of the Temple he takes it out and brings it to the camp.

  • Attic red-figure cup from Apulia, c. 380 BCE. Oxford, Ashmolean 1931.39.

Ajax drags Cassandra.
Ajax (Lesser) prepares to drag the naked Cassandra away from the statue of Athena where she has sought sanctuary.

  • Red figure painting, c. 370-360 BCE. Lycurgus Painter.

The Palladium, Cassandra and Ajax.
The statue of Athena to which Cassandra clung just before Ajax (Lesser) dragged her away should not be the Palladium, since Odysseus stole it before the fall of Troy.

  • Skyphos, 350-330 BCE. Campanie "peintre de Capoue 7531". Genève, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire.

Ajax seizes Cassandra.
Cassandra, naked, cowers at the feet of the image of Athena; Ajax grasps her hair to drag her away (right). Aeneas carrying Anchises (left).

  • Attic red figure hydria, c. 480-475 BCE. Attributed to the Kleophrades Painter. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 2422.

Menelaus and Ulysses at the Altar of Athena.
Seated on the stepped Altar in the Sanctuary of Athena at Troy are Menelaus, Ulysses and the herald Talthybius. They are approached by Theano, her two maids Dia and Malo, and her nurse. The names of practically all of the figures are inscribed.

  • The Greeks had come to Troy to ask for a peaceful surrender of Helen. They are depicted inside the city, having just arrived. They are met by Theano, the priestess of Athena and the wife of Antenor, the most important Trojan, next to King Priam. The embassy to Troy was not successful and the Trojan War broke out, but during the sack of Troy the Greeks spared the house of Antenor.
  • Black-figured column krater, known as the Astarita krater. Corinthian vase c. 560 BCE, height 47 cm Vatican, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco I, cat. 35525.

The priestess of Athena.
Black-figured column krater, known as the Astarita krater. Corinthian vase c. 560 BCE, height 47 cm Vatican, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco I, cat. 35525.


Tourist Information

Although by no means the most spectacular archeological site in Turkey, Troy, thanks to Homer, is probably the most celebrated. Known as Truva in Turkish, the remains of the ancient city lie just west of the main road around 20km south of Canakkale. It's a scanty affair on the whole, but if you lower your expectations and use your imagination, you may well be impressed.

Canakkale is without a doubt the most sensible base for seeing Troy, running worthwhile guided tours of the ancient site. Alternatively, fairly frequent dolmuses leave from the station just before the bridge on Ataturk Caddesi, for the half-hour journey through a rolling landscape of olive groves and cotton fields.

The dolmus to the site drops you off just beyond the village, in front of a burgeoning cluster of tourist shops and restaurants.

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