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May 23, 2013
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The Temple of Zeus
This temple was dedicated to the Olympian God Zeus. It took seven centuries to finish. Zeus is the king of all gods. The Athens started the temple in the 6th century BC. The columns in the temple has the Corinthian columns, the temple is made of rows of these fancy columns. It use to have 104 columns, but now it only has 15 columns. Each column is 17 meters high. While the Athens were building the temple, they had to stop building in 510 BC due to political disorders when the Tyrant Hippias was exiled from Athen. The temple is built 3 by 4 and 3 standing on it’s own.
The temple was left unfinished for 336 years. In 174 BC the King Antiochus IV Empiphanes started the reconstruction of the temple. He replaced the material from limestone to the high quality Pentelic Marble. But Antiochus died, once again the temple was left unfinished. In 125 BC the Roman Empire Hadrian included this temple in his Athens building program. In the middle of the 15th century, 21 remained. Although, it took centuries to finish, it was worth it. The whole temple had 104 columns when it finished. In 1852, there was a huge storm that caused the 16th column to blow over. Now there is 15 columns remaining.
The finished temple only survived for a few centuries, all the centuries of building this temple fell as each column fell. This is important to history because this shows how much the Greeks worshiped this powerful god. The Greeks went to this building to worship this god.
Article posted March 23, 2012 at 07:36 AM •
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