TEMPLES OF TYRANNY

Archaeologist Neil Faulkner argues that the Greek temples of Sicily are monuments to both civilisation and barbarism.

For well over 300 years, ever since the Grand Tour took off in the late 17th century, Greek temples have been seen as emblematic of Classical civilisation. Grand tourists who made it all the way to southern Italy and Sicily – like Goethe in the 1780s – were rewarded with a view of some of the best-preserved Greek temples in the world. The temples at Paestum in southern Italy and at Agrigento and Selinunte in Sicily were admired for their symmetry, grandeur, and placement – silent sentinels, it seemed, at the very origins of Western civilisation.

Archaeologists should not be romantics; or at least, if we are, we are obliged to set aside our sense of awe and mystery in the presence of the great monuments of the past in favour of rational analysis. All artefacts – including big ones like temples – must be appraised holistically, in context, with full appreciation of the past social complexities they represent. Let us follow the grand tourist to Agrigento then, but let us dig deeper to a fuller appreciation of what the ‘Valley of the Temples’ means.

The best time to arrive is shortly before the sun goes down. Then, instead of looking bleached, the temples have a rich honey colour, contrasting with the equally rich greens of the vegetation and the deep blue of the sky. From the modern road that runs parallel with the sea – much receded since ancient times – you look up and see them skylined on the ridge. The Temple of Hera, all its columns restored. The Temple of Concordia, surviving for 2,500 years because of its conversion into an early Christian church. The Temple of Herakles, one row of columns restored.