Selinunte

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History

Around 650 B.C. colonists from Megara Hyblaia, on the east coast of Sicily north of Syracuse, founded a second town on a distant and as yet uninhabited site, and named it Selinus. Selinon is the Greek word for wild celery, an essential in the vegetation of the region; its leaf decorates the town's coinage, often together with a picture of Selinos, the horned God of the River. This, the most westerly Greek town in Sicily, was - like Homera on the north coast - an outpost against the Carthaginian occupation of the western part of the island. It soon extended its influence along the coastlines. To the north, however, it met with resistance from the Elymian town of Segesta, and the dispute over boundaries became a recurring theme. Greek tyrants (Pythagoras and Euryleon) ruled Selinunte for a short time in the sixth century. The sixth and fifth centuries B.C. were a period of prosperity and splendor for Selinunte, largely as a result of its agriculture and internal and external trade. The population - numbering 20,000 free citizens and 100,000 serfs - had at that time both the desire and the means to embellish their town with a splendid array of temples for which it has remained famous to this day.

Selinunte also had close trading relations with Carthage and in the year 480 B.C. it was the only town to fight on the Carthaginian side in the battle of Himera, but then in 466 B.C. it helped the Syracusans to overthrow the tyrant Thrasybulos. This volte-face was subsequently to prove disastrous. When its struggles with Segesta in 416 drained the resources of the Athens expedition to Sicily Carthage took the opportunity to intervene and in 409 B.C. it launched a counter-offensive. Like Himera, Selinunte was besieged, taken and destroyed. Reports indicate that 15,000 inhabitants were killed, the rest enslaved or driven out. The town subsequently remained under the An aloe outside the ancient remains of Temple C dominance of Carthage; in 250 B.C. during the First Punic War the Carthaginians transported the remaining inhabitants to Lilybaion and destroyed the town's fortifications. From then on Selinunte became a ghost town, and in the A.D. sixth century any remaining buildings were completely destroyed in a devastating earthquake.

For the next thousand years Selinunte lay forgotten; it was not until 1551 that it was re-discovered by T. Fazello. But even Goethe, on his Grand Tour in 1787, studiously avoided visiting this ruined place. Only in the 19th century did excavations start: in 1822 by the Englishmen Angell and Harris, in 1824 by the Germans Hittdorf and Zanth, and on a larger scale between 1830 and 1872 by the Italians Cavallari and Scalea. Explorations were continued in the 20th century, combined with restoration work aimed as much at the tourist as at scientific interests. In 1927 a row of columns of Temple C on the Acropolis were re-erected, and in 1957-58 Temple E in the eastern group was re-built. There are further plans for the gigantic Temple G, which is also in the eastern group.

History of the buildings

The Temples at Selinunte were built in the space of only a hundred years. Apart from Temple B they are all Doric peripteral temples. The individual dates are as follows: c. 550 b.c. Temple C c. 540 B.C. Temple D c. 530 B.C. Temple F (Athena?) c. 520 B.C. Temple G (Apollo) 465-450 B.C. Temple E (Hera) c. 450 B.C. Temples A and O c. 280 B.C., immediately before Selinunte finally went into decline, the little Temple B was added as a late-comer.