Following in Alexander the Great’s Footsteps

The Owl
Vol. 2, Issue 24
June 19, 2008
Baltimore, Maryland

A portrait of Alexander by his personal sculptor, Lysippus. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Dear Inquiring Traveler,

A couple of weeks ago, The Owl took you to the amazingly beautiful—but tourist-thronged—ancient city of Ephesus.

As promised, we are now visiting lesser-known places in the region. Some are gigantic, some more intimate. They are all sure to charm you.

Regards,

Editor, The Owl

P.S. A note to last week's Grand Tour of China. An Owl reader kindly mentioned to me that, if you want to see the terracotta soldiers of Xi'an, you don't need to go to China or even Paris. An extensive selection of Emperor Qin's army is currently on display at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California.

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Climb the stairs of the theatre in Miletus and you'll see graffiti that spectators carved into the stone seats 2,000 years ago. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Following in Alexander the Great’s Footsteps

by Catherine Lapp

While Greece was under Macedonian rule Alexander the Great needed a new challenge. He determined to conquer Asia. Gathering the largest army ever to leave Greece —43,000 foot soldiers and 5,000 horses—he crossed the Hellespont and started the long march that would take him all the way to India.

A Theater in Cotton Fields

Most cities on Alexander’s route surrendered without a fight. One of the few that tried to resist, however, was Miletus. This city—where some of the earliest Greek philosophers had been born—refused to open its gates. Miletus was a large, proud city that had spawned several colonies on the shores of the Black Sea. Alexander besieged Miletus, trying out a new weapon—the torsion catapult—and then pushed onwards.

Consulting the Gods

After capturing Miletus, Alexander paid a visit to a temple that you should certainly see if you are in the region.  It’s one of the most spectacular buildings of the ancient world, made even more dramatic by its unexpected location—it stands today in the middle of a small village and will suddenly appear at the turn of a narrow street.

“The memory of the pleasure which this spot afforded me will not be easily erased. The columns are so exquisitely fine, the marble mass so vast and noble, that it is impossible perhaps to conceive greater beauty and majesty in ruin.” — Archaeologist Richard Chandler who visited Didyma in 1764

Surrounded by a forest of 120 columns, each 64-feet high (the tallest ever in the Greek world), the sanctuary at Didyma was the largest Ionic temple ever built. Don’t expect the usual Greek structure, though—a roofed building with a central entrance surrounded by columns.

The temple of Didyma is unique in that the main chamber was open to the sky and access to it was made possible not through a main door, but through two small side entrances. You can still walk through those doors today. Walk up the steps that lead to the front porch of the temple. Make your way through the gigantic, but delicately sculpted column bases and head toward either of the side entrances. A covered passageway will take you down to the exposed open-air interior of the sanctuary where, for hundreds of years, pilgrims came to listen to Apollo’s oracles.

A Gigantic Project

Things looked very different when Alexander visited. By the time he arrived, the temple of Didyma had already been in ruins for 150 years, burnt down by the Persians and never rebuilt. But a supernatural event occurred when Alexander first set foot in Asia: the spring inside the temple that had been dry for over a century suddenly gushed forth water and the priestess predicted Alexander’s triumph over the Persians. In return, the Macedonian ordered the rebuilding of the temple.

Thus, the Didyma you see today is not what Alexander saw, but what he made possible. It isn’t what he envisioned either, for the temple was never finished. Work continued for almost six centuries, with one architect after another working on the project. Marble kept being brought from surrounding quarries. But the enterprise was just too gigantic. What makes the temple even more unique, though, is the blueprint still visible on the walls of the interior court that never received a final polish—an exceptional occurrence in the ancient world.

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