Construction had begun on the colossal Temple…

Construction had begun on the colossal Temple of Olympian Zeus in the sixth century BCE during the rule of the Athenian tyrants, who had envisaged building the greatest temple in the ancient world.

The temple is located about five hundred meters (sixteen hundred and forty feet feet) southeast of the Acropolis, and about seven hundred meters (twenty-three hundred feet) south of the center of Athens, Syntagma Square.

Its foundations were laid on the site of an ancient outdoor sanctuary dedicated to Zeus.

An earlier temple had stood there, constructed around 550 BCE by the tyrant Pisistratus.

The building was demolished after the death of Peisistratos and the construction of a colossal new Temple of Olympian Zeus was begun around 520 BCE by his sons, Hippias and Hipparchos.

They sought to surpass two famous contemporary temples, the Heraion of Samos and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Designed by the architects Antistates, Callaeschrus, Antimachides and Porinus, the Temple of Olympian Zeus was intended to be built of local limestone in the Doric style on a colossal platform measuring forty-one meters (one hundred and thirty-four and a half feet) by one hundred and eight meters (three hundred and fifty three and a hapf feet).

It was to be flanked by a double colonnade of eight columns across the front and back and twenty-one on the flanks, surrounding the cella.

The work was abandoned when the tyranny was overthrown and Hippias expelled in 510 BCE, by which point only the platform and some elements of the columns had been completed.

The temple has remained in this state for the past three hundred and thirty-six years, left unfinished during the years of Athenian democracy, apparently because the Greeks thought it hubristic to build on such a scale.

In the treatise Politics, Aristotle cited the temple as an example of how tyrannies engaged the populace in great works for the state and left them no time, energy or means to rebel.

The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who presents himself as the earthly embodiment of Zeus, revives the project in 174 BCE and places the Roman architect Decimus Cossutius in charge.

The design is changed to feature three rows of eight columns across the front and back of the temple and a double row of twenty on the flanks, for a total of one hundred and four columns.

The columns are to stand seventeen meters (fifty-five and a half feet) high and two meters (six and a half feet) in diameter.

The building material is changed to the expensive but high-quality Pentelic marble and the order is changed from Doric to Corinthian, marking the first use of this order on the exterior of a major temple.