Temple of Aphrodite, Aphrodisias · Wikimedia Commons

Temple of Aphrodite, Aphrodisias

Templum Veneris Aphrodisiensis

TempleAsia · Geyre, TurkeyBuilt 100 BCE

About

Aphrodisias took its name from its goddess, and this Ionic temple is the reason the city mattered. Columns ring the shrine eight across and thirteen deep, many of them carrying the names of the citizens who paid for them. The Julian house claimed descent from Venus, so Augustus and his successors treated the sanctuary as family business: the city holds a grant of freedom and exemption from tax, carved up on a wall in public for anyone to read. White marble from quarries an hour's walk away feeds a school of sculptors whose signed work travels the empire. In 117 CE the cult is thriving.

What happened here

The building itself is a house for the god, and most people never go inside. Everything public happens on the steps and at the altar in front: an animal led up, examined, killed cleanly, its organs read, the meat divided and eaten. The priest covers his head and a flute player keeps up a noise so no ill-omened word is heard. Worshippers leave what they can afford — a terracotta figure, a coin, a model of the body part they want healed — and the accumulated clutter is periodically cleared and buried on site. On festival days the doors are opened and the cult statue is dressed, garlanded, and sometimes carried out through the streets. The temple also holds money, which is why towns keep their treasury in one.

In ancient writing

Tacitus, Annals 3.62
Aphrodisias comes before the Senate in 22 CE to defend its temple's right of asylum, producing decrees going back to the dictator Caesar.