Heraion
About
Nine columns line each short end of this temple instead of the usual even number, an odd count builders used nowhere else at Paestum. Raised around 550 BCE, it is one of the oldest Greek temples still standing anywhere in Italy, its columns swollen with the heavy archaic curve typical of the earliest Doric style. Eighteenth-century antiquarians mistook the roofless ruin for a Roman civic hall and called it the Basilica, a name that stuck for good. It still carried its full colonnade in 117 CE.
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.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →