Selinunte lies west of Agrigento... about 100 klms around the coast. While both Greek colonies have much in common... the main difference was that Selinunte is closer to the Cartheginian stronghold at Palermo... and chose to work in partnership with those 'no good' temple wrecking terrorists. The site at Selinunte doesn't offer good defence... another reason for cosying up to the bad guys. We weren't able to get a guide to explain this site... and the notices and literature weren't very helpful. So, we have lots of unanswered questions regarding Selinunte .
We did manage to sort out a few issues for ourselves.
When are too many Temples not enough? The Selinunte Greeks were most pious. At the Selinunte site, the major temples labelled E, F and G were so close that Matt could throw a cricket ball over the lot of them. The oldest temple had dimensions of 110 meters by 5 metres ... funny shaped building... supported by massive columns... 16 metres high... with a diameter of 3.4 metres... I have not seen bigger. The stones were hauled 9 kms from the quarry to the site. The project was so big they didn't complete the construction. The stone pieces were too large for the scavengers to steal... so they remain where the last earth quake tossed them. Next to this gigantic pile of rubble lies a much smaller pile... an early temple that was completed... intensely picked over by scavengers. The temple that catches the eye is younger... but still dates back to the C5th BC... dedicated to Hera. There was no shortage of temples away from the prime temple arena. They even had a temple to pomegranates stuck way out the back... outside the city walls.
When is a site too large? Clearly, when the electric road train runs out of battery getting from one end of the site to the other... the site is too big. We had a dozen people riding in our road train. On one steep sandy slope, the vehicle crawled to a halt. The driver asked the men to step off and give him a push to the top of the hill. Selinunte covers 110 Hectares... enough to accommodate 80,000 people. The Acropolis section fired the imagination. The geography of the site didn't provide good protection... so the military built very clever gateways into the Acropolis to maintain security. The remaining skeleton of the area shows the roads and temples and entrances to bigger buildings. Clearly, there was a professional administration function housed in the Acropolis.
When is replication a suitable treatment for a site? UNESCO must be tempted to show off some of the grandeur on offer at Selinunte ... the defensive structures are very clever... the old temples have a huge amount of stone lying around... just waiting to be piled one on top of the other. A few million of EU money would spark up the site no end. Today, visitors are allowed to climb over stones that elsewhere have 24/7 armed security guards.
Dear reader... I promise not to harangue you with future blogs on Greek ruins... we leave Sicily in a couple of days... heading for northern Italy... The Dolomites... well beyond the sphere of Greek influence.
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