Waldstein, Charles: The Argive Heraeum (Band 1): General introduction, geology, architecture marble statuary and inscriptions (Boston [u.a.], 1902)

ARCHITECTURE OF THE AKGIYE IIEHAEUM

By EDWARD LIPPINCOTT TILTON

The Argive Heraeum was at a very early time a place of high importance in Greece,
and its architectural remains silently indicate that it continued to be a religious centre
for many centuries. The buildings themselves have indeed been entirely destroyed, but
it is still possible to piece together the fragments into a whole which may in a measure
simulate the original, to restore as a result from excavations the temples, porticoes, and
other buildings of the famous sanctuary of Hera.

TOPOGRAPHY1 AND SURVF.Y.

The Argive plain consists chiefly of an alluvium deposited during the course of ages.
It comprises an approximate area of one hundred square miles, extending from the
Gulf of Argos northerly about ten miles to the entrance of the gorge of Mycenae, and

Fig. 4G. — Argive Heraeum : View from the north.
Showing in the distance the hills back of Nauplia. The rocky eminence in the foreground is northeast of the

Old Temple.

as many miles east and west. This exceptionally flat expanse of country is bordered on
three sides by low foothills, beyond which roll higher hills and mountains like petrified
waves northward toward Corinth, eastward toward Epidaurus, and westward until they
blend with the mountains of Arcadia. The first ripple into which the plain breaks on

1 See also Introduction, pp. 10-25.
105