page_title: Amphiareion of Oropos
section_title: Temple of Amphiaraos
hierarchical_section_title: Amphiareion of Oropos / Sanctuary of Amphiaraos / Temple of Amphiaraos
caption_attribution_description: English: J. M. Harrington, personal digital image
context_page_description: The Amphiareion of Oropos, situated in the hills 6 km southeast of the fortified port of Oropos, was a sanctuary dedicated in the late 5th century BCE to the hero Amphiaraos, where pilgrims went to seek oracular responses and healing. It became particularly successful during the 4th century BCE, to judge from the intensive building at the site. The hero Amphiaraos was a descendant of the seer Melampos and initially refused to participate in the attack on Thebes because he could foresee that it would be a disaster. In some versions of the myth, the earth opens and swallows the chariot of Amphiaraos, transforming him into a chthonic hero. Today the site is found east of the modern town Markopoulo Oropou in the Oropos municipality of Attica, Greece
  The sanctuary is located 37.2 km NNE of Athens at a sacred spring; it contained a temple of Amphiaraos, as well as a theater, stoa, and associated structures. The temenos extended for some 240 metres northeast from the Temple of Amphiaraos along a streambed. The cult, which was both public and private, dates to the 5th century BCE.
context_section_description: The early 4th-century BCE temple of Amphiaraos was of an unusual Doric hexastyle in antis plan: i.e. it had six columns across the front façade between small projecting walls. The antae were capped with half columns, giving the appearance of an octastyle façade. It measures 14 by 28 m (46 by 92 ft) Behind the columns was a pronaos, leading into a cella with two rows of five unfluted internal columns. Alongside the second pair of columns back from the pronaos there was a base for the acrolithic cult statue of Amphiaraos of which one arm remains in situ. In the rear wall of the cella, there was a threshold, perhaps a later addition.
  On axis with the center line of the temple, and about 10.5 m (34 ft) northeast, are the remains of the altar divided into sections with inscriptions to a number of gods and heroes. Pausanias (1.34.3) says that the altar was dedicated to five groups:
  Heracles, Zeus and Apollo the Healer (Παιών)
  Heroes and heroes’ wives
  Hestia, Hermes, Amphiaraos, and of the children of Amphiaraos, Amphilochos
  Aphrodite, Panacea ("all-cure"), Iaso, Hygeia, and Athena the Healer (Παιωνία)
  Nymphs and Pan; the rivers Achelous and Cephisus
  Wrapping around the altar on the west side is a stepped structure that may have served as an early theatral area before the construction of the theater. Immediately to the east is the sacred spring, where Pausanias says worshipers threw coins when they were healed of a disease. Immediately northeast of the spring is the structure traditionally called the men’s bath.
  To the northeast of the temple was a line of dedications of statuary, of which the bases (illustration, right) have largely survived; the avenue stretched for around 70 m (230 ft) along the road into the sanctuary. Among the more notable dedications, all of the Roman era:
  42 BCE inscription honoring Marcus Junius Brutus as a Tyrannicide
  86–81 BCE inscription for the Roman dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla
  post-27 BCE inscription for Marcus Agrippa
  1st BCE inscription for Appius Claudius Pulcher
  inscription for Gnaius Calpurnius Piso
  There are also the remains of a small temple at the southwest extremity of this area.
caption: Interior view of the Temple of Amphiaraos showing interior colonnade and arm of an acrolithic statue
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