page_title: Temple of Athena (Syracuse)
section_title: Architecture and pictorial decoration
hierarchical_section_title: Temple of Athena (Syracuse) / Architecture and pictorial decoration
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Ricostruzione tempio di Athena
context_page_description: The Temple of Athena is a hexastyle peripteral Doric temple built in Syracuse in the 5th century BC by the tyrant Gelo after his victory over the Carthaginians at the Battle of Himera.
  The temple was preceded by a cult site which dated back to the 8th century BC, with an altar discovered in excavation at the beginning of the twentieth century, and by an earlier temple from the middle of the sixth century BC.
context_section_description: It contained another temple too, consecrated to Minerva, which was very ornate and beautiful. In the pediment was the gilt copper shield of Minerva, which was so large that it was visible to sailors on the high seas. Those who left the port of Syracuse would lift a cup or a glass made of clay from near the altar of the goddess outside the walls near the temple of Zeus, when they were so distant that they could no longer see the shield, and they would fill it with apples, incense, spices and flowers and throw it all into the sea in honour of Neptune and Minerva. After performing this sacrifice, according to superstition, they continued happily on their journey.
  — Tommaso Fazello, Storia di Sicilia, p.293
  This is the description which Tommaso Fazello gave of the gilt shield located in the pediment of the Syracusan temple.
  From Cicero, who lists the decorations pillaged by Verres, we know that it was decorated with ivory, golden bosses on the doors, and a series of painted panels depicting a cavalry battle between Agathokles and the Carthaginians, as well as 27 portraits of the city's tyrants.
caption: Reconstruction of the front of the Temple of Athena with the gilded shield
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