Temple of Athena Alea: The Arcadian Masterpiece of Tegea

The Story of the Temple of Athena Alea

High on the plateau of Arcadia, in the heart of the Peloponnese, lay the city of Tegea, one of the most important Arcadian cities and a frequent rival of nearby Sparta. Its greatest sanctuary was dedicated to Athena Alea, a goddess who combined the great Olympian Athena with an older local deity named Alea. The sanctuary was so revered that it served as a place of asylum, where fugitives, even exiled kings of Sparta, could take refuge without fear of being seized.

Local legend said the sanctuary was founded by Aleus, an early king of Tegea. His daughter Auge served as priestess of Athena, and according to myth she became the mother of a son by the hero Heracles. The child, Telephus, was abandoned and later grew up to become a king in Asia Minor, where he fought against the Greeks on their way to Troy. The story of Auge and Telephus was deeply tied to Tegea and appeared again and again in its art.

The old temple of Athena Alea burned down in 395 BC. The people of Tegea commissioned a new one from Scopas of Paros, one of the most celebrated sculptors of the 4th century BC, who served as its architect. The travel writer Pausanias describes it as surpassing all other temples in the Peloponnese in size and beauty. It was a Doric temple of marble, with 6 columns across each end and 14 along each side, while inside, half columns with Corinthian capitals lined the walls, an elegant combination of styles.

The temple's pediments told two great myths. The east pediment showed the Calydonian boar hunt, in which heroes including Meleager and the huntress Atalanta faced a monstrous boar sent by Artemis. The west pediment showed the battle between Telephus and Achilles in Asia Minor. Surviving fragments of heads from these sculptures, with their deep set eyes and intense expressions, are among the most admired works attributed to Scopas.

The sanctuary held famous relics too. Pausanias reports that the tusks and hide of the Calydonian boar were kept here. According to him, the emperor Augustus took the tusks to Rome after defeating Mark Antony, because the people of Tegea had sided with his enemy. The story shows how valuable such legendary objects were, both as religious treasures and as symbols of a city's pride.

Over the centuries the temple collapsed, and much of it was reused as building material, while the site was covered by the village of Alea. Excavations led by French archaeologists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries revealed the foundations of the temple and many of its sculptures, and further work has since added to our knowledge of the sanctuary. Finds from Tegea are displayed in the local archaeological museum and in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

Today the Temple of Athena Alea lies in the village of Alea, near the town of Tripoli, the capital of Arcadia. You can walk around the foundations and see column drums and blocks scattered across the site, with the mountains of Arcadia on the horizon. Visit the Archaeological Museum of Tegea nearby to see sculptures from the sanctuary, and imagine the fugitives who once ran to the goddess's altar seeking protection.