This is an article which I published to be associated with Athens in Hellas, I think it mught be of interest in this group so I offer it here.

The Olympieion Now, it sits alone with but little of it left in an open field of brown and bare soil in the center of the busy city, like a wound in the green parks around it. The empty space seems out of place in crowded Athens. The greatest temple in all of Hellas, The Olympeion. It's on the tour and only a few blocks from The Acropolis, a short walk; many visit it. There isn't much to see, 15 of its columns standing and a 16th on the ground where a storm toppled it in 1852. Like all of the antiquities of Athens there is scaffolding around it, but one can easily see the scope of the thing; it was enormous. It has a history of its own dating back to before there was an Athens and continuing to the time of The Emperor Hadrian. At a glance your mind re constucts the size of the building: it was very big indeed. Its history recalls the whole story of ancient Hellas from the beginning to the end. It was a place sacred to Zeus before the time of memory, simply an open space where sacrifice was offered to the king of the Gods. It was in the time of the dictators when Peisistratos ordered a temple to be built here and the work began, it would continue off and on, for 700 years. When the last tyrant, Hippias was overthrown, the construction began by Peisistratos stopped for the first time. Athens changed. These kinds of great works became out of fashion with the democratic Greeks; they thought them huberistic and un democratic. The Olympeion sat there unfinished, a reminder of past tyrannies. Philip II of Macedon rose to power in the 4th century BCE and after him, his son, The Great Alexander. The Olympeion sat still unfinished. Silent and accusatory, it waited for a hundred years in the shadow of the Acropolis until, once again the world around it changed. And then in Hellenistic times, the era of the great god kings came to pass. They advertised their magnificence with colossal works throughout the Mediterranean world. Great buildings and gigantic statues appeared to trumpet to the world of the wealth and power of their builders. It was only a matter of time before someone's eye should fall upon the unfinished Olympeion. The power and wealth of Athens had long ago slipped by, but it remained the center of Hellenistic culture. What better place to display a great king's world influence than Athens, itself? It was in this time that the temple once again came to the eye of a tyrant. What better opportunity for a great king? Here was already begun a temple to the king of the gods, bigger than The Parthenon, and in the heart of Athens. In 174 BCE. Antiochos IV who styled himself, Epiphanes (god made manifest), resumed construction on The Olympieion. He was known for his devotion to Zeus as the chief god in his vast kingdom in The Near East and the opportunity was an appropriate way for him to display his wealth and power in Athens. He engaged a Roman architect named, Decimus Cossutius to re design and build the temple. It is for this reason that the building has a curious out of place look in Athens, the style is very much Roman. The existing Ionic structure was scrapped in favor of the more ornate and eastern Corinthian architecture so favored by the Romans. Antiochos reigned for only 12 years and upon his death his kingdom was racked by internal succession wars and the work once again was halted. Again The Olympieion stood silent, without a roof, waiting. Once again a powerful autocrat looked upon The Olympieion as an opportunity to associate himself with both Zeus and Athens. This time it was Hadrian, emperor of Rome and a Hellenophile. He not only completed the great temple, but also placed into it two gigantic chryselephantine statues side by side, Zeus , king of the gods and Hadrian emperor of Rome. The message was obvious. The Olympieion was complete after all the centuries of work. From the start only autocrats had worked upon it. It stood as a monument to strong totalitarian power. There are no surviving images, but it is not difficult to re construct the plan. It was in the usual manner of a Greek Temple, rectangular and raised upon a platform. The corinthian columns were of white pentelic marble from the nearby quarries. From the bases it can be ascertained that there were 104 of them measuring 55.75 feet in height and 6.5 feet in diameter, a proportion not designed for great stability In earthquake prone Greece, it was doomed from the beginning. there were 48 columns in triple rows (tripteral octastyle) under the pediments and 56 in double rows (dipteral eikosastyle) along the sides. The roof most likely of dressed stone would have been at a low angle and as a result there would have been triangular pediments probably highly decorated. It would certainly have been impressive, but then that was the idea. No one knows what happened to it. There is no record of it's destruction and none of its use. It was simply an aggrandizement of autocratic power and the people of the city could have had little interest in it other than the prestige value of the thing. It most certainly would have fallen piece by piece in earthquakes. It was never kept in repair after there were no more autocrats interested in associating themselves with Zeus. In the Christian era which closely followed, the stones were most likely used for other constructions. The building had an ill fate from the beginning.