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Modern Description: Beginning again at the eastern entrance, and taking the path to the right in the direction of the Mosque of the Loggia, there is visible to the left the base of a small, 2nd century BC, temple to Hercules— a popular semi-divinity in port-areas as the protector of stevedores and those involved in hard manual labour. The temple (7.20m x 4.80m) would latterly have stood in a cramped enclosure of buildings which further encroached on its space in the 3rd century AD, amongst which is a small fountain (with some of its marble revetment and terracotta water-pipes still in evidence) to the east. The temple was oriented north south, and the neat masonry of the base on its west side shows careful attention to the decorative effect of two colour-tones of marble.
At the extremity of this path (below and in front of the Mosque of the Loggia), are the remains of a very large brick structure at a higher level than the surrounding buildings, whose orientation is visibly at odds with everything else. This was an Early Christian basilica, built in the 5th century AD—perhaps after this area had been levelled by the earthquake of 469 AD—consisting of three aisles, which appear not to be interconnected and are separated by solid walls; its dimensions are an indication of the size of the Christian community on the island in this early period. A baptistery (again at higher level) with cruciform font stood just to the south. The basilica's apsidal east end has a raised floor, possibly to accommodate a crypt or martyrion below. At an obtuse angle across its west end and narthex, marches a row of columns which have been re-erected, with their acanthus leaf capitals, in the position they would have occupied before the basilica was built over the area. They constituted the front colonnade of the late 4th century BC, Harbour Stoa, which would have extended another 30 or 40m in both directions.
The marble of the columns is cipollino from Euboea; when polished, it would have been of a veined and translucent blue-green colour, reflecting the water of the harbour which it embellished.
Trismegistos Geo: 2796

Info: McGilchrist's Greek Islands

(From McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, © Nigel McGilchrist 2010, excerpted with his gracious permission. Click for the books)

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