altar of Hieron

• Name — Altar of Hieron • Type — Sacrificial altar • Built — Third century BC • Location — Syracuse, Sicily, Italy • Management — Regione Siciliana • Public Access — fenced off • Designation1 — WHS • Designation1 Offname — Syracuse and the Rocky Necropolis of Pantalica • Designation1 Date — 2005 • Designation1 Number — 1200

The altar is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus, who attributes its construction to Hiero II. Stylistic analysis of the sculptural fragments from the altar confirms this, showing that they were made at the same time as the third phase of the nearby Greek theatre, which belongs after 235 BC. The votive deposit in the natural grotto under the eastern side of the altar shows that the area was already a sacred site in the Archaic period, not long after the city of Syracuse was established. One argument suggests that the altar was dedicated to Zeus Eleutherius (Zeus the Liberator) and was used to celebrate the Eleutheria festival, which commemorated the expulsion of the last Deinomenid tyrant, Thrasybulus of Syracuse in 466 and feature the sacrifice of 450 bulls. The size of this sacrifice would explain the scale of the altar. Caroline Lehmler questions most aspects of this reconstruction. She argues that the altar was dedicated to Olympian Zeus, on the grounds that Zeus Eleutherius was associated with the overthrow of autocrats and Hieron II was a monarch himself and is not otherwise known to have cultivated Zeus Eleutherius, but is known to have carried out several other public works honouring Olympian Zeus. Lehmler stresses, however that the two names are different epithets of the same deity, rather than distinct gods. Lehmler also questions whether sacrifices were carried out on the altar itself, since it would be difficult to get animals up the narrow stairways. She suggests that the animals were slaughtered in the courtyard area and then the parts of the animal that were allotted to the gods were carried up the stairs to be burnt on the altar. Other suggestions, not necessarily mutually exclusive, are that the altar, as well as the nearby theatre, played a role in meetings of the League of the Sicilians which was placed under Hiero's control after the First Punic War, or that it was built for the five hundredth anniversary of Syracuse's foundation. At a more general level it served to aggrandise Hiero, as its builder, demonstrating his wealth and piety. In this, it represented the culmination of a long Sicilian Greek tradition of monumental altars - the 54.5 metre long altar of the fifth-century Temple of Olympian Zeus at Agrigento is an important precursor.

From late antiquity onwards, the altar was quarried away as raw material for other structures in Syracuse, most recently for the Spanish fortifications of Ortygia at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Amateur archaeological excavations were undertaken by Giuseppe Maria Capodieci in 1780, Saverio Landolina in 1813, and F.S. Cavallari in 1839. The only systematic and scientific excavations of the site were undertaken by Robert Koldewey and Otto Puchstein in 1893. All subsequent study of the altar has been based on their findings.

• Illustration — The altar at the beginning of the 20th century • Illustration — Detail of the altar • Illustration — View of the northern staircase of the altar, from the northwest