Let's remind that the so-called seven wonders of the world amazed people already in ancient times. The fame of them went around all the countries of that time, and the name - "seven wonders of the world" - appeared in Hellenic literature, apparently, in the 3rd century BC. e. However, there is reason to believe that the world could also receive an eighth miracle - the temple of Apollo near Miletus, if it were completed. It is curious, but the idea of a grandiose construction has matured not in the Greek metropolis, where culture has been honing its amazing understanding of harmony and beauty in art for centuries, but in the overseas territories of Greece, in its Asia Minor colonies. But before talking about the construction of the Temple of Apollo, let us make a small excursion into even more distant history to remind how the Greek territories arose in Asia Minor.
Ruins of the temple of Apollo in Didyma, near Miletus (Asia Minor), which could have become the eighth wonder of the world, had it been completed in due time
Miletus, the largest city-state, was built, as the excavations showed, strictly according to the plan. The picture shows the central part of the city and the surrounding residential areas
An example of the technology of ancient Greek builders. Flutes (grooves) on the body of the column were made after the marble blocks-drums were placed one on top of the other and received a smooth column. Only then were they drawn along a plumb line, marking the grooves.
In this way, the slaves lowered the marble blocks from the mountain where the quarry was located.
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This is how the road looks like today, along which marble blocks were lowered from the quarries.
In search of new lands
At the beginning of the second millennium BC, Greek tribes, known in history as the Achaeans, moved from north to south of the Balkan Peninsula and settled on the Peloponnese and some of the Aegean islands. Other tribes followed them south like waves of the sea for centuries.
One of the last to come to southern Greece in the XII century BC. e. Dorian tribes. Overpopulation made life for the Greeks all the more difficult, but the arrival of these warlike tribes, who seized power and imposed their own order, which corresponded to the relations of the clan system, which had already died out in Achaean society, was almost a disaster. Returning to the conditions of a past life for many meant an infringement of their rights as a free citizen, and sometimes a simple enslavement. All this gave birth to a craving to search for new lands.
The Greeks - experienced sailors - began to settle on the western coast of Asia Minor. Migration began long ago - after the collapse of the Hittite kingdom and the fall of Troy, no one defended these lands. The Aegean Sea, which separated them from Greece, was not an obstacle even for light ships. By the XII century BC. e. on the Asia Minor coast was already the Greek city-state of Miletus - the center of the province of Ionia, a large port and manufacturer of handicrafts at that time. The city was the main trading partner of Greece, through which it exchanged goods with the rest of Asia Minor.
In the 7th and 6th centuries BC. e. Miletus in its economic development was ahead of the cities of Greece itself. It went down in history as a major cultural center of the Ancient World. Here the so-called Milesian school of nature-philosophy was born, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes worked. Herodotus, who lived in Ionia, is called the father of historical science, Pythagoras, who was born in this province, is glorified for centuries.
In Miletus, apparently, there were conditions so that the human mind would not struggle in the dead end of everyday worries about survival, but could look broadly ahead. The first hypotheses related to astronomy, mathematics, physics, biology were born there. The first scientific instruments were created there: a sundial, a model of the celestial sphere, a gnomon - a device for determining the geographical latitude of a place. And the compass was invented there.
According to its layout, Miletus became the first city in the history of mankind, in which the idea of rational placement of parts of the city according to their purpose and taking into account the convenience of the townspeople was realized. This showed the democratic foundations of the life of the polis. A rectangular network of streets, residential quarters built up with houses of equal size, and outside the residential part there were shopping areas, sanctuaries and temples. The architecture of the Hellenistic cities, along with the construction of temples, included such buildings necessary for society as theaters, gymnasiums (this was the name of the schools of physical development, and then the places where philosophers and scientists gathered), bouleuteria (public and administrative buildings), palaces.
The idea to streamline the life of the city in this way belonged to Hippodamus of Miles. Following the example of Miletus, in antiquity, cities with a regular layout began to be built in Asia Minor and the Middle East. And today in cities built after feudalism, a rectangular scheme prevails.
Miletus has another merit: his sailors were the only ones among the Greeks who constantly drove ships with people looking for a new place to settle. Residents of mainland and insular Greece, if they decided to leave their homeland, first gathered in Miletus, from there ships with immigrants sailed. Greek colonies were based in large numbers on the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas - there were more than 80 of them.
Temple for the oracle
The increased role of Miletus and all Ionia in the life of the Greek people prompted the city fathers to think: do not the lands on the shores of Asia Minor need their oracle, and then its inhabitants, when solving important matters, will not every time get to the mainland, where in Delphi at the temple of Apollo there was a soothsayer, the pythia, who spoke the will of God. This idea was supported by the myth that Apollo was born in Ionia. The Milesians went to Delphi and received a kind of blessing from the Pythia, clothed in the words: "You need your oracle."
The construction of the temple of Apollo, where the oracle should dwell, was undertaken by the city of Miletus - its citizens felt pride, feeling themselves victors in the rivalry with the ancestral home, with mainland Greece. True, this was the time when the empire of Alexander the Great had already disintegrated, but the Greek influence in the eastern states - the heirs of the empire, remained strong, which gave reason to call this period of cultural development Hellenism. For its part, Greece also adopted the ideas and features of a peculiar culture coming from the East. Perhaps most of all they touched on art and architecture.
Hellenisian architecture is distinguished by the desire to develop huge open spaces (this is how the architects of the East worked, who built on the plains), thus achieving the effect of grandeur, impressing a person with the grandeur and boldness of design. Of the seven wonders of the world, four were created by the Greeks.
The Temple of Apollo was supposed to stand in the town of Didim and was thought of as something grandiose, many times superior to the majestic temple of Zeus at Olympia. The length of the sanctuary of Apollo reached 108 meters, and in width - 50, while the main temple of Greece, the Temple of Zeus, was only 64 meters long. The temple of Zeus had only 34 columns, while the temple in Didim had 120, and their diameter was 2.3 meters, and the height was 20 meters. According to the calculations of today's archaeologists, the then builders could make one such column only in a year.
Two centuries have passed since the beginning of construction (in 300 BC), and the temple was not even half finished. As the records of those times say, Apollo, to whom the temple was dedicated, "expressed" through the Delphic pythia his disapproval of the slow progress of the work. But Miletus was now in crisis and was no longer as rich as before. Presumably, the authorities of Miletus formed a commission (as they often do in our days), which was supposed to get acquainted with the state of affairs at the construction site. A strange fact suggests this idea: all the finished columns were displayed on the facade in such a way that the impression was created that the work would be completed soon.
The ancient Greek geographer Strabo wrote about the delay in construction and explained it by the fact that there was not enough material for the roof, and even then the engineers did not know how to block such a huge temple. Construction finally ceased in the 1st century AD. e., when Christianity expelled the Olympic gods from these lands. Two centuries later, hordes of Goths invaded Asia Minor, and the marble of the temple was useful to the local population for defensive structures. The earthquake of 1446 was another destroyer of the construction site in Didim.
Now tourists admire the Cyclopean ruins, giving an idea of how majestic the eighth wonder of the world could have looked if it were completed. There is also a practical benefit from the fact that we got an unfinished building. On the marble walls, which had not yet received final polishing, the then architects and mechanics drew various building units. Nowhere, it seems, historians can learn in such detail as here about the technology of construction in those ancient times.