The dramatic location of the ancient Greek sanctuary of Poseidon at Sounion, sited on a

cliff overlooking the Aegean 60 km south of Athens, is uniquely appropriate to the Greek god of

the sea. The earliest ritual activity on the site dates to the beginning of the 7th century BCE, a

period when Athens was expanding its influence and power throughout the Attic peninsula. How

did Sounion fit into this expansion? I will approach this question in two ways, first by using GIS

to analyze the physical relationship between the two sites. Later I will examine the votives and

architecture on the site to reveal further material connections between Sounion and Athens. They

are further bound by Poseidon’s mythic connections. But to explain why the sanctuary of

Sounion gained prominence in the 7th century BC, and what part its location might have played

in that importance, we must turn to theory. Robin Osborne’s work on broader archaeological

trends in 7th century Attica fills in some of the explanation, while de Polignac’s theoretical model

of the development of archaic extraurban sanctuaries may be applied to the votives, providing

further explanation of the sanctuary’s significance in the archaic period.

In his influential work Cults, Territory, and the Origins of the Greek City-State, François

de Polignac proposed the model of the bipolar polis to explain why some extraurban sanctuaries

grew and became monumentalized in the 8th century BC, parallel to the development of the first

Greek city-states, or poleis.1 These extraurban sanctuaries were sited on territorial borders—

natural or political—and were bound to the polis by ritual, usually involving a procession from

the city out to the extraurban sanctuary.

Though it matched the evidence at many Archaic extraurban sanctuaries, De Polignac’s

original bipolar polis model did not fit so comfortably onto the Athenian evidence. Athens had

1
De Polignac 1995: 32-88. The original French text was published in 1984, but the page numbers quoted refer to the
English translation by Janet Lloyd, published in 1995.
no single major extraurban sanctuary, and its major civic festival, the Panathenaia, began on the

periphery of the city and moved inward to the Acropolis, the exact opposite of the bipolar polis.2

Athens is not absent from de Polignac’s models, however. He has suggested that by the

sixth century BCE the sanctuary of Poseidon at Cape Sounion was manifesting Athenian

sovereignty at the furthest tip of the Attic peninsula.3 He goes so far as to draw a distinct axis

between Athens and Sounion on a map in his 1994 article. Yet he does not elucidate exactly how

Athens and Sounion were connected across a distance of more than 60 km, and what threads—

spatial, economic, artistic, or mythical—bound these two communities together, from the earliest

signs of activity at Sounion in the 8th century BCE down into the classical period.

Any assertions of a relationship between the city of Athens and the sanctuaries at

Sounion—particularly a relationship involving a concept so politically important as sovereignty

—implies some sort of spatial connection which would facilitate travel. There is some indication

that, in the classical period, travel to Sounion for ritual purposes was accomplished by ship.

During a longer description of a war between Athens and Aegina, Herodotus describes an

Aeginetan ambush in 491 BCE which resulted in the capture of a sacred ship at Sounion,

carrying many leading Athenian men:

kai\ h{n ga\r dh\ toi=si 0Aqhnai/oisi pentethri\j e0pi\ Souniw|, loxh/santej w{n th\n qewri/da

ne/a ei{lon plh/rea a0ndrw=n tw=n prw/twn 0Aqhnai/wn…

…and while a five-year festival was happening for the Athenians at Sounion, [the Aeginetans]

having set an ambush seized the sacred ship full of the foremost Athenian men…

2
De Polignac 1995: 81-88.
3
De Polignac 1995: 85; De Polignac 1994: 14.
 --Herodotus, VI.87

The noun qewri/j is intriguing for its associations; it can mean a sacred ship (clarified

here by the addition of ne/a) or the road by which the theoroi traveled. The use of this word

might imply that the men on this ship were theoroi, a group of state delegates who travelled to

sanctuaries for festivals (usually arranging for a sacrifice to be performed on behalf of their

home city) or to panhellenic athletic competitions.4 The term for the delegation, theoria, literally

means ‘watching’ or ‘spectacle’, and may imply that “delegates from one city do not share fully

in a festival or ritual staged by the city which controls the sanctuary.”5

The passage from Herodotus has further implications. The theoria was a single ship

bearing a group of elite Athenians whose identification as theoroi suggests that they may not

have been the main participants in the festival. Though Athens clearly took a role in the festival

and reinforced its connection to Sounion by taking part in regular ceremonies there, presumably

the festival also involved other participants who may not have come to Sounion on a sacred ship,

or even by ship at all. We know that worshippers walked in processions to two other Attic

extraurban sanctuaries, Eleusis and Brauron, and there is some evidence to suggest that some

thought travel by foot ‘gave more honor to the god’. It is worth considering how someone

wishing to take part in this festival might have traveled to Cape Sounion by land, and what

route(s) might have connected Athens and Sounion.

The ancient Greek road system in Attica has not yet been mapped and is sparsely attested

archaeologically. The most complete route known is the Sacred Way between Athens and

Eleusis, which was lined with various temples and sacred sites. It seems reasonable that, if there

4
Elsner & Rutherford 2005: 12-14.
5
Elsner & Rutherford 2005: 12.
was a road which connected Athens and Sounion and was used by people traveling to a

quinquennial festival, it might have also attracted similar religious sites along its route.

GIS modeling—specifically, least-cost path analysis—has been used to suggest possible

travel routes in the ancient world. It incorporates factors—in this case, slope and elevation—into

a cost layer, where each cell is given a ‘cost’. As the route passes from cell to cell, it adds cost.

The GIS calculates the route from point A to point B which accumulates the least cost. Any

attempt to model such a route between Athens and Sounion must also take into account possible

sites along the way (especially religious sites), as well as at least one community where travelers

could spend the night, since the overall distance between Athens and Sounion is over 60km and

could not have been traveled on foot in one day.

My first analysis took into account only slope and elevation, to see which route the

terrain would have dictated as the easiest path. The route predicted was about 69km (42mi) long,

running north of Mt. Hymettos, across the Mesogaian plain, through a valley just north of Mt.

Panaion, and then along the east coast of Attica past Thorikos and Laurion down to Sounion.

Archaeological evidence along this route—for religious sites or settlements—is relatively sparse.

It is interesting, however, that a modern guide to Sounion describes two roads available to the

tourist traveling to the cape: the coast road (67km) and the ‘old road’ (64km) which passes

through the Mesogaian plain.6

There is a cluster of settlement sites and religious sites in the modern municipality Vari-

Voula-Vouliagmeni, just south of the southern foot of Mt. Hymettos, which might have offered

both a stop for the night and an additional religious experience to pilgrims on their way to

Sounion. During the Archaic period (roughly the 8th through 6th centuries BC) on the hill of

6
Tataki 1983: 16.
Lathouriza there was both an ancient settlement and a sanctuary enclosed by a wall.7 The

sanctuary had a small Geometric shrine and, on the peak of the hill, the foundations of an oblong

double temple. On a saddle below the sanctuary were several rounded, apsidal or rectangular

rooms which are partly built adjoining each other and partly detached—a settlement, occupied

from the 8th to the 5th centuries BCE, which also contained “cult rooms with benches, which were

built onto the walls, and lodgings for pilgrims” as well as a circular walled open-air sanctuary

with evidence of burning and terracotta figurines.8

Vari-Voula-Vouliagmeni and Lathouriza are located about 20-25km away from Athens.

This would be a manageable one-day journey for a Greek traveling between Athens and

Sounion, and thus offers a reasonable overnight point. The evidence for potential lodging for

pilgrims lends additional support to this suggestion, as well as the fact that a settlement existed

here in some form as early as the 8th century BCE—just a little bit earlier than Sounion’s first

votive activity.

The route initially heads south of Athens along the western coast to Lathouriza, and then

cuts into the middle of the Attic peninsula to rejoin the first projected path, down the east coast

to Thorikos. The distances crossed by this second path are reasonable for a traveler who stopped

at Lathouriza and again at Thorikos—25km (15.5mi) from Athens to Lathouriza, then 36km

(22mi) from Lathouriza to Thorikos, and a final 13km or 8mi from Thorikos to Sounion. Still the

path as projected does not really seem to be the most reasonable route, even though it is the

easiest route in terms of slope and elevation.

One would expect the road between Athens and Sounion to pass down the west coast,

which would involve going through Vari-Voula-Vouliagmeni and Lathouriza. Further down the

7
Goette 2001: 190-192.
8
Goette 2001: 192.
coast the traveler might also have gone through the deme of Anavyssos, archaeologically known

only from its Archaic cemetery, which yielded some very high quality Archaic sculptures

including two kouroi.9 Particularly considering the inscription associated with the earlier of the

two kouroi (the Kroisos kouros, dated ca. 530 BCE), which commands passersby to “stop and

mourn by the grave monument of Kroisos, killed amongst the champions by the war-god Ares”,

it seems likely that these graves were meant to be seen and that a road passed through this area.10

There are problems with my current least-cost model. It does not yet take into account the

locations of various demes in Attica, which are known from inscriptions rather than

archaeological evidence. It might also be possible to reconstruct some of the road network which

must have connected these deme centers by mapping herms and particularly impressive grave

monuments, which were meant to be seen by passersby. It also appears that the Greeks did not

always choose the easiest routes. When the current model was applied to the cities of Athens and

Eleusis, the projected path between them ran north of Mt. Aigaleo, instead of through the pass in

the middle of the hill which the Sacred Way used.

Another factor in both the location of the temples and the paths leading to them may have

been the visual impact of the structures themselves. The location of the temple of Poseidon is

visually striking even today, emphasized by the coastal approach of the modern road. One

method for considering the temples’ visual impact is viewshed analysis, where a GIS takes into

account the elevation of the surrounding landscape and predicts which areas could be seen from

a certain observer point. Taking the precinct of Poseidon as the observer point, the viewshed

analysis reveals some interesting patterns.

9
Goette 2001: 116 & 200.
10
Ibid.
 First I tested what areas of the peninsula would have been visible from the site of the

temple. Visibility was clearly concentrated to the west and north of the temple; the eastern

approach, including the least-cost path, was not readily visible from the temple. Along the road

projected by the cost-path analysis, the temple of Poseidon at Sounion probably first became

visible about 5km (3mi) away. Then the temple disappears from view for about two km, until the

path descends to hug the coast about 3km (1.8mi) from the destination. While the road follows

the coast, affording the traveler stunning views of the sea, it seems that the temple was largely

hidden from the eastern side by the ridge of the cape. Even quite close, at a distance of about

1km, the entire cape was not visible, according to this viewshed analysis (fig. 10). At a half-

kilometer, the southeast side of the cape becomes more visible, but it is also possible that some

part of the temple was tall enough to be seen at this point.

The spatial connection between Athens and Sounion requires further study. A potential

‘sacred way’ is difficult to pinpoint because so little is known about the road network of Attica

or the settlements and religious sites that might have been located along the route. GIS suggests

that the easiest route ran down the center of Attica, then veered along the eastern coast past

Thorikos. Evidence from the Sacred Way between Athens and Eleusis, however, makes it clear

that the Greeks did not always choose the easiest path, and the other archaeological remains from

the western coast of Attica suggest that a route following that coast is not implausible. On land,

the temples were most visible when being approached from the northwest, but the Greeks had a

keen eye for dramatic visuals and might well have manipulated the path approaching Sounion for

maximum visual impact.

The impressive votives dedicated at Sounion in the 7th and 6th centuries BC also

demonstrate the relationship between Athens and Sounion, and help explain Francois de
Polignac’s assertion that “…the sanctuaries of Cape Sounion, the ‘Cycladic’ extreme of the

territory, had until [the annexation of Eleusis] been the principal manifestation of Athenian

sovereignty over the region.”

The cape actually contains two sanctuaries to Poseidon and Athena. In the earliest period

of activity, the evidence at Sounion is sparse but spectacular. One pit, found near the Poseidon

temple, contained material from the 7th century BCE—bronze implements and weapons,

terracotta plaques, statuettes and vases, beads, Egyptian scarabs, and a Near Eastern (probably

Syrian) cast bronze figurine of the storm-god Baal.11 Fragments of several kouroi statues—stone

representations of male youths—were also buried nearby. A second pit, dug near the Athena

temple on the northern hill, contained objects from the early 7th to the early 5th centuries BCE,

including more fragments of kouroi statues, terracotta busts of Athena, some weapons, scarabs,

and Proto-Corinthian, Corinthian, and Rhodian pottery dating to the 7th and 6th centuries BCE.

No temple structures from this period have survived, though perishable structures may have

existed for both Athena and Poseidon.

These 7th century BCE pits represent the earliest ritual activity on the site. Robin

Osborne’s work on Attica in the 7th century BCE has traced an expansion of cult activity

throughout Attica, beginning in the 8th century BCE and continuing into the 7th, when cult

activity first appeared at Sounion.12 He explained this cult expansion “in terms of the marking

out of claims to an interest in the whole territory of Classical Attica by members of a

community.” Part of this argument is based on his research into the Salaminioi clan, who had

responsibility for several priesthoods geographically focused at Athens and at Sounion in the

Classical period.13 These did not include the cults of Poseidon and Athena at Sounion, but

11
Dinsmoor 1970: 3-4.
12
Osborne 1994: 148-151.
13
Osborne 1994: 155.
Osborne has concluded that the Salaminioi were likely involved with the cult expansion to

Sounion, based on the scant historical evidence for them and their responsibilities in Athens.

In his article “Mediation, Competition, and Sovereignty: The Evolution of Rural

Sanctuaries in Geometric Greece,” de Polignac developed a three part model to explain the

development of extraurban sanctuaries in the period 900-700 BCE. At first these religious sites

served as a place of mediation between multiple communities or—for coastal sanctuaries such as

Sounion—between Greeks and foreigners. Over time more—and more spectacular—offerings

were being dedicated at the sanctuaries. De Polignac suggested that ritualized social competition,

expressed through prestige offerings, could explain this phenomenon. He observed that because

these rural sanctuaries were central and shared, displays of wealth and political power could be

presented before the eyes of all. “The medial sanctuary…became the site of an appropriation

which was at first symbolic and then actual, as a power centre formed itself nearby which

reorganized regional relations for its own advantage and thus gave birth to the first form of

state.”

These three phases—mediation, competition, and the expression of sovereignty—can be

found at Sounion as well, by examining the votives. Cape Sounion, located at the southernmost

tip of Attica, was ideally suited for mediation between foreigners and residents of Attica. In both

of the early pits at Sounion, imported objects were found. In the pit near the temple of Poseidon,

Egyptian scarabs from 685-525 BCE and a bronze Syrian figurine of the storm-god Baal were

deposited, while the pit near the temple of Athena held imported pottery dating to the 7th and 6th

centuries BCE. Though it is impossible to know whether the imported objects being dedicated at

Sounion in the earliest periods were left by foreign sailors or by Attic elites who were

demonstrating their wealth and foreign connections, it seems plausible that the cape might have
served as a mediatory stop for foreign sailors on their way to Athens or elsewhere on the

mainland.

The second factor in de Polignac’s model of the development of these rural sanctuaries is

ritualized social competition through dedicatory offerings. The location of the sanctuary—

particularly the ability to travel to a remote place—might have increased the prestige of

dedicating there. Moreover some of the early dedications point to elite involvement in the

sanctuary, including objects which may have been imported, painted terracotta plaques, and

stone statuary, particularly the kouroi.

The magnificent kouroi of Sounion are dated to the late 7th and early 6th centuries BCE,

and are some of the earliest examples of the type. Two of the more complete Sounion kouroi

have been estimated at 3.05m tall (10 feet); extensive weathering suggests that they were on

display in the open air for some time.14 All total, fragments of seventeen kouroi were found in the

precinct of Poseidon, while the pit in the precinct of Athena yielded five kouroi from life-size to

half-life-size.15 The Sounion kouroi are paralleled by two further kouroi known to come from

Athens. Richter suggests that they are so similar in execution and share so many anatomical

peculiarities not found elsewhere, that they may be assigned to a single workshop.16

These kouroi statues were clearly set up by wealthy elites; if the Sounion kouroi and the

early Athenian kouroi derive from a single workshop, it is plausible that the workshop was

situated at Athens. Herodotus mentioned a festival at Sounion which was attended by a ship full

of Athenian elites, a festival which presumably had been in existence for some time. The

individual prestige value of the kouroi is highlighted by the inscriptions which adorned them,

now too weathered to read. It is clear from their size and weathering that they were meant to be

14
Richter 1970: 43; Dinsmoor 1970: 11.
15
Dinsmoor 1970: 11, 39.
16
Richter 1970: 30.
seen. Whether the viewers were fellow elites or less powerful visitors, the kouroi became part of

a dialogue of competition.

The third part of de Polignac’s model is the stage when the sanctuary begins to express

the sovereignty of the power center developing nearby. In the Archaic period, political power at

Athens lay in the hands of the elite. Competition among the elite, showing off their wealth and

power, might also have been intended to reflect the wealth and power of the city-state they

controlled. It is impossible to know for certain where the statues stood on the cape, though it is

interesting to note that the kouroi fragments associated with the Athena temple, which was at a

lower elevation and not nearly as well-placed for visibility, were only life-size to half-life-size.

In contrast at least some of the kouroi associated with the Poseidon temple were greater than life-

size, perhaps suggesting that they were intended to have greater visibility from the cape. It is

tempting to imagine that they might have been visible from the sea, appearing as larger-than-life

stone watchmen advertising the power and wealth of Athens to passing sailors.

By the Classical period, Sounion was firmly situated within Athenian territory. A marble

temple to Poseidon was constructed between 444 and 440 BCE. The temple of Athena, located

on a lower hill a slight distance away, was built during the second half of the 5th century BCE,

but little is left today.

Poseidon and Athena famously competed to become the protector and namesake of

Athens, a sort of religious sovereign.17 Poseidon lost, and it is interesting that he received very

little cultic acknowledgment within the city of Athens. On the Acropolis, his contest with Athena

was memorialized by a pool of salt water and the olive tree, as well as the sculpture depicting

their mythic contest on the west pediment of the Parthenon. Poseidon seems to have had an altar

17
Herodotus VIII.55; Plut. Them. 19; Paus. 1.24.5; Paus. 1.26.5; Ov. Met. 6.70ff.; Hyginus, Fab. 164.
in the Erechtheion, on which sacrifices were also made to Erechtheus, an archaic king of Athens,

thus further connecting Poseidon to the line of Athenian kings.18

In the contest for patron deity of Athens, Poseidon lost to Athena, and was given only a

minor role on her acropolis. At Sounion, however, the situation was reversed; the main temple

was dedicated to Poseidon, while Athena held the less important sanctuary. At Sounion Poseidon

was honored from the early 7th century BCE, and his sanctuary may be Athens’ attempt to mark

the southernmost tip of its territory from an early period. Robin Osborne’s work on seventh

century Attica suggests that communities may have been using cult to mark territorial boundaries

from the 7th century BCE. De Polignac’s model of sanctuary development through mediation,

competition, and sovereignty may be usefully applied to explain Sounion’s early prominence.

Sounion was connected to Athens by land and sea routes, by a common material culture and a

common body of citizens who took part in the quinquennial festival, and by mythology

concerning Poseidon and Athena. The 5th century temple stands today, as the marble kouroi did

before, as a mute but magnificent testimony to the wealth and power of Archaic and Classical

Athens.

18
Pausanias 1.26.5.