The Temple of Dionysus was a sanctuary on ancient
Naxos
Naxos (; el, Νάξος, ) is a Greek island and the largest of the Cyclades. It was the centre of archaic Cycladic culture. The island is famous as a source of emery, a rock rich in corundum, which until modern times was one of the best ab ...
dedicated to
Dionysus
In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus (; grc, Διόνυσος ) is the god of the grape-harvest, winemaking, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity, and theatre. The Roma ...
.
[Vassilis Lambrinoudakis, Gottfried Gruben: Das neuentdeckte Heiligtum von Iria auf Naxos. In: Archäologischer Anzeiger. 1987, S. 569–621.] Naxos was one of the cult centers of Dionysus in
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of Classical Antiquity, classical antiquity ( AD 600), th ...
, and the sanctuary at Naxos was one of his main temples along with the temple in
Thebes.
The site of the sanctuary was a place for a fertility cult as early as 1400 BC. Several temples were constructed on the site prior to the final temple.
If still in use by the 4th century CE, the temple would have been closed during the
persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire, when the Christian emperors issued edicts prohibiting non-Christian worship.
The site has been subjected to excavation since 1986.
See also
*
List of Ancient Greek temples
This list of ancient Greek temples covers temples built by the Hellenic people from the 6th century BC until the 2nd century AD on mainland Greece and in Hellenic towns in the Aegean Islands, Asia Minor, Sicily and Italy ("Magna Graecia"), wher ...
References
N
Ancient Naxos
Ancient Greek archaeological sites in Greece
Destroyed temples
Buildings and structures in Naxos
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