The sun rose behind me, and the full moon sank ahead, as I set forth from my coastal campsite. Within a kilometer or two, the seaside trail had joined the sun in my wake. Another kilometer wrapped up the unpaved part of the day. The Agrigento sprawl kicked in soon after, first as a trickle, and then a flood, delivering a wave of big box stores, McDonald’s, and a Lidl supermarket where I was quite content to kill some time. Even with a leisurely pace, I was ahead of schedule, and as excited as I was to reach the Valley of the Temples, I didn’t aspire to sit in the parking lot for an hour.
Objectively, this was not a great walk, with long stretches on busy roads, especially in the midst of the morning commute. But once I was within range of ancient Akragas, all annoyances and distractions faded immediately from view, because multiple glorious Greek temples suddenly towered high overhead, maintaining a commanding view from the hills. Paestum hid its masterpieces from me until just moments before I reached the entrance gate. By contrast, Akragas demanded my attention, pulling me by the eyes straight uphill.
While a pair of other impressive, relatively-well represented temples flank it, the star of the show is indisputably the Temple of Concordia. How fortunate we are that such a place has been preserved–and preserved so well that it’s held alongside the Parthenon as the best preserved Doric temple in the world. That preservation, though, is neither a blind stroke of good fortune, nor an unmitigated success.
Built around 440 BC, we know little about the temple’s origins, or even which god or gods it was dedicated to. We have one of the first Sicilian historians to thank–and to blame–for the temple’s name. Tommaso Fazello, doing the best he could with what he had, discovered a Latin epigraph somewhat near the temple, which he translated as, “Temple of Concordia of the Agrigentines, made by the Republic of the Lilybaeans.” The “made by,” he determined, was a wry way of articulating that the neighboring Lilybaeans, defeated in conflict, had been forced to fund the initiative. Today, the inscription is instead translated as, “[Erected] by the republic of the Lilybaeans, as sacred to the concord of the Agrigentines.” And hey, even with different words, that could still convey the same general truth about the temple, if not for the facts that a) the inscription was produced 500 years after the temple’s construction, and b) the Lilybaean republic didn’t even exist until a century later. There’s a consensus among historians today that the “Concordia” in the name is fundamentally inaccurate and misplaced, and yet it persists. We have preserved the name, however incorrect.
Greek fell, Rome rose, and Christianity ascended, taking its place of preeminence in the 4th century AD. And then, there emerged the question of what to do about all those old, magnificent temples, gradually falling into disrepair, and honoring disreputable deities. As John Julius Norwich writes–much to Napoleon’s avid disagreement–once a building has been established as holy, that holiness tends to persist, even in new forms. This happened all across old Magna Graecia, most famously, perhaps, at the Parthenon in Athens and the Pantheon in Rome. So, too, it happened with the Temple of Concordia in 597.
Its transformation into a cathedral, though, wasn’t as simple as a local bishop tracking the real estate market for a place with lots of seating space and a great coastal view. As Livius explains in an entertaining post, we have a scandal to thank for this development. Archbishop Gregory II of Agrigento, beloved among the local folk, became a target of jealousy among bitter rivals, most notably Leucio. To discredit Gregory, they slipped a prostitute named Evodia into his chambers, and then arranged for her to be discovered the next morning. Gregory was arrested, but the locals put so much pressure on papal authorities that the defamed archbishop was smuggled off to sea and delivered to Rome for a trial. Somehow, two-and-a-half years passed before he finally got to make his case.
Conviction seemed a certainty; it was practically Gregory versus the world–or most of Agrigento, at least. But then, Evodia dramatically recanted, revealing the plot and naming names.
Gregory returned triumphant to Agrigento, but he refused to return to his old church, which had been tarnished by Leucio’s presence in his absence–leaving the same kind of grievous funk that my backpack is unfortunately gifting to every space it visits right now. Instead, Gregory moved outside the city limits, traveling to the Temple of Concordia for a new home. First, he needed to chase out its old tenants–a pair of pagan demons, named Eber and Raps. From there, he settled into the space, purging many of the old decorative elements and the altar, while also completely overhauling the back wall.
So on one hand, Gregory worked against the great task of preserving this glorious temple, making such substantial changes to the original structure. The same is true, of course, for the countless other temples that were retrofitted into churches. I’m not suggesting he should get a trophy or anything. On the other, though, there’s a reason that the Temple of Concordia stands out as such a preservation success today, and why many of the others are little more than piles of stone. All of the work performed under the guidance of Gregory and his followers resulted in a structure that was far better positioned to endure the countless earthquakes that have rattled Sicily over the years, and as a consequence it has also escaped raids from locals, hoping to scavenge free building materials. Cut rock was yesterday’s copper wiring.
Fast forward then to the 18th century. As happened around Europe during the Enlightenment, the church in the Temple of Concordia was deconsecrated in 1748, and soon after the pre-archaeologists arrived, eager to make their mark. Gabriele Castello, the Royal Custodian of Antiquities for the Val di Mazara, took the lead on Agrigento. He focused his efforts on eliminating Gregory’s influence all together, restoring the temple’s original plan. Goethe, visiting the same year that those works unfolded, found in favor of Agrigento over Paestum, writing that, “compared to the temples of Paestum, it resembles the figure of a god facing the apparition of a giant.”
To what degree could an 18th-century AD amateur restore a 4th-century BC structure that had been substantially overhauled in the 6th century AD? On a gut level, it seems like a noble pursuit; there is something inherently correct and just about prioritizing the original vision. But was that even possible? And is there no argument for preserving a 1200-year-old structure, especially one where we can have greater confidence about its form and function?
A short day’s walk was becoming an unexpectedly long one, as I discovered that I would need to fully backtrack from the far end of the archaeological site to where I first entered, followed by a steep ascent into the town center. Soon after arriving, I realized that the duomo was going to close in 40 minutes, and also that my accommodation was far on the other side of town. So I hustled to the cathedral’s dominant position, sitting high atop the sprawling city, and after a long back-and-forth with the helpful attendant received a blank Testimonium for all of my Sicilian walks, to be filled in upon completion in Palermo. By that point, only fifteen minutes remained until closing time for siesta, so he encouraged me to visit a nearby church–the modern structure sits over the excavated original, with glass floors allowing a complete view–and return in the afternoon. I took a deep breath and agreed, knowing that I had just bought myself a good bit more work. Indeed, I counted each and every ascending stair on my return trip, and it totaled exactly 400. Nonetheless, the marvelous wooden roof, each beam uniquely painted, made the visit essential, and the exceptional sarcophagi raised it to an even higher level.
The whole day was a reminder that, for all the circular debates that are worth having about the hows of preservation, that unceasing impulse to pass on our heritage to future generations is one of our most laudable collective values.
