Sanctuary of Poseidon Onchestios
Dates
unspecified (mentioned in the 1st and 2nd century CE)
Garden Description
According to Pausanias, the ancient city of Onchestos in Boeotia lay in ruins by the time he visited the site in the 2nd century A.D., but the shrine and statue of Poseidon Onchestios and the sacred grove survived (9.26.5). This, he says, was the grove that Homer praised in his poetry (Il. 2.506; see also Homeric Hymn to Apollo 229-238). Perhaps the trees that Pausanias saw were not quite as old as he thought, since Strabo, writing over a hundred years earlier, described the site as treeless and the temple empty (9.2.33). Replanting in the sanctuary might account for the presence of the trees seen later by Pausanias.
Keywords
- literary gardens
- Pausanias
- sacred grovesAAT:300251876
- shrines (structures)AAT:300007558
- statuesAAT:300047600