75-82

Sculpture and inscriptions from the "Dionysion" of ancient Rhodes

• Κωνσταντινόπουλος, Γρηγόριος

From the writings of the historian Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and Pseudo-Lucian, it was known that the monumental building complexes of ancient Rhodes included a ‘Dionysion’. In the absence of any excavation evidence, modern scholars vaguely believed that this was probably a temple. Both Strabo and Pseudo-Lucian, however, state that it was a precinct with stoas, in which works of sculpture and painting were displayed.In an excavation conducted in 1925 within and close to the north fortifications of the medieval town, not far from the ancient small or military harbour of Mandraki, the Italian archaeologist Jacopi found an inscription built into a small church erected at time of the knights which bore the name of a priest of Dionysos. On the basis of this, he believed he had found the site of the temple of this god. Italian excavations after 1940, however, brought to light the remains of a large tetrapylon and a decumanus maxi- mus, built by the Romans at the end of the 2nd c. AD above ancient Greek ruins produced by a major earthquake. Amongst the finds from the excavations were a fairly well-preserved marble relief with a hunting scene (P1.11 a), a badly mutilated marble torso from a warrior relief (P 1.11 β), and a large number of inscriptions, three of them bearing the names of priests of Dionysos and found at three points hundreds of metres apart.In his description of the third flood in the classical city of Rhodes, in 316 BC, Diodorus states that the rain-water first flooded the Dionysion, and eventually reached the Asklepieion, the site of which is to the south of and at a higher level than the Dionysion.It is the opinion of the present writer that the two marble reliefs (PI. 11 α-β) found during the excavation of the decumanus maximus, and a third, small fragment of a large scene depicting a naval battle, found in the old town behind a coat-of-arms dating from the period of the knights (P1. 12 a) were displayed in the Dionysion, which was destroyed by a severe earthquake in the late 2nd c. AD. On the site of the precinct, the Romans built a bombastic tetrapylon and an imposing decumanus, which obliterated the memory of the Hellenistic, austere site, designed on a human scale, and with it the Dionysion, which was famous for its humanist content.Finally, the present writer also argues that the boy in the Berlin Museum, according to the findings of Ms. Preisshofen, who studied it, will have been displayed not in the sanctuary of Helios, as Preisshof- en suggests, but in the Dionysion.

• History and Archaeology

• Αρχαιολογία
• Ανασκαφές (Αρχαιολογία)
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