GREECE CENTRAL GREECE EVVIA ERETRIA APOLLO

According to the Homeric hymn to Apollo, when the god was seeking for a location to found his oracle, he arrived at the Lelantine plain. Consequently, the first temple, an apsidal "hekatompedon" (100 feet long), was constructed in the 8th century BC and is roughly contemporary with the much smaller "Daphnephoreion" (laurel-hut) connected with the early cult of Apollo at Delphi. After two more temples of Apollo in Eretria, a new peripteral temple, having six Doric columns on the narrow sides and fourteen on the long ones, was built at the end of the 6th century BC. This temple was destroyed during the Persian invasion in 490 BC, and its ruins are the ones visible today. Unfortunately only through a fence with locked entrance.