Old Temple of Athena

[2] The existence of an archaic temple to Athena had long been conjectured from literary references until the discovery of substantial building foundations under the raised terrace between the Erechtheion and Parthenon in 1886 confirmed it.

While it is uncontroversial that a temple stood on the central acropolis terrace in the late archaic period and was burnt down in the Persian invasion of 480, nevertheless questions of its nature, name, reconstruction and duration remain unresolved.

[12] Subsequent excavation of the terrace south of the Parthenon exposed the so-called "poros layer" of archaic debris including fragments of the Hekatompedon decree.

[13] This inscription, cut into two slabs of what were metopes from a sixth-century temple and datable to 485 BCE[14] is, along with the passages in Homer, the only contemporary description of the archaic acropolis.

The south side of the Acropolis, the site of the later Parthenon, was throughout the sixth century an open terrace that was by some measurement one hundred feet long (hence the name), though this space could have been occupied by a number of small buildings or shrines.

The date of the poros Doric temple is largely based on the style of the pediment sculptures attributed to it: these are a Gigantomachy featuring Athena and on the opposite façade two lions attacking a bull.

The Oath of Plataea required of the victors that they preserve their destroyed temples as a memorial, if this was indeed the case then the ruins must have stood on the Acropolis until the Periclean Building Programme (perhaps) cleared it away.

[24][25] Alternatively, it was Dörpfeld’s contention, recently argued by Gloria Ferrari,[26] that the blackened shell of the Temple of the Polias remained at the centre of the Acropolis and served both as monument and treasury.

[27] Ferrari cites the testimony given by the decree of the Praxiergidae of 460/50,[28] containing the provision that a stele be set up "behind the ancient temple" implying that the ruined building continued to function as a home for the cult image before the construction of the Erechtheion.