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Cape Sounion (Modern Greek: Aκρωτήριο Σούνιο Akrotírio Soúnio ; Άkron Soúnion, latinized Sunium; Venetian: Capo Colonne "Cape of Columns") is the promontory at the southernmost tip of the Attica, south of the town of Lavrio (ancient Thoricus), and 69.5 km (43.1 miles) southeast of Athens in the Athens Riviera. It is part of Lavreotiki municipality, East Attica, Greece.
Cape Sounion is noted for its Temple of Poseidon, one of the major monuments of the Golden Age of Athens. Its remains are perched on the headland, surrounded on three sides by the Aegean Sea.
Archaeological finds on the site date from as early as 700 BC. Herodotus (VI.87) mentions that in sixth century BC, the Athenians celebrated a quinquennial festival at Sounion, which involved Athens' leaders sailing to the cape in a sacred boat.
The deme was located between Amphitrope to the west and Thorikos to the north. Its territory included parts of the Mines of Laurion. According to Traill (1986), the center of the settlement was situated somewhat to the north of the cape, between the modern settlements of Ano Sounio and Kato Sounio (close to ).John S. Traill, Demos and trittys. Epigraphical and topographical studies in the organization of Attica. Athenians Victoria College, Toronto 1986, p. 131.
Sounion was fortified in the nineteenth year of the Peloponnesian War (413 BCE) for the purpose of protecting the passage of the cornships to Athens, and was regarded from that time as one of the principal fortresses of Attica.Demosthenes, pro Cor. p. 238; Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax, p. 21; Its proximity to the silver mines of Laurium probably contributed to its prosperity, which passed into a proverb;Anaxand. ap. Athen. 6.263c but even in the time of Cicero it had sunk into decay.Cicero ad Att. 7.3 The circuit of the walls may still be traced, except where the precipitous nature of the rocks afforded a natural defence. The walls which are fortified with square towers, are of the most regular Hellenic masonry, and enclose a space of a little more than half a mile in circumference. The southern part of Attica, extending northwards from the promontory of Sounion as far as Thoricus on the east, and Anaphlystus on the west, is called by Herodotus the Suniac angle (τὸν γουνὸν τὸν Σουνιακόν). Though Sounion was especially sacred to Athena, we learn from Aristophanes that Poseidon was also worshipped there.Aristophanes, Kn. 557, Aves, 869.
The temple of Poseidon at Sounion was constructed in 444–440 BC. This was during the ascendancy of the Athenian statesman Pericles, who also rebuilt the Parthenon in Athens. It was built on the ruins of a temple dating from the Archaic period. It is perched above the sea at a height of almost . The design of the temple is a typical hexastyle, i.e., it had a front portico with six columns.Perseus Digital Library @ www.perseus.tufts.edu (search term: 'Sounion'). Only some columns of the Sounion temple stand today, but when intact it would have closely resembled the contemporary and well-preserved Temple of Hephaestus beneath the Acropolis, which may have been designed by the same architect.
As with all Greek temples, the Poseidon building was rectangular, with a colonnade on all four sides. The total number of original columns was 34, of which 15 still stand today. The columns are of the Doric Order. They were made of locally quarried white marble. They were 6.10 m (20 ft) high, with a diameter of 1 m (3.1 ft) at the base and 79 cm (31 inches) at the top.Perseus Digital Library, for search term 'Sounion' At the center of the temple, there would have been a hall of worship ( naos), a windowless rectangular room, similar to the partly intact hall at the Temple of Hephaestus. It would have contained, at one end facing the entrance, the cult image, a colossal, ceiling-height () bronze statue of Poseidon.W. Burkert, Greek Religion (1987).
Its architecture was unusual, as it had colonnades on the southern and eastern sides, but not on the western or northern sides, a peculiarity mentioned by Vitruvius. It was built adjacent to a peribolos identified as the burial mound and Heroon to Phrontis, the helmsman of Menelaus whose burial at Sounion is mentioned in the Odyssey.
A smaller Doric temple next to the temple of Athena is thought to have been dedicated either to the hero Phrontis or to Artemis.Herbert Abramson, "A Hero Shrine for Phrontis at Sounion?", California Studies in Classical Antiquity 12 (1979), pp. 1-19. A deep pit southeast of the temenos was used to deposit the remains of the Archaic-period offerings destroyed during the Persian invasion.
The temple of Athena was demolished in the 1st century AD, and parts of its columns were taken to Athens to be used in the South-East temple of the Agora.Christopher Mee and Antony Spawfort, Greece: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (2001), p. 100.
The Temple of Poseidon was situated in the southeastern corner of the fortress, with the garrison quarters arranged along a main stream on the western slope of the hill. The fortress included a small naval base, with a shipshed for two warships in the northwestern corner ().David Blackman, Boris Rankov, Shipsheds of the Ancient Mediterranean (2013), p. 531. The fortress was maintained well into the Hellenistic period.Mark H. Munn, The Defense of Attica (1993), p. 10. Repairs and additions to the fortress were made during the Chremonidean War (266–261 BC).
The inscribed name of George Lord Byron, carved into the base of one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon, possibly dates from his first visit to Greece, on his Grand Tour of Europe before he acquired fame. Byron spent several months in 1810–11 in Athens, including two documented visits to Sounion. There is, however, no direct evidence that the inscription was made by Byron himself. Byron mentions Sounion in his poem Isles of Greece:
Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, Where nothing, save the waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep...Byron, Don Juan, Canto the Third "The Isles of Greece". Romantic Circles, The Byron Chronology, webpage: RC-UMD.
Martin Heidegger visited Sounion during his journey to Greece in 1962, as described in his book Sojourns. Sojourns: The Journey to Greece, translated by J. P. Manoussakis, State University of New York, 2005, p. 43ff. He refers to the "gleaming-white ruins of the temple". In the strong sea breeze "these few standing columns were the strings of an invisible lyre, the song of which the far-seeing Delian god let resonate over the Cycladic world of islands". He marvels at "the way that this single gesture of the land suggests the invisible nearness of the divine and dedicates to it every growth and every human work" (ibid.). He goes on to reflect "the people of this country knew how to inhabit and demarcate the world against the barbarous in honour of the seat of the gods. ...they knew how to praise what is great and by acknowledging it, to bring themselves in front of the sublime, founding, in this way, a world" (ibid.).
The Lavreotiki municipality was established in 1890 under the name of Sounio, and renamed to Lavreotiki in 1891. Cape Sounion itself is located between the villages of Kato Sounio and Legrena.
The Sounio national park (Εθνικός Δρυμός τού Σουνίου) was established in 1974 with a core area of 750 hectares.
Forming the southeastern endpoint of the Athens Riviera, Sounion is now an upscale summer home location for Athenians. Construction of villas across the bay northwest of Cape Sounion flourished in the 1960s to 1970s. The Grecotel Cape Sounio luxury resort was built in 1973. fr.hotels.com
The project Arrangement of the Archaeological Site of Sounion (2011–2013) was co-financed by the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports and the European Union (ERDF).
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