The Pagan Sites of Europe Remembered (30): The Acropolis of Lindos

Following the defeat of the Titans, the World was divided between the three brother gods Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades. In book XV of Homer’s epic poem The Iliad, Poseidon explains the division:

We were three brothers whom Rhea bore to Cronus - Zeus, myself and Hades who rules the world below. Heaven and earth were divided into three parts, and each of us was to have an equal share. When we cast lots, it fell to me to have my dwelling in the sea forevermore. Hades took the darkness of the realms under the earth, while air and sky and clouds were the portion that fell to Zeus; but earth and great Olympus are the common property of all.

Zeus then of course fathered many gods and goddesses, but the most remarkable of his many children was Athena, who was produced without a mother, and sprang fully formed from his brow.

It is for this reason that she was worshipped at Athens in a Parthenon (literally "the quarters of the Virgin") sited in the city's Acropolis ("sky city"). What more suitable place for a goddess who burst forth from the brow of the sky god than a elevated rocky eminence perched high above the world?

The same arrangement can be found at Lindos on the isle of Rhodes, a Doric Greek settlement from the 10th century BC. The temple, dramatically perched above the blue Aegean, is thought to have been built in the 6th century BC and rebuilt in the 4th century BC after being destroyed by a fire. 

The temple is of great archaeological significance due to the  "Lindos Chronicle," an inscription found on slabs used as paving blocks in the nearby church of Saint Stephen that originally came from the temple.

Dated to 99 BC the "chronicle" is one of the longest surviving Hellenistic inscriptions, containing various decrees, dedications, memorials, and religious passages. The scholar Carolyn Higbie has published an English version of the text with explanatory notes.