sides by a colonnade and with chambers opening out towards the north, may have served as a gymnasium or a sanatorium. It is of good early Greek architecture, earlier than the second temple. A curious, ruder building to the north of this and to the west of the second terrace is probably of much earlier date, perhaps of the Mycenaean period, and may have served as propylæa.
Immediately below the second temple, at the foot of the elevation on which this temple stands, towards the south, and thus facing the city of Argos, a splendid stoa or colonnade, to which large flights of steps lead, was erected about the time of the building of the second temple. It is a part of the great plan to give worthy access to the temple from the city of Argos. To the east of this large flights of steps lead up to the temple proper.
At the western extremity of the whole site, immediately beside the river bed, we again have a huge stoa running round two sides of a square, which was no doubt connected with the functions of this sanctuary as a health resort, especially for women, the goddess Hera presiding over and protecting married life and childbirth.
Finally, immediately to the north of this western stoa there is an extensive house of Roman times also connected with baths. While the buildings give archaeological evidence for every period of Greek life and history from the preMycenaean period down to Roman times, the topography itself shows that the Heraeum must have been constructed before Mycenae and without any regard to it. The foothills which it occupies form the western boundary to the Argive plain as it stretches down towards the sea in the Gulf of Nauplia. While it was thus probably chosen as the earliest site for a citadel facing the sea, its further relation points towards Tiryns and Midea. It could not have been built as the sanctuary of Mycenae, which was placed farther up towards the north-west in the hills, and could not be seen from the Heraeum, its inhabitants again of that site.
For the layer, which he now assigns to the Mycenaean period, is the sixth stratum from below. Now, as some of the remains at the Heraeum correspond to the two lowest layers of Hissarlik, the evidence of the Argive temple leads us far beyond the date assigned to the Mycenaean age, and at least into the second millennium b.c. (see also Mycenaean Civilization).
This sanctuary still holds a position of central importance as illustrating the art of the highest period in Greek history, namely, the art of the 5th century b.c. under the great sculptor Polycleitus. Though the excavations in the second temple have clearly revealed the outlines of the base upon which the great gold and ivory statue of Hera stood, it is needless to say that no trace of the statue itself has been found. From Pausanias we learn that “the image of Hera is seated and is of colossal size : it is made of gold and ivory, and is the work of Polycleitus.” Based on the computations made by the architect of the American excavations, Mr Tilton, on the ground of the height of the nave, the total height of the image, including the base and the top of the throne, would be about 8 metres, the seated figure of the goddess herself about 5‘50 metres.
