Voices columnist Glenn Maffia on a ‘historic mistake’

I STILL retain a slight niggled doubt, though my archaeologist friends have done the work and concluded that my visual observation of the placement of a possible third temple is awry by some twenty metres or so. Oh so near, yet so far!

I kowtow to their professional knowledge and kindness in investigating this idea that the renovated chapel is standing astride a Roman architectural artifact.

Though I believe that we are all in agreement that the area around the Temple of Apollo is extensive in Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine history merely waiting to be unearthed, it is just a matter of finding the correct clues to pull all this together.

And I would like to see, being impatient, a more prolonged digging period.

Imagination and intuition of course must play a part, though so too must the local and national authorities. They must show and confirm their resolve in revealing the hidden mysteries surrounding the Temple.

I have heard there is a train of thought which suggests that next year should be devoted to extensive research of the multitude of finds recovered in the past years.

Probably selfishly, though also on a feeling that the public need to see ongoing work to keep their interest alive, I would like to observe at least some activity on the ground.

Some most impressive finds have been disclosed this season. The finely constructed Byzantine chapel adorned with a rather delightful apse also shows the ravages of conflicts operating in the past.

Naturally no one dare breathe a word of conjecture, though I have heard names bandied around, and all quite valid until proven incorrect.

Remember we are in a time frame of many hundreds of years within a land which was rich in turmoil after turmoil. It takes a lot of work to uncoil the vagaries of such a period in our collective history.

I fully understand that it is frustrating having to wait for the painfully slow work of the archaeologists, but that is archaeology. To find the truth everything must be examined meticulously.

As I mentioned in a previous article, Tony Robinson’s ‘Time Team’ would go in merely for three days to reveal a glorious panorama of past events. Though, that is TV with all its illusions. This is real, so give these hard working people the time to do their work diligently.

I could be wide of the mark (by twenty metres or so!), but I fear that the local authorities wish to reconstruct the ramshackle Greek village into a pastiche as abhorrent as Sirince. Pretty, but no guts.

We have history, real history. Here. Not Disneyworld.