PHIGALIA Or PHIGALEIA or clvyaXel.a; mod. Pay litsa), an ancient Greek city on the river Neda in the south-west angle of Arcadia, among some of the highest mountains in the Peloponnesus—Mt. Cotylium and Mt. Elasum.
In 659 B.C. Phigalia was taken by the Spartans, but soon after recovered its independence by the help of the Orasthasians. Dur ing the struggle between Achaeans and Aetolians in 221 B.C. it was held by Dorimachus, who left it on the approach of Philip V. of Macedon. In common with other cities of Arcadia, it appears to have fallen into utter decay under Roman rule. Several curious cults were preserved near Phigalia, including that of the fish tailed goddess Eurynome and the Black Demeter with a horse's head, whose image was renewed by Onatas. No autonomous coins of Phigalia are known. Nothing remains above ground of the temples of Artemis or Dionysus and the works of art which existed in the time of Pausanias. A great part of the city wall remains, 2 m. in circuit built in fine Hellenic masonry, with a large square central fortress with a circular projecting tower.
Not at Phigalia itself, but at Bassae, 5 or 6 m. away, on the slope of Mt. Cotylium is a well-preserved temple of Apollo Epi curius. It commemorates relief from a plague in the 5th cen tury. Pausanias (viii. 41) notes it as (next to that of Tegea) the finest in the Peloponnesus, "from the beauty of its stone and the symmetry of its proportions." It was designed by Ictinus, joint architect with Callicrates, of the Parthenon at Athens. Vis ited earlier by Chandler, Dodwell, Gell and other English travel lers, the temple was explored and measured in 1811-1812 by C. R. Cockerell, the internal sculptured frieze of the cella being found almost perfect. This and other fragments of sculpture are now in the British Museum. The colonnade of the temple has been recently restored by the Greeks.
The temple is of the Doric order, but has an internal ment of its cella which is unique. Probably to suit the ground, it lies north and south but the vestibule has a door to the east. It is hexastyle, with fifteen columns on its flanks ; thirty-four out of the thirty-eight columns of the peristyle are still standing, with the greater part of their architrave. The internal columns of the cella are very strangely placed, apparently without sym metry, as regards the interior, though they are set regularly op posite the voids in the peristyle.
With the exception of one at the south end, which is Corin thian, the internal columns are of the Ionic order, and are en gaged with the cella-wall, form ing a series of recesses, which may have been designed to con tain statues. Another peculiarity of this interior is that these col umns reach to the top of the cella in one order, not in two as was Doric fashion. These inner col umns carried an Ionic entabla ture, of which the frieze now in the British Museum formed a part. The pediments and external metopes of the peristyle appear to have contained no sculpture, but the metopes within the peri style on the exterior of the cella had sculptured subjects. The po sition occupied by the great statue of Apollo is disputed. Cockerell, with much probability, placed it facing the eastern side door, so that it would be lighted by the rising sun. The main entrance is at the northern end through the pronaos, once defended by a door in the end of the cella and a metal screen, of which traces were found on the two columns of the pronaos. There was no door between the posticum and the cella. The general proportions of the fronts resemble those of the The seum at Athens, except that the entablature is less massive, the columns thicker, and the diminution less. In plan the temple is long in proportion to its width—measuring, on the top of the stylobate, 125 ft. 7 in. by 48 ft. 2 in., while the Theseum (built probably half a century earlier) is about 1o4 ft. 2 in. by 45 ft. 2 in.
The material is a fine grey limestone (once covered with painted stucco), but the roof-tiles, the capitals of the cella columns, the architraves, the ceilings and the sculpture, are of white marble. The roof-tiles, specially noticed by Pausanias, are remarkable for their size, workmanship, and the beauty of the Parian marble. They measure 2 ft. I in. by 3 ft. 6 in., and are fitted together in the most careful and ingenious manner. Unlike those of the Parthenon and the temple of Aegina, the ap,uoil or "joint-tiles" are worked out of the same piece of marble as the flat ones, for the sake of more perfect fitting and in order to provide greater security against wet.