Cape Sounion, the southernmost tip of Attica, is a significant strategic point, whence the city-state of Athens controlled the sea passage to the Aegean Sea and Piraeus, the central port, as well as the Lavrion peninsula, comprising the rich silver mines thanks to which Athens emerged as a leading power in the 5th century BC.
Homer was the first to refer to Sounion (Odyssey c 278) as “the sacred cape of the Athenians”. Herodotus (6,87) informs us that the Athenians celebrated there a great four-yearly festival. Poseidon’s sanctuary is mentioned by the tragedians Euripides and Sophocles and the comic poet Aristophanes.
The temple of Poseidon, the ancient Greek god of the sea, dominates the southernmost tip of Attica, where the horizon meets the Aegean Sea. Perched on the craggy rocks of Cape Sounio, the temple is enveloped in myth and historic facts dated from antiquity until the present times.
There are stories about the ship of King Menelaus who stopped briefly at Sounio on his way back from Troy; or about the unfortunate King Aegeus who drowned himself on that spot and the Aegean Sea got named after him; or about the people who built a temple using local marble to honour the god of the sea and safeguard the profits from the neighbouring Lavrio mines.
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