At the beginning of October the period of this year’s systematic excavation at the plateau of Trapeza, eight kilometres southwest of Aigio, was completed. This site is identified with Rypes, a town in Achaia that flourished in early historical times and participated in the colonization by founding Croton in Greater Greece.

This year’s excavation focused mainly on the investigation of building C southeast of the temple andiron which belonged to the public sphere of the city’s functions. The building was covered by the ruin of its superstructure consisting of limestone and conglomerate lithic blocks. After surveying, numbering and removing them, the flap of the main, southern long side with the pillar, 16.80 m long, was fully revealed. The H and Z-shaped joints in the flap and the elements of the superstructure recommend a date before 300 BC. Corinthian half-columns are restored on this façade. Above them ran an unhinged thrigos with an epistyle band that had a Doric beak section. The diameter of the semi-columns and the total height of the column, results in a Corinthian column with the lowest proportions of all time. The sigmoidal section bases of the semi-columns are of Peloponnesian type, such as those found in the temple of Apollo at Vasses.

The excavation data so far reconstruct a monumental face of three metres. The post-concretional spaces between the composite pillars were covered by orthostatic slabs – thoracic. The Corinthian column bears a tiny, slow, cymium under the acanthus, as well as 20 shaped spindle-leaves in the semi-periphery of the column, which allows all kinds of comparisons with early examples, such as that on the Corinthian column in the temple of Apollo of the Vasses. Moreover, it is the earliest complete Corinthian composition that we know of inside a monument, and for the first time it is directly linked to burial use, just as it is delivered in the anecdotal account of Vitruvius. The lithoplints of the ruin include architectural elements that do not come from the Corinthian building. These are mainly parts of a single Ionic triangle with an architrave and a combination of frieze and dentils, fragments of gabled columns and Ionic capitals combined with semi-columns clustered in complex lithoplins. They come from a building which will be searched very close to the monument under investigation.

The research of building C so far testifies to its identification as the heroon of the ancient city. Under the ruin covering its façade, a marble lion in an occipital position, smaller than its natural size with its plinth, was found fallen from its original position, a second, larger lion with part of its plinth also in a prone position with anatomical details and mane in soft relief, the head of a smaller marble lion with its mane and the upper part of a large, marble tombstone of a young male figure. All the sculptures are carved in pedel marble. The lions were inlaid on separate stone bases.

Inside the monument and in a later phase of its use, were found and investigated asylums burials in cist tombs and in a sarcophagus, which yielded valuable grave goods of particular artistic value. Among other things, a pair of golden eulogies with lion heads on their tops, a solid eulogy of a naked winged cupid with a scepter in his right hand and a wreath in his left hand, a gold necklace with the ends terminating in solid lion busts, a gold ring, a gold lace, a gold lace, a papier-mâché volute with a turtle on the obverse, two iron knobs surrounded by cloth and an iron girdle. The grave goods inside the building bear witness to the prosperity and high social status of their occupants.

A small exploratory cut under and outside the monument’s façade, yielded architectural remains and pottery of the 8th century BC.

The investigation of the Heroon will continue after the approval of the new five-year excavation programme.

The systematic excavation in Trapeza Aigio-ancient Rypes, directed by Dr Andreas C. Vordos of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Achaia.