"A small modern chapel" nell'opistodomo del tempio A di Selinunte

According to the chronology of Thucydides confirmed by the results of the most recent excavations, Selinus was founded on the southern coast of Sicily by Megara Hyblaea in 628 BC. Destroyed by the Carthaginians in 409 BC, it was partially reoccupied in 340-330 BC by a mixed Greek-Punic population, now part of the Carthaginian territory on the island. In 250 BC, during the First Punic War, it was abandoned by the Carthaginians, who transferred its inhabitants to Lilybaeum. The events of the city after this date have long been debated. In short, we can say today that some tombs and a bronze lamp associated with them have suggested a Late Antique settlement among the ruins of the city. A Late Antique port settlement with a baptistery at the mouth of the Modione River has recently been discovered. Few ceramic materials and what appear to be the remains of a fortress above Temples A and O have been attributed to the Byzantine or Arab period. Numerous coins testify to a presence at the time of Manfredi (1258-1266). The aim of this work is to refute the hypothesis of the presence of a Byzantine church within the ruins of temple C. This hypothesis has been advanced several times in the last century by various scholars based on some statements by Fazello (1558) and D’Orville (1764). The only Christian place of worship that can be documented with certainty on the acropolis of Selinus is instead a modern chapel inside the opisthodomos of Temple A, whose ruins were removed by Cavallari in 1881 during the excavations that definitively brought to light the structures of Temple A as they are currently visible. A cementitious mixture that can be observed in Selinus only in the area of the opisthodomos of Temple A (and in the eighteenth-century restoration of a column of temple G on the eastern hill) makes it possible to attribute to the modern chapel that is no longer preserved certain wall sections that have hitherto been attributed to the Byzantine fortress.