Giasone e gli Argonauti alla foce del Sele: il santuario, la città e l’eroe fondatore

The contribution aims to bring attention to the foundation of the sanctuary of Hera in Sylaros,linked in the literary sources to the hero Jason returning with the Argonauts from the conquest of the Golden Fleece; particularlydeepened is the meaning that the figurative program of sanctuary of Hera in Sylaros assumes related to the ‘re-foundation’ of Poseidonia at the end of the sixth century BC. Therefore attention has been focused on the Doric frieze of the main temple, interpreted as a choros of girls yet, reading it, based on punctual iconographic comparisons, such as Peleus’s kidnapping of Teti in the presence of fleeing Nereids. The theme represented on the main temple dedicated to Hera Argonia, exhalting the lineage of Achilleus, would enhance the link with Jason and the Achaean-Thessalian traditions, when a new political and social structure was set up in the colony, at the most ideological projection, in the heroon of the founder at the center of the agora.