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| Banknote of 1000 Drachma |
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| 1000 Drachmai |
Greek Banknotes 1000 Drachmas bank note 1922 National Bank of Greece
Obverse: Portrait of Georgios Stavros, first governor of the National Bank of Greece and Coat of arms of the Kingdom Greece, vignette of the goddess Demeter resting her arm on a plough and holding an ear of corn.
Reverse: Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae, ancient Greek urns at left and right.
Printed by American Bank Note Company, New York.
The 1000-drachma note, measuring 11x21 cm, issued in 1922 to replace the banknotes cut in half as part of the mandatory loan. This is why it bears the word “NEON” (i.e. new). The note does not bear the name of the Bank in French as the Latin Monetary Union had been abolished.
Greek banknotes and paper money from Greece
1918-1922 (1922) "NEON" Overprint Issue
Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae
The temple was dedicated to Apollo Epikourios ("Apollo the helper"). It was designed by Iktinos, architect at Athens of the Temple of Hephaestus and the Parthenon. The ancient writer Pausanias praises the temple as eclipsing all others but the temple of Athena at Tegea by the beauty of its stone and the harmony of its construction. It sits at an elevation of 1,131 metres above sea level on the slopes of Kotylion Mountain.
The temple is aligned north-south, in contrast to the majority of Greek temples which are aligned east-west; its principal entrance is from the north. This was necessitated by the limited space available on the steep slopes of the mountain. To overcome this restriction a door was placed in the side of the temple, perhaps to let light in to illuminate the cult statue.
The temple is of a relatively modest size, with the stylobate measuring 38.3 by 14.5 metres containing a Doric peristyle of six by fifteen columns (hexastyle). The roof left a central space open to admit light and air. The temple was constructed entirely out of grey Arcadian limestone except for the frieze which was carved from marble (probably in ancient times colored with paint). Like most major temples it has three "rooms" or porches: the pronaos, plus a naos and an opisthodomos. The naos may have housed a cult statue of Apollo, although it is also surmised that the single 'proto-Corinthian' capital discovered by Cockerell, and subsequently lost as sea, may have topped the single column that stood in the centre of the naos, and have been intended as an aniconic representation of Apollo Borealis. The temple lacks some optical refinements found in the Parthenon, such as a subtly curved floor, though the columns have
The temple is unusual in that it has examples of all three of the classical orders used in ancient Greek architecture: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. Doric columns form the peristyle while Ionic columns support the porch and Corinthian columns feature in the interior. The Corinthian capital is the earliest example of the order found to date.
It was relatively sparsely decorated on the exterior. Inside, however, there was a continuous Ionic frieze showing Greeks in battle with Amazons and the Lapiths engaged in battle with Centaurs. This frieze's metopes were removed by Charles Robert Cockerell and taken to the British Museum in 1815. (They are still to be seen in the British Museum's Gallery 16, near the Elgin Marbles.) Cockerell decorated the walls of the Ashmolean Museum's Great Staircase and that of the Travellers Club with plaster casts of the same frieze.