THE HEROON AT THE STADIUM The Heroon is part of the Stadium; with which it is connected both architecturally and in terms of its function. The building is a Doric temple with four columns in front; made entirely of local limestone. It stands on the south side of the Stadium; just to the right of the axis of the race-course; on a rectangular podium that projects like a bastion from the city wall. The building in the form of a temple was a funerary monument; a kind of Heroon-Mausoleum. It belongs to the tradition of similar monuments from Asia Minor; like the monument of the Nereids at Xanthos and the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos. Some of its features also relate it to the Heroon at Kalydon. According to the testimony of Pausanias (4.32.2); one personality of great wealth and influence to whom the Messenians accorded the honours appropriate to a hero; was the Messenian life high priest and helladarches Saithidas. The Heroon-Mausoleum in the Stadium belonged most likely to the family of the Saithidai. Distinguished members of this family were buried in it and received a hero's honours from the date of the foundation of the Heroon in the 1st century BC; at least down to the time of Pausanias's visit to Messene (AD 155-160).