Pausanias (10.5.9–13) insists on four consecutive temples—the first made of laurel, the second of birds’ feathers and beeswax, the third of bronze, and the fourth of stone—the last of which was burned down in 548 BC. Pindar’s fragmentary eighth Paean, in contrast, attributes the bronze temple to different builders, and disagrees with Pausanias over the manner of its disappearance (for Pindar, it was swallowed up by the ground after a lightning strike).20
