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Introduction

The Open University — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 11:21:08 GMT

The ancient Greeks did not have a term equivalent to the English word ‘religion’. However, their world was populated by numerous figures they both recognised and worshipped as divinities. Among these figures was Amphiaraos (pronounced am-fi-ah-RAY-os), an ancient Greek hero who was later worshipped as a god and popularly associated with healing through the medium of dreams. But there was no sacred book (like those which exist in many religions today) which told the ancient Greeks what to believe about Amphiaraos or how to communicate with him. How, then, did people and communities know how to worship Amphiaraos?

In this free course, you will explore this question by looking at textual and visual evidence relating to Amphiaraos’ sanctuary, which was located at a town called Oropos, in northeast Attica. You will engage with this material to learn about some of the different ways the ancient Greeks interacted with Amphiaraos, both individually and as part of their community.

Study note: glossary and pronunciation guide

As you study this course you may come across some key words or terms with which you are unfamiliar. We have therefore produced a pronunciation guide and glossary to help you. Clicking on terms which feature in bold text will take you to the pronunciation guide, where you can listen to audio recordings of the words featured. Clicking on terms which feature in bold text and are underlined will take you to the glossary where you will find definitions of those terms. Alternatively, hovering the cursor over the glossary entries within the text will show you the definition.

Before you get started we would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for this course, in our optional start-of-course survey. Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.

Learning outcomes

The Open University — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 11:21:08 GMT

After studying this course, you should be able to:

develop awareness of the rich and complex relationship between politics and religion in the ancient Greek world
understand how to uncover personal experiences in the study of ancient religions
feel confident in working with both ancient texts and visual source material to answer questions about ancient Greek religion
use Amphiaraos’ sanctuary as a case-study for understanding the broader political and personal aspects of ancient Greek religion.

1 Religion in the ancient Greek world

The Open University — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 11:21:08 GMT

The sanctuary of Amphiaraos, which lay about 55 kilometres (35 miles) northeast of the centre of ancient Athens, was just one of an enormous number of shrines and temples built by Greek-speaking communities across the ancient Mediterranean. Such buildings formed a focus for religious activities in the ancient world and provided ways for the inhabitants of ancient Greece to connect with their deities, that is to say the gods and heroes that they worshipped.

Figure 1 The Parthenon on the Acropolis, in Athens, Greece.

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A photograph of the Parthenon. It is located on the Athenian Acropolis, in the heart of the ancient city. This temple was built between 447 and 432 BCE in honour of Athens’ patron deity Athena, who was worshipped here as ‘Parthenos’ (or ‘maiden’).

Figure 1 The Parthenon on the Acropolis, in Athens, Greece.

But what does ‘religion’ in the world of ancient Greece signify, and who were the gods that they worshipped? To kick off your studies on this course, you’ll begin with two introductory activities. First, you’ll think about what religion means to you, and then you’ll consider what, if anything, you may already know about Greek deities. You don’t need any prior knowledge, though, so don’t worry if you don’t yet know anything about ancient Greece, or Greek religion!

Activity 1

Timing: Allow around 5 minutes for this activity

Take a few minutes to think about what the word ‘religion’ means to you. Then jot down four or five key words or phrases which spring to mind.

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Discussion

There is no right or wrong answer to this activity. Your four or five words/phrases will depend a lot on your own personal experiences and interests. You may have thought about a particular faith with which you are familiar, for example, or a set of rituals, places and objects associated with certain religious activities. You may have even thought about religion in terms of a particular recipient of worship or in relation to the types of peoples who commit their lives to serving a religious order.

Study note: a note on dates

You will notice that this course uses the abbreviations ‘BCE’ and ‘CE’ when dating events, texts and objects. These abbreviations stand for ‘Before the Common Era’ and ‘Common Era’. You may be familiar with an alternative method of referring to dates as ‘BC’ (‘Before Christ’) and ‘AD’ (Anno Domini, Latin for ‘in the year of our Lord’), and you may find that the authors of other things you read on the topics discussed here use instead BC and AD instead of BCE and CE. Remember that BCE years count backwards – therefore the eighth century BCE is earlier than the seventh century BCE.

1.1 Sacred places and the Greek gods

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Now that you’ve had time to consider what the term ‘religion’ means to you today, you may be wondering what it meant to the ancient Greeks. This question is a little tricky to answer because, as noted earlier, the ancient Greeks didn’t have a word for ‘religion’. However, that doesn’t mean that they completely lacked thoughts or actions which fall under this category.

Like many religions today, the ancient Greeks had sacred places, objects, people and gods associated with religious beliefs and behaviour. For example, people often visited temples (such as that of the goddess Aphaia on the island of Aegina, depicted in Figure 2) to pray and make offerings to their divinities, and such visits would have consisted of a series of expected actions and performances deemed appropriate for the occasion. However, unlike many religions today, there was no central book or text guiding the ancient Greeks how to go about their daily worship. This absence means that there is no direct ancient source which outlines what the ancient Greeks believed in. As you will learn in this course, though, there are other pieces of ancient evidence which shine light on this complex matter.

Figure 2 Temple of the goddess Aphaia at Aegina, c.500 BCE.

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A photograph of the temple of the goddess Aphaia, Aegina.

Figure 2 Temple of the goddess Aphaia at Aegina, c.500 BCE.

Activity 2

Timing: Allow around 5 minutes for this activity

What, if anything, do you know about ancient Greek gods? If the answer is ‘nothing at all’, don’t worry! Otherwise, make a note of four or five key words or phrases.

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Discussion

Again, there is no right or wrong answer here. Depending on what knowledge you have already about ancient Greek gods, you may have noted down the names of some major divinities, such as Zeus, Poseidon and Athena – or, indeed, simply observed that the ancient Greeks had lots of gods and goddesses. You may even have seen some images of, or perhaps visited, a particular Greek temple or sanctuary, or have some memory of seeing a particular divinity in a modern context (such as a film, book, video game or part of a museum exhibit).

Something which you might find interesting about the nature of gods and goddesses in the ancient Greek world is that, although they were numerous, each divine figure commonly had their own special qualities (in other words, they could be thought of as ‘the god/goddess of X’). Quite often, though, the special quality that a deity possessed overlapped with those of other gods or goddesses. For example, if a particular divine figure was associated with bringing about a good harvest, that did not necessarily mean that only that divine figure had such a capability. Indeed, the ancient Greeks had a large number of divinities to whom they could turn in times of need.

1.2 The cult of Amphiaraos

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In this course, you will be thinking in depth about the figure of Amphiaraos, whose cult site (that is, the main location where he was worshipped) at Oropos was popularly associated with healing by the late fifth century BCE (see Map 1). However, Amphiaraos was not the only divinity associated with this quality: there were more ‘popular’ figures who shared this same attribute. The most famous god associated with healing was arguably Asklepios, who had a major cult site at Epidauros in the Peloponnese, among other places (see Map 1).

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Map 1 Map depicting key religious sanctuaries of the Greek Aegean.

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Map depicting key religious sanctuaries of the Greek Aegean.

Map 1 Map depicting key religious sanctuaries of the Greek Aegean.

Study note: names of Greek places and people

Many Greek names have more than one English spelling. For instance, you will find Asclepius as well as Asklepios, Aphaea as well as Aphaia and Herodotus as well as Herodotos. The reason is that there are different conventions for transliterating words from Greek into the English alphabet.

In this course, ‘Hellenised’ spellings are generally used, for example, ‘k’ rather than ‘c’, ‘ai’ rather than ‘ae’, and ‘os’ rather than ‘us’ at the end of names: Asklepios, Aphaia, Herodotos. These ‘Hellenised’ spellings closely reflect the way these names were spelt in ancient Greek. Elsewhere, you will often find modern authors and translators using ‘Latinised’ spellings, however: ‘c’ rather than ‘k’, ‘ae’ rather than ‘ai’, and so on (Asclepius, Aphaea, Herodotus).

At Asklepios’ sanctuary at Epidauros, temple officials aimed to promote the healing capabilities of the god to visitors by setting up stone inscriptions which recorded the experiences of individuals and the cures they received. These cures contain several fantastical elements and recount miraculous tales of Asklepios’ healing of both humans and even objects. Although we do not have comparable tales from the Amphiareion which describe Amphiaraos’ medical expertise, we do have text-bearing dedications (that is, religious objects often erected within religious settings to honour a divinity – such as the one depicted in Figure 3) which clearly relate to acts of healing. Such evidence, which you’ll have the opportunity to explore later in this course, can help us to learn more about the activities of individuals who visited the god’s sanctuary to seek a cure.

Figure 3 Marble stele with relief depicting a leg and buttock within a temple border, c. third century CE; 0.51m (height) x 0.31m (width). The inscription reads: ‘Leonteus son of Leonteus from Lebadeia [set this up] as a vow to Amphiaraos’. Image taken from V.C. Petrakos (1997), Οἱ ἐπιγραφὲς τοῦ Ὠρωποῦ (The Inscriptions of Oropos), Athens, no. 469.

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A photograph of a marble stele with relief.

Figure 3 Marble stele with relief depicting a leg and buttock within a temple border, c. third century CE; 0.51m (height) x 0.31m (width)...

Different divinities, then, had different ways of being consulted for medical treatment. In Amphiaraos’ case, surviving pieces of ancient evidence make it clear that the ancient Greeks communicated with him through the medium of dreams. This doesn’t mean that Amphiaraos spontaneously visited people as they were tucked up in their beds at night, but that those seeking the god’s help made the journey to his sanctuary at Oropos where they slept overnight. This process is also known as incubation.

2 Worshipping Amphiaraos: personal religion and ‘polis’ religion

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But what did it mean to worship Amphiaraos and how exactly did the ancient Greeks encounter him? In this section, you will explore these questions from two main perspectives which have been applied to modern studies of ancient religions. The first one is known as ‘personal’ religion: as the title suggests, this perspective is concerned with thinking about the needs of the individual person in their religious experiences with the divine. As one scholar summarises, personal religion seeks to understand ‘how individuals in the ancient Greek city adapted… culturally-given religious beliefs and practices to fit their personal religious needs’ (Kindt, 2015, p. 45). The cult of the Eleusinian Mysteries celebrated at the town of Eleusis (see Map 1) in honour of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone is a good example of personal religion, given that the choice to partake in its rituals and practices was very much based on individual initiative and personal aspirations.

Figure 4 The Ninnion Tablet, c. 370 BCE.

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The Ninnion Tablet is a terracotta plaque which was dedicated at the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at Eleusis around 370 BCE. It gets its name from the woman who set it up, which we know from an inscription scratched onto the bottom of the plaque. The scenes are thought to represent affairs at the Eleusinian Mysteries, a secret religious festival held in honour of the two goddesses. At the bottom on the right a seated Demeter is depicted. Before her stands the god Iakchos who is leading a group of initiates towards her. They hold torches in their hands.

Figure 4 The Ninnion Tablet, c. 370 BCE.

The second perspective is known as the ‘polis-religion’ model – ‘polis’ being the ancient Greek word for city-state or community. This model views ancient Greek religion as intricately connected to the values of the city-state and supporting the city’s ideals (e.g. Sourvinou-Inwood, 2000). Although this view is arguably less fashionable than it once was, there are still certain contexts in which this model may be usefully applied to understand ancient religion. The biggest festival in the Athenians’ religious calendar, for example, known as the Panathenaia, was an opportunity for the Athenians to celebrate Athena, who as patron goddess of the city played a crucial role in its citizens’ self-identity.

An important point to bear in mind, however, as one scholar of ancient Greek religion points out, is that the terms ‘personal’ and ‘polis’ religion are modern ways of looking at the ancient Greek religious system (Kindt, 2015, p. 37). This means that the ancient Greeks did not consciously distinguish between these two terms as we do today in their everyday religious activity. As such, we can usefully look for elements of both ‘polis’ and ‘personal’ beliefs and practices within the same cult. This is the approach which will be adopted in this course, using the example of the cult of Amphiaraos as your case-study. In the following sections, you will examine material remains from Amphiaraos’ sanctuary to discover how the ancient Greeks worshipped him both as individuals and as part of broader communities.

2.1 The cult of Amphiaraos: orientation

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If this is the first time you’ve come across the name Amphiaraos, don’t worry! No knowledge of Amphiaraos or his cult site is required for you to complete this course. However, you may find Activities 3 and 4 helpful for bringing you up to speed before you go on to look more closely at aspects of his cult worship in later sections.

Activity 3

Timing: Allow around 35 minutes for this activity

Read The Amphiareion at Oropos: An Introductory Guide (open it in a new tab or window so you can easily find your way back to the course).

Then, using this guide, complete the missing words in the short text below using the drop-down list provided.

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Discussion

Here is an example of a completed text. If you didn’t get all of the words in the right places, take note of their correct placement now.

The sanctuary of Amphiaraos is also known as the Amphiareion. It is situated within a town called Oropos between Attica and Boiotia in a wooded grove. The Athenians probably founded the sanctuary in the fifth century BCE. According to Herodotos, the Amphiareion was once a popular dream oracle, but by the late fifth century BCE it was associated with healing.

In Greek mythology Amphiaraos is associated with the Seven Against Thebes. He allegedly met his fate when he fled from Thebes on his chariot and was swallowed up by the earth.

Oropos was a politically weak city-state. The Athenians and the Boiotians often competed to control the city and the sanctuary of Amphiaraos, but at times the city of Oropos was independent. In later periods, the Romans were also interested in the Amphiareion.

To understand the history of Oropos and the Amphiareion we mainly rely on material culture (that is, physical objects which come down to us from the ancient world) rather than literary evidence. For example, objects tell us about the Great Amphiaraia, a festival celebrated in Amphiaraos’ honour which included an event in which competitors leapt in and out of moving chariots.

More than 500 inscriptions are known to have been set up at the sanctuary. These inscriptions help us unravel the interactions that took place within the confines of the sanctuary. They also helpfully tell us about how individuals and cities sought to identify with Amphiaraos’ religious practice.

2.2 The cult of Amphiaraos: the god and his sanctuary

The Open University — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 11:21:08 GMT

Now that you’ve become acquainted with Amphiaraos and his cult site at Oropos, you’ll now think more about the types of ancient evidence available to you about the god and his sanctuary.

Activity 4

Timing: Allow around 20 minutes for this activity

Using the Introductory Guide once again, make a list of the different types of ancient evidence we can use to find out about the Amphiareion and the activities which took place within it. Aim to come up with a list of at least three different types of evidence.

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Discussion

You may have identified the following types of ancient evidence:

Literary texts, which provide snippets of information about Amphiaraos and the relationship the town of Oropos had with its neighbours.
Archaeological remains, such as building structures at the sanctuary, which provide insight into some of the ways people used the shrine – such as for the celebration of games and festivals.
Reliefs, which reflect the experiences of individuals at the sanctuary, such as their victories in certain competitions at Amphiaraos’ games.
Monuments and inscriptions, which provide information about the activities and decisions of individuals and communities in relation to the sanctuary.

Hopefully you now feel more informed about Amphiaraos and the Amphiareion as well as about the different types of ancient evidence available to you about the god and his sanctuary. If you do find yourself needing a refresher of the basics later on in this course, you may find it helpful to look back at Activities 3 and 4. In the rest of this course you will explore how the ancient Greeks might have viewed and performed Amphiaraos’ worship, both as individuals and as members of a broader community.

3 Keeping it personal

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Unlike many religions today, the ancient Greeks lacked sacred books which told them what to believe and how to act in a pious manner. You might well be wondering, then, ‘how did people know how to worship Amphiaraos?’, ‘how did people know what to expect?’, or ‘how is it even possible recover their personal experiences?’. To seek answers to these questions, we need to look to a different kind of evidence.

As you learned in Activity 3, more than 500 inscriptions (that is, text-bearing objects, in this case usually made of stone) survive at the Amphiareion. These inscriptions could take several different forms, such as extended pieces of writing on thin slabs of stone (known as stelai, or stele in the singular: see Figure 5) or short texts accompanying artistic representations on objects of all different shapes and sizes (Figure 3).

Figure 5 Side A of a marble stele from the Amphiareion concerning the melting down of votive objects, c. late third century BCE; 77.47cm (height) x 38.10cm (width).

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A photograph of part of a marble stele.

Figure 5 Side A of a marble stele from the Amphiareion concerning the melting down of votive objects, c. late third century BCE; 77.47cm ...

As objects which come down to us directly from the ancient world, inscriptions don’t always survive intact: their texts can have gaps in them (or lacunae as they are otherwise known) or break off in unexpected places; the stone itself may also be damaged and have pieces missing (see Figures 3 and 5). Despite their breakages, these inscriptions offer us glimpses into the religious life of the sanctuary as they were commissioned by the very people and communities who lived and experienced Amphiaraos’ cult worship in ancient times. As such, they permit consideration of the types of personal emotions and expectations people might have had when they visited Amphiaraos’ sanctuary. You will now examine some of these inscriptions for yourself.

3.1 The sacred regulation of the Amphiareion

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Although the ancient Greeks lacked sacred books, at times they did choose to publish religious guidance on stone. Such inscribed guidance (which you may see referred to as a ‘sacred regulation’ or ‘sacred law’) was often specific to a particular sanctuary or particular group of worshippers and, importantly, never sought to set out religious beliefs. As such, this type of evidence cannot tell you about the entire history of a particular cult and its belief system, but it can offer insight into important elements of it, especially relating to its administration.

Activity 5

Timing: Allow around 10 minutes for this activity

You have a sense from Figures 3 and 5 of what inscriptions could look like. Figure 6 now shows you another inscription: the sacred regulation from the Amphiareion.

Take a moment to examine Figure 6 and to read the image description beneath it in order to gain a sense of the object’s dimensions and the material it is made from.

You will consider what the inscription says later on, but for now take a few minutes jot down a few thoughts in response to the following questions:

Why might someone have chosen to set up an inscription in stone (rather than using another material, such as wood)?
How easy or difficult do you think it would have been to create something like this?

Figure 6 Stone stele recording the sacred regulations of the Amphiareion, c. 386–374 BCE; 1.49m (height) x 0.3m (width).

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A photograph of part of a stone stele.

Figure 6 Stone stele recording the sacred regulations of the Amphiareion, c. 386–374 BCE; 1.49m (height) x 0.3m (width).

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Discussion

You may have thought about factors such as durability (that is, how long something might last before becoming damaged) and the importance of the text itself: things carved onto stone are likely to last for a long time and create a sense of permanence too (you may be familiar with the phrase ‘set in stone’ as a way of referring to something which cannot be changed). You may also have thought about visibility (that is, making something noticeable or clear) or even about increasing access to a piece of information.
In terms of the effort it might have taken to create an inscription, you may have thought about factors such as the size, cost and material of the monument and the different skills required to carve letters onto a hard surface. Each letter would have been carved individually by hand which must have been painstaking and highly skilled work. Indeed, you may have remarked on the neatness and precision of the inscribed letters.

3.2 The sacred regulation in context

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The Amphiareion’s sacred regulation was inscribed in the fourth century BCE. It was later found during an excavation at the sanctuary in the late nineteenth century, by which time the shrine had long been abandoned and several of its monuments had been removed from their original locations. This inscription was found in an old aqueduct at the sanctuary, marked with a red cross in Figure 7.

Figure 7 Topographical outline of the Amphiareion.

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The plan shows the main features of the Amphiareion, as reconstructed from archaeological finds. At the top of the site is a theatre, below which there is a long colonnaded stoa. The women’s baths lie to the right of this stoa, while the men’s baths lie to the left, close to the temple, which is at the far left of the plan. Other features include a sacred spring and an altar, located between the baths and the temple. Above these is the site of a series of honorific statues and below is a water clock. From the bottom left to the bottom centre of the plan, a large, interconnected series of walls and buildings is labelled ‘residential quarters and the agora’, i.e. the market place.

Figure 7 Topographical outline of the Amphiareion.

As for its original location, it is likely that the sacred regulation was displayed near Amphiaraos’ altar (see Figures 7 and 8) as was customary for similar types of inscriptions at other sanctuaries (Petropoulou, 1981, p. 42; Wilding, 2021, p. 65).

Figure 8 Remains of the altar at the Amphiareion.

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The altar of the Amphiareion was constructed by the mid fourth century BCE. The sanctuary’s sacred regulations tell us that it was used both by the priest of Amphiaraos and visitors to the sanctuary to offer sacrifices to the god. A small stepped theatre overlooked the altar allowing pilgrims to observe such religious sacrifice.

Figure 8 Remains of the altar at the Amphiareion.

This location means that the Amphiareion’s regulation was displayed alongside important building structures central to Amphiaraos’ worship, such as his altar (Figure 8) and temple (Figure 9), which visitors to the sanctuary would have interacted with as part of their religious practice.

Figure 9 Remains of the temple of Amphiaraos.

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The temple of Amphiaraos was constructed by the mid fourth century BCE. Like other ancient Greek temples, it would have housed sacred objects and treasures as well as a cult statue.

Figure 9 Remains of the temple of Amphiaraos.

3.3 What does the sacred regulation say?

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Given that literacy rates in classical Greece would have been extremely low by modern standards, not everyone would have had the literary skills to read what the sacred regulation said, but that does not mean that such people missed out on understanding the inscription’s importance. The habit of reading aloud in the ancient world (Thomas, 1992, p. 64) means that people could listen to others as they read the content of an inscription; a person might also reasonably gauge that they were looking at something official and important when they came across an inscription in a public setting and so ask another about what it said.

Activity 6

Timing: Allow around 45 minutes for this activity

Imagine that it is the fourth century BCE and that you are planning a visit to the sanctuary of Amphiaraos for the first time. Your shoulder has been giving you trouble for months now and you’ve heard good things about Amphiaraos’ medical expertise. As this is your first visit to the sanctuary, you’re a bit nervous: you want to make sure you know the sanctuary’s rules, what to expect, and how to behave as piously as possible while you’re there. Fortunately, a friend of yours has been before and is able to fill you in on the dos and don’ts based on their knowledge of the sanctuary’s sacred regulations.

To help you plan for your visit to the sanctuary, answer the following questions below using the set passages taken from the sacred regulations of the Amphiareion to help you. Note that parts of the text marked ‘[---]’ indicate places where there are gaps in the inscription.

The sections of text you need to answer each question appear under each of the four questions below. Note that, to help you easily locate the information you need, some of the passages are repeated under more than one question

Glossary for Activity 6

You should use the following short glossary to help you:

Drachma, drachmas: name of an ancient Greek coin, worth 6 obols. In fourth-century BCE Athens, an unskilled labourer could earn up to 1 and a half drachmas a day and a skilled labourer between 2 and 2 and a half drachmas (Rhodes and Osborne, 2003, p. xxiii).

Incubate: in an ancient Greek context, the act of sleeping in a temple or sacred space to communicate with the divine for oracular or healing purposes. (This word derives from the Latin cubare, ‘to lie down’ or ‘sleep’ + in, ‘in, inside’.)

Obol, obols: name of an ancient Greek coin, worth 1/6th of a drachma.

All translations are taken from Osborne and Rhodes (2003, pp. 129, 131).

What do you need to take with you on your visit to the Amphiareion?
Whoever comes to be cured by the god is to pay a fee of not less than nine obols of good silver and deposit them in the treasury in the presence of the keeper of the temple. The priest is to make prayers over the offerings and place them on the altar if he is present; but whenever he is not present the person sacrificing (is to do so) and each is to make his own prayers for himself at the sacrifice, but the priest is to make the prayers at the public sacrifices (lines 20–28).
What religious actions do you expect to undertake?
The skin of every animal sacrificed in the sanctuary is to be sacred. Any animal anyone wishes may be sacrificed, but there is to be no taking meat outside the boundary of the sanctuary (lines 29–32).
Whoever needs to incubate in the sanctuary [---] obeying the laws. The keeper of the temple is to record the name of whoever incubates when he deposits the money, his personal name, and the name of his city, and display it in the sanctuary, writing it on a board for whoever wants to look. Men and women are to sleep separately in the dormitory, men in the part east of the altar and women in the part west [---] those incubating in the dormitory [---] (lines 36–44).
What types of actions should you avoid during your visit?
If anyone commits an offence in the sanctuary, either a foreigner or a member of the community, let the priest have power to inflict punishment of up to five drachmas and let him take guarantees from the man who is punished, and if he pays the money let him deposit in the treasury when the priest is present. The priest is to give judgement if anyone, either a foreigner or a member of the community, is wronged privately in the sanctuary, up to a limit of three drachmas, but let the larger cases take place where it is stated in the laws for each (lines 9–16).
The skin of every animal sacrificed in the sanctuary is to be sacred. Any animal anyone wishes may be sacrificed, but there is to be no taking meat outside the boundary of the sanctuary (lines 29–32).
How do you expect to communicate with Amphiaraos? Where within the sanctuary will this communication take place?
Gods. The priest of Amphiaraos is to frequent the sanctuary from when the winter has ended until the season of ploughing, not being absent for more than three days, and to remain in the sanctuary for not less than ten days each month. He is to require the keeper of the temple in accordance with the law to look after both the sanctuary and those who come to the sanctuary (lines 1–8).
Whoever comes to be cured by the god is to pay a fee of not less than nine obols of good silver and deposit them in the treasury in the presence of the keeper of the temple. The priest is to make prayers over the offerings and place them on the altar if he is present; but whenever he is not present the person sacrificing (is to do so) and each is to make his own prayers for himself at the sacrifice, but the priest is to make the prayers at the public sacrifices. (lines 20–28).
Whoever needs to incubate in the sanctuary [---] obeying the laws. The keeper of the temple is to record the name of whoever incubates when he deposits the money, his personal name, and the name of his city, and display it in the sanctuary, writing it on a board for whoever wants to look (lines 36–41).

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Discussion

Reading inscriptions can be tricky at first, so don’t worry if you found this activity a bit challenging. Hopefully you enjoyed engaging with the very rules of the ancient Greeks of the fourth century BCE and managed to come up with some ideas about the dos and don’ts for your first visit. Your answers may differ slightly from these, but here are some examples:

You would expect to take money with you on your visit to pay for your consultation with Amphiaraos (the regulations stipulate 9 obols, which, as you might have worked out from the glossary entry on ‘drachma’, could be as much as one day’s pay). You might even take something to sacrifice upon the altar while you are there, such as an animal.
The sacred regulations don’t go into great detail about specific actions you should undertake, but it does mention the possibility of offering sacrifice and the chance to be healed by the god via the process of incubation. There is no guidance for how you ought to prepare for either of these actions other than paying the fee and providing a record of your name.
From the inscription, it is clear that you shouldn’t take any of my sacrificial meat outside of the sanctuary and that the shoulder of the animal should be kept as sacred for the priest; the skin is also to remain sacred. The inscription also mentions not committing any offences to avoid paying a fine, but it doesn’t elaborate upon what those offences are. As a new visitor, you will have to be on my best behaviour.
While the inscription doesn’t explicitly mention communication with the god, it does mention the process of incubation, but unfortunately the details of this process no longer survive on the stone! What is clear, however, is that this process involves going to sleep at the sanctuary and that and this was achieved by sleeping in a dormitory (with men and women sleeping separately). You should therefore expect to communicate with Amphiaraos in a dream.
The priest doesn’t seem overly important to the visit. The inscription records that he has to be at the sanctuary for at least 10 days every month and not be absent for more than three days at a time. However, it also says that you are allowed to offer your own personal sacrifice upon the altar in the priest’s absence. The temple keeper seems to be more important as it is to them that you must pay my consultation fee and give your name for the sanctuary’s official records.

The sacred regulations of the Amphiareion, then, provide some guidance on religious action and provide an indication of what individuals might expect on their visit to the sanctuary. Visitors would need money to seek a cure, possibly an animal to sacrifice, and time and resources to be able to visit the sanctuary in the first place and sleep there overnight. But by not including specific guidance for all areas of one’s visit (such as how to prepare for certain religious actions), the inscription implies that there was room for manoeuvre when it came to some aspects of cult worship. Since the sacred regulations provide information about expectations rather than experience, it is useful to examine other material remains for the sanctuary to gain insight into the latter.

3.4 ‘Seeing’ Amphiaraos

The Open University — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 11:21:08 GMT

The sacred regulations of the Amphiareion allow us to recover the rules which visitors were expected to follow when they visited the sanctuary. While they therefore provide some indication of personal expectation, you may still be wondering what kind of religious experience individual visitors actually had beyond following the shrine’s rules. How did a visitor personally encounter Amphiaraos? In what ways did they communicate with him? Fortunately, answering these questions is possible due to the survival of dedications (that is, religious objects often erected within religious settings to honour a divinity) set up by visitors to Amphiaraos himself.

Sometimes these dedications include a short text which details the name of the dedicant (that is, the person setting up the dedication) and the name of divinity it is intended to honour. They also on occasion include images which appear to represent religious activities associated with the context of their creation, as you saw earlier in the case of Leonteus’ dedication depicted in Figure 3. In Activity 7, you will meet another such dedication from the Amphiareion and will be taken through how its textual and iconographical elements (i.e. not only the wording of the dedication but also the images that accompany it) may take us closer to thinking about personal religious experience.

Activity 7

Timing: Allow around 25 minutes for this activity

Watch the following recording in which Alexandra Wilding, the course author, talks about a dedication from the Amphiareion dating to the fourth century BCE.

Download this video clip.Video player: hds_2_video_activity7.mp4

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Transcript

Hello, I’m Alex Wilding from The Open University. In this recording, I’m going to be talking about this marble relief from the Amphiaraos which dates to the fourth century BCE. You may remember from earlier on in your studies, that the term relief denotes a type of artwork, such as a sculpture which has raised moulded shapes and images against a flat background.

As you can see, there’s a lot of imagery going on in this relief, which I’m going to take you through over the course of this recording. In particular, I want to give you a sense of how we might interpret iconography, that is the way in which drawings and figures have been used to represent ideas to think a bit more about personal religious experience. As a starting point, we know that this relief was set up as a dedication, because of an inscribed text at the bottom. The inscription reads Archinos, that is the name of the person making the dedication, set this up, meaning the relief, to Amphiaraos. It is with this information that we may look at the imagery of the relief for clues about the religious experiences of Archinos and reasons why he might have made this dedication.

There are four male figures depicted in the relief. Looking closely at their facial features and their hairstyles, we see that three of them are the same person. These three figures are best identified as Archinos himself. The fact that Archinos appears in the relief three times means that we should see each of his representations as belonging to a different scene if you like, each of which seeks to explain an aspect of Archinos’ personal religious experience.

If we begin with the middle scene, we find Archinos lying down on a bed. As Archinos sleeps, a snake appears to bite or lick his right shoulder. In the ancient world, snakes were commonly associated with healing deities and so the snake here is in fact healing Archinos’ sore shoulder.

Indeed, one fragment of a lost play called Amphiaraos, produced in the late fifth century BCE by the Athenian comic playwright Aristophanes, refers to the use of snakes in medical healing at the Amphiareion. It is therefore likely that this scene shows Archinos undergoing the process of incubation, whereby he would have slept overnight at the sanctuary to receive a cure.

This interpretation goes some way to helping us understand the broader context of the dedication. It was set up to commemorate Archinos’ religious healing after he had slept at the Amphiareion. This reading of the central scene is confirmed when we look at the scene on the left.

We still find Archinos now in a standing position with an injured right shoulder. However, this time he raises it towards another male figure on the left, who offers him treatment. This other figure has to be a god because of his overly large size and stature, and he is almost certainly Amphiaraos given the relief’s location within his sanctuary.

Taking the two scenes together, they appear to offer very different perspectives about Archinos’ medical treatment. They may well represent different ideas Archinos held about his own religious experience and interaction with the god. Indeed, at the very top of the relief, almost looking down on these scenes, are a pair of eyes.

These eyes likely represent ideas of a vision or a dream, and hence symbolise a version of events Archinos might’ve encountered or thought he encountered when he slept at the Amphiareion. Finally, in the third and final scene on the right, Archinos is once again shown.

This time he is looking and gesturing his right hand towards an object in the background. This object is a pinax or a board which is supported by a tall tenon. Different interpretations of the subject have been put forward. One is that Archinos is gesturing toward our relief here. In other words, the dedication he set up for Amphiaraos after being cured.

A second theory is that the pinax represents the wooden board mentioned in the sanctuary’s sacred regulation, which you met in Activity 6. You may remember that it was the job of the temple keeper to write up all the names of those who had come to be cured by the god for all to see.

Whatever its precise identification, this third scene may be interpreted as the final stage of Archinos’ religious experience, by representing him as a thankful worshipper who had successfully been cured at the Amphiareion.

End transcript

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Introduction

Study note: glossary and pronunciation guide

Learning outcomes

1 Religion in the ancient Greek world

Activity 1

Discussion

Study note: a note on dates

1.1 Sacred places and the Greek gods

Activity 2

Discussion

1.2 The cult of Amphiaraos

Study note: names of Greek places and people

2 Worshipping Amphiaraos: personal religion and ‘polis’ religion

2.1 The cult of Amphiaraos: orientation

Activity 3

Discussion

2.2 The cult of Amphiaraos: the god and his sanctuary

Activity 4

Discussion

3 Keeping it personal

3.1 The sacred regulation of the Amphiareion

Activity 5

Discussion

3.2 The sacred regulation in context

3.3 What does the sacred regulation say?

Activity 6

Glossary for Activity 6

Discussion

3.4 ‘Seeing’ Amphiaraos

Activity 7

Transcript

Discussion

4 The politics of religion

4.1 The politics of Amphiaraos’ sanctuary: literary evidence

Activity 8

Discussion

4.2 The politics of Amphiaraos’ mythical tradition

4.3 The chariot dismount competition

Study note: transliterating Greek words

4.4 Competing traditions: Athens and Oropos

Activity 9

Part 1

Discussion

Part 2

Discussion

4.5 Picturing the dismount competitions: the visual evidence

Activity 10

Discussion

4.6 Merging traditions? Oropos, Athens and polis religion

Conclusion

Taking it further

Pronunciation guide

Tell us what you think

References

Acknowledgements

Glossary