The Greek Ephebate in the Roman Period IJHS 2009 (original) (raw)

"At the Altar: A Spectator's Experience of the Sacrificial Ritual in Hellenistic East Greece"

In the region of East Greece during the Hellenistic period, we witness the broad emergence of a luxurious type of built stone altar - monumental in scale, architectonic in form, and lavish in sculptural decoration. While the formal typology and political significance of these altars have been the subject of inquiry, their function as the site of the central cultic ritual - the sacrifice - repays investigation. In this paper, I examine the ways in which the position, design, and ornamentation of the built altar shaped the experience of the spectator during the performance of the sacrifice, using as examples the altars of Asklepios at Kos, Artemis Leukophryene at Magnesia, and Athena Polias at Priene. Each altar's position, architectural form, and sculptural decoration were carefully planned to heighten the experience of the ritual. Marble pavements in front of the altars demarcated the space in which the audience stood. The architectural form of the altar promoted a tension between inclusion and exclusion. The height of the podium, the narrow entrance into the interior, and the colonnade surrounding the inner space created a boundary that separated the rituals observed by all from those reserved for a privileged few in the inner sanctum of the altar. Free-standing or high-relief sculptures of the gods adorned the exterior facades of all three altars. By means of these sculptures, the gods became permanent witnesses to the sacrificial ritual, accompanying the mortal audience assembled on the surrounding pavement. Through the manipulation of physical movements, lines of visibility, and the perception of scale, the built altars of Hellenistic East Greece exploited the threshold between mortal and divine, thus amplifying the emotional impact on the spectator.

New Aspects of Religion in Ancient Athens

New Aspects of Religion in Ancient Athens , 2016

Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. ἐρωτηθεὶς ὑπό τινος, τίνι οἱ φιλόπονοι τῶν ῥᾳθύμων διαφέρουσι, εἷπεν ὡς οἱ εὐσεβεῖς τῶν ἀσεβῶν, ἐλπίσιν ἀγαθαῖς. Isocrates, when asked by someone in what the hard working differ from the lazy, said, As those who show respect for the gods differ from those who don't, in their good hopes for the future. Isocrates, fragment 20 ταῦτα δὲ διανοηθεὶς ἔγραφον τὸν λόγον τοῦτον, οὐκ ἀκμάζων ἀλλ᾽ ἔτη γεγονὼς δύο καὶ ἑβδομήκοντα. διόπερ χρὴ συγγνώμην ἔχειν ἢν μαλακώτερος ὢν φαίνηται τῶν παρ᾽ ἐμοῦ πρότερον ἐκδεδομένων. καὶ γὰρ οὐδὲ ῥᾴδιος ἦν οὐδ᾽ ἁπλοῦς, ἀλλὰ πολλὴν ἔχων πραγματείαν.. .. πολλὰ δὲ καὶ τῶν ὑπ᾽ ἐμοῦ πάλαι γεγραμμένων ἐγκαταμεμιγμένα τοῖς νῦν λεγομένοις οὐκ ἀλόγως οὐδ᾽ ἀκαίρως, ἀλλὰ προσηκόντως τοῖς ὑποκειμένοις. Isocrates, 15.10 with ἑβδομήκοντα for ὀγκοήκοντα After having thought about these things, I was writing this book when I was not in my prime but seventy-two years old. Therefore you ought to have some sympathy if it appears a little "softer" than my previous publications. The book was neither easy nor simple but involved a lot of time and effort.. .. Many of the things that were written by me long ago have been mixed in with what is now said, not unreasonably nor inappropriately but in way befitting the topics. ∵ Preface After spending a few years on questions about εὐσέβεια ("proper respect") and ὁσιότης ("religious correctness") in ancient Greek religion, now published in Popular Greek Religion in Greek Philosophy, I decided, one afternoon, to see how ὁσιότης and its cognates, so common in literary and philosophical texts, were used in Athenian epigraphical texts. The search took very little timemere seconds, in fact. It turned out that ὁσιότης and its cognates are quite rare and late on Athenian inscriptions. No person is designated as ὅσιος, and no person is praised for acting ὁσίως. Given the frequency and importance of these terms in philosophical and literary texts, that seemed odd, and it enticed me to investigate a rather wide range of religious terms and their contexts in Athenian inscriptions and led to the results in this book. And ὁσιότης became a mere Appendix. This study and this book would have been impossible without the on-line Searchable Greek Inscriptions, centered at Cornell University and Ohio State University and hosted by The Packard Humanities Institute, without the online Brill Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, and without the on-line Thesaurus Linguae Graecae of the University of California, Irvine. For all three I express my deep gratitude to those many who have labored and contributed to create, update, and maintain these precious resources. They can be fully appreciated perhaps only by those who remember their excitement at the invention of the Ibycus by David W. Packard. As my work drew to a close, I benefited greatly from careful readings of the whole or parts of my manuscript by my colleague Elizabeth Meyer and by Angelos Chaniotis, Christopher Faraone, Robert Garland, Edward Harris, and an anonymous reader. They had many suggestions and corrections to offer, and the book was much improved. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Henk Versnel who saw value in the project, encouraged me in it, and promoted its publication. And finally I express my gratitude to Frits Naerebout, Maarten Frieswijk, and Stephanie Paalvast, who accepted the manuscript for the Brill series Religions in the Graeco-Roman World and have seen it through to publication. In 1975 I dedicated my first book to my dear wife Mary, then as now the sine qua non of my life and work, and now I dedicate this book to her, in deepest affection and gratitude for fifty years of marital happiness and of copy-editing, proofreading , and indexing. The abbreviations for periodicals are those listed in The American Journal of Archaeology 95 (1991), 1-16. The following abbreviations for primarily epigraphical publications are largely taken from SEG and from McLean, 2002.387-472. Fuller bibliographic material for all epigraphical entries may be found there.

Festivals and Contests in the Greek World

“FestivalsThesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum VII, Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum 2011, 1-43 and 160-172

Typography by Martino Mardersteig, printing and binding by Stamperia Valdonega Group, Verona Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thesaurus cultus et rituum antiquorum.