“Asklepios in the Piraeus & The Mechanisms of Cult Appropriation.” in Autopsy in Athens: Recent Archaeological Research on Athens and Attica. Margaret M. Miles, ed. Oxbow Press 2015, pp. 37-50. (original) (raw)

2015, in _Autopsy in Athens: Recent Archaeological Research on Athens and Attica._ Margaret M. Miles, ed. Oxbow Press 2015, pp. 37-50.

With the Peloponnesian War came great change and tumult. In Athens, the demos was confronted by war, plague, and both the overthrow and reinstallation of the democracy. Religion during these dynamic years was not a static performed; religion experienced change alongside other institutions. It comes as no surprise, then, that the last quarter Athenian religious sphere. Although traditional polytheistic pantheons, a case can be made that Athens experienced an atypical surge in a new, specialized type of deity at this time: the healing hero and his distinct incubation cult. 1 The sudden emergence of deities concerned with health was at work in Athenian society; this was manifest in the near simultaneous foundation of several healing cults across Attica in a period of less than ten years. 2 This paper addresses the questions of where, when and how the healing god Asklepios was absorbed into the Attic pantheon, focusing in particular on an understudied sanctuary, the Piraeus Asklepieion. By synthesizing excavation reports and a constellation of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic material, this unpublished sanctuary can be resurrected from the concrete under which it currently lies buried. After examining the sanctuary as it reemerged in the late 19th century AD, this paper charts a chronology for the cult's establishment. The workings of the cult and, lastly, the mechanisms by which Asklepios was incorporated into the Attic community will be illuminated. Crucial to his links between the deities sharing the temenos, regardless of how subconsciously the ritual actions were performed.