RITUAL, AND PERFORMANCE:

THE RHETORIC OF SPACES IN ANCIENT

A Thesis

Presented to the faculty of the Department of Communication Studies

California State University, Sacramento

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

in

Communication Studies

by

Hannah Edwards

SPRING 2017

© 2017 Hannah Edwards ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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RITUAL, TRADITION AND PERFORMANCE:

THE RHETORIC OF SACRED SPACES IN

A Thesis

by

Hannah Edwards

Approved by:

______, Committee Chair Mark A. E. Williams, Ph.D.

______, Second Reader Nicholas F. Burnett, Ph.D.

______, Third Reader Gerri Smith, Ph.D.

______Date

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Student: Hannah Edwards

I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format manual, and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to be awarded for the thesis.

______, Graduate Coordinator ______Michele Foss-Snowden, Ph.D. Date

Department of Communication Studies

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Abstract

of

RITUAL, TRADITION AND PERFORMANCE:

THE RHETORIC OF SACRED SPACES IN ANCIENT GREECE

by

Hannah Edwards

This thesis explores how space and ritual functioned rhetorically in religious settings in ancient Greece. , , and were the three sacred spaces used as case studies. These spaces represented three different functions of Greek : healing, mystery , and oracular . Using the method of close reading, rhetorical analysis of the spaces and revealed that foundation gave rhetorical meaning to the place of the sanctuary, which framed the spaces within it. This meaning was communicated to the inner self of the supplicants who performed rituals in those spaces.

The repetition of rituals in those spaces made them into places of public memory, and the interplay of ritual, place, and memory resulted in a sense of Greek and identity.

______, Committee Chair Mark A. E. Williams, Ph.D.

______Date

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

If you had told me 18 months ago that I would write a thesis to culminate my master’s degree I would not have believed you. Sometimes doing things that scare you are the most rewarding and worthwhile in the end. Of course, there were a few special people who helped me get through this scary thing.

Prof. Williams, thank you for being an absolute to work with from start to finish, I genuinely could not have done this without you. I am so lucky to have found a professor with such an avid interest in to work with me on a thesis based in the ancient world. We made quite the team. Thanks for the coffee chats, putting up with my perpetual lateness, and understanding my British accent. You never gave up on me, and always pushed me to produce my best work. Sorry for the lost hours of sleep, but I will always be grateful to you for the effort you invested in me during my at Sac State.

Thank you also to Prof. Burnett and Dr. Smith, for your fast-paced reading, flexibility around my tight deadlines, and valuable input throughout the process.

Thank you to my amazing parents, for your unfailing support and encouragement, despite an 8-hour time difference and 5000 miles between us. You kept me going through all the highs and lows, and celebrated every little milestone with me along the way.

And thank you to my roommate Jocelyn, for driving me to the library whenever it was raining, and for putting up with all my moaning and late-night showers.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

Acknowledgements ...... vi

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Background: Religion in Ancient Greece ...... 1

Polis Religion ...... 2

Literature Review...... 7

Justification for Artifacts ...... 18

Epidaurus ...... 20

Eleusis ...... 21

Delphi ...... 22

Method ...... 24

2. THE GREEK VIEW: RHETORICAL SACRED SPACES ...... 29

Introduction: Defining Spaces and Places ...... 29

Epidaurus: Overview ...... 30

Eleusis: Overview ...... 37

Delphi: Overview ...... 42

Epidaurus: Analysis ...... 47

Sanctuaries as Memory Places ...... 50

Eleusis: Analysis ...... 52

Memory Places as Destinations ...... 55 vii

Delphi: Analysis...... 56

Conclusion ...... 58

3. ACTING GREEK: THE RHETORIC OF RITUAL PERFORMANCE ...... 61

Ritual Space ...... 61

Epidaurus: Overview ...... 62

Eleusis: Overview ...... 69

Delphi: Overview ...... 76

Myth, Place and Ritual: A Rhetorical Synthesis ...... 85

Ritual and Memory ...... 86

Conclusion ...... 97

4. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION ...... 102

Critical Problem ...... 104

Modern Receptions ...... 105

Territoriality of Religion in Modern America ...... 107

Future Research ...... 108

Appendix A. Epidaurus ...... 111

Appendix B. Eleusis...... 113

Appendix C. Delphi ...... 115

References ...... 117

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1

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Greek religion was deeply embedded in the larger network of relationships within

the polis. Greek religion was religion-in-practice and Greek religious practices

permeated all spheres of life. It follows that it is not possible to reflect upon

Greek religion as a category in and of itself.

(Kindt, 2012, p. 16)

Background: Religion in Ancient Greece

As in many contemporary , religion was inextricably linked to everyday life in ancient Greece. Ancient had a reverential thambos (awe) for the forces that permeated their universe. The needed to be constantly appeased and consulted; all important transactions, both public and private, needed divine sanction and permission. Life revolved around the rhythm of religious festivals and the everyday performance of rituals to propitiate the gods. Social, political, and emotional stability depended on an orderly system of communication with the gods to secure and maintain divine favor. Greek religious beliefs and practices provided a connection between the and the gods, but also a strong link between the individual poleis and the rest of Greece (Kindt, 2012, p. 14). Eschewing any central , numerous and ubiquitous Greek gods oversaw and protected activities in the mortal realm.

Thus, from the ninth century BC onwards, Greek civilization became a , establishing places of cultural identity and prestige in which citizens could interact with the divine. became sacred spaces organized around religious social systems,

2 facilitating social interaction in a religious setting, bestowing meaning upon human events, including suffering, illness, and .

The ancient Greeks understood sacred space in explicitly religious terms, in direct relation to their religion’s concepts of the gods and the ultimate of . They used their understanding of sacred space to locate transcendent meanings in definite forms within the contexts of their lived experience (Stump, 2008, p. 302). In defining the sanctity of spaces, they drew upon varied meanings rooted in their religion’s and experiences, characterizing the sources of sacred places in diverse ways. From their , sacred space in its various forms essentially represented a manifestation of the cosmos defined in their religious . The meaning of sacred space was grounded in a in the existence of spiritual discontinuities in the material world, where the sacred was linked to physical reality but also encompassed imagined, divine regions that existed beyond the realm of sensory experience. At the same time, sacred space comprised crucial points of contact between human and divine domains, through acts of or . In this regard, Greek beliefs regarding sacred space represented a pervasive expression of the inherent spatiality of their religious system.

Polis Religion

The polis anchored, legitimated, and mediated all religious activity.

(Sourvinou-Inwood, 1991, p. 297)

To understand the rhetorical function of sanctuaries and sacred spaces, one must consider the wider context of polis religion. The word polis had multiple layers of meaning; at the most basic level it meant an ancient Greek -state,

3 but this included the architecture and structure of the city, the practices of the state and its citizens, the political, economic and social landscape, as well as the religious spaces and rituals occurring within it. Polis culture encompassed everything it meant to be Greek.

Religion was a stable cohesive force that lay at the very center of the Greek polis.

Religion encompassed, symbolically legitimated, and regulated all civic activity within the polis. The individual was the primary, basic, cultic unit in polis religion. The role of the polis in the articulation of Greek religion was matched by the role of religion in the articulation of the polis: religion provided the framework and the symbolic focus of the polis (Sourvinou-Inwood, 1991, p. 322). The centrality of polis religion was expressed in the monumentalizing of sacred spaces, in the form of temples and sanctuaries.

The development of Greek sanctuaries in the eighth century BC correlated with the emergence of the polis1. During this period, social structures were transformed as part of a national shift in ideas of , which resulted in new ideas of the gods, the past, and the organization of space (Morris, 1987, p. 171). The polis put religion at its center, and forged its identity through religion (Sourvinou-Inwood, 1993, p. 11). The polis provided the fundamental framework in which Greek religion operated. Temples were material expressions of Greek religious tradition, intimately connected with the

Greek polis structure, and central to worship and ritual practices within the civic setting.

These sacred spaces demonstrated the power of the divine, and provided either physical or imagined access to the itself. The centrality of religion in Greek civic life derived

1 For polis, and some other Greek words throughout the thesis (for example, iamata), I will use the original Greek word due to an absence of an equivalent English term that encompasses its entire meaning. Note that poleis is the plural of polis (not a misspelling).

4 from the perception that the relationship of the polis with its gods ultimately guaranteed its existence. In the origins of poleis, there was often an explicit or implicit form of guarantee by the gods, a finite and relative protection, maintained by the cultic relationships of the poleis with their principal (Sourvinou-Inwood, 1991, p. 306).

This divine promise of protection was at the root of the oracular sanction for the foundation of colonies.

Cities whose origin was perceived to lie in the mythical past expressed their divine guarantee through . Some gods and had temples located at their places of birth, which gave those spaces mythical, historical and religious significance. In these cases, temples were seen as the abodes of gods and goddesses, who would occasionally reside there. Different poleis often worshipped the same gods, but structured their based on local myths, traditions, and practices. For example, the cult of

Apollo, based at Delphi, was also worshipped at , , and . As temples were open to the public, they became distinctive and prestigious religious centers, symbols of political and economic power as well as civic pride. This association linked them to their patron gods and to ancient Greece in general.

Temples were not the only sacred spaces in ancient Greece, of course. There were also sanctuaries, which held both civic and religious significance. Sanctuaries were the link between material expression of religious belief and state formation on a local level, varying according to local political and economic circumstances; the polis was, after all, a community of cult (Morgan, 1993, p. 19). Religious structures were continually invented and reinterpreted to suit prevailing social needs and priorities, indicated by the

5 nature of activities at sanctuaries, which balanced individual and community interests.

The eighth century BC saw an explosion of state formation in ancient Greece, with changes evident in most areas of cultural and political life, including religious activity.

Temples and sanctuaries became an expression of polis identity, and were manifestations of power and prestige within the framework of a competitive culture (Marinatos, 1993, p.

229). This period also saw an increase in votive offerings and dedications at sanctuaries due to higher levels of personal and civic wealth, as well as an increase in the building of temples due to the monumental development of major community cult places.

Sanctuaries and temples were built outside of state borders, removing them from formal state structures, whilst maintaining links with their mother poleis.

After the eighth century BC, sanctuaries became the focus for the self-definition of the polis, which led to widespread monumentalizing, as well as the foundation of more sanctuaries across Greece. Greek colonization, which created the need to up new polis-defining sanctuaries in new lands, further enhanced this process (Sourvinou-

Inwood, 1993, p. 12). The greater mobility and interaction within the Greek world and outside it, together with a greater of a Greek identity and interest in the heroic past, led to a greater interaction between sanctuaries in different places. This, in turn, led to the spreading of ideas from within the Greek world and outside it, and to a cross-influence of cultures that led to the emergence of the Panhellenic religious dimension. Panhellenic sanctuaries were centers of cultural diversity, hosting contests, games, and festivals. In these sanctuaries, the polis mediated the participation of its citizens in a variety of ways. Each polis was a religious system which formed part of the

6 more complex world-of-the-polis system, interacting with the religious systems of the other poleis and with the Panhellenic religious dimension.

Panhellenic sanctuaries drew together numerous city-states to share in a common framework of religious ritual activity. Not only did these sanctuaries act as focal points where formal relations between were established and maintained, but they reinforced ideas and values central to polis organization (Morgan, 1993, p. 18). This role was reflected materially in the creation of monuments to the wealth and achievements of individual city-states, designed to impress and influence visitors from other regions, but also in the development of formally regulated athletic and artistic contests, in which rivalries between different states could be exercised in a controlled manner. Thus,

Panhellenic sanctuaries were sacred spaces that reflected a system of values, beliefs and behaviors, enacted through the performance of rituals. Panhellenism was more than just the sum of various parts of , it was the incorporation of shared community values into an institutionalized ritual program, and correlated with a strong perception of

Greek identity, cultivated through the communality of religion.

Proper interactions with sacred spaces were central to the ethos of the Greek religious system, articulated through a wide variety of religious obligations and worship practices (Stump, 2008, p. 301). Through their experiences of and within sacred spaces,

Greek citizens fully assimilated the basic motivations, expectations, and emotions associated with living their religion. Sacred spaces were expressions of universal archetypes within the ancient Greek religious imagination. The prevalence of shared ritual practices among sacred spaces suggested a distinct commonality in polis religion,

7 which arose from the central importance of space in attempting to structure and understand human experience. Ritual spaces gained religious significance due to repeated ritual actions performed in relation to an atmosphere of sanctity. The performance of distinctive reinforced group solidarity, and related the polis to both its territory and its mythical past. This process was of fundamental importance in establishing and perpetuating civic, cultural, and religious identities in ancient Greece.

In this thesis, we will be examining how sacred spaces and their respective mythic foundations and ritual practices functioned rhetorically in ancient Greece. Of course, neither the study of nor rhetoric is new.

Literature Review

The Thargelian purification rites took place on the first day of the festival, Athens’ principal festival for (Wilson, 2007, p. 151). The ritual involved choosing one or two human scapegoats, known as pharmakoi, who were then draped in figs, fed, led in procession through the city, whipped with vegetation (so as to transfer impurity to them), and driven out:

Must cleanse the city [polin kathairein], and with twigs pelted.

Pelting him in the meadow [20] and beating

With twigs and squills like a scapegoat [pharmakon].

He must be chosen from among you [ekpoiēsasthai] as a scapegoat.

And in his grip take barley-cakes, dried figs

And cheese, such cheese as scapegoats may feed on.

For long have they awaited them gaping

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armed with fig-branches like they have for scapegoats. [21]

That he be parched with famine and, led out

A scapegoat, seven on his piece beaten. (, 5-10W/26-30Dg)

But how are sacred rites and rituals like these functioning rhetorically to enforce social frames and construct polis identity? This thesis focuses on the rhetoric of sacred spaces in ancient Greece, paying particular attention to the rituals and activities that occur in those spaces. The sacred spaces in question are all religious in nature, connected to the gods, a cult, or an . Critical methods struggle when analyzing religious rhetoric, and this realm presents a great challenge to the field of rhetorical criticism. Schreiner, Williams, and Zuckerman (2013) tried to find a method that worked, but found that even Perelman’s and Burke’s methods unraveled in the face of religious communication. But rhetoric and religion are clearly linked in some way.

In ancient Greece, for example, rhetoric was thought to be a magical power that possessed orators and connected them to the gods, especially , the of seduction and . The connections and tensions between rhetoric and the divine have a long history, stretching back at least to ’s Phaedrus. In the Phaedrus, and Plato discussed notions of and madness. Plato said that “the greatest of blessings come to us through madness, when it is sent as a gift of the gods” (244a), and ascribed poetic inspiration, love, and to divine madness. This inspired madness alleviates humans from their mortal condition, allowing them access to the eternal. In the Middle

Ages, Anselm’s ontological theory in Proslogion, written in 1078 AD, defined God as “that which nothing greater can be conceived,” which is a rhetorical construct about the

9 that frames the concept of God tightly without falling into the trap of trying to contain the infinite in words, since its focus is on the limits of language rather than the nature of God.

Anselm said that we can talk about the human mind, but we cannot talk about God, as God is beyond anything that can be conceived in the mind. He believed that religion places language under such duress that it crumbles, and that there is something that occurs inside of us that language cannot explain. Branham & Pearce (1985) also discussed the issue of ineffability for the rhetor, when trying to describe something that lies outside of human experience. In these cases, the rhetor should turn to “contextual reconstruction” (p. 29) to provide a heuristic frame of reference for their audience.

In contrast to the above views, Kenneth Burke believed that the study of religious discourse could bring new depth to our view of language. Burke (1961) explored the similarities between logology, the study of words, and , the study of religion (pp.

1-2). He proposed that religion and language were intrinsically linked (pp. 13-14), and that our language contained words for the supernatural that were borrowed from our words for the empirical (p. 15), therefore when studying religious discourse one must focus on the terminology and language being used (p. 38). Burke made six analogies between logology and theology: 1) The likeness between words about words (logology) and words about god (theology), 2) Words are to the non-verbal as spirit is to matter, 3)

Language theory corresponds to “negative theology”, 4) Linguistic entitlement leads to a search for the title of titles, technically a “god-term”, 5) “Time” is to “” as the parts of a sentence are to the sentence’s whole meaning and 6) The relation between the name and the thing named is like the relations of the persons in the trinity (pp. 33-4).

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Burke stated that our study of human motives should begin with complex theories of (p. 5), as words transcend the thing that they name (p. 10). The notion of transcendence is crucial to the study of sacred space, as the rhetorical significance of religious spaces transcends the building or place they are in.

Pernot (2006) also made an important contribution to the field of religious rhetoric, focusing his analysis on rhetoric and religion in Graeco-Roman antiquity (p.

236). He said that religious messages can be analyzed rhetorically, religious discourse takes rhetorical forms, and rhetoric itself has a religious dimension (p. 253). Pernot noted that the Greeks regarded persuasion as a magical skill to possess; they believed that the rhetorical power of words had a supernatural effect and that orators were in some way sacred (p. 245). He believed that the dialogue between religion and rhetoric can be explained by the similarities that exist between persuasion and belief and between art and the sacred (p. 253). While Pernot echoed Burke in some particulars – they both agreed that rhetoric and religion were strongly linked – his views were better aligned with ancient views of rhetoric and religion. In his concluding remarks, Pernot noted other places where rhetoric and religion cross paths, that “the feeling of belonging to a community” is “important in religious communities and in the rhetorical community formed by the audience listening to a speaker” (pp. 253-4). The rhetorical sense of community formed by audiences in sacred spaces will be a key idea in this thesis.

Rhetorical religious discourse comes in three main forms: verbal, written, and active. Beyond the spoken and written word, religious rhetoric is expressed through actions, such as rituals, dedications, and other activities associated with the

11 divine realm. The rhetoric of religious spaces and ritual actions will be studied in this thesis. Various scholars have demonstrated the broad scope and reach of questions focused on religion and the use of ritual and space (Kemper, 2012; Stobb, 2016; Webb,

1999). Kemper warned of the limits of cultural hybridity and visual communication; when cultures collide, sacred spaces are not available for sharing because you cannot attempt to duplicate the sacred and hope to retain all of its sacred essence (p. 226). Stobb demonstrated that laces political discourse with religious symbols to reinforce the presence and power of the supernatural (p. 296), and that the terms of sacred spaces should not presuppose supernatural referents (p. 298). Webb found that authors of ekphraseis, descriptions of buildings, seek to convey the experience of sacred space in which the seen and unseen, the tangible and the intangible, are equally real (p. 74). In this way, the distinction between the perceptible and the imperceptible qualities of the buildings becomes unimportant.

Campbell (1972) declared that “rhetoric and ritual are inseparable” and “ritual is the basis of rhetoric” (p. 269). Campbell called attention to the tension within the dynamic relationship between rhetoric and ritual. Campbell stated that the meaning of ritual is the “quality of transcending situations” (p. 182), and that the “ works only when everything is present and functioning smoothly”, when the “various formal and semantic aspects come together” (p. 183). Elsner (1996) concurred with these ideas about rhetoric and ritual, as he explored the connection between image and ritual, and the importance of within a religious sphere of experience. He proposed that underlying the sacred functions and supernatural qualities of art in ritual-centered

12 discourse is an identity (posted by worshippers) between the god and the image, or the act and its representation (p. 529). Bell (2009) also alluded to the tension between rhetoric and ritual, and said that ritual discourse is “fundamentally organized by an underlying opposition between thought and action” (p. 66).

In terms of the unifying and transcendent quality of ritual, Hermans, Janssen,

Gommers, and Houwer (2007) stated that religious rituals “establish a relation between the (social and natural) world and transcendent reality” (p. 84). Later in the chapter, in

Table 5 denoting “statements of respondents in 4 categories of ritual elements connected with the experience of God” (p. 100), there was a section on the “Togetherness” of religious rituals, and how respondents experienced a “feeling of unity with others … passing the peach to those next to me” and felt that “God was there in others”. Although not all rituals are communal, when they are performed as a group, people not only connect with the gods but also those around them. Religious rituals have the power to bring people together, unifying them through the divine, transcending the barrier that lies between the mortal and eternal realms. Community and unity are important parts of ritual communication, as we shall see.

Focusing on the human aspect of rituals, and how human action creates this moment of transcendence, Hermans et al. (2007) defined ritual as “the coalescence of divine and human action” (p. 82). The role of humans in ritual is key in breaking down the barrier between the mortal and immortal realms. They have to perform certain actions in certain ways, using specific language in specific contexts, in order to create this transcendent moment. As Bell (2009) crucially pointed out, human activity in ritual is

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“situational”, in other words its importance “cannot be grasped outside the specific context in which it occurs” (p. 81). The power of ritual discourse is entirely contextual, just like rhetoric is. The actions performed in rituals are everyday actions, but when put in a different context take on sacred and spiritual significance. Alexander and Jacobs

(1998) noted that “the discourse of religion constitutes a language system that can be understood semiotically” (p. 30), and rituals are indeed not just actions, but symbolic human actions, that have a deeper meaning than just the appearance.

Symbolic actions form part of a wider phenomenon called visual culture, as rituals derive meaning from their context and setting. Visual culture was a crucial part of

Athenian identity in the ancient world, and was very much connected to the individual.

Athenian perceptions of the visual arts combined with personal experiences to construct a polis identity (Pollitt, 1972). There were several recurring themes within ancient and , such as cult, politics and imperialism, which included images of power, violence, and victory (Osborne, 1998). These images and themes appeared in the physical environment, but also in the metaphysical environment, such as in sacred spaces within sanctuaries and temples (Joint Association of Classical Teachers, 1984). In order to interpret meaning from visual culture, classical rhetoricians such as Plato and created the discipline of , as a way to describe kalon (beauty). Aesthetics is a branch of involving critical reflections on the sensory-emotional values of art, culture, nature, and beauty.

Building on the concept of humans constructing meaning through visual culture,

Steinbock (2012) explored how Athenians employed social memory in artistic displays

14 on structures and monuments to preserve and communicate about past historical events.

The book looked at how social memory formed a shared image of the past in antiquity and shaped identities. Steinbock emphasized that polis-wide festivals and public commemoration were of enormous importance for the Athenians’ shared image of the past, and that material records of the past, such as monuments and inscriptions, reinforced dominant versions of the past (p. 48). The idea of art creating shared identities by highlighting the past can also be applied to sacred spaces in ancient Greece.

Visual rhetoric has the power to move the hearts and of its audience, and the rhetorical power of images lies with the interpretation of the audience. Sturken and

Cartwright (2001) explored the ways in which humans perceive and process images in order to negotiate meaning in the world around them. The capacity of images to affect viewers is dependent on the larger cultural meanings they invoke, and the social, political, and cultural contexts in which they are viewed (p. 25). The meanings of images are multiple and change each time they are viewed and interpreted, as we create meaning from recognized symbols and codes. Sturken and Cartwright highlighted the difference between the artists’ intended meanings and the meaning interpreted by the viewer, as the viewer creates meaning; power and knowledge lies in the gaze of the spectator.

Interpreting images around us to understand their meaning and what they signify is known as semiotics (p. 28), and the tools of semiotics are key for understanding how meanings of images change according to context.

Semiotics can also be used to analyze the rhetoric of architecture. Hattenhauer

(1984) believed that in the semiotic view, communication is the common denominator

15 between and within cultural systems and artifacts (p. 72). He said architecture that represents values and beliefs is rhetorical because it induces ritual behavior (p. 74).

Hattenhauer’s theory of semiotics will be applied to this thesis to assess how the rhetoric of sacred spaces communicated cultural meaning and context. Johnstone (2012) discussed the concept of an “archaeology of consciousness”, which is a “structure or framework in terms of which one comes to understand one’s experiences,” a culture’s way of “accounting for its own existence and for its experience of the world” embodied in artifacts such as “religious rituals and objects, painted or carved images and preserved stories and tales” (p. 7). These kinds of artifacts articulate convictions about the essential character of the world and our place in it, illuminating the forms of consciousness they express and the relationships between these. The symbolic dimension of architectural space is clearly rhetorical in nature.

The rhetorical use of place is extremely important in religion. Endres and Senda-

Cook (2011) argued that location matters in protests and social movements. They theorized about the rhetorical force of place in protest events. Although social movements and protests are not related to religious or sacred events or spaces, a few crucial ideas can be taken from this article. The authors said that learning to smell, feel, hear, taste, and see rhetoric all around is necessary because otherwise ephemeral and material rhetorical devices remain unnoticed. They emphasized the materiality of rhetoric, as all rhetoric has material consequences through acting on physical structures, bodies, and experiences (p. 278). The nature of place is experiential, thus the study of places should attend to the stylistic and affective aspects of material rhetoric, or the

16 feeling of a place. This is particularly useful for studying sacred spaces, as their rhetorical power lies in the feelings and emotions they evoke.

The rhetoric of place was used to enhance the rhetorical power of sacred spaces, and is also used in public commemorative monuments. Public memorializing was explored by Blair, Jeppeson, and Pucci (1991) in relation to the Veterans

Memorial. They discussed how monuments can provoke engagement and thoughtful interpretation through a rhetoric that is not easily consumed or immediately intelligible

(p. 278). They also showed how monumentality can communicate a narrative by telling multiple stories (p. 279), and how the language of architecture is full of .

Blair (1999) also conducted a study on contemporary U.S. public memorial sites and the materiality of rhetoric. She found that the architecture of public memorials “expresses degrees of significance not just through its symbolic substance but by its very existence”

(p. 34). The construction of memorials says something about the cultural context of the society in which they are built. One of her key ideas was that “memorial sites, by their very existence, create communal spaces”, and individual’s encounters with these sites are

“almost always part of a collective experience” (p. 48). Blair’s idea of spaces unifying people is a key concept that I will carry forth in my thesis, particularly how the sense of community within certain spaces contributes to a notion of shared identity.

Dickenson, Blair, and Ott (2010) also discussed how museums and memorials serve as places of public memory, combining ideas of rhetoric, memory and place. They said that memory narrates shared identities, constructing a sense of communal belonging, and that it relies on material and symbolic support (p. 6), such as ritual performances.

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Public memory involves collective audiences with mutual experiences and interests, and has political implications. This book got very close to what I want to explore in my thesis, as it touches on the concept of how such places can construct feelings of identity through memory. Instead of focusing on museums and memorials, however, I will focus on sacred spaces and how they rhetorically craft identity through the performance of ritual activities. This notion is not sufficiently addressed in the available literature on this topic, so my thesis will address that gap in the literature.

Mitchell (2005) suggested that human beings established their “collective, historical identity” by creating around them a “second nature composed of images which do not merely reflect the values consciously intended by their makers but radiate new forms of value formed in the collective, political unconscious of their beholders” (p. 105).

This supports the view that visual culture holds rhetorical power that shapes the political identity of those who experience it. Gillespie (2007) wrote a thesis on constructing

American nationalism after 9/11. The period after 9/11 was, for some Americans, a period in which their national identity was questioned, but for most it was a time of unabashed patriotism (p. 3). These competing narratives showed a dialectical tension in the relationship between the individual and the collective, a struggle between individual and national identity in the rhetoric of the imagination. He found that the ways in which we imagine ourselves, our nation, and ourselves as part of our nation were both discursively and non-discursively produced, and that there were material and metaphysical, ideological, and mythical elements to this process. Thus, national identity

18 needs to be examined as both a rhetorical construct in the interior spaces of an individual and the exterior spaces of the nation.

Gillespie’s thesis was useful for showing how we construct national identity in our modern society. We have seen studies on the social negotiation of cultural national identity in western democracies, but there is far less done on this process in the past. In light of this, my thesis will address the following research questions:

RQ1: How did space function rhetorically in religious settings in ancient Greece?

RQ2: In what way did ritual religious practice function to perform social negotiation of civic identity in ancient Greece?

Justification for Artifacts

To address my research questions of how sacred spaces functioned rhetorically, I will look at three important sites in ancient Greece where religious rituals occurred.

When we think of sacred spaces in ancient Greece, the most famous and cited example would be the in Athens. Copious scholarship has been dedicated to the study of the four main buildings on the Acropolis – Propylaia, the , the and the temple of . These four buildings were the sites of various traditions and rituals, connected to the worship of the gods. However, despite all the available on this famous sacred space, there is minimal scholarship addressing the rhetorical power of this space and the artifacts within it. Visual rhetoric and aesthetics were key parts of ancient Greek culture, and sacred spaces created a rhetorical interplay between myth, space and ritual. Religion and the gods played a central role in Greek daily life, so these sacred spaces were culturally important sites to the Greeks.

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This thesis will focus on the rhetoric of sacred spaces in ancient Greece, but instead of using the Acropolis as a case study, it will analyze artifacts from the lesser known yet significant sanctuaries at Epidaurus, Eleusis and Delphi. These three sacred sites represent three different aspects of ancient Greek religion – healing, mystery cult and oracular divination. From looking at all three, one can gain a more rounded picture of how space, ritual and religion functioned together to create a sense of community, by combining human, divine and civic interests.

Each of these spaces contain specific buildings and arrangements of buildings, of course. I will focus on several of these buildings, such as the abaton at Epidaurus, the telesterion at Eleusis and the temple of Apollo at Delphi. I will focus not only on these buildings and spaces themselves, but also the rhetorical power of the ritualistic activities that go on inside them. These artifacts are significant because the buildings provide the location for the rituals that occur in these sacred spaces. The abaton is a building within the sanctuary at Epidaurus where visitors spend the night and dream, and end up being healed of their ailments through these . The telesterion at Eleusis was a great hall where secretive ceremonies took place, and was the primary center of the

Eleusinian Mysteries. The temple of Apollo at Delphi was a sanctuary dedicated to

Apollo, and contained inside it the , which was the seat of the (oracle), where she sat and made her premonitions. These artifacts were chosen because they are all buildings or spaces within which sacred rituals occur.

The main objective of this thesis is to extend the scope of the literature about ancient Greek sanctuaries, by addressing the rhetorical significance of these sacred spaces

20 and the performance of ritual activities in those spaces. If we better understood the kinds of messages these sacred spaces presented to those who experienced them, we could come closer to understanding the nuance these acts and spaces offered as rhetorical devices.

Epidaurus

Epidaurus is the most famous sanctuary of , the Greek god of healing.

Sanctuaries in honor of the divine healer were established throughout Greece during the

5th century BC (Spivey, 1996, p. 80). These healing temples were called Asclepions, and the Asclepion at Epidaurus was considered the most important healing center in the ancient world, visited by people from all over Greece seeking help for their various ailments. Numerous ritualistic practices were performed on the Epidaurus site in order to heal the sick, and these performative rituals evoked the god and his favor, whilst also confirming and asserting the divine presence on the site. Myths as well as history played a fundamental role in the preservation of the collective memory and, in the specific case of these sanctuaries, allowed the maintenance of a strong association of the god with his places of worship (Melfi, 2010, p. 335).

The abaton was a building within the sanctuary at Epidaurus where visitors would spend the night, dream of the god and be cured. Sickly patients would be healed of their ailments through these dreams, which was a process called thaumaturgy. The abaton was a dormitory, made from a two-part (covered portico), used for those awaiting

Asclepius’ advice and as a place of incubation for worshippers. The healing god would visit patients in a dream, either showing them treatments to follow or curing them of their

21 complaints as they slept. The abaton was the most significant sacred space at Epidaurus, because it was the place where patients were cured and could rhetorically access the god

Asclepius. This thesis will explore the rituals practiced in this special place, which produced such miraculous results and religious experiences.

Eleusis

Eleusis is the location of the famous, yet very secretive, , which were held every year for the cult of and Kore. The Mysteries were an annual festival held in honor of Demeter, and involved several ritual practices including processions, , and initiations. The festival involved a procession from Athens to Eleusis, a fourteen-mile along the , where participants would carry the holy things of Demeter and escort the initiates. In the annual festival of the Eleusinian Mysteries, men, women, citizens, foreigners and slaves stood on an equal footing in their experience of and knowledge of the gods (Evans, 2002, p. 250). In this way, the Eleusinian system of rituals, dedications and sacrifices transcended gender, age, ethnicity and civic status.

The telesterion at Eleusis was called Demeter’s Temple (neos), and like all Greek temples was located within a defined sacred precinct, or , separate from the inhabited territory outside (Evans, 2002, p. 235). It was a large, roofed hall where the secret initiation ceremonies took place, and was the primary center of the Eleusinian

Mysteries. The telesterion (from Greek τελείω – to complete, to initiate) was devoted to

Demeter and , and these initiation ceremonies were the most sacred and ancient of all the religious rites celebrated in Greece. Only worshippers of Demeter’s

22 mysteries, called mystai (initiates), were allowed beyond the gates that led into the goddess’ sacred precinct which included the telesterion and the paved courtyard around it

(Evans, 2002, p. 236). It is for these reasons that this particular artifact has been chosen for analysis in this thesis, as it was such a crucial part of the Eleusinian Mysteries, but also a sacred space shrouded in secrecy and intrigue.

Primary sources containing first-hand accounts of the initiation ceremonies that took place inside the telesterion will be the key to discovering the rhetorical significance of this place, such as ’s to Demeter, Plato’s and ’

Frogs. Homer was the writer of the two most famous epics in Greek literary history,

Plato was a distinguished philosopher and rhetorician and Aristophanes was a famous and prolific playwright, so the sources are all from trusted authors. The main issue with using these sources as evidence, however, is first-hand accounts can often be biased or embellished. There is no way of knowing for sure that an ancient source is entirely truthful when describing experiences, especially when those experiences are from a secretive, mysterious cult. However, for all intents and purposes it does not matter, because these accounts, accurate or not, give us an impression of how people felt at the time, shedding insight on how the Mysteries were received by the ancient Greeks.

Delphi

Delphi was the site of the sanctuary of Apollo, sitting on the south-western slope of overlooking the valley of . The oracle of Delphi, otherwise known as the Pythia, was the priestess at the temple of Apollo. It was believed that

Apollo spoke through this oracle, and she was Apollo’s voice. Inside the temple of

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Apollo was the adyton, which was the seat of the Pythia, where she sat and made her premonitions. The oracle only dispensed advice in this specific seat in this specific temple; everything about it was bound by ritual. Citizens and officials would come from far and wide to consult the Delphic oracle for advice on important decisions. The utterings of the Pythia were full of and prophetic rhetoric, and the language of the Delphic oracle bound her to the Athenian polis (Walsh, 2003, p. 57). It is significant that the oracle was a woman in such a male-dominated world. Analyzing her rhetoric and the space in which she resided is therefore not just a study of the rhetoric of , but also a study of female rhetoric and divine agency. However, male were always on hand to interpret and write down the often unintelligible words of the oracle, diminishing her rhetorical power.

The adyton was a sacred tripod or chamber in the center of the temple of Apollo

(Walsh, 2003, p. 56), and the Pythia would engage in ritualistic activities prior to giving out advice, after sacrifices were made at the outside the temple. The temple of

Apollo and the adyton within were chosen as artifacts for this thesis because they encapsulate how rhetoric, ritual and place all combine to create a sense of civic identity.

The oracle served as a mouthpiece for the god Apollo, communicating his divine rhetoric, on her seat in the sacred temple. Seeking the oracle’s advice at Delphi became a unifying symbol for Greek identity. The fact that throughout the years that the temple of Apollo was demolished and re-built, the adyton remained in the same exact place, is a testament to the religious and rhetorical significance of that sacred place. Critical rhetorical analysis will be used to find out what made this place so special and why its connection to the

24 oracle mattered. Of course, as the analysis proceeds more details will be given about each of these sites. But what is offered here is certainly enough to show that these sanctuaries were important religious and ritual centers in ancient Greece.

Method

Having outlined the artifacts in question from Epidaurus, Eleusis and Delphi, I will now turn to the critical method being used to analyze them. Close reading is a method of literary analysis, which interprets a small piece of text or artifact and applies it to the whole. The technique of close reading was pioneered by I. A. Richards and his student William Empson. It was then developed by the New Critics of the mid-twentieth century, becoming one of the fundamental methods of modern criticism. Richards (1929) described close reading as a technique for those who wish to discover for themselves what they think and feel about poetry (p. 3), and argued that humans need to introspectively access their feelings and experiences to gain objectivity and clarity when interpreting poetry (p. 304). In this case, it will be used to analyze the rhetoric of rituals in sacred spaces. Close reading is perfectly suited for analyzing the rhetoric of spaces, actions and rituals in this thesis, as it acknowledges non-discursive stylistic elements and transcendent appeals.

An illustration of how close reading can be used to analyze rhetorical artifacts is a piece by Leff (1988) on the dimensions on temporality in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural speech. He found that the rhetorical power of the Second Inaugural was in its mode of verbal articulation. In the perfection of its utterance, it yielded to the imperfections of the human condition, and by yielding, transcended them (p. 31). Lincoln well understood the

25 limits of any single voice in influencing the course of political history, and that understanding permeated the speech and drove its symbolic action forward. Although

Leff was analyzing a verbal artifact, the same conclusions can be applied to visual artifacts and their power as rhetorical texts. Human-made sacred buildings, artifacts and spaces, when executed perfectly, can transcend the imperfect nature of the human condition, connecting and identifying them with larger themes and broader expressions of reality. Blair, Jeppeson, and Pucci (1991) illustrate this in their analysis of the Vietnam

Veterans Memorial, analyzing this visual artifact as a rhetorical text. They do this by examining the setting, material form, and minimalist architectural expression of the memorial and note how these phenomena communicate larger themes of cultural identity, unresolved guilt, and ambiguous expressions of national ideals.

Another analysis on a spoken artifact is found in Black’s (1994) close reading of

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Black found that this speech was a projection of Lincoln himself, signaling humility with a flawless sense of the depth and limits of his own competence. Crucially, Lincoln never presumed to cast his mind beyond human dimensions; he does not recite divine intentions or issue cosmic judgments (p. 35). He knows what he knows, and of the rest he is silent. The rhetorical power of the speech lies in what is unsaid, the symbolic implications. In a similar way, sanctuaries convey rhetorical messages not just through the physical buildings and artifacts within them, but also through the spaces in and around them; these “” in the visual narrative have the power to communicate the divine and cosmic nature of sacred spaces.

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Beyond these classics, close reading plays a frequent role in modern studies that focus on the history of rhetoric (Agnew, 2016; Fredal, 2016; Turner, 2016). Agnew used close reading to illuminate how British depictions of at different moments in history reflect writers’ values and rhetorical aims. Her investigation shows that the focus on Demosthenes as a rhetorical model becomes particularly important for nineteenth-century British theorists who see rhetoric as an individualistic display of linguistic virtuosity. The treatments of Demosthenes found in the writings of British rhetoricians from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries demonstrate ways in which

"the facts" of history, including biography and rhetorical criticism, are inevitably shaped by the cultural environments they are in. Agnew also draws upon the of reception history, which investigates how textual meaning shifts as texts circulate in different cultural contexts, mediated by centuries of interpretation. Used widely in the disciplines of history and classics, reception history can offer valuable insights about rhetorical history as well. Reception history is particularly relevant in studying the rhetorical tradition because reception is integral to the formation of tradition. Agnew used close reading to look at the rhetorical and reception history of textual artifacts; this thesis will use close reading to look at the rhetorical and reception history of sacred spaces.

Fredal also used close reading to study the use of enthymemes in ancient oratory as a rhetorical technique. He explores not only the variety of their use, but also the connections between oratorical enthymemes and ancient theory. Fredal uses close reading to look at how the enthymeme was developed and used in ancient Greek rhetoric and oratory, as most scholarship on the subject does not address its role in ancient oratorical

27 practices. Most scholars say that the enthymeme was invented by Aristotle, but Fredal argues that it was in fact created by the ancient orators. His findings show that the orators developed a stable and consistent understanding of the enthymeme as a rhetorical technique, that they used this technique often, and that studying the orators provides an important perspective on what enthymemes are and why they are rhetorically useful. The orators knew that an important aspect of rhetorical pleading involved directing the audience's attention to significant facts, just as religious leaders direct their followers’ attention to significant rituals and actions through their use of rhetoric.

Turner explored ’s angry speech in Chaucer’s Merchant’s Tale, finding that it represented the intersection of medieval classroom grammar exercises, Geoffrey of

Vinsauf’s theory of delivery, and poetics. Through close analysis and a sharp focus on

Chaucer’s depiction of women’s persuasive tactics, Turner found that the rhetoric in

Proserpina’s speech was calculated to subvert the masculine power structures that surround her. Through Proserpina’s gift of defensive rhetoric, revealed in her angry tirade, the Merchant’s Tale “articulates a theory of women’s rhetoric that helps women insulate themselves from masculine aggression” (p. 431). It also illustrates how women use language to “level gendered power differences” and to “protect themselves from violence in domestic situations” (p. 432). The rhetoric explored in this particular speech had wider implications when looked at in context, something that could only be achieved through close reading.

This thesis will define and explain the rhetorical power of space and ritual in ancient Greek sanctuaries by using Richards and Empson’s close reading method, and

28 applying it much like Leff and Black. Just as Fredal looked at the historical and rhetorical significance of enthymemes through close reading, this thesis will look at the historical and rhetorical significance of sacred spaces in ancient Greece through the same method.

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CHAPTER 2

THE GREEK VIEW: RHETORICAL SACRED SPACES

Introduction: Defining Spaces and Places

Before we embark on a rhetorical analysis of sacred spaces, it is important to make a clear distinction between space and place. Space is an area in which there are cultural expectations set by the architecture and furnishings, for example a . A space is set within a larger area called place. For example, the place of Athens contained the space of the Acropolis. Likewise, when one enters the space of the Acropolis, it becomes the place that holds the smaller spaces of the Parthenon, the temple of Athena

Nike, the Erechtheion, and so forth. Enter any one of these spaces, Erechtheion for example, and it becomes the place that contains the interior spaces one encounters within it. The larger setting of a place helps to contextualize and interpret the smaller spaces within it. The terms place and space reference physical locations, but also serve as metaphors for the social imaginary, subjectivities, identities, or epistemologies

(Dickenson, Blair, & Ott, 2010, p. 23). Thus, space and place are both real and imaginary. Although these two words are sometimes used as approximately equivalent terms, they are often used to emphasize differences in physical situations. Place is often thought of as a structured, bordered area, and space is thought of as open and undefined.

However, the two terms are interrelated, not separate entities; the character of a place depends on how it deploys space, and space allows movement within a place. Space and place inform and complement one another, together forming a mutually constitutive relationship.

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We will begin with a general overview of the cultural context and arrangement of each individual location to be surveyed and discussed. Once this overview is complete, we will proceed to examine how each place and its attendant spaces function rhetorically.

Epidaurus: Overview

Asclepius was the ancient Greek god of medicine, and during the fifth century BC there was an expansion of the cult of Asclepius (Spivey, 1996, p. 80), which led to sanctuaries in honor of the divine healer being established throughout Greece. These healing temples were called Asclepions. The sanctuary at Epidaurus was the most prominent location of the Asclepius cult and was considered the most important healing center in the ancient world, visited by those from all over Greece seeking help for their various ailments. Epidaurus is “especially sacred to Asclepius” because, according to a myth which relates, he was born there. Myths and history played a fundamental role in the preservation of the collective memory and, in the specific case of these sanctuaries, allowed the maintenance of a strong association of the god with his cult places (Melfi, 2010, p. 335). We will address this fully in the analysis section later.

Pausanias’ Description of Greece (trans. 1918) is a key ancient literary source for the sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus. In the sanctuary at Epidaurus stood a chryselephantine cult statue of Asclepius. The presence of this statue within the temple of

Asclepius is important, because sacred art creates an identity for worshippers between the god and the image (Elsner, 1996, p. 529). The temple with its cult statue clearly and obviously honors Asclepius as a god (Tomlinson, 1983, p. 66). In Book 2, he describes the “image of Asklepios” in the temple of Epidaurus “made of and gold.” The god

31 is “seated on a throne holding a staff in one hand; his other hand is placed over the head of a ; there is also a figure of a dog lying by his side” (2.27.2). This one description denotes all of the imagery typically associated with Asclepius in ancient

Greek art – holding a staff (the bakteria), with a serpent nearby and a dog at his feet.

Later in the passage from Pausanias, he says that the serpents “are considered sacred to

Asclepius, and are tame with men” (2.28.1). Asclepius would appear to supplicants in dreams under the guise of a dog or snake, and thus the two animals were considered sacred at his sanctuaries.

There were numerous buildings and monuments in the sanctuary of Asclepius at

Epidaurus, such as the temple of , a banqueting hall, a gymnasium, a and a well (see Appendix A, fig. 1 for a map of the site layout). In the center of the sanctuary stood the temple of Asclepius; most of the other buildings clustered around and faced the temple, including the thymele and abaton that stood nearby (see Appendix A, fig. 2). The entrance to the sanctuary on the northern boundary was marked by the propylon, a formal decorative gate. The sanctuary had a clearly defined boundary, separating the sacred area from the profane world beyond, but the boundary was never a physical barrier, but rather a line of posts or marker stones (Tomlinson, 1983, p. 41). Epidaurus had its own temenos, a piece of land marked off from common uses and dedicated to a god, a sanctuary or sacred space. Here, the temenos was the of Asclepius, which was surrounded on all sides by boundary marks (Paus. 2:27:1).

The temple of Asclepius, the thymele and the abaton were the three major buildings at Epidaurus. The temple was relatively modest in size, compared to other fifth-

32 century Athenian temples, and contained the altar of Asclepius in the center of the space.

The temple was simple in decoration and design, as is evident from the cheap on the exterior of the building and sparing use of . In contrast, the circular thymele was a substantial building, wider, taller and more lavishly decorated than the temple (Tomlinson, 1983, p. 60). A fair amount of expensive Pentelic marble was used for the thymele, most noticeably in the tiles and crowning decoration of the roof

(Tomlinson, 1983, p. 36). The inside of the thymele contained six concentric rings, forming a simple maze (Tomlinson, 1983, p. 61). Clearly the arrangement of the inner space had a special function, but there is no evidence for what this was. The thymele also marks one of the places of Asclepius as a man, its conical roof rising like a over a burial chamber (Tomlinson, 1983, p. 67). All of these elements reflect the importance of the thymele as an element in the sanctuary.

The abaton building was a dreaming chamber where patients would be visited by the god and healed while they slept. The abaton, also known as the enkoimeterion, was a two-part stoa situated close to the temple, possibly to achieve proximity to the god. It was the most significant sacred space in the sanctuary at Epidaurus, because it was the building where people were healed of their ailments. Invalids would spend a night, or longer, in the custom-built dormitory, and while they slept, the god visited them and effected his cures (Spivey, 1996, p. 90). Temple doctors would also deal out magical cures through snake bites (Joint Association of Classical Teachers, 1983, p. 297). The abaton at Epidaurus provided patients with a sacred space where they could rhetorically

33 access the god Asclepius. The dreams that occurred in the abaton were commemorated in narratives and images (Marinatos & Kyrtatas, 2004, p. 229).

For example, numerous cures were recorded on publicly displayed inscriptions, including four slabs of stone found by excavators in the 19th century – two of them are virtually intact, one of them is only a small fragment. These four inscribed stelai, dated to the fourth century BC, are crucial evidence in our analysis of Epidaurus as a sacred space, as they recorded the cures (iamata) of Asclepius (LiDonnici, 1992, p. 25). The iamata were publicly displayed inscriptions on stone, giving accounts of healing experiences that had taken place at Epidaurus. The narratives on the four slabs are succinct and to the point, but give an excellent impression of the psychological impact of the healing (Tomlinson, 1983, p. 20). The iamata are often dismissed for their fantastic nature, but they shed light on the nature of the healing cult at Epidaurus. Most of the iamata involve the practice of incubation at the abaton, but some of the accounts describe cures effected without spending the night in the abaton, showing that not all cures at

Epidaurus required sleep or visions. The inscriptions also attest to the role of sacred snakes and dogs in curing patients.

For example, one iamata describes a cure effected without spending a night in the abaton:

A dumb boy came to the sanctuary concerning his voice. When he had performed

the preliminary , and completed the accustomed ritual, after this the

servant who brings the fire for the god, looking at the boy’s father asked him to

promise to make the thank offering sacrifice for the cure within the year, if he got

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what he had come for. The boy suddenly said ‘I promise’. His father was amazed

and asked him to say it again. The boy said it again, and after this was healthy.

Two things stand out from this description: the fact that the boy was only cured after performing the preliminary sacrifice and ritual, and that he was asked to make a thank offering sacrifice to display gratitude for being cured. This shows us that ritual was bound in the rhetorical significance of the place, and that the inscriptions on the iamata were written in exchange for receiving a cure.

Another iamata describes an instance of a patient being cured after the incubation ritual in the abaton:

Hagestratos had head pains. He suffered from continuous sleeplessness because of

the pains in his head. When he came to the abaton, he slept, and saw a vision in a

dream. It appeared to him that the god cured the pain in his head, made him stand

up naked, and taught him the lunge used in pankration wrestling. When day came

he went away healthy, and not long after won the pankration contest at .

This description outlines the process of sleeping, seeing a vision and being visited by Asclepius in a dream, all in the abaton building, rhetorically connecting the place with the healing experience.

Sacred snakes and dogs played a significant role in the cures effected at

Epidaurus:

A man had his toe cured by a serpent. This man suffered terribly from a malignant

ulcer on a toe. During the day he was taken outside by the attendants and settled

on a seat. He was seized by sleep. Meanwhile a snake came out of the abaton and

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cured the toe with its tongue. Having done this, it returned to the abaton. The man

woke up cured, and said he saw a vision; it seemed that a handsome youth had put

a drug on his toe.

And:

Lyson of , a blind boy. While awake his eyes were healed by one of the

sanctuary dogs, and he went away cured.

These accounts connect the presence of the sacred animals with the space of the abaton building. The abaton was not just a dream chamber, but also a house for the sacred creatures at Epidaurus. Although these stories seem slightly farfetched in nature, the testimonials are written with profound sincerity, which shows the patients must have believed these events to be true.

The iamata were publicly displayed in the sanctuary, most of them found within the abaton building itself, demonstrating that they had an important rhetorical purpose.

Visitors to the site would see and read these accounts of healing when they entered the sacred space in preparation for incubation, so this would have communicated positive persuasive messages about the treatments they were about to receive. The iamata inscriptions played a vital role in the psychological preparation of the patients, setting up the conditions and expectations which would help them to generate the properly miraculous kind of dream (LiDonnici, 1992, p. 27). Being exposed to visual, concrete evidence of patients being healed at Epidaurus was an encouraging to patients, promoting belief in the treatment and making them feel part of a community. The iamata served a specific didactic purpose: encouraging the ill that they too, like others before

36 them, could be cured, as well as making clear what the temple authorities expected of the who came to this site (Dillon, 1994, p. 240). They fostered a sense that the patients were all in this together, and that they were in safe hands. Whether these miracle cures actually happened or not, the rhetorical power of the sanctuary at Epidaurus meant that visitors were convinced healing could and would happen.

The power of thoughts can often transcend reality. People visiting Epidaurus would step into the sanctuary and believe that they would be healed of their ailments.

They would read inscriptions on stone slabs around the site attesting to this fact, giving accounts of their experiences. When patients spent the night in the abaton, they were entering a space that was clearly functioning to suggest they could expect that Asclepius would visit them in a dream and heal them, because they read accounts of this happening in the iamata. If they woke up feeling better, then that experience of healing would be committed to memory. Grateful patients would then record their cures on stone slabs in the sanctuary, so the rhetorical process would come full circle and start again. It is likely that the recording of miraculous cures in these inscriptions was not the result merely of spontaneous gratitude, but that there was an obligation to the patient to fulfil thank offering sacrifices, and one gets the impression that the priests of the cult welcomed the publicity these testimonials provided (Tomlinson, 1983, p. 21). Healed patients would go home and tell their friends and family about their experiences, encouraging more people to visit the sanctuary to be healed. People trust the opinions of those close to them, so these social networks were crucial to the rhetorical power of sacred spaces like

Epidaurus.

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Eleusis: Overview

As we have already mentioned, Eleusis was the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries, an annual festival honoring the cult of Demeter and Persephone. The Eleusinian

Mysteries were the most important of the widespread Greek mystery cults of antiquity, and our sources for the Mysteries include the archaeological evidence of the sanctuary buildings, inscriptions, representations on reliefs and vases and references in literary sources. The festival involved a wide range of religious practices, including processions, sacrifices and initiations. The requirements of the varied traditional practices necessitated both public and non-public sacred spaces at Eleusis, with located in the public and less restricted locations (Evans, 2002, p. 239). Interestingly, there were no altars within the sanctuary itself, however, and this absence is telling, as we shall see. The telesterion is the most important non-public sacred space at Eleusis, as it was the location where the secret initiation ceremonies of the mystai (initiates) were held (Mylonas, 1961, p. 237).

The telesterion was called Demeter’s temple, neos, and like all Greek temples was located within a defined sacred precinct, temenos, separate from the inhabited territory outside (see Appendix B, fig. 3 for a site plan of the sanctuary). The anaktoron was an enclosed area in the center of the telesterion, which held sacred objects to be viewed only by initiates to the sacred cult of Demeter.

It is significant that only worshippers of Demeter’s mysteries, the mystai, were allowed beyond the gates that led into the goddess’ sacred precinct, which included the telesterion and the paved courtyard around it (Evans, 2002, p. 236). In this private, sacred area, participants would take part in a involving secret rites, in front of fellow

38 initiates, priests and other participants as spectators. Within the telesterion was rows of seats (see Appendix B, fig. 4), meaning the initiation ceremonies were both private and public in nature – private to non-initiates, public to initiates. the sacred rites was an important part of the ceremony. The rhetorical message being communicated by the telesterion was that you would enter that space to become part of this cult. When people left the space, they were part of a wider community. What they encountered during the festival, both outside the sanctuary and within the central building, led them as a group to an experience that taught them something at an emotional level (Evans, 2002, p. 249).

This sacred space at Eleusis brought people together, united them not just with Demeter and Persephone but also those around them.

The visual aspect of the initiation ceremonies in the telesterion implies the building also had a rhetorical function as a place for spectacle. This is derived from the performance of a sacred as part of the ceremony, and the use of the space for ritual-centered viewing. Participants gazing upon the secret sacred rites of the two goddesses held the power of ritual viewing and framing that allowed the initiates to see beyond their culturally imposed identifications and restrictions (Petridou, 2013, p. 327).

The public and private spaces within the sanctuary created areas of light and dark, linked to the metaphorical notion of initiates being in the ‘light’ and the uninitiated being in the

‘dark’. The initiates enter the telesterion in the dark, but when the anaktoron is opened and the initiates enter that inner space, they pass from darkness into an immense space blazing with extraordinary light, coming from thousands of torches held by the epoptai

(beholders) (Clinton, 1993, p. 118). The bright light in the sacred ,

39 described by (De prof. virt. 81D-E; , fr. 178), whilst physically coming from burning fires, is a simile representing the revelation and epiphany of the initiates

(Clinton, 2004, p. 92). The initiates of the Mysteries are illuminated from within, by entering this sacred space. By connecting with the gods, they are now in the light.

The Eleusinian cult had a double nature: it was an integral part of Athenian polis religion and at the same time a restricted cult accessible through initiation by individual choice, which led to membership of a category mystai to which Athenians and non-

Athenians had access (Sourvinou-Inwood, 2003, p. 26). The teletai (mystery rites) of

Demeter at Eleusis stood in sharp contrast to the most common type of sacrificial ritual in the polis, as the telesterion mysteries neither privileged nor marginalized anyone – male or female, citizen or slave (Evans, 2002, p. 249). Thus, the cult ignored the conventional categories of in the Greek polis during their initiation ceremonies. This further contributes to the rhetorical message of the telesterion being an inclusive space that unified people. The rhetorical power of the sacred space is bound up in its function as a ritual space, as will be discussed in the next chapter.

As we have discussed, the Mysteries involved strong emotional experiences, and so a strong emotional involvement with the ritual and deities. The intense of the initiation ceremony would have made the initiates feel connected to the deities of the cult, as well as the humans around them. Besides the benefit of the experience itself, the connection would also have sealed the effects of the ritual: at the level of the community (experienced by its individual members, as well as articulated by, and on behalf of, the polis) it would have sealed the renewal of the guarantee of

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Demeter’s protection of the crops; at the level of the individual it would have sealed the forging of a relationship (in the framework of polis religion) between each initiate and the two goddesses; this privileged access to Persephone, the Queen of the , ensured a better lot in the (Sourvinou-Inwood, 2003, p. 40). The rhetorical significance of the telesterion only comes to life through the actions of humans, carrying out ritual practices inside the private space during the initiation ceremonies.

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter is a key primary source for information about the

Eleusinian Mysteries. Aside from telling the myth of Demeter and Persephone, it establishes the architectural history of the sanctuary, the significance of Eleusis as the founding place of the cult of Demeter, and the origins of the secret rites. Importantly, the

Hymn to Demeter provides literary evidence for the building of the temple of Demeter, which can be taken to mean the telesterion. The following passage (HH 2 268-274) demonstrates this:

I am Demeter, the holder of tīmai. I am the greatest

boon and joy for immortals and mortals alike.

[270] But come! Let a great temple, with a great altar at its base,

be built by the entire dēmos. Make it at the foot of the acropolis and its steep

walls. Make it loom over the well of Kallikhoron, on a prominent hill.

And I will myself instruct you in the sacred rites so that, in the future,

you may perform the rituals in the proper way and thus be pleasing to my noos.

For clarity, I will give translations of the Greek words in this passage: tīmai means honors, demos means the common people of an ancient Greek city, and noos

41 means mind. From this source, it appears that the telesterion was ordered to be built by

Demeter herself, which provides a mythical foundation for the building as the heart of the cult.

It is important to note that the location of Eleusis and its proximity to Athens was crucial to its significance as a sacred religious space in ancient Greece. The notion that

Eleusis was independent of Athens until the early sixth century is based partly on the fact that the Homeric Hymn to Demeter sets much of its story in Eleusis but says nothing about Athens. However, Eleusis had been part of Athens from the beginning; the

Eleusinian cult was, from the beginning, an important agricultural, “central polis” cult – in which the worshipping group encompassed the whole polis located in the periphery; it was ritually and mythically connected to the center and helped articulate symbolically polis territory, the integration of the periphery (Sourvinou-Inwood, 2003, p. 26). Eleusis’ agricultural and poliadic aspects are correlative with its location in an especially fertile area and at the live frontier with . Poliadic is a Greek word meaning (female) guardian of the city, an of Athene as the tutelary goddess of Athens. In this case,

Demeter was the guardian goddess of Eleusis, and this increased the rhetorical power of the site. Initiations took place in the building that Demeter had ordered to be built, according to the myth, thus the location of the ceremony was historically and emotionally significant to the cult.

Another dimension to the rhetorical power of the sanctuary at Eleusis is that the telesterion constituted as a liminal space. , from the word līmen meaning threshold, is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of

42 rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete. Spatial entities possess an autonomous liminal status within a given worldview, and space only acquires meaning through ritual performance (Endsjø, 2000, p. 357). During a ritual's liminal stage, participants stand at a threshold between their previous way of structuring their identity or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes. Thus, the experience of liminal space was ritualized in the Eleusinian rites. Liminality is the intersection between ritual and space, and the telesterion at Eleusis perfectly encompasses the rhetorical function of a liminal sacred space. The telesterion was a space where initiates transitioned between two states of being, through the act of rituals, which we will discuss in the next chapter.

Delphi: Overview

Delphi was without doubt the most sacred of the religious sites in ancient Greece, with its own festivals, celebrations and prophetic oracle. Located on top of Mount

Parnassus, this important religious sanctuary was sacred to the god Apollo and home to the . The Pythian Games were one of the four of ancient Greece, held in honor of Apollo every four years. Panhellenic means ‘involving all people of Greek origin or ancestry’, denoting the idea of a political union of all

Greeks. The events that accompanied these festivals took place in the heights above the temenos (sanctuary). Archaeological evidence for the site includes architectural remains, votive offerings and representations of the oracle in . The temenos at Delphi contained a theatre, the Castalian , a sacred precinct of , the

43 of Athens and the temple of Apollo marking the focal point at the center (see

Appendix C, fig. 5 for a plan of the site). From just inside the wall of the temenos, the viewer would see the silhouette of the temple of Apollo floating against the backdrop of the cliff (Ching, Jarzombek, & Prakash, 2011, p. 127). The oracle of Delphi, or Pythia, sat on her special sacred seat, the adyton, inside the temple of Apollo as she made her prophetic utterances.

Within the peristyle, the temple consisted of four parts: a pro-naos, a , a sanctuary and a vault (Middleton, 1888, p. 290). The inner sanctuary was at the end of the cella, only entered by the priestly servants of Apollo (see Appendix C, fig. 6 for a reconstruction of the cella inside the temple). The principal object in this chamber was a gold statue of Apollo (Paus. 10:24). In addition to the statue of Apollo, the sanctuary, rather than the public cella, seems to have contained two important objects – a fire-altar

(Plut. De Ei, 2), on which the Pythia burnt bay-leaves and barley-meal before descending to the oracular chasm (Plut. De Pyth. or. 6), and the , a conical mass of 'white marble or stone' (Paus. 10:16). Though the omphalos in later times became the symbol of

Apollo, it evidently dated from a far off pre-historic period, when a rude conical stone was used as the symbol of a , long before the cult of Apollo was brought to Delphi

(Middleton, 1888, p. 294). Delphi was considered to be the center of the world by the

Greeks. This is because in , released two , one to the east and another to the west, and Delphi was the point at which they met after encircling the world. The belief that Delphi was the center of the world was represented by the omphalos, which stood outside Apollo’s temple, marking the spot where Apollo was

44 believed to have killed the . Interestingly, the name Delphi is related to the Greek word meaning womb, which adds another rhetorical layer to the belief that

Delphi was the center of the world, as we shall see.

The oracular vault containing the Pythian tripod was a chamber under the paving of the sanctuary (see Appendix C, fig. 6). In many passages, Plutarch speaks of the Pythia descending to the vault, such as in De Pyth. or. 6 and 28. There was a natural fissure in the rocky floor of this chamber where the oracle-inspiring exhalations were released.

Water was also issued from the rock fissure in the oracular cell, supposedly an outburst from the Castalian Spring nearby (Paus. 10:24). Plutarch (De Def. or. 40-51) discusses the nature of these fumes and their effect on the mind of the Pythia. Evidence for these gaseous exhalations, or at least that the Pythia's excitement was not wholly feigned, appears from Plutarch's story of the Pythia, who in his recollection died through being forced to descend into the vault and give an oracular response against her will (De Def. or. 51). Plutarch’s treatises on the Pythian oracle are extremely interesting, and well worthy of attention due to the fact of his being so intimately acquainted with Delphi and its cult (Middleton, 1888, p. 304). It is clear that Plutarch had a genuine belief in the oracle and her trustworthiness.

According to the traditions handed down by the Greeks, there were five successive temples built to enshrine the world-famed oracular chasm of Delphi

(Middleton, 1888, p. 283). It should however be observed that the first three belonged to period before the site of Delphi was attributed to the cult of Apollo. Pausanias (10.5) gives a list of these five temples, but does not distinguish those which were earlier than

45 the Apollo cult. The fourth temple was destroyed by a fire in 548 BC, but the remains of the fifth temple survive to this day. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo is a key literary source for the origins of Delphi, describing the arrival of Apollo at Delphi, the choice of location for his sanctuary and the establishment of his priesthood from a standpoint almost hostile to local interests. Apollo himself chooses the site and builds his own temple, and having chosen male priests from Crete and other places in Greece brings them to Delphi

(emphasizing the sanctuary’s Panhellenic role), he demands their obedience under threat of retribution (in implicit contrast to the past behavior of the local population). The following excerpt from the Hymn outlines the Cretans’ arrival at Delphi, led by Apollo:

They started out led by the Apollo, the son of Zeus,

[515] holding a in his hands, and playing sweetly

as he stepped high and featly. So the Cretans marching in time

followed him to Pytho, as they chanted the Ie (Hail, Healer!)

after the manner of the Cretan paean-singers and of those

in whose hearts the heavenly Muse has put sweet-voiced song.

[520] With tireless feet they approached the ridge and straightway came to

Parnassus and the lovely place where they were to dwell

honored by many men. There Apollo brought them and

showed them his most holy sanctuary and rich temple. (HH 3 514-523)

To clear up any confusion, Pytho refers to Delphi in this passage, as this is the name by which Delphi used to be known. Delphi used to be known as Pytho, based on the famous myth that Apollo slayed the Python there. This also explains the name of the

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Pythian Games, which were held at the Delphic site. The Pythian part of the Homeric

Hymn to Apollo focuses on three stories that end in the foundation of a cult, ordering altars to be set up to himself as Telphousios, as Delphinios (since he appeared to them in the form of a ) and as Pythios. Thus, the hymn can be seen as an for three cult titles of Apollo, each story ending with an explanation of the title (Chappell, 2006, p.

331). Etiology is the study of causation, or origination. An etiological myth is an origin story intended to explain a name or the historical foundations of a place. In this case, the

Homeric Hymn to Apollo explains the mythological significance and origins of Delphi as a sacred space. However, it is important to note that the hymn does not make any mention of Delphic ritual.

Overall, the rhetorical significance of Delphi as a sacred space in ancient Greece rested heavily on its connection to the oracle. As an oracular , Delphi stands quite alone among the many oracles of the Greeks (Middleton, 1888, p. 282). The Delphic oracle was exceptional for dealing with enquires from a number of states; a shared oracle dealing with major community issues was something new (Morgan, 1993, p. 28). The oracle of Delphi is evidence for divination being used as a tool for decision-making within state government in ancient Greece during the eighth century BC. The institution of a shared oracle at Delphi reflected a balance of state and individual interests at the sanctuary. As the sanctuary gained popularity, the risk of conflict between the local community and sanctuary participants must have increased. The tension between

Delphi’s religious and political interests was evident from the architectural layout of the site and the role of the oracle.

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As we have seen, the spaces of the three sanctuaries we are examining were all unique arrangements of sacred spaces within their contextualizing places. While we have touched on and hinted at the way these spaces come to function rhetorically, we will now turn our attention to a more direct consideration of these places and spaces as rhetorical events.

Epidaurus: Analysis

Meaning emerges from the sacred spaces in question because the place they are in gives them a rhetorical frame of reference. For example, Epidaurus was above all a place of healing, and this was communicated rhetorically through the functions of the various sacred buildings in the sanctuary, especially the abaton (dreaming chamber), where patients were healed while they slept. The message of healing was enhanced by interactions between fellow patients, the priests and the god himself. The publicly displayed iamata at Epidaurus, most of them within the abaton building itself, also had an important rhetorical purpose. These positive accounts of healing experiences would be seen by visitors as they awaited incubation, emotionally preparing them and setting up the conditions and expectations for a miraculous cure, promoting belief in the treatment they were about to receive. The iamata inscriptions made the patients feel like they were all in this together, and that they were in safe hands as it had worked out well for so many before them, making them feel part of a community. The rhetorical power of the sacred space at Epidaurus meant that visitors were convinced before, during and after their visit to the sanctuary that they could and would be cured by the god Asclepius.

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The potential for healing at Epidaurus was communicated through a multidimensional rhetorical process. People visiting Epidaurus would step from the place that was the city – the birthplace of the god – into the space of the sanctuary. There they would be confronted with memorials of past healing. These provided a rhetorical witness, literally written in stone, of the definition and meaning of this space within the place of

Epidaurus. When patients entered the abaton to spend the night, these memorials, now internalized as memory, were carried with them. If they woke up feeling better, then those memories filled, empowered, and sharpened the present. They became the material of invention – a blending of reason and emotion and divine authority – to enhance the pistis, the , the conviction of the who could now more easily believe they were healed, or at least had begun the journey to health. Grateful patients would then record their cures on stone slabs in the sanctuary, so the rhetorical process would come full circle and start again. Healed patients would go home and tell their friends and family about their experiences, encouraging more people to visit the sanctuary to be healed.

They became human witnesses, ‘living stones’ so to speak, that enhanced the ethos of the place. People trust the opinions of those close to them, so these social networks, the core of life in the polis, were equally crucial to the rhetorical power of sacred spaces like

Epidaurus.

When a visitor stepped into the space of the abaton within the sanctuary of

Asclepius, that then became the place: the rhetorical frame that told visitors how to understand and interpret the space inside the building. But the process did not stop there.

It continued as the supplicants moved deeper into the sanctuary, and entered the abaton.

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When they stepped into the abaton itself, it became the place, the context, and the space became the area in which their own interior would be interpreted. Then within the place of the abaton, the supplicant went to lay on their own bed for the night, and that became the final space-turned-place that contextualized the soul as the final, most basic, and inescapable space. It was there where the god or his emissaries would work, and the interpretation would finally be communicated. That is one reason why the genealogy we discussed is so very important: the story, the mythos, became the place to the space that was Epidaurus. The myth was the first place within the rhetorical narrative of Epidaurus, allowing Epidaurus to be a space where Asclepius do his healing work. When patients arrived at the place of the abaton, making their soul the space they came to interpret and understand, then the perfect rhetorical circle was complete: the divine genealogy became the interpreter of the supplicant’s last, most private space, and provided the meaning to the supplicant’s illness.

It is this dialogue between the larger place (active: establishing the rules of interpretation and meaning) and the smaller space (passive: being interpreted and given meaning) that creates powerful rhetorical meaning in these sacred spaces. As we have discussed, the word abaton translates literally as ‘not to tread’, used to describe inaccessible spaces and sacred enclosures. In this hard-to-access space, the healing god would visit patients in a dream, either showing them treatments to follow or curing them of their complaints as they slept, in a process called thaumaturgy. For those who are given an interpretation of their ailment and told what must be done to affect a cure, this is the revelatory moment of the rhetorical message of the space. It is the moment when

50 meaning is assembled out of culture, and it is also the moment culture is being reinforced by the meanings given. In this way, it brings the circle of meaning to its conclusion.

Culture gives meaning to places-becoming-spaces, and those spaces give meaning to culture. The dialectic between the spaces and the culture is where the citizen finds their own self-definitions and sense of identity.

Sanctuaries as Memory Places

A common feature of all three of these sacred spaces is that they all have mythological foundations connecting them to their patron gods, giving them historical significance. The mythical connections of the places to their respective gods inform and empower the spaces within those places. Epidaurus was said to be the birth-place of

Asclepius (Paus. 2:26:8), Eleusis was visited by Demeter in search of her daughter

Persephone, and she told the Eleusinians to build a sanctuary in honor of her (Homeric

Hymn to Demeter 268-274), and Delphi was where Apollo led the Cretans and told them to worship him there (Homeric Hymn to Apollo 514-523), as well as being the place where Apollo slayed the great Python. The telesterion building was ordered to be built by

Demeter herself, which provides a mythical foundation for the building as the heart of the cult. In a culture centered around religion, these etiological myths provided heritage and precedence for the sites of Epidaurus, Eleusis, and Delphi as places of worship for their respective gods and goddesses. A foundation myth gives rhetorical meaning to the place, which filters down in the spaces within that place, and to the people experiencing the spaces. If a sanctuary space is contextualized within a place where a god resides or once

51 resided, this adds a rhetorical layer of ethos and designates importance to that space and those who experience it.

Due to their mythological foundations, Epidaurus, Eleusis and Delphi are all places of memory. Memory connects the individual to the collective, acting cognitively to create a shared understanding of the past. Memory is most salient to collective audiences, positioned in a relationship of mutuality that implicates their common interests, investments or , with profound political implications (Dickenson, Blair, & Ott,

2010, p. 6). Beliefs about the past are shared among members of a group, whether a local community or the citizens of nation-state. Rhetoric, memory, and place are three intersecting topoi that combine to form complex and important relations that create a deep over time (Dickenson, Blair, & Ott, 2010, p. 1). Rhetorical meaning is contextual, addressed to particular audiences in particular circumstances, in line with the political interests, social norms and cultural landscape at the time (Dickenson, Blair,

& Ott, 2010, p. 4). To understand the rhetoric of a place, you must first understand the social, political and economic context in which it was built. For sanctuaries, you must also consider the religious context. Memory places, such as public memorials and sanctuaries, are rhetorically powerful due to their symbolic and material character and function.

Sanctuaries are objects of attention because of their recognizable status, set apart from undifferentiated space. They announce themselves as a site of significant memory of and for a collective, as a marker of collective identity. These places function as secular oracles for the current moment of civic cultures, constructing public identity and purpose

52 through interpersonal interaction and contact. They construct preferred public identities for visitors by specific rhetorical means. A memory place proposes a specific kind of relationship between past and present that offers a sense of sustained and sustaining communal identification. By bringing the visitor into contact with a significant past, the visitor can access the experiences of their ancestors and interact with past traditions. Such sanctuaries offer their symbolic contents to groups of individuals who negotiate not just the place, but stranger relations as well. Rhetoric acts on the whole person – body as well as mind – and often on the person situated in a community of other persons. Sacred spaces shape the heart, mind and will of those who encounter them.

Entering sacred spaces often requires specific behavior by visitors, for example taking your shoes off, covering your shoulders, or staying quiet. Memorials, for example, work rhetorically on the body by directing the vision of vistors to particular features, and controlling the direction, speed or possibilities of physical movement within the space

(Blair, 1999, p. 46). Being able to touch the monument or memorial often provokes profound emotional responses, but also being physically prohibited from touching them, if they occupy a chained-off space, can be just as important. Rhetoric acts on the whole person, not just on the hearts and minds of its audience. The material aspect of rhetoric does significant work to shape the character of rhetorical experience within sacred spaces.

Eleusis: Analysis

Memory places necessitate a particular set of performances on the part of people who seek to be their audience. For example, at the memory place of Eleusis, the

53 celebration of the festival of the Mysteries in honor of the cult of Demeter and Kore required certain ritualistic performances, which we have also seen at Epidaurus. The mythical foundation of the Mysteries festival gave the spaces within Eleusis a rhetorical frame of meaning, most of all the sacred space of the telesterion building, where the secret initiation ceremonies were held. As we saw at Epidaurus, the location and layout of the place set up expectations for the pilgrims and supplicants. The arrangement of the telesterion, especially, mentally prepared initiates for taking part in the secret rites of the ceremony. It was a large rectangular building in the center of the sanctuary at Eleusis, marked by a boundary of outer walls, with a closed-off inner sacred space in the middle of it. The building was only accessible by those already initiated, or about to be initiated, into the cult, making it an exclusive space.

The mythical foundation of Eleusis, outlined in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, gave a rhetorical frame of meaning to the place of Eleusis. This informed the interpretation of the spaces within that place, such as the telesterion. Once initiates entered the telesterion, it then became a place, containing an inner space designated for initiation. Thus, the rhetorical frame of the place governed the ritual actions that took place inside it. The ritual performances of the Mysteries festival were based on the myth described in the Hymn to Demeter. Performing the rituals made the initiates feel that they were suffering just as their patron goddesses did. The story provided meaning to the place

(Eleusis), which rhetorically framed the space (telesterion), which informed the actions inside that space, which communicated the meaning to those performing them.

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The final moment of the initiation ceremony involved stepping into the brightly- lit inner space of the telesterion. This was the final space-turned-place before the rhetorical meaning of Eleusis was revealed to the inner soul of the participants. The innermost space of the telesterion was a liminal space, where initiates stood on the threshold of transitioning between two states of being. The absence of altars within the sanctuary of Eleusis showed the special kind of symbolic relationship between divine and human that was experienced during the Eleusinian Mysteries. Initiates moved from the dark to the light, and the light was where they interacted with the divine, thus there was no need for altars. The rhetorical power of the space of the telesterion was enhanced by its function as a stage for spectacle, highlighted by the rows of seats flanking all sides of the interior, where initiates, priests and other participants viewed the rites as spectators.

Eleusis was an urban sanctuary, and its proximity to Athens was crucial to its significance as a sacred religious space in ancient Greece. The notion that Eleusis was independent of Athens until the early sixth century is based partly on the fact that the

Homeric Hymn to Demeter sets much of its story in Eleusis but says nothing about

Athens. However, Eleusis had been part of Athens from the beginning; the Eleusinian cult was ritually and mythically connected to Athens and helped articulate symbolically polis territory, the integration of the periphery (Sourvinou-Inwood, 2003, p. 26). Eleusis was a space within the wider place of Athens, and its association with Athens gave the site added power and prestige. The rhetorical power of Eleusis was also related to the fact that Demeter was the guardian goddess of Eleusis, according to the foundation myth in

Hymn to Demeter, as we already mentioned. Initiations took place in the building that

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Demeter had ordered to be built, thus the location of the ceremony was historically and mythologically significant to the cult. The mythical foundations for the place of Eleusis guided the audience’s interpretation within its spaces.

Memory Places as Destinations

Aside from memory places having mythical foundations and requiring certain ritual performances, their rhetorical power also derives from the fact that they are destinations; they typically require visitors to travel to them (Dickenson, Blair, & Ott,

2010, p. 26). As such, they demand a certain level of physical labor from their visitors in order to reach them. Some kind of motion is required to go to the sites, and most require mobility to negotiate the spaces within them. When memory sites are treated as destinations, we have allowed them to affect our material lives as well as our mental activities (Blair, 1999, p. 46). The primary action the rhetoric of the memory place invites is the requirement of movement around the place, in the performance of traveling to and viewing it.

Recognizing the role of other visitors on the site is a crucial dimension of the rhetoric of memory places. The visitor is not just imagining connections to people of the past, but experiencing connections to people in the present. Memory places cultivate the being and participation together of strangers, but strangers who appear to have enough in common to be co-traversing the place (Dickenson, Blair, & Ott, 2010, p. 27). The rhetorical meaning of Epidaurus, Eleusis and Delhi was enhanced by interactions with other visitors and officials at the sites.

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Delphi: Analysis

As we just mentioned, memorial sites are destinations, and Delphi is a key example of a memory place that was a destination for the ancient Greeks. The mythical foundation of Delphi, sanctioned by Apollo, gave the place a rhetorical frame of reference. I will quote a small part of the myth again here for reference: “Here I make a glorious temple, an oracle for men, and hither they will always bring perfect

… coming to seek oracles. And I will deliver to them all counsel that cannot fail, giving answer in my rich temple” (Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 248-253). This myth about the place of Delphi framed the meaning of the spaces within it, such as the temple of Apollo, which Apollo himself had built in the etiological myth. As we previously discussed, memory places necessitated a particular set of ritual performances and behaviors. The myth informed the ritual practices that were performed in the sacred spaces at the memory place of Delphi: “[Apollo] will receive with delight rich sacrifices from the people dwelling round about.” (Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 274); “[Apollo] made himself an altar in a wooded grove [385] very near the clear-flowing stream.” (Homeric Hymn to

Apollo, 384-386). Visitors purified themselves in the Castalian spring and made sacrifices to the god, before entering the temple.

Inside the temple, the Pythia would sit on the adyton and inquirers would ask her for advice on issues. She would consult the god Apollo, and interpret his divine and messages to produce a response, through direct divination. Her response would be interpreted and written down by the temple priests. The foundation myth of Apollo provided a rhetorical frame of reference for the place of Delphi. This gave meaning to the

57 sacred space of the temple, which in turn gave meaning to the adyton space inside the temple. The adyton became the final space-turned-place that contextualized the soul as the final, inescapable space where the interpretation of the meaning was communicated.

The oracle and her priests acted as communicative mediums in this rhetorical process.

When the oracular response was given to the supplicants, this is when the rhetorical meaning of the sacred space was finally revealed.

As we saw with Epidaurus and Eleusis, the genealogy is so important to the rhetorical power of Delphi: the story, the mythos, was the place to the space that is

Delphi. This rhetorically framed the spaces in the place of Delphi, which in turn rhetorically framed the actions in the place of the temple and other sacred spaces on the site. These actions gave access to those spaces, and once within the inner space of the temple, that temple became the place that – in this case, literally – communicated meaning to the individuals within it.

The rhetorical significance of Delphi as a sacred space rested heavily on its connection to the oracle. The oracle of Delphi used direct divination to interpret messages from Apollo. She dealt with inquiries and community issues from multiple states. The institution of a shared oracle at Delphi reflected the mix of state and individual interests at the sanctuary; not only was it the home of the oracle, but it was also the site of multiple

Panhellenic festivals and the . Delphi was a multifunctional sanctuary that catered to the interests of all Greek people, giving it widespread political and religious significance. Whether involved in the public celebrations during festivals and

Panhellenic games, or involved in the private cultic activities at the sanctuary, seeking the

58 oracle’s advice in the sunken chamber within the temple of Apollo, the place lent itself to creating a feeling within the visitors of participating in something greater than themselves.

The sacred organization of Delphi represented the hopes and aims of those who looked forward to a great Panhellenic in matters both sacred and secular – a united Greece with one hierarchy of deities and common political interests, instead of a group of separate states each with its own local and tribal gods, and each fighting for its own interests, with little or no regard to the welfare of the rest of the Hellenic race

(Middleton, 1888, p. 282). Inter-state conflicts were put to rest during games and festivals on the site, making it a place of political neutrality and freedom. Above all, the sanctuary at Delphi represented shared community values, and cultivated a sense of Greek identity through its function as a Panhellenic religious space. Visitors would not leave the site feeling Athenian or Cretan; they would leave feeling Greek.

Conclusion

Overall, sacred spaces in ancient Greece functioned rhetorically as places of healing, initiation or oracular divination where visitors could be visited, attended to or advised by gods (or their mouthpieces) in moments of transcendence. Each of the spaces became rhetorical forces that communicated a unified meaning and a sense of identity, demonstrating a synonymous harmony between rhetoric, place and ritual. They accounted for both material and metaphysical constitutions of both self and society, by communicating socio-politico-cultural narratives in a series of overlapping rhetorical imaginings. One of these rhetorical imaginings was the symbolic function of sanctuaries

59 as portal areas to the divine. These portal structures were visual representations to the masses of the fusion of local (polis) and collective (Greek) identity. Sacred spaces occupied a rhetorical realm between the material and metaphysical, the universal and the particular, the part and the whole (Gillespie, 2007, p. 144). They were non-discursive rhetorical acts that expressed the public and private political and religious interests of

Greek society. As material embodiments of Panhellenic cultural values and religious beliefs, they were powerful forms of visual rhetoric.

Public memory’s importance to groups’ self-definitions and adherents’ identity makes it strongly linked to patriotism. The establishment of a public memory place by a state or government marks it out for exceptional cultural importance. Places of memory are positioned perpetually as the sites of civic importance and their subject matters as the stories of society, because of their material form, modes of visibility, rarity and seeming permanence (Dickenson, Blair, & Ott, 2010, p. 28). This is due to the deeply political character of public memory places. The symbols and monuments in public memory places arrange the ‘place’, locating and orienting peoples spatially and temporally. Thus, public memory places are critical in binding and mediating the body politic. In addition, they often determine who belongs to the nation and on what terms, encoding and reinforcing power relations within society. Their locations value and legitimate some views and voices, while ignoring or diminishing others.

This discussion of rhetorical sacred spaces and sanctuaries is essentially a study of the rhetoric of architecture. Architecture is one of humanity’s dominant symbolic forms.

In practice, architecture intersects with rhetoric at several levels. A structure embodies

60 and symbolizes ideas and values (Medhurst & Benson, 1984, p. 387). The structure, further, determines the activities of those who inhabit it, and their relations to one another, including their communicative relationships. Hence, a sanctuary is both a rhetorical artifact and the setting for the enactment of rhetorical, sacred ritual.

Architectural signs are omnipresent, yet the very obviousness of such signs, the fact that they exist by occupying public space and appealing to the human senses, often results in the masking and de-politicizing of their cultural bias (Medhurst & Benson, 1984, p. 388).

Once someone is fully aware of a structure’s practical functions, they often become unaware of the symbolic meanings beyond the everyday nature of its representation. By understanding that architecture is a symbol system, replete with social, cultural, economic and moral values, the rhetorical critic takes the first step toward comprehending the power that physical structures exert on the way we envision ourselves, our environment, and our relations with others.

Now that we have discussed how sacred spaces provided rhetorical frames of meaning for their visitors within the place of sanctuaries, we will move on to the ritual performances that occurred within those spaces. The performance of ritual acts made the sacred space into a place, and the rituals became the rhetorical spaces within them, narrowing the rhetorical meaning of the sacred space even further, into the private self of the supplicant.

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CHAPTER 3

ACTING GREEK: THE RHETORIC OF RITUAL PERFORMANCE

Ritual Space

Religious rituals in ancient Greece were performed in sacred spaces within the wider place of sanctuaries. Sanctuaries were places that rhetorically framed the spaces inside them, which formed a frame of reference for visitors to interpret meaning. The ritual actions within those sacred spaces were a response that acknowledged the interpretation of the space. Ritual space provided a crucial link between religious practice and the concept of sacred space (Stump, 2008, p. 304). The acts worked out the meaning that visitors were guided to within the space, due to the rhetorical frame that the place imposed on it. The rhetoric of the sacred spaces in question was communicated through a concentric narrowing of meaning – the myth was the story to the place (sanctuary), which rhetorically framed the inner spaces (abaton/telesterion/temple), that gave meaning to the acts within the space (rituals), and finally informed the inner, private self (supplicants performing the ritual acts). Ritual spaces gained religious significance due to the performance of repeated ritual actions in relation to an atmosphere of sanctity. The causal link between ritual and the sacredness of a place was complex. In some cases, a space acquired sanctity from repeated ritual performance. In other instances, however, a space was used as a ritual center because of the sanctity attributed to the location by the supplicants’ myths.

Now that we have given a brief outline of how rhetorical meaning was crafted from these sacred spaces through the performance of rituals, we will address how each of

62 the sacred spaces in question used rituals to give performative enhancement to the rhetoric of the place. Each of the sacred spaces served a different religious function which informed the nature of the rituals performed.

Epidaurus: Overview

At Epidaurus, each individual had to approach the god by way of a set ritual. This included preliminary sacrifice and purification by ritual (Tomlinson, 1983, p. 19), which is a common feature of all the sacred spaces being studied. The general method of approach was for the supplicant to spend a night sleeping in the abaton, where they would be visited by the god in a dream and cured of their ailment. Spending the night in the abaton and being cured through sleep and visions was called the incubation ritual; this ritual will be the focus of our present discussion of rhetorical ritual performances at

Epidaurus. As mentioned in the previous chapter, four inscribed stone slabs (iamata) found on the site provide evidence for various experiences of healing at the sanctuary; describing nights spent sleeping in the dream chamber and visions of the god, as wells as stories of sacred snakes and dogs issuing cures.

One of the oldest performative rituals attested in the sanctuary of Epidaurus is that recorded by the Paean of Isyllos. were songs or lyrical poems expressing triumph or thanksgiving, often used in to honor gods. ‘Paeon’ was also an epithet of Apollo, who was Asclepius’ father according to the Epidaurians (Paus. 2:26:2).

At the beginning of the third century ВС, Isyllos, an Epidaurian aristocrat, established a new ritual in honor of Asclepius, which consisted of a procession and the performance of

63 a hymn (Melfi, 2010, p. 327). A complete text of Isyllos’ Paian to Asclepius was found on a stone inscription, a key section of which follows:

O people, praise the god to whom "Hail, Paean" is sung, you who dwell in this

sacred Epidaurus. For thus the message came to the ears of our forefathers, O

Phoebus Apollo. Zeus the Father is said to have given the Muse Erato to Malus as

his bride in holy wedlock. Then , who dealt in Epidaurus, his fatherland,

married the daughter of Malus whom Erato, her mother, bore, and her name was

Cleophema. By Phlegyas then a child was begotten, and she was named Aeglē;

this was her name, but because of her beauty she was also called Coronis. Then

Phoebus of the golden bow, beholding her in the palace of Malus, ended her

maidenhood. You went into her lovely bed, O golden-haired son of . I revere

you. Then in the perfumed temple Aeglē bore a child, and the son of Zeus,

together with the Fates and , the noble midwife, eased her birth pains.

Apollo named him Asclepius from his mother’s name, Aeglē the reliever of

illness, the granter of health, great boon to mankind. Hail Paean, hail Paean.

Asclepius, increase your maternal city of Epidaurus, send bright health to our

hearts and bodies, hail Paean, hail Paean.

This hymn praises Asclepius, but also gives prominence to the role of Epidaurus in the cult of Asclepius. It perfectly encapsulates the notions of , geography and identity that combine to make Epidaurus a significant for Asclepius.

Worshippers of the cult would gather first at the town of Epidaurus, then make their way in a sacred, formal procession to the sanctuary chanting of praise to Asclepius

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(Tomlinson, 1983, p. 16), just like the Paean of Isyllos. Along the route leading from the plain to the hilltop, the ancient hymns might have been sung to evoke the birth of

Asclepius in the land of the Epidaurians and consequently re-establish the ancestral connection of the god with his sanctuary (Melfi, 2010, p. 330). Performative rituals evoked the god and his favor, but also confirmed and asserted the continuation of the divine presence on the site.

The second book of Pausanias’ Description of Greece provides us with rich literary evidence relating to the ritual activities that took place at Epidaurus. In terms of sacrificial offerings at Epidaurus, Pausanias tells us that are forbidden from being sacrificed there as it is against the custom of the Epidaurians (2.26.9), that meat from sacrifices must be consumed within the bounds of the sanctuary (2.27.1), and that

Hippolytus dedicated twenty horses to the god (2.27.4). As well as sacrificial rituals, he also refers to the incubation ritual in the abaton: “Over against the temple is the place where the supplicants of the god sleep” (2.27.2). The incubation ritual in the abaton involved a form of divination, through the interpretation of dreams. Divination in ancient

Greece took many forms, all involving the interpretation of divine signs. The four main types of divinatory practice are direct, indirect, spontaneous, and artificial (Johnston,

2009, p. 9). Direct divination is when a supplicant experiences divination through dreams, through a temporary state of madness, or frenzy. Thus, supplicants at Epidaurus were subject to direct oracular incubation when they spent the night in the abaton.

These experiences of dreaming or frenzy resulted in a revelation or attainment of truth through , after the supplicant made efforts to produce a state of

65 mind and being that created a precondition for divination. These efforts included sleeping in conditions where dreams might be more likely to occur (such as sleeping in the abaton at Epidaurus), inhaling vapors, and chewing bay leaves (such as the oracle of Delphi did).

In this way, the sacred space provided a rhetorical frame on the body and mind of the supplicants. The body and soul are separate entities that work in shifts rather than in tandem. While the body is active, for example when the person is awake, the body is in control. While the soul is active, for example when a sleeping person dreams, the body is more open to divine ministrations (Johnston, 2009, p. 92). By sleeping in the abaton, the supplicants were preparing their bodies and minds to be visited by the god. The rhetoric of the sacred space placed demands on the body and mind, affecting the inner spatial territoriality of the supplicants.

Another rhetorical demand that the space placed on the body and mind during the incubation ritual came from the fact that the abaton was a labyrinth sunken into the ground, therefore entering the space felt like going into a cocoon or dark underground world. When patients entered this subterranean chamber, they rhetorically and psychologically left ordinary time and space, and entered another dimension of visions and dreams, an altered state of consciousness. Ancient Greeks would descend into dark, underground, enclosed spaces in search of a revelation of divine truth (Ustinova, 2009, p.

32). Thus, descending into the abaton mentally prepared the patients for a divine revelation from Asclepius. We saw a similar process at Delphi, where supplicants descended to the adyton chamber before consulting the oracle. The physical demands that the space placed on the bodies of supplicants also affected their minds, altering their state

66 of consciousness. This process of illumination was heightened by the sensory deprivation induced by the darkness of the space, which was also employed in the initiation rites at

Eleusis.

The final aspect of rituals at Epidaurus that Pausanias mentions is the presence of the serpents, “a peculiar kind of yellowish color” that are “considered sacred to Asclepius and are tame with men” (2.28.1). He says that these special kinds of serpents are only found at Epidaurus. The live snakes were kept in labyrinths beneath the temple of

Asclepius. The significance of snakes as part of the ritual activities at Epidaurus is also apparent from depictions of Asclepius in statues holding a staff with a single serpent twined around it. The snake is a natural symbol of renewal because it sheds its skin periodically to rejuvenate itself (Tzeferakos & Douzenis, 2014, p. 4). In addition to this, the name of Asclepius itself originates from the Greek word askalabos, which means snake. Even now, the image of a staff with a snake wrapped around it is associated with healing, often used as a universal symbol for a pharmacy or medical center, which shows that the rhetoric of that image was so powerful that it lasted the test of the time from ancient Greece to the modern day.

The healing narratives found at Epidaurus, which would have circulated among people of the ancient Greek world, would have enhanced Asclepius’ reputation as a divine physician. Panagiotidou (2016) that the public and open nature of these narratives of healing in the sanctuary created a placebo effect on the patients, convincing them that they had received a miraculous, religious healing experience bestowed on them by the divine Asclepius during the ritual of incubation (p. 79). It is difficult to say

67 whether these visitations were merely hallucinations in the imaginations of individuals, whether some in the dim light, accompanied by a serpent, acted the part of

Asclepius, or whether the patient was put under the influence of opium or some other drug provocative of dreams (Caton, 1900, p. 29). Whether the healing experiences were a placebo or not matters little, because the people who visited the sanctuary left convinced they were healed, which shows the immense rhetorical power of the healing rituals at

Epidaurus.

Another rhetorical layer of the ritual performance at Epidaurus was the representation of Asclepius’ healing powers in ancient Greek plays. Aristophanes was a prominent and popular Athenian playwright, most well-known for writing comedies during the third and fourth centuries BC. In Wasps, one of his famous comedies, he describes methods used to cure a patient's mental disorder:

[115] At first he tried him with gentleness, wanted to persuade him to wear the

cloak no longer, to go out no more; unable to him, he had him bathed

and purified according to the ritual without any greater success, and then handed

him over to the Corybantes; but the old man escaped them, and carrying off the

kettledrum, [120] rushed right into the midst of the Heliasts. As could do

nothing with her rites, his son took him to and forcibly made him lie one

night in the temple of Asclepius, the God of Healing, but before daylight there he

was to be seen at the gate of the tribunal. [125] Since then we let him go out no

more, but he escaped us by the drains or by the skylight, so we stuffed up every

opening with old rags and made all secure. (115-129)

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This passage describes persuasion with soothing words, washing and purification, incubation in the temple of Asclepius in Aegina, participation in mystic rites (wild

Corybantic and ), and constraint in the house as forms of treatment for mental illness. Of these treatments, Parker (1983) said that purification (katharmos) was believed to be a method of freeing a person or a community from a miasma (religious pollution), and is one of the magical treatments for mental disorders (p. 217). Insanity, therefore, was regarded in popular thought to be caused by religious pollution, which could often be unintentional (Tzeferakos & Douzenis, 2014, p. 7). From this point of view, the rhetorical message being communicated by Epidaurus was one of cleansing the local and wider Greek community through its ritual activities, as the site specialized in the treatment of mental illnesses.

In the incubation ritual in the abaton, the priests of the temple interpreted the dreams of the patients. The priests elucidated and revealed the cause and the proper cure for the disorders being suffered by the patients. The preservation of a climate of spiritual healing was largely entrusted to this group of priests within the sanctuary, derived from a select few families. The priests established procedures for worship, suggested appropriate sacrifices at Asclepius’ altar and sought to create a holding environment for the pilgrims

(Tzeferakos & Douzenis, 2014, p. 4). It is interesting that even though the cures were thought to be issued by the god Asclepius, and any dream experienced was presumed to come from the god, the dreams required interpretation and issuance by human priests.

One can imagine it may have been a tense time for the patients awaiting an interpretation

69 of the method of treatment for their ailment by the priests, a delayed divinatory response, compared to those who woke up instantly miraculously cured.

Rhetorically, the illnesses of the incoming patients are associated with human mortality, and the cures are associated with divine power or magic. Thus, when patients are healed, the rhetorical message is that they are transcending their human condition.

The human presence makes the divine cures become a reality, just as the advice of the divinely prophetic oracle at Delphi had to be interpreted by human priests to be understood, which will be discussed later. Although this sacred space supposedly connects visitors with the god, it requires human actions and ritual activities to gain access to the ‘divine’ presence. For the patients who were not instantly cured over night, they woke up with symbolic instructions from the god, that had to be interpreted from the priests before they issued or advised a cure for their ailment. The rhetorical significance of the healing experiences at Epidaurus was activated by mortal actions – the acts of purification and sacrifice by the patients, and divine interpretation by the priests.

Eleusis: Overview

The Eleusinian Mysteries festival involved various ritual practices, both public and private in nature. The public celebrations involved processions, sacrifices and acts of purification. Participants in the great procession of the Eleusinian Mysteries would walk from Athens to Eleusis carrying the “holy things of Demeter or escorting the initiates”

(Joint Association of Classical Teachers, 1984, p. 119-120). The epheboi, young men of eighteen or nineteen, would escort the sacred things (hiera) in boxes (kistai) to Athens

(Joint Association of Classical Teachers, 1984, p. 125). were sculptured female

70 figures found at the site of Eleusis, and they were often depicted carrying kistai on their heads. These sacred objects were a central part of the ritual, but due to the universal awe and respect for the secrecy of the Mysteries in Greece, we have no evidence at all for suggesting what they might have been. When the procession reached

Eleusis, the kernoi and plemochoai were presented to Demeter.

Other rituals performed as part of the Greater Mysteries were ritual cleansing in the , feasting and revelry, followed by , and resting. Many of these acts were performed as purification of the mind, body and soul to prepare for initiation. The last day of the festival featured public rites and libations in honor of the dead, and the great civic sacrifices at the altars and escharai in the public courtyard outside the walls (Evans,

2002, p. 241). The pig is the sacrificial animal most commonly referenced in depictions of the Mysteries at Eleusis. Eleusis was famous for its pigs, and scholars have long known of the significance of piglets at Eleusis from literary evidence and the iconography of the Mysteries (Clinton, 1992, p. 59). On the second day of the Mysteries, the initiates would bathe in the sea with their piglets as part of the cleansing ritual of purification (Foucart, 1914, pp. 314-17). Initiates even commissioned commemorative statues depicting themselves holding a piglet in a posture that recalls that moment before dedication of their offering to Demeter. Since we know from epigraphic and iconographic evidence that pigs play a large role in Eleusinian ritual, it is then not surprising to find specific areas for the deposition of votive pig offerings for the goddess to whom pigs were so often dedicated in Greek cult practices (Evans, 2002, p. 242). Five pit-like structures, known as megara, were found attached to the foundations of the porch of the

71 telesterion (see Appendix B, fig. 4 for an illustration of this). In the central pit, the excavator found a remarkably black soil reminiscent of compost, and in two of the pits he discovered animal bones (Clinton, 1993, p. 113). These pits are evidence of the certain type of sacrificial ritual practiced at Eleusis – the dedication of piglet offerings.

The private rituals performed as part of the Eleusinian Mysteries involved mysterious initiation ceremonies. Although the mysteries stressed the difference between the initiated and uninitiated, entry to initiation was not restricted; anyone could become an initiate (Joint Association of Classical Teachers, 1984, p. 124). The secret initiation ceremony of the mystai (initiates) took place in the telesterion (Mylonas, 1961, p. 237).

These initiations would result in personal revelation and , feelings of bliss, joy, awe and confusion. It is believed that there were three parts of the initiation rites: dromena (sacred pageant telling the story of Demeter and Persephone), deiknymena

(sacred objects shown), legomena (words spoken) – in other words, ‘things done, things shown and things said’ (Mylonas, 1961, p. 261). On the evening of the seventh day of the

Mysteries, the secret rites took place.

During the night, initiates would file into the sanctuary in complete darkness, walk to the telesterion where they deposited piglets in the megara, then wander around in search of the goddess Kore (as Demeter did in the foundation myth), confused and disorientated as they stumbled in the dark, their eyes blinded by a hood, each initiate guided by a mystagogue (Clinton, 1993, p. 118). It is unclear whether the initiates were searching for a vision, a statue, or a physical appearance of Kore. A mystagogue, or , is a person who initiates others into a mystic cult, who has knowledge of the

72 . In this case, they served as a guide to the initiates, who were blinded by their hoods in the darkness of the night. Once inside the telesterion, after the three parts of the ceremony were carried out – the sacred drama, the showing of the sacred objects, and the speaking of sacred words – the initiates’ hoods were removed by the , and they were led into the brightly-lit anaktoron to mark the moment of initiation and personal revelation. As they entered this inner space of the telesterion, the first thing the initiates saw was two glowing statues of the goddesses, greeting their eyes after temporary blindness. After searching for the goddesses all night, they have now found them. The temporary sensory deprivation would have enhanced the visions experienced after by the mystai.

The initiation ceremony was a strongly visual experience for the participants.

Controlling sight and the interplay between vision and blindness was of paramount importance in the sacred rites of the Mysteries. The power of ritual viewing and framing at Eleusis allowed the initiates to metaphorically and physically ‘see’ (Petridou, 2013, p.

316). The passage from ritual blindness to ritual sight, the transformation from being a mystes (sightless and blind to true knowledge) into being an epopteias (insightful and knowledgeable), was the basic for the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Initiates would leave behind both the actual darkness of their blindness and the metaphorical darkness of their ignorance of the Mysteries, welcoming both the light of sight and the light of knowledge (Petridou, 2013, p. 319). Vision is semantically connected with knowledge. It is important to note that human action is the factor that brings the uninitiated (both physically and metaphorically) from the darkness into the

73 light. The ritual performance of mortals at Eleusis allows them access to the world of the divine, just as we saw at Epidaurus.

A mystery cult normally requires mystai to undergo a death-like experience or at least an experience of suffering to be initiated, and usually holds forth a promise of prosperity in this life and usually also in the afterlife (Clinton, 2003, p. 55). A major expectation of the initiates at Eleusis was a happy lot in the afterlife, as proclaimed in the

Homeric Hymn to Demeter (480-2): “Happy is he who has seen these things, but he who is not initiate in the rites, who does not share in them, he does not have a lot of like things when he is dead in the dank gloom.” Plato also refers to the importance of initiation in mystery cults with regards to the afterlife (Phaedo 69c): “…whoever goes uninitiated and unsanctified to the other world will lie in the mire, but he who arrives there initiated and purified will dwell with the gods.” Both sources demonstrate that one of the primary functions of ritual performance at Eleusis was to secure a pleasant afterlife, but what is most interesting is the terminology used to refer to the uninitiated. They are described as

‘in the dank gloom’ or ‘in the mire’, symbolically connecting those uninitiated into the cult with darkness, and also with the piglets deposited in the dark sacrificial pits outside.

By implication, mystai leave the ‘darkness’ and go into the ‘light’ when they are initiated, thus the rhetorical message of ritual performance at Eleusis is one of journeying from dark to light.

Plato, an initiate himself, also uses light and dark terminology when describing the culminating experience of the Mysteries in Phaedrus (250b-c):

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… they saw beauty shining in brightness, when, with a blessed company … they

saw the blessed sight and vision and were initiated into that which is rightly called

[250c] the most blessed of mysteries, which we celebrated in a state of perfection,

when we were without experience of the evils which awaited us in the time to

come, being permitted as initiates to the sight of perfect and simple and calm and

happy apparitions, which we saw in the pure light, being ourselves pure …

This passage from the Phaedrus reports the sacred rites of the Mysteries as personally experienced by an initiate. Not only does Plato symbolically connect initiates with light, but also with purity, perfection and beauty. As purification is one of the preliminary rituals in the Eleusinian Mysteries, it appears that the rhetorical purpose of this ritual performance was another way to become mystically enlightened. Initiates of the mystery cult perform these rituals to enter a state of purity and perfection, to gain access to the light and beauty that can be witnessed in the mortal world. The cultural metaphor of ‘purification’ reflects how initiation into the cult of Demeter and Kore offered initiates not only purity from the actual darkness of their blindness, but also cleanness from their intellectual and ritual darkness (Petridou, 2013, p. 319). Only those who had seen the rites could avoid the damp darkness of the halls of and reach the sunlight of the blessed. Connotations of these symbols of light and dark are that the initiates can see, whilst the uninitiated are blind to the beauty of the world, emphasizing the strongly visual aspect of rituals at Eleusis. This is reflected in the ritual actions of the initiates during the sacred rites, which happens under the darkness of night, as they are

75 blindfolded when looking for Kore then pass into the light when they enter the telesterion.

Plutarch also describes the experience of initiates of the Mysteries, making a comparison between the experience of the human soul at death and that of an initiate:

The soul suffers an experience similar to those who celebrate great initiations …

wandering astray in the beginning, tiresome walks in circles, some frightening

paths in darkness that lead nowhere; then immediately before the end all the

terrible things, panic and shivering and sweat, and bewilderment. And then some

wonderful light comes to meet you, pure regions and meadows are there to greet

you, with sounds and and solemn, sacred words and holy view; and there

the initiate, perfect by now, set free and loose from all bondage, walks about

crowned with a wreath, celebrating the festival together with the other sacred and

pure people, and he looks down on the uninitiated, unpurified crowd in this world

in mud and fog beneath his feet. (fr. 168)

This fragment is significance because it uses a similar set of terms to describe the uninitiated, as we saw in Plato – ‘unpurified’, wandering ‘in darkness’, in ‘mud and fog’.

The implication is that through the performance of sacred rituals, initiates become pure, perfect and sacred. From these sources, it seems there was a hierarchy between the initiates and the uninitiated. Those who had taken part in the secret rites became part of an elite inner circle of the mystery cult.

If there is any correspondence between the myth recorded in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Eleusinian rites, perhaps initiates suffered as Demeter and Persephone

76 suffered in the narrative of their separation and reunion (Evans, 2002, p. 249). If so, then in the Mysteries the initiate experiences the feelings of the two goddesses in their progression from grief to joy. The two goddesses were in pain, and were displayed to the worshippers in this state. The initiates share their pain and, in the end, their and joy

(Clinton, 1993, p. 116). Compared to most Greek cults, this is truly extraordinary. The ritual performances at Eleusis made initiates suffer as their cult goddesses suffered, giving the participants a sense of mutual shared experience with their patron deities.

Suffering of the initiates came in the form of fasting, being in darkness and the ritual procession from Athens to Eleusis – a hot and dusty 14-mile journey, which was repeatedly interrupted by sacred dances, sacrifices, libations, ritual washings, and the singing of hymns accompanied by pipes (Bremmer, 2014, p. 6). The power of these rituals made participants feel unified with other initiates and intimately connected to their patron goddesses.

Delphi: Overview

As we have seen, Delphi was considered the omphalos (navel), the center of the world (Plut. De def. orac. 1). In the opening of Pythian 6, refers to Delphi as

“the sacred navel” (4-9). This belief was represented by a marble monument of the omphalos stone found in the temple of Apollo at the sacred site of Delphi. The sacred stone became a symbol of Apollo, the oracle and more generally of the region of Delphi.

Sophocles also refers to Delphi as the center of the earth in his Athenian tragedy the King:

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Who is he of whom the divine voice from the Delphian rock has said [465] to

have wrought with blood-red hands horrors that no tongue can tell? It is time that

he ply in flight a foot stronger than the feet of storm-swift steeds. [470] The son

of Zeus is springing upon him with fiery lightning, and with him come the dread

unerring Fates. Recently the message has flashed forth from snowy Parnassus

[475] ordering all to search for the unknown man. He wanders under cover of the

wild wood, among caves and rocks, fierce as a bull, wretched and forlorn on his

joyless path, still seeking to separate himself from the doom revealed at the

central shrine of the earth. [480] But that doom lives forever, forever flits around

him. (463-81)

In this passage is poetically contemplating the source of the divine world, imagining it as emanating not from the Pythia herself but from all the various elements of the sanctuary at Delphi. So, what made this site so special? The ritual performances of the visitors, temple priests and the oracle gave this sacred space rhetorical significance in ancient Greece.

Oracles and divination played a regular and significant role in the lives of ancient

Greeks, who used divine revelation as a regular and continual means for determining the will of the gods on almost every conceivable issue (Aune, 1983, p. 23). Oracular activities commonly took place within the precincts of sacred spaces, which was true for the sanctuary at Delphi. The place of Delphi contained many sacred spaces within it, such as the Castalian Spring, the temple of Apollo, and the adyton inside the temple where the

Pythia sat. The mythical foundation of Delphi, being sanctioned by Apollo in the

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Homeric Hymn to Apollo, provided a rhetorical frame of reference for the sacred spaces within the sanctuary. The adyton was a space within the place of the temple, which was a space within the place of the sanctuary. The rhetorical meaning of the sacred spaces framed the ritual actions that took place inside them.

Each of the sacred spaces at Delphi required a certain set of rituals to be performed by those seeking the advice of the oracle. Visitors to Delphi would perform these sacred rituals to secure an oracular response from the Pythia and receive divine advice from the god Apollo. When analyzing the rhetoric of ritual performance at Delphi, one must not only consider the actions of the supplicants inside the sanctuary, but also the actions of the temple priests and the oracle herself, who had to perform ritual procedures too before the oracle took her seat. Firstly, we will address the rituals that the visitors had to perform. Both the inquirer and the temple priests had to complete a prescribed regimen of ritual requirements before a question could be posed to the oracle and a response granted (Aune, 1983, p. 29). This regimen involved specifically defined forms of purification and sacrifice, which will now be described.

Before entering the sanctuary, visitors had to ritually cleanse themselves in the sacred Castalian Spring. The of the spring was channeled down from the nearby wooded bank into a semi-subterranean masonry tank, reached by stone steps. The ancient worshipper would descend into the tank to reach the water, which was pure and chilly, fresh from the mountain. Here, they would wash their hands and hair in imitation of the god Apollo before entering the main sanctuary (Emerson, 2007, p. 29). The importance of the Castalian spring as a sacred space is reflected by its use for at the

79 sanctuary. At Delphi, the natural features of the landscape enhanced the rhetorical power of the sacred rituals performed there. Each oracle shrine had within its precincts some natural feature, such as a spring, or tree, to which much of the sanctity of the site was attributed (Aune, 1983, p. 27). Springs and grottoes were closely associated with the functioning of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, as well as the laurel tree. The grotto at

Delphi also became identified as the source of a enthousiastikon (inspiring vapor), over which the Pythia sat on her tripod ( 9:3:5). The inhalation of these vapors sent the Pythia into a frenzy, which preconditioned her mind and body for divine inspiration.

After the supplicant completed their ritual purification in the spring, it was necessary that a sacrifice of bulls, boars, sheep, or goats should be offered, which were tested by the priests to discover whether they were acceptable offerings (Plut. De def. orac. 49, 51). Proceeding back to the temple of Apollo, the priests would sprinkle the sacrificial animal (usually a ) with cold water. If it trembled all over (a likely prospect), then the god Apollo was believed to be present and the consultation could take place (Plut. De def. orac. 435b, 437b, 438a-b). Once the supplicants had completed the ritual bathing and deposited their offering, they were led inside the temple of Apollo to the far end of the adyton chamber, where steps descended to a sunken area below the level of the floor, in which the oracle resided. This ritual descent into the sacred adyton chamber echoed the descent to the abaton at Epidaurus. Without performing the ritual prerequisites, inquirers were not allowed to enter the sanctuary or seek the oracle’s advice.

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The ritual procedures for the oracle herself appear to have been as follows. On auspicious days, preliminary sacrifices were offered by supplicants at the great altar outside the temple, after which the Pythia entered the sanctuary. After the Pythia entered the sanctuary, she would leave the inquirers to sit and wait in the main cella (Plut. De def. orac. 50). A procession of cult officials accompanied the Pythia to spring Kassotis, where she took a ritual bath of purification (Aune, 1983, p. 30). While the visitors waited, she burned bay-leaves and barley flour in front of the statue of Apollo. After this, the Pythia descended with the cult officials and the inquirers to a two-room complex below the temple of Apollo; the Pythia to the adyton (inmost sanctuary), where she took her seat on a tripod, and the officials and inquirers to the waiting room outside (Plut. De def. orac.

438b). The Pythia’s tripod, representing the throne of Apollo, was where she sat and delivered divinely inspired oracular responses (Parke, 1967, p. 74). Once on her tripod, she drank from the holy spring Kassotis and chewed some bay-leaves (Middleton, 1888, p. 305). The from the spring were probably piped into the adyton for that purpose

(Paus. 10:24:7).

After these necessary rituals had been performed, the inquirer would ask their question and the oracle would use the method of divine inspiration to interpret symbolic messages from Apollo as a response. The inquiries of the oracle seem to have been made in some cases verbally, in others by writing (Middleton, 1888, p. 306). The oracular answer was also given in both ways, but in all important cases it was written. The voice of the Pythia, concentrated by the curved vault of the oracular cell, would rise into the adyton through an opening in its floor, and then be interpreted and written down by the

81 priests, as her utterances were often unintelligible. Envoys from public states received the answer sealed, and on their return home it was deposited among the public archives, usually in the chamber of some temple. The priests of Delphi kept copies of their oracles.

Since the oracle of Delphi received their oracular potency from that sacred site, the cult officials at Delphi only functioned within the bounds of that sacred precinct. The Pythia’s oracular responses were formulated as the direct speech of the inspiring divinity. She spoke on behalf of the god, as a medium between god and man. This form of divination is called enthusiastic prophecy, which is when the will of a god is spoken through the mouth of a mortal.

The waters from the sacred spring Kassotis were widely believed to be the cause of the oracle’s divine inspiration (Paus. 7:21:13; 9:2:1; 10:24:7; Plut. De def. orac. 432d).

Vapors are also mentioned as a source of the Pythia’s divine inspiration. The room in which the oracle sat would be filled with a “perfumed odor”, which was likely produced

“by warmth or some other force engendered there” (Plut. De def. orac. 50). The seat of the Pythia was said to be positioned over a crack in the rocks, from which the sweet- smelling vapors emanated. The occurrence of oracular inspiration was wholly dependent on the sacred site and the cultic ritual that activated its oracular potencies (Aune, 1983, p.

34). While the chewing of laurel leaves specifically by the Pythia is a ritual unmentioned until the second century AD (Parke, 1967, p. 75), the ritual of drinking or chewing certain substances within the sacred precincts was the means whereby the oracle priest or priestess sought to absorb the oracular potencies of the site (Aune, 1983, p. 30). Inhaling

82 vapors and chewing on leaves are both examples of direct divination, as they are efforts by the oracle to precondition her body and mind to receive divine inspiration.

After inhaling the vapors and chewing the leaves, the Pythia was sent into an altered state of consciousness. As such, the divine inspiration of the Pythia was often associated with madness or frenzy. Plutarch said the Pythia was “subject to differing influences”, which affected a “part of her soul” and divine inspiration caused her to be

“in a state of emotion and instability” (De def. orac. 50). Another very popular ancient view of the origin of the oracular abilities of the Pythia was that a god or took possession of her organs of speech to make oracular responses (Plut. De def. orac. 414e).

Divine inspiration and oracular activity was attributed to the influence of daimones, supernatural beings located midway between gods and men on the scale of being (Plut.

De def. orac. 418c-e; 421b; 431a-c). Plato describes daimonion, the region of the spirits that lies between men and gods, in :

[The function of the daimnoion is] to interpret and convey messages to the gods

from men and to men from the gods, and sacrifices from the one, and

commands and rewards from the other. Being of an intermediate nature, it bridges

the gap between them, and prevents the universe from falling into two separate

halves. Through this class of being come all divination and the skill of priests in

sacrifices and rites (teletai) and spells and every kind of divination and wizardry.

God does not deal directly with man; it is by means of this daimonion that all the

intercourse and communication of gods with men, both in waking life and in

sleep, is carried on. (202e-203a)

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From this description, religious acts destined for the gods that pass through the daimonion are divided into five categories: sacrifices, teletai, spells, divination and wizardry. Therefore, the oracle of Delphi was a daimonion in human form, as she interpreted and conveyed messages to men from the god Apollo through the religious ritual act of divination. She was a vehicle of communication between the divine and human worlds.

The oracle’s words and advice were highly revered in ancient Greece, thus the performance of her oracular divination rituals at Delphi gave the site immense rhetorical power. Oracles of gods were inseparably connected with the traditional sites of their cults, and the foundation of the cult of Apollo at Delphi is what gave it oracular potency and significance as a sacred space. Despite her prominence in ancient Greece, the oracle could only be consulted on certain days of the year. Originally, she was only consulted on the seventh day of the seventh month of the year (Salt & Boutsikas, 2005, p. 565). Since

Apollo was believed to be absent from Delphi during the three winter months, the oracular activity of the Pythia was confined to nine months each year. During the sixth century BC, monthly consultations of the Pythia on the seventh day of each of the nine months (the number seven was sacred to Apollo) were introduced (Plut. De def. orac.

398a). Most inquiries, however, appear to have been answered by the sacred lot, which was accessible to inquirers on most auspicious days.

An example of when people would seek the oracle’s advice is found in a section of Isyllos’ Paean to Asclepius, a text mentioned earlier in this chapter with regards to

Epidaurus:

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Isyllus bade Astylaïdas consult the oracle in Delphi for him concerning the paean

which he composed in honor of Apollo and Asclepius, whether it would be better

for him to inscribe the paean on stone. The oracle replied: "It would be better for

him to inscribe it on stone both for the present time and for days to come."

This source shows that all kinds of people could seek the oracle’s advice, for all sorts of issues. The Pythia's advice did not in fact reveal the future, but petitioners' agendas

(Walsh, 2003, p. 73). From the mundane to the very important, people from all over

Greece could come to the oracle with issues that needed resolving. Officials and leaders had the same access to the oracle as every ordinary Greek citizen. The oracle’s gift of prophecy controlled the effects of the god’s decisions about human fate (Walsh, 2003, p.

60), thus she held the power of constructing reality through words. The Pythia's oracular responses meant nothing until they were exposed to the multifaceted influences of the polis, where they became employed as a tool for self-examination and construction through negotiation with others.

The institution of a shared state oracle at Delphi during the eighth century BC had obvious implications for the changing balance of state and individual interests at the sanctuary (Morgan, 1993, p. 28). Inter-city conflict was a common feature of life in ancient Greece, and scenes of war were a common feature of ancient Greek art and sculptural decoration. Panhellenic sanctuaries offered neutral locations for city-states to meet and compete (Morgan, 1993, p. 31), so all Greeks could meet in neutral territory under the influence of the god within these . This attitude was reflected in the enforced which accompanied some religious festivals, notably the

85 and the Eleusinian mysteries. While the common enemy, Persia, was proudly named and triumphed over, Greeks themselves ultimately stuck together, despite quarrels. What a shrine like Delphi offered was a form of social cohesion, where, outside of any particular polis, a common sense of Greek identity was celebrated (Emerson, 2007, p. 39).

With these introductions and descriptions as our context, we will now look more closely at how the rituals performed in all of the sacred spaces in question functioned rhetorically to create a sense of polis and Greek identity for those participating in them.

By doing so, I will demonstrate how myth, place and ritual combined to make these sacred spaces rhetorically powerful in the religious imaginations of the ancient Greeks.

Myth, Place and Ritual: A Rhetorical Synthesis

The rhetorical power of the sacred spaces in question derives from the interplay of myth, place and ritual at those sites. For all three spaces, the wider place of the sanctuary, divinely sanctioned based on its mythical foundations, provides a rhetorical frame of reference for the sacred spaces within it, which gives meaning to the rituals carried out inside them. When visitors perform those rituals, the rhetorical meaning of the place comes full circle and is revealed to their private, inner selves – the final, most basic, space. The meaning of the place frames the space, which informs the rituals in those spaces, and eventually reveals itself to the minds of those participating in the ritual.

Performing these acts commits them to the memory of the participants, keeping the acts alive in the classical mind. It is the doing of the ritual that activates the memory of it.

Memory in the ancient world gave events of the past permission to be in the present. By recalling the mythical foundation of the sacred space they are in, and performing the

86 rituals required to enter that space and gain access the gods, the participants are conjuring memories of their religious and cultural past, and giving it rhetorical meaning in the present.

Ritual and Memory

Memory is crucial to the rhetorical power of sacred rituals. As we mentioned in the previous chapter, ancient Greek sanctuaries are places of public memory. Public memory is activated by concerns, issues, or anxieties of the present, but relies on material and symbolic supports to communicate the past, such as ritual performances. Memory utilized in Greek sanctuaries situates remembrance in a sacred context, making it a phenomenon of emotion and transcendence. The performance of rituals conjures memories of the past, evoking the mythical foundations of the place in which the sacred space is situated. In addition to this, public memory constructs shared identities and a sense of communal belonging by offering the individual a symbolic connection to a group, anchoring the self in the comfort of a collective. Public memory comprises of a body of rituals specific to each society, whose cultivation serves to stabilize and convey that society’s self-image (Dickenson, Blair, & Ott, 2010, p. 7). Upon such collective knowledge of the past, each group bases its awareness of unity and particularity.

There are two main functions of rituals. Firstly, the repeated performance of ritual acts in sacred spaces commits them to public memory and assimilates them into the cultural fabric of society. Rituals are a series of communal practices whose repetition creates or recreates the cohesion of the group (Schmitt-Pantel, 1991, p. 206). Normative patterns of behavior reinforce the development and persistence of ideas among members

87 of a religious group. Repeated religious behaviors strongly influence the ways in which adherents interpret religious meaning and its role in their daily lives (Stump, 2008, p. 9).

The second function of rituals is that their repetition allows their meaning to be assimilated by those participating in them. Repetition of rituals makes them a part of memory, and thus a part of the self. That memory crafts and sculpts the self, and from there, the meaning of the rituals work their way out into the larger society. Of course, in some cases the larger society and those participating are almost synonymous, which is one of the things that makes religious rites so powerful in ancient Greece.

Ritual acts give performative reinforcements to the meaning of the sacred spaces in which they occur, coaching our interpretation and meeting our expectations of the wider place of the sanctuary. Once the memory of the ritual is internalized, the meaning of the sacred space becomes self-evident to those experiencing it. Sanctuaries and the sacred spaces within them play significant roles as vehicles of cultural and religious meaning. Sacred spaces provide a place where body, ritual, and religious experience interact together. The bodies of ritual performers are changed by their actions, which take place in sacred enclosures. Thus, sacred spaces are the center of the ritual creation of embodied rhetorical power within the ritualized bodies of the performers, which is then communicated to the spectators (Strathern & Stewart, 1998, p. 244). Sacred rituals place demands on the body and mind of those performing them, and the body becomes a space within that sacred place. We will now address the preliminary rituals of purification and sacrifice that were performed by supplicants before entering the three sanctuaries.

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Before entering the sanctuaries, preliminary purification rituals were to be performed by visitors and supplicants before being allowed to enter the sacred spaces.

Rites of purification were a requirement of most sacred spaces in ancient Greece. Burkert

(2013) tells us that “purification was a social process: to belong to a group was to conform to its standard of purity; the reprobate, the outsider, and the rebel are unclean”

(p. 76). Thus, by performing purification rituals, ancient Greeks were conforming to the standard of purity dictated by their religious system. The emotionally-charged activity of cleaning became a ritual demonstration of belonging to a community. By the elimination of irritating matter, supplicants could access a more highly-valued realm – the religious community itself, in relation to the chaotic society outside. Purification mediated access to this realm. Therefore, purification rituals were involved in all intercourse with the sacred and in all forms of initiation in ancient Greece, such as at Eleusis, but they were also employed in crisis situations of madness or illness, such as at Epidaurus.

The most widespread means of purification was water, and in ancient Greek purification rituals contact with water was fundamental. At Epidaurus, patients would clean themselves in the baths; at Eleusis, initiates would ritually bathe in the sea; and at

Delphi, supplicants would purify themselves in the spring of Kassotis. The act of bathing in the baths, sea, or spring, not only physically cleaned the body, but also metaphorically cleansed the mind and soul of the supplicants. By performing these rites, the supplicants were ridding themselves of the bad or unknowledgeable parts of themselves, to make way for a better, more knowledgeable state of mind. As they washed their bodies, they were preconditioning their body and mind for divine interaction. The water became the place

89 which provided a rhetorical frame of meaning for the bodily spaces within it. As the human bodies entered that place, the rhetoric of the purification ritual was communicated to the inner selves of the supplicants. In this way, ritual bathing crafted meaning out of the act for the participants by placing control over their bodies. It told the supplicants they were not worthy of this divine interaction, so they needed to psychologically cleanse themselves to prepare for it.

The purification rituals at Delphi exemplified how natural spaces were sanctified in ancient Greek sanctuaries. Caves, and natural springs were considered shrines for gods in Greek religion. The ‘holy waters’ from the sacred springs were a key part of ritual performance at Delphi; those consulting the oracle first had to bathe in the

Castalian spring at the site to purify themselves, while the oracle herself ritually bathed in and drank from the nearby Kassotis spring. The sacred nature of the springs, derived from the mythical foundations of the wider place of the site, provided a rhetorical frame of meaning for the supplicants and the oracle, who purified themselves in their waters.

Supplicants would clean themselves in the Castalian Spring to prepare their mind and body to seek divine advice from the oracle. The oracle drank the sacred water as an effort to precondition her body and mind to receive divine inspiration. For her, the act of drinking and bathing in the water prepared her for direct divination. Through repetition, these rituals were committed to the memory of the supplicants and the Pythia.

As well as purification rituals, the three sites in question also required the performance of animal sacrifices before entering the inner sacred spaces. In ancient

Greece, sacrificing domestic animals as offerings to gods was a commonplace,

90 straightforward and non-miraculous process (Burkert, 2013, p. 55). Although sacrifices were an ordinary religious practice in ancient Greece, they were intended to produce extraordinary results. By performing sacrifices, ancient Greek citizens hoped to secure divine favor from the god(s) they were making the offering to. The ritual of varied in detail according to local ancestral and religious customs, defined by the sacred space they took place in. At Epidaurus, patients would sacrifice any animal they wanted, most commonly roosters, except goats which were forbidden (Paus. 2:26:9).

The sacrificial rituals at Epidaurus stood out from the other two sanctuaries in that they were much less specific; Asclepius did not seem fussy with what kind of offerings he got.

At Eleusis, initiates would sacrifice piglets after bathing them in the sea. Piglets were the cheapest and most widely available sacrificial animal, and considered sacred to the site of

Eleusis. At Delphi, supplicants would usually sacrifice a goat before seeking the oracle’s advice. The goat would first be sprinkled with water, causing it to jerk its head, which was interpreted as the animal nodding its assent to be sacrificed.

Through the performance of these sacrifices, the ritual was committed to the memory of the participants, and allowed the meaning of the act to be assimilated by the supplicants. By sacrificing an animal and gaining access to the sacred space, they would remember that the performance of this act allowed them to interact with the divine. The act of sacrifice created a relationship between the supplicant and the god, and the reward of this act was significant, resulting in either healing, initiation or guidance. Such positive rhetorical reinforcements committed the act of sacrificial rituals to the memories of the ancient Greeks. Divine favor was not guaranteed, and had to be earned. By performing

91 this sacrificial act, supplicants saw the influence of human action and its ability to provoke divine favor. The cost of letting the sacred space act upon the supplicants came in the form an animal’s life. The death of an animal did not affect the immortal gods, but it would have had an emotional effect on the mortal humans performing the act, causing them suffering. The act of sacrificing an animal highlighted its mortality, whilst confirming and asserting the power of the eternal gods. Communal performance of sacrifices invoked a sense of shared guilt and solidarity among the supplicants (Burkert,

2013, p. 58). Thus, sacrificial rituals created a rhetorical sense of community for those performing them.

Once allowed access inside the sanctuaries, having performed the necessary prerequisites, another set of ritual activities took place. These rituals communicated a different meaning to the participants; they had already prepared their body and mind for contact with the divine, and now they were ready to receive that divine interaction. The rituals performed at Epidaurus were both public and private, reflecting the dualistic nature of the cult of Asclepius. The public rituals at Epidaurus included a festival involving a procession, sacrifices, hymns, ritual washing, banquets and contests. The rhetorical appeal of public rituals was aimed at the level of the group, as a celebration of being part of that respective cult, religious association, or polis. Processions were essential components of ancient Greek religious festivals, and a fundamental medium of group formation. The active participants separated themselves from the amorphous crowd, fell into formation, and moved towards the goal of reaching the sanctuary, which provided the center of the sacred action. The pathway itself was also important and

92 sacred, and the public nature of the ritual demonstration invited the viewing and interaction of onlookers. This would have made participants in the procession feel proud of belong to a special group and community.

As well as public ritual celebrations, the private side of the rituals at Epidaurus was the healing of illness in the sanctuary. The most oppressive crisis for the ancient

Greeks was illness. The god Asclepius had the special power of illness, and the repetition of healing experiences at the sanctuary of Epidaurus committed this to the public memory of the Greeks. The placebo effect of such procedures in the case of illness should not be underestimated (Burkert, 2013, p. 268). Healing took place during the incubation ritual in the abaton building, where patients would spend the night and be healed through dreams and visions whilst they slept. In the abaton, the god would either cure supplicants while they slept, or give them advice on how to cure their ailments, which was interpreted by priests when they woke up. Entering the state of sleeping and dreaming altered the patients’ state of conscious, disengaging them from their physical environment and external stimuli, directing their reality inwards (Ustinova, 2009, p. 19).

The abaton was dark, cave-like space, so the sensory deprivation would have enhanced the experience of the visions. The rhetoric of the space acted on the mind and body.

Supplicants could only access this sacred space after completing the preparatory purification and sacrificial rituals. By performing these ritual prerequisites, the patients received direct access to the god, rewarding them for the efforts that they had made. This rhetorical process made it become a memory in the minds of the supplicants, which

93 shaped their behaviors. It would then be self-evident to the supplicants that these rituals had to be performed to receive divine healing.

The rituals performed at Eleusis, like at Epidaurus, were both public and private in nature, reflecting the dualistic nature of the cult of Demeter and Kore. The public celebrations at Eleusis for the festival of the Mysteries included a long procession, cleansing in the sea, sacrifices and feasting. The procession from Athens to Eleusis was long and hard, and these toils were supposed to represent the suffering that the goddesses went through in the foundation myth. The purpose of this ritual was for the initiates to share in Demeter’s journey from grief to joy, from when she searched for Kore in distress, to when she finally found her again. The myth gave the procession a rhetorical frame of meaning, that was revealed to the participants as they went through it. The physical act of going on this ritual journey gave it rhetorical power in the minds of those completing it. Only by going through that hardship could they understand the suffering that their patron goddesses went through. Performing this ritual made participants feel connected to those suffering around them, as well as to the goddesses. This emotional experience was committed to the memory of participants and onlookers alike. Initiates went through this in hope of securing a happy afterlife. Again, there is a cost on behalf of the humans to gain divine favor.

After the procession, initiates had to ritually bathe in the sea with their piglets before sacrificing them and depositing the remains in the megara pits outside the telesterion, as we mentioned earlier in the chapter. The purification ritual cleansed their body and soul, preparing them for the initiation ceremony to come. The rhetorical

94 purpose of ritual purification was to prepare initiates to become mystically enlightened.

The initiates would perform the rituals of purification and sacrifice to enter a state of purity and perfection, leaving behind their old ignorant state of being, to make way for the knowledge of the sacred rites. The rhetorical significance of sacrificing the piglets again came from the foundation myth – when the chasm of the underworld opened to swallow Persephone, a nearby herd of piglets fell into the hole. Thus, the ritual performance of sacrificing the piglets emulates the story of the myth, committing the piglets to eternal darkness, through death and being thrown into the dark pits. The myth rhetorically frames the place of Eleusis, which gives meaning to the spaces in it and the rituals carried out at in those spaces, informing the initiates carrying out those ritual acts.

The private rituals at Eleusis were of course in the form of their secretive initiation ceremonies, which were only accessible to the mystai (initiates). Although the initiation ceremony was private, the rituals in the sacred rites involved many visual aspects, as the three parts of the ceremony (sacred drama, showing of sacred things, speaking of sacred words) invited viewing and involvement of the audience. The ceremony happened under the darkness of night, and the initiates were blindfolded when looking for Kore, before passing into the light when they enter the inner sanctum of the telesterion. Going into the light resulted in a great revelation for the initiates, and feelings of bliss, joy, awe, and confusion. The rhetorical message of the ritual performances in the initiation ceremonies at Eleusis was one of journeying from dark to light, from ignorance to enlightenment. The rhetoric of the initiation rituals placed control over the mind, body and soul of the initiates. Their sight was controlled through blindfolds, inducing sensory

95 deprivation, and their passage from blindness to sight represented their transformation from being a mystes (sightless and blind to true knowledge) to being an epopteias

(insightful and knowledgeable).

The rituals carried out at Delphi also contained public and private ritualistic aspects, but it stood apart from Epidaurus and Eleusis in its oracular ritual practices. The foundation myth of Apollo gave the site of Delphi rhetorical meaning, which acted as a frame of reference for the spaces inside it, and the rituals carried out in those spaces. The divinatory rituals of the oracle gave performative enhancement to the sanctity of the site.

The oracle of Delphi could be sought for advice once a month, but only after the necessary set of preliminary rituals were fulfilled by both the supplicants and the oracle herself. Whoever wished to consult the oracle had to purify themselves in the Castalian

Spring before entering the sanctuary, and offer an animal sacrifice, usually a goat, before they sought the oracle’s advice. The animal was splashed with sacred water by the temple priests, and if it quivered it was ready to be sacrificed. Again, as we saw at Epidaurus and

Eleusis, these preliminary rituals were an effort on behalf of the supplicants to prepare their body and mind for divine interaction. The sacrifice showed the cost of divine favor.

The Pythia herself would bathe in the spring of Kassotis in an act of ritual purification, and then she was dressed in a sacred robe and crown. After this, she would enter the temple of Apollo, descend into her subterranean adyton chamber, mount her sacred tripod and touch the egg-shaped omphalos (sacred stone). The oracle would only dispense advice whilst sitting on her sacred tripod, the adyton, as she interpreted signs from the god Apollo. As the omphalos was in the adyton (inner sanctum) of the temple,

96 next to the Pythia’s tripod, the inquirers would not have seen the moment when she touched it. The supplicants would not be able to see the omphalos or the Pythia as she consulted Apollo, as they had to wait in a separate area to the Pythia, in a small room next to the adyton, as they awaited advice. They would know that the moment of divine interaction was close, but did not know exactly when she would touch the stone. This would have caused the supplicants to feel an immense sense of anticipation. For the

Pythia, touching the stone, considered the center of the world, mentally prepared her for accessing the divine realm outside of the human world.

After touching the stone, she swallowed some laurel leaves and inhaled vapors from a chasm, causing her to go into a state of ecstasy. By doing this, the Pythia was preconditioning her body and mind to interact with the divine. These ritual actions altered her state of consciousness, preparing her to receive the divine signs from Apollo, in a process of direct divination. While in this heightened emotional state, she went into a frenzy and uttered unintelligible words. The utterances of the Pythia were then interpreted by the temple priests and composed into verses, which were deciphered by interpreters, revealing the fortune. The communication process of receiving an oracular response had many rhetorical layers, being filtered down through people of varying religious status at the site. The Pythia had the greatest religious authority at Delphi, as she was the mouthpiece for the god, and then the priests were next in religious importance, followed by the interpreters. The interpreters were the final intermediary before the meaning of the ritual was finally revealed to the inquirers. When the inquirer received the oracular response, the experience would then be assimilated into their memory. The

97 various rituals performed and conditions undertaken to get to that point of revelation must have given it even greater significance when it did come.

The sanctuary of Delphi was considered sacred due to its mythical foundations, its role as a ritual center and its function as an oracular shrine. Through the repeated performance of oracular divination at Delphi, it took on an active dimension of sacredness that went beyond its original mythical and divine associations, committing it to the public memory of the ancient Greeks. Delphi existed primarily as a center for the worship of Apollo, drawing ritual importance from its major temple and authoritative significance from the oracle, who spoke Apollo’s words. All precincts of the sanctuary had an important religious role, and so they took on transcendent and sacred significance.

Due to Delphi’s role as a , open to people from all poleis, the rituals performed there constructed a sense of Greek identity. This sense of identity was formed through the communal practice of rituals among people of different cultures and beliefs, performed together in public. This experience made a memory in all of the Greek minds, uniting their differences through a shared ritual experience.

Conclusion

Ritual actions are an articulation of the fundamental meaning of any religion. As such, sacred spaces may be defined primarily through their ritual contexts. Sacred spaces had a direct connection to the gods, and facilitated the interactions between humans and the gods. Proper interactions with sacred spaces were central to the ethos of Greek religion, articulated through a wide variety of ritual obligations and practices. Through their experiences of and within sacred spaces, Greek citizens fully assimilated the basic

98 motivations, expectations, and emotions associated with living their religion. The sanctity of sacred spaces derived from their fundamental centrality, in a ritual sense, within the

Greek religious system. These spaces in effect represented a point of contact between the material and intangible spaces of the Greeks worldview, organized to support interactions with the divine and the rituals associated with it. Such rituals placed rhetorical demands on the body and mind of those performing them.

The interactions between supplicants and sacred spaces were reinforced by a wide variety of customs enacted at the scale of the body. Within this context, the intersection of body space and sacred space served as the foundation for religious experience.

Religious rituals frequently focused on bodily involvement in sacred space, a process that was crucial in the supplicant’s assimilation of ritual knowledge, which resulted in memory. Religious territoriality pertaining to body space and worship found expression in concerns involving the location of the body, such as in rituals. Participation in communal rituals within a sacred space served as a primary link between the scales of the body and the community, establishing ties between personal experience and a broader sense of Greek religious identity. The interactions among location, worship, and the body were represented by the control of body space in sacred settings, in terms of bodily appearance, orientation and ritual performance.

Territoriality at the scale of the body generally has an underlying emphasis on the religious identity, duties, and obligations of the believer. Ritual practices therefore provide an essential link between the individual’s personal existence and the larger framework of a religious tradition. They are important in situating the individual within

99 the context of a surrounding religious community. Observance of the meanings and uses of body space is one of the principal means by which adherents associate themselves with a religious community (Stump, 2008, p. 249). At the same time, such expressions of territoriality enable the community to assert control over individual adherents, through standards of behavior and practice that reinforce the community’s reproduction of its religious system. Territoriality over body space thus intersects in important ways with territoriality at the broader scale of the community.

All three of the sanctuaries in question required preliminary ritual acts of purification and sacrifice before entering the sacred space. The rituals performed at

Epidaurus involved healing through dreams, at Eleusis they involved initiation rites, and at Delphi they involved oracular divination. Through performing these rituals, supplicants came to understand the rhetorical meaning of the sacred space they were in. The world of the humans was a space within the wider place of the gods. Sanctuaries were spaces within the place of the human world. The place of the sanctuary provided a rhetorical frame of meaning for the space of the abaton/telesterion/temple. The place of the temple gave meaning to the ritual actions carried out inside it. The rituals worked out that interpretation and created meaning for those who performed them. Rituals were the penultimate layer in the narrowing of meaning before the individual. The doing of the ritual act crafted the rhetorical meaning out of the sacred space. The rituals placed rhetorical demands on the mind and body of those performing them. Myth and place gave the rituals meaning, and performing them repeatedly in those sacred spaces committed

100 them to public memory. This assimilation of memory constructed a sense of communality and Greek identity.

Stump (2008) did a detailed study on the geography of religion, which is the intersection of faith, place, and space, looking at how places and spaces impact on religious belief. Greek religion produced a diverse array of sacred and ritual spaces in their cultural landscape. Religion is inherently communal, based on meanings and values collectively acknowledged by a group of believers. Sacred rituals are based on historical

(or mythological) narratives, securing collective attachment and making them appear believable to their respective audience. In this way, sacred rituals gain cultural authority over time, until they are an accepted part of the religious infrastructure of society. Rituals are communicative acts that simultaneously depend on and reconstruct existing contexts, and those contexts tend to be relatively stable because people and societies work to construct and enforce a re-creation of shared experiences (Branham & Pearce, 1985, p.

19). This re-creation produces perceptions of permanence and choice in the social order based on an unchallenged consonance between rhetorical motives and ordinary experience.

As a cultural system, a religion is an expression of the community rather than of the individual, rooted in shared understandings and reproduced through social interaction

(Stump, 2008, p. 9). Consequently, religion produces a sense of identity and membership in a distinct community of believers. Religious concerns with space and place are represented by the complex relationship between place and religious identity. Religious belief often influences the social construction of space, and Greek religion put profound

101 emphasis on the special sanctity of certain spaces and places. Greek citizens recognized the existence these places as areas sanctified by divine action or defining events in their religion’s development. Sanctuaries, holy sites, and places of worship marked points of access to a presence of the divine or interaction between the human and the divine. The many ways in which citizens related their faith to the meanings and uses of space led to the creation of distinctive religious landscapes comprising features that were explicitly sacred.

As Schmitt-Pantel (1991) rightly points out, “collective activities were the expression of the civic community as a whole” in ancient Greece (p. 205). Although

Greek religion had diverse local expressions, they all shared common patterns of belief and practice that lay at the heart of a broader tradition. Greek citizens practiced their religion at the scale of their own lives, but understood their faith in more expansive terms, as embracing diverse local manifestations within a single larger system. Thus, they identified strongly with a widespread, imagined community of fellow believers, a perspective that necessarily connected them with cultural networks and forces beyond their own immediate experience. The diverse expressions of sacred spaces in ancient

Greece reflected the cultural intersection and fundamental connectedness between them.

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CHAPTER 4

CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION

In the first chapter of this thesis, I posed the following research questions:

RQ1: How did space function rhetorically in religious settings in ancient Greece?

RQ2: In what way did ritual religious practice function to perform social negotiation of civic identity in ancient Greece?

In answer to the first research question, we have seen that sacred spaces functioned rhetorically in ancient Greece by communicating the meaning of the place

(sanctuary) they were in, which was based on mythical foundations. The rhetorical process worked as a concentric narrowing of meaning: the initial layer being the story of the myth, that rhetorically framed the places examined (Epidaurus, Eleusis, Delphi), which gave meaning to the sacred spaces contained within those places. Myth, place, and space combined to give visitors a sense of contact and communality with the gods within these sacred spaces. The abaton at Epidaurus, the telesterion at Eleusis, and the temple of

Apollo at Delphi all contained inner sanctums within their respective sacred spaces, which mentally prepared supplicants to transcend their human condition and interact with the divine, through symbolic and material supports. In this way, sacred spaces created psychological temene (boundaries) of religious spatiality in the minds of the ancient

Greeks. The rhetoric of sacred spaces acted on the mind, body, and soul of the supplicants, affecting their thoughts, actions, and behaviors. They allowed humans to access the divine in an atmosphere of sanctity, making them significant cultural centers in a society that revolved around polis religion.

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In answer to the second research question, rituals functioned rhetorically in ancient Greece by giving performative voice to the meaning of the sacred spaces. Rituals were physical acts that activated the rhetorical meaning of the space, marking the final concentric layer of persuasion that had filtered down from the myth, to the place, to the sacred space, to the performance of the ritual act, before ending in the self. By performing the rituals, the rhetorical meaning of the place was revealed to the private, inner self of the patients (at Epidaurus), initiates (at Eleusis), and inquirers (at Delphi).

The details of the rituals were often based on the foundation myth of the place, making supplicants feel a connection to their patron gods and goddesses during and after performing them. The performance of rituals in sacred spaces committed them to public memory. The regular repetition of the rituals reinforced those memories, allowing their meaning to be assimilated by those participating in them and to become part of the cultural fabric of society. As rituals were often communal practices and were always part of the community, their repetition transformed them into normative patterns of religious behavior. Repeated religious behaviors in sacred spaces created cohesion and unity among the ancient Greeks, which constructed a sense of polis and Greek identity. The sacred spaces at Epidaurus, Eleusis, and Delphi rhetorically articulated an expression of society’s collective values, moving ancient Greek poleis communities toward unity.

At Delphi, the polis articulated the operation of the oracle. The oracle’s religious personnel, the temple priests, consisted of citizens of Delphi. The participation of non-Delphians was mediated by Delphians who acted as proxenoi (intermediaries), and offered the preliminary sacrifice before consultation by non-Delphians. On regular

104 consultation days, this sacrifice was offered by the Delphic polis for all the enquirers; on other days, it was offered on behalf of the enquirer by the proxenos of his city

(Sourvinou-Inwood, 1991, p. 297). The non-Delphians were treated on the model of xenoi (foreigners) worshipping at the sanctuary of another polis. The same dominance of the polis articulation also occurred at other Panhellenic sanctuaries, such as in the sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia. The Greek polis articulated religion and was itself articulated by it; religion became the polis’ central , structuring and giving meaning to all the elements that made up the identity of the polis – its past, its physical landscape, and the relationship between its constituent parts.

Critical Problem

A critical problem faced by scholars in the field is that data about ancient Greek religion is often studied through modern filters, shaped by certain (implicit or explicit) perceptions about what their society and religion ‘must have been like’. Since we do not view data neutrally, but through perceptual filters shaped by culturally determined assumptions, this leads to serious distortions, as does any investigation based on probabilities and reasonable assumptions (Sourvinou-Inwood, 1993, p. 1). These notions and their application are inevitably radically culturally determined, and any reconstruction which depends on them reflects modern preconceptions as well as ancient . It is therefore crucial to, as much as possible, clear the ground of false assumptions and misconceptions, which can become false structuring centers and create false perceptual filters that structure the discourse in insidious ways.

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With that in mind, modern rhetorical scholars have taken steps to combat this problem, and although we can never truly know what it was like to be a Greek living in those times, our studies of their experiences are not superfluous. As time goes on, more archaeological and literary evidence is uncovered, and technology is improving so that we have better tools to interpret that evidence. We can get a pretty good idea of what their society was like and how they lived their lives, though it is problematic to automatically equate their experiences to ours. Although there are many similarities to the modern day, we should not instantly draw parallels just to confirm our own assumptions. It is perhaps more fruitful and interesting to find out how and why our modern sacred spaces function differently to those in ancient Greece. Rhetoric is shaped by cultural contexts, and rhetorical meanings change with time and shifting societal norms. To understand the rhetoric of a place or memorial, you must understand its social, political and economic context. For sanctuaries, you must also consider the religious context.

Modern Receptions

Many of the concepts and concerns of the earliest rhetoricians continue to animate modern rhetorical studies, especially on public memorials. Understanding the relations among rhetoric, memory, and place is of crucial importance to understanding contemporary public culture. For example, Blair, Jeppeson, and Pucci (1991) did a piece on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as an example of public memorializing. The Vietnam

Veterans Memorial is a key example of post-modern monumentality, one of the first of its kind, an instance of an emergent discourse within the cultural rhetoric of public

106 commemorative monuments. One of the rhetorical features of the Memorial is its epideictic function, but it also represents political concerns and instructs visitors on what is to be valued in the future as well as in the past. The Memorial has a multi-vocal rhetoric, which has the power to evoke emotional response. The rhetorical power of the

Vietnam Veterans Memorial is multiplied by its reach, as it is an extremely popular monument attracting over 4 million visitors each year.

Since the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in 1982, a remarkable number of public commemorative sites were constructed in the United States. Blair

(1999) did a study on contemporary U.S. memorial sites as exemplars of rhetoric’s materiality, and chose to focus on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the AIDS Memorial

Quilt, the Civil Rights Memorial, Kent State University’s May 4 Memorial, and the

Witch Trials Tercentenary Memorial. She concluded that these memorials construct reactions and depths of visitor experience that transcend their and make them destinations (p. 46). The rhetoric’s material dimension acts on the audiences to garner attention; guiding walkways punctuate the memorials, directing the mind, body and gaze towards poignant features. For these memorials, the place gives meaning to the space, providing a rhetorical frame of reference for the audience to understand.

Modern memorials are material expressions of public memory and religious beliefs. The use of place and space to articulate religious belief is part of the geography of religion. Stump (2008) did a detailed study on this topic, looking at the intersection of faith, place, and space. He made the point that “the integration of religious belief and practice into broader social structures” has contributed to “the expression of religious

107 territoriality at wider scales” (p. 257). This pattern has developed in modern societies, producing explicit expressions of religious territoriality in the public domain, from legal controls to widely accepted social norms. He explains how in modern society, “the relationship between public space and religion affects territoriality at the communal scale, resulting in elements of a religious system being incorporated into public spaces” (p.

268). This also leads to phenomena inconsistent with that religious system being excluded from public space. The exercise of territoriality in public space faces problems when imposed on the social structures of a pluralistic society where one religion is not shared by all, such as in modern America.

Territoriality of Religion in Modern America

Acceptance of religious behaviors and obligations affects diverse forms of social behavior, such as the incorporation of religion into the rituals and routines of public life.

The incorporation of into public events represents a widespread expression of this practice in many parts of the world. As communities become more self-conscious of their internal diversity, public prayer is becoming increasingly generic. For example, in

America, presidential speeches commonly use the deliberately vague phrase “God Bless

America”, which does not reference a specific god or religion. The incorporation of religious elements in public landscapes, such as the public display of the Ten

Commandments in schools, is another form of religious territoriality.

Secular forces are challenging the legitimacy of religious influences within public contexts. The result has been an increase in controversies over the role of religion in public space in various parts of the world. Growing commitments to pluralism and civic

108 in many modern societies have contributed significantly to the proliferation of such conflicts (Stump, 2008, p. 269). Many of these conflicts have focused on the presence of religion in official public spaces such as government buildings, parks, and schools. Such conflicts tend to be largely symbolic, emphasizing issues of identity and tradition rather than the practical advantages of one group over another. This pattern has recurred in numerous forms in the United States, for example, where the naturalized hegemony of has persisted alongside the constitutional separation of church and state. Especially in recent decades, Christianity’s influence over public spaces has been contested both by religious minorities and by those professing no religion. We have seen throughout this thesis how intimately religious spaces and acts were involved in social definitions in ancient Greece. This raises the question of the place of state religion in modern society, as part of the wider contemporary debate on religion in the public sphere.

Future Research

Following on from the findings of my thesis, I believe that future studies should investigate the rhetorical power of visual narratives present in ancient Roman sanctuaries and sacred spaces, to see whether the Romans interpreted and experienced religious spaces in similar or different ways to the Greeks. The Romans were inspired by Greek temple culture and carried this over into their own religious structures, so it would be interesting to see how their cultural norms filtered into the sacred spaces. By doing this, we can learn more about how ancient Greek and Roman identities were constructed through experiencing visual topoi in sacred spaces.

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Another avenue for future research could be the study of religious rhetoric in modern day . Rome plays a significant role as a holy city in Roman Catholicism as the location of that religion’s sacred , the Vatican, where rulings concerning church doctrine and policy are made. Its sacred identity as a city is derived from its organizational role in the functioning of the Catholic religious system, making it a center of religious authority. Rome’s character as a sacred city draws on other factors as well: the role that it played in the early development of Christianity; its identity as the burial place of St. Peter and St. Paul; the large number of early Christians martyred there in the

Colosseum; and the extensive catacombs of early Christianity (Stump, 2008, p. 318). The focus of Roman Catholicism’s global organizational hierarchy on the Vatican and the office of the pope lend Rome considerable importance as a center of religious authority, which continues to make Rome an important pilgrimage destination to this day.

Additionally, it would be useful for a study to be conducted on how sacred spaces function, or fail to function, rhetorically in modern America. For example, the images of in American Christian churches and the messages they communicate. America is a country full of different , all with different beliefs, values and places of worship, which is a stark contrast to ancient Greek society, which revolved around a universal set of gods that everyone believed in. As America considers itself a , supposedly keeping religion and politics separate, it would be interesting to investigate how churches and places of worship exist within modern American society and how they preserve their role as sacred spaces in communities.

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Do sacred spaces still have a place in our contemporary society or are they dying out as our ways of lives become increasingly secular? I think the future will see a move towards religious centers being pushed out of the mainstream fabric of society, forced to occupy the cultural periphery of civilization.

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Appendix A: Epidaurus

Figure 1: Site plan of the sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus – the Greek buildings

(except the Theatre). Taken from Tomlinson (1983, p. 41).

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Figure 2: Site plan of Epidaurus – the main area. Building 13 is the temple of Asclepius, building 14 is the thymele, and building 15 is the abaton. Taken from Tomlinson (1983, p. 42).

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Appendix B: Eleusis

Figure 3: Site plan of the sanctuary of Eleusis in the second century AD. 1 – Sacred Way;

2 – ; 3 – Greater ; 4 – Callichoron Well; 5 – Lesser

Propylaea; 6 – Mirthless Rock; 7 – Telesterion; 8 – Interior structure. Taken from Clinton

(1993, p. 111).

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Figure 4: Reconstructive drawings showing the development of the Eleusinian anaktoron and telesterion. The two versions on the right-side (D and E) are from the time period studied in this thesis. Notice the megara pits outside the telesterion, and the rows of seats on all interior walls. Taken from Evans (2002, p. 232).

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Appendix C: Delphi

Figure 5: Site plan of Delphi. Taken from Emerson (2007, p. 27).

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Figure 6: Site plan showing a conjectural restoration of the temple of Apollo at Delphi.

Taken from Middleton (1888, p. 311).

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