Other Panhellenic sites dealt with purely personal con-
cerns that were beyond the scope of civic religion, such as
healing and salvation. Epidaurus in the Peloponnesus was the
home of the main temple of Asklepios. As a son of Apollo by
a mortal woman, Asklepios was technically only a semidivine
“hero,” but Greeks soon began to worship him as a god. His
priests provided the healing of illness, a subject obviously re-
moved from the collective religion of the city. Patients came
to the shrine and slept in the courtyard of the temple over-
night. Th e next morning the priests interpreted any dream
a patient might have had and devised a treatment for him or
her accordingly. Like many temples, this one had a sacred tree
nearby from which off erings were hung—in this case fi gu-
rines of the patients’ body parts that the god had healed. Th e
temple of the grain goddess Demeter at Eleusis (outside Ath-
ens) off ered initiation into mysteries that would secure for the
participants a kind of personal salvation that would let them
partake of the same kind of blessed existence as heroes aft er
death, rather than the near nonexistence Greek believed to be
the common end of humankind.
ROME
BY KATIE PARLA
Defi ning sacred space in ancient Rome was the responsibility
of high authorities—fi rst of kings and then later of priests.
Both used ritual interpretations of occurrences in the natural
world when creating sacred sites. Th e myth of the founding of
Rome itself by the twins Romulus and Remus describes such
an event. Romulus, by interpreting the fl ight of birds more
masterfully than his brother, was able to defi ne the ritual
boundary that divided the sacred space of the city from the
world beyond. Supposedly he passed this skill and this privi-
lege on to the kings who followed him. Over time, however,
the right of establishing sacred areas became the province of
priests called augurs (augures).
Th e augurs were one of the main priestly colleges in the
augurs Roman state religion. Originally these authorities di-
vined the will of the gods just as Romulus had done, by inter-
preting the fl ight of birds. Later in Rome’s history they also
interpreted a variety of other natural phenomena: thunder,
lightning, and diff erent kinds of animal behavior. By reading
these signs—or “taking auspices,” as it was known—the au-
gurs could determine the boundaries of sacred space. Occa-
sionally the signs came unsolicited—for example, the sudden
appearance of an eagle over the Capitoline Hill—but more
oft en they were the result of deliberate ritualistic attempts to
communicate with the divine world.
In Rome—and later in the territories Rome controlled—
the augurs could defi ne several types of sacred sites. One type
was the templum, a consecrated space or site where the au-
gurs would take auspices. For the Romans a templum could
be a building, but it could also be plot of ground or even a
fi xed place in the heavens where signs from the gods might
View of Mount Olympus, in Attica (Alison Frantz Photographic Collection, American School of Classical Studies at Athens)
sacred sites: Rome 905
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