Recreating Olympus on Earth: A Synaesthetic Approach to Ancient Greek Animal Sacrifice

Abstract

Recreating Olympus on Earth evaluates how the senses were engaged and intentionally amplified during ancient Greek animal sacrifice. Using methodologies from landscape studies, phenomenology, and comparative religion and contributing to the “sensory turn” in archaeological studies, I ask why the senses were so important during ritual, and what their effects were for humans and gods. Focusing on the Greek mainland in the Archaic and Classical periods, I show that the efforts to create a sensorially saturated environment changed space and time into a milieu worthy of the divine: the sensorial both attracted the gods and instigated a sense of contact with them, making the invisible tangible through metonymic representation, epiphany, and metamorphosis of place. Ultimately, I show how the effects created by sensorial paraphernalia were indispensable components of sacrifice, without which the gods would not be persuaded to act or exchange favor with mortals. Thus, this project challenges past scholarship that has long argued that ancient Greek religion was primarily about praxis and was not concerned with belief. My case studies on Epidaurus, Delphi, and Olympia demonstrate the complexity of ideas about the nature of the gods and discuss how local and shared cultural memory was formed at major sanctuaries. I begin by examining the early evidence for beliefs about the gods, who were thought to be radiant, affective, and synaesthetic, and to enjoy objects and experiences that have similar such characteristics, reflecting their own natures. Moving from this foundation, I examine how the senses were manipulated and intensified in the Greek sanctuary to make the space suitable for a divine host. Particular and often highly site-specific synaesthetic combinations made for a coded phenomenological experience of each sanctuary that allowed that space to transform into a milieu that was closer to Olympus, the home of the gods, than earth. Simultaneously, the effects of the sensorium emotionally prepared a worshiper to encounter the gods. I conduct three extended case studies of the sanctuaries of Delphi, Epidaurus, and Olympia to demonstrate how synaesthesia worked differently in each sanctuary for specific goals. At Delphi, ostentation and an emphasis on large-scale bull sacrifice flooded the sacred pathway up the sanctuary’s mountain landscape, while stimulation also formed a specific embodied knowledge of what it meant to be at Delphi. At Epidaurus, sacrifice acted as a framing motif around ritual healing. The therapeutic nature of the sanctuary manifested opposing sensescapes of day and night, noise and silence, and awake and dreaming; these interlocking sensescapes helped to manifest Asclepius for each suppliant and formed a deeply personal relationship with the god. At Olympia, sacrifice and athletic games worked together to attract Zeus’s gaze and lure him onto the mortal plane. Furthermore, although Olympia was believed to be a landscape saturated with gods and heroes, it was also marred by past miasma. Sacrifice acted as a course-correcting tool to rectify these accumulated offenses. Scale and grandeur were tailored to reflect Olympia’s importance as the most prestigious panhellenic sanctuary and home to the king of gods. Overall, this dissertation offers a critical reconstruction of the embodied experience of religion—long overlooked—to get closer to the answer of why sacrifice was so integral to Greek life and religion.