Localism and Religion in Ancient Greece (LoRAG)

Principal Investigator: Hans Beck, with key researchers Marian Helm and Sophia Nomicos

Collaborators: Renaud Gagné (Cambridge), Angela Ganter (Regensburg), Alex McAuley (Cardiff University), Julia Kindt (University of Sydney), Jeremy McInerney (University of Pennsylvania), Irene Polinskaya (King’s College London), Ruben Post (St. Andrews), Julietta Steinhauer (UC London), Uwe Walter (Bielefeld). Across the Isthmus of Corinth, LoRAG partners with the Perachora Peninsula Archaeological Project, directed by Panagiota Kasimi and Susan Lupack. Click here for PPAP’s 2020 field campaign.

Research Cycle I: Saronic Religions (2021-2024)

Sponsors: Cluster of Excellence ‘Religion and Politics’ and the Chair of Greek History at Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster.

Ongoing Research Event: EXC Research Cloud 9: “Localism and the Local”

Research Output:

Ager, S. and H. Beck (eds) 2024. Localism in Hellenistic Greece. Toronto.

Beck, H. 2023. "Making Landscapes, Building Communities. A Journey along the Kopais Corridor in Boiotia." Klio 105: 51-84.

Beck, H. and J. Kindt (eds) 2023. The Local Horizon of Ancient Greek Religion. Cambridge.

Beck, H. and S. Nomicos, Sakrale Bergwelten in Mittelgriechenland und auf der Peloponnes. Antike Welt Sonderheft: Berge (in press)

Beck, H. and S. Scharff (eds) 2024. Beyond Mysteries. New Studies on the Site, Settlement, and Sanctuaries of Eleusis in Antiquity (in press).

Helm, M. and S. Nomicos (eds) 2024. Lakonia and the Argolid. New Approaches to an Interconnected Landscape (in preparation).

Ancient Greek religion is characteristic of a hybrid blending of bounded and connected practices. Localism and Religion in Ancient Greece (LoRAG) probes this blend by measuring the gravitational pull of local religious systems and their interplay with regional as well as universal contexts.

New interest in localism and the local, spurred by debates about cultural connectivity and convergence, provides new insight into the lived experience in ancient Greece. At the same time, there has been an upsurge of scholarly interest in diversifying the notion of Greek religion, between its dichotomous expressions in local and global/universal spheres. LoRAG positions itself at the frontier of both debates: (1) the conceptual study of localism, also in its interaction with glocal paradigms; and (2) the impact the local wields over religious conduct in a variety of spatial arenas. The overall goal is to advance the understanding of ancient Greek religion by finding a space for divergence, idiosyncrasy, and plurality.

LoRAG’s chronological framework, from c. 800 to c. 300 BCE, is bracketed by the arrival of the city-state, which brought about a new concept of living, and the formation of profound challenges to the meaning of that way of life in the early 3rd century BCE.

Greek Religion, Greek Religions, or Piecemeal?

Greek religion has been labelled an “embedded religion” (Robert Parker). Its conduct adhered to a local dynamic: it was tied to the cults and deities of the city, to the sacred covenant the people had established with the divine, and to the good fortunes this covenant was believed to bestow on the local community. All the while, the strong thrust of Greek religion toward universal paradigms has of course not gone unnoticed. Emanating from great transregional sanctuaries such as Olympia and Delphi, the Panhellenic thread shaped a universal belief system and, according to Herodotus, its expression in sacrifice and cult.

The traditional scales of local, regional, and universal are presently under reconsideration. Examining the antipodes of the Greek religious experience, Julia Kindt has argued that the binary of local and universal builds on a series of dubious premises; indeed, she speaks of a “false dichotomy”. At the universal level, a broad array of local infiltrations at the great Panhellenic sanctuaries of Delphi and Olympia has been identified, which complicates the verdict of a universal signature.

The problem is not new. Walter Burkert has painted a notoriously coherent picture of Greek religion and ritual practice. The evidence supporting this, often tucked away in the footnotes of his seminal works, typically derives from highly localized environments. How representative of the universal are those citations? Should we see them as moments of divergence from an ideal type? Or was deeply rooted divergence itself the norm? Robert Parker responded to this challenge with the label of Athenian religion (rather than Greek religion). Others, such as Albert Schachter, preferred the regional lens, whereas Simon Price spoke of Greek religions (plural), instead of Greek religion. Which of these values captures best the tension between universal belief on the one hand and a plurality of localized religious systems on the other?

The Saronic Region: Entanglement and Boundedness (Research Cycle I)

In its first cycle of investigation, LoRAG explores the local dimension of religious interactions in the Saronic Gulf, a region that presents ideal conditions for the study of the complex mosaic of Greek religion. The Saronic comprises a plethora of cities that were stitched into a connected maritime world of sea shores, islands, and promontories: Megara, Corinth, Athens, Aigina, Poros, Troizen, the cities of the Eastern and Southern Argolid, and more. In addition to these political communities, the lived experience was shaped by a series of sanctuaries of regional and transregional recognition (Poseidon at Kalauria and Sounion, Asklepios near Epidauros, Isthmia near Corinth, among others). Human agency in the Saronic was segregated, connected, and entangled at once and on multiple levels - and it played out in a complicated matrix of seasonal time. The Saronic’s central location in Greece, at the crossroads of many networks, each one with shifting nodes of influences over time, further invites creative applications of scale.

The fragmented and interwoven nature of the region lends a structuring force to the analysis of Saronic religions: it allows for the study of countless localisms, and it inspires the search for non-linear narratives that oscillate between local idiosyncrasy and regional/universal paradigms. The basic regional traits of the Saronic illustrate how LoRAG’s conceptual and thematic research axes of localism and religion converge in an energetic and indeed exciting manner. To unravel this convergence, goals of the first cycle of study include: to map Saronic religions, to root them in local place, disclose the dynamics of regional entanglement, and relate them to the universal conduct of religion in Aegean Greece.

Individual Research Axes (2021-2024)

Religious knowledge (Hans Beck): The production and transfer of religious knowledge is key to the understanding of cultural communications in the Saronic. The main data that sheds light on these conversations derives from local narratives that thematize the various links between the local community and the gods. The extensive body of local historians (writers of Aiginetika, Troizenika, Argolika, among others) is a crown witness to this; Hans currently studies the material in a systematic manner. For inspiration, see the quotation below from an unknown historian (BNJ 607, cited by Pausanias), which captures local, regional, and universal perspectives.

Burial practices (Sophia Nomicos): Archaeological evidence from sanctuaries and burial sites documents both local variations and their amalgamation into regional styles. Precisely how local styles contributed to the shaping of a relatively homogeneous material culture of the Saronic is still open to debate. Sophia traces the vectors of idiosyncrasy and cross-fertilization in a diverse roster of cities, including Athens, Megara, and Epidauros. Surveying parameters include the size and structure of the graves, burial goods, grave-markers and tombstones, and others. Questions of burial traditions and funerary materials cross into the realm of economic exchange.

Religious rifts (Marian Helm): Previous scholarship on the Southern Argolid has identified a rift in the ritual landscape, with spheres of Hera in the northern and central plains and Demeter in the south; around Hermione, a particularly high density of chthonic sanctuaries is attested. The research carried out by Marian employs Central Place Theory to explore how settlement patterns and religious catchment areas conform to the postulated rift in the Argolid and elsewhere in the Saronic, with clusters around Isthmia, Salamis and Megara, Epidauros, and Aigina. The aim is to identify lines of religious alignment and misalignment across the region.

“The Troizenians were glorifiers of their own country like no others. … They say that their king Saron built the sanctuary for Artemis by a sea which is marshy and shallow, so that for this reason it was called the Phoibean lagoon. Saron was fond of hunting. As he was chasing a doe, it so chanced that it dashed into the sea and he dashed in after it. The doe swam further and further and Saron kept close to his prey, until his ardor brought him to the open ocean. There his strength failed and he was drowned in the waves. The body was cast ashore at the grove of Artemis by the lagoon, and they buried it in the sacred enclosure, and after him they named the sea in these parts the Saronic.”