sacred sites: Rome 905 View of Mount Olympus, in Attica (Alison Frantz Photographic Collection, American School of Classical Studies at Athens) Other Panhellenic sites dealt with purely personal concerns 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 removed from the collective religion of the city Patients came to the shrine and slept in the courtyard of the temple overnight The 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 offerings were hung—in this case figurines of the patients’ body parts that the god had healed The temple of the grain goddess Demeter at Eleusis (outside Athens) offered 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 after death, rather than the near nonexistence Greek believed to be the common end of humankind ROME BY KATIE PARLA Defining sacred space in ancient Rome was the responsibility of high authorities—first of kings and then later of priests Both used ritual interpretations of occurrences in the natural world when creating sacred sites The myth of the founding of Rome itself by the twins Romulus and Remus describes such an event Romulus, by interpreting the flight of birds more masterfully than his brother, was able to define the ritual boundary that divided the sacred space of the city from the world beyond Supposedly he passed this skill and this privilege on to the kings who followed him Over time, however, the right of establishing sacred areas became the province of priests called augurs (augures) The augurs were one of the main priestly colleges in the augurs Roman state religion Originally these authorities divined the will of the gods just as Romulus had done, by interpreting the flight of birds Later in Rome’s history they also interpreted a variety of other natural phenomena: thunder, lightning, and different kinds of animal behavior By reading these signs—or “taking auspices,” as it was known—the augurs could determine the boundaries of sacred space Occasionally the signs came unsolicited—for example, the sudden appearance of an eagle over the Capitoline Hill—but more often 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 define several types of sacred sites One type was the templum, a consecrated space or site where the augurs 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