Aims and previous research

1Divination in dreams, where a dreamer communicated with a divinity, was a well-known phenomenon in ancient Greece. The dreams were received both at home and in sanctuaries, and by all members of society.1 If a dream was received in a sanctuary, the ritual framework and the dream experience are called ‘incubation’ by modern scholars. This study documents and analyses the rituals surrounding the divinatory dream (the purpose of which was to receive healing or an oracle) in a sanctuary. I use the word ritual for the sequence of rites comprising incubation, and the word rite for the singular actions. I follow the majority of modern scholars, who see ritual as an overlapping term for a number of individual rites that are connected within a specific functional context.2 I also agree with the group of scholars who acknowledge the large variety of ritual functions. I suggest that the proper way to study rituals is to contextualize their performative content within their specific historical setting and recognize the way these rituals affected the minds and emotions of their participants.3

2Greek incubation was most frequent in the healing centres of Asklepios, where all sorts of suppliants met the god and received help: instant miraculous cures and prescriptions (which were no less miraculous), on how to get well, or answers on other matters. At sanctuaries offering incubation, in particular the Asklepieia, there were also rituals for the healthy, which did not require incubation, and for the ill who did not incubate but rather prayed and made offerings.4 Not all those who came to a sanctuary offering incubation actually incubated.

3Firstly, this study aims to document incubation, i.e. the institutionalized way of obtaining an epiphany in a dream inside a Greek sanctuary. I will present, analyse and discuss all epigraphic and literary evidence (as well as archaeological evidence when it is relevant for documenting and analysing the rituals) for incubation rites and rules in various cults of the Greek world in Classical and Hellenistic times. Secondly, the ritual components are analysed to explain their structure and function. The basic question for this analysis is how a ritual structure was designed and developed in order to make worshippers believe in the possibility of a cure through direct communication with a deity.

4The reasons for undertaking this study are as follows: first, in previous research, not all relevant testimonia have been taken into account; secondly, a new investigation is necessary because testimonia from different cults and times have often formed the basis of theoretical analyses of incubation; and the third reason for studying incubation rituals anew is that the theoretical models which have been used to explain their structure and function do not, in fact, conform to the material.

5Alice Walton and Ludwig Deubner were among the first scholars to study Greek incubation as a religious phenomenon.5 Both were active at the beginning of the twentieth century, at a time when most scholars believed that Greek gods and rituals could be divided into Olympian and Chthonian. Deubner and Walton postulated that incubation sprang from oracles of the Earth, as a ritual belonging to the Chthonian sphere.6 The first, and still most dominant, study on incubation is Ludwig Deubner’s book De incubatione, which was written in 1900.7 A basic assumption made by Deubner was that the rites surrounding incubation were of a ‘magical’ kind, thus serving as techniques for obtaining a divine dream.8 If the purpose of the rites was to serve as a technique for engendering an unusual event such as a divine dream, then the assumption logically follows, or has happened in the past, that these rites had to be different from the most common forms of Greek worship. Deubner classified incubation rites as Chthonian because he belonged to a school of thought that believed in the existence of a group of Chthonian gods who were pre-existent and set apart from the Olympian pantheon. These gods were connected with earth cults, magical practices, and some oracles.9 Their cults were characterized by certain animals (such as the snake) as well as by particular rites. Chthonian rites were rites that supposedly differed from Olympian rites, and they included actions such as purifications, meatless and wineless sacrifices, the burning of the entire sacrificed animal (enagismata), black sacrificial victims and libations of milk and honey.10 Certain epicleses, such as Zeus Meilichios, have also been considered Chthonian.11

6Ancient evidence that has been claimed to support the partition of gods into Olympian and Chthonian groups is found primarily in tragedies and in Plato.12 The epigraphical evidence, however, provides a more varied picture, in that no partition exists in the rites of deities that were considered Chthonian or Olympian.13 In contemporary research, the distinction is often seen as a scholarly construct,14 but the Olympian-Chthonian model is still used.15 Today, many scholars follow this approach when examining incubation rituals, and this issue will be explored further in Chapter 2.

7The next important work was by Emma and Ludwig Edelstein, who studied only the cult of Asklepios and argued that there was a minimal number of rites encompassing the sleeping and healing (purificatory bath and sacrifice only).16 The important thing for the worshipper was to have a pure mind, as evidenced in the inscription related by Porphyry De Abstinentia 2.19 from Epidauros: ‘Pure must he be who enters the fragrant temple; purity means to think nothing but holy thoughts’.17 The Edelsteins were of the opinion that prayer rather than sacrifice formed the climax of the sacrificial ritual. The Edelsteins emphasized faith and medical science rather than ritual as ways to be healed by Asklepios. The notion of purity is, however, only evidenced in Roman times, and the famous quote in Porphyry is of a later date.18 Furthermore, incubation was surrounded by a great deal of rites and rules, and not only prayers.

8Another recent approach has been to discuss the didactic nature of the cure tablets found at Epidauros and how they promoted the cult and induced faith in its worshippers.19

9Recently, the incubation ritual has been interpreted using van Gennep’s three-step model of rites of passage (separation from the old, transition (described as a stage of liminality), and then re-incorporation).20 Using this model, in incubation, preparations and then the dream experience (the stage of liminality) would finish with a common meal consisting of the sacrificed animal.21 This model stresses the liminality and heightened sacrality of incubation.22 The van Gennep model is difficult to apply to incubation because of the lack of rites which might be identified as liminal, and also because rites that would have taken the worshipper out of the experience are lacking.

Method

10The material used for this study comprises all the testimonia that describe the ritual components of incubation; these are primarily epigraphical and literary testimonia. All archaeological evidence that provides information on the rites will be taken into account. Architectural evidence for dormitories in sanctuaries is included as a point of reference, and I draw on the ample previous research on the topic.23 The archaeological evidence will be interpreted together with the literary and epigraphical material. In the mapping of the overall experience surrounding incubation, I have also included prescriptions, or rules, made by the sanctuary. These rules were obligatory, and if they were not observed, incubation would not have been allowed to proceed at the sanctuary.

11In previous research, incubation rites and rules have generally been treated as basically one coherent ritual composed of a number of rites specific to incubation.24 Often, one testimonium, e.g. the Ploutos of Aristophanes, or one cult, e.g. the cult of Trophonios (which was not even an incubation cult) has been made into a role model when incubation rites, in all cults at all times, have been described.25 It is a problem that scholars in the past have used testimonia from different geographical areas and chronological contexts to describe a coherent ritual. My approach differs, in that I study the rites in their chronological and cultic contexts, and I only study incubation during Classical and Hellenistic times, from the beginning of Greek incubation until the birth of Christ. The reason for imposing these limitations is that a methodological weakness arises when trying to recreate one ritual from testimonia dating many centuries apart. Greek cults continued to develop in Roman times, and it is wise to be cautious when using, for example, Pausanias to describe cults of the Classical period.

12The method I use when discussing the testimonia is first to analyse each singular testimonium in relation to its factual content, and I then examine it in the light of any existing previous interpretations. Questions that are continuously posed are not only which rites or rules can be established, but also to whom they were directed (to incubants only, or to everyone who visited the sanctuary). Also, contextualization is important: how do the rites and rules compare with other rites in the same sanctuary and in Greek religion as a whole? Given that there are lacunae in our knowledge of incubation rites, are there any rites surrounding the dream that we can presuppose even though they do not turn up in the testimonia?

13Different literary genres also invite special methodological considerations. The richest testimonia for incubation in this period in Greece, before the birth of Christ, are the Epidaurian healing inscriptions, iamata, which were written down on four large stelae in the fourth century BC.26 They are believed by LiDonnici to have been edited from various smaller inscriptions at the site by the priests of Epidauros, these smaller dedications dating at the earliest to the fifth century BC.27 Healing inscriptions have also been found at Lebena in Crete.28 It is certain that the iamata narrate miraculous events, but the assumption is made here that information given in passing on sacrifices, prayers, thanksgiving, etc. does actually reflect historical truths concerning the cult at the time of the collection and composition of the large slabs.29 Otherwise the stories would not have made sense to the readers. The miraculous events are present in the cures, not in how rites such as sacrifice and prayer were related.

14There is also the question of how to use a comedy as a source for historical and religious events. Two Greek comedies include mentions of rites in the cult of Asklepios: the Ploutos of Aristophanes and the Mimiambi of Herodas.30 In these two plays, it is the setting that tells of religious rites, not the comic plot itself.31 Since the incubation of Ploutos was a backdrop for the plot, one might presume that the rites included were meant to make sense to the audience of the time.32 Hence, they cannot have differed much from the rites of the time, although the plot itself was pure fiction.

15Generally, leges sacrae are considered to have been displayed for the worshippers to read, and they would not have included details of the whole ritual, but rather the parts of the ritual that were not common or well-known.33 Such information could deal with a particular sort of cake that was suited to an associated deity, monetary payments, information on the priests’ share at the sacrifice, and special instructions that in some way deviated from common practice.

Definition of incubation, and its terminology

16Incubation is defined, for the purposes of selecting testimonia, as a ritual way of meeting a divinity in a dream inside a sanctuary (with a healing or an oracle being the purpose of the consultation).34 The definition requires incubation to be offered on a regular basis in the cult, and not simply be a spontaneous dream of a single worshipper.35

17Using this definition of incubation, short inscriptions set up in a sanctuary ‘according to a dream’ or ‘according to an oracle’ have been excluded from the study.36 Likewise, formulae in the Papyri graecae magicae for invoking Asklepios in a dream at home have been excluded.37 The cult of Brizo on Delos has, with some hesitation, been included in this study38, but some other cults, where the evidence for incubation is dubious, have been excluded.39

18The method of selecting the epigraphic and literary testimonia used here is that the words for ‘incubate’ or ‘incubation’, or a background of events in the source relating to a clear incubatory context, should be present. Furthermore, the testimonium has to say something about the rites surrounding the sleeping (otherwise it only emphasizes the presence of incubation at a site, but is not helpful for this investigation).

19The word for incubation in Greek is enkoimesis, but it is very rare.40 Usually, different verbs are used to describe the events at the sanctuary: ‘lie down to sleep’, ‘to sleep in, among’, etc., i.e. ‘to incubate’. The verbs used for Greek incubation in the Classical and Hellenistic periods number around 16.41

20All of these verbs are used for ‘sleeping in, among’, etc. but can also denote just ‘to sleep’, wherefore the context in an inscription or a text has been vital for the selection process. Often, a text relating a dream healing or dream oracle just refers to the god having shown himself to someone in a dream or prescribing a cure to the patient.

21There is no specific terminology for ‘to incubate’. Starting with the cult of Asklepios at Epidauros, as many as seven different verbs are used for ‘to incubate’ in the Epidaurian iamata, the most common being ἐγκαθεύδω.42 At Lebena, which was founded from Epidauros, the verb ἐφεύδω appears — as discussed above, this was an Archaic form of Greek that remained on the island.43 At Pergamon, the verb for ‘to incubate’ was ἐγκοιμάομαι. In a sacred law from Amphipolis of the last half of the fourth century BC, the verb ἐγκαθεύδω again appears.44

22In the Ploutos of Aristophanes, where incubation in the Asklepieion at Piraeus is described, the event is related using the verbs ἐγκατάκειμαι, ἐγκατακλίνω, κατάκειμαι, κατακλίνω and καθεύδω.45 The Ploutos was performed in Athens and relates a religious practice that existed close in terms of time and location to the scene set in Piraeus. Had there been one set of terminology for incubation at the Asklepieion of Piraeus at the time of Aristophanes, it would surely have turned up in the play.

23Looking at the terminology used in incubation cults other than those of Asklepios, Herodotus (writing in the fifth century) uses the verbs ἐγκατακοιμάομαι and κατακοιμάω for ‘to incubate’ in relation to the cult of Amphiaraos in Boeotia.46 Hyperides, writing in the fourth century, uses κοιμάομαι and κατακλίνομαι for incubating in the Amphiareion at Oropos.47 A lex sacra from Oropos that relates to incubation and is dated to 386–374 BC uses the words ἐγκαθεύδω as well as καθεύδω.48 Hyperides and the lex sacra from Oropos are close in time, but the verbs chosen to designate the sleeping differ even between these two testimonia. Turning to the Plutonium at Acharaka, Strabo uses the verb ἐγκοιμάομαι to describe the event.49 Since all the words designating incubation also just mean ‘to sleep’, which prefix is chosen is most probably due to a variation of the language and does not purport to any ritual actions such as going to underground dormitories to incubate. By way of comparison, in English we say ‘to go to sleep’ or ‘lie down to sleep’ without hinting at any difference in the two actions.

24No terminological differences can be noted between inscriptions and literature relating to incubation. Many different words were used in the inscriptions, as well as in the texts describing incubation. As previously noted, many different verbs meaning ‘to incubate’ could be used within the same text or inscription. Strabo is the exception in that he only uses the verb ἐγκοιμάομαι. Here, the literary style of Strabo, rather than a knowledge of the local language used at a certain site, most likely determined his choice of words, since he uses ἐγκοιμάομαι for a wide variety of incubation cults: the Plutonium at Acharaka, an incubation cult of an unknown god at Anarice by the Caspian sea, and the cult of Sarapis at Canopus, as well as for describing Jewish incubation.50

25Thus, we may note that no unique words designating ‘to incubate’ were used, not even within the same testimonium, and not even concerning the cult of Asklepios or even at one and the same Asklepieion. Thus, we may not speak of a ritual defined by a generally accepted term. The choice of word is dependent on factors other than cultic consensus, factors such as the style of the author writing about the cult, or the local dialect at the incubation sanctuary.