Fall 2024 | Yale University
This graduate-level seminar approaches sacred space in ancient Italy (ca. 500 BCE–100 CE) from several evidential and methodological perspectives. The class probes how different kinds of sacred artifacts (places, buildings, and bodies) textured ritual space, forming its recognizable character then and now. While assessing the available evidence (material, literary, epigraphic) for each of these categories, we devote time to untangling the ways that modern scholars and Roman authors have written about ancient holy places. The emphasis on "approach" also provides an avenue to begin to reconstruct the lived experiences of sacred space, moving from the realia of locations, structures, and objects to the possible responses of ancient people.
General
MODULE 1: APPROACHING THE SANCTUARY
Week 1: Aug 29 – Introductions
[\c] Jaś Elsner, “Material Culture and Ritual: State of the Question,” in Bonna Wescoat and Robert Ousterhout (eds.), Architecture of the Sacred: Space, Ritual, and Experience from Classical Greece to Byzantium (Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 1–26.
Week 2: Sept 5 – Approaching the Evidence for Sacred Spaces
Archaeology: [\c] Emma Jayne Graham, “Place,” in Reassembling Religion in Roman Italy (Routledge, 2021), pp. 41–76.
Text: [\o] Maik Patzelt, “About Servants and Flagellants: Seneca’s Capitol Description and the Variety of ‘Ordinary’ Religious Experience at Rome,” in Gasparini et al. (eds.), Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World: Approaching Religious Transformations from Archaeology, History and Classics (De Gruyter, 2020), pp. 117–136.
Art: [\o] Christopher Hallett, “The Wood Comes to the City: Ancient Trees, Sacred Groves, and the ‘Greening’ of Early Augustan Rome,” Religion in the Roman Empire, vol. 7 (2021), pp. 221–274.
Week 3: Sept 12 – Reconstructing Ancient Experience
Big Picture: [\c] Dan-el Padilla Peralta, Divine Institutions (Princeton University Press, 2020), “Temples, Festivals, and Common Knowledge,” pp. 131–177.
Place-Specific: [\c] Amanda Herring, “Reconstructing the Sacred Experience at the Sanctuary of Hekate at Lagina,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 79, no. 3 (September 2020), 247–263.
Single Objects: [\o] Vicky Jewell, “Haptic Colour: Experiential Viewing in Graeco-Roman Sacred Spaces,” in Graham and Misic (eds.), Senses, Cognition, and Ritual Experience in the Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 2024), pp. 89–117.
MODULE 2: INSIDE THE SANCTUARY
Week 4: Sept 19 – Patrons and Pavements
Patrons and Politics: [\c] Penelope Davies, Architecture and Politics in Republican Rome (Cambridge, 2017), ONLY pp. 75-109.
Patrons and Pavements: [\c] Mark Pobjoy, ‘A New Reading of the Mosaic Inscription in the Temple of Diana Tifatina’ in Papers of the British School at Rome, 1997, Vol. 65 (1997), pp. 59-88.
Romans as Patrons in Italy: [\c] Fay Glinister, “Colonies and Religious Dynamism in Mid-Republican Italy,” in Stek and Burgers (eds.), The Impact of Rome on Cult Places and Religious Practices in Ancient Italy (London, 2015), pp. 145–156.
Week 5: Sept 26 – Artists and Cult Statues
Meeting Gods: [\c] Verity Platt, Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 77–123 (“Material Epiphany: Encountering the Divine in Cult Images”).
Making Gods: [\c] Eugenio La Rocca, “Greek Sculptors in Rome: An Art for the Romans,” in Palagia (ed.), Handbook of Greek Sculpture (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), pp. 579–619.
Week 6: Oct 3 – Comparing Bodies
The View from Above: [\c] Osborne, The History Written on the Classical Greek Body (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 185–215 (“Godsbodies”).
The View from Below: [\c] Emma-Jayne Graham, “Partible Humans and Permeable Gods: Anatomical Votives and Personhood in the Sanctuaries of Central Italy,” in Draycott and Graham (eds.), Bodies of Evidence (Routledge, 2017), pp. 45–62.
MODULE 3: CASES AND PLACES
Week 7: Oct. 10 – Case Studies: The Sanctuary of Diana at Nemi
[\c] Carin Green, “The Sanctuary of Diana at Aricia to the Augustan Age” in Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 3-33.
Pia Guldager Bilde, “The Sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis. The Late Republican Acrolithic Cult Statues” in Acta Archaeologica LXVI (1995), pp. 191-217.
[\o] Francesca Diosono and Giulia D’Angelo, ‘Nemi in contesto. La Decorazione Fittile Delle Diverse Fasi del Tempio di Diana Tra Vecchie Collezioni e Nuovi Dati Stratigrafici’ in Deliciae Fictiles V. Networks and Workshops: Architectural Terracottas and Decorative Roof Systems in Italy and Beyond (Oxbow, 2019), pp. 397-406.
[\o] Francesca Diosono, “Ricerche in Corso Nel Santuario di Diana a Nemi” in Dialoghi sull'archeologia della Magna Grecia e del Mediterraneo IV (Pandemos, 2021), pp. 93-103.
Week 8: Oct. 24 – Case Studies: The Temple of Fortuna Huiusce Diei
[\c] Daniele Miano, Fortuna (Oxford, 2018), pp. 99-113 ONLY.
[\c] Anna Clark, Divine Qualities (Oxford, 2007), pp. 117-131 ONLY.
[\c] Eleanor Leach, ‘Fortune's Extremities: Q. Lutatius Catulus and Largo Argentina Temple B: A Roman Consular and his Monument’ in Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 55 (2010), pp. 111-134.
[\c] Maggie Popkin, ‘Decorum and the Meanings of Materials in Triumphal Architecture of Republican Rome’, JSAH 74.3 (2015), pp. 289-311.
Week 9: Oct. 31 – Case Studies: The Thermal Sanctuary at San Casciano dei Bagni
[\c] Jacopo Tabolli, ‘1. Lost and Found: The Discovery of a Sanctuary at the Bagno Grande in San Casciano dei Bagni’ in Il Santuario Ritrovato (Sillabe, 2021), pp. 13-21.
[\c] Jacopo Tabolli, ‘1. Found and Refound: Two Years After’ in Il Santuario Ritrovato 2 (Sillabe, 2023), pp. 15-19.
Week 10: Nov. 7 – Case Studies: Munigua
[\c] Thomas Schattner, ‘Munigua’ in Ciudades romanas de Hispania, 2. Cities of Roman Hispania, 2 (Rome, 2022), pp. 241-252.
[\o] Filippo Coarelli, ‘Munigua, Praeneste e Tibur. I modelli laziali di un municipio della Baetica’, Lucentum 6 (1987), pp. 91-100.
[\c] William Mierse, Temples and towns in Roman Iberia: the social and architectural dynamics of sanctuary designs from the third century B.C. to the third century A.D. (Berkeley, 1999), pp. 204-267, in particular. pp. 245-266.