Roman Baths. Photo by Trapac.

When you start chasing a line of inquiry there’s a danger of getting tunnel vision. In my case if I start thinking that astronomy is THE key to understanding ancient mind then I’ll be eventually in my own private world with it’s own rules. In the case of examine how people see the universe down is as important a direction as up. The human world for the Greeks was a world between the heavens and the underworld.

There’s an interesting example I’ve found at the Theoi Project, which I can’t recall coming across before despite it being around since 2000. This is Diodorus Siculus discussing Daedalus’s work in Sicily:

[78.3]A third construction of his, in the territory of Selinus, was a grotto where he so successfully expelled the steam caused by the fire which burned in it that those who frequented the grotto got into a perspiration imperceptibly because of the gentle action of the heat, and gradually, and actually with pleasure to themselves, they cured the infirmities of their bodies without experiencing any annoyance from the heat.

There’s stories like this that crop up in the ancient sources. They interesting for a couple of reasons. One is that it should be possible to find sites like this.

The processes that drive these things are natural geological processes. There are many spas which are still active today. If I knew how to read a Geological map then it may be possible to find some helpful hints as to where to look for these sites. That sounds easy, but one Geology professor declared that the who point of a three-year Geology degree was to learn how to read a geological map. It’s an interesting subject in its own right, but I suspect that there’s a huge amount of stuff waiting to be discovered in examining how the ancients interacted with Geology.

The other feature relevant to me is that this is attributed to Daedalus who is said to have visited Sicily in the prehistoric period. I can’t prove that it’s impossible a man flew from Crete to Sicily with wax wings, but let’s say for the sake of argument it is impossible. If that’s the case where did this knowledge really come from. I think this is a classic example of the Greeks deciding that native knowledge in Sicily had to have a Greek source. A lot of the sanctuaries or oracles built on geological features in Sicily are almost certainly native sites which have been Hellenised.

This is where it gets really interesting because most of these Hellenised sites are santuaries of Demeter and Kore. Why? Presumably because these sites were associated with female deities by the natives. When the Greeks took on these sites, did they also take on native beliefs without questioning them? There’s no central authority for Greek religion and the Greeks themselves accepted that everyone’s local gods were a bit different to their neighbours. The traditional view is that the Greeks hellenised the natives to a greater or lesser degree. This may be a way of showing how the Greeks themselves were changed by the people they met.