Introduction: The Landscape as a Legible Canvas
How did ancient societies ensure their most vital rules, such as the regulation of marriage, sexuality, and reproduction, were remembered and obeyed? They did not merely write them on scrolls or debate them in the political assembly; they etched them into the rivers, rocks, and temples of the physical environment itself.
In HIEROTOPOI, we want to explore a new perspective on the study of ancient religions and its connection with the landscape. By drawing upon the anthropological concept of “topographic writing” (Santos-Granero, 1998), we suggest that the natural landscape is not just a passive, theatrical backdrop for human activity. Instead, it acts as a legible canvas upon which communities inscribe their religious history. Through specific ‘topograms’, i.e., meaningful places shaped by myths and rituals, the physical environment becomes a living archive, a mnemohistory that communicates collective memory and social identity across generations.
To truly understand how this topographic writing worked in the ancient Mediterranean, we must look beyond the well-documented city of Athens and journey into the rugged, myth-soaked region of the Argolid in the Peloponnese. Here, the landscape reveals a fascinating story about the intersection of religion, power, and the control of the female body.*
Reading the Biopolitics of the Polis through Marriage
To decode the landscape of the Argolid, we first need to understand the social position of ancient Greek women. In the ancient polis (city-state), women were entirely excluded from the political rights granted to male citizens. However, this was an “inclusive exclusion” (Valdés Guía, 2008: 174). While excluded from the assembly, women were the absolute cornerstone of the oikos (the household) and the biological continuity of the community.
For a city-state to survive and thrive, it needed to manage the life, health, and reproduction of its population, what modern sociologists usually define as “biopolitics”. Ancient philosophers openly debated this need for control. Aristotle, for instance, describes in his Politics this power relationship in which the masculine must dominate the feminine:
“And since, as we saw, the science of household management has three divisions, one the relation of master to slave, of which we have spoken before, one the paternal relation, and the third the conjugal—for it is a part of the household science to rule over wife and children (over both as over freemen, yet not with the same mode of government, but over the wife to exercise republican government and over the children monarchical); for the male is by nature better fitted to command than the female (except in some cases where their union has been formed contrary to nature [εἰ μή που συνέστηκε παρὰ φύσιν]) and the older and fully developed person than the younger and immature“. (Arist. Pol. 1.5, 1259a40-b4)
Consequently, Aristotle himself describes how marriage is the quintessence of this relationship of domination, since a woman must regard her husband’s rules as a divine law imposed upon her:
“Nay, it is fitting that a woman of well-ordered life should consider that her husband’s uses are as laws appointed for her own life by divine will, along with the marriage state and the fortune she shares. If she endures them with patience and gentleness, she will rule her home with ease; otherwise, not so easily“. (Arist. [Oec.] 3.1, 141.5)
In this sense, the institution of marriage constituted the primary tool for this biopolitical control. Marriage was a strict mechanism designed to recognise parentage and legitimise the offspring produced by the sexual union. But how did the state enforce these strict reproductive rules without a modern police force? Aristotle gave us some clues: by turning to the divine. As we can observe in Plato’s Laws:
“The sentence that these acts are by no means holy , but hated of God and most shamefully shameful (τὸ ταῦτα εἶναι φάναι μηδαμῶς ὅσια, θεομισῆ δὲ καὶ αἰσχρῶν αἴσχιστα). And does not the reason lie in this, that nobody speaks of them otherwise, but every one of us, from the day of his birth, hears this opinion expressed always and everywhere, not only in comic speech, but often also in serious tragedy—as when there is brought on to the stage a Thyestes or an Oedipus, or a Macareus having secret intercourse with a sister, and all these are seen inflicting death upon themselves willingly as a punishment for their sins?” (Pl. Leg. 838c)
In this passage, Plato illustrates how the lawmaker must imbue civil laws with a divine and sacred character in order to ensure their absolute obedience. By instilling from childhood the belief that transgression invites the wrath of the gods, human law becomes an unquestionable taboo that citizens respect of their own accord. This demonstrates how myth, religious practice, and even civic theatre collaborated to enforce these social norms.
Applying this Platonic framework to Greek religious practices, one can analyse deities like Aphrodite as “special agents” who provided normativity and legitimacy to matrimonial unions. As noted by scholar Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge (1994), Aphrodite’s role in regions like the Argolid extended far beyond erotic love to encompass the explicit “patronage of sexuality”. By sacralising the social order, the rules governing a woman’s body and behaviour became the unquestionable will of the gods, embedded deeply into the community’s daily life.
The Topograms of Troezen: Hippolytus and the Memory of the Land
The perfect example of this sacred, biopolitical control inscribed into the landscape can be found in the ancient city of Troezen, located in the northeastern Peloponnese. According to the ancient travel writer Pausanias, Troezen was home to a sanctuary dedicated to Aphrodite Nymphia, situated near the source of the river Hylikos. This sanctuary stood beside the very rock where the legendary hero Theseus supposedly retrieved the sandals and sword left by his father, Aegeus (Paus. 2.32.7). The divine epithet Nymphia directly connects the goddess to the protection of the bride and the young wife, marking this specific geographical space as a critical node for marital rituals.
However, the topographic writing of Troezen goes much deeper. Pausanias also describes another sacred enclosure in the city dedicated to Hippolytus, the son of Theseus (Fig.2). In Greek mythology, Hippolytus famously rejected Aphrodite, setting off a tragic chain of events involving his stepmother, Phaedra. This divine transgression and its disastrous narrative were physically woven into the religious topography of Troezen, serving as an indelible memory that reinforced the rules of the community. Before their marriage, the young women of Troezen were required to perform a powerful, embodied ritual: they offered a lock of their hair to Hippolytus (Paus. 2.32.1). Through this act, they were literally reading and writing the landscape’s mnemohistory. By leaving a piece of their own bodies at the shrine, these young women acknowledged the tragic consequences of defying Aphrodite and physically anchored their own transition from virginity to womanhood into the sacred, cautionary topography of their city.
Reinforcing Mnemohistory: Aphrodite in Hermione and the Hybristika in Argos
This topographic writing was not limited to the transition from childhood to adulthood; it extended across all stages of a woman’s life. In the Argolic city of Hermione, Pausanias describes another temple dedicated to Aphrodite:
“There is also another temple of Aphrodite. Among the honours paid her by the Hermionians is this custom: maidens, and widows about to remarry, all sacrifice to her before wedding”. (Paus. 2.34.12)
In a society deeply concerned with legitimate lineage and population growth, a widow still possessed valuable reproductive capacity. By requiring both young brides and widows to share the same ritual space before marriage, the city transformed the temple into a physical, regulatory node. The sacred landscape acted as a biopolitical registry, managing and sanctioning the reproductive timelines of the city’s women.
Yet, the landscape also recorded moments where these strict rules were seemingly turned upside down. In the city of Argos (Fig. 4), the community celebrated a fascinating festival known as the Hybristika. This event commemorated the Battle of Sepeia, a conflict where the women of Argos, led by the poet Telesilla, famously took up arms to defend their city against the Spartans (Valdés Guía, 2005). During the Hybristika, normative gender roles were completely reversed: women dressed as men, and men dressed as women. This subversion even bled into marital rites, with women in Argos practicing ritual cross-dressing before their weddings:
“Some say that the battle took place on the seventh day of the month which is now known as the Fourth Month, but anciently was called Hermaeus among the Argives; others say that it was on the first day of that month, on the anniversary of which they celebrate even to this day the ‘Festival of Impudence,’ (Ὑβριστικὰ) at which they clothe the women in men’s shirts and cloaks, and the men in women’s robes and veils (γυναῖκας μὲν ἀνδρείοις χιτῶσι καὶ χλαμύσιν, ἄνδρας δὲ πέπλοις γυναικῶν καὶ καλύπτραις ἀμφιεννύντες)”. (Plut. Mor. Mul. virt. 245f)
Why would a strict patriarchal society allow such a radical subversion of its rules? The answer lies in the “negativity of the norm” (Soneira-Martínez, 2024). By allowing women to step out of their boundaries and adopt a male aesthetic for a single, exceptional day within a specific sacred context, the city highlighted the impossibility of doing so the rest of the year. This temporary, ritualised freedom ultimately reaffirmed and reinforced the strict patriarchal order, etching the permanent social boundaries deeply into the civic memory.
Conclusion: Walking Through the Ancient Mnemohistory
From the perspective of the HIEROTOPOI project, reading the landscape of the Argolid completely transforms our understanding of ancient Greek society. The physical environment was a powerful, panoptic tool of social control. For an ancient Greek woman, walking through her local landscape meant navigating a complex, highly legible network of myths, temples, and rules. The topography constantly reminded her of her designated role: to be a docile body, a caretaker, and a life-giver essential for the continuity of the polis.
However, by decoding these ancient “topographies” and the rituals performed within them, we achieve something vital. We move beyond a biased history told exclusively by male philosophers and legislators, and we begin to recover the marginalised, lived experiences of ancient women. More broadly, we reveal the profound ways humanity has historically used the natural world, its rivers, rocks, and sanctuaries, not just as a place to live and dwell, but as a monumental archive to organise, control, and remember its society.
* [This blog post is based on an expanded and more elaborate version of the research in “Biopolítica matrimonial en la agencia sexo–reproductiva de la mujer griega” in A. Fernández Prieto (ed.) (In)visibilidad, vulnerabilidad y agencia:visiones antiguas y modernas de la mujer griega antigua. Univ. de Sevilla/UAM, 2024. https://dx.doi.org/10.12795/9788447226375
Bibliography, Sources and Further Readings
Aristotle, Pol.: Aristotle, Politics, trans. H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library 264, (Cambridge, MA 1932).
Aristotle, [Oec.].: Aristotle, Metaphysics, Volume II: Books 10-14. Oeconomica. Magna Moralia, trans. H. Tredennick and G. Cyril Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library 287, (Cambridge, MA 1935).
Pausanias: Pausanias, Description of Greece, Volume I: Books 1-2, trans. by W. H. S. Jones, Loeb Classical Library 93, (Cambridge, MA 1918).
Plato, Leg.: Plato, Laws, Volume II: Books 7-12, trans. R. G. Bury, Loeb Classical Library 192 (Cambridge MA 1926).
Plutarch, Mor. Mul. virt.: Plutarch, Moralia, Volume III, Sayings of Kings and Commanders. Sayings of Romans. Sayings of Spartans. The Ancient Customs of the Spartans. Sayings of Spartan Women. Bravery of Women, ed. and trans. Frank Cole Babbitt, Loeb Classical Library 245 (Cambridge, MA, 1931).
Pirenne-Delforge, V. (1994) L’Aphrodite grecque, Liège. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pulg.1409
Santos-Granero, F. (1998): Writing History into the Landscape: Space, Myth, and Ritual in Contemporary Amazonia. American Ethnologist, 25(2), 128-148.
Soneira-Martínez, R. (2024) “Biopolítica matrimonial en la agencia sexo–reproductiva de la mujer griega” in A. Fernández Prieto (ed.) (In)visibilidad, vulnerabilidad y agencia:visiones antiguas y modernas de la mujer griega antigua. Univ. de Sevilla/UAM. https://dx.doi.org/10.12795/9788447226375.
Valdés Guía, M. (2005) La batalla de Sepea y las Hybristika: culto, mito y ciudadanía en la sociedad argiva, Gerión. Revista de Historia Antigua, 23(1), pp. 101-114.
Valdés Guía, M. (2008) El nacimiento de la autoctonía ateniense: cultos, mitos cívicos y sociedad de la Atenas del s. VI a. C, Madrid.
