Rocks, views, soils and plants at the temples of ancient Greece

Libation, or the pouring of wine or blood on the ground, was an important element of religious practice in ancient Greek religion (Burkert 1985), indicating reverence for soil. Homer (c . 750 BC, Iliad 14.347) sang how ‘divine soil [χθών δı̂α] made fresh-sprung grass to grow, and dewy lotus, crocus and hyacinth’. A similar epithet ‘sacred soil’ [‘ιερòν πέδoν], which includes the root word for pedology (soil science), was used by Sophocles (c . 445 BC, Ajax 859) and Apollonius of Rhodes (c . 248 BC, Argonautica 1296). Plato wrote in c . 350 BC ‘Some districts are ill-conditioned or well-conditioned owing to a variety of winds or to sunshine, others owing to their waters, others owing simply to the produce of the soil, which offers produce either good or bad for their bodies, and equally able to effect similar results in their souls as well’ (Laws Book V, Bury 1947: 389). Ancient Greek writers also had technical understanding of soils, classifying them according to colour-texture (Xenophon and Theophrastus), fertility (Plato and Strabo) and medical considerations (Hippocrates and Theophrastus), and into categories corresponding to modern Andisols, Mollisols, Vertisols, Aridisols, Spodosols, Alfisols, Entisols and Inceptisols, as well as aquic and salic conditions (Bech Borràs 1999; Soil Survey Staff 2000). This study of soils and vegetation explores relationships between the religious and scientific perceptions of soil at 84 temples of Classical (480-338 BC) mainland Greece, several Aegean islands and Cyprus (Figure 1). The main question to be addressed is why are the temples where they are? Can this be determined by detailed examination of bedrock geology, compass orientation, topographic setting, soils and vegetation at the various sacred sites of ancient Greece? Or are they just accidents of history, where individual founders had profound