Sacred circles: Enclosed sanctuaries and their festival communities in the Hellenistic world

In the Hellenistic period, cities increasingly organized major festivals in honour of their principal gods, often as an ‘echo’ of the great Panhellenic games, sending out invitations to cities and kings for support and participation. Cities thus opened up their prime sanctuaries to the Greek world through their festivals. At the same time, there was a growing tendency to enclose these sacred spaces within peristyle architecture. As the political borders of cities were temporarily suspended, so the edges of their great civic shrines were hardened, creating a paradox of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion. This chapter examines this phenomenon through the lens of the ‘sacred circle’, a special ritualized place cut out of the urban fabric of time and space that in this case also fostered connectivity across the Greek world. Three case studies from Asia Minor serve to highlight local strategies in effectuating festival connectivity through sacred space: Magnesia on the Maeander and the sanctuary of Artemis Leukophryene, Stratonikeia and the sanctuary of Hekate at Lagina, and Pisidian Antioch and the sanctuary of Men Askaenos.