Roman Votive Offering [Wikimedia Commons]

Jessica Hughes. Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

As some of the most numerous, widespread, and striking objects associated with the practice of religion in the ancient world, anatomical votives have appeared in many studies of the classical and late antique Mediterranean. Only in recent years have scholars begun to interrogate this broad category of object more critically. Jessica Hughes's Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion contributes to this growing body of scholarship, and shows that anatomical votives were more than simple attestations of healings or vows. As Hughes observes, anatomical votives are “challenging objects to work with” as they frequently problematize assumptions about the way that ancient people understood and experienced the body. (p. 4) Embracing this challenge, Hughes's book pursues two primary goals: 1) to earnestly consider the shocking, startling, or unsettling effect of anatomical votives as dismembered body parts and 2) to uncover the ways that these objects materialize the fragmentation of the human body allowing for complex and deeply meaningful forms of representation.

After setting these goals in the introduction, the book presents another four chapters, each of which focuses on select sites and types of votive objects. As Hughes notes, these chapters are not intended to be comprehensive, but rather illustrative of regionally and chronologically constructed understandings of the body. Despite their limited scope, each chapter provides a wealth of context, exploring the theme of bodily fragmentation in both anatomical votives and their broader cultural and religious setting.

The book’s second chapter, “Fragmentation as Metaphor: Anatomical Votives in Classical Greece,” examines votives of the fifth and fourth century BC from the Asklepieia of Athens and Corinth. At these two sites, models of body parts feature an array of limbs and appendages including legs, feet, arms, eyes, ears, breasts, and male genitalia. Using their physical features as well as their illustration in ancient visual media, Hughes interprets these models as depicting illness within individual pieces of the body. For Hughes, this understanding of illness as localized reflects a larger Greek “fascination” with the relationship between the body and its parts. (p. 42) Consequently, the remainder of the chapter explores the idea of bodily fragmentation in classical Greek art and literature, searching for the ways in which anatomical votives might have functioned as metaphorical representations of illness and pain. Consulting a wide array of sources from medical texts and curse tablets to painted pottery and stone reliefs, Hughes identifies patterns in the expression of pain and divine punishment through the dismemberment of the body. Hughes also brings in accounts from the Asclepius cult which present healing as the reconstitution of the dismembered body in dreams and visions. These themes of the dismemberment and reintegration of the body offer new interpretations for anatomical votives as manifestations of ideas about the body in classical Greece.

Chapter three, “Under the Skin: Anatomical Votives in Republican Italy,” considers Etrusco-Italic terracotta votives from the fourth to first centuries BC. Specifically, Hughes details the numerous model body parts found at the Etrurian sanctuaries of Gravisca and Tessennano. As previous studies have already compared these materials to one another, Hughes elects to focus on contrasts between votives in classical Greece and republican Italy. Whereas the limbs and appendages from classical Greece include only external appendages, the Etrusco-Italic models also include internal organs such as wombs and torsos with exposed viscera. Highlighting this key difference, Hughes challenges the straightforward transmission of votive practices from Greece to Italy. Instead, Hughes points to the prevalence of extispicy in the region as an important influence on Etrusco-Italic votives. This argument works particularly well in the case of polyvisceral models which appear to offer the internal organs as a sign of vulnerability and submission to the will of the gods. Although the fragmentation of the body recedes somewhat to the background in this chapter, Hughes does conclude with an inquiry into the effects that models of internal organs would have on those offering or viewing anatomical votives. As one possibility, Hughes proposes that the shocking sight of internal organs in Etrusco-Italic sanctuaries would mimic the “sudden consciousness” of one’s own internal organs which occurs during illness. (p. 97) Alternatively, Hughes suggests that models of internal organs would confront viewers with the similarity between human and animal bodies as is the case with several interesting hybrid examples that combine human organs with animal features.

Chapter four, “The Anxiety of Influence: Anatomical Votives in Roman Gaul,” shifts the book’s attention to the Gallic sanctuaries of Dea Sequana in Burgundy and the ‘Source des Roches’ at Chamalières. Dated to the first century BC to first century CE, anatomical votives from these sites are among the earliest in the region. As in previous chapters, Hughes attempts to complicate an existing scholarly narrative, namely, that anatomical votives first emerged in Gaul through “a one sided ‘religious Romanisation.’” (p. 107) While anatomical votives from Gaul do show similarities to their Etrusco-Italic predecessors, Hughes seeks their distinctly Gallic characteristics. Through a series of fascinating examples, Hughes links models of heads and headless bodies found in Gaul to an Iron Age Gallic “head-cult.” Applying the lens of the fragmented body, Hughes shows that these votives preserve a pre-Roman sense of the head as a way to encapsulate a person’s entire being. Similarly, models of reduplicated body parts also find parallels in older Gallic imagery. Hughes offers several interpretations for these examples, but is more interested in the questions that they—along with the Gallic models of heads—raise about the association between anatomical votives and the bodies of those who dedicated them. Might Gallic votives have been offered on behalf of multiple people? Were Gallic votives sometimes intended aggressively as a curse or metaphorical decapitation? Such questions lead Hughes to the insightful conclusion that anatomical votives might be used “not only to construct ‘vertical’ relationships between mortals and gods, but also to shape ‘horizontal’ relationships between mortals.” (p. 149)

The interpersonal meanings of anatomical votives also feature in the book’s fifth and final chapter, “Punishing bodies: The Lydian and Phrygian ‘Propitiatory’ Stelai.” This chapter examines stone stelai from rural sanctuaries in Lydia and Phrygia inscribed in the second and third centuries CE.[1] Unlike many of the examples found in the book, these stelai combine images of body parts with substantial inscriptions narrating the transgressions of a dedicant as well as the divine punishment they experienced. Surveying the stelai, Hughes first agrees with previous scholars who understand reliefs of the body parts on the stelai as localized afflictions. Akin to the anatomical models from classical Greece, these images represent anatomical “diving rods” which revealed a god’s displeasure. (p. 157) At the same time, however, Hughes also understands the fragmented bodies of the stelai to be multi-functional. In certain cases, images seem to reference body parts responsible for a transgression or the all-seeing eyes of a god. Other stelai depict the bodies of multiple individuals and tell of divine punishments experienced by the family or community of the transgressor. These examples lead Hughes to consider the stelai as pars pro toto representations for the interconnectedness of the community. Just as the entire body of a dedicant may be condensed into an image of a single limb, so too may the stelai “collectively materialize” a larger “body politic” defined by a shared obligation to honor the gods. (p.184)

This interpretation of anatomical votives as fluid and multivalent epitomizes the value of Hughes’s approach in Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion. At no point does Hughes offer a single overarching definition of the anatomical votive. Instead, as Hughes states in a concluding Afterword, the book’s analysis has “allowed us to move beyond the observation that anatomical votives pinpoint parts of the human body that were suffering, to recognize that the striking visual image of a truncated body also had other meanings, which drew upon contemporary discourses and contexts for the divided body.” (p.187) While the book does succeed in re-imagining the significance of votive body parts and placing them in their proper context, some of its connections appear more plausible than others. Perhaps more could be said as well about the afterlife of votive objects and changes to votive traditions within each region after their initial inception. Nevertheless, Hughes expertly brings together an impressive array of literary, visual, and material evidence supported throughout with clear and fascinating images. Thus, Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion will appeal to both those looking for a study of anatomical votives and those interested in the body in the ancient world. The book works best as a whole, but each chapter may be read on its own depending upon one’s interest. For any reader, Hughes’s book will present fascinating possibilities and a convincing case for the richness and complexity of ancient votive body parts.

[1] Though most studies refer to the Lydian and Phrygian stelai as “confession inscriptions,” Hughes prefers the term “propitiatory stelae” so as to include the images of body parts that sometimes accompany the inscriptions. (p. 151)

Scott Possiel is a PhD candidate in Ancient Mediterranean Religions at Boston University.