Gazing for temples on Mt Olympus
Mt Olympus has always held the fascination of the ancients. More recently, Barbara Graziosi entitled her 2013 book on the Greek gods by that mountain — The Gods of Olympus: A History. Countless images in popular culture idealise Mt Olympus as a perfectly conical mountain topped by a beautiful temple of Zeus above the clouds, a testament to its literary fame. But what really is up there on the crown of the gods?
Did the ancients ever climb Mt Olympus?
What’s so interesting about Mt Olympus is that it is both a literary construction and an equally physical space. Yet few people focus on the physical side — and how the ancients interacted with it. On the one hand, it’s justifiable: there is a clear practical problem — Mt Olympus is covered by snow for a good portion of the year (as Anne Viry-Babel has recently vividly written about), limiting access to potential shrines. It’s not a close place to visit — a strenuous pilgrimage of “three to four days” would have been required to reach the top, without taking into account the volatile, adverse weather. At the top, if there were physical structures, they would easily have been destroyed, and restoration works would have been tough. Building on Olympus would require extraordinary efforts. Just how far would people go to fulfil that?
On the other hand, another problem in an entirely different field obscures our search for this physical side: the panhellenic literary fame of Olympus as the home of the Twelve Olympian gods often dominates our discussions of Mt Olympus, as scholars like Clay 1989 (The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns) have famously done. At times, this overshadows the fact that Olympus was also a real mountain surrounded by historic communities that engaged with it. There were many epichoric sites sloping down Mt Olympus — three of which can still be visited today (Dion, Pythion, Leivithra).
Yet there are more serious reasons as to why the Macedonian massif might not have been associated with the gods’ abode. After Homer and especially during the Hellenistic world, literary sources increasingly locate the abode of the Olympian gods in the general “sky”, as opposed to the massif in Thessaly. This arguably occurs even in Homer — Od.11.306–20 dramatises the moment when the giants Otos and Ephialtes pile up Mt Pelion and Mt Ossa up to the “sky” (ouranos) in order to reach the abode of the gods. To the opposite extreme, Nagy (2019: I§6) has noted that some Mycenaean Linear B tablets record multiple different Mt Olympuses around Greece with their own set of gods. Was the Mt Olympus we know today really that special back then?
So is our enquiry on the physical face of Olympus doomed even before we set foot on the question? Not entirely — Greek literature is overwhelmingly dominated, diachronically and geographically, by the view that the Macedonian mountain is the abode of the gods. Indeed, Homer’s Poseidon singles out the physical side of the mountain when defining Mt Olympus as the communal hearth of the gods: since Mt Olympus straddles all three realms of the underworld, sea, and sky belonging to Hades, Poseidon and Zeus respectively (Il. 15.187–193), it is the ideal intersecting abode for all the gods.
So exploring Mt Olympus as a physical setting of the gods is a valid question — and one surprisingly neglected, to our loss. Few scholars have asked what the physical aspect of Olympus as an abode, in its very literal sense, actually meant to the Greek mind.
And it’s a valuable question in broader Classical scholarship — this approach raises unique and rich questions about identity negotiation, space, and religion that have surprisingly significant stakes in current scholarship. First, it focuses on the ground-up perspective. What did Mt Olympus mean to the epichoric communities clinging to its slopes? How did the unique environmental features make this landscape differ from the standard religious sanctuary? Given the fame of Olympus’ mythology as opposed to its physical sites, this opens up interesting questions about the negotiation between the literary and the physical. How did the broader pan-Hellenic stories about Zeus and Olympus corroborate or clash with local versions? How did imagination and reality match up? Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, how did people reconstruct or reclaim that imagination in reality?
The physical aspect of Mt Olympus opens up a rich playing ground to negotiate these questions — and, as we’ll see, to deconstruct them. What I argue here is that it is precisely the traditional literary fame of Mt Olympus, the often-droned about singularity of the interpretation as the home of the dodecatheology, that gives the physical side of Mt Olympus such a rich opportunity to craft unique cults, alternative stories, and personal accounts for the self-definition and political agency of local communities clinging to its slopes. It’s the deconstruction of the international orthodoxy that nurtures the proudly local.
Before we start, another methodological assurance is necessary. Were there similar sanctuaries in high and sacred locations in the first place? Put shortly, yes — especially for Zeus and related to his birthplace. (One) alleged birthplace of Zeus on Crete, the Idaion Andron on Mt Ida (modern-day Psychoro), had a sanctuary that revealed many small figurines from Egypt to Mesopotamia, ranging over a broad timespan. More interestingly, similar finds to Zeus have been discovered just next door, at another place that claimed to be Zeus’ birthplace— the Diktaian cave in the Lasithi plateau. Significant sacred structures within these caves were known to have been frequented: indeed, the famed “Hymn of the Kouretes” stele, a third-second century BC inscription detailing a hymn to Diktaian Zeus discovered in the excavations of Palaikastro in Crete, highlights the enduring popularity of this; while the fact that it was found in a pit with other temple architecture indicates some form of more permanent cult to that deity (cf. Athenaeus 9.376A for the birth of Zeus on Dikte in literature). Connected to such physical institutions, the famed Hellenistic inscription detailing Magnesia as arbitrators of a dispute between two major cities in Crete, Itanos and Hierpytna (SIG 685 = SEG 46–1225, often cited to highlight the existence of polis-level interaction in the Hellenistic world), mentions the sanctuary of Diktaian Zeus (Ζεὺς Δικταῖος) as part of the territorial boundaries between the two states. Therefore, both of these locales staked their claims to have a share of Zeus — and made this religious identity deeply personal in their contemporary political life on the ground. As we will see below, this same appropriation of peak sanctuaries in inter-poleis politics and formation of identities is equally if not more amplified in the case of Mt Olympus and the cities clinging to its slopes. Much of this relies on the Classical texts and traditions that many would have known: Hesiod’s Theogony (477–484) places the birthplace cave of Zeus (in Mt Aigaion) next to the geographical town of Lyttos — understandably, which was exactly halfway between the Idaion Andron and Diktatian cave, its two competitors.
But these are caves — Mt Olympus is quite another story, of a much greater calibre in fame and environmentally. Its immediate steep rise from the sea creates a dramatic view from all around of the isolated massif. As Graziosi notes, the often snowy peaks just a few kilometres from the sea and sweltering plains in summer below might have conjured up supernatural associations (2013:13). Even from Thessaloniki (or ancient Dion), you can see the orchestra of peaks at the top, emulating a circular bouleuterion of the gods. Did the ancients make these associations, and if so, why?
What we do know is that the ancients also recognised these unique geological features and often capitalised on them in their literature to characterise the divine. Homer often uses gods’ journeys (perhaps most famously Thetis’ in Il. 1) to and from Olympus as an opportunity to describe the mountain: it is “many-summited” (πολυδειράδος Οὐλύμποιο, Il. 1.499; also κατ’ Οὐλύμποιο καρήνων, Il 1.44, Od. 24.488 etc.), “snowy” (ἀγάννιφον, Il. 1.420), “gleaming”(αἰγλήεντος, Od. 20.103), and “steep” (πρὸς μακρὸν Ὄλυμπον, Od. 10.307, 15.43). Indeed, a whole compilation of these epithets, filled with exegetic descriptions, has been found in a manuscript that seems to be a treatise on Mt Olympus from Milan (Pap. Med. inv. 71.82, Daris 1972: 89–90). Beyond Homer, ancient scholars were especially intrigued by Homer’s use of the physical Mt Olympus as a literary topos and within the mythic world. The Homeric scholar Aristarchus of Samothrace (c.310 BC — 230 BC) often tackles the question of whether Mt Olympus or the general “sky” was the home of the gods, in his conception of the Homeric universe. Given that the epithets of Olympus are exclusively mountain-related, he concludes that it is the mountain. Inversely, Homer never calls Mt Olympus “starry” or claims it is “midway” between earth and heaven where the gods live (Scholia in Iliadem 8.46a), as he does when he describes, for example, a shout rising up to the sky past Mt Olympus (Il. 16.364–6). When Zeus threatens to haul earth, sea and the gods in Olympus up into space by a magic rope “attached to a peak of Olympus”, Aristarchus argues Olympus, here equated with the abode of the gods, must be a mountain because this “peak” on which the rope is attached must be attached to the earth to hurl that earth up (Sch. Il. 8.26a). This is opposed to the “sky”, whence Zeus stands immeasurably taller than all gods. Olympus, the home of the gods, is a physical mountain; above this is the silent sky and sun.
These arguments by Aristarchus play into a much broader dialogue of rejecting the contemporary Hellenistic intellectual milieu’s new model of the Homeric cosmos, promulgated especially by Zenodotus (Schironi 2018: 328). But such scholars also argued more specifically that Homer’s Olympus, established as a mountain, appears to be the Macedonian Mt Olympus. We already get hints of this in Homer. On the one hand, Mt Olympus seems quite similar to a generic polis: the Hours guard the city’s/Olympus’ gates, which surround the many houses within (Il. 5.749–51), with Zeus’ the uppermost citadel. Yet this geographical comparability, instead of depicting an accurate topography of Olympus, created a useful literary model to contrast the divine and mortal sphere (rarely positive for the former). Down on the ground, the geographical descriptions of approaches and departures from Olympus centre around the Macedonian massif: Aristarchus takes the fact that Hephaestus names Lemnos as the island whither Zeus hurled him as a baby from Olympus (Il. 1.593, Scholia Il. 1.593a) as proving that Olympus is the Macedonian Olympus, given their reasonable geographical proximity. Likewise, when Hera leaves Mt Olympus to find Sleep to seduce Zeus (Il. 14.225–30), her journey takes her from Olympus past the adjoining mountain range Pieria, Emathia (Homer’s Macedon), Mt Athos to Lemnos — skirting the northern parts of the Aegean Sea of Macedonia and Thrace. All these are located in Macedonia and end up at Mt Olympus as we know it today. What this tells us with certainty is that this debate held their imagination, and was grounded in both common and intellectual social spheres as much as in the physical site of Mt Olympus. As Stuttard notes, perhaps the other most famous scene of the Olympian gods (potentially) banqueting is on the Parthenon’s frieze, but also on the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi (2016: 19).
As a side note, this is rooted in the broader idea of the presence of gods in the landscape. Some ancients may have believed that Olympus’ circular, throne-like shape derived from the physical presence of the gods — gods were known to leave marks “where they reclined” on rocks (such as in Chiron’s cave during Peleus and Thetis’ wedding; Statius, Achilleid 109–110).
But the literary usage of Mt Olympus becomes especially interesting in Homer when its literary and historical sides clash: when its geography is used for literary characterisation of people on the ground. Often, Olympus’ nature of being “shrouded in cloud” (ὑψόθεν ἐκ νεφέων, Od. 20.104) is used to highlight a god’s power — here it enhances Zeus’ omnipotent display of his thundering power to Odysseus. Yet, Homer plays around with his narratorial description of Mt Olympus to characterise Odysseus when the man of many turns explains Mt Olympus to Nausicaa:
“Olympus is never shaken by winds, hit by rain, or covered in snow; cloudless ether spreads around it, and a bright aura encircles it”
(Od. 6.43–45)
What is interesting here is that there is an explicit clash between the physical and imaginary depictions of Mt Olympus within the (arguably) same author. Here, Olympus is “never covered in snow” (vs. “snowy” Il. 1.420). To understand this incongruence we must place it in its context. Odysseus, destitute of food and clothing upon landing at Phaeacia and at the mercy of Nausicaa, needs to supplicate and win her over in order to survive. In this light, one explanation of this incompatibility is that it makes Odysseus more understandable to her — yet it also enhances his overarching characterisation. Odysseus’ description fits broader patterns of supernatural places — especially close is Homer’s description of Alkinous’ (Nausicaa’s father) own garden in the next book. Natural abundance, fertility, and self-sufficiency are refracted in both descriptions — like Olympus’ weatherless, utopic nature for the gods, the plants in Alkinous’ garden are not destroyed by winter storms or summer heat (ἀπόλλυται οὐδ᾽ ἀπολείπει / χείματος οὐδὲ θέρευς, Od. 7.117–8). Instead, the gentle west wind nourishes some and ripens others (Ζεφυρίη πνείουσα, Od. 7.119), implying it is eternally free from adverse weather. Both are utopic, supernatural places free from decaying mortal qualities. In this light, Odysseus might be remoulding Mt Olympus’ physical nature specifically for Nausicaa’s mindset, applying characteristics similar to Scheria that would have been recognisable to Nausicaa. Odysseus crafts himself to seem like someone who grew up in a place familiar to Nausicaa, taught to think in a similar way and respect such customs, and therefore less likely be a threat. The physical is sacrificed for the literal — but the physical was the important starting point, and was engaged with in useful ways. The fact that Homer did it is what’s interesting — something we do much less so, and what I will explore.
Therefore, asking how physical space and imaginary idea engage opens up a rich dialogue and whole spectrum of semantic interpretations, sharings, and slippages regarding Olympus as an imaginary and real place. We need to understand both the physical landscape and local contexts in order to appreciate this duality fully.
Most studies that have been done on Mt Olympus focus on its constructed functions in literature, at the expense of historical on-the-ground study of the archaeological evidence on Mt Olympus. Graziosi’s book on the Olympic gods immediately dismisses the archaeological perspective of Olympus on page 1 of chapter 1: “People had little reason to go near it [sc. Mt Olympus], and no incentive at all to climb it” (2013: 13). This enhances her argument that people never needed to go to Olympus — they already felt watched by gods. She does suggest the imaginative depiction of Olympus was rooted in a very real landscape (22)— but that it always exists alongside the literary (“Mt Olympus and its gods”). Stuttard posits the reason that the peaks were “probably taboo throughout antiquity” (2016: 26). Does this do justice to the situation on the ground?
This overlooked focus of Mt Olympus through its archaeology and history is a major lost opportunity. Digging in the clouds can shed valuable light on how locals on the ground perceived their location, and used, interacted with, and shaped their memories based on the broader stories. This thereby contributes a unique perspective to the debate on the power of religious ritual and social memory in civic identities. Complementing ever-flourishing studies on the negotiation between local and ruler and inter-local diplomacy, spearheaded by Ma (2003) in the Hellenistic world, approaching Mt Olympus not so much from the lofty heights of imagination but from the epichoric view from the ground yields innovative and productive perspectives on an understudied facet of religion and social memory.
What this article aims to do, therefore, is to revalorise the archaeology and ancient remains on Mt Olympus in order to reclaim Olympus’ significance to pilgrims and locals from a ground-up perspective, and explore how people interacted with the standard literary fame of Olympus to differentiate and define themselves — especially by climbing it. In this spirit, first, I will explore the first modern ascent of Mt Olympus by the Swiss Baud-Bovy and Frédéric Boissonnas, and Greek lumberjacks Kakkalos and Bistikos. This will bring out how much and in what diverse ways the ancients, as much as the moderns, strove to appropriate Mt Olympus’ slippage between physical and ideological for self-defining and political purposes. In Part 2, I will explore how ancients made Mt Olympus their own and understand the gods by going up it — through the archaeology on its peak and evidence of ancient ascents. Picking up on the plurality of identities on the peak and the interaction there by local cults on its slopes, in the final part, I will explore how ancient communities on Olympos’ slopes used Mt Olympus in both their self-identities and, most interestingly, political negotiations with international rulers. Mt Olympus gave these local communities a rare opportunity to craft a degree of political leverage on the domestic and international level that little else could — with a mechanics that is deeply rooted in creating alternative, contested, and fiercely local reinterpretations of the massif that capitalise and push back on the orthodox Olympian theology bound to the mountain.
Overall, I argue that this negotiation between the physical and literary landscape of Mt Olympus brings out a rarely studied but highly productive matrix of interactions between local and international.
Following Martin West’s model in his seminal The East Face of Helicon, the other face of Olympus, its physicality, is just as interesting — if not more so.
Just under the doormat? Searching for the keys of the gods today
Although the association between Olympus and the abode of the twelve Olympian gods has been affirmed since the beginning of Greek history, it may come as a surprise that modern attempts to find the threshold of the gods by scaling Mt Olympus only began 100 years ago.
Modern accounts of Olympus’ height date right from the beginning of tourism to Greece — but it was a long process. British tourists and naval officers from 1831 claim to have seen Mt Olympus from ships in the North Aegean sea. It was only until almost a century later that the first full ascent was made by the Swiss photographer Daniel Baud-Bovy and author Frédéric Boissonnas in the famous 5-day 1913 expedition, guided by the Greek lumberjacks and goat hunters Christos Kakkalos and Nikos Bistikos. Part of the reason behind this delay was politics: it was only until 1913 that northern Greece and Macedonia were liberated from the grip of Greece’s First Balkan War with Serbia. This context of politics and the local are important, as we’ll see below.
Starting on 28 July, the diaries of the author-in-residence (recorded in Olympus, by Frédéric Boissonnas recently by Nikos Nezis in 2003) capture a vivid picture of adventure and turning back, returning and wrong turns — only reaching the summit on a foggy and rainy 2 August, having stopped off at the wrong one earlier that morning. What this exemplifies well is the importance of the practicalities and environment of Olympus, as Freddy Germanos has captured in his book Olympus. Texts and images from two centuries. It was hard to get to, even harder to find the will to complete. More importantly, this ownership and conquering of the “house of the gods” fascinated the minds of the world back then, and continues to do so — as evidenced by the 100-year anniversary stamp from the ascension.
The scientific taming of Olympus climaxed a few years later when Marcel Kurz, a Swiss topographer again guided by Christos Kakkalos, measured Olympus’ height accurately in the 1921 expedition — to 2918.80 metres.
As in the ancient literature, the literary and physical worked simultaneously here. It was also during the first physical ascent, that Olympus was conquered by the mind. The group of four symbolically claimed ownership of the places and slotted them back into the Classical narrative by giving them many Classical names, apparently inspired “immediately” upon arrival at them. The diary records that on 30 July, they reached the current Plateau of the Muses. The description already betrays a vivid excitement — “which they immediately named Meadow of the Gods”. The study of the aetiology of the names is fascinating and tells us much about modern perceptions of and interactions with the ancient past. Similarly, having reached the closest part of Mt Stefani (it’s foot) — they go wild and christen it the “Throne of Zeus”. In his memoirs, describing the moment when he saw that there was another peak above the peak they thought was the highest, Boissonnas monumentalises his motivations by claiming to have been inspired by the gnomic utterance that “in the heart of every mortal there is a spark of Prometheus’ fire”. The Classical past was grafted onto the places in order to solidify the ownership.
However, things aren’t always as straightforward as we want to believe — which nicely shows that interactions with the mountain extend much more beyond the ‘Classics’ and this standard, uncontested, rosy, Classical 5th-century glorious past. On the one hand, Mt Skolio is inaugurated by the group as the very generic “Black Top ” — no sign of Classics there. The mountain opposite Megala Kazania, “Big Cauldrons”, is named arguably more do to geology: its position in the shadow at that particular time of day evokes that image. This extends equally to more ambiguous historical interpretations. The peak they originally thought was the highest was named instantaneously “Victory Peak” — honouring the recent Greek victory at Sarantaporo against the Ottomans in 1912 and which happened under the very slopes of Olympus. Climb further down to see the Classics! Get off your high thrones to see what you eulogise as so special. As we’ll see below, these alternative, not standardly Classical interpretations map remarkably well onto the ancient mindsets, and specifically local ones. Not all names follow a specific Classical or pan-Hellenic pattern, but can flourish in a much more general, phenomenological framework. Classics is not mutually exclusive. Nor is it everything. When engaging in Classical Reception, we must always bear in mind that Classics may have been consulted without priority: it may be but part of a whole spectrum of mnemonic confluences.
And this extra-Classical trend can extend right up to today, as seen in the opposite process of describing other parts of the mountain. Many later authors, and indeed Boissonnas’ book, incorporate many anachronistic digressions on present features on the mountain and foreground aetiological descriptions. After each stop, in the aforementioned article, its modern-day situation is described: the small clearing near the modern-day hut of Spilios D, where these 1921 climbers “realized what exactly the path to the top of Mount Olympus is”, is given the parenthetical addition “[today] which functions as a heliport”. In a way, such digressive proleptic allusions to the present beg our attention more than we allow. They highlight the vital fact that perhaps for the past to matter, we need to retell it, mould it into new narratives and reclaim ownership of it, in our own ways. But just how well can we hear these various ‘own ways’ equally well? Interacting with the past is an eternal activity — but is it always successful?
Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, are cases that occasionally betray the great fragility of these modern links with the past — and their failings. Intending to rewrite a narrative does not always necessitate its success, or optimality — and the consequences of this dealing with the past with various communities and their identities could be enormous. Although they were invited to ascend by the Greek government, not all was done according to the legal plan: while waiting for their two compulsory cholera vaccines to enter Greece, they innocently, almost accidentally “decided” to spend the convenient eight-day by climbing Olympus. Now, in their memoirs, they justified this decision with their desire to fulfil an “age-long dream” and to help the Greeks enhance the worldly repute of the mountain (as if they needed that help). But this questionable motivation, below the surface, hints at real internal difficulties with the government, and which resulted more long-term in a pushback from the local Greeks. Indeed, a modern Greek newspaper’s description (for the centenarian) of their motivation as “taking advantage of” this waiting time betrays a much more negative perception of this glorious ascent by the local Greek inhabitants. Perhaps we should resist the simplicity of reading a unanimous acceptance emitted by the successful powers, but realise this ascent implicated much broader and more complex cultural interactions between the past and present, internationals and locals. What were the other voices of Olympus, of the Greeks living under Olympus? Most people remember Boissonnas’ quotation, but few remember the poem that the local Greek shepherd-guide emotionally cried impromptu upon reaching the peak:
Do not cry, Mytikas
And do not sigh
You were walked on by Kakkalos
The first brave man
This is a fiercely local view, explicitly challenging the international ownership of the massif and indeed of Greece’s cultural heritage. The physical and emotional state of Mt Olympus is here subject to a single man — and a native Greek at that. In a way, it is the potentiality of the Greek identity that is being discovered in these verses; it tells us more about Greek culture and self-thought, and the ways in which it is rooted in this physical landscape. And, to an extent, in a subversive, alternative way against foreign standard imposing powers. The quotation captures a voice of loss (‘do not cry, do not sigh’), one reacting both from emotional love but also anxiety about foreign claims to Olympus by Boissonnas & company. Germanos captures this nicely: “He did not want to leave the ownership of the summiting to foreigners”. We should not see this as xenophobia; this would grossly be oversimplifying the gross appropriations committed and privileges assumed by the foreign European powers. So locals like Kakkalos pushed back against this “international” and made their Olympus their own — facilitated by crafting their own meanings in the process. Everyone remembers Boissonnas’ 1930 book Tourisme En Grece — because it was written in four languages. But the omnipresence of Kokkolas in articles by Greek authors like Greece Is suggests the Greeks strongly remember Kokkalos’ presence and his definition of Mt Olympus as home, in a whole other matrix. Greek author wrote equally about and mythologised Olympus as the site, to cite but one example, of victory against the Ottomans in 1912 in equally, perhaps more, interesting ways: Constantine Athanasius Trypanis turned Hesiod’s myth of the fight against the Titans and Olympians into the fight between the Ottomans and Greeks, which occurred on their very slopes in 1912 (poem 89)— we cannot silence those accounts.
Do the modern views of contested memories, of competitive social identities and ownership, refract and help us re-consider this question of ancient contested ownership?
We may never know. But it is these challenges and failings that put into focus most acutely the significance of the past and Classics for the present— indeed in a process of re-imposing new Classics on the Classics, rewriting our canon. This multiplicity of engagements with the landscape and climb up Olympus is nicely refracted in the ancient world, as we’ll see below. What this viewpoint does most usefully is open up the possibility of the agency and stories of locals against the predominant “big men/power history” which so often dominate our sources, or in the case of the ancient world, the big literary authors. Although we don’t often see them, the locals do find gaps in official narratives to craft their own meaning and significance — for both personally-held self-definitions and civic identities, and as a political tool for real diplomacy. What did the government do; what did the Greek guides really think beyond Boissons claim that they unanimously decided to touch the peak together?
One must question the statement that “there are no signs of any Olympian Gods today”. Yet one must also question the perspectives that these claims are coming from. Maybe it’s the silences of these locals on the ground that are most telling, and which, though lost today, encapsulate a much more turbulent and creative process of engagement with the past and physical landscape of Olympus — as we shall now vividly see clashing out in the ancient sources.
Ancient sanctuaries on Mt Olympus: between literature and archaeology
How would the ancients have seen all of this? What was Olympus to them?
The aforementioned article concludes with a dead-end even before we start — Christos Kakkalos, Frederic Boissonnas and Daniel Baud Bovy were the first to “conquer the then untrodden summit of Mount Olympus”.
According to this account, Mt Olympus was never reached by ancient people.
Archaeologically, however, this is much more up for debate. Moreover, it introduces some fundamental questions that nicely parallel the modern ascent. How does this modern obsession with cultural ownership, and rooting this symbolic capital back into the past and indeed rewriting the past to make it relevant in the present, play out in the ancient world?
The ancient literary sources about human construction on Olympus are almost non-existent. This might be a symptom of the mode of thinking and fact that people were afraid of the gods and didn’t want to hubristically incur their jealousy. How else is Olympus portrayed in relation to the gods? Homer often portrays Olympus as a literary topos where the gods, after bitter quarrelling, turn to reconcile between themselves with a feast there. Fractures are restored with wine and food; it usually culminates with Hera and Zeus going to bed together (famously in Iliad 1.570ff, perhaps humorously suggested by their son Hephaestus). That Homer collectively calls those gods “The Olympians” highlights a clear association between mountain and gods. But as Graziosi notes, most occurrences of gods on Olympus involves them looking down at mortals, not the other way around (31). This is supported by the mythological examples of heroes trying to ascend Olympus — Bellerophon is thrown off by Pegasus before he can reach it (Pindar, Isthmian 7.44–48). Did people ever look up, figuratively and literally, to Mt Olympus?
Is it a lost cause? Quite the contrary — the best evidence that supports my point is seen in the Linear B tablets. The earlier Linear B tablets from the Mycenaean palaces, corroborating much evidence in interesting ways, wonderfully messes up the picture. Apart from mentioning gods that are often absent in Homer (such as Dionysos) and vice versa (famously Apollo), the lists of ancient sanctuaries seem to imply that people did climb ancient peak sanctuaries in Minoan Crete. This is borne out by the archaeological evidence — Petsofas, excavated by John Myres, unearthed many clay figurines from 1900–1450BCE; Mt Iuktas, aptly shaped like Zeus’ bearded face, was probably one of the oldest peak sanctuaries; Atsipades in western Crete is most recently almost opened to the public. These examples highlight that the idea of climbing was linked to mountains — and from a very early time, also linked to their high locations and religiosity. In a nice coincidence, the geographical converse is also true: gorges and ravines deep below mountains often also have sacred sites in them. Right below the peak cave sanctuary of Mt Ida on Crete, the modern-day Samaria gorge had several shrines to Apollo, Leto, and the nymphs — which you can still see on the walk down it today. Greeks did use and interact with their landscape in religious ways — and the aura and phenomenology of it only enhanced it.
Moreover, the Linear B tablets also mention Mt Olympus and connect it to the gods. The problem, as Nagy and Nilsson have noted, is that there are many such Olympuses. What this highlights is a common concept in relative form: each individual settlement had their own local “seat of the gods”, defined as Mt Olympus (which we today associate with that one mountain), with their own set of gods. Later authors attest to the fact of many mountains called Olympus — including Mt Lykaion in Arcadia (Pausanias 8.38.2), one in Lesbos, Aigina, and many in Asia Minor (especially near Troy).
But does the sacred nature of many mountains mean that ancients did not try to ascend Olympus for some particular religious or “taboo” reason (for example fearing hubris)? One might argue the temporal disjunction between the Minoan Cretans and Classical Greeks problematises a link of continuity. But lingering a bit more on the literary sources, one of the few extant tells us some interesting facts. First — was climbing Olympus all that unthought-of or unprecedented? Hesiod’s Theogony sings that the Muses, daughters of Zeus, climbed Mt Olympus to reach their father Zeus who dwelled at the top with his thunderbolt (αἳ τότ᾽ ἴσαν πρὸς Ὄλυμπον ἀγαλλόμεναι ὀπὶ καλῇ…νισσομένων πατέρ᾽ εἰς ὅν: ὃ δ᾽ οὐρανῷ ἐμβασιλεύει, 63–74). Moreover, he links it explicitly with wanting to please their father Zeus. Depending on how far we read into it, the causation of this joy could or could not be linked to religiosity or pious devotion: they sing and dance like potential pilgrims. Is this modelled on human worshippers? What kind and context? It is difficult to say. But it does show people, and perhaps even poets like Hesiod with his flocks on Mount Helicon, might have thought about climbing mountains associated with gods. Indeed, archaeological remains have been found on the slopes of Mt Helicon on Mt Zagaras near Hesiod’s home Askra, such as a potential altar to Zeus (along with ten other sites on the Greek mainland, and not explored enough!). We know these were frequented by the ancients; like our Swiss explorers of Olympus, ancients associated places in their landscape: sources say the Hippocrene spring on Zagaras was formed by Pegasus’ kick from Hesiod. Although indirect, this questions Graziosi’s view that people “had little reason to go near it, and no incentive at all to climb it” (2013: 13) — with the evidence instead potentially suggesting a connection to religiosity. In fact, Homer’s very insertion in Demodocus’ story of the love affair between Ares and Aphrodite (Od. 8.260–366, useless to the immediate plot) highlights the great interest in “spying” and “eavesdropping” on the gods (Graziosi 2013: 29). So did they really not go further to see what was up there, as the Swiss explorers later did?
This is where turning to the archaeology on Olympus, the greatest and tallest of such sacred mountains, can shed new light.
This neglect of interest in religious peak sanctuaries and their archaeology can most ironically be seen on Mt Arachnaion in the Peloponnese. While archaeological structures suggest a prominent peak sanctuary to Zeus and Hera, any sense of the phenomenological quiet and peace of the sanctuary is now forever disturbed —crowded by turbines in a wind farm.
Another reason why few archaeological remains of peak sanctuaries have been found may lie in the fact of a much more modern footprint — many peaks in Greece were or still are topped with military installations. This makes accessing them difficult, and likely destroys much evidence of ritual activity. Nevertheless, not all hope is lost. The archaeological excavations on Mt Lykaion near Olympia in the Peloponnese, ongoing since 2004, have given us much valuable data — beyond revealing yet another place where Zeus was apparently born and grew up (as do Mt Zas on Naxos, Mt Dikte in the Lasithi Plateau Crete, Mt Ida next door, etc; this might be a “Pelasgian” version). Romano, however, has argued Lykaion’s ash altar belongs to a pre-Zeus diety.
Olympus, however, is a whole different story.
First of all, ancient sources do mention an altar of Zeus on Mt Olympus — of ash, implying ancients did climb up Olympus. Plutarch records that there were often processions ascending to a peak of Macedonian Olympus:
For people who have placed ash on top of some mountains, or have left it behind after sacrifices there, have when investigating many years later found that it was still lying as they left it. … Plutarch reports that letters (γράμματα), too, remained from one ascent (ἀναβασιν) of the priests to the next on Olympus, in Macedonia.
— Plutarch fr. 191 Sandbach; in Philoponus, On Aristotle’s Meteorologica 1.82
This gives evidence not just of recurring ascents (ἐπιόντι..πάλιν..ἀνελθόντες, ἀναβασιν) up to Mt Olympus by different groups of people, but also the mention of priests (των ἰερέων) and repeated sacrificing (θύσαντές τινες ἐν τωι ἐπιόντι θέρει πάλιν θύσαι ἀνελθόντες) implies a religious cult. Moreover, his statement of placing a letter or writing presumably to the gods might also suggest some sort of ritual or perhaps even institutional structure for it. Placing Plutarch in his context, however, reveals more information. Philoponus is reporting that Plutarch is explaining the phenomenon of why cloud layers often float below mountain peaks, instead of at the peak, which thereby accumulates human letters over time. This “factoid”, as St. Augustine reveals more explicitly below, may originate specifically from Homer’s literary concept of Olympus, especially in his digression to it in Odyssey 6.41–6 (above) as a utopic supernatural place without storms or adverse weather. Peter Gainsford further highlights the plausibility of this literary criticism, since commentaries on Homer’s geography and physical world were prevalent by these two authors’ times, such as Crates of Mallos’ work (2nd century BCE). Therefore, taking Homer’s standard literary epithet of “cloud-covered” Olympus, which highlights the ethereal nature of Olympus fit for gods, Plutarch brings it to the ground by explaining this nature in terms of science.
St. Augustine’s (4th-5th century) exploration into this theory brings out more information. Apart from corroborating these annual pilgrimages, he more precisely explores the scientific explanation of Homer’s claim that the peak of Mt Olympus is free from the heavy aer:
In that air [at high altitudes] they say that clouds do not gather and no stormy weather exists. Indeed where there is no wind, as on the peak of Mount Olympus, which is said to rise above the area of this humid air (aer), we are told, certain letters are regularly made in the dust and are a year later found whole and unmarred by those who climb that mountain for their solemn memorials.
— Augustine, Unfinished Literal interpretation of Genesis 14, tr. Teske.
This reaction against Homer is further solidified by the comparative terminology used in the analysis of the “aether” by both authors. Therefore, the peak of Olympus, as opposed to its slopes, is free from storms because the aether up there is much more pure and lighter than the heavier and “humid” aer by the sea. Opposite perhaps to the modern Swiss’ actions when climbing Olympus, the imaginative is framed in the historical. Indeed, St Augustine elsewhere ascribes the mythical idea of Olympus’ transparency to “one of the pagan poets” — potentially Homer. This poignantly highlights the importance of the real, ground-up perspective even by ancient scholars. Like Aristarchus above, these texts belong to a broader and highly debated intellectual tradition — but it is this which makes Olympus such a productive springboard.
Returning to the question of historicity, both record that animal sacrifices were also undertaken, highlighting the religious nature of such expeditions. More importantly, Augustine provides a valuable and likely religious motivation for climbing Olympus: “for their solemn memorials” likely aim to worship the gods. But is it remembering a past (memorial as memory) or a still invoking the present gods? Alongside the letter and priest, this suggests the existence of a religious cult that asked the gods for something. What is interesting temporally is that, if Augustine is relating a contemporary practice, then people were still climbing Mt Olympus after the Roman Empire’s Christianisation (as Jason König has argued). Indeed, confirming Plutarch, the 3rd-century CE historian Solinus explicitly says there were burnt offerings dedicated there (qua de extis inferuntur, 8.6), although he is unclear as to whether they were sacrificed on the peak and “placed on” the altar or literally “brought up” having been sacrificed below (‘inferuntur’; an interesting Reddit discussion here). The almost identical similarities between these accounts is striking. What this shows, like Aristarchus five centuries earlier, is that there was an intellectual network still engaging with the physical side of Mt Olympus.
So it understandably came with great excitement when in 1961 archaeological evidence of a ‘sanctuary’ of Zeus Olympios was found on Olympus’ Agios Antonios peak during the construction of a meteorological tower by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
It was an exciting discovery — not just for the fact that it is 2,817 metres above sea level (yet only some 7km from the sea). Finds included pedestals of statues; inscribed stelai and even sculptures. Of the more daily character, shards of vases, ceramics, and gold and bronze coins were found. Coupled with the many animal bones found, most of this was found buried in a thick layer of ash, this strongly points towards evidence of cultic associations and religious feasts in honour of Zeus.
One of the nicest examples where literary and archaeological evidence complement each other is in the inscribed stelai. Two inscribed stelai specifically are dedicated “for Zeus Olympios”; this might refer to the practice that Plutarch and St. Augustine are referring to when the γράμματα, which can be interpreted either as “letters” or more probably in the context here “writings”, are placed on the mountain.
Shards of vases, ceramics, and coins, all found amongst animal bones buried in ash, points towards evidence of established cultic associations and feasts. A bronze coin from Antigonus Gonatas suggests it may date to the early 200sBCE. Stelai inscribed with Δ̣ιὶ̣ Ὀλυν/[πίῳ] (“for Zeus Olympios”, SEG 56 733; cf. SEG 56 732), fragments of a pedestal for a bronze statue, parts of a red-stone column and marble statue suggest it was an established site with significant dedications to Zeus. That a Roman stele (SEG 56 734) dedicated by a priest (ἱερητεύοντος) was found beside two Hellenistic inscriptions prompted Kyriazopoulos and Livadas (1967: 10) to argue it was an organised (ώργανωμένης) cult for some time and continued into the late Roman Empire.
Further aspects suggest a local form of Zeus. Many knucklebones found may suggest a divinatory nature to the cult or gambling in a ritualistic context (Greaves 2012: 191); a loom weight and iron-wrought lilies suggest a wider audience both in gender and wealth. A conical apex on an altar might represent a crowned Zeus typical in the Hellenistic Age, or perhaps an omphalos, the centre of the earth or the symbolic stone that replaced Zeus at his birth by Rhea. These are tantalising glimpses on the broader level of the importance of Olympos’ physicality and the cult of Zeus.
Moreover, similar aspects of this cult have been found at other places. A closer look reveals that the finds suggest pilgrims were interacting with this cult in very particular ways. Similar types of ceramics have been unearthed below in Dion, including the sanctuary of Zeus Hypsistos and Olympios. This might be expected: Zeus was worshipped as “The Highest” in his standard supremacy among Olympians, as on Athens’ Pnyx. But is this link bound more closely to the mountain, beyond Zeus’ power, in dedicating objects from this particular cult? A quotation from Marcus Aurelius (Meditations 5.7; Nigdelis (2016), 672–3) suggests the Athenians also worshipped Hypsistos as the weather god, begging him to “bring rain”. Given Greece’s tallest mountain towered just kilometres away, and that such weather gods were often worshipped alongside significant mountains (Dietrich (1974), 45, Zeus is worshipped as Abbrenatos at the Mysian Mt Olympus near Troy: Strabo, Geography 12.8.8), perhaps Zeus was worshipped on “the Highest” Greek mountain. This foregrounds the local Dians’ use of their landscape; indeed Voutiras (2006: 333–45), from the inscriptions argues the cult on the peak was highly “dependent” on the Zeus cults at Dion. It seems that the Dians were not just using the physical “height” of the mountain to distinguish their cult in Dion, but also trying to claim some sort of ownership of the cult on the mountain. Similar trends of local elite competition in religious architecture, and remarkably locally adapted forms of it, have been recently demonstrated at peak sanctuaries like Mt Lykaion. Locals used Olympus to craft and extend their civic identities.
Beyond Mt Olympus, perhaps most famous is the massive one at Mt Lykaion (Romano and Voyatzis, 2019). Could there have been here at Mt Olympus the activities of games and festivals (on the mountaintop!) and indeed human sacrifice as recorded at Mt Lykaion? Was there also no altar, as is (so far) notably lacking, at Mt Lykaion, but solely an altar? Most interesting to me, did local communities help (or capitalise) to fund certain activities or buildings, from self-pride or political enhancement? Did locals at the nearby and presumably wealthy games at Olympia take any part at Lykaion? This is the strand Nagy takes, and argues (albeit rather circumlocutory) that the Athenian Peisistratids had something to do with connecting the local Olympic games with the Mt Olympus massif.
These are all difficult problems to answer, and ongoing. It’s always important to note the methodological limitations. The finds date from the Hellenistic to the Early Christian times, presumably before paganism started to be persecuted. Geographically, Agios Antonios is slightly separated from the other group of the highest peaks of Olympus (but it is still very close!). Indeed, the current Profitis Elias peak is the closest and tallest in sight of Dion, whence the ritual might have started; Gainsford argues many modern mountains called ‘Elias’ today used to be ancient mountains called Olympus. Nevertheless, there are still indications of earlier use on Agios Antonios: one of the coins found dates to the 200sBCE, which could suggest an earlier tradition.
Moreover, a silver figurine from the Late Bronze Age found on the slopes nearby (Nezero, Kallipefki) might suggest a broader audience from the Eastern Mediterranean. It appears to be in the typical stance of Zeus hurling a thunderbolt or of a “smiting god”, and are possibly Hittite in origin. If this is an import, it already shows the importance of Mt Olympus as a sanctuary that was visited; but if it is a Greek copy of a Hittite god blueprint, as Canby argues, then we can see locals reinterpreting and experimenting through new mediums upon their old traditional gods, perhaps to distinguish themselves. Perhaps they deliberately wanted to give the impression of their sanctuary’s importance; perhaps simply to individualise their cult and piety. Either way, these reveal how people consciously carved divergent, local interpretations of Zeus through networks fuelled by Olympus’ physical presence. While these objects can tell us about themselves and the gods, they are equally living sculptures that reveal a wealth of information and questions about the people who made them, and here, perhaps, how they were trying to carve their own interpretation of Zeus and worship him in a uniquely epichoric way.
Therefore, guided by Plutarch and St Augustine’s arguments, perhaps the concern with the survival of the religious structure is slightly overemphasised. Opposite to Olympos’ isolation, the unique evidence suggests that people, whether locals or foreigners, were each staking their claims in their own unique ways. And going back to the original claim in this article, we need a few qualifications: if the right season, the hike from Dion to the mountain and back could be done in a day, as Gainsworth argues. Mt Olympus was not always covered in snow. Indeed, the ascent of Agios Antonios is not more difficult than the other peaks — as the image below captures.
Perhaps many of the initial thoughts with which we started off the article are misconceptions that have blinded our acceptance of ancient ascents and from these rich interactions, justifying our own lack of evidence. We may equally perhaps be reading too much into it. Whatever the case, it will always be difficult to tell what the nature of the cult up there was back then, be it simply from the lack of evidence.
Nevertheless, although the scarcity of evidence leaves us with tantalising glimpses, the literary evidence analysed above attests to the frequency of such ascents and their religious motivation. What we see from studying the often-overlooked archaeological evidence directly is locals worshipping on Olympus in fascinating innovative ways, striving to make Mt. Olympus their own. This brief study has shown that this identity negotiation is productively played out through Olympus’ physical presence — both by creating direct links on the mountain itself to the cults of their towns on its slopes and by crafting a unique, divergent form of worship to distinguish their identity. This is just the beginning of a rich case study in the field of identity negotiation and its expression in space that finds particular applicability at the famed Home of the Gods. Further studies into these local networks and the landscape, such as reciprocally studying the uses of the mythology of Olympus in the cities themselves, would likely reveal valuable insights on growing studies into local identities and agency (e.g. as Constantakopoulou has recently (2017) done for Delos and its networks in its period of Independence).
On the slopes and foothills of Mt Olympus — the local perspective
But we can gain alternative, and often unexplored, useful perspectives on the physical significance of Olympus by soaring further down its slopes. Expanding finally to the epichoric, what is so interesting in the local cults and rituals of the towns clinging to Mt Olympus is that the worship of Zeus and the Olympian gods was not the sole, perhaps not even the dominant, form of worship under the home of the gods. On the slopes, where minor deities reportedly haunted the glens and gorges like the Enipeus, remarkably esoteric, unique, and at times anti-Olympian cults involving Orpheus, the Maenads, and Muses, flourished. Moreover, local agents interacted with such cults not just in identity formation, carving their own path in the shadow of standardness behind Mt Olympus, but complexly exploited them in their political diplomacy with international powers to gain a unique degree of political agency. Diversity and resistance mattered — and made others matter. This pushing back against the standard by the local cities on the ground foregrounds the productivity and mechanics of having the physical nature of Mt Olympus there, and how this very deliberately straddles the literary, religious, and political.
At 1,000 metres above sea level on the west slope stood the Pythion, the sanctuary sacred to the Delphic guise of Apollo. Indeed, it was from here that Xenagoras allegedly and ingeniously calculated the height of Olympus using just a telescope and simple geometry to around 10.16 stadia, i.e. just over 1,877 metres above Pythion (Plutarch, Aemilius Paullus 15; “ten full furlongs and a hundred feet lacking four”). Given Pythion is around 700 metres above sea level, this comes close to the current 2,918 figure — 2577 metres. But regarding theology, what’s interesting is that we have a very localised form of the god, attached to the infamous slopes of Delphi, being imported with remarkable proximity to the peak where his international or multifarious form traditionally resided. Indeed, Stephanus of Byzantium’s comment that ritual games were celebrated for Apollo there highlight the life of this cult (Ethnica. s.v. Πύθιον). Might this refract some ideological relationship on the relationship between gods and their various cult forms? Is the oracular aspect of Apollo significant enough to epitomise Apollo in his many guises — or is it encroaching upon it?
Or perhaps we can say more about the political sphere and the transferal from Delphi to Pythios. A 3rd-century BCE inscription (FD III 4:417, l.15) records that a certain Philarchos son of Hellanion and his descendents ἐκ Πυθείου received the honour of proxeny, promanteia, and many more at Delphi — the home of Apollo Pythios. What were there political moves behind this transferal? It also mentions honours given for proxeny and “benefactions” (ὅσα καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις προξένοις καὶ εὐεργέταις) — but is no more specific. Coins labelled ΤΡΙΠΟΛΙΤΑΝ (tripolis, “three cities”) tell us synoikised with the two other cities Azorus and Doliche in the region. What does this say politically, spatially, and conceptually, about the slippage between the Olympian gods and their infinite epithets? It’s a reverberant node which we sadly do not have enough published evidence to explore further. But the unique name, cult, and politics of Pythion highlight the productivity of local communities forging international ties under Olympos through religion, and question just how the panhellenic religion of Olympos fit in, whether we want to interpret it as resistance, enhancement, or unconnected.
Strabo also cites that the infamous poet Orpheus lived “in the foothills of Mt Olympus”, in a town called Pimpleia (7.17–18). Orpheus was renowned for being an outsider, but was its esoteric flourishing here specifically linked to the normalness of Mt Olympus? On the one hand, this association between Orpheus and Mt Olympus may simply be due to the fact that Orpheus was the son of the epic Muse Kalliope, who was associated with Mt Olympus, and the local Pierian king Oeagrus. Yet the coherent and conspicuous role of the locals in these myths of alternity suggests another focus.
Strabo’s Orpheus is also defined as the fantastical, a “wizard” who had his sights on gaining money — a distinctly non-honourable method in Greek eyes. Most tellingly, the different versions of myths about Orpheus seem to rest on the presence or fact of Mt Olympus. Ovid (Met. 10.81–85) frames and focalises Orpheus’ misogynistic refusal to accept women into his cult (refugerat Orpheus / femineam venerem) following his loss of Eurydice and his “courting” of boys (iuventam…carpere; carpo ambiguously slipping between “reaping” and “enjoying” to “weakening” and “injuring”) through the local Pieran women who lived around Mt Olympus. Scorned by him, they were so annoyed by his antiques that they tear him apart limb by limb (as Prof Ingleheart has recently written in The invention of (Thracian) homosexuality : the Ovidian Orpheus in the English Renaissance (2015): 54). Most tellingly, as we will see below, they interact in crucial ways with the rivers and environment around Mt Olympus when killing Orpheus. It is the local people around Mt Olympus and the physicality of Olympus that create a breeding ground for the introduction of homosexuality into Greece (in this tradition). The significance of the first homosexuality and Orpheus’ cult cannot be understood without these women intimately tied with Mt Olympus.
On the east slope lies the Livethra (τὰ Λίβηθρα, modern-day Livithra), the famous Telesterion of Dionysos and one of the alleged locations of the tomb of Orpheus built by the Muses (also alleged to be on Lesbos). From the 10th century BCE, the Livethrian Nymphs were worshipped at the tomb of Orpheus and indeed the Muses were so strongly associated with this place and the burial of Orpheus that they gained the epithet Λιβεθρίδες (Pliny the Elder, Natural History; Orphic Frag 342). This link to unique semantics of these figures under Olympus is best seen with Orpheus. The Orphic religion, with its unique views on the afterlife and esoteric views, was remarkably different to the traditional Olympian theology on Olympus. What seems (from extant evidence) to have pinned this entire tradition down was the death and resurrection of Dionysos (e.g. Orphic Hymns, the “Gold Leaf” Tablets)—a mythical tradition found almost nowhere else. Indeed, the Protogonos Theogony appears to comment on the infamous Derveni Papyri (itself a commentary on an Orphic poem), which were found buried in a tomb near Thessaloniki (50–60km from Mt Olympus as the crow flies) — again attesting to the popularity of the cult around Mt Olympus. Likewise, the Derveni papyri present a remarkably different set of beliefs than traditional Homeric poetry, perhaps most famously on poetic inspiration: it places emphasis on Orpheus the “I” and his purity of hearing (αἐίσω, OF 3) rather than deriving the truth passively from the Muse (e.g. Il. 1.1, 2.484).
But the links to Mt Olympus in the Derveni Papyri are especially interesting, and foreground the productivity of its standardness in creating a locus for the “other”. Perhaps one of the most perplexing segments, Column 12.1–15, discussing Orpheus’ claim that Zeus must eat his father Cronos’ phallus “so that he may rule on the lovely abode of snowcapped Olympus”, states that “Olympus and time are the same”. On the one hand, as Brisson notes, the poet frames his discussion of Mt Olympus to distance himself from “previous poets” who equate Olympus with heaven. Orphic tradition uses its famous mountain as a springboard to challenge tradition and legitimise its individuality. Moreover, the identification of “Time” in its abstract equation of Olympus might be the God of Time, Cronos. Older, pre-Olympian gods may be evoked in this religion just below the foothills of the Twelve Olympians. But Betegh 2004 has argued that the most probable reading is that the poet is linking the sun’s creation to time’s creation. This elevation of time to the celestial bodies is remarkably rare — with the closest parallel in the heavenly bodies as the “instruments of time” in Timaeus 42d5. Therefore, just below the famous house of the gods was a remarkably idiosyncratic religion that used Mt Olympus to achieve that — extending to performative rituals as well. Pausanias recorded that the cypress-wood oak statue of Orpheus began to sweat once Alexander departed from the nearby Dion to attack Persia (Plutarch, Life of Alexander 14, also alludes to it).
The supernatural and unusualness is also exploited at the tomb of Orpheus nearby—to stake some relevance to major events in history. Indeed, this esoteric myth and religion was used to effect real political effects in interstate diplomacy at a more local level (cf. peer-polity interaction). Pausanias includes a whole digression about the people of Dion taking the “bones” of Orpheus back to his original home from their neighbour Leivithra following a flood (9.30.7). As Graziosi and Goldschmidt recently argued in Tombs of the Ancient Poets (2018) 188, local ownership of the bones of such international heroes gave real symbolic power. But it is the uniquely esoteric heroes under Mt Olympus that allow such contestations to take place, which put the spotlight on the locals. Between 9.30.6–9, Pausanias records different tombs of Orpheus. This ties into what we saw above with Ovid’s Pierian women. When discussing the removal of Orpheus’ tomb from Leivithra to Dion, Pausanias gives an aetiology of a stream beside his tomb at Dion. The Helicon river, refusing to be profaned when the Pieran women wanted to wash their hands in it after killing Orpheus, sank underground and sprung up again as the peaceful Vaphyras spring near Dion (9.30.8) — which can still be seen today. Locals fight for these international characters, and try to make them their own — one way of doing so is by rooting it in the landscape of Mt Olympus and stressing the isoteric. And it matters, and spreads. Pausanias records that the tale of this transfer to Dion is told to him by a local of Larisa (9.30.8); he himself was prompted to describe Orpheus’ tomb at Dion as he describes a statue of Orpheus at Helicon (9.30.7). Moreover, what is common to all is that the locals play a dominant role. The story of the people of Dion and the contested cult allows them to gain some relevance both in interstate politics (with Leivithra) and on the bigger stage. Finally, the present recasts this rich but idiosyncratic past to stress its continuity and ownership. Pausanias records that a shepherd sleeping on Orpheus’ grave suddenly sang “verses of Orpheus in a loud and clear voice”. This local myth echoes the idea of reincarnation in the Derveni Papyri. Therefore, the standard literary orthodoxy of Mt Olympus creates a blank canvas to craft one’s own individual history and make it their own. The literary proximity to the gods allows a constructed historical distance from the traditional gods. This translates to the political field when cities use these variant competing versions to stake their own superiority. What’s so interesting is how much cities below Mt Olympus are using its physicality’s and interpreting it in different ways, and how well we can map this on the micro-level. The physical side of Olympus is relevant — and gives a valuable insight onto the people on the ground, their unique beliefs, and how they use them with international powers.
What I argue lies at the heart of this, therefore, is a unique intertwining between the imagined concept of Mt Olympus between the historical and broader literary spheres. This has fundamental effects both on the mindscape of the Greeks, but also on the physical landscape on the ground. Mt Olympus’ landscape is crafted with idiosyncratic qualities into a very unique sort of place (using Gilhuly and Worman’s 2014 spatial definitions). It is precisely this idiosyncrasy that allowed locals on the ground to craft some relevance and a unique negotiation with international powers. This focus on space gives important contextualisation that shows just how unusual the importance of Mt Olympus actually was. Although Mt Olympus was the traditional hearth and centre of Greek religion, geographically it was far from the religious and political hub of Attica and Peloponnese. Most myths as we have them today are further crafted in these localities. Thessaly was instead always considered to be a periphery, a transitory border between the Barbarian hinterland of Macedonia and the civilised south (especially as described by Herodotus in relation to Xerxes and their relation with the Persians in Book 7).
Indeed, Strabo (7.14) places the boundary between the Greek Thessaly and Macedonia (which was later seen as the border with Greece) at Mt Olympus. Just a few lines later, he places Olympus’ twin mountains Pelion and Ossa in Thessaly — and Olympus in Macedonia (7.15). It may be uncertain, but it’s definitely liminal. This liminality of Olympus in Greece’s landscape seems to date as early as the 2nd century BCE, as the Alexandrian librarian and Homeric editor Aristarchus of Samothrace mentions a similar analysis in his scholion on Iliad 8.19 (Schironi 2018: 323–329). Moreover, Strabo spatially situates Mt Olympus by the rivers that go by it, which themselves are natural and political boundaries between this periphery of the Greek north. This spatial arrangement may also have been originated earlier — Strabo cites Homer’s Catalogue of Ships on the ability of Olympus’ rivers to bound Greek and Macedonian cultures (“the Europus River, which Homer called Titaresius, it marks the boundary between Macedonia on the north and Thessaly on the south”, cf. Il. 2.751f). Homer himself might also betray this idea of liminality by stressing that the Titaresius was a tributary of the Styx, the liminal river between the world and underworld, life and death, memory and forgetfulness (2.755).
On the other hand, however, Aristarchus also mentions Olympus belonged to Thessaly before it did to Macedon. This is supported by Herodotus, who clearly places it in the rule of the Thessalians (7.128). Nagy (2019), taking a broader Pan-Hellenic approach to explain why Macedonian Mt Olympus became the Olympus when there were many other Olympuses with their local gods, goes on to argue that the Thessalians had a special link with Peisistratid Athens; the Peisistratids also controlled recitations of Homer in the Panathenaic games, so that this single version stems from the Peisistratid Athens and which was propagated to other places, including Olympia. But how much did Peisistratid influence and unify the local Thessalian cults themselves under Olympus? I would rather argue that on the local perspective, the diversity stays — with equally productive political outcomes. Geographically, what we see is that Mt Olympus is a clear and contested crossroads that straddled the physical, cultural, and ideological.
The political and religious clash — and this has real effects on the landscape physical and ideological. We must remember that Olympus was inhabited by a certain ethnography of Greeks, and this enabled unique variations to spring up that permeated the religious sphere. Yet, as we’ve been developing in the previous examples, it is also important to remember that these local communities interacted on international levels and sometimes used these versions to aid them. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that these local versions spread to broader Greece and became fascinating topoi or models for general esoteric, liminal religion. In this stage second to last stage, the literature interdisciplinarily interacts with the archaeology.
That international characters noticed and used this idiosyncrasy of religious forms that Mt Olympus fostered as a topos is exemplified especially in tragedy. Perhaps the most famous of the divergent, esoteric cults in Greek religion are the Maenads, grape-infused women frenzied by Dionysos. Multiple times in the powerful Second Stasimon of Bacchai does the Chorus foreground that the slopes of Mt Olympus hold a special place for their revels (550–575). This becomes especially interesting when we consider that Euripides wrote his final two plays Bacchai and Archelaus during self-imposed exile in Macedonia (Vita Euripides 25), and indeed might have been performed at the theatre at Dion under the slopes of Mt Olympus:
ἐσορᾷς τάδ᾽, ὦ Διὸς παῖ
Διόνυσε, σοὺς προφήτας
ἐν ἁμίλλαισιν ἀνάγκας;
μόλε, χρυσῶπα τινάσσων,
ἄνα, θύρσον κατ᾽ Ὄλυμπον,
φονίου δ᾽ ἀνδρὸς ὕβριν κατάσχες.
πόθι Νύσας ἄρα τᾶς θη-
ροτρόφου θυρσοφορεῖς
θιάσους, ὦ Διόνυσ᾽, ἢ
κορυφαῖς Κωρυκίαις;
τάχα δ᾽ ἐν ταῖς πολυδένδρεσ-
σιν Ὀλύμπου θαλάμαις, ἔν-
θα ποτ᾽ Ὀρφεὺς κιθαρίζων
σύναγεν δένδρεα μούσαις,
σύναγεν θῆρας ἀγρώτας.
μάκαρ ὦ Πιερία,
σέβεταί σ᾽ Εὔιος, ἥξει
τε χορεύσων ἅμα βακχεύ-
μασι, τόν τ᾽ ὠκυρόαν
διαβὰς Ἀξιὸν εἱλισ-
σομένας Μαινάδας ἄξει,
Λυδίαν πατέρα τε, τὸν
τᾶς εὐδαιμονίας βροτοῖς
ὀλβοδόταν, τὸν ἔκλυον
εὔιππον χώραν ὕδασιν
καλλίστοισι λιπαίνειν.
550 Do you see this, our son of Zeus:
Dionysus, your spokesmen in the dangers of restraint?
Come, lord, down from Olympus, brandishing your golden thyrsos,
555 and check the hubris of this murderous man.
…
Where on Nysa, which nourishes wild beast, or on Korykian height, do you lead with your thyrsos the bands of revellers?
560 Perhaps in the thickly wooded bed-chambers of Olympus, where Orpheus once led together trees by playing songs on his lyre.
565 Blessed Pieria, the Joyful one reveres you and will come to set you singing and dancing in choruses of revelry;
having crossed the swiftly-flowing Axion he will bring the 570 whirling Maenads, leaving father Lydia, giver of prosperity [olbos] and happiness [eudaimoniā] to mortals, who they say fertilises the land of beautiful horses with its 575 fairest streams. [Translated by T.A. Buckley, Loeb; some adaptions by me]
The contrast between the esoteric, passionate, Eastern, female chorus of Maenads to the dignified, Greek, well-known Mt Olympus is stunning — and dangerous. There is almost the potentiality that this small force of women, modelled on the violent Pierian women who destroyed Orpheus (through the mention of Orpheus and his idiosyncratic branch of religion, 564), might subvert the well-established Olympian order (570–5). Indeed, Mt Olympos, before named the “holy slope” (414), now transforms to not simply “thickly wooded”, especially suitable for the Maenads’ secret rites, but to “bed-chambers” (θαλάμαις) potentially alluding to the sexual orgies of such rites. The physical aspect of Olympus is moulded for the present characterisation: here, its venerable associations with the Olympian gods are dashed for an orgiastic sexscape of an esoteric cult. While this praise of Olympus may simply be to please his audience, Dodds 1960: 126 hits closer to the importance of the physical landscape by arguing Piera was “Dionysiac” land through Dionysus’ association with the Muses. It is Olympus’ unique local cultic atmosphere that made it conducive to a new esoteric Dionysiac cult and the dualities that Euripides’ Dionysus and Bacchai are so famous for.
Before, we saw this threat in mythological terms: Dionysus’ rebirth and ‘invasion’ from the East. Now, moreover, it spreads to the very physical space of Mt Olympus — to the extent that the countryside could become Lydia (570) and be drowned with Dionyus’ maenads. The language stresses Dionyus’ forcefulness and intended success: he will set them singing to his favour (ἥξει τε χορεύσων). It is significant that to achieve this transitory process, Euripides chooses the esoteric “tree-mover” Orpheus and implied Pieran women to act as a model for the maenads in the locus of Olympus. Therefore, the esoteric and local nature of Mt Olympus is used on the international dramatic stage to explore other esoteric Dionysiac cults, bringing meaning by clashing with the traditional orthodox fame of Olympus.
Finally, of course, there was Dion. It is here that we see perhaps most marvellously of all the final usage of the physical side of Mt Olympus by local communities — to extract political power with international powers directly.
The famous sanctuary of the Greeks and later Macedonian kings had long been the international political arena for communities around Olympos: its famous altar of Zeus Olympios was where Alexander sacrificed and gained divine approval under Mt Olympus from Zeus of his campaign against Persia in 334BCE (Diodorus Siculus 17.16). There were multiple sanctuaries to different forms of Zeus’ power at the site, including Zeus Olympios and Hypsistos (lit. “The Highest Ruler”), and a spring of the Muses (whose water functions were specifically important to the healing cults of Zeus Hypsistos and Asklepius), and a Hellenistic theatre that was deliberately oriented to gain a direct view of Mt Olympus. A statue has been even found of Aphrodite Hypolimpidia (literally “under Olympus”) in the Hellenistic and Roman quarter. Causing much excitement, the discovery of the oldest hydraulis, water organ, in the Villa of Dionysos stresses the local link again between the Muses, Dionysos, and Mt Olympus. All this highlights that the local Dians and those around Olympus had a strong connection to their local landscape, and shaped their buildings, religion, and identities according to it. While this mythology claims a stake at the heart of traditional genealogies, as the only man surviving the flood, Deucalion, apparently built the altar of Zeus Olympios (Pausanias 1.18.7–8), we have seen esoteric and local variations of cults surprising up in the nearby region. “Dion” literally means “belonging to Zeus” — but just how much are the people appropriating the fact Zeus’ household is just above them?
This localised diversity further extends to the performative sphere: apart from performing plays about Zeus and Mt Olympus in view of Mt Olympus from the Hellenistic (and presumably Classical) threatre, Dion also had a version of the Olympic “Dian” Games (ἐν Διω Ὀλυμπίων; Diodorus Siculus 17.16; Dion Chrys. 2.2; Stephanus Byzantinus, D.S. 17.16.3–4, s.v. Δϊον). These games engaged with pointedly local myths of Olympus (each of the nine days was named after a Muse). What is interesting, however, is how these games interacted with the broader political landscape.
These games might have been organised by a political assembly named after the Muses, the “sunodos (Assembly) of the Musiasts” (οἱ Μουσαϊσταὶ…εἰς τὴ[ν] σύνοδον). While the focus on the Muses suggests they helped with the performance of such festivals, the interactions of this assembly also reveal valuable information about how the local Dians used this mythological association with Hellenistic kings. A Hellenistic stoichedon inscription on a doric capital concerning Perseus V (SEG 49: 697, c.170–168BCE) involves the group. Immediately, there is a unique manipulation of different myths relating to Mt Olympus. According to Brill’s SEG, this is the only extant inscription mentioning such a sunodos of devotees to the Muses. Olympus’ links with the Muses make this feasible, and creates unique circumstances. Yet the productive use of Olympos’ religion extends beyond the Muses. Rather than the standard pairing of the Muses with Zeus in myth concerning Mt Olympus, Perseus dedicates this inscription to the Muses and Dionysos, a less common association possibly localised at Dion (Μούσαις καὶ Διονύσω[ι]). Perhaps it taps into the broader Dionysiac cults around the slopes that push against the Olympian theology. Whatever it does, the fact that groups named themselves after these local gods and such gods could be combined highlights the real power such associations with Olympus could create. Just as there is no singular form of Zeus at Dion, this religious plurality responding to Mt Olympus gives locals multiple guises to respond to political dealings.
On the political level, this religious link with the Muses creates the conditions for the respect of these local customs that the Hellenistic King Perseus shows. The enactment of these real political actions are couched in this religious language and focus on the Muses: this inscription comes as a result of concrete benefactions (ἕν[εκεν]…καὶ εὐεργεσίας, 4) and excellence (ἀρετῆς, 3) done by Perseus for the community. Moreover, the king targetted these benefactions specifically towards this local religious group (εἰς τὴ[ν] || σύνοδον), highlighting their individual attention and power. On the other hand, this language also allows these epichoric entities to address the kings on more level terms. It is as Musiasts, the inscription states, who dedicate a statue of Perseus. They are the agents who can judge that Perseus has been dutiful specifically to the gods (εὐσεβεία[ς] | τῆς πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς); he must respect their regulations. So the political and religious meet — intersecting at this local cult that derives its existence from the multifaceted religion of Mt Olympus and the way local communities engaged with it. This status gives them a unique set of tools to honour and retrieve benefactions from the King.
Yet there are some qualifications that need to be made. The last king of the Macedonian kingdom, Perseus did not have the prestige earlier kings had and may have had to bow to appease local cults. At the same time, this is the only inscription that survives; and the sunodos might have been formed precisely to manipulate these circumstances. Whatever the case, that this negotiation between a Hellenistic king and the local citizens of Dion is couched in the terms of the diversity of local Olympian gods poignant highlights the effective political power that such local discourses provided.
In conclusion, what these examples that focus on the archaeology and materiality show, therefore, is how widespread and complex the connection between Mt Olympus and the gods was in a very physical sense; and one that extended right up the slopes of Mt Olympus. Taking the ground-up perspective of the archaeological and supporting literary evidence reveals a whole range of productive departures from the orthrodox literary version of Mt Olympus, foregrounding how locals moulded their landscapes and ideas to fit new perspectives, religions, and political aims. It is this freedom from the constraints of the orthodoxy and pan-Hellenic twelve Olympian gods that so often permeates the imaginary half of Mt Olympus that makes what we have here so fascinating. It enables great diversity and focus on the local, in cults perceptions, and most importantly, their political agency in all this.
Perhaps the power of the imaginary Zeus of Olympus, in both the Swiss team and the ancient Dians, lay in the fact that it could be moulded to fit into multiple variant and sometimes contradicting natures. It is in this sense that retelling the past becomes owning it, making it relevant to oneself.
The stakes are high, even to the highest peak in Greece.
Conclusion: Over Olympus and beyond — the Isle of the Blessed?
The interesting thing that a study on the archaeology of Mt Olympus brings out is a productive lens to approach and interpret the ambiguity and debate surrounding the standard myths of the gods. On the one hand, as we have seen with the epichoric individualities of forms of Zeus, Orpheus and the other gods, it brings out new ambiguities unattested elsewhere; on the other hand, it brings out different interpretations of well-known myths. This setting creates a rich resource to suggest interesting solutions.
I conclude by adding a fiery and admittedly tenuous interpretation to an already wild and much-debated example from the great, pious traveller Pindar. One very much debate and unknown reference to Cronus is in Pindar’s Second Olympian, whereby he connects the Isle of the Blessed with the “Tower of Cronus”. There is one line that has completely baffled scholars, ancient and modern:
ὅσοι δ᾽ ἐτόλμασαν ἐστρὶς
ἑκατέρωθι μείναντες ἀπὸ πάμπαν ἀδίκων ἔχειν
ψυχάν, ἔτειλαν Διὸς ὁδὸν παρὰ Κρόνου τύρσιν: ἔνθα μακάρων
νᾶσος ὠκεανίδες
But all those who dared to stay three times on either side (of earth and the underworld)
preserving their souls from all evils
They come upon the road of Zeus, past the towers of Kronos: there
The ocean winds blow around the Isle of the Blessed…
(Pindar, Olympian 2.68–71)
Many will say that this is absolutely irrelevant, a huge stretch, and quite frankly symptomatic of the tenuous claims pretentious Classics squibble over. And yet there are some relevant links. Pindar’s Olympian 2 is the sole ode, and indeed one of the sole pieces of extant literature, to endorse the idea of metempsychosis, or reincarnation of the soul. The main reason people believe this is because Pindar was writing for the local circumstances at Akragas, which was both famous for its unique chthonic sanctuary to Demeter and Kore, and indeed was where the other main philosopher who endorsed reincarnation, Empedocles was living at that time. Pindar may be linking to the performative occasion. So what’s the link? The Derveni Papyrus, which follows many Orphic concepts, involves Mt Olympus much, and was found nearby, also has similar ideas to reincarnation, as Bernabé has argued. Two rare texts focus on two locations with very unique religious precepts — and one of them, Pindar, uses the landscape of Akragas extensively to mould an identity and link Akragas to the Greeks. Does this use geographic use in Pindar extend further, especially in the underworld with this tower of Cronos?
Cronus’ tower is a prominent landmark along the Road of Zeus, straddling the themes of reincarnation (69) and this enigmatic Isle of the Blessed (71f). Scholars have been constantly perplexed by what this Tower of Zeus and Road of Zeus actually are: modern interpretations have ranged from seeing them as a rare reference to the Canary Islands to a general symbol of isolationism as in Aiolos’ bronze-towered island in Odyssey 10 (Constantakopoulou 2007: 93). The ancient scholia are likewise perplexed: they conflate the typical association of the Isle of the Blessed with Cronos (e.g. in Aristophanes, Frogs) and name this tower as the “Kingdom (basileian)” or “City (polin)” of Cronos; or stress the strength (κυρίως) of the walls of the tower (Drachmann 1903, 93: 127a). There are clear conceptual resonances with certain Pythagorean ideas originating from Empedocles and Parmenides (cf. the ecliptic of the sun in On the Soul as representing the equal nights and days), specifically in the natural triplets and especially the idea of the “Tower (purgos) of Zeus”, or the sun, or Hestia, as being the centre of the universe. These references, however, are problematic in that Pindar skews, conflates, or downright incongruously uses them (between the Eleusinian mysteries, Odyssey 4, Hesiod’s Theogony, Aristophanes’ Frogs, among others). If we look within the actual poem, where a more coherent conceptual unity may be cemented, Zeus and Cronos are paired earlier on in the poem (2.12), there specifically to praise Zeus. Later (2.77) Cronos as the husband of Rhea occupies a seat higher than Zeus (πόσις ὁ πάντων Ῥέας ὑπέρτατον ἐχοίσας θρόνον), suggesting the relationship between them is unequal. Whatever it is, the interpretation of this mysterious geographical marker is likely a product of literary imagination and rooted specifically for the localised Sicilian mythic tradition in the performance context at Akragas in 476.
Maybe adding another wild theory wouldn’t be of too much harm — the perspective of archaeology. Perhaps we can approach this anew from the very archaeological structure on a very similar place. Pindar often talks about the gods of Olympus and refers to their seats — could he have meant any of this literally? We know some of his odes were in honour of people from Thessaly (Hippocles, Pythian 10), so he may have travelled up there and preformed below the heights of Olympus; we know he travelled to other mountains (Nem 1.19 standing at Chromius’ doors before Aetna) and crafted his work to that local context (Aetna in Sicily; cf. Chromius, Nemean 9; Hieron, Pythian 1), perhaps making mountains relevant. But we don’t have to take it this literally or geographically; it could be a general reference to the ideological layering of Mt Olympus or some much looser understanding of the nature of Olympus’ many-peaks and its resonance for ideas symbolic for Pindar. Whatever it is, there’s certainly no explicit indication that any of this is the case in Olympian 2. But what it does is open up a (potentially valid) new spatial perspective into this debate. That’s what makes this approach valuable — questioning old presumptions and offering new ideas.
It’s an exciting time and approach.
Perhaps the next time we climb up, we can finally ask Zeus directly where on earth he was really born. Or what really this negotiation between the real and imaginary actually is. Provided he isn’t having another of his bad, cloudy days.
But maybe all this is in vain. After all, returning to our dear Homeric commentator, Aristarchus does say that the homes of the gods on Olympus are, ironically, “invisible” (Sch. Il. 13.21a). But what’s so amazing is that other local traditions exist which foreground the opposite: a modern etymology of Olympus lies in its famous luminescence: the “everglowing mountain” — as Anne Viry-Babel suggests.
So perhaps the truth isn’t that important. Whatever it is, and we may never know, what I have argued is so important to remember is that the people on the ground interacted with the gods in their own ways — and beyond literature, sometimes imagined how their sacrifices influenced the gods up there. Sometimes, it’s more the attempt and desire to see it in one’s own vivid colours, rather than the success or authenticity of this fragile version in the broader schema, that mattered in how people understood the mountain. It’s about its climbing and forming a personal connection, the desire and intention, the journey, the varied interpretations. I end on a quotation by Pindar (Isthmian 4.65–72), where he focalises on the smoke of the burnt offerings and begins to travel with the smoke up to the sky from Thebes and potentially linked to Mt Olympus which has just been mentioned before, where Heracles is now seated in bliss. Imbued in its perspective, what is so fascinating about this passage is the extended and playful motif of rays of light permeating everything, making Melissos’ victory blaze onwards. Transcending all human boundaries to his own Olympus, what is most heartwarming is how Pindar, and indeed maybe any local, made it their own:
τοῖσιν ἐν δυθμαῖσιν αὐγᾶν φλὸξ ἀνατελλομένα συνεχὲς παννυχίζει
αἰθέρα κνισάεντι λακτίζοισα καπνῷ,
καὶ δεύτερον ἆμαρ ἐτείων τέρμ᾽ ἀέθλων
γίνεται, ἰσχύος ἔργον.
ἔνθα λευκωθεὶς κάρα
μύρτοις ὅδ᾽ ἀνὴρ διπλόαν
νίκαν ἀνεφάνατο παίδων τε τρίταν πρόσθεν, κυβερνατῆρος οἰακοστρόφου
γνώμᾳ πεπιθὼν πολυβούλῳ. σὺν Ὀρσέᾳ δέ νιν κωμάξομαι, τερπνὰν ἐπιστάζων χάριν.
To them the flame rises up in the setting rays of the sun, and burns unceasingly all through the night, lashing the heavens with the smoke of burnt offerings,
and on the second day the goal of the yearly contests
takes place, the deed of strength.
Where, his head whitened by the myrtle wreath, this man now
blazed forth a double victory, having won before a third in the boys’ games —
obeying the wise advice of his guide and helmsman. With you, Oreseus, I will praise him, letting delightful grace fall in droplets.
You can probably see the shimmering lights of Thessaloniki, and ourselves, much more clearly from Mt Olympus than the sleeping giant ever can be.
This article was inspired by my trip to Thessaloniki, Macedonia, and Northern Greece this summer. It hopes to inspire people to tackle the mountain and keep thinking about innovative approaches to old ideas.
A guide to climbing Mt Olympus has also been written on another great Classics blog, Eidolon. Keeping with the stress on the ground-up approach, a more local and complete guide made by the owners of the Refuge A Spilios Agapitos can be found. A good history of the ascent can be found at The Greek Reporter’s “The Hundred-Year Climb of Mount Olympus”. David Stuttard’s travel guide is ‘Greek Mythology: A Traveller’s Guide from Mount Olympus to Troy’. As almost every previous Ostraka article, many thanks especially to Prof Barbara Graziosi, with her books on The Gods of Olympus: A History and The Tomb of the Ancient Poets: Between Literary Reception and Material Culure, whom I have always wanted to learn with but sadly never had the opportunity when she was in Durham.
A very interesting, broader article on climbing ancient mountains with sanctuaries has been written by Jason König, Professor of Greek, University of St Andrews, “Why do we ignore the ancient treasures on top of Mediterranean mountains?”. One specifically on Mt Olympus can be found at Kiwi Hellenist; another about a winter ascent of Mt Olympus has been written by Anne Viry-Babel and one in general at Greece Is; the official site of Levithra (burial place of Orpheus) is also very good. A wonderful immersive 3D and visual website also at Olympus Summits. Finally, Gregory Nagy’s fascinating article can be read on the Harvard Classical Enquiries website: “Olympus as mountain and Olympia as venue for the Olympics: a question about the naming of these places” and Francesca Schironi’s inspiring work: The best of the Grammarians: Aristarchus of Samothrace on the Iliad.
Most of all, I dedicate this piece to my travel mate this summer to Thessaloniki and Macedonia — Ben. My gratitude can never be fully expressed — especially for putting up with (and engaging with!) endless debates about the ancient history and for taking all the photos (no matter how sick of it you became towards the end)! Hopefully, Zeus will meet us at the top this summer.
Do you have a suggestion for a future topic? Do you have an idea to share with your friends? Send us a message and follow the Durham University Classics Society on Twitter (@DUClassSoc) and Facebook (@DUClassics Society) to keep up with this blog and our other adventures!
