From song to monument: sacred poetry and religious revival in Roman Epidaurus

The poetic corpus commonly referred to as Epidaurian Hymns1 consists of a number of different metrical texts, composed at different times for different occasions, which were reunited in a single wall inscription at Epidaurus between the second and third centuries AD (IG IV2 1, 129-135; SEG XXX 390). The establishment of this epigraphical archive, which encompasses approximately five centuries of musical activities at the site, is likely to have had a promotional purpose similar to that of the cure inscriptions (IG IV2 1, 121-124). Chronologically and ideologically, it is compatible with the Roman revival of the Epidaurian Asclepieum during the last part of the empire.

The songs in better state of preservation are found in two inscriptions discovered in 1900 during work in an area immediately outside the northeast boundary of the precinct. Here, a short distance to the east of the sanctuary’s propylon, are the ruins of an early Christian basilica devoted to the cult of St. John the Faster. Built around AD 400, this church is fronted by a square courtyard which appears to have been converted from an ancient structure. St. John was the site of some major epigraphical discoveries, including one of the famous Epidaurian cure inscriptions (IG IV2 1, 123; cf. AE 1918, p. 156). Overshadowed by these more spectacular findings, the discovery of the hymns was never properly communicated to the academic world, with the result that, by the time the poems were finally published in IG IV2, 1, editors were no longer able to provide information about their findspot.