page_title: Amphiareion of Oropos
section_title: Sanctuary of Amphiaraos
hierarchical_section_title: Amphiareion of Oropos / Sanctuary of Amphiaraos
caption_attribution_description: English: Plan of the Sanctuary of Amphiaraus. J. M. Harrington, self-made image
context_page_description: The Amphiareion of Oropos, situated in the hills 6 km southeast of the fortified port of Oropos, was a sanctuary dedicated in the late 5th century BCE to the hero Amphiaraos, where pilgrims went to seek oracular responses and healing. It became particularly successful during the 4th century BCE, to judge from the intensive building at the site. The hero Amphiaraos was a descendant of the seer Melampos and initially refused to participate in the attack on Thebes because he could foresee that it would be a disaster. In some versions of the myth, the earth opens and swallows the chariot of Amphiaraos, transforming him into a chthonic hero. Today the site is found east of the modern town Markopoulo Oropou in the Oropos municipality of Attica, Greece
  The sanctuary is located 37.2 km NNE of Athens at a sacred spring; it contained a temple of Amphiaraos, as well as a theater, stoa, and associated structures. The temenos extended for some 240 metres northeast from the Temple of Amphiaraos along a streambed. The cult, which was both public and private, dates to the 5th century BCE.
context_section_description: At the Temple of Amphiaraos, the site is about 154 m in elevation, with a gentle slope to the northeast, as it fills the northwest bank of a small ravine between two hills. The sanctuary was located near the border of Attica and Boiotia, the respective spheres of control of Athens and Thebes; control over the site passed back and forth between the rival cities until Alexander the Great destroyed Thebes in 335 BCE. In the 2nd century CE, the Greek periegetic writer Pausanias stated:
  I think that Amphiaraos most of all dedicated himself to interpreting dreams: it is clear that, when he was considered a god, he set up an oracle of dreams. And the first thing is to purify oneself, when someone comes to consult Amphiaraos, and the purification ritual is to sacrifice to the god, and people sacrifice to him and to all those whose names are on (the altar), and - when these things are finished – they sacrifice a ram and spread out its skin under themselves, lie down waiting for the revelation of a dream.
  Description of Greece 1.34.5
  An inscription from the site, however, states that each man may sacrifice what he wants. Some variation in practice during the nine centuries of cult activity at the sanctuary may be expected. The baths of the site were famous in antiquity. The locations of a stadion and a hippodrome are unknown.
caption: Plan of the Sanctuary of Amphiaraus.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 (10.0x20061208 [20061208.beta.1251 2006/12/08:02:00:00 cutoff; m branch])  Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2007:03:21 21:33:19", "Image ExifOffset": "240", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "378", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5636", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1050", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "821"}