Die Heilige Strasse - ein 'Weg der Mitte'?

"Since the 6th century B.C. paved processional routes, so-called Sacred Roads, are attested, e.g. on Samos, at Ephesus, Miletus, Didyma, Athens, Eleusis, and Cyrene. Later, they were often embellished with monumental funeral precincts, banqueting rooms, treasuries, and representative statues and connected - perhaps according to Oriental models - the urban nucleus with the most important extra- or intra-urban sanctuary. Their construction can always be pinned down to the decades after 600 B.C. and repeatedly coincided with documented synoikismoi. From the 8th century onwards, aristocratic feasting fraternities, the hetariai, had employed hero worship of mythical ancestors for the demonstration of wealth and power by means of the agon, sacrifices, and offerings. But sanctuaries with their "neutral" sacred sphere also had an integrative effect through collective consultation and ritual acts. In the 7th/6th century the rivalry of elites caused serious political unrest summoning either legislators or tyrants. Now, Sacred Routes formed an important political instrument for the integration of local groups of a settlement area defined by descent into the new citizen-based community of the polis"--Publisher.