ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to investigate female agency and movement beyond the settlements so as to reconstruct a topography of women on sacred journeys in ancient Greece. It considers the geographical aspects of space and movement as much as those of chronology and liminality. The chapter also aims to reconstruct the presence and performance of women on their way to, as well as inside, ancient Greek extra-urban sanctuaries. It also addresses potential differences in movement, agency and space between male and female, secular and sacred, and urban and extra-urban. Both women and men visited a sanctuary of the healing god Asclepius for very obvious reasons: for their own health, or for that of a very close relative. To this purpose they might travel long distances. The Thesmophoria were the oldest and most widely attested festivals of Demeter in the ancient Mediterranean. Their Panhellenic spread points to a very old age, probably as old as the second millennium BC.
