The peculiar Graeco-Roman phenomenon of incubation is the subject of R.’s new two-volume book. By its simplest definition, incubation is the ritualised sleep in a sacred space (often a sanctuary but, sometimes, something far less architecturally-organised than this) with the goal of receiving a divinely-sent vision. This dream or vision could take the form of an epiphany or contain the remedy for an ailment; the dream might prescribe a regime for regaining one's health or could in itself serve as an oracular message. To lend order to the term's inherent fluidity or unruliness, R. distinguishes between ‘therapeutic’ incubation, which endeavours to cure sickness, and ‘divinatory’ incubation, a prophetic variant that offers advice on both specialised and everyday affairs. These thorough volumes collect and assess evidence for the polymorphous ritual from sanctuaries across the Mediterranean and beyond. The conclusions are far-reaching. By the end of the book, R. carefully demonstrates that the phenomenon of incubation is in fact not so peculiar, and not exclusively Graeco-Roman.

Comprehensive and important are two terms that describe this study; large is another. The first volume contains the text; the second includes 17 appendices, a 107-page bibliography and indexes (including a 47-page index locorum). The book is dappled with 80 figures and architectural plans. Few will read these volumes from cover to cover – rather, the book will serve as a reference work for scholars of religion, epigraphy, divination, archaeology, iconography and more. While a proper overview would take many pages, the book is perhaps best surveyed in relation to its four parts: Part 1 is largely introductory (Chapters 1–2), Part 2 examines incubation in Greek cults (Chapters 3–5), Part 3 explores incubation in Graeco-Roman Egypt (Chapters 6–9), and Part 4 contains thematic appendices and catalogues.

In greater detail, the first chapter outlines the scope and methodology of the study; the second probes the origins of incubation in the Near East, assessing sources related to divination from Hittite Anatolia, Assyria, Mari, Israel, Egypt and beyond. More broadly in this second chapter, R. shows the rite of overnight incubation to have precedents in the Near East, but, like so many other phenomena, it was adapted to a uniquely Greek model by the Classical period. This leads to Part 2 on Greek incubation cults: those of Asklepios (Chapter 3), other therapeutic healers (Chapter 4: Amphiaraos, the Plutonion-Charonion at Akaraka in Caria, Hemithea at Kastabos in Caria – most of which are discussed in relation to Asklepios, that is, taking the Asklepios cult as the therapeutic ‘norm’) and, finally, Greek divinatory cults (Chapter 5: Amphiaraos revisited, Pasiphae at Thalamai, Brizo on Delos, Amphilochos and Mopsos in Cilicia, obscure heroes and the dead). In the cults of this latter fifth chapter, the rite of incubation served as the mechanism for the delivery of oracles; many interesting historical questions are raised herein. For example, R. notes that Spartan ephors frequented the incubation oracle of Pasiphae at Thalamai (pp. 316–18). A message sent to an ephor on state business must have carried real weight – one wonders the extent to which these visions reflected an ephor's own daytime judgement of what was best for his polis. A historian might similarly ponder the ways or frequency with which such incubation oracles shaped important state policies, and when or why someone would go to an incubation shrine for an oracle over, say, a purely oracular sanctuary such as Delphi or the Ptoon of Akraiphia. Such tantalising questions are hinted at throughout these sections, but largely left to the reader to sort out. Part 3 explores the practice of incubation in Egyptian and syncretistic Graeco-Egyptian cults: Sarapis and Isis (Chapter 6); cults within the Saqqâra temple complexes (Chapter 7: Osorapis, Isis, Imhotep, Thoth); the cults of Amenhotep and Imhotep at Deir el-Bahari and Thebes (Chapter 8); and, finally, a group of other Egyptian cults in which incubation may have been practised (but is less-well attested) rounds out Chapter 9. In Chapters 2 and 6–9, R. demonstrates that while the Hellenisation of Egypt greatly popularised temple incubation – indeed, the practice was remarkably widespread – the Greeks did not introduce incubation to Egypt. So ends the first rich volume.

With seventeen thematic appendices, the second volume is just as notable. A flurry of fascinating topics are discussed here, and I highlight but a few. R. treats the role of the senses in incubation in Appendix 2, including the sonic and visual components of divine epiphanies and voice oracles. We are led to consider the mechanisms of incubation ‘on the ground’ in Appendix 7, ‘Were the Sexes Separated During Incubation?’ In this very short section (pp. 628–33), R. asks some new and interesting questions, such as whether married couples could engage in incubation simultaneously (pp. 630–1). Enthusiasts of Late Antiquity will find much of interest in Appendix 16, ‘Incubation in Late Antique Christianity’. Here R. concludes that incubation in the early Christian world was distinct from the Graeco-Roman phenomenon; the question of direct versus indirect transmission from one tradition to the other is also wrestled with. Appendix 16 ultimately calls for a clear and broader definition of the Christian ‘temple sleep’ before its relationship to Graeco-Roman incubation can be fully ascertained. Absolutely invaluable, especially for iconographers and art historians, is Appendix 7, a catalogue of incubation reliefs from several Attic cults of Asklepios and Amphiaraos (even if Athens NM 3369 and figure 53, the famous Archinos votive relief, is distorted length-wise on p. 651). Most of R.’s appendices work quite well in this form. And while readers will have their own preferences in terms of organisation, ‘Fertility Incubation’, here treated as a separate topic in Appendix 3, in antiquity was often entirely subsumed within the standard ‘therapeutic’ healing praxis of cults like that of Asklepios, Amphiaraos et al. This topic may have fit more seamlessly within the various chapters on Greek, Egyptian and Graeco-Egyptian therapeutic cults; alternatively, it might have been combined with Appendix 7 (‘Were the Sexes Separated During Incubation?’) and used to address the broader question of the gendered treatment of patients within sanctuary healing praxis. Regardless, one hopes that R. and others will revisit these fascinating topics in further detail in future articles.

One of R.’s many important contributions concerns the incubation cult of Amphiaraos at Oropos (and Thebes). R. takes a definitive stance on the question of where the earliest incubation sanctuary of Amphiaraos, known to the Lydian king Kroisos by the sixth century bc (Hdt. 1.46, 1.49, 1.52, and now BE 2015.306), should be situated: Thebes, rather than Oropos. Making quick use of an epigram published brilliantly by N. Papazarkadas in 2014 (‘Two New Epigrams from Thebes’, in The Epigraphy and History of Boeotia: New Finds, New Prospects [2014], pp. 223–51), R. employs this new inscription to show that the earliest oracular cult of Amphiaraos was located in Thebes, long before it spread to Oropian territory. R. rightly realises that the presence of this Archaic inscription in Thebes (when combined with the details in Book 1 of Herodotus) allows us to conclude the existence of an Archaic Amphiareion in the vicinity of Thebes – as Herodotus states (8.133–4). R. is the most recent scholar to weigh in on this historical question, and his treatment of the Theban versus Oropian oracular shrine is very important here. R.’s incorporation and contextualisation of this new epigram, unknown to P. Sineux in his masterful 2007 Amphiaraos: Guerrier, Devin et Guérisseur, should be the firm final word in this long-standing debate (even if that great doyen of Boiotian cults, A. Schachter, remains a dissenting voice; Cults of Boiotia, 4 vols. [1981–94]; used by Papazarkadas [2014], p. 242 n. 68). In his discussion of incubation in the early sanctuaries of Amphiaraos, R. missed the recent treatment of the Theban site by A.Y. Mozhajsky (‘The Archaic Wall of Greater Thebes: Chronological and Topographical Problems’, Graeco-Latina Brunensia 19 [2014], 71–9), whose conclusions agree with his own, but otherwise his collected bibliography proves invaluable. The treatment of the Amphiaraos cult is here split across two chapters (4, 5) and Appendix 10, perhaps a less than ideal organisation for the thematic researcher.

This book, like the phenomenon of incubation itself, is rich and dense, capturing great variation across time and geographic space. A small criticism might be levelled at the rather large footnotes, some of which are several paragraphs in length and stretch across two or three pages (e.g. n. 177, pp. 189–90; n. 280, pp. 226–8). In spite of this, R. joins an exciting group of experts to address various aspects of incubation in Graeco-Roman antiquity.Footnote ¹ He does it well, and the field is most grateful for his new book. None will deny the value and magnitude of this study.