This paper argues that the epiphany of a god or hero in incubation cults was tied to a certain locality above all because the assignation of one place of epiphany for the group incubating made it easier for them to imagine the presence of the divine. In particular the iamata of Epidauros as well as the Lex Sacra Hallenstrasse from Pergamon are examined with respect to this question.

Good stories were part of the ancient world just as they are today. We find them occasionally transmitted in the extant sources from Classical Greece and Rome, but too seldom are they the subject of scholarly study. The book by Asplund Ingemark and Ingemark is an in-depth study of a limited number of key texts chosen on the basis of their oral origin, as well as their focus on fear. It analyses the function of these stories using an interdisciplinary approach.

Religious festivals in ancient Greece and Rome, where slaves were given a holiday or the roles of master and slaves were reversed, have been labelled ‘slave festivals’. This paper first highlights structural variations in different Greek slave festivals. Second, the function of the festivals is discussed, putting the previously suggested purpose as a ‘safety valve’ in the psychological framework of ‘coping factors’. It is argued that whereas slave festivals offering a holiday did serve as a ‘safety valve’, the festivals with a strict and temporary theme of reversal did not help with coping. The suggestion follows, that slave festivals served a religious function for the masters, balancing their good fortune against the slaves’ harsh fate.

The article analyses possible placebo effects that Late Antique religious healing might have had. It focuses on healings believed to have been sent in dreams to worshippers, both in pagan and Early Christian tradition. It also investigates how possible placebo effects might have served to propagate and spread the particular cults (be it the cult of Asklepios, or the Early Christian cults of martyrs). The paper seeks to integrate modern placebo research with the ancient accounts of healings, answering the following question: is it possible that the placebo effect (above all relief of pain) was activated in ancient times by the same factors as seen in experiments today (e. g. effect of the healer’s persona, ritualized behaviour, and above all belief in the cure)? The scope of the paper is at the end broadened to touch upon the question to what degree ancient religious healing offered a socially well-established method of handling illnesses psychologically and fill the need to act, even if a cure as such was not a probable result.