In a recent article I published with Antiquity, I argued that ancient Greek architects built accessibility into religious healing sanctuaries, such as the Sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidaurus. These sanctuaries were specifically intended to serve people who came in search of the god’s assistance, including disabled people, pregnant women, and the elderly. Permanent stone ramps provided access to the various buildings within the sanctuary for visitors with mobility impairments. This included visitors like Sostrata, a woman who was carried on a couch or a litter all the way to Epidaurus from her hometown in Thessaly (northern Greece). There was also Damosthenes, who was paralysed in his legs and, after being carried to Epidaurus on a couch, used canes within the sanctuary to move around. The ramps made the buildings—and the sanctuary as a whole—accessible to people who needed them.

When I published this article, I received a lot of support, but also plenty of skepticism. It’s hard to imagine that ancient Greeks would care about accessibility. But, when you think about it not in terms of accommodation but as a practical enterprise, it isn’t too surprising. The Sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia, which hosted the original Olympic Games, had athletic facilities to support the cult’s important athletic games. In a similar fashion, healing sanctuaries were built with their visitors’ needs in mind. Still, it’s difficult because we know that life in ancient Greece was hard. Plus, there was no ancient civil rights movement to push for legislation like the Disability Discrimination Act (UK) or the Americans with Disabilities Act (USA), which have resulted in more of our modern societies being made accessible. But actually, that’s a critical point:

Not all societies and cultures require a civil rights movement to recognize and accommodate (in whatever limited ways) the needs of disabled people. In my work more broadly, I question how physical disability and disabled people were situated in ancient Greece. Were the ancient Greeks ableist: was their concept of the Self explicitly nondisabled and were disabled people situated as Other? Were the ancient Greeks disablist: did they promote the unequal treatment of disabled people in their communities? The ramps provide some tantalizing hints but can’t alone answer such big questions.

Actually, though, what I love most about this article—and my work in general—isn’t really the answers, it’s the questions themselves. Ancient Greeks were humans. We must appreciate the variety and complexity of their very human bodies. Physical disability—which comes in many different forms and degrees—is a natural part of the human experience. If our task is to understand the ancient world in its fullness, we should be creative about the questions we ask about its residents. Whether or not you believe my argument about ramps (though I hope you do!), my goal is really to emphasize the critical importance of asking questions about disability and disabled people in all of our research and to demonstrate just how productive and valuable these questions can be. 

Dr. Debby Sneed is Lecturer in Classics at California State University, Long Beach. She has a Ph.D. in Archaeology from UCLA (2018), her M.A. is in Classics from University of Colorado at Boulder (2013) and her B.A. in English and History from the University of Wyoming (2009). Debby is currently working on a book on physical disability, ableism, and disablism in ancient Greece, and has an article coming out this year in another journal (Hesperia) about disability and infanticide in ancient Greece.