Experiencing Athenian pasts on Delos: Resource depletion, embodied cognition, and synchronized arousal in the <i>geranos</i> dance

Abstract The geranos dance, which imitated Theseus’ mimetic replication of the labyrinth’s winding passages, was the central component of an annual theōric delegation dispatched to Delos. From the fifth century BCE, this delegation and dance are illustrated as media by which Athenian hegemony on the island could be retrojected and legitimized. In this paper, the geranos is considered from the perspective of its experiential impact on both performers and audience. Adopting particular models drawn from the Cognitive Science of Religion, this examination takes account of the contingent results of how executing/observing the dance would result in Athenian claims on Delos being embedded at an embodied level. Indeed, by taking account of the archaeological, phenomenological, and physical aspects of the dance’s performance, we are better able to understand how as a ritual act, the geranos would facilitate cognitive conditions by which the memory of Theseus dancing on Delos would be varyingly experienced.