Giant 'hero bones' in Greek shrines may have been prehistoric fossils
Ancient Greek cities guarded the bones of legendary heroes as civic protectors, and Spartans once hunted for the remains of Orestes because an oracle said victory depended on it. Some of those bones were described as enormous, which has led to a tempting guess: worshippers may have been venerating the skeletons of extinct animals.
A relic is a revered object from the past, usually a holy person's body or belongings, kept as a physical memorial. The word traces to the Latin reliquiae, 'remains', linked to relinquere, 'to leave behind'. The container that holds one is a reliquary. Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam and shamanic traditions all keep them.
In Greece, hero cults seldom credited bones with miracles. Their job was protection: the tomb of Oedipus was said to shield Athens. Delphi told the Spartans to recover the bones of Orestes before fighting their Tegean neighbours, and Plutarch says Athens was likewise sent to seize the relics of Theseus from the Dolopians. Shrines displayed more colourful items too, from weapons and chariots to furniture; a sanctuary in Sparta claimed to show the egg of Leda. Orpheus had an especially busy afterlife: his head was said to have become an oracle on Lesbos, and Pausanias, writing in the 2nd century, described his bones in a stone vase on a pillar near Dion.
Christian writers found precedents in scripture. In 2 Kings, a corpse hastily thrown into the prophet Elisha's grave during a Moabite raid comes back to life on touching his bones. Acts credits cloths carried from Paul with healing power, and the gospels describe sufferers cured by touching Jesus's garment. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, composed around 150 to 160 AD, records early reverence for a martyr's remains, and Augustine, Ambrose and Chrysostom took the practice for granted. Thomas Aquinas, who died in 1274, compared it to keeping a dead relative's possessions.
Early Christians did not move martyrs' bodies at all, leaving them in cemeteries and the Roman catacombs outside the city walls. Because burial near a saint was thought to help the soul, large funerary halls rose over martyrs' graves, Old Saint Peter's Basilica among them. These began less as churches than as covered cemeteries packed with tombs.
Source: Relic
