The priestess glared at the bedrolls lining the temple walls, each wrapped around a sleeping soldier. "Blasphemous tyrants," she hissed as she made her nightly offering at the altar. "Your god'll take our moonfish as well as anyone's, Sheani," the lone watchman answered lazily. The worst of it was, he was right. --- ## AFTERWORD The story behind _Blasphemy_ is an unusually good microcosm of how my academic reading habits evolve into fiction, so this week I want to take you through the process, in hope that it's an interesting "behind the scenes" look at how my stories get written — although often they take a longer than a week. On Thursday, I got an email from Readwise, the app I use to pull quotes and highlights from things I've read into my notes. (Here's an [affiliate link](https://readwise.io/i/ac9) if you're interested in checking it out; we'll both get 30 days free if you use it). There's a neat little daily review feature where the app resurfaces something I highlighted, to jog my memory and make sure interesting things don't get lost. There are normally five highlights, but this one caught my eye: - [i] Additional Image * [[42f6918f-1dd9-47e1-b344-03fd40d0eef5_1300x731.jpeg|Readwise Screenshot]] So I tweeted about it: > It's pretty interesting to see such an unusual use for a temple. I sometimes wonder if this kind of "using the Temple as a military base" was common in other societies? Did this ever happen during WWII, for example? I'm not a military historian, it just seems surprising. And it caught the eye of the dev team for a research app I use (Research Rabbit). They were curious too, so they [plugged some search terms into their database](https://twitter.com/RsrchRabbit/status/1489286149772234755) and came up with an [interesting paper](https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.3764/aja.124.2.0275). The second I read the abstract, I knew I wanted to write a story about soldiers as unwanted temple patrons. Literally within an hour, I'd come up with a [first draft](https://twitter.com/EleanorKonik/status/1489294828718510081) of the story above. If you click through, you'll note that the ending is different (they're setting sail for a totally different city, in fact) and I've expanded it a bit — by chopping off a chunk of the ending. Personally, I think the new ending is a bit stronger — but I know I'm not done with this storyline. These soldiers are still going to set sail for another city, and the temple priestesses will have to react to this invasion of their sacred space. But how? Well, that's where the research — and reflection — comes in. I was raised in a mostly secular household associated loosely with the Protestant tradition, which I think is true for a lot of Americans. So it's with that cultural baggage in mind that I say: yes, I was surprised the first time I came across mention of Greek temples being used as a basis for raids during the "Sicilian Expedition" portion of the Peloponnesian War. I'm used to the opposite situation, really: sacred spaces being used as sanctuaries, places where soldiers and police officers are reluctant to enter in pursuit of criminals and refugees. The western tradition treats churches almost as inviolate as embassies. That's one of the reasons the [Viking raids were so shocking in the Carolingian era; they targeted monasteries](https://en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-viking-age/expeditions-and-raids/robbery-of-churches-and-monasteries/), which most armies of the time wouldn't have dared touch. As a result, the monasteries weren't particularly well defended — that's why they were such tempting targets for raiding bands. I thought at first that this was just a difference between Ancient Greek religious beliefs and Medieval Catholic ones, but the more I dug into things, the more confused I got. Here's a quote from the very beginning of _Military Leaders and Sacred Space in Classical Greek Warfare: Temples, Sanctuaries and Conflict in Antiquity_. > deeply ingrained cultural imperatives required all Greeks to respect the inviolability of shrines, sanctuaries and temples, as well as the rich dedications these often housed. But if the Ancient Greeks _weren't_ that different from Medieval Catholics, what was going on in Syracuse? It's easy to imagine that the Syracusans during the Peloponnesian War chose to "violate" the sanctity of the temple they used as a military base because they were pushed to emergency measures by the siege, but was that true? More importantly, what does "respecting" mean in this context? What does "inviolability" mean to the Greeks? _Were_ the Syracusans doing anything unexpected or "beyond the pale" by choosing the local temple as a base of military operations? The more I dug, the more I learned that the events of the Sicilian Expedition were not unique: > the majority of episodes [mentioned in this book] take place in enemy territory or during defensive conflicts in home territory. I haven't read this entire book yet (I have _got_ to finish some other things on my to-do list before I buy another book!) but it seems _fascinating_: Part II examines: "the use of sanctuaries as fortified positions, sacrifice on enemy _acropoleis_, sacred items as targets, the presence of sanctuaries beside battlefields, and sanctuaries as places of post-battle asylum." So that's the rabbit hole I'm down now, thanks to this story.