Legend had it that she blinded the poet Stesichorus for singing of her adultery at Troy, and then restored his sight when he wrote a
recantation
denying that she ever traveled there.
Ancient-greek-cults-a-guide
1 on Sikyon) that indicate a "mixed" or dual cult.
It is not surprising that some communities enacted Herakles' dual status as god and hero in ritual, but this approach, based in theological speculation, was probably not the norm.
A sacrifice more closely approximating the "Olympian" type, with its focus on shared meals and meat consumption, is the mark of Herakles' cults, while the renun- ciatory mode associated with offerings to the dead, heroes, and chthonian deities seems to be relatively rare.
3
In antiquity it was generally agreed that Herakles' birthplace was Thebes, though his parents had come from Tiryns. Boiotia's numerous cults focus almost exclusively on a young Herakles, and he often assumes the cultic role of military champion and guardian of city gates. At Thebes, fifth-century coins show the youthful Herakles strangling the snakes sent by Hera, pre- saging his role as a protector against evils. Our earliest written source for his cult is Pindar (Isthm. 4. 61-72), who describes a "feast" (dais) for Herakles and annual burnt sacrifices for the Alkaidai, warrior sons of Herakles with his Theban wife Megara. This was just one part of the festival, which featured athletic competitions held in the attached gymnasium and stadium. Paus- anias (9. 11. 1-6) gives a more detailed account of the cult complex outside the gate, including the tomb of the warriors, the "house of Amphitryon," and the temple of Herakles. The tomb of Iolaos, an old Theban hero who came to be known as Herakles' nephew, was probably also located here. 4
In spite of the paucity of Athenian myths about Herakles, his Attic cults were deeply rooted and numerous, arguably benefiting further from the patronage of the Peisistratid tyrants. The Athenian victory over the Persian invaders in 490 only increased his popularity, for one of his oldest Attic shrines was located at Marathon. The Athenians organized their military camp in his sanctuary, which possessed athletic facilities and probably hosted games at the local level. After the battle, the hero-god was credited with aiding the Athenians, and the games quickly developed a following outside of Attica, as we learn from Pindar (e. g. Ol. 9. 89-90, Pyth. 8. 79). Vanderpool located the Herakleion in the southern part of the plain of Marathon on the strength of a ste ? le ? or marker dating just after 490 (IG I3 2-3), which carried instructions on the organization of the games. 5
According to Herodotus (6. 116), the Athenians rushed back from Mara- thon to engage the Persian fleet and encamped at Kynosarges, another important sanctuary of Herakles. Located on the Ilissos river in the suburb of Diomeia, Kynosarges had a gymnasium frequented by nothoi, youths who were illegitimate or had only one citizen parent. It was also a hothouse of intellectual activity, attracting men like Themistokles and Sokrates. A most unusual feature of this ancient cult was that the nothoi were its officiants, and participated as "parasites" in the feasts for the god Herakles; elsewhere such activities were the privilege of full citizens. Pausanias (1. 19. 3) says that the sanctuary included altars for Herakles and his divine bride Hebe (Youth),
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as well as one for Alkmene and Iolaos, a combination that suggests Theban influence. 6
Within the city walls, Herakles' most important shrine was south of the agora, in the deme of Melite. Here, as in several other cities, he had the title of Alexikakos (Warder-Off of Evils), and the Athenians relied on him to repel plagues. 7 As a protector of youths, he received libations from Athenian boys preparing to embark on military training. This ceremony, known as the oiniste ? ria, may have taken place at Melite or in the type of neighborhood shrine illustrated on Attic vase paintings and in votive reliefs: four columns stand on a base supporting an unroofed rectangle of beams. Such shrines were probably used often for private sacrifices to Herakles; inscriptions demonstrate that his cult was most frequently observed at the sub-state level. There is abundant fifth- and fourth-century evidence of small cult associ- ations (thiasoi), which met regularly to share a banquet in his honor, appointing their own priests and making their own rules. 8
One of Herakles' oldest known cults belongs to Thasos, an island colonized by Greeks from Paros in the seventh century. A Thasian hymn to Herakles styling him Kallinikos (of Beautiful Victory) was attributed to Archilochus (fr. 324 West IE2). Herakles and Dionysos were designated "guardians of the city" in an Archaic inscription on the southern city wall (IG XII 8. 356), where a relief sculpture depicted Herakles kneeling and taking aim with his bow. According to Herodotus (2. 44), it was the Phoenicians who introduced the cult of Herakles - not the Greek hero, but a god of Egyptian origin who was far older. While no evidence from the sanctuary itself supports this idea, the Phoenicians certainly occupied Thasos before the Greeks. Their god Melqart was widely identified with Herakles in the historical period, and the Phoenician background may account for the unusual civic prominence of Herakles on Thasos. 9
Entering the city from the south, visitors soon encountered the Herakleion, which initially consisted of a space cleared around a rock outcropping, enclosed with stone slabs, which served as an altar. Along its eastern side was a row of pits hewn into the rock, of unknown function (often interpreted as receptacles for offerings, but possibly post-holes for a wooden structure). A small building containing a hearth (the "polygonal oikos") was soon added for the purpose of ritual dining; during the fifth century, it was incorporated into a bank of dining rooms. Meanwhile the first identifiable temple was constructed to the north of the altar on a fresh site. A gallery, well, and propylon (entrance) were also added during the fifth century.
As a civic deity, Herakles was worshiped in the Thasian agora. A Classical inscription (IG XII Suppl. 414) from the marble-walled "Passage of the Theoroi," a special area in the northeast part of the agora where ritual laws were displayed, announces that it is not permitted to sacrifice goat or pig to Herakles Thasios, nor for a woman to partake of the meat, nor for "a ninth" (a tithe) to be given, nor for gera (perquisites) to be cut from the meat, nor for
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contests to be held (i. e. , for prizes of honor to be cut from the meat). These restrictions seem to focus on saving the animal's meat all for one purpose, whether for a holocaust sacrifice in chthonian style, or (more likely) some strictly equal division of meat among a group of privileged men. Other inscriptions mention Thasian festivals of Herakles, including one occasion when athletic competitions were held and the sons of dead soldiers were presented with arms as state compensation for their loss. On the whole, the evidence from Thasos gives us a picture of a warlike Herakles concerned above all with male bonding and commensality. 10
In spite of (or perhaps because of) his ancient roots in the Peloponnese, the Dorian peoples who settled there appropriated Herakles as an ancestor in order to legitimize their claims to the land. Herakles himself was denied the kingship of Argos, but according to myth, his descendants returned and conquered the land by right. Stories of his exploits overseas similarly served to justify Dorian colonization (first in Rhodes and Kos, later in the West). Thus many an elite family and tribe, including the kings of Sparta, traced their ancestry to him. There is evidence of an Archaic cult at Tiryns, including the report of a statue of Herakles by the sixth-century sculptors Dipoinos and Skyllis. 11 Old Dorian cults of Herakles are not as numerous as we would expect, were he in origin a Dorian hero, and are all but absent in Krete. In fact, Herakles figures far more often as a cult founder than a cult recipient. A surprising number of Spartan monuments and cults are tied to a minor myth, Herakles' feud with the renegade king Hippokoo? n, who usurped the throne from Tyndareos. Herakles slaughtered Hippokoo? n and his huge brood of sons, placing Tyndareos in his debt and filling the landscape with tombs, trophies, and sanctuaries thanking the gods for his victory. In the service of the Herakleid ideology, these myths and cults placed Herakles on an equal footing with the native heroes and putative sons of Tyndareos, the Dioskouroi. 12
The Spartan Herakles was less the club wielding, skin-clad figure familiar from Attic vases, and more an idealized warrior. Spartan youths on the cusp of manhood offered sacrifices to Herakles at the Dromos (course for foot- races) and fought ritual battles at "the Planes," a sacred grove of plane trees where Herakles and Lykourgos were the resident powers. As a tutelary deity of the kings, Herakles often played a role in battle. The Spartan generals' preference for sanctuaries of Herakles as encampments surely owed some- thing to piety as well as expedience. Attacking Mantineia in 418, Agis settled his men at the Herakleion, just as Archidamos III arrayed his men for battle near the Herakleion at Eutresis, interpreting the lightning that flashed over the sanctuary as a good omen. 13
For the Greeks of the western colonies, Herakles was a trailblazer who traveled to the ends of the earth, a founder of cities and cults, and an apostle of Hellenism. His journey through the western Mediterranean with the cattle of Geryon, celebrated by the Sicilian poet Stesichorus, helped to justify Greek
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possession of colonized lands. His prominence in the sphere of Phoenician influence was in part a function of his identification with the god Melqart, but this cannot explain the popularity of Italian Hercules, whose cult was ubiquitous. Diodorus Siculus (4. 23-25), our main informant for the beliefs of the Sicilian Greeks, says that Herakles made a circuit of the island, battling the indigenes and leaving "imperishable memorials of his presence" in the landscape itself. As elsewhere, he was particularly associated with hot springs, which were known as "Herakleian baths. " In Diodorus' native city, Argyrion, Herakles seems to have been a major deity, honored with festivals and splendid sacrifices "on equal terms with the Olympian gods. " Youths grew their hair in honor of Iolaos and dedicated it in his precinct when they reached manhood. These offerings were made in connection with annual gymnastic and horse racing contests, and the celebration was extended to slaves, who were allowed to hold their own banquets in Herakles' honor. A private dedication from Selinous shows that Herakles was worshiped in Sicily by the sixth century, while the great temple inscription (IG XIV 268, c. 450) from the same city names Herakles with major gods such as (Demeter) Malophoros and Zeus. 14
Pindar repeatedly (Ol. 2. 1-4, 3. 11-38, etc. ) credits Herakles with the founding of the sanctuary at Olympia and the establishment of rules for the Olympic games. In later accounts, however, and most conspicuously in Pausanias' (5. 7. 6-9, 5. 14. 7) description of the sanctuary, we hear that there was more than one Herakles, and the founding of Olympia is attributed to Idaian Herakles, one of the Daktyls of Kretan Ida who aided Rhea in the upbringing of Zeus. The Daktyls (Fingers) were dwarfish magicians, guar- dians of mysteries, and experts in metallurgy who would seem to have little in common with the hero-god Herakles. The theory of multiple "Herakleis" goes back to Herodotus' distinction between the god Herakles, of exotic origin, and the Greek hero, son of Alkmene. At Olympia, the custodians of sacred legends exploited the theory in order to bolster the sanctuary's exist- ing connections with Krete, usually acknowledged as the birthplace of Zeus, and to portray the sanctuary as an alternative Ida, where the young Zeus was nurtured. All this is not to say that Idaian Herakles was a complete fabrica- tion. Although there is no sign of him in Krete, it is possible that Herakles the Daktyl has his origin in Bes, the Egypto-Phoenician dwarf god who protected the young. Syncretization of Herakles, Bes, and Melqart, whose kourotrophic and apotropaic functions are similar, has been documented in Cyprus and elsewhere. 15
Ino-Leukothea
Like Herakles, Ino-Leukothea was widely worshiped and she transcended distinctions between mortal and immortal. The sixth-century philosopher Xenophanes (fr. 21 A 13 DK) advised his fellow Eleans that they ought to
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make up their minds: if Leukothea was a mortal woman, they should not sacrifice (thuein) to her. But if she was a goddess, they should not sing laments. This evidence of Archaic dirges for Leukothea was cited by Farnell to support his interpretation of Ino-Leukothea as a vegetation goddess closely associ- ated with Dionysos, for lamentation is often a part of the worship of deities connected with the ebb and flow of the seasons and the cycle of plant growth and death. 16 The myth of Athamas' angry pursuit and Ino's leap into the sea indeed parallels the anger of Lykourgos and the leap of Dionysos recounted in the Iliad (6. 130-37).
Beneath the myth lies a substrate of ritual, rich in the symbolism of rebirth and transfiguration, which helps us to see how the Theban daughter of Kadmos and the sea-goddess who rescues Odysseus from drowning can be one and the same, an identification already made in Homeric epic (Od. 5. 333-35). Ino-Leukothea and her son Melikertes-Palaimon derive their power as sea gods from their own experience of drowning, and their dual names may signal not the blending of two originally separate figures, but a passage from one state of existence to another. Like other Dionysiac women, Ino-Leukothea has an ambivalent relationship to children: sometimes she is the maddened killer who dispatches Melikertes, sometimes she attempts to revive his lifeless body through immersion, and sometimes she is the nurtur- ing foster-mother of the infant Dionysos himself. 17
According to Cicero (Nat. D. 3. 15), all of Greece worshiped Ino-Leukothea. The evidence for her cults is mostly late, yet they were probably well developed by the Archaic period, given the wide distribution of her worship and her popularity in Archaic poetry. Homer, Alcman (fr. 50b PMG), and Pindar (Pyth. 11. 2) speak of her as a sea goddess, and we must presume that she received prayers and sacrifices from anxious mariners. Antiquarian sources note her presence in Thessaly (where inscribed dedications have been found), Boiotia, the Isthmos, and southern Lakonia, but in contrast to the witness of the Archaic poets, there is little or no indication of a marine character in the cults they describe. A festival at Miletos involving a boys' competition evokes Leukothea's kourotrophic role. 18 Plutarch (Quaest. Rom. 267d) mentions her precinct (se ? kos) in Chaironeia (Boiotia), which was perhaps modeled on the se ? kos of her sister Semele in Thebes. Near Megara was the Molourian rock from which she leapt, and the Megarians of the Roman period said that her body washed up on their shore, where the two granddaughters of the king found it and laid it to rest, instituting annual sacrifices at the tomb. Whereas the Megarian customs sound like standard heroic cult, we also hear that Ino (like Dionysos at Argos) resided deep in a lake in southern Lakonia. During her annual festival, people threw barley loaves into the water and read omens from the manner in which they sank. Such deep lakes, through which access to the underworld was possible, were the homes of chthonian deities. 19
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The Dioskouroi and Helen
The cult of the Dioskouroi, "youths of Zeus," is already attested in the eleventh book of the Odyssey (11. 298-304), where we learn that "the life- giving land holds them, living, who beneath the earth have honors from Zeus. On alternate days they live and again are dead, and they have honor equal to the gods. " This passage appears to "correct" lines in the Iliad (3. 243-44) that baldly note the burial of the brothers in Lakedaimon, with no mention of their special status. Together, the passages illustrate a central issue in the cult and myth of the divine twins: the tension between their dual identities as dead heroes and as gods, mortals and immortals. Other poets, including Alcman (fr. 7 PMG) and Pindar (Nem. 10. 55-90), celebrated the paradox of the twins alive under the Lakonian earth, and told how the immortal brother, Polydeukes, would not be separated from his mortal sibling Kastor even by death.
The Tyndaridai (sons of Tyndareos), as the Spartans usually called them, appear at first glance to be typical heroes who exert influence from their tombs. While their Lakonian cult is unquestionably chthonian, however, the Spartans always spoke of them as gods and swore "by the two gods. " Other Greeks saw them primarily as divine saviors who rode down from the skies in a blaze of light to give aid in battle or rescue swamped sailors, and their Panhellenic cult developed early in the Archaic period. Already in the seventh century, a hymn of Alcaeus tells how they fly from the Peloponnese to manifest themselves in a ship's rigging as St. Elmo's fire, and "easily rescue men from chilling death," and in the sixth, Poseidon accompanies them on Attic vase paintings. Their Delian cult, established in the seventh or early sixth century, presumably focused on the aid they offered to mariners. 20
Scholars agree, though not unanimously, that the Dioskouroi have an Indo-European pedigree. The Vedic Asvins, twin riders who give aid in battle and marry the daughter of the Sun, provide a striking parallel to the Greek twins and their divine sister Helen. Anak(t)es (Lords), a third cult title for the Greek twins used in Attica, Boiotia, and Argos, may signal yet another com- ponent in their evolution. It was an Argive who dedicated the famous twin statues of the local heroes Kleobis and Biton, now in the Delphi museum, to the Anakes. Thus several strands of tradition, some plausibly Indo-European in origin, coalesced to form the divine persona of the Dioskouroi. 21
The twins played an important role in the civic lives of the Spartans. Although the Spartan kings claimed to be descendants of Herakles, the dual kingship was intimately connected with the cult of the Tyndaridai. When either king left Sparta on campaign, one of the twins accompanied him, most likely in the form of a statue. The Tyndaridai also served as models for the Spartan youths who aspired to full citizenship. The influence of horse-taming Kastor and the boxer Polydeukes was felt in all the spheres of action appropriate to young Spartan males: there was a Kastorian hunting dog, a
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Kastorian battle song, and a choral sword dance invented by the pair. They also provided a model for Spartan matrimony through their capture of the daughters of the Messenian king Leukippos (White Horse). These maidens, Hilaeira (Softly Shining) and Phoibe (Radiant), are ideal female counterparts of the brilliant twins. Spartan marriage customs included a ritual kidnapping that must have evoked this myth, an Archaic favorite often illustrated in Lakonian contexts. 22
Pindar (Pyth. 11. 61-64) and other early poets identify Therapne as the site of the brothers' joint burial. There, a complex of related sanctuaries included those of Helen and Menelaos, the shrine of Polydeukes, and "the so-called Phoibaion with a temple of the Dioskouroi in it" (Paus. 3. 20. 2) where Spartan youths sacrificed to the war god Enyalios. The Phoibaion was probably a shrine of the Leukippides. Unfortunately, none of the cult places of the Tyndaridai have been identified, but we have material evidence of their worship in ten votive reliefs of Archaic and Classical date. They depict the nude twins standing in profile, facing each other and holding spears. Their other attributes are two tall amphoras with peaked lids, a pair of snakes, and a curious monument called the dokana (the beams), which consisted of two parallel planks joined by two horizontal crossbars. All of these objects possessed chthonian or sepulchral connotations: the mysterious dokana may have served as a tomb marker, or as a schematic representation of the twins in their shrine. The Spartans exported the Tyndaridai to their colony Taras, most likely when it was founded in the eighth century, though our evidence is limited to an important series of terracotta relief plaques dedicated in the fourth and third centuries. These plaques, pierced for suspension on the walls of a shrine or in a grove, include some motifs that are obviously of Spartan origin (the dokana, twin amphoras, the rape of the Leukippides) and others that are more generalized (chariots, horse heads). 23
An aspect of the Panhellenic cult of the Dioskouroi, reflected both in popular legend and in individual devotions, was the belief that the twins gave aid in battle and sometimes appeared on the actual battlefield. Two inscribed spear butts, appropriate gifts for the spear-wielding Dioskouroi, were separ- ately dedicated as battle spoils in Classical Attica and Arkadia. 24 Partisans of Sparta, the Tyndaridai were said to have thwarted Aristomenes, Sparta's great antagonist in the Second Messenian War, on at least two occasions. After they miraculously appeared on their white horses during a clash between Lokroi Epizephyrioi and Kroton beside the Sagra river (c. 600), the victorious Lokrians set up altars to them. Over a century later, Simonides elegized the Battle of Plataiai with a description of the Dioskouroi and Menelaos accom- panying the Spartans as they rode out to battle against the Persians. 25
The core ritual in the worship of the Dioskouroi was their reception as guests at a meal. Scholars often refer to the practice as theoxenia, but this technical term is only rarely attested. Usually the ritual is described in the same terms used for the entertainment of mortal guests: the hosts receive
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(dechesthai) them or provide hospitality (xenia); couches are strewn and tables are set out with food and drink. Herakles, Asklepios, and many other heroes and gods were recipients of such meals, which were often shared with "parasites" in special dining rooms, or as was more often the practice for the Dioskouroi during the Archaic period, set out in private households. According to Pindar (Ol. 3. 36-40, Nem. 10. 49-51), the family of Theron of Akragas was favored by the Tyndaridai because "of all mortals they attend them with the most tables of welcome" and Herodotus (6. 127) tells of an Arkadian who became famed for his hospitality after he received the Dioskouroi. 26
Like her siblings the Dioskouroi, Helen was prone to miraculous inter- ventions.
Legend had it that she blinded the poet Stesichorus for singing of her adultery at Troy, and then restored his sight when he wrote a recantation denying that she ever traveled there. 27 Herodotus (6. 61) says that the nurse of a rich but ugly young Spartan girl took her regularly to the sanctuary of Helen at Therapne and placed her before the cult statue. One day a woman appeared from the shrine and predicted that the child would grow to be the most beautiful woman in Sparta. From that day, her looks improved so dramatically that she ended up marrying one of the Spartan kings. This anecdote illustrates Helen's important role in the lives of Spartan girls and women as a paradigm of female beauty and grace. Like the Dioskouroi, Helen was worshiped both in Sparta proper and in Therapne. The urban cult seems to have involved a girls' footrace or dance on the banks of the Eurotas, and the placing of wreaths on a plane tree sacred to Helen, acts in celebration of Helen's wedding. These rituals were performed at the Dromos and the Planes, the same areas where Spartan youths experienced a separate rite of passage under the protection of Herakles. 28
Therapne was an important Bronze Age site, revived in the late Geometric period under the impetus of Spartan military victories. Excavations there revealed an enclosure and a small white limestone shrine, begun as early as 700, where statues of Helen and Menelaos probably stood, plus a rich store of votive offerings including jewelry, plentiful bronzes, terracottas, lead figurines, and pottery. A seventh century bronze vase inscribed to "Helen, wife of Menelaos" attests that the royal pair were worshiped together, and other objects are dedicated separately to Menelaos or Helen. The site was centered on a rocky outcropping, hinting at the worship of a prehistoric goddess, a predecessor of the epic Helen. The disappearance and return of a goddess is a familiar motif in Greek religion and presumably gave rise to the myths of Helen's abductions. 29
Outside of Lakonia, Helen was usually worshiped only in connection with the Dioskouroi. As early as Euripides (Or. 1635-43, 1688; Hel. 1667-70), we hear of the belief that Helen was a celestial savior of mariners along with her brothers, and that the three received libations and xenia (ritual hospi- tality) as a group. Attica, where Kastor and Polydeukes were worshiped as
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the Anakes, had its own local traditions of Helen's birth at Rhamnous, her kidnapping by Theseus and her rescue by the Dioskouroi. This rich lore was reflected in various minor cults, such as the sacrifices to the Anakes and Helen recorded in the Thorikos deme calendar. 30
Asklepios
All the Greeks agreed that Asklepios was a mortal healer who had perished, struck by Zeus' lightning bolt, for presuming to raise the dead. Yet by the Classical period, he was just as unequivocally considered a god, though subordinate to his father Apollo, from whom his healing power was derived. Very little is known of Asklepios before c. 500, when his cult at Epidauros began to develop. During the fifth century, "Asklepiad" was already a familiar synonym for a physician, and Asklepios was considered the father, in a metaphorical sense, of all members of the profession, some of whom probably honored him in private with prayers and offerings; with Apollo and Hygieia, he is one of the witnessing gods in the famous Hippokratic oath. Certainly he was renowned as a culture hero long before the rise of his Panhellenic cult. Homer (Il. 2. 729-33, 4. 194, etc. ) speaks of Asklepios as the "blameless physician" who is father to the heroes Machaon and Podaleirios, and connects the family with Trikka (Thessaly), Ithome, and Oichalia (both in Messenia), where there were early traditions about Asklepios' birth. 31
Although Asklepios' earliest sanctuary may well have been in Trikka, it was the small Peloponnesian city of Epidauros that developed a cult of Pan- hellenic importance, and from which the worship spread rapidly throughout the Greek world in the fifth and fourth centuries. The peak of Asklepios' popularity, and the heyday of his important Hellenistic sanctuaries at Kos and Pergamon, lie outside the chronological parameters of this discussion. At Epidauros, the early cult of Apollo Maleatas on Mt. Kynortion expanded to the plain as the city grew. One of the earliest installations in this lower sanctuary was an altar to Apollo, beneath which was found a bronze offering bowl dedicated to Asklepios in the early fifth century. A nearby stoa or court- yard ("Building E") contained an ash altar and terminated in a small room supplied with a water channel and a stone couch or table, where the god shared food with his worshipers. A sacred well, which was probably used for ritual baths, became the nucleus of the later abaton, the area where incuba- tion (dream cures) took place. 32 These elements formed the core of the early Classical sanctuary, shared by Apollo and Asklepios.
During the fifth century, Asklepios' popularity burgeoned, and his worship began to be exported, often by grateful pilgrims who wished to establish branch cults in their home towns. Important cults at Korinth and Athens were among the early offshoots. Still it was not until the fourth century that the great prosperity of the sanctuary resulted in major architectural elabor- ation, fortunately documented in an unusually full collection of inscriptions
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detailing the financial and legal arrangements. The new structures, begun as early as 380, included a Doric temple of Asklepios, a large abaton that incor- porated the sacred well, and a mysterious circular building, the Thymele, which concealed below its floor level a mazelike arrangement of concentric rings around a central chamber. The stadium and famous theater came slightly later, though already in Plato's day (Ion 530a), Asklepieia with musical and athletic competitions were held.
Through hymns, dedications, and iconography, we learn that Asklepios was worshiped in conjunction with a family group who personify aspects of healing. The name of his consort Epione refers to the physician's gentle touch, and ancient speculation found the same root in Asklepios' name, though its true etymology is unknown. In addition to his two physician sons, he had a daughter or wife Hygieia (Health) and a trio of nymphlike attendants Akeso (Relief), Iaso (Healing), and Panakeia (Universal Cure). 33 Asklepios possessed certain chthonian characteristics, the most important of which were his epiphany as a snake and the ritual of enkoime ? sis or incuba- tion, which is generally associated with netherworld powers. The function of the famous Thymele is unknown, but its lower chambers suggest a chthonian component in the Epidaurian cult. In spite of these features, Asklepios lacked the kindly/wrathful dual personality that is typical of chthonian figures. Although he sometimes refused to heal evildoers, he was generally a bene- ficent, gentle god, extending his gifts even to unbelievers.
The popular and affective element in Asklepios' worship is accessible to us through the famous iamata of Apollo and Asklepios, testimonies of cures left
Figure 14. 1 Marble votive relief to Asklepios and Hygieia. A family brings a bovine to the altar for sacrifice. Late fourth century. Louvre Museum. Erich Lessing/Art Resource.
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by visitors from all over the Aegean. These were set up in the sanctuary in the second half of the fourth century, but they represent a compilation of many older dedications, including a number of painted pinakes which are now lost. Perhaps one of the oldest was dedicated by Kleo, whose inscription read: "The size of the tablet is not to be wondered at, but the greatness of the divinity, in that Kleo carried a burden in her womb for five years, until she lay down within and he made her healthy. " Another account tells of a local boy who suffered from kidney stones. In his dream, the god asked "what will you give me if I heal you? " The boy offered his collection of knucklebones, the ancient equivalent of dice, and Asklepios laughingly agreed to the bargain. Other tales tell of cures for parasites, blindness, and lameness; they are strikingly similar to the accounts from modern healing shrines such as Lourdes. 34
Around 420, Athens became home to two sanctuaries of Asklepios, one in the Peiraieus at Zea and one in the city, on the south slope of the Akropolis. Relations between Athens and Epidauros had just been restored through the Peace of Nikias in 421, and Athens was still recovering from the great plague that ravaged the city from 430 to 426. Although a number of older healing cults existed, including those of Apollo Paion, Athena Hygieia, and various physician heroes, the time was ripe for a newer, more potent healing figure. A monument found in the city Asklepieion (IG II2 4960-63) proclaims that one Telemachos introduced the god and financed the cult in its earliest years. This large inscribed ste ? le ? , topped by a double-sided relief illustrating Asklepios' arrival, says that he came from Zea in 420 at the time of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and was temporarily lodged in the Eleusinion. Damaged lines sug- gest that Telemachos installed a sacred snake, summoned from Epidauros, in the new sanctuary (other accounts of Asklepios' travels similarly describe how he was conveyed in serpent form to Sikyon, Epidauros Limera, and Rome). 35 There is continuing controversy over which areas of the excavated city Asklepieion, west of the Theater of Dionysos, were included in Tele- machos' original installation. One of the oldest structures, c. 420, is a four- room dining area; another is the so-called bothros, a stone-lined circular pit covered by a four-columned canopy, which most likely served as a place to deposit offerings. A grotto-spring in the cliff must have been a part of the earliest shrine, since abundant water for ritual and therapeutic bathing was a necessity in all Asklepieia. 36
Aristophanes' comic account (Plut. 633-747) of the healing of Ploutos, set in the Peiraieus Asklepieion, is the earliest description of the incubation ritual. The blind Ploutos (Wealth) is led into the sea to bathe, and inexpensive cakes are burned on the altar. Then he is placed on the temple floor along with the other ailing visitors, and the lamps are extinguished for the night. The god enters, attending to each patient in turn. Assisted by his daughter Panakeia, he covers Ploutos' head with a cloth and calls two huge serpents from the temple to lick his eyes, speedily effecting the cure. This testimony shows that
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Asklepios did not demand expensive sacrifices from those he treated. The standard preliminary offering consisted of cakes, while thank offerings after receiving a cure might be more generous: sacrificial sheep, pigs, and cattle are shown in the abundant votive reliefs from the Athens and Peiraieus Asklepieia. Although unusual in other cults, the cock was a common gift to Asklepios, as we learn from Sokrates' last words (Plat. Phd. 118a) and the terracotta roosters found in the sanctuaries at Athens and Korinth. Another widespread custom, still practiced at modern healing shrines, was the dedica- tion of metal or clay body parts as thank offerings.
The rise of Asklepios is often called the harbinger of an important shift in Greek religion, a movement away from state and communal worship toward a greater focus on the needs of the individual and the gods who addressed those needs. There is much truth to this, but the available evidence suggests that Asklepios concerned himself with families as much as individuals. More votive reliefs to Asklepios are extant than for any other single deity, and these usually show a family making offerings to the god and Hygieia or other associates. They vary greatly in the number, age, and sex of the family members depicted, showing that the reliefs were custom made, rather than "stock" items. 37
Further reading
Much of the material in Farnell 1921 is now out of date, yet this book still provides the only comprehensive discussions in English for the cults of several figures treated in this chapter. Woodford 1971 has detailed discus- sion of the literary and archaeological evidence for Herakles in Attica, and Silk 1985 is complementary. LiDonnici 1995 contributes new insights into the experience of pilgrims and the workings of the sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidauros; Edelstein and Edelstein 1975 contains an important collection of primary sources on Asklepios. Lambrinoudakis 2002 provides a current account of the sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas.
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15
THE POWERFUL DEAD Heroes and heroines
The Greeks sacrificed and prayed to a class of supernatural beings they called the heroes, of which the heroes in Homeric epic formed only a subset. No taxonomy of the heroes and heroines can be completely satisfying because they are a large and varied group, sometimes resembling the medieval saints with respect to the way their relics are manipulated, other times the restless and vengeful dead in their malicious and ghostlike activities, and yet other times functioning as tutelary deities who help shape the identity of the polis and protect its lands. The Greeks looked back with intense interest on their own heroic past, and believed that the first generations of men had possessed godlike powers and stature. Hesiod (Op. 123, 141) speaks of early races that died out, yet became "pure ones dwelling on the earth, kindly ones, guard- ians of mortals" and "blessed ones under the earth. " Most of the epic heroes died (Op. 166-73), yet a privileged few were brought to the Islands of the Blessed to live an existence like that of the gods. Homer and Hesiod are concerned with Panhellenic, shared traditions about the heroes, so they have little to say about heroic cult, which is a varied phenomenon, distinctive to each place.
Since we must generalize about the worship of heroes and heroines, we can say that their cult places were usually their purported tombs, or ancient structures they supposedly once inhabited. Because they were imagined as dwellers below the earth and were therefore related to the common dead and the underworld gods, they occasionally received sacrifices with what are considered "chthonian" features: a nocturnal setting, a black victim, special blood rituals, and/or the burning of the carcass whole with no attendant feasting. While this grim, renunciatory form of sacrifice "as to a hero" was opposed in the minds of many Greeks to the standard sacrifice "as to a god," the archaeological and epigraphic evidence shows that people were rarely willing to expend resources so lavishly. The prevailing mode of sacrifice for heroes and heroines seems to have been the slaughter of the animal followed by a ritual meal. In these cases the status of the recipient as a hero, hence one of the dead, might be indicated through the blood rituals mentioned above (allowing it to flow on the ground, or pouring into the tomb), the burning of
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a portion of meat (as opposed to the whole animal), or the requirement that all the meat be eaten on the spot, and not removed from the sanctuary. There was much local variation in sacrifices for the heroes, but the same was true for the gods. In many cases, heroes and heroines were simply "little gods," concerned for the most part with the daily comings and goings in their own neighborhoods. As such, they might be called simply "the hero at the salt- marsh" or "the heroines at the gate. " The epigraphic record gives us numerous examples of such minor heroes, whose existence we would not otherwise have suspected. 1
Heroic cult and tomb cult
Much debate has focused on the origins of heroic cult and to what degree it was influenced by the rise of Homeric epic. Most authorities agree that a major flowering of heroic cult took place in the eighth century, contemporary with the genesis of the Greek city-state and the dissemination of epic poetry in written form. An older scholarly model made epic the impetus for the development of hero cults, while more recent approaches focus on the role of heroes' tombs as "nodes of power" to be contested by different groups claim- ing land or social status in rapidly changing social and political contexts. During the eleventh through eighth centuries, there was a wave of interest in Bronze Age tombs, particularly in the Argolid and Messenia. In the late Classical and Hellenistic periods, a similar phenomenon is attested over a broader area including Messenia, Lakonia, Boiotia, and Krete. Sometimes the locals reused the ancient tombs for burials, but other times they simply left gifts to honor the tomb occupants. Unlike proper heroic cults, these "tomb cults" usually involved one-time offerings or were sustained only a short while. 2 Special rituals in honor of ancestors also seem to be attested from time to time in the material record, and it is likely that heroic cult evolved from tribal and familial ancestor cults to serve the differing needs of the polis. 3 Unlike the ancestor, who was the actual progenitor of those bringing offerings, the hero was not always a real person, and his cult was not defined by family descent but by other common interests of the group he (or she) represented. In spite of their differences, tomb cult, ancestor cult, and heroic cult are related phenomena, as all share the assumption that, through ritual, the living can carry on a dialogue with the powerful dead, appeasing their anger or benefiting from their goodwill.
There were hundreds, if not thousands of hero and heroine cults in the ancient Greek world. In this chapter, I select a few for more detailed discus- sion, and information about others appears in the chapters on the gods. The tombs of many heroes and heroines could be found in the very sanctuaries of the gods, overturning the normal prohibition on contact between the Olympian gods and the dead. In such cases, the hero's death was often attri- buted to the god (Apollo and Hyakinthos, or Artemis and Iphigeneia), yet the
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identities of deity and mortal might overlap and converge. 4 With a hero or heroine functioning as a sort of alter ego, the festivals of these gods were rich in contrasting rites of mourning and celebration, evoking a full range of emotional experience in the worshipers. The festival of Hyakinthos at Sparta, which opened with a day of mourning for the hero and continued with a festive celebration, is a case in point.
Epic heroes and the archaeological record
Surprisingly few cults of the great mythic and epic heroes can be firmly linked to the material record. The cult of Helen and Menelaos at Therapne is the lone case in which inscribed votives confirm the identity of the recipients as early as the seventh century and the first quarter of the sixth (the cult of Achilles at Olbia, discussed below, may prove to be of similar antiquity). The sanctuary of Alexandra and Agamemnon in Amyklai also produced a rich hoard of votive gifts stretching back to the seventh century, though without identifying inscriptions. The Archaic and Classical offerings include terra- cotta plaques with the typically Lakonian iconography of heroization: a man and woman are seated on thrones together; the bearded man extends a kantharos toward a rearing serpent. Other plaques show Alexandra enthroned, holding a scepter, and accompanied by a snake. The local heroine or goddess Alexandra was identified with the epic Kassandra, possibly as the focus of an expiatory rite that attempted to atone for Kassandra's murder. The introduction of Agamemnon's cult is in keeping with the strong Spartan interest in establishing cultic and mythic claims to the line of Pelops. The Spartans, in fact, seem to be the earliest and most vigorous proponents of heroic cult, promoting the cults of epic heroes as well as Spartan lawgivers and kings. 5
Often, a cult place can be securely dated to the early Archaic period, but there is no proof of a specific hero's residency until the late Classical or Hellenistic periods. Located about 1 km from the akropolis at Mycenae, the so-called sanctuary of Agamemnon was perhaps the most important cult place in the immediate area, in spite of its modest architecture. While signs of cult begin in the eighth century, only a rubble wall, a sacrificial pit, some roof tiles, and a large votive deposit remain from the Archaic and Classical phases. Inscribed sherds demonstrate that offerings were made to Agamemnon in the fourth century, but this only happened after a significant gap in activity resulting from the Argive sack of Mycenae in 468. Given the female figurines in the deposit, it has been suggested that the site was originally a shrine to Hera, and that the citizens of Archaic Mycenae were more interested in proclaiming their ties to Perseus, ancestor of Herakles, than to Agamemnon. A late Archaic inscription (IG IV 493) from the Perseian spring near the entrance to the citadel refers to the judges of youths' contests (probably rites of passage) held for Perseus. 6
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Polis cave in Ithaka has been touted as the site of an old hero cult for Odysseus. This cave, which saw use throughout the Bronze Age, contained the remnants of at least thirteen Geometric tripod cauldrons and a series of other, later votive gifts suggesting female deities. Could it be coincidental that Homer makes Odysseus store away his Phaiakian guest-gifts, including numerous tripods, in an Ithakan cave of the nymphs (Od. 13. 13-14, 345- 50)? Given that some of the tripods go back to the ninth century, Homer's story may be a reference to this wondrous cave and its contents. Some scholars are skeptical about the claim of a cult for Odysseus, as his name does not appear on an object from the cave until the Hellenistic period. 7
An example of an epic hero who can be more firmly tied to an early shrine is Phrontis son of Onetor, the drowned steersman of Menelaos. Homer must have been aware of this cult, for he goes out of his way to mention that Phrontis was buried on the promontory of Sounion in Attica (Od. 3. 278-85). When excavators found votive pits containing offerings suitable for a hero (e. g. iron weapons, miniature shields), including a seventh-century terracotta plaque with a painted ship and helmsman, they naturally attributed the cult to the hero. Pots inscribed to Onetor and his son from the sixth century onward confirmed the connection. Phrontis (One Who Watches Over) and son of Onetor (Giver of Advantage) are the perfect names for a hero who looked down on sailors from the cliff of Sounion and took thought for their safety. Still, the minor figure Phrontis is not so much an "epic" hero like Agamemnon as a cult hero who has been absorbed into the epic. There has been much uncertainty about exactly which structures at Sounion can be assigned to Phrontis, for in the same area there are sanctuaries of Poseidon and Athena. 8
Heroes and politics
Because most heroes were closely identified with specific cities, lineages and/ or ethnic groups, Archaic poleis made extensive use of heroic cult as a sym- bolic system to convey messages about political relationships. The Athenian tribal epo ? numoi illustrate how heroes functioned as symbols of group identity, and the extent to which Athens both valued and manipulated heroic cult. Around 500, Kleisthenes reformed the tribal system by restructuring the four old Ionian tribes as ten new units, each containing a balance of citizens from different parts of Attica. The new tribes were political constructs with no kinship bonds to unify them, yet each was assigned a hero as its "founder" and each tribe was named for its hero. In the new democracy, it was by tribe that the Athenians voted, filled public offices, mustered for military service, and commemorated their war dead. With the assistance of Delphi, Kleis- thenes selected a group of Attic heroes that heavily favored legendary kings (Kekrops, Pandion, Aigeus, Erechtheus). Others in the list had special con- nections with places important to Athens, such as Salamis (Ajax), Eleusis
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(Hippothoo? n), and Thrace (Akamas). All had preexisting cults and shrines, which were supplemented by a monument in the agora, a narrow base topped by ten bronze statues of the heroes. On the wall around the base were posted notices of lawsuits, pending legislation, muster rolls, and other information of public interest. In the 460s, statues of the eponymous heroes fashioned by Pheidias were financed by Persian spoils from the battle of Marathon and dedicated at Delphi. 9
From the sixth century on, there was a widespread belief in the talismanic powers of heroic remains, diligently fostered by the Delphic oracle. The presence of certain heroes and heroines brought prosperity and protected a city from its enemies, just as the Palladion, a famous statue of Athena, once protected Troy until Odysseus penetrated the city's defenses to steal it. Bones served as physical confirmation of a hero's presence, so heroes could be dis- covered, lost, transferred, and stolen via this medium. (Therefore the exact location of some heroic tombs, like those of Dirke in Thebes or Oedipus in Kolonos, was kept secret. ) Around 550, the Spartans became embroiled in a war with Tegea. Consulting Delphi about what ritual actions they should take in order to bring about a victory, they were told to "bring in the bones of Orestes" and given a set of riddling directions for finding his grave inside enemy territory (Hdt. 1. 67). Spartan propaganda had it that their subsequent hegemony in the Peloponnese was due to the discovery of bones belonging to a ten-foot giant, clearly those of a hero, and the installation of these remains in the Spartan agora. In spite of the Spartans' Dorian ethnicity, they took pains to establish ties with their Achaian, heroic predecessors through culti- vation of the Pelopid heroes: Agamemnon, Menelaos, and Orestes. The Spartan hunger to control the legacy of the Pelopids, and win their favor, even extended to Orestes' son Teisamenos, whose relics were brought from Achaia to Sparta in response to yet another oracle from Delphi. 10
Heroines too were of interest to the collectors of relics. A Theban tradition held that the body of Herakles' mother Alkmene was miraculously replaced by a stone, which the citizens piously installed in her shrine. At Haliartos in Boiotia, a second purported tomb of Alkmene was opened by Agesilaos (c. 379), who planned to move her remains to Sparta. The Spartans were dis- appointed in the modest contents of the tomb: a stone, a bronze bracelet, two amphoras filled with what appeared to be hardened earth, and a bronze tablet inscribed with strange characters. They went so far as to send the tablet to Egypt for "translation. " Disasters and portents followed the violation of the tomb, and attempts were made to propitiate its angry occupant and her husband Aleus, whom the Haliartans identified with the underworld judge Rhadamanthys. 11 The story shows that the fourth-century Spartans main- tained the interest in relics shown by their forefathers, and that they were eager to possess remains associated with Herakleid ancestry.
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The heroic founder
Greek mythology and religion held in common a lively interest in the first authors of rituals, founders of cities and sanctuaries, and inventors. Such founder figures, whether real or invented, were often made the objects of cults. 12 One such hero who deserves to be better known is Anios, the priest- king of Delos. His father Apollo taught him divination and established him on Delos, while his grandfather Dionysos gave Anios' daughters Spermo (Grain-Girl), Oino (Wine-Girl), and Elai? s (Oil-Girl) the magical power to create food and drink. The epic Cypria told how Anios offered the services of his daughters to provision the Greek armies setting out for Troy. 13 On Delos, however, Anios' importance was far greater than the literary sources suggest.
In antiquity it was generally agreed that Herakles' birthplace was Thebes, though his parents had come from Tiryns. Boiotia's numerous cults focus almost exclusively on a young Herakles, and he often assumes the cultic role of military champion and guardian of city gates. At Thebes, fifth-century coins show the youthful Herakles strangling the snakes sent by Hera, pre- saging his role as a protector against evils. Our earliest written source for his cult is Pindar (Isthm. 4. 61-72), who describes a "feast" (dais) for Herakles and annual burnt sacrifices for the Alkaidai, warrior sons of Herakles with his Theban wife Megara. This was just one part of the festival, which featured athletic competitions held in the attached gymnasium and stadium. Paus- anias (9. 11. 1-6) gives a more detailed account of the cult complex outside the gate, including the tomb of the warriors, the "house of Amphitryon," and the temple of Herakles. The tomb of Iolaos, an old Theban hero who came to be known as Herakles' nephew, was probably also located here. 4
In spite of the paucity of Athenian myths about Herakles, his Attic cults were deeply rooted and numerous, arguably benefiting further from the patronage of the Peisistratid tyrants. The Athenian victory over the Persian invaders in 490 only increased his popularity, for one of his oldest Attic shrines was located at Marathon. The Athenians organized their military camp in his sanctuary, which possessed athletic facilities and probably hosted games at the local level. After the battle, the hero-god was credited with aiding the Athenians, and the games quickly developed a following outside of Attica, as we learn from Pindar (e. g. Ol. 9. 89-90, Pyth. 8. 79). Vanderpool located the Herakleion in the southern part of the plain of Marathon on the strength of a ste ? le ? or marker dating just after 490 (IG I3 2-3), which carried instructions on the organization of the games. 5
According to Herodotus (6. 116), the Athenians rushed back from Mara- thon to engage the Persian fleet and encamped at Kynosarges, another important sanctuary of Herakles. Located on the Ilissos river in the suburb of Diomeia, Kynosarges had a gymnasium frequented by nothoi, youths who were illegitimate or had only one citizen parent. It was also a hothouse of intellectual activity, attracting men like Themistokles and Sokrates. A most unusual feature of this ancient cult was that the nothoi were its officiants, and participated as "parasites" in the feasts for the god Herakles; elsewhere such activities were the privilege of full citizens. Pausanias (1. 19. 3) says that the sanctuary included altars for Herakles and his divine bride Hebe (Youth),
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as well as one for Alkmene and Iolaos, a combination that suggests Theban influence. 6
Within the city walls, Herakles' most important shrine was south of the agora, in the deme of Melite. Here, as in several other cities, he had the title of Alexikakos (Warder-Off of Evils), and the Athenians relied on him to repel plagues. 7 As a protector of youths, he received libations from Athenian boys preparing to embark on military training. This ceremony, known as the oiniste ? ria, may have taken place at Melite or in the type of neighborhood shrine illustrated on Attic vase paintings and in votive reliefs: four columns stand on a base supporting an unroofed rectangle of beams. Such shrines were probably used often for private sacrifices to Herakles; inscriptions demonstrate that his cult was most frequently observed at the sub-state level. There is abundant fifth- and fourth-century evidence of small cult associ- ations (thiasoi), which met regularly to share a banquet in his honor, appointing their own priests and making their own rules. 8
One of Herakles' oldest known cults belongs to Thasos, an island colonized by Greeks from Paros in the seventh century. A Thasian hymn to Herakles styling him Kallinikos (of Beautiful Victory) was attributed to Archilochus (fr. 324 West IE2). Herakles and Dionysos were designated "guardians of the city" in an Archaic inscription on the southern city wall (IG XII 8. 356), where a relief sculpture depicted Herakles kneeling and taking aim with his bow. According to Herodotus (2. 44), it was the Phoenicians who introduced the cult of Herakles - not the Greek hero, but a god of Egyptian origin who was far older. While no evidence from the sanctuary itself supports this idea, the Phoenicians certainly occupied Thasos before the Greeks. Their god Melqart was widely identified with Herakles in the historical period, and the Phoenician background may account for the unusual civic prominence of Herakles on Thasos. 9
Entering the city from the south, visitors soon encountered the Herakleion, which initially consisted of a space cleared around a rock outcropping, enclosed with stone slabs, which served as an altar. Along its eastern side was a row of pits hewn into the rock, of unknown function (often interpreted as receptacles for offerings, but possibly post-holes for a wooden structure). A small building containing a hearth (the "polygonal oikos") was soon added for the purpose of ritual dining; during the fifth century, it was incorporated into a bank of dining rooms. Meanwhile the first identifiable temple was constructed to the north of the altar on a fresh site. A gallery, well, and propylon (entrance) were also added during the fifth century.
As a civic deity, Herakles was worshiped in the Thasian agora. A Classical inscription (IG XII Suppl. 414) from the marble-walled "Passage of the Theoroi," a special area in the northeast part of the agora where ritual laws were displayed, announces that it is not permitted to sacrifice goat or pig to Herakles Thasios, nor for a woman to partake of the meat, nor for "a ninth" (a tithe) to be given, nor for gera (perquisites) to be cut from the meat, nor for
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contests to be held (i. e. , for prizes of honor to be cut from the meat). These restrictions seem to focus on saving the animal's meat all for one purpose, whether for a holocaust sacrifice in chthonian style, or (more likely) some strictly equal division of meat among a group of privileged men. Other inscriptions mention Thasian festivals of Herakles, including one occasion when athletic competitions were held and the sons of dead soldiers were presented with arms as state compensation for their loss. On the whole, the evidence from Thasos gives us a picture of a warlike Herakles concerned above all with male bonding and commensality. 10
In spite of (or perhaps because of) his ancient roots in the Peloponnese, the Dorian peoples who settled there appropriated Herakles as an ancestor in order to legitimize their claims to the land. Herakles himself was denied the kingship of Argos, but according to myth, his descendants returned and conquered the land by right. Stories of his exploits overseas similarly served to justify Dorian colonization (first in Rhodes and Kos, later in the West). Thus many an elite family and tribe, including the kings of Sparta, traced their ancestry to him. There is evidence of an Archaic cult at Tiryns, including the report of a statue of Herakles by the sixth-century sculptors Dipoinos and Skyllis. 11 Old Dorian cults of Herakles are not as numerous as we would expect, were he in origin a Dorian hero, and are all but absent in Krete. In fact, Herakles figures far more often as a cult founder than a cult recipient. A surprising number of Spartan monuments and cults are tied to a minor myth, Herakles' feud with the renegade king Hippokoo? n, who usurped the throne from Tyndareos. Herakles slaughtered Hippokoo? n and his huge brood of sons, placing Tyndareos in his debt and filling the landscape with tombs, trophies, and sanctuaries thanking the gods for his victory. In the service of the Herakleid ideology, these myths and cults placed Herakles on an equal footing with the native heroes and putative sons of Tyndareos, the Dioskouroi. 12
The Spartan Herakles was less the club wielding, skin-clad figure familiar from Attic vases, and more an idealized warrior. Spartan youths on the cusp of manhood offered sacrifices to Herakles at the Dromos (course for foot- races) and fought ritual battles at "the Planes," a sacred grove of plane trees where Herakles and Lykourgos were the resident powers. As a tutelary deity of the kings, Herakles often played a role in battle. The Spartan generals' preference for sanctuaries of Herakles as encampments surely owed some- thing to piety as well as expedience. Attacking Mantineia in 418, Agis settled his men at the Herakleion, just as Archidamos III arrayed his men for battle near the Herakleion at Eutresis, interpreting the lightning that flashed over the sanctuary as a good omen. 13
For the Greeks of the western colonies, Herakles was a trailblazer who traveled to the ends of the earth, a founder of cities and cults, and an apostle of Hellenism. His journey through the western Mediterranean with the cattle of Geryon, celebrated by the Sicilian poet Stesichorus, helped to justify Greek
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possession of colonized lands. His prominence in the sphere of Phoenician influence was in part a function of his identification with the god Melqart, but this cannot explain the popularity of Italian Hercules, whose cult was ubiquitous. Diodorus Siculus (4. 23-25), our main informant for the beliefs of the Sicilian Greeks, says that Herakles made a circuit of the island, battling the indigenes and leaving "imperishable memorials of his presence" in the landscape itself. As elsewhere, he was particularly associated with hot springs, which were known as "Herakleian baths. " In Diodorus' native city, Argyrion, Herakles seems to have been a major deity, honored with festivals and splendid sacrifices "on equal terms with the Olympian gods. " Youths grew their hair in honor of Iolaos and dedicated it in his precinct when they reached manhood. These offerings were made in connection with annual gymnastic and horse racing contests, and the celebration was extended to slaves, who were allowed to hold their own banquets in Herakles' honor. A private dedication from Selinous shows that Herakles was worshiped in Sicily by the sixth century, while the great temple inscription (IG XIV 268, c. 450) from the same city names Herakles with major gods such as (Demeter) Malophoros and Zeus. 14
Pindar repeatedly (Ol. 2. 1-4, 3. 11-38, etc. ) credits Herakles with the founding of the sanctuary at Olympia and the establishment of rules for the Olympic games. In later accounts, however, and most conspicuously in Pausanias' (5. 7. 6-9, 5. 14. 7) description of the sanctuary, we hear that there was more than one Herakles, and the founding of Olympia is attributed to Idaian Herakles, one of the Daktyls of Kretan Ida who aided Rhea in the upbringing of Zeus. The Daktyls (Fingers) were dwarfish magicians, guar- dians of mysteries, and experts in metallurgy who would seem to have little in common with the hero-god Herakles. The theory of multiple "Herakleis" goes back to Herodotus' distinction between the god Herakles, of exotic origin, and the Greek hero, son of Alkmene. At Olympia, the custodians of sacred legends exploited the theory in order to bolster the sanctuary's exist- ing connections with Krete, usually acknowledged as the birthplace of Zeus, and to portray the sanctuary as an alternative Ida, where the young Zeus was nurtured. All this is not to say that Idaian Herakles was a complete fabrica- tion. Although there is no sign of him in Krete, it is possible that Herakles the Daktyl has his origin in Bes, the Egypto-Phoenician dwarf god who protected the young. Syncretization of Herakles, Bes, and Melqart, whose kourotrophic and apotropaic functions are similar, has been documented in Cyprus and elsewhere. 15
Ino-Leukothea
Like Herakles, Ino-Leukothea was widely worshiped and she transcended distinctions between mortal and immortal. The sixth-century philosopher Xenophanes (fr. 21 A 13 DK) advised his fellow Eleans that they ought to
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make up their minds: if Leukothea was a mortal woman, they should not sacrifice (thuein) to her. But if she was a goddess, they should not sing laments. This evidence of Archaic dirges for Leukothea was cited by Farnell to support his interpretation of Ino-Leukothea as a vegetation goddess closely associ- ated with Dionysos, for lamentation is often a part of the worship of deities connected with the ebb and flow of the seasons and the cycle of plant growth and death. 16 The myth of Athamas' angry pursuit and Ino's leap into the sea indeed parallels the anger of Lykourgos and the leap of Dionysos recounted in the Iliad (6. 130-37).
Beneath the myth lies a substrate of ritual, rich in the symbolism of rebirth and transfiguration, which helps us to see how the Theban daughter of Kadmos and the sea-goddess who rescues Odysseus from drowning can be one and the same, an identification already made in Homeric epic (Od. 5. 333-35). Ino-Leukothea and her son Melikertes-Palaimon derive their power as sea gods from their own experience of drowning, and their dual names may signal not the blending of two originally separate figures, but a passage from one state of existence to another. Like other Dionysiac women, Ino-Leukothea has an ambivalent relationship to children: sometimes she is the maddened killer who dispatches Melikertes, sometimes she attempts to revive his lifeless body through immersion, and sometimes she is the nurtur- ing foster-mother of the infant Dionysos himself. 17
According to Cicero (Nat. D. 3. 15), all of Greece worshiped Ino-Leukothea. The evidence for her cults is mostly late, yet they were probably well developed by the Archaic period, given the wide distribution of her worship and her popularity in Archaic poetry. Homer, Alcman (fr. 50b PMG), and Pindar (Pyth. 11. 2) speak of her as a sea goddess, and we must presume that she received prayers and sacrifices from anxious mariners. Antiquarian sources note her presence in Thessaly (where inscribed dedications have been found), Boiotia, the Isthmos, and southern Lakonia, but in contrast to the witness of the Archaic poets, there is little or no indication of a marine character in the cults they describe. A festival at Miletos involving a boys' competition evokes Leukothea's kourotrophic role. 18 Plutarch (Quaest. Rom. 267d) mentions her precinct (se ? kos) in Chaironeia (Boiotia), which was perhaps modeled on the se ? kos of her sister Semele in Thebes. Near Megara was the Molourian rock from which she leapt, and the Megarians of the Roman period said that her body washed up on their shore, where the two granddaughters of the king found it and laid it to rest, instituting annual sacrifices at the tomb. Whereas the Megarian customs sound like standard heroic cult, we also hear that Ino (like Dionysos at Argos) resided deep in a lake in southern Lakonia. During her annual festival, people threw barley loaves into the water and read omens from the manner in which they sank. Such deep lakes, through which access to the underworld was possible, were the homes of chthonian deities. 19
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The Dioskouroi and Helen
The cult of the Dioskouroi, "youths of Zeus," is already attested in the eleventh book of the Odyssey (11. 298-304), where we learn that "the life- giving land holds them, living, who beneath the earth have honors from Zeus. On alternate days they live and again are dead, and they have honor equal to the gods. " This passage appears to "correct" lines in the Iliad (3. 243-44) that baldly note the burial of the brothers in Lakedaimon, with no mention of their special status. Together, the passages illustrate a central issue in the cult and myth of the divine twins: the tension between their dual identities as dead heroes and as gods, mortals and immortals. Other poets, including Alcman (fr. 7 PMG) and Pindar (Nem. 10. 55-90), celebrated the paradox of the twins alive under the Lakonian earth, and told how the immortal brother, Polydeukes, would not be separated from his mortal sibling Kastor even by death.
The Tyndaridai (sons of Tyndareos), as the Spartans usually called them, appear at first glance to be typical heroes who exert influence from their tombs. While their Lakonian cult is unquestionably chthonian, however, the Spartans always spoke of them as gods and swore "by the two gods. " Other Greeks saw them primarily as divine saviors who rode down from the skies in a blaze of light to give aid in battle or rescue swamped sailors, and their Panhellenic cult developed early in the Archaic period. Already in the seventh century, a hymn of Alcaeus tells how they fly from the Peloponnese to manifest themselves in a ship's rigging as St. Elmo's fire, and "easily rescue men from chilling death," and in the sixth, Poseidon accompanies them on Attic vase paintings. Their Delian cult, established in the seventh or early sixth century, presumably focused on the aid they offered to mariners. 20
Scholars agree, though not unanimously, that the Dioskouroi have an Indo-European pedigree. The Vedic Asvins, twin riders who give aid in battle and marry the daughter of the Sun, provide a striking parallel to the Greek twins and their divine sister Helen. Anak(t)es (Lords), a third cult title for the Greek twins used in Attica, Boiotia, and Argos, may signal yet another com- ponent in their evolution. It was an Argive who dedicated the famous twin statues of the local heroes Kleobis and Biton, now in the Delphi museum, to the Anakes. Thus several strands of tradition, some plausibly Indo-European in origin, coalesced to form the divine persona of the Dioskouroi. 21
The twins played an important role in the civic lives of the Spartans. Although the Spartan kings claimed to be descendants of Herakles, the dual kingship was intimately connected with the cult of the Tyndaridai. When either king left Sparta on campaign, one of the twins accompanied him, most likely in the form of a statue. The Tyndaridai also served as models for the Spartan youths who aspired to full citizenship. The influence of horse-taming Kastor and the boxer Polydeukes was felt in all the spheres of action appropriate to young Spartan males: there was a Kastorian hunting dog, a
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Kastorian battle song, and a choral sword dance invented by the pair. They also provided a model for Spartan matrimony through their capture of the daughters of the Messenian king Leukippos (White Horse). These maidens, Hilaeira (Softly Shining) and Phoibe (Radiant), are ideal female counterparts of the brilliant twins. Spartan marriage customs included a ritual kidnapping that must have evoked this myth, an Archaic favorite often illustrated in Lakonian contexts. 22
Pindar (Pyth. 11. 61-64) and other early poets identify Therapne as the site of the brothers' joint burial. There, a complex of related sanctuaries included those of Helen and Menelaos, the shrine of Polydeukes, and "the so-called Phoibaion with a temple of the Dioskouroi in it" (Paus. 3. 20. 2) where Spartan youths sacrificed to the war god Enyalios. The Phoibaion was probably a shrine of the Leukippides. Unfortunately, none of the cult places of the Tyndaridai have been identified, but we have material evidence of their worship in ten votive reliefs of Archaic and Classical date. They depict the nude twins standing in profile, facing each other and holding spears. Their other attributes are two tall amphoras with peaked lids, a pair of snakes, and a curious monument called the dokana (the beams), which consisted of two parallel planks joined by two horizontal crossbars. All of these objects possessed chthonian or sepulchral connotations: the mysterious dokana may have served as a tomb marker, or as a schematic representation of the twins in their shrine. The Spartans exported the Tyndaridai to their colony Taras, most likely when it was founded in the eighth century, though our evidence is limited to an important series of terracotta relief plaques dedicated in the fourth and third centuries. These plaques, pierced for suspension on the walls of a shrine or in a grove, include some motifs that are obviously of Spartan origin (the dokana, twin amphoras, the rape of the Leukippides) and others that are more generalized (chariots, horse heads). 23
An aspect of the Panhellenic cult of the Dioskouroi, reflected both in popular legend and in individual devotions, was the belief that the twins gave aid in battle and sometimes appeared on the actual battlefield. Two inscribed spear butts, appropriate gifts for the spear-wielding Dioskouroi, were separ- ately dedicated as battle spoils in Classical Attica and Arkadia. 24 Partisans of Sparta, the Tyndaridai were said to have thwarted Aristomenes, Sparta's great antagonist in the Second Messenian War, on at least two occasions. After they miraculously appeared on their white horses during a clash between Lokroi Epizephyrioi and Kroton beside the Sagra river (c. 600), the victorious Lokrians set up altars to them. Over a century later, Simonides elegized the Battle of Plataiai with a description of the Dioskouroi and Menelaos accom- panying the Spartans as they rode out to battle against the Persians. 25
The core ritual in the worship of the Dioskouroi was their reception as guests at a meal. Scholars often refer to the practice as theoxenia, but this technical term is only rarely attested. Usually the ritual is described in the same terms used for the entertainment of mortal guests: the hosts receive
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(dechesthai) them or provide hospitality (xenia); couches are strewn and tables are set out with food and drink. Herakles, Asklepios, and many other heroes and gods were recipients of such meals, which were often shared with "parasites" in special dining rooms, or as was more often the practice for the Dioskouroi during the Archaic period, set out in private households. According to Pindar (Ol. 3. 36-40, Nem. 10. 49-51), the family of Theron of Akragas was favored by the Tyndaridai because "of all mortals they attend them with the most tables of welcome" and Herodotus (6. 127) tells of an Arkadian who became famed for his hospitality after he received the Dioskouroi. 26
Like her siblings the Dioskouroi, Helen was prone to miraculous inter- ventions.
Legend had it that she blinded the poet Stesichorus for singing of her adultery at Troy, and then restored his sight when he wrote a recantation denying that she ever traveled there. 27 Herodotus (6. 61) says that the nurse of a rich but ugly young Spartan girl took her regularly to the sanctuary of Helen at Therapne and placed her before the cult statue. One day a woman appeared from the shrine and predicted that the child would grow to be the most beautiful woman in Sparta. From that day, her looks improved so dramatically that she ended up marrying one of the Spartan kings. This anecdote illustrates Helen's important role in the lives of Spartan girls and women as a paradigm of female beauty and grace. Like the Dioskouroi, Helen was worshiped both in Sparta proper and in Therapne. The urban cult seems to have involved a girls' footrace or dance on the banks of the Eurotas, and the placing of wreaths on a plane tree sacred to Helen, acts in celebration of Helen's wedding. These rituals were performed at the Dromos and the Planes, the same areas where Spartan youths experienced a separate rite of passage under the protection of Herakles. 28
Therapne was an important Bronze Age site, revived in the late Geometric period under the impetus of Spartan military victories. Excavations there revealed an enclosure and a small white limestone shrine, begun as early as 700, where statues of Helen and Menelaos probably stood, plus a rich store of votive offerings including jewelry, plentiful bronzes, terracottas, lead figurines, and pottery. A seventh century bronze vase inscribed to "Helen, wife of Menelaos" attests that the royal pair were worshiped together, and other objects are dedicated separately to Menelaos or Helen. The site was centered on a rocky outcropping, hinting at the worship of a prehistoric goddess, a predecessor of the epic Helen. The disappearance and return of a goddess is a familiar motif in Greek religion and presumably gave rise to the myths of Helen's abductions. 29
Outside of Lakonia, Helen was usually worshiped only in connection with the Dioskouroi. As early as Euripides (Or. 1635-43, 1688; Hel. 1667-70), we hear of the belief that Helen was a celestial savior of mariners along with her brothers, and that the three received libations and xenia (ritual hospi- tality) as a group. Attica, where Kastor and Polydeukes were worshiped as
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the Anakes, had its own local traditions of Helen's birth at Rhamnous, her kidnapping by Theseus and her rescue by the Dioskouroi. This rich lore was reflected in various minor cults, such as the sacrifices to the Anakes and Helen recorded in the Thorikos deme calendar. 30
Asklepios
All the Greeks agreed that Asklepios was a mortal healer who had perished, struck by Zeus' lightning bolt, for presuming to raise the dead. Yet by the Classical period, he was just as unequivocally considered a god, though subordinate to his father Apollo, from whom his healing power was derived. Very little is known of Asklepios before c. 500, when his cult at Epidauros began to develop. During the fifth century, "Asklepiad" was already a familiar synonym for a physician, and Asklepios was considered the father, in a metaphorical sense, of all members of the profession, some of whom probably honored him in private with prayers and offerings; with Apollo and Hygieia, he is one of the witnessing gods in the famous Hippokratic oath. Certainly he was renowned as a culture hero long before the rise of his Panhellenic cult. Homer (Il. 2. 729-33, 4. 194, etc. ) speaks of Asklepios as the "blameless physician" who is father to the heroes Machaon and Podaleirios, and connects the family with Trikka (Thessaly), Ithome, and Oichalia (both in Messenia), where there were early traditions about Asklepios' birth. 31
Although Asklepios' earliest sanctuary may well have been in Trikka, it was the small Peloponnesian city of Epidauros that developed a cult of Pan- hellenic importance, and from which the worship spread rapidly throughout the Greek world in the fifth and fourth centuries. The peak of Asklepios' popularity, and the heyday of his important Hellenistic sanctuaries at Kos and Pergamon, lie outside the chronological parameters of this discussion. At Epidauros, the early cult of Apollo Maleatas on Mt. Kynortion expanded to the plain as the city grew. One of the earliest installations in this lower sanctuary was an altar to Apollo, beneath which was found a bronze offering bowl dedicated to Asklepios in the early fifth century. A nearby stoa or court- yard ("Building E") contained an ash altar and terminated in a small room supplied with a water channel and a stone couch or table, where the god shared food with his worshipers. A sacred well, which was probably used for ritual baths, became the nucleus of the later abaton, the area where incuba- tion (dream cures) took place. 32 These elements formed the core of the early Classical sanctuary, shared by Apollo and Asklepios.
During the fifth century, Asklepios' popularity burgeoned, and his worship began to be exported, often by grateful pilgrims who wished to establish branch cults in their home towns. Important cults at Korinth and Athens were among the early offshoots. Still it was not until the fourth century that the great prosperity of the sanctuary resulted in major architectural elabor- ation, fortunately documented in an unusually full collection of inscriptions
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detailing the financial and legal arrangements. The new structures, begun as early as 380, included a Doric temple of Asklepios, a large abaton that incor- porated the sacred well, and a mysterious circular building, the Thymele, which concealed below its floor level a mazelike arrangement of concentric rings around a central chamber. The stadium and famous theater came slightly later, though already in Plato's day (Ion 530a), Asklepieia with musical and athletic competitions were held.
Through hymns, dedications, and iconography, we learn that Asklepios was worshiped in conjunction with a family group who personify aspects of healing. The name of his consort Epione refers to the physician's gentle touch, and ancient speculation found the same root in Asklepios' name, though its true etymology is unknown. In addition to his two physician sons, he had a daughter or wife Hygieia (Health) and a trio of nymphlike attendants Akeso (Relief), Iaso (Healing), and Panakeia (Universal Cure). 33 Asklepios possessed certain chthonian characteristics, the most important of which were his epiphany as a snake and the ritual of enkoime ? sis or incuba- tion, which is generally associated with netherworld powers. The function of the famous Thymele is unknown, but its lower chambers suggest a chthonian component in the Epidaurian cult. In spite of these features, Asklepios lacked the kindly/wrathful dual personality that is typical of chthonian figures. Although he sometimes refused to heal evildoers, he was generally a bene- ficent, gentle god, extending his gifts even to unbelievers.
The popular and affective element in Asklepios' worship is accessible to us through the famous iamata of Apollo and Asklepios, testimonies of cures left
Figure 14. 1 Marble votive relief to Asklepios and Hygieia. A family brings a bovine to the altar for sacrifice. Late fourth century. Louvre Museum. Erich Lessing/Art Resource.
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by visitors from all over the Aegean. These were set up in the sanctuary in the second half of the fourth century, but they represent a compilation of many older dedications, including a number of painted pinakes which are now lost. Perhaps one of the oldest was dedicated by Kleo, whose inscription read: "The size of the tablet is not to be wondered at, but the greatness of the divinity, in that Kleo carried a burden in her womb for five years, until she lay down within and he made her healthy. " Another account tells of a local boy who suffered from kidney stones. In his dream, the god asked "what will you give me if I heal you? " The boy offered his collection of knucklebones, the ancient equivalent of dice, and Asklepios laughingly agreed to the bargain. Other tales tell of cures for parasites, blindness, and lameness; they are strikingly similar to the accounts from modern healing shrines such as Lourdes. 34
Around 420, Athens became home to two sanctuaries of Asklepios, one in the Peiraieus at Zea and one in the city, on the south slope of the Akropolis. Relations between Athens and Epidauros had just been restored through the Peace of Nikias in 421, and Athens was still recovering from the great plague that ravaged the city from 430 to 426. Although a number of older healing cults existed, including those of Apollo Paion, Athena Hygieia, and various physician heroes, the time was ripe for a newer, more potent healing figure. A monument found in the city Asklepieion (IG II2 4960-63) proclaims that one Telemachos introduced the god and financed the cult in its earliest years. This large inscribed ste ? le ? , topped by a double-sided relief illustrating Asklepios' arrival, says that he came from Zea in 420 at the time of the Eleusinian Mysteries, and was temporarily lodged in the Eleusinion. Damaged lines sug- gest that Telemachos installed a sacred snake, summoned from Epidauros, in the new sanctuary (other accounts of Asklepios' travels similarly describe how he was conveyed in serpent form to Sikyon, Epidauros Limera, and Rome). 35 There is continuing controversy over which areas of the excavated city Asklepieion, west of the Theater of Dionysos, were included in Tele- machos' original installation. One of the oldest structures, c. 420, is a four- room dining area; another is the so-called bothros, a stone-lined circular pit covered by a four-columned canopy, which most likely served as a place to deposit offerings. A grotto-spring in the cliff must have been a part of the earliest shrine, since abundant water for ritual and therapeutic bathing was a necessity in all Asklepieia. 36
Aristophanes' comic account (Plut. 633-747) of the healing of Ploutos, set in the Peiraieus Asklepieion, is the earliest description of the incubation ritual. The blind Ploutos (Wealth) is led into the sea to bathe, and inexpensive cakes are burned on the altar. Then he is placed on the temple floor along with the other ailing visitors, and the lamps are extinguished for the night. The god enters, attending to each patient in turn. Assisted by his daughter Panakeia, he covers Ploutos' head with a cloth and calls two huge serpents from the temple to lick his eyes, speedily effecting the cure. This testimony shows that
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Asklepios did not demand expensive sacrifices from those he treated. The standard preliminary offering consisted of cakes, while thank offerings after receiving a cure might be more generous: sacrificial sheep, pigs, and cattle are shown in the abundant votive reliefs from the Athens and Peiraieus Asklepieia. Although unusual in other cults, the cock was a common gift to Asklepios, as we learn from Sokrates' last words (Plat. Phd. 118a) and the terracotta roosters found in the sanctuaries at Athens and Korinth. Another widespread custom, still practiced at modern healing shrines, was the dedica- tion of metal or clay body parts as thank offerings.
The rise of Asklepios is often called the harbinger of an important shift in Greek religion, a movement away from state and communal worship toward a greater focus on the needs of the individual and the gods who addressed those needs. There is much truth to this, but the available evidence suggests that Asklepios concerned himself with families as much as individuals. More votive reliefs to Asklepios are extant than for any other single deity, and these usually show a family making offerings to the god and Hygieia or other associates. They vary greatly in the number, age, and sex of the family members depicted, showing that the reliefs were custom made, rather than "stock" items. 37
Further reading
Much of the material in Farnell 1921 is now out of date, yet this book still provides the only comprehensive discussions in English for the cults of several figures treated in this chapter. Woodford 1971 has detailed discus- sion of the literary and archaeological evidence for Herakles in Attica, and Silk 1985 is complementary. LiDonnici 1995 contributes new insights into the experience of pilgrims and the workings of the sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidauros; Edelstein and Edelstein 1975 contains an important collection of primary sources on Asklepios. Lambrinoudakis 2002 provides a current account of the sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas.
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15
THE POWERFUL DEAD Heroes and heroines
The Greeks sacrificed and prayed to a class of supernatural beings they called the heroes, of which the heroes in Homeric epic formed only a subset. No taxonomy of the heroes and heroines can be completely satisfying because they are a large and varied group, sometimes resembling the medieval saints with respect to the way their relics are manipulated, other times the restless and vengeful dead in their malicious and ghostlike activities, and yet other times functioning as tutelary deities who help shape the identity of the polis and protect its lands. The Greeks looked back with intense interest on their own heroic past, and believed that the first generations of men had possessed godlike powers and stature. Hesiod (Op. 123, 141) speaks of early races that died out, yet became "pure ones dwelling on the earth, kindly ones, guard- ians of mortals" and "blessed ones under the earth. " Most of the epic heroes died (Op. 166-73), yet a privileged few were brought to the Islands of the Blessed to live an existence like that of the gods. Homer and Hesiod are concerned with Panhellenic, shared traditions about the heroes, so they have little to say about heroic cult, which is a varied phenomenon, distinctive to each place.
Since we must generalize about the worship of heroes and heroines, we can say that their cult places were usually their purported tombs, or ancient structures they supposedly once inhabited. Because they were imagined as dwellers below the earth and were therefore related to the common dead and the underworld gods, they occasionally received sacrifices with what are considered "chthonian" features: a nocturnal setting, a black victim, special blood rituals, and/or the burning of the carcass whole with no attendant feasting. While this grim, renunciatory form of sacrifice "as to a hero" was opposed in the minds of many Greeks to the standard sacrifice "as to a god," the archaeological and epigraphic evidence shows that people were rarely willing to expend resources so lavishly. The prevailing mode of sacrifice for heroes and heroines seems to have been the slaughter of the animal followed by a ritual meal. In these cases the status of the recipient as a hero, hence one of the dead, might be indicated through the blood rituals mentioned above (allowing it to flow on the ground, or pouring into the tomb), the burning of
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a portion of meat (as opposed to the whole animal), or the requirement that all the meat be eaten on the spot, and not removed from the sanctuary. There was much local variation in sacrifices for the heroes, but the same was true for the gods. In many cases, heroes and heroines were simply "little gods," concerned for the most part with the daily comings and goings in their own neighborhoods. As such, they might be called simply "the hero at the salt- marsh" or "the heroines at the gate. " The epigraphic record gives us numerous examples of such minor heroes, whose existence we would not otherwise have suspected. 1
Heroic cult and tomb cult
Much debate has focused on the origins of heroic cult and to what degree it was influenced by the rise of Homeric epic. Most authorities agree that a major flowering of heroic cult took place in the eighth century, contemporary with the genesis of the Greek city-state and the dissemination of epic poetry in written form. An older scholarly model made epic the impetus for the development of hero cults, while more recent approaches focus on the role of heroes' tombs as "nodes of power" to be contested by different groups claim- ing land or social status in rapidly changing social and political contexts. During the eleventh through eighth centuries, there was a wave of interest in Bronze Age tombs, particularly in the Argolid and Messenia. In the late Classical and Hellenistic periods, a similar phenomenon is attested over a broader area including Messenia, Lakonia, Boiotia, and Krete. Sometimes the locals reused the ancient tombs for burials, but other times they simply left gifts to honor the tomb occupants. Unlike proper heroic cults, these "tomb cults" usually involved one-time offerings or were sustained only a short while. 2 Special rituals in honor of ancestors also seem to be attested from time to time in the material record, and it is likely that heroic cult evolved from tribal and familial ancestor cults to serve the differing needs of the polis. 3 Unlike the ancestor, who was the actual progenitor of those bringing offerings, the hero was not always a real person, and his cult was not defined by family descent but by other common interests of the group he (or she) represented. In spite of their differences, tomb cult, ancestor cult, and heroic cult are related phenomena, as all share the assumption that, through ritual, the living can carry on a dialogue with the powerful dead, appeasing their anger or benefiting from their goodwill.
There were hundreds, if not thousands of hero and heroine cults in the ancient Greek world. In this chapter, I select a few for more detailed discus- sion, and information about others appears in the chapters on the gods. The tombs of many heroes and heroines could be found in the very sanctuaries of the gods, overturning the normal prohibition on contact between the Olympian gods and the dead. In such cases, the hero's death was often attri- buted to the god (Apollo and Hyakinthos, or Artemis and Iphigeneia), yet the
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identities of deity and mortal might overlap and converge. 4 With a hero or heroine functioning as a sort of alter ego, the festivals of these gods were rich in contrasting rites of mourning and celebration, evoking a full range of emotional experience in the worshipers. The festival of Hyakinthos at Sparta, which opened with a day of mourning for the hero and continued with a festive celebration, is a case in point.
Epic heroes and the archaeological record
Surprisingly few cults of the great mythic and epic heroes can be firmly linked to the material record. The cult of Helen and Menelaos at Therapne is the lone case in which inscribed votives confirm the identity of the recipients as early as the seventh century and the first quarter of the sixth (the cult of Achilles at Olbia, discussed below, may prove to be of similar antiquity). The sanctuary of Alexandra and Agamemnon in Amyklai also produced a rich hoard of votive gifts stretching back to the seventh century, though without identifying inscriptions. The Archaic and Classical offerings include terra- cotta plaques with the typically Lakonian iconography of heroization: a man and woman are seated on thrones together; the bearded man extends a kantharos toward a rearing serpent. Other plaques show Alexandra enthroned, holding a scepter, and accompanied by a snake. The local heroine or goddess Alexandra was identified with the epic Kassandra, possibly as the focus of an expiatory rite that attempted to atone for Kassandra's murder. The introduction of Agamemnon's cult is in keeping with the strong Spartan interest in establishing cultic and mythic claims to the line of Pelops. The Spartans, in fact, seem to be the earliest and most vigorous proponents of heroic cult, promoting the cults of epic heroes as well as Spartan lawgivers and kings. 5
Often, a cult place can be securely dated to the early Archaic period, but there is no proof of a specific hero's residency until the late Classical or Hellenistic periods. Located about 1 km from the akropolis at Mycenae, the so-called sanctuary of Agamemnon was perhaps the most important cult place in the immediate area, in spite of its modest architecture. While signs of cult begin in the eighth century, only a rubble wall, a sacrificial pit, some roof tiles, and a large votive deposit remain from the Archaic and Classical phases. Inscribed sherds demonstrate that offerings were made to Agamemnon in the fourth century, but this only happened after a significant gap in activity resulting from the Argive sack of Mycenae in 468. Given the female figurines in the deposit, it has been suggested that the site was originally a shrine to Hera, and that the citizens of Archaic Mycenae were more interested in proclaiming their ties to Perseus, ancestor of Herakles, than to Agamemnon. A late Archaic inscription (IG IV 493) from the Perseian spring near the entrance to the citadel refers to the judges of youths' contests (probably rites of passage) held for Perseus. 6
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Polis cave in Ithaka has been touted as the site of an old hero cult for Odysseus. This cave, which saw use throughout the Bronze Age, contained the remnants of at least thirteen Geometric tripod cauldrons and a series of other, later votive gifts suggesting female deities. Could it be coincidental that Homer makes Odysseus store away his Phaiakian guest-gifts, including numerous tripods, in an Ithakan cave of the nymphs (Od. 13. 13-14, 345- 50)? Given that some of the tripods go back to the ninth century, Homer's story may be a reference to this wondrous cave and its contents. Some scholars are skeptical about the claim of a cult for Odysseus, as his name does not appear on an object from the cave until the Hellenistic period. 7
An example of an epic hero who can be more firmly tied to an early shrine is Phrontis son of Onetor, the drowned steersman of Menelaos. Homer must have been aware of this cult, for he goes out of his way to mention that Phrontis was buried on the promontory of Sounion in Attica (Od. 3. 278-85). When excavators found votive pits containing offerings suitable for a hero (e. g. iron weapons, miniature shields), including a seventh-century terracotta plaque with a painted ship and helmsman, they naturally attributed the cult to the hero. Pots inscribed to Onetor and his son from the sixth century onward confirmed the connection. Phrontis (One Who Watches Over) and son of Onetor (Giver of Advantage) are the perfect names for a hero who looked down on sailors from the cliff of Sounion and took thought for their safety. Still, the minor figure Phrontis is not so much an "epic" hero like Agamemnon as a cult hero who has been absorbed into the epic. There has been much uncertainty about exactly which structures at Sounion can be assigned to Phrontis, for in the same area there are sanctuaries of Poseidon and Athena. 8
Heroes and politics
Because most heroes were closely identified with specific cities, lineages and/ or ethnic groups, Archaic poleis made extensive use of heroic cult as a sym- bolic system to convey messages about political relationships. The Athenian tribal epo ? numoi illustrate how heroes functioned as symbols of group identity, and the extent to which Athens both valued and manipulated heroic cult. Around 500, Kleisthenes reformed the tribal system by restructuring the four old Ionian tribes as ten new units, each containing a balance of citizens from different parts of Attica. The new tribes were political constructs with no kinship bonds to unify them, yet each was assigned a hero as its "founder" and each tribe was named for its hero. In the new democracy, it was by tribe that the Athenians voted, filled public offices, mustered for military service, and commemorated their war dead. With the assistance of Delphi, Kleis- thenes selected a group of Attic heroes that heavily favored legendary kings (Kekrops, Pandion, Aigeus, Erechtheus). Others in the list had special con- nections with places important to Athens, such as Salamis (Ajax), Eleusis
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(Hippothoo? n), and Thrace (Akamas). All had preexisting cults and shrines, which were supplemented by a monument in the agora, a narrow base topped by ten bronze statues of the heroes. On the wall around the base were posted notices of lawsuits, pending legislation, muster rolls, and other information of public interest. In the 460s, statues of the eponymous heroes fashioned by Pheidias were financed by Persian spoils from the battle of Marathon and dedicated at Delphi. 9
From the sixth century on, there was a widespread belief in the talismanic powers of heroic remains, diligently fostered by the Delphic oracle. The presence of certain heroes and heroines brought prosperity and protected a city from its enemies, just as the Palladion, a famous statue of Athena, once protected Troy until Odysseus penetrated the city's defenses to steal it. Bones served as physical confirmation of a hero's presence, so heroes could be dis- covered, lost, transferred, and stolen via this medium. (Therefore the exact location of some heroic tombs, like those of Dirke in Thebes or Oedipus in Kolonos, was kept secret. ) Around 550, the Spartans became embroiled in a war with Tegea. Consulting Delphi about what ritual actions they should take in order to bring about a victory, they were told to "bring in the bones of Orestes" and given a set of riddling directions for finding his grave inside enemy territory (Hdt. 1. 67). Spartan propaganda had it that their subsequent hegemony in the Peloponnese was due to the discovery of bones belonging to a ten-foot giant, clearly those of a hero, and the installation of these remains in the Spartan agora. In spite of the Spartans' Dorian ethnicity, they took pains to establish ties with their Achaian, heroic predecessors through culti- vation of the Pelopid heroes: Agamemnon, Menelaos, and Orestes. The Spartan hunger to control the legacy of the Pelopids, and win their favor, even extended to Orestes' son Teisamenos, whose relics were brought from Achaia to Sparta in response to yet another oracle from Delphi. 10
Heroines too were of interest to the collectors of relics. A Theban tradition held that the body of Herakles' mother Alkmene was miraculously replaced by a stone, which the citizens piously installed in her shrine. At Haliartos in Boiotia, a second purported tomb of Alkmene was opened by Agesilaos (c. 379), who planned to move her remains to Sparta. The Spartans were dis- appointed in the modest contents of the tomb: a stone, a bronze bracelet, two amphoras filled with what appeared to be hardened earth, and a bronze tablet inscribed with strange characters. They went so far as to send the tablet to Egypt for "translation. " Disasters and portents followed the violation of the tomb, and attempts were made to propitiate its angry occupant and her husband Aleus, whom the Haliartans identified with the underworld judge Rhadamanthys. 11 The story shows that the fourth-century Spartans main- tained the interest in relics shown by their forefathers, and that they were eager to possess remains associated with Herakleid ancestry.
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The heroic founder
Greek mythology and religion held in common a lively interest in the first authors of rituals, founders of cities and sanctuaries, and inventors. Such founder figures, whether real or invented, were often made the objects of cults. 12 One such hero who deserves to be better known is Anios, the priest- king of Delos. His father Apollo taught him divination and established him on Delos, while his grandfather Dionysos gave Anios' daughters Spermo (Grain-Girl), Oino (Wine-Girl), and Elai? s (Oil-Girl) the magical power to create food and drink. The epic Cypria told how Anios offered the services of his daughters to provision the Greek armies setting out for Troy. 13 On Delos, however, Anios' importance was far greater than the literary sources suggest.
