7 As a protector of youths, he received libations from
Athenian
boys preparing to embark on military training.
Ancient-greek-cults-a-guide
14
The Spartans maintained close ties with the Dorian colonists of Kyrene and thus felt a strong affinity for the oracle in the Archaic and Classical periods. 15 According to tradition, Zeus Ammon held the Spartans in high regard, and prophesied that they would colonize Libya. The Spartan general Lysander had a dream vision of Zeus Ammon that caused him to abandon the siege of Aphytis, and he most likely visited Siwa more than once. Temples of Ammon were established at an unknown date in Sparta and its port town of Gythion. To judge from contemporary references in the work of Aristophanes, Euripides, and Herodotus, fifth-century Athenians were also familiar with Ammon, though not as quick to adopt his cult. 16 Plutarch (Vit. Cim. 18) tells how the general Kimon, who not coincidentally was a man of pro-Spartan sentiments, attempted to consult the god in 451 during his last campaign in Cyprus. The story goes that he sent a delegation with a secret inquiry, but fell ill and died while the men were traveling. When they arrived at Siwa, the oracle told them their long journey was needless, "for Kimon is already with me. " By the early fourth century there is epigraphic evidence of the Athenian state's interest in Ammon, including records of gold sent to
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Siwa on behalf of the Athenian people. Its military situation forced Athens to seek alternatives to Delphi during this period, among which Dodona and the oracle of Ammon were favored. Of course the most famous petitioner was Alexander the Great, whose consultation in 331 gave rise to a popular tradition that he was the son of Zeus Ammon. 17
Bendis
A major Thracian goddess, Bendis came to the notice of Greeks who colonized the northern Aegean in the Archaic period. Thasian settlers on the coast of Thrace frequented at least two sanctuaries (at Neapolis and Oisyme) sacred to a goddess with the title Parthenos (Maiden), who is thought to be Bendis. Too little is known of Bendis as a Thracian deity, but she seems to have been a Great Goddess of the wilderness who like Artemis was associated with springs and cave spirits. On the other hand, an interest in agriculture is suggested by Herodotus' statement (4. 33) that the Thracian and Paionian women always sacrificed to "Artemis the Queen" (presumably Bendis) by burning straw. Unlike Artemis, however, Bendis acquired a male cult com- panion, the hero or deity Deloptes, whose iconography, borrowed from that of Asklepios, suggests that he was viewed as a healer. Bendis' own Hellenized appearance, known to us from fourth-century votive reliefs, was that of a young, athletic woman in a short dress, skin cloak, hunting boots, and
Figure 13. 2 Bendis and Deloptes, terracotta votive relief, c. 400. Archaeological museum of Chalkis, Greece. Erich Lessing/Art Resource.
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Phrygian cap. 18 She typically leans on a spear, and the comic poet Cratinus (fr. 85 Kassel-Austin) called her "twin-speared. "
The Athenians too had numerous direct and indirect contacts with Thrace. By 450, most Greek cities of the northern Aegean and Hellespont were allied to or dependencies of Athens, while Athens itself possessed a significant popu- lation of Thracian metics (resident foreigners) and slaves. Within another twenty years, the Athenians took the unprecedented step of instituting public worship of Bendis in the Peiraieus, their cosmopolitan port. This event is recorded in the opening lines of Plato's Republic (327a-328a), where Sokrates describes how he and a companion walked several miles to say their prayers and see the dual procession: one composed of Athenian citizens, and one of Thracians. Later in the evening, there was a torch race (on horseback, a typically Thracian touch), and an all-night celebration. From later records, it appears that considerable resources were expended on this festival, including the sacrifice of a hundred cattle and the distribution of their meat. 19 The public festival was complemented by private cult organizations of citizens and metics, which conducted their own observances and presumably helped to organize the annual festivities.
Historians have long debated the motivation for the state's highly unusual interest in Bendis, since the Athenians were generally suspicious of foreign gods. The most likely explanation is that they wanted to cement their existing diplomatic, military, and trade relations with the Odrysian Thracians at a time when a major war with the Peloponnesians was imminent. 20
Britomartis, Diktynna, and Aphaia
In Krete, the worship of a Minoan goddess (or goddesses) of the natural world lingered for centuries. Hellenistic poets and mythographers under- stood the indigenous Kretan goddesses Britomartis and Diktynna either as companions of Artemis, or as bynames of Artemis herself, but in the realm of cult they continued to be treated as separate deities. Ancient lexicographers tell us that among the Kretans, the name Britomartis meant "sweet maiden. " She was worshiped primarily in the eastern half of the island, and her name with the local spelling Britomarpis appears in Hellenistic treaties of Olous, which possessed an Archaic cult statue said to be the work of Daidalos. 21 According to Callimachus (Hymn 3. 189-203), Britomartis was a nymph, a beloved companion of Artemis who drew the amorous attention of Minos. He pursued her until, in desperation, she threw herself into the sea and was saved in the nets (diktua) of some fishermen. Henceforth she was called Diktynna. An alternate version says that she hid from Minos in a grove at Aigina and was afterwards worshiped as Aphaia, the unseen (aphane ? s) goddess. 22 These tales are constructed around false etymologies, but give us a few hints about the nature of Britomarpis: as her name suggests, she was a virgin, and she was a mistress of the natural world like Artemis.
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Diktynna has nothing to do with nets, but rather with the Kretan Mt. Dikte. On the other hand, Dikte lies in the east, while the major centers of Diktynna's cult (Kydonia and Lisos) were in the west of Krete, a fact that has puzzled both ancient and modern commentators. A temple of Diktynna built by Samian colonists in Kydonia (Hdt. 3. 59) has been located by archaeolo- gists, and a month name Diktynnaios is attested. During the Classical period, Diktynna was more widely recognized than Britomartis, and her syncretiza- tion with Artemis was well underway. Aristophanes (Ran. 1359) already thinks of them as identical, and Euripides (Hipp. 145) describes Diktynna as a mistress of many beasts. Later we hear of Diktynna or Artemis Diktynna in Lakonia, Phokis, and Athens. The Hellenistic poets' interest in Diktynna coincided with a resurgence of her cult, attested on coins from western Krete starting in the fourth century. 23
Before the twentieth century, information about Aphaia was strictly limited to a few late literary sources, which recounted how Britomartis/Diktynna fled to the island of Aigina to escape Minos. 24 There, a splendid Doric temple (c. 500) had long been assigned to Athena because she appeared as the key figure in both pediments (the east portrays the sack of Troy by Herakles, while the west shows the capture of the city by Aiakid heroes). This temple also contained a cult statue of an Athena-like, spear-wielding goddess, the right arm of which has been recovered. But a sixth-century inscription (IG IV 1580) revealed that the predecessor of the Classical temple was dedicated to Aphaia: "In the priesthood of [Th? ]eoitas, the house of Aphaia was built and the altar; the ivory was added and a wall was built all around. " The ivory in question may refer to ivory components of a cult statue, or plaques of ivory used to adorn the temple interior. A still earlier dedicatory inscription was made to Apha, which is probably the original form of the goddess' name. 25 Aphaia remains an enigmatic deity, and while it is unclear why the fifth- century Aiginetans began to assimilate her to Athena, they may have intended to win for themselves the favor of the better-known goddess who protected their longtime enemy, Athens. They were unsuccessful, for the Athenians eventually expelled the Aiginetans and colonized the island themselves. According to their careful inventory (IG IV 39, c. 431), the pronaos of the temple was full of wooden furniture, chests, and sacrificial implements.
The votive gifts from the sanctuary suggest that Aphaia had a special interest in protecting pregnant and nursing women as well as their babies. This character is apparent even in the Mycenaean objects, which include figurines of women holding infants (though there is, as usual, a gap in the finds between the Mycenaean period and the eighth century). Aphaia's involvement in rituals of maturation is suggested by the presence of sheet bronze rings used to secure offerings of hair, cut when youths reached the threshold of adulthood. Ulrich Sinn suggests that Aphaia's sanctuary was a religious center for a confederation of tribes, and was therefore used for festivals that addressed family and tribal continuity. 26
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Themis and Nemesis
Already in Hesiod's Theogony, abstract concepts considered fundamental to human society are treated as divine beings. Worship of these allegorical deities developed in response to the same impulse that made the poets sing of them, but in a much more idiosyncratic fashion, reflecting local needs and preferences. While the great heyday of these cults came during the fourth century and the Hellenistic period, when many personifications like Eirene (Peace) and Tyche (Fortune) were popularized, a religious impulse to ack- nowledge powerful and culturally weighty concepts through prayer and sacrifice was already active in the Archaic period.
The name Themis refers to "that which has been ordained," the norms of society with respect to politics, social relations, and ritual. In Homer (Il. 20. 4-6) Themis is the deity who summons and dismisses assemblies, and in cult she sometimes has the epithet Agoraia (of the Meeting Place). Themis also governs the natural world, which likewise functions according to divine laws. Hesiod (Theog. 901-4) says her children are Eunomia (Lawfulness), Dike (Justice), Eirene (Peace), and the Moirai (Fates), but also the Horai (Seasons), who ensure the orderly cycle of plant growth and decay. 27 Our sources hint that Themis (like Thetis and perhaps Gaia) once played a more important role in early Greek pantheons and cosmologies. Pindar (fr. 30 Snell-Maehler) made Themis the first wife of Zeus, and she seems to have occupied the place of Hera in the Archaic pantheon of Thessaly. We lack detailed information about her Thessalian worship, but a Thessalian month name Themistios, along with the prevalence of personal names like Themis- tion and Themistokles in the region, show that her cult was popular in the Archaic period. A fourth-century altar from Pherai, inscribed with the names of six major goddesses, lists Hestia, Demeter, Athena, Aphrodite, Enodia (another important local goddess), and Themis. 28
As the personification of divine law, Themis was the confidante and frequent companion of Zeus, able to dispense knowledge of future events (hence the verb themisteuein, "to pronounce divine law" for the giving of oracles, and Themis' strong mythic, though not cultic, presence at Delphi). In a lost seventh-century epic, the Cypria, she and Zeus planned the Trojan war as a way to reduce the population of the overburdened earth. Themis warned Zeus of the prophecy that the Nereid Thetis would bear a son more powerful than his father; hence Thetis was married off to the mortal Peleus, resulting in the birth of Achilles, while Helen, the casus belli, was born from the union of Zeus with his own daughter Nemesis. Awareness of Themis' role in these events may account for the construction of a shrine to Themis within the sanctuary of Nemesis at Rhamnous in Attica. 29
The Attic cult of Nemesis is a rare early example of full-blown worship paid to a personification. Like the cult of Themis in Thessaly, it demonstrates the persistence of idiosyncratic local pantheons in opposition to the trend in
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poetry toward a canonical, Panhellenized system. Derived from the verb nemein, "to deal out, distribute," Nemesis' name evokes that which is allotted by fate, but also whatever is dealt out as just deserts and, finally, the appro- priate reaction to wrongdoing: righteous indignation. Hesiod (Op. 197-201) pairs Nemesis with Aidos (Right Feeling), and predicts that the two will abandon the earth at the end of the age, leaving a world of shameless crimi- nals. The cult at Rhamnous, however, confounds our expectations about the worship of "abstract concepts" because it emphasizes Nemesis' concrete role in bringing about the Trojan war by giving birth to Helen, in contradic- tion to the Panhellenic version, which asserted that Helen's mother was the Spartan queen Leda. The two versions were reconciled in the story that Nemesis, having shape-shifted to escape Zeus, was finally raped in goose form at Rhamnous and laid an egg containing Helen, whom Leda then nursed.
The Greek victory against the invading Persians, who burned the little Archaic temple, seems to have positively affected the fortunes of Nemesis' cult, for all agreed that Nemesis had taken a hand in the downfall of the overweening foe, just as in the days of Troy. In the most prosperous period of the Athenian empire, Nemesis was one of the Attic deities selected to receive a lavish new peripteral temple (others outside the city included Poseidon at Sounion and Ares at Acharnai), and the story of Helen's egg enjoyed a spike in popularity. A comedy Nemesis by Cratinus, presented around the time the temple was completed (c. 430), had Leda attempting to hatch the egg by sitting on it, while Attic and Italian vases also portrayed the story. The ruins of the temple have been excavated, and pieces of the marble cult statue by Agorakritos have been recovered and studied in detail. Twice life-size, the goddess held an apple branch in her left hand and a libation bowl in her right. The statue base was decorated with relief figures of Leda presenting young Helen to her true mother, along with a number of Trojan war heroes. Inscribed dedications from the site show that Themis and Nemesis had their own priestesses, and an annual festival called the Great Nemesia is attested, though only from the late fourth century on. 30
Damia and Auxesia
Another example of resistance to Panhellenization is the cult of Damia/ Mneia and Auxesia/Azesia, which was roughly equivalent to, but probably independent of, the better-known cult of Demeter and Kore (their names remain mysterious, though the form Auxesia appears to be related to the verb auxein, increase). These pre-Dorian goddesses were native to the eastern Peloponnese, particularly the coast of the Saronic gulf. At Epidauros they were worshiped under the names Mneia and Azesia, or as the Theoi Azesioi, and a month Azesios was connected with them. 31 Herodotus (5. 83-88), our
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most detailed source, tells how this worship spread to Aigina and ultimately became symbolic of Aigina's longstanding quarrel with Athens. Previously under the control of Epidauros, Aigina declared its independence in the early seventh century, and absconded with Epidauros' two olivewood statues of the goddesses, installing them in a rural sanctuary with the same annual rites they had enjoyed in the mother city. These included two female "mocking" choruses whose targets were other women, an activity that has been com- pared to the aischrologia (sex talk) and mocking attested in Thesmophoric ritual. The statues, it was said, were made under the guidance of the Delphic oracle, when Epidauros had been stricken with a famine. Told to carve the statues from olive wood, the Epidaurians petitioned Athens for a sacred olive tree, and agreed to bring annual offerings to Athena and Erechtheus in return. After the Aiginetans took away the statues, Epidauros ceased sending offerings, and the angry Athenians were told to seek redress from Aigina. They attacked the island with the intention of repatriating the sacred wood, but found themselves unable to remove the images from their bases. As they dragged the statues toward the Athenian ships, the two goddesses fell to their knees. The Athenians were nearly all killed (either by a supernatural storm and earthquake, or with the aid of the Argives), and the statues thereafter remained frozen in a kneeling posture. Upon returning home, the sole Athenian survivor was murdered by the hostile wives of his comrades, who stabbed him with their dress pins, while the Aiginetans decreed that dress pins should be the main offering in the goddess' sanctuary, and banned all dedications of Attic origin, including pottery.
Clearly, much of this story was fashioned not only to explain details of the cult, but also to provide a religious justification for the Aiginetans' hostility toward Athens. The olive wood of the statues, their kneeling poses, the custom of dedicating dress pins, and the exclusion of Attic objects are all tied to the belief that the Athenians committed an unprovoked, impious attack on an Aiginetan sanctuary, and that the victimized goddesses themselves were therefore anti-Athenian. While the main elements of the legend may be fabri- cated, the cult is independently attested in a fifth-century temple inventory from Aigina (IG IV 1588), which the Athenians produced after expelling the Aiginetans in 431. 32 This inscription indicates that the goddesses shared a temple, and that dress pins (made of iron, in a style not in daily use since the Protogeometric period) were indeed a favorite gift. Other objects of value included bronze lamps, incense burners, chests, wine cups and basins, pedestals, armor (shields and breastplates), and statues of the goddesses. The kneeling pose of the cult statues most likely alludes to childbirth and suggests that the goddesses provided help to women in labor. The dedication of armor, on the other hand, suggests a more bellicose aspect of the goddesses and reminds us of their symbolic role in Aiginetan-Athenian relations.
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Further reading
Roller 1999 is especially valuable for its investigation of the prehistoric roots and Phrygian background of the Kybele cult; Borgeaud 2004 is complemen- tary. Schachter 2003 is a concise study of the Theban sanctuary of the Kabiroi by an expert on Boiotian religion, with good illustrations. On the Great Gods at Samothrace, Cole 1984 is still the most detailed discussion in English. Chapter 9 of Parke 1967 provides a thorough introduction to Ammon's cult. On the cult of Bendis at Athens, Simms 1988 is a good discussion of the epigraphic evidence for advanced students with some knowledge of ancient Greek.
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ANOMALOUS IMMORTALS Hero-gods and heroine-goddesses
Herakles
Herakles is unique among Greek heroes. He achieved Panhellenic status at such an early date that his origins can no longer be traced, but most likely they lie in the Argolid (his name, which means "glory of Hera," also evokes Argos). The fact that a wide variety of non-Greek populations, from the Lydians to the Phoenicians and Etruscans, adopted this hero is the best evidence of his overwhelming popularity. Much of his story is familiar to Homer, and some scholars believe that he was a Mycenaean hero. In any event, the question of "origins" is perhaps moot for Herakles because the corpus of his myths, and his general character, are the result of a long process of accretion, with contributions from nearly all parts of the Greek world. While some of the myths appear to have Bronze Age and even Stone Age roots, evidence for cults is much more recent, dating from the seventh and sixth centuries or later. 1
Like Hermes and Apollo, Herakles was a patron of the young men engaged in preparing their bodies for the challenges of campaign and battle. The foremost requirements for a Herakleion, which often did double duty as a gymnasium, were abundant open space, water, and accessibility; many sanctuaries lay just outside the city walls. These same features meant that Herakleia were often used as military encampments. For Pindar, who sang of athletic prowess, he represents the acme of masculine achievement (Isthm. 4. 11-12): "by their manly deeds, unrivaled, they have set out from home and grasped the Pillars of Herakles. " His cults, as well as those of dependent "Herakleian" heroes (Iolaos, Iphikles, and the sons of Herakles) are often found in initiatory and pederastic contexts. 2
Pindar (Nem. 3. 22) called Herakles hero ? s theos (hero-god), in recognition of his apotheosis and his unique status among the heroes. Unlike most heroic figures, Herakles was the exclusive possession of no single city or village. None dared to lay claim to his tomb in the normal manner of heroic cult, not even the residents around Mt. Oita where his fiery death was commemorated from the Archaic period with an annual sacrifice and bonfire. Scholars have long debated how his dual nature was handled at the cultic level, citing
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ancient sources (e. g. Hdt. 2. 44 on Thasos or Paus. 2. 10. 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.
The Spartans maintained close ties with the Dorian colonists of Kyrene and thus felt a strong affinity for the oracle in the Archaic and Classical periods. 15 According to tradition, Zeus Ammon held the Spartans in high regard, and prophesied that they would colonize Libya. The Spartan general Lysander had a dream vision of Zeus Ammon that caused him to abandon the siege of Aphytis, and he most likely visited Siwa more than once. Temples of Ammon were established at an unknown date in Sparta and its port town of Gythion. To judge from contemporary references in the work of Aristophanes, Euripides, and Herodotus, fifth-century Athenians were also familiar with Ammon, though not as quick to adopt his cult. 16 Plutarch (Vit. Cim. 18) tells how the general Kimon, who not coincidentally was a man of pro-Spartan sentiments, attempted to consult the god in 451 during his last campaign in Cyprus. The story goes that he sent a delegation with a secret inquiry, but fell ill and died while the men were traveling. When they arrived at Siwa, the oracle told them their long journey was needless, "for Kimon is already with me. " By the early fourth century there is epigraphic evidence of the Athenian state's interest in Ammon, including records of gold sent to
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Siwa on behalf of the Athenian people. Its military situation forced Athens to seek alternatives to Delphi during this period, among which Dodona and the oracle of Ammon were favored. Of course the most famous petitioner was Alexander the Great, whose consultation in 331 gave rise to a popular tradition that he was the son of Zeus Ammon. 17
Bendis
A major Thracian goddess, Bendis came to the notice of Greeks who colonized the northern Aegean in the Archaic period. Thasian settlers on the coast of Thrace frequented at least two sanctuaries (at Neapolis and Oisyme) sacred to a goddess with the title Parthenos (Maiden), who is thought to be Bendis. Too little is known of Bendis as a Thracian deity, but she seems to have been a Great Goddess of the wilderness who like Artemis was associated with springs and cave spirits. On the other hand, an interest in agriculture is suggested by Herodotus' statement (4. 33) that the Thracian and Paionian women always sacrificed to "Artemis the Queen" (presumably Bendis) by burning straw. Unlike Artemis, however, Bendis acquired a male cult com- panion, the hero or deity Deloptes, whose iconography, borrowed from that of Asklepios, suggests that he was viewed as a healer. Bendis' own Hellenized appearance, known to us from fourth-century votive reliefs, was that of a young, athletic woman in a short dress, skin cloak, hunting boots, and
Figure 13. 2 Bendis and Deloptes, terracotta votive relief, c. 400. Archaeological museum of Chalkis, Greece. Erich Lessing/Art Resource.
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Phrygian cap. 18 She typically leans on a spear, and the comic poet Cratinus (fr. 85 Kassel-Austin) called her "twin-speared. "
The Athenians too had numerous direct and indirect contacts with Thrace. By 450, most Greek cities of the northern Aegean and Hellespont were allied to or dependencies of Athens, while Athens itself possessed a significant popu- lation of Thracian metics (resident foreigners) and slaves. Within another twenty years, the Athenians took the unprecedented step of instituting public worship of Bendis in the Peiraieus, their cosmopolitan port. This event is recorded in the opening lines of Plato's Republic (327a-328a), where Sokrates describes how he and a companion walked several miles to say their prayers and see the dual procession: one composed of Athenian citizens, and one of Thracians. Later in the evening, there was a torch race (on horseback, a typically Thracian touch), and an all-night celebration. From later records, it appears that considerable resources were expended on this festival, including the sacrifice of a hundred cattle and the distribution of their meat. 19 The public festival was complemented by private cult organizations of citizens and metics, which conducted their own observances and presumably helped to organize the annual festivities.
Historians have long debated the motivation for the state's highly unusual interest in Bendis, since the Athenians were generally suspicious of foreign gods. The most likely explanation is that they wanted to cement their existing diplomatic, military, and trade relations with the Odrysian Thracians at a time when a major war with the Peloponnesians was imminent. 20
Britomartis, Diktynna, and Aphaia
In Krete, the worship of a Minoan goddess (or goddesses) of the natural world lingered for centuries. Hellenistic poets and mythographers under- stood the indigenous Kretan goddesses Britomartis and Diktynna either as companions of Artemis, or as bynames of Artemis herself, but in the realm of cult they continued to be treated as separate deities. Ancient lexicographers tell us that among the Kretans, the name Britomartis meant "sweet maiden. " She was worshiped primarily in the eastern half of the island, and her name with the local spelling Britomarpis appears in Hellenistic treaties of Olous, which possessed an Archaic cult statue said to be the work of Daidalos. 21 According to Callimachus (Hymn 3. 189-203), Britomartis was a nymph, a beloved companion of Artemis who drew the amorous attention of Minos. He pursued her until, in desperation, she threw herself into the sea and was saved in the nets (diktua) of some fishermen. Henceforth she was called Diktynna. An alternate version says that she hid from Minos in a grove at Aigina and was afterwards worshiped as Aphaia, the unseen (aphane ? s) goddess. 22 These tales are constructed around false etymologies, but give us a few hints about the nature of Britomarpis: as her name suggests, she was a virgin, and she was a mistress of the natural world like Artemis.
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Diktynna has nothing to do with nets, but rather with the Kretan Mt. Dikte. On the other hand, Dikte lies in the east, while the major centers of Diktynna's cult (Kydonia and Lisos) were in the west of Krete, a fact that has puzzled both ancient and modern commentators. A temple of Diktynna built by Samian colonists in Kydonia (Hdt. 3. 59) has been located by archaeolo- gists, and a month name Diktynnaios is attested. During the Classical period, Diktynna was more widely recognized than Britomartis, and her syncretiza- tion with Artemis was well underway. Aristophanes (Ran. 1359) already thinks of them as identical, and Euripides (Hipp. 145) describes Diktynna as a mistress of many beasts. Later we hear of Diktynna or Artemis Diktynna in Lakonia, Phokis, and Athens. The Hellenistic poets' interest in Diktynna coincided with a resurgence of her cult, attested on coins from western Krete starting in the fourth century. 23
Before the twentieth century, information about Aphaia was strictly limited to a few late literary sources, which recounted how Britomartis/Diktynna fled to the island of Aigina to escape Minos. 24 There, a splendid Doric temple (c. 500) had long been assigned to Athena because she appeared as the key figure in both pediments (the east portrays the sack of Troy by Herakles, while the west shows the capture of the city by Aiakid heroes). This temple also contained a cult statue of an Athena-like, spear-wielding goddess, the right arm of which has been recovered. But a sixth-century inscription (IG IV 1580) revealed that the predecessor of the Classical temple was dedicated to Aphaia: "In the priesthood of [Th? ]eoitas, the house of Aphaia was built and the altar; the ivory was added and a wall was built all around. " The ivory in question may refer to ivory components of a cult statue, or plaques of ivory used to adorn the temple interior. A still earlier dedicatory inscription was made to Apha, which is probably the original form of the goddess' name. 25 Aphaia remains an enigmatic deity, and while it is unclear why the fifth- century Aiginetans began to assimilate her to Athena, they may have intended to win for themselves the favor of the better-known goddess who protected their longtime enemy, Athens. They were unsuccessful, for the Athenians eventually expelled the Aiginetans and colonized the island themselves. According to their careful inventory (IG IV 39, c. 431), the pronaos of the temple was full of wooden furniture, chests, and sacrificial implements.
The votive gifts from the sanctuary suggest that Aphaia had a special interest in protecting pregnant and nursing women as well as their babies. This character is apparent even in the Mycenaean objects, which include figurines of women holding infants (though there is, as usual, a gap in the finds between the Mycenaean period and the eighth century). Aphaia's involvement in rituals of maturation is suggested by the presence of sheet bronze rings used to secure offerings of hair, cut when youths reached the threshold of adulthood. Ulrich Sinn suggests that Aphaia's sanctuary was a religious center for a confederation of tribes, and was therefore used for festivals that addressed family and tribal continuity. 26
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Themis and Nemesis
Already in Hesiod's Theogony, abstract concepts considered fundamental to human society are treated as divine beings. Worship of these allegorical deities developed in response to the same impulse that made the poets sing of them, but in a much more idiosyncratic fashion, reflecting local needs and preferences. While the great heyday of these cults came during the fourth century and the Hellenistic period, when many personifications like Eirene (Peace) and Tyche (Fortune) were popularized, a religious impulse to ack- nowledge powerful and culturally weighty concepts through prayer and sacrifice was already active in the Archaic period.
The name Themis refers to "that which has been ordained," the norms of society with respect to politics, social relations, and ritual. In Homer (Il. 20. 4-6) Themis is the deity who summons and dismisses assemblies, and in cult she sometimes has the epithet Agoraia (of the Meeting Place). Themis also governs the natural world, which likewise functions according to divine laws. Hesiod (Theog. 901-4) says her children are Eunomia (Lawfulness), Dike (Justice), Eirene (Peace), and the Moirai (Fates), but also the Horai (Seasons), who ensure the orderly cycle of plant growth and decay. 27 Our sources hint that Themis (like Thetis and perhaps Gaia) once played a more important role in early Greek pantheons and cosmologies. Pindar (fr. 30 Snell-Maehler) made Themis the first wife of Zeus, and she seems to have occupied the place of Hera in the Archaic pantheon of Thessaly. We lack detailed information about her Thessalian worship, but a Thessalian month name Themistios, along with the prevalence of personal names like Themis- tion and Themistokles in the region, show that her cult was popular in the Archaic period. A fourth-century altar from Pherai, inscribed with the names of six major goddesses, lists Hestia, Demeter, Athena, Aphrodite, Enodia (another important local goddess), and Themis. 28
As the personification of divine law, Themis was the confidante and frequent companion of Zeus, able to dispense knowledge of future events (hence the verb themisteuein, "to pronounce divine law" for the giving of oracles, and Themis' strong mythic, though not cultic, presence at Delphi). In a lost seventh-century epic, the Cypria, she and Zeus planned the Trojan war as a way to reduce the population of the overburdened earth. Themis warned Zeus of the prophecy that the Nereid Thetis would bear a son more powerful than his father; hence Thetis was married off to the mortal Peleus, resulting in the birth of Achilles, while Helen, the casus belli, was born from the union of Zeus with his own daughter Nemesis. Awareness of Themis' role in these events may account for the construction of a shrine to Themis within the sanctuary of Nemesis at Rhamnous in Attica. 29
The Attic cult of Nemesis is a rare early example of full-blown worship paid to a personification. Like the cult of Themis in Thessaly, it demonstrates the persistence of idiosyncratic local pantheons in opposition to the trend in
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poetry toward a canonical, Panhellenized system. Derived from the verb nemein, "to deal out, distribute," Nemesis' name evokes that which is allotted by fate, but also whatever is dealt out as just deserts and, finally, the appro- priate reaction to wrongdoing: righteous indignation. Hesiod (Op. 197-201) pairs Nemesis with Aidos (Right Feeling), and predicts that the two will abandon the earth at the end of the age, leaving a world of shameless crimi- nals. The cult at Rhamnous, however, confounds our expectations about the worship of "abstract concepts" because it emphasizes Nemesis' concrete role in bringing about the Trojan war by giving birth to Helen, in contradic- tion to the Panhellenic version, which asserted that Helen's mother was the Spartan queen Leda. The two versions were reconciled in the story that Nemesis, having shape-shifted to escape Zeus, was finally raped in goose form at Rhamnous and laid an egg containing Helen, whom Leda then nursed.
The Greek victory against the invading Persians, who burned the little Archaic temple, seems to have positively affected the fortunes of Nemesis' cult, for all agreed that Nemesis had taken a hand in the downfall of the overweening foe, just as in the days of Troy. In the most prosperous period of the Athenian empire, Nemesis was one of the Attic deities selected to receive a lavish new peripteral temple (others outside the city included Poseidon at Sounion and Ares at Acharnai), and the story of Helen's egg enjoyed a spike in popularity. A comedy Nemesis by Cratinus, presented around the time the temple was completed (c. 430), had Leda attempting to hatch the egg by sitting on it, while Attic and Italian vases also portrayed the story. The ruins of the temple have been excavated, and pieces of the marble cult statue by Agorakritos have been recovered and studied in detail. Twice life-size, the goddess held an apple branch in her left hand and a libation bowl in her right. The statue base was decorated with relief figures of Leda presenting young Helen to her true mother, along with a number of Trojan war heroes. Inscribed dedications from the site show that Themis and Nemesis had their own priestesses, and an annual festival called the Great Nemesia is attested, though only from the late fourth century on. 30
Damia and Auxesia
Another example of resistance to Panhellenization is the cult of Damia/ Mneia and Auxesia/Azesia, which was roughly equivalent to, but probably independent of, the better-known cult of Demeter and Kore (their names remain mysterious, though the form Auxesia appears to be related to the verb auxein, increase). These pre-Dorian goddesses were native to the eastern Peloponnese, particularly the coast of the Saronic gulf. At Epidauros they were worshiped under the names Mneia and Azesia, or as the Theoi Azesioi, and a month Azesios was connected with them. 31 Herodotus (5. 83-88), our
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most detailed source, tells how this worship spread to Aigina and ultimately became symbolic of Aigina's longstanding quarrel with Athens. Previously under the control of Epidauros, Aigina declared its independence in the early seventh century, and absconded with Epidauros' two olivewood statues of the goddesses, installing them in a rural sanctuary with the same annual rites they had enjoyed in the mother city. These included two female "mocking" choruses whose targets were other women, an activity that has been com- pared to the aischrologia (sex talk) and mocking attested in Thesmophoric ritual. The statues, it was said, were made under the guidance of the Delphic oracle, when Epidauros had been stricken with a famine. Told to carve the statues from olive wood, the Epidaurians petitioned Athens for a sacred olive tree, and agreed to bring annual offerings to Athena and Erechtheus in return. After the Aiginetans took away the statues, Epidauros ceased sending offerings, and the angry Athenians were told to seek redress from Aigina. They attacked the island with the intention of repatriating the sacred wood, but found themselves unable to remove the images from their bases. As they dragged the statues toward the Athenian ships, the two goddesses fell to their knees. The Athenians were nearly all killed (either by a supernatural storm and earthquake, or with the aid of the Argives), and the statues thereafter remained frozen in a kneeling posture. Upon returning home, the sole Athenian survivor was murdered by the hostile wives of his comrades, who stabbed him with their dress pins, while the Aiginetans decreed that dress pins should be the main offering in the goddess' sanctuary, and banned all dedications of Attic origin, including pottery.
Clearly, much of this story was fashioned not only to explain details of the cult, but also to provide a religious justification for the Aiginetans' hostility toward Athens. The olive wood of the statues, their kneeling poses, the custom of dedicating dress pins, and the exclusion of Attic objects are all tied to the belief that the Athenians committed an unprovoked, impious attack on an Aiginetan sanctuary, and that the victimized goddesses themselves were therefore anti-Athenian. While the main elements of the legend may be fabri- cated, the cult is independently attested in a fifth-century temple inventory from Aigina (IG IV 1588), which the Athenians produced after expelling the Aiginetans in 431. 32 This inscription indicates that the goddesses shared a temple, and that dress pins (made of iron, in a style not in daily use since the Protogeometric period) were indeed a favorite gift. Other objects of value included bronze lamps, incense burners, chests, wine cups and basins, pedestals, armor (shields and breastplates), and statues of the goddesses. The kneeling pose of the cult statues most likely alludes to childbirth and suggests that the goddesses provided help to women in labor. The dedication of armor, on the other hand, suggests a more bellicose aspect of the goddesses and reminds us of their symbolic role in Aiginetan-Athenian relations.
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Further reading
Roller 1999 is especially valuable for its investigation of the prehistoric roots and Phrygian background of the Kybele cult; Borgeaud 2004 is complemen- tary. Schachter 2003 is a concise study of the Theban sanctuary of the Kabiroi by an expert on Boiotian religion, with good illustrations. On the Great Gods at Samothrace, Cole 1984 is still the most detailed discussion in English. Chapter 9 of Parke 1967 provides a thorough introduction to Ammon's cult. On the cult of Bendis at Athens, Simms 1988 is a good discussion of the epigraphic evidence for advanced students with some knowledge of ancient Greek.
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ANOMALOUS IMMORTALS Hero-gods and heroine-goddesses
Herakles
Herakles is unique among Greek heroes. He achieved Panhellenic status at such an early date that his origins can no longer be traced, but most likely they lie in the Argolid (his name, which means "glory of Hera," also evokes Argos). The fact that a wide variety of non-Greek populations, from the Lydians to the Phoenicians and Etruscans, adopted this hero is the best evidence of his overwhelming popularity. Much of his story is familiar to Homer, and some scholars believe that he was a Mycenaean hero. In any event, the question of "origins" is perhaps moot for Herakles because the corpus of his myths, and his general character, are the result of a long process of accretion, with contributions from nearly all parts of the Greek world. While some of the myths appear to have Bronze Age and even Stone Age roots, evidence for cults is much more recent, dating from the seventh and sixth centuries or later. 1
Like Hermes and Apollo, Herakles was a patron of the young men engaged in preparing their bodies for the challenges of campaign and battle. The foremost requirements for a Herakleion, which often did double duty as a gymnasium, were abundant open space, water, and accessibility; many sanctuaries lay just outside the city walls. These same features meant that Herakleia were often used as military encampments. For Pindar, who sang of athletic prowess, he represents the acme of masculine achievement (Isthm. 4. 11-12): "by their manly deeds, unrivaled, they have set out from home and grasped the Pillars of Herakles. " His cults, as well as those of dependent "Herakleian" heroes (Iolaos, Iphikles, and the sons of Herakles) are often found in initiatory and pederastic contexts. 2
Pindar (Nem. 3. 22) called Herakles hero ? s theos (hero-god), in recognition of his apotheosis and his unique status among the heroes. Unlike most heroic figures, Herakles was the exclusive possession of no single city or village. None dared to lay claim to his tomb in the normal manner of heroic cult, not even the residents around Mt. Oita where his fiery death was commemorated from the Archaic period with an annual sacrifice and bonfire. Scholars have long debated how his dual nature was handled at the cultic level, citing
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ancient sources (e. g. Hdt. 2. 44 on Thasos or Paus. 2. 10. 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.
