Copper slag was found in the sanctuary itself and close by, a pattern that is
repeated
at other Cypriot cult sites from the Late Bronze Age, where the goddess was worshiped in conjunction with a male deity.
Ancient-greek-cults-a-guide
Many of Artemis' sanctuaries were located on the borders of a given polis, in lands that formed territorial boundaries.
Rituals conducted safely by girls at these vulnerable sites demon- strated the strength of the polis, just as the very placement of such border sanctuaries asserted territorial claims.
Likewise, a number of myths and legends draw a clear analogy between the rape of young women celebrating Artemis' festivals and the penetration of polis territory by enemies.
The Spartans traced the origins of their hostility toward the Messenians to such an incident.
During a festival, they said, Spartan girls were raped in the sanc- tuary of Artemis Limnatis (of the Marsh), which stood on the borderlands between Lakonia and Messenia and was disputed territory.
13
Artemis' concern for the nurture of human young overlaps with her control over the fertility of the natural world. Particularly in the Peloponnese, where her cults are extremely numerous, Artemis has the characteristics of a nature goddess who promotes the growth of vegetation and is to be found in green, moist places. The cult of Artemis Karyatis (of the Nut Tree) was famed throughout Greece for its dancing maidens, often said to be the inspiration for the columns in maiden form (caryatids) that support the porch of the Athenian Erechtheion and other ancient buildings. Located on the border between Lakonia and Arkadia, Karyai was sacred to Artemis and the nymphs who served as her companions. The girls of Lakonia made an annual pilgrimage there to dance "a traditional local dance" before the goddess' statue, which in Pausanias' day stood in the open air. Here too, the maidens were vulnerable: it was said that the Messenian general Aristomenes and his men kidnapped the daughters of their Lakonian enemies from this sanctuary. 14
As a virgin goddess, Artemis is not asexual but fosters a constant aware- ness of the maturing sexuality of the community's adolescent girls. From a
106
ARTEMIS
patriarchal perspective, the asset of female fertility is always complicated by fears of poaching by rival males (or the desire to engage in such poaching), which helps to explain the regular appearance of the rape motif in Artemis' myths and cults. Still another Peloponnesian cult, that of Artemis Alpheiaia (of the river Alpheios) at Letrinoi, incorporated a legend about the attempted rape of Artemis by the local river god. Artemis escaped recognition by daubing her own face and those of her nymph companions with river mud, an act that probably reflects a lost ritual practice. Artemis and Alpheios shared an altar at Olympia, and the cult spread to the Dorian colony of Syracuse in Sicily, where Artemis Potamia (of the River) was worshiped at a spring said to be the local manifestation of the river Alpheios. 15
Artemis Brauronia
All over the Greek world, women prayed to Artemis for help with gynecological problems, childbirth, and the nurture of young children. Artemis' cult at Brauron, one of the oldest and most important in Attica, was concerned with these functions. The sanctuary, which included a temple and a dining facility, was arranged around a sacred spring and a cave-like cleft in the rocky hillside nearby. This "cave" area was appropriate for a goddess of childbirth, both from a symbolic standpoint and because the Kretan childbirth deity Eileithyia, who is sometimes syncretized with Artemis, was also worshiped in a cave. It is possible that Iphigeneia, whose name means something like "strong in birth," was originally the goddess of Brauron, and that she was demoted to the status of a heroine upon the arrival of Artemis. In Euripides' day (Eur. IT 1462-67), Iphigeneia was remembered as the first priestess at Brauron, and garments of women who died in childbirth were dedicated at her tomb. Excavation has failed to pinpoint the location of this tomb, but it may have been associated with the complex of structures found in the cave area.
Here and in the spring, archaeologists discovered costly gifts to Artemis from the women of Attica: gold jewelry, stone seals and scarab gems, glass beads and vases, and bronze mirrors. 16 But the most frequently dedicated items were articles of women's clothing: belts, tunics, long robes, shawls, and headgear. After using the garments for a time, women gave them to the goddess, often embroidered with their own names or the words "sacred to Artemis. " The items were displayed in the temple in boxes and on racks, and the officials in charge of the sanctuary kept careful records of them. No trace of them exists today, but the temple inventories were carved in stone in the fourth century and set up both at Brauron and at a sister sanctuary on the Athenian Akropolis. These lists make it clear that women gave the best they had to the goddess:
Pheidylla, a white woman's himation in a display box. Mneso, a frog- green garment. Nausis, a lady's himation with a broad purple border in
107
ARTEMIS
wave pattern around the edge. Kleo, a delicate shawl. Phile, a bordered textile. Teisikrateia, a multi-colored Persian style shirt with sleeves. 17
Some of the garments were draped over the cult images of Artemis in the temple, which was first constructed in the sixth century and rebuilt after the Persian invasion in the fifth. There were at least two statues and possibly three, referred to in the inventories as "the old image," "the stone image," and "the standing statue. " As many as five garments at a time were worn by these images, a practice that allowed worshipers to feel they had achieved the closest possible contact with the goddess. 18
Old Attic stories, dating to the founding of Brauron and beyond, tell how Artemis became enraged when local inhabitants killed a sacred bear. The ensuing plague could be stopped only by a maiden sacrifice or by the insti- tution of a ritual in which young girls "played the bear" (arkteuein). 19 The bear was noted in Greek lore for both its fierceness and its maternal devotion; though presumably not commonly encountered in Classical Attica, it had a long history as a sacred yet prized game animal in the prehistoric hunting cultures of Europe. At Brauron, girls between the ages of five and ten danced and ran races beside the altar of Artemis. They wore special yellow robes, which they shed at some point in the rite, for the small painted jars dedicated at the end of their service depict both clothed and naked girls. 20
When the Attic towns were united under Athens, the state took over the Brauronia and entrusted the quadrennial festival to the hieropoioi (doers of the sacred things), the same officials who ran the Panathenaic festival for Athena. Not every girl in Attica could serve as a bear at Brauron, though the painted cups have turned up in several other sites, suggesting that some of the Attic villages held their own Brauronian festivals. "Playing the bear" is often described as a puberty or initiation ritual that prepared the girls for the next stage of life, but clearly they were pre-adolescent, too young to be married even by Greek standards. Rather, the ritual has to do with Artemis' role as a goddess who alternately nurtures and destroys the young of both humans and wild animals. By serving the goddess, the young "bears" appeased her and placed themselves under her protection. Many statues of young children, both boys and girls, were dedicated at Brauron. These were apparently given in thanks for the children's survival, because mortality rates were highest in the first few years of life. 21
Artemis Ephesia
Almost nothing remains of the Artemision at Ephesos, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. This monumental temple was an expression of the awesome power attributed to the goddess, the patroness of the city. The plan consisted of an unroofed central court surrounded by an outer phalanx of over a hundred columns, each nearly sixty feet tall. Thirty-six of
108
ARTEMIS
the columns in the front had bases carved with relief sculptures, a feature inherited from Hittite palace architecture, so that entering the temple was like walking through a gallery of gods and heroes. At the heart of the temple was the famous cult image, mysteriously un-Hellenic in appearance. When Paul of Tarsos (Acts 18:19-20:1) visited Ephesos as a missionary in the first century, he found a thriving city that owed much of its prosperity to the popular cult of Artemis.
The Greek settlers who reached the Anatolian coast about 1000 encoun- tered the deities of the indigenous peoples. Most prominent among these was a mother goddess who held a dominant position in the pantheons of this region. She was worshiped under many local names and in many variations, but is best known as Kybele or the Great Goddess. The Greeks chose to recognize their own Artemis in this foreign deity, in spite of the fact that Artemis was emphatically a virgin, not a mother. Yet like her Anatolian counterpart, Artemis was a mountain-roving goddess and a Mistress of Animals.
It is likely that the Greeks found a pre-existing cult at the site of the later Artemision, for legends attributed the founding of the cult to the native Amazons. According to Callimachus (Hymn 3. 237-42), the women warriors set up the goddess' statue beneath an oak tree and danced around it in their armor. Both Artemis' early epithet Oupis/Opis and the name Ephesos itself seem to be etymological descendants of the Hittite town Apasa, which occupied the site in the Bronze Age. While there are Mycenaean and Proto- Geometric potsherds at the site, the earliest archaeological remains securely attributed to the cult are those of a hundred-foot eighth-century temple (hekatompedon) with a surrounding colonnade. Following the local practice, the entrance faced west rather than east. By the next century, there was a large altar opposite the entrance with a special base for the cult image; presumably it was brought out of the temple to witness sacrifices at close quarters. Beside the altar was a sacred spring, perhaps the focus of the earliest cult, and the entire site was marshy and wet.
The evidence suggests that a statue of the goddess was an important ele- ment of the worship from at least the seventh century onward. We know little about the earliest cult image, but a new statue seems to have been commis- sioned with the construction of the massive Archaic temple in the sixth century. Literary sources tell us that the sculptor Endoios, who made several other famous cult statues, created the Artemis. It was similar in appearance to the Archaic Hera of Samos: a rigidly frontal standing figure with legs together, swathed in a tight garment. The arms were bent at the elbows and held forward, and the goddess wore a high crown called a polos. This basic wooden image, probably smaller than life-size, was adorned with a variety of objects: from her hands hung long knotted ribbons, she was draped with cloth garments including a veil, and she wore fine necklaces. Eventually, she was given an elaborate chest ornament, a feature characteristic of Anatolian
109
ARTEMIS
cult images. Covered with globe-like objects, this pectoral was later mis- understood by both ancients and moderns, who thought that the goddess was many-breasted. Votive reliefs depicting the Zeus of Labraunda with a similar pectoral falsify the breast theory, though it was a favorite of early Christian authors, and a few ancient copies of the Ephesian statue actually have nipples, suggesting that the globes seemed breastlike to some pagan worshipers. 22 A recent hypothesis holds that the globe-like objects were scrotal sacs from sacrificed bulls, symbols of fertility. More likely suggestions are that they represent the large, globular dates harvested from the date palm under which Artemis was born in Ephesian Ortygia, according to local legend, or that they can be traced back to a leather bag considered a divine attribute in Hittite religion. It is unclear whether the pectoral was added in the Hellenistic period or had Archaic origins. The panels of Artemis' skirt were covered with a profusion of small relief images. These were a develop- ment of early modes of ornamentation for cult statues, in both the Near East and Greece, which involved fixing hammered plates of gold to the statues. 23
Figure8. 2 ArtemisEphesia. Romanalabasterandbronzecopyofcultstatue,original c. 500. Ht 2. 03 m. Naples, Museo Nazionale. Alinari/Art Resource.
? 110
ARTEMIS
Beneath the Archaic temple, the original excavators found a collection of valuable objects including ninety-three Lydian coins (the earliest known coinage) and intricately crafted items of gold, ivory, terracotta, and bronze. More recent investigations revealed a cache of jewelry contemporary with the Geometric temple, including many amber beads that may have been used to adorn the cult statue. The Archaic stone temple was constructed with help from the Lydian monarch Kroisos, who had his name inscribed on one of the column drums. It endured until the fourth century, when it was consumed in a fire set by a madman. The Ephesians, men and women, gave their own jewelry toward its restoration, which took more than a century. 24
The archaeological remains from the sanctuary include large numbers of animal bones, primarily those of sheep and goats, but cattle, pigs, and a wide variety of wild animals are also attested. Slightly fewer than one hundred deer bones were found around the hekatompedon in the same areas as the ovicaprid bones; this suggests that they were sacrificed. Other bones of wild animals, such as bear teeth, may have been brought to the sanctuary as offer- ings. A "horn altar" composed of goat horns within a stone casing recalls similar Apolline altars on Delos and at Dreros in Krete. 25
We know surprisingly little about the rituals conducted for Artemis at Ephesos in the Archaic and Classical periods; we can only make guesses based on later evidence. A first-century inscription describes a sacred pro- cession including a singer and several individuals specially chosen to carry salt, wild celery, a garment or cloth, and the kosmos, or accessories, of the goddess. A late lexicographer provides context for this inscription, telling of a ritual in which the cult image is brought down to the sea, laid on a bed of wild celery, and given a meal of salt. 26 According to the temple legend, Klymene, the daughter of the king, once treated the goddess to this meal as a game, and she responded by demanding an annual reenactment of the ritual. Such rites focused on the dressing and feeding of cult images are not unknown in Greece, but are more often attested in Near Eastern and Egyptian sources.
A typically Anatolian feature of the Artemision, perhaps borrowed from the cult of the Great Mother, was the eunuch priest called the Megabyzos, a word of Persian origin. The Athenian mercenary Xenophon (An. 5. 3. 6) speaks of his dealings with one of these priests, with whom he deposited money for safekeeping. The Megabyzoi were held in great honor among the Ephesians, though they faded away during the Hellenistic period. 27 Like many other ancient sanctuaries, the Artemision was a place of asylum for fugitives and suppliants of all kinds. The inviolate aura of the sanctuary was so strong that according to legend, when the Ephesians came under attack by Kroisos, they stretched ropes about a mile from the gates of their city to the columns of the temple. By remaining in physical contact with the sanctuary, they attempted to extend its protection to the city itself. 28
Ephesian Artemis, unlike her mainland counterparts, was a city goddess concerned primarily with the prosperity and safety of the Ephesians, yet her
111
ARTEMIS
great fame encouraged the spread of her cult. When sending a colony to Massilia (Marseilles) around 600, the people of Ionian Phokaia were instruc- ted by an oracle to bring with them a guide from Ephesos and a copy of the cult image. Meanwhile, an Ephesian woman named Aristarche dreamed that the goddess stood beside her and commanded her to go with the Phokaians. Strabo (4. 1. 4) tells how she became the first priestess of the goddess at Massilia, where a temple was constructed and the rituals performed at Ephesos were preserved unchanged. Another example shows how the cult could be spread through private devotion. After visiting the Artemision, Xenophon (An. 5. 3. 4-13) decided to build a miniature copy of the temple for the goddess on his land in Skillous near Olympia. Within it he placed a cypresswood copy of the cult image, and every year he held a banquet in honor of Ephesian Artemis for the people living in the district.
Artemis on Delos
Ephesos and Delos put forward competing claims to be the birthplace of Artemis, but the Delian claim became more widely accepted. Here the triad of Apollo, Artemis, and Leto was worshiped from the eighth century onward, and these cults, particularly that of Artemis, may have had Mycenaean ante- cedents. One of the enduring riddles of Delian archaeology is the nature of the cache of precious objects found beneath the Archaic (c. 700) temple of Artemis. This was a foundation deposit like the one discovered beneath the temple at Ephesos, but it consisted of true antiques: Mycenaean gold orna- ments, a cache of ivory pieces including plaques carved in relief, bronze arrowheads, and potsherds spanning the gap to the Geometric period. The excavator suggested that these were the collected votives from a Mycenaean temple of "pre-Artemis" that preceded the Archaic one and stood on the spot until it was replaced. Others have questioned this reconstruction of a con- tinuous cult because there is little evidence that the island was inhabited from the eleventh to ninth centuries. 29 Still, the deposit suggests that the Archaic temple builders wished to emphasize links to the past. Perhaps they chanced upon a long-buried hoard and piously placed the ancient treasures beneath the new temple.
The richest concentrations of Mycenaean and Geometric votives on Delos were found around Artemis' sanctuary, not that of Apollo, the dominant deity in later centuries. Even in the Classical period, the Artemision remained the spot where the most important votive offerings and heirlooms were pre- served. Among these was the famous seventh-century kore (maiden) dedicated by Nikandre to "the Far-Shooter," the oldest Greek example of a larger than life-size marble statue. Because the hands are pierced to hold attributes, the statue probably represents Artemis rather than a worshiper. Its size and proportions were inspired by Egyptian art. In the temple itself was a seated image of the goddess. Hellenistic inventories of the temple's treasures record
112
ARTEMIS
that this statue possessed an extensive wardrobe including crowns, robes, and a necklace. 30
Artemis' sanctuary was associated with two tombs said to be those of maidens from the land of the Hyperboreans, the legendary northern people who sent offerings to Apollo. According to Herodotus (4. 35), Arge and Opis came to the island "at the same time as the gods themselves. " Upon their tomb, located behind the Artemision, the Delians scattered ashes from the thighbones burned at the altar. The maidens were the subject of ancient songs, and the Delian women had a custom of taking collections on their behalf. When excavated, their shrine turned out to be a real tomb of Mycenaean date. Another pair of maidens, Hyperoche and Laodike, had a monument in the Artemision itself. Legend said that they came to bring thank offerings for the birth of Apollo and Artemis, but they died without returning home. 31 The tale of these girls who died young formed the basis for a Delian rite of passage to adulthood: both girls and boys cut their hair at adolescence and laid it on the tomb as a sign of mourning. For the girls, this was a prelude to marriage. The reason for the location of the monument in the Artemision is clear, for Artemis herself often presided over such rites. Plutarch (Vit. Arist. 20. 6) tells us that Artemis Eukleia (of Glory) had an altar and image in the marketplace of every Boiotian and Lokrian town, where she received offer- ings from couples about to be married.
Further reading
Vernant 1991 gathers some essential writings (Chapters 11-14) on the "other- ness" of Artemis, a quality she shares with Dionysos. Cole 2004 (Chapters 6-7) deals with the goddess of the wilderness in relation to the civilized spaces of polis and sanctuary. The web of connections between Artemis, Gorgo, and the prehistoric Mistress of Animals, and the goddess' patronage of warriors are explored in Marinatos 2000. Faraone 2003 rejects the consensus view that the rites at Brauron pertain to female initiation and focuses instead on the way the ritual functions to placate the anger of Artemis. On Iphigeneia, see Bremmer 2002.
113
9
THE PERSUASIVE GODDESS Aphrodite
Aphrodite was universally recognized as the Lady of Cyprus, the cosmopoli- tan island where Greek colonists and mariners were exposed at an early date to the cultures of the Near East. Because of the many similarities between Aphrodite and Semitic Ishtar/Astarte, and the lack of clear evidence for a Mycenaean Aphrodite, many scholars view the goddess of sexual desire as a relatively late addition to the Greek pantheon, borrowed from the Phoeni- cians. A persistent minority, however, argue that her roots were Indo- European, and that she was a cousin to Ushas, the Vedic dawn goddess, brought to Cyprus by the Mycenaeans. A third view holds that her ancestor was a Bronze Age Cypriot goddess who incorporated both indigenous and Phoenician elements by the time the Greeks adopted her. 1
In poetry as in cult, she was associated with blooming gardens and all the paraphernalia of female beauty: perfumed textiles, jewels, and mirrors. Incense, dove sacrifices, and myrtle crowns were distinctive features of her worship. Aphrodite was typically honored at several smaller shrines in a given city rather than one major sanctuary, which indicates an important popular element in the development of her cult. Her sanctuaries often inclu- ded a cult statue, which required housing, but only rarely were grandiose temples built for her. Similarly, few state festivals in her honor are attested except in the case of Aphrodite Pandemos, though private activities such as vows and banquets were common, particularly in connection with the securing of husbands or sea journeys safely completed. Though a mother, she is not a "mother goddess. " Above all, as in myth and poetry, she rules sexual unions of every variety, and is therefore incidentally associated with marriage and the conception of children.
Kypris: The Lady of Cyprus
Around 1200, longstanding trade between the Mycenaean Greeks and the Cypriots culminated in Greek colonization at several sites on Cyprus, including Paphos. At about the same time, a monumental sanctuary was constructed in the local style, with an open court and a covered colonnade.
114
APHRODITE
This sanctuary was destined to endure more than a thousand years, and to become the best-known cult site of Aphrodite. Here, according to Homer (Od. 8. 361-66) and Hesiod (Theog. 199), was the goddess' home, the spot where she was born from the sea, and where the smoke of fragrant incense rose from her altar. Not surprisingly, given the multicultural nature of the site, the ancient sources do not agree on whether the origins of the sanctuary were Greek, Cypriot, or Phoenician. One of the legends says that its founder was Agapenor, a king of Arkadia returning from the Trojan war. Archaeo- logical and linguistic evidence of close contacts between Arkadian and Cypriot Greeks in this period suggests that this story contains a grain of truth, but a competing version holds that the sanctuary was founded by Kinyras, an indigenous king whose descendants became the historical kings of Paphos and priests of Aphrodite. For his part, Herodotus (1. 105) says that the Cypriots borrowed the cult of Aphrodite Ourania (that is, Astarte) from Ashkelon in the Levant. 2
In spite of the fame of Paphos, few details of its early cult are known. Inscriptions show that Aphrodite had the Mycenaean title Wanassa (The Lady) until the end of the Classical period, and it is clear that her cult was closely associated with kingship on the Near Eastern model. The older structures in the sanctuary were mostly obliterated by the later Roman temple, and our only sources for the ritual life there are of Roman date. According to Tacitus (Hist. 2. 3-4), the Paphians practiced divination from the entrails of sacrificed animals, but the blood was not allowed to touch the altar, which had to remain pure. This is consistent with the early accounts of incense as a key offering. Tacitus also describes the strange image of the goddess: a large conical stone. A dark grey-green stone of matching shape, slightly over a meter high, was recovered in the excavations. 3 Other sources emphasize the importance of flowers and fragrant botanicals in the cult. The use of perfumed oil, mentioned as part of Aphrodite's toilet in her Paphian shrine in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (5. 61-63), has Mycenaean precedents. Nearby was the Hierokepia (Sacred Garden), perhaps the source for the rose garlands that filled the sanctuary. An important feature of the early cult, not mentioned in the literary sources, is the relationship between the sanctuary and the industry of bronze metallurgy.
Copper slag was found in the sanctuary itself and close by, a pattern that is repeated at other Cypriot cult sites from the Late Bronze Age, where the goddess was worshiped in conjunction with a male deity. This patronage of the island's main export product by a divine pair throws new light on the mythic (but not cultic) association of Aphrodite with the smith god Hephaistos. 4
Among the numerous Cypriot sanctuaries of the goddess, that at Ama- thous, where the population was of indigenous and Phoenician stock, was noted for its unusual, bi-gendered deity. Here the image of the goddess wore female garb, but was bearded and held a scepter. The locals called this deity Aphroditos, a name that was also known in fifth-century Athens. The
115
APHRODITE
androgyny of Aphrodite at Amathous again points to the Near East, for Phoenician Astarte is likewise known to have had a male aspect, but it is also compatible with Greek ideas of Aphrodite as the goddess born of Ouranos' genitals, who governed male sexuality. 5
The export of Aphrodite
The Greeks thought that the oldest cult place of Aphrodite in their lands was the island of Kythera, where an ancient sanctuary of Aphrodite Ourania was attributed to Phoenician founders by Herodotus (1. 105) and others. Archae- ology provides no support for the hypothesis of Phoenician influence on the island, though the sanctuary itself remains unexcavated, and the murex shells exploited by the Phoenicians for purple dye were locally abundant. Certainly this cult was well established by the time of Hesiod (Theog. 191-99), who mentions Aphrodite's brief sojourn there before her emergence from the sea at Cyprus. The remains of a fifth-century Doric temple survive on the island, and the cult statue was an armed Aphrodite who recalled the warlike god- desses Ishtar and Astarte. 6 The goddess probably made her way into mainland Greece during the tenth and ninth centuries from three locations: Cyprus, Kythera, and Krete. Excavations have revealed that the Kretan sanctuaries are among the oldest after those of Cyprus. At Kato Symi, the Archaic sanctuary devoted to Hermes and Aphrodite had a history of continuous use stretching back to Middle Minoan times, though the Minoan predecessors of the pair must have had different names. Again, at Olous there was a Geo- metric temple of Aphrodite and Ares. (Ares is not attested at the site until the double temple of the Roman period, but in other parts of Krete the pair was worshiped from an early date. ) All over the Greek world, Aphrodite is regularly found with a cult partner, either Hermes or Ares, and this appears to be an archaic feature of her worship rather than a later development. 7
Aphrodite Ourania and Pandemos
At Paphos, Kythera, Korinth, Athens, and many other places, Aphrodite was known as Ourania (Heavenly). For the Greeks, this most widely disseminated of her titles evoked the Hesiodic story of the goddess' birth from the severed genitals of Ouranos, Father Sky. They also associated the title with Aphrodite's putative Eastern origins, perhaps because Ishtar/Astarte was known as the "Queen of Heaven" and was likewise a daughter of the sky god. Aphrodite's abode was the heavens, and artists visualized the goddess transported through the night sky, or descending from heaven on a ladder, an Egyptian and Near Eastern symbol of travel between heaven and earth. 8 Much evidence for the cult of Ourania comes from Athens, and its observance there was attributed to the mythical King Aigeus. The goddess had a sanctuary in the city center near the Stoa Poikile with a statue attributed to Pheidias, and an altar
116
APHRODITE
excavated in the area was constructed around 500. In the vicinity of this altar lay a fragmentary, fifth-century votive relief of Aphrodite descending a ladder and later reliefs of the goddess riding on a goat, her favorite sacrificial animal. The iconography of Aphrodite on a goat must have been popular with Greek women, for it was often used to decorate bronze mirrors and jewelry. We find the goat and ladder motifs combined on votive reliefs from outside Attica, as well as on a silver medallion from a brothel in the Kera- meikos that shows the goddess riding through a starry sky accompanied by Hermes and Eros. 9
The sanctuary of Aphrodite by the Ilissos river, situated in a suburban area known as the Gardens, has not been located and is known only from Pausanias' description (1. 19. 2). Here was an image of Aphrodite Ourania in the shape of a herm, a squared-off pillar topped by a head. This shape was not unusual in the cult of Aphrodite, though it is primarily associated with Hermes or Dionysos. It may have been a sign of Aphrodite's bisexual nature, for the gods portrayed in this way were highly phallic; or it may have been a reminder of the goddess' aniconic image at Paphos. While the herm stood in the courtyard, the temple itself contained the best-known work of Pheidias' pupil Alkamenes, "Aphrodite in the Gardens. " Pausanias called this much- admired statue "one of the most noteworthy sights in Athens," but unfortu- nately failed to describe its appearance, leaving modern scholars to speculate based on minimal clues. A prevailing theory holds that two other Aphrodite sanctuaries in the Athens area are duplicates of the one on the Ilissos. Certainly the small sanctuaries at Daphni and on the north slope of the Akropolis are similar to one another, for both were bounded by stony hillsides with niches cut into the rock, both linked the worship of Eros with that of Aphrodite, and both received offerings of anatomical votives in the shape of male and female genitalia. These charming spots, surely filled with greenery in antiquity, correspond to the vase paintings of the Meidian school that show Aphrodite seated on a rock in a garden setting. Aphrodite's connection with vegetation at these shrines recalls the sacred gardens of Near Eastern Astarte and Cypriot Aphrodite Ourania. 10
Pheidias sculpted an Aphrodite Ourania for the Eleans, sponsors of the Olympic games. This work of ivory and gold showed Aphrodite standing with one foot resting on a tortoise, an animal associated with women in Greek folklore because it was always confined to its home. 11 In the sanctuary at Elis, Pheidias' Ourania was juxtaposed with a bronze statue of the goddess riding on a ram, by the fourth-century sculptor Skopas. This image was called Aphrodite Pandemos (of All the People), another widespread cult title of the goddess. Plato (Symp. 180d-181c) attempted to differentiate Ourania and Pandemos as two distinct goddesses, one the celestial deity of "Platonic love" and the other concerned with fleshly pleasures. There is no evidence, how- ever, to suggest that this distinction reflects cult practices or assumptions. Ourania, as we will see, is by no means aloof from fleshly pleasures, while
117
APHRODITE
Pandemos shares the iconography of the "celestial" goddess who travels through the sky.
The epithet Pandemos had to do with Aphrodite's political function as a goddess who unites the citizens in harmony. An Athenian legend about Pandemos says that Theseus founded her worship with that of Peitho (Persuasion) after he united all the people of Attica into one city. 12 Equally indispensable in matters of ero ? s and politics, Peitho was an important con- cept for the emergent Athenian democracy. It is probable that the cult was established around 500, and helped to promote sunousia, the fellowship of citizens. We hear of Athenian tetradistai, or men who gathered to feast in honor of Aphrodite Pandemos on the fourth of every month, a day sacred to both Aphrodite and Hermes. 13 Remnants of the sanctuary have been excavated on the southwest slope of the Akropolis, including a small fourth- century temple with sculpted doves. A later Hellenistic inscription from the site shows that preparations for the state-sponsored festival (known as the Aphrodisia) involved the purification of the sanctuary with a dove sacrifice and the washing of the statues. The cult of Pandemos was an exception to the rule that Aphrodite's worship tended to be less centralized and state- supervised than that of most other Olympian deities. At Erythrai in Ionia, an oracle solicited by the state toward the end of the fifth century advised that the citizens build a temple of Aphrodite Pandemos and supply it with a statue "for the preservation of the people. "14
Figure 9. 1 Aphrodite with dove, votive bronze from Dodona (? ), c. 450. Athens, National Archaeological Museum. Bildarchiv Foto Marburg.
? 118
APHRODITE
An analogue to the legend of Theseus' establishment of the cult of Aphro- dite Pandemos and Peitho is found at Thebes, where the city's Phoenician founder, Kadmos, is said to have married Harmonia, the daughter of Aphro- dite and Ares. Thebans believed that Harmonia, whose name connotes the unity of the citizens, dedicated three ancient wooden statues of Aphrodite on the akropolis. These were named Ourania, Pandemos, and Apostrophia (Averter of Evils). According to Xenophon (Hell. 5. 4. 4), the three Theban civil and military officials known as polemarchoi always celebrated a festival of Aphrodite when their term of office was completed. Similar customs are attested for city officials in Megara, Ionia, and the Aegean islands through dedicatory inscriptions, the earliest of which belongs to fifth-century Keos. 15 While the emphasis at Thebes is on Aphrodite's partnership with the war god Ares, many of these dedications pair her with Hermes. In either case, the union of polar opposites (masculine and feminine or war and love) expresses metaphorically the concepts of civic concord and harmonious order.
Spartan Aphrodite
On the Spartan akropolis, we find an arrangement similar to that at Thebes, with a temple of Aphrodite Areia (of Ares) containing at least two Archaic cult statues. Based on inscribed potsherds from the area, one of these was probably Aphrodite Basilis (Queen). In the seventh century, Spartan colon- ists of Taras and Satyrion in Italy chose to carry this cult to their new home. Taras built an akropolis temple for the goddess, and at neighboring Satyrion worshipers deposited huge numbers of terracotta figurines and pots from the seventh to the third centuries, including one inscribed with the cult title Basilis. The choice of Aphrodite as a patroness may be connected with the legend that the settlers were illegitimate sons of Spartan women. 16 A second Spartan temple was unusual in that it had two stories, each containing its own cult statue. The lower level housed Aphrodite Enoplios (Armed), an Archaic type that may have been copied from Kythera. The upper room contained an unusual cedar statue called Morpho (the Beautiful One). Here the goddess, presumably Aphrodite, was shown enthroned, veiled, and wearing fetters on her feet. She belongs to a category of cult statues deemed to be so powerful and dangerous that they required binding and restraint. The veil too fits this interpretation, for such images were often hidden from view. 17
Aphrodite and "sacred prostitution" at Korinth
On Akrokorinthos, the high rocky citadel of Korinth, Aphrodite was installed as a goddess of the city, probably under the rule of the Bakchiad aristocrats in the eighth century. As in other early cults of Aphrodite, she was depicted with weapons and had the title Ourania, signs of her Near Eastern affinities. 18 The
119
APHRODITE
Korinthian cult, however, differed from most other Greek cults of Aphrodite because the goddess owned slaves who worked as prostitutes. According to the traditional scholarly view, the practice of "sacred prostitution" origin- ated as a fertility rite, and is attested in relation to Ishtar and Asherah. For example, a class of women known as ishtaritum is described in a Babylonian text alongside courtesans "whose favors are many" and prostitutes "whose husbands are legion. "19 On the other hand, this interpretation of certain Mesopotamian cultic functionaries has been vigorously criticized as a scholarly construct, overly reliant on nineteenth-century assumptions about "fertility cult" in the ancient Near East. While the vast textual evidence from cuneiform tablets reveals a bewilderingly large variety of female cultic personnel, some of whom are regularly mentioned alongside prostitutes or in contexts that hint of sexuality, they offer no clear-cut example of a "cultic prostitute," and it is likely that this conceptual category simply does not correspond to the more nuanced and complex roles of Mesopotamian women in relation to their goddesses. 20
Not surprisingly, the practice of "sacred prostitution" at Korinth has also been called into question, since it was assumed to derive directly from the cult of Ishtar. In the Greek instance, however, the evidence is much more con- vincing, and it is important to keep in mind that prostitution for Aphrodite need not be an exact imitation of any Near Eastern model. It could have been based on Greek (mis)understandings of the roles of female cultic personnel in the Near East, or it could even be an independent development. Athenaeus remarks (13. 573d) that it was the practice of individuals to "render" hetairai (courtesans) to Korinthian Aphrodite in payment of vows when their prayers were fulfilled. An example was Xenophon, a citizen who vowed one hundred girls to the goddess in return for victory at the Olympic games. He commis- sioned Pindar to write a song (fr. 122 Snell-Maehler) for the thanksgiving sacrifice, attended by the girls:
Young women, hospitable to many, handmaidens of Peitho in rich Korinth, you who burn the golden tears of pale incense; often you fly in your thoughts to Aphrodite Ourania, the mother of Loves. She gave to you, girls, without blame, to pick the fruit of soft youth on beds of desire. With necessity, all is good . . .
Strabo (8. 6. 20) reports that both men and women dedicated sacred slaves, or hierodules, to the goddess, and that the sanctuary at one time owned more than a thousand of these courtesans, who were a major source of income. 21
As a thriving port and trade depot, Korinth was famous for its prostitutes. Sanctuaries were often expected to be self-supporting, and their income usually derived from estates belonging to the resident deity. In this case, the goddess profited from one of the main industries of Korinth, the sex trade,
120
APHRODITE
through her ownership of slaves who worked as prostitutes. Most, if not all of these slaves must have worked near the harbors, rather than on the Akrokorinthos itself. To modern ears, this arrangement sounds incompatible with "the sacred," yet there is further evidence that the prostitutes of Korinth had a special relationship with Aphrodite. It was an ancient custom that whenever the city had great need, it recruited as many prostitutes as possible to participate in the supplication of the goddess. The most famous instance occurred in 480 when, with the Persian invasion at hand, the hetairai of Korinth prayed to Aphrodite on behalf of the Greeks and the Korinthian soldiery. 22 Still, there is no evidence that Aphrodite's prostitutes acted as priestesses of the goddess, or that consorting with them was in itself a religious act, so "sacred prostitution" is probably a misnomer for their role.
Aphrodite in Lokroi Epizephyrioi
A different form of "sacred prostitution" involving temporary service to Aphrodite is attributed to the people of Cyprus, Lydia, and Lokroi Epizephyrioi by late authors including Clearchus of Cyprus, who says that parents prostituted their freeborn daughters. 23 The case for prostitution in connection with Aphrodite at Lokroi is considerably less credible than that at Korinth, for the sources are not considered reliable and the practice described by Clearchus would have been shocking to standard Greek sensibilities. He may have in mind the story that when the Lokrians were under attack from the rival city of Rhegion in the fifth century, they vowed to prostitute their virgins during the festival of Aphrodite if they were victorious. Hieron of Syracuse intervened on their behalf, and the city was saved; it is unclear whether the promised offering of virgins actually took place. 24
The gift of female sexual services in fulfillment of a vow evokes the customs of Korinth, and it is at least possible that the vow was made in a similar context, where prostitutes were a standard offering to Aphrodite. On this hypothesis, the exigencies of war drove the Lokrians to vow not merely slaves but their own daughters to the goddess, just as the Lokrians of mainland Greece devoted citizen maidens to the temple service of Athena. The famous Ludovisi throne, a ritual object of unknown function which originally stood in a Lokrian temple of Aphrodite, is carved with reliefs showing a nude courtesan playing the double flute on one side and a matron burning incense on the other: a reference to the vow, or perhaps to the different modes by which married women and (non-sacred) prostitutes served the goddess. 25
There is no question that Aphrodite's worship at Lokroi was anomalous in some ways. The oldest known structure at Lokroi is a dining complex near the seashore dating to the seventh century, not long after the initial founding of the colony (later, in the sixth century, a three-room temple was added). The U-Shaped Stoa, as it is known, enclosed three hundred and seventy-one separate pits, each with the buried remains of one or more ritual banquets,
121
APHRODITE
including pottery inscribed with Aphrodite's name. The contents of the pits were laid down from the mid-sixth to the fourth century. While dining facilities are not unusual in sanctuaries, this example is particularly early and the careful deposition of the debris - with each pot and figurine deliberately broken - is unparalleled. Whatever the function of the ritual, the early date of the stoa shows that Aphrodite's cult was of crucial importance to the colonists. 26
At Lokroi, Aphrodite's cult was closely intertwined with that of the most important goddess of Magna Graecia, Persephone. The large collection of fifth-century terracotta pinakes from the Persephone sanctuary at Mannella contain a significant number illustrating mythic and cultic scenes involving Aphrodite, including her birth from the sea. Three pinax types show Aphro- dite with her cult partner Hermes, while Eros too seems to have played a role in her worship here. In one type, she stands in a chariot drawn by a winged boy and girl as Hermes steps up beside her; in another she presents Hermes with a flower as Eros sits on her arm. A third shows cult statues of the pair standing in a temple while a young couple pours libations upon an altar decorated with a copulating satyr and deer. The general impression is that while Persephone's cult focused on pre-nuptial rites and the protection of young children, Aphrodite's cult had to do with women's sexual experience, including that of brides. 27
Figure 9. 2 The birth of Aphrodite on the Ludovisi "Throne," probably from the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Lokroi Epizephyrioi, 460-50. Museo Nazionale Romano. Art Resource.
? 122
APHRODITE
Maritime Aphrodite
Aphrodite's sanctuaries were regularly located at port cities along the major trade routes used by Greek and Phoenician merchants, important dissemin- ators of her cult. An anecdote quoted by Athenaeus (15. 675f-76a) illustrates this point. Herostratos, a merchant plying the waters between Cyprus and the Greek trading emporium of Naukratis in Egypt, purchased a small statue of Aphrodite at Paphos and continued south. Buffeted by a terrible storm, all aboard his ship prayed to the goddess to save them. Fresh myrtle sprouted around the statue, permeating the air with its sweet scent and soothing the seasick men as the skies cleared. The crew arrived safely at Naukratis, and Herostratos was moved to dedicate the image at the sanctuary of Aphrodite, and to distribute crowns of the miraculous myrtle to her worshipers. Hero- stratos is supposed to have lived in early Archaic times, and excavation has shown that the temple in the sanctuary of Aphrodite was one of the oldest structures at Naukratis, founded c. 600 by East Greek traders. Several vases were dedicated here to Aphrodite Pandemos, an appropriate choice for a colony composed of immigrant citizens from varied backgrounds. As a god- dess of sea and sky who aided in navigation, Aphrodite was called Euploia (of Good Sailing), Epilimenia (She at the Harbor), and Pontia (She of the Sea). The sanctuary of Aphrodite Euploia at Knidos was famous for its cult statue by Praxiteles, the first Classical sculptor to show the goddess nude. Surrounded by fine gardens, the temple was constructed on a circular plan so that visitors could enjoy the delights of the statue in the round. 28
Aphrodite and Hippolytos
At both Athens and Trozen, which faced each other across the Saronic gulf, Aphrodite's cult was closely linked with that of Hippolytos. Euripides' play Hippolytos tells how the hero incurred the goddess' wrath because of his devotion to chastity, and how Phaidra, the young wife of Theseus and stepmother of Hippolytos, became the tool of Aphrodite's vengeance. The Athenian cult of Hippolytos was an offshoot of that at Trozen, the result of the popularization of Theseus as an Athenian hero. On the south slope of the Akropolis, in the same area as the sanctuary of Aphrodite Pandemos (and perhaps identical to it) was a shrine of Aphrodite "at Hippolytos," also known as the Hippolyteion. Here the hero received regular sacrifices at his tomb. 29 At Trozen, on the other hand, Hippolytos was a local god whose sanctuary contained a shrine of the goddess, so that their relative status was inverted. The meaning of his name is not transparent, but it contains the root hipp- (horse), suggesting a relationship with the city god Poseidon (both Poseidon and Aphrodite were responsible for his death according to the myths). He was the principal deity in a large, important extramural sanctuary that included a number of interrelated cults. Here, the debris from the site of
123
APHRODITE
his small temple indicates activity as far back as the Geometric period. 30 Pausanias (2. 32. 1) saw the temple with its ancient statue and reported that a priest was dedicated for life to Hippolytos' service. Before marriage, maidens offered a lock of hair at his sanctuary. The complex also included a stadium, overlooked by a temple of Aphrodite Kataskopia, (She Who Observes). Near this temple was a myrtle tree, sacred to the goddess, and the supposed tombs of Hippolytos and Phaidra.
Aphrodite and Adonis
The cult of Aphrodite's paramour Adonis held a special appeal for Greek women, combining the erotic adoration of a beautiful youth with the emo- tional catharsis of lamentation for his death. The Adonis cult was an early import from the Levant, probably via Cyprus, but while many of the outward forms remained the same, its cultural context and significance changed. Adonis was modeled upon Tammuz, the consort of Ishtar whose death was annually lamented by women, and his name is a direct borrowing of the West Semitic adon, Lord. At Phoenician Byblos there was a sanctuary of "Aphrodite and Adonis," that is, the city goddess Astarte and a consort who corresponded to Tammuz. Whereas the cult of Tammuz (Sumerian Dumuzi) enjoyed near-universal recognition in Mesopotamia and his festival was so important that a Babylonian month was named after him, the worship of Adonis was tolerated by many Greek city-states but rarely gained the status of a state-sponsored cult. Adonis was viewed with some ambivalence, pro- bably because his main adherents were women, and in spite of his popularity in certain areas, he retained a fundamentally "foreign" aura. At the core of the cult lay a ritual with no connection to acknowledged sacred space; in Greek contexts before the Hellenistic period, Adonis only rarely possessed a sanctuary, temple or even an altar, making his rites anomalous.
To perform the Adonia, which took place in late summer, women ascended to the roof, where they sang dirges, cried out in grief, and beat their breasts. Sappho (fr. 140a LP) mentions that the women tore their garments, a stand- ard sign of mourning. Other features of Adonis' ritual belong to the cult in Classical Athens. A few days before the Adonia, garden herbs and cereals were sown in broken pots. These tender young plants were brought to the rooftops during the festival, to be withered in the hot sun as emblems of the youthful Adonis' death. Another custom involved the laying out of Adonis dolls as for burial. While the traditional Frazerian concept of Adonis and similar figures as dying "fertility gods" has been increasingly criticized, Detienne's analysis of Adonis as the paradigm of illicit sexuality and sterility, to be set against the fruitful union of husband and wife, has not achieved full acceptance, perhaps because it neglects the Adonis cult's Near Eastern background. 31
124
APHRODITE
Aphrodite and marriage
Aphrodite is sometimes associated with weddings, as we saw at Lokroi, but her involvement has to do specifically with the sexual component of marriage, not its social aspects. On the road from Trozen to Hermione, Pausanias (2. 32. 7) noted a sanctuary of Aphrodite Nymphia (Bridal Aphro- dite), which was connected with Theseus' abduction of the young Helen. In Hermione itself, both virgins and widows who wished to "go with a man" had to sacrifice to the goddess before marriage. The inclusion of widows shows that this was not a rite of passage, but an acknowledgment of Aphro- dite's role in successful marriages. Similarly, widows at Naupaktos went to Aphrodite's cave to pray for husbands. The participation of women at vary- ing stages of life is also evident in the venerable cult of Aphrodite at Sikyon, where the temple was served by a female warden (neo ? koros) "for whom it was no longer permitted to go with a man" and by a maiden priestess, consecrated for one year. Whereas the warden had once been married, the priestess soon would be. The cult statue was a gold and ivory image by Kanachos, the Sikyonian sculptor who created other masterworks for the Thebans and Milesians around 500. The goddess was shown seated, wearing a polos and holding a poppy in one hand and a fruit in the other. Access to the temple was restricted, so visitors gazed upon the statue and offered their prayers from the doorway. This cult is similar in nature to those of the old Achaean goddesses such as Hera or Athena and shows few signs of the Near Eastern influences we saw in other cities. Still, it is typically Aphrodisian in its emphasis on fragrance: the sacrifices were burned on juniper wood with a local aromatic herb that had erotic associations. 32
Further reading
Budin 2003 provides a detailed examination of the goddess' journey to the west from Cyprus and her prehistoric roots, with emphasis on the material evidence. MacLachlan 1992 defends the historicity of sacred prostitution against the growing number of skeptics; it should be read with Westenholz 1989, Assante 2003 and the papers collected in Part I of Faraone and McClure 2006. Williams 1986 summarizes the material evidence for Aphrodite's cult on the Korinthian citadel. Rosenzweig 2004 has full coverage of cults in Athens, primarily from an art-historical perspective, while Redfield 2003 offers many insights about Aphrodite's important role in Lokrian culture.
Artemis' concern for the nurture of human young overlaps with her control over the fertility of the natural world. Particularly in the Peloponnese, where her cults are extremely numerous, Artemis has the characteristics of a nature goddess who promotes the growth of vegetation and is to be found in green, moist places. The cult of Artemis Karyatis (of the Nut Tree) was famed throughout Greece for its dancing maidens, often said to be the inspiration for the columns in maiden form (caryatids) that support the porch of the Athenian Erechtheion and other ancient buildings. Located on the border between Lakonia and Arkadia, Karyai was sacred to Artemis and the nymphs who served as her companions. The girls of Lakonia made an annual pilgrimage there to dance "a traditional local dance" before the goddess' statue, which in Pausanias' day stood in the open air. Here too, the maidens were vulnerable: it was said that the Messenian general Aristomenes and his men kidnapped the daughters of their Lakonian enemies from this sanctuary. 14
As a virgin goddess, Artemis is not asexual but fosters a constant aware- ness of the maturing sexuality of the community's adolescent girls. From a
106
ARTEMIS
patriarchal perspective, the asset of female fertility is always complicated by fears of poaching by rival males (or the desire to engage in such poaching), which helps to explain the regular appearance of the rape motif in Artemis' myths and cults. Still another Peloponnesian cult, that of Artemis Alpheiaia (of the river Alpheios) at Letrinoi, incorporated a legend about the attempted rape of Artemis by the local river god. Artemis escaped recognition by daubing her own face and those of her nymph companions with river mud, an act that probably reflects a lost ritual practice. Artemis and Alpheios shared an altar at Olympia, and the cult spread to the Dorian colony of Syracuse in Sicily, where Artemis Potamia (of the River) was worshiped at a spring said to be the local manifestation of the river Alpheios. 15
Artemis Brauronia
All over the Greek world, women prayed to Artemis for help with gynecological problems, childbirth, and the nurture of young children. Artemis' cult at Brauron, one of the oldest and most important in Attica, was concerned with these functions. The sanctuary, which included a temple and a dining facility, was arranged around a sacred spring and a cave-like cleft in the rocky hillside nearby. This "cave" area was appropriate for a goddess of childbirth, both from a symbolic standpoint and because the Kretan childbirth deity Eileithyia, who is sometimes syncretized with Artemis, was also worshiped in a cave. It is possible that Iphigeneia, whose name means something like "strong in birth," was originally the goddess of Brauron, and that she was demoted to the status of a heroine upon the arrival of Artemis. In Euripides' day (Eur. IT 1462-67), Iphigeneia was remembered as the first priestess at Brauron, and garments of women who died in childbirth were dedicated at her tomb. Excavation has failed to pinpoint the location of this tomb, but it may have been associated with the complex of structures found in the cave area.
Here and in the spring, archaeologists discovered costly gifts to Artemis from the women of Attica: gold jewelry, stone seals and scarab gems, glass beads and vases, and bronze mirrors. 16 But the most frequently dedicated items were articles of women's clothing: belts, tunics, long robes, shawls, and headgear. After using the garments for a time, women gave them to the goddess, often embroidered with their own names or the words "sacred to Artemis. " The items were displayed in the temple in boxes and on racks, and the officials in charge of the sanctuary kept careful records of them. No trace of them exists today, but the temple inventories were carved in stone in the fourth century and set up both at Brauron and at a sister sanctuary on the Athenian Akropolis. These lists make it clear that women gave the best they had to the goddess:
Pheidylla, a white woman's himation in a display box. Mneso, a frog- green garment. Nausis, a lady's himation with a broad purple border in
107
ARTEMIS
wave pattern around the edge. Kleo, a delicate shawl. Phile, a bordered textile. Teisikrateia, a multi-colored Persian style shirt with sleeves. 17
Some of the garments were draped over the cult images of Artemis in the temple, which was first constructed in the sixth century and rebuilt after the Persian invasion in the fifth. There were at least two statues and possibly three, referred to in the inventories as "the old image," "the stone image," and "the standing statue. " As many as five garments at a time were worn by these images, a practice that allowed worshipers to feel they had achieved the closest possible contact with the goddess. 18
Old Attic stories, dating to the founding of Brauron and beyond, tell how Artemis became enraged when local inhabitants killed a sacred bear. The ensuing plague could be stopped only by a maiden sacrifice or by the insti- tution of a ritual in which young girls "played the bear" (arkteuein). 19 The bear was noted in Greek lore for both its fierceness and its maternal devotion; though presumably not commonly encountered in Classical Attica, it had a long history as a sacred yet prized game animal in the prehistoric hunting cultures of Europe. At Brauron, girls between the ages of five and ten danced and ran races beside the altar of Artemis. They wore special yellow robes, which they shed at some point in the rite, for the small painted jars dedicated at the end of their service depict both clothed and naked girls. 20
When the Attic towns were united under Athens, the state took over the Brauronia and entrusted the quadrennial festival to the hieropoioi (doers of the sacred things), the same officials who ran the Panathenaic festival for Athena. Not every girl in Attica could serve as a bear at Brauron, though the painted cups have turned up in several other sites, suggesting that some of the Attic villages held their own Brauronian festivals. "Playing the bear" is often described as a puberty or initiation ritual that prepared the girls for the next stage of life, but clearly they were pre-adolescent, too young to be married even by Greek standards. Rather, the ritual has to do with Artemis' role as a goddess who alternately nurtures and destroys the young of both humans and wild animals. By serving the goddess, the young "bears" appeased her and placed themselves under her protection. Many statues of young children, both boys and girls, were dedicated at Brauron. These were apparently given in thanks for the children's survival, because mortality rates were highest in the first few years of life. 21
Artemis Ephesia
Almost nothing remains of the Artemision at Ephesos, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. This monumental temple was an expression of the awesome power attributed to the goddess, the patroness of the city. The plan consisted of an unroofed central court surrounded by an outer phalanx of over a hundred columns, each nearly sixty feet tall. Thirty-six of
108
ARTEMIS
the columns in the front had bases carved with relief sculptures, a feature inherited from Hittite palace architecture, so that entering the temple was like walking through a gallery of gods and heroes. At the heart of the temple was the famous cult image, mysteriously un-Hellenic in appearance. When Paul of Tarsos (Acts 18:19-20:1) visited Ephesos as a missionary in the first century, he found a thriving city that owed much of its prosperity to the popular cult of Artemis.
The Greek settlers who reached the Anatolian coast about 1000 encoun- tered the deities of the indigenous peoples. Most prominent among these was a mother goddess who held a dominant position in the pantheons of this region. She was worshiped under many local names and in many variations, but is best known as Kybele or the Great Goddess. The Greeks chose to recognize their own Artemis in this foreign deity, in spite of the fact that Artemis was emphatically a virgin, not a mother. Yet like her Anatolian counterpart, Artemis was a mountain-roving goddess and a Mistress of Animals.
It is likely that the Greeks found a pre-existing cult at the site of the later Artemision, for legends attributed the founding of the cult to the native Amazons. According to Callimachus (Hymn 3. 237-42), the women warriors set up the goddess' statue beneath an oak tree and danced around it in their armor. Both Artemis' early epithet Oupis/Opis and the name Ephesos itself seem to be etymological descendants of the Hittite town Apasa, which occupied the site in the Bronze Age. While there are Mycenaean and Proto- Geometric potsherds at the site, the earliest archaeological remains securely attributed to the cult are those of a hundred-foot eighth-century temple (hekatompedon) with a surrounding colonnade. Following the local practice, the entrance faced west rather than east. By the next century, there was a large altar opposite the entrance with a special base for the cult image; presumably it was brought out of the temple to witness sacrifices at close quarters. Beside the altar was a sacred spring, perhaps the focus of the earliest cult, and the entire site was marshy and wet.
The evidence suggests that a statue of the goddess was an important ele- ment of the worship from at least the seventh century onward. We know little about the earliest cult image, but a new statue seems to have been commis- sioned with the construction of the massive Archaic temple in the sixth century. Literary sources tell us that the sculptor Endoios, who made several other famous cult statues, created the Artemis. It was similar in appearance to the Archaic Hera of Samos: a rigidly frontal standing figure with legs together, swathed in a tight garment. The arms were bent at the elbows and held forward, and the goddess wore a high crown called a polos. This basic wooden image, probably smaller than life-size, was adorned with a variety of objects: from her hands hung long knotted ribbons, she was draped with cloth garments including a veil, and she wore fine necklaces. Eventually, she was given an elaborate chest ornament, a feature characteristic of Anatolian
109
ARTEMIS
cult images. Covered with globe-like objects, this pectoral was later mis- understood by both ancients and moderns, who thought that the goddess was many-breasted. Votive reliefs depicting the Zeus of Labraunda with a similar pectoral falsify the breast theory, though it was a favorite of early Christian authors, and a few ancient copies of the Ephesian statue actually have nipples, suggesting that the globes seemed breastlike to some pagan worshipers. 22 A recent hypothesis holds that the globe-like objects were scrotal sacs from sacrificed bulls, symbols of fertility. More likely suggestions are that they represent the large, globular dates harvested from the date palm under which Artemis was born in Ephesian Ortygia, according to local legend, or that they can be traced back to a leather bag considered a divine attribute in Hittite religion. It is unclear whether the pectoral was added in the Hellenistic period or had Archaic origins. The panels of Artemis' skirt were covered with a profusion of small relief images. These were a develop- ment of early modes of ornamentation for cult statues, in both the Near East and Greece, which involved fixing hammered plates of gold to the statues. 23
Figure8. 2 ArtemisEphesia. Romanalabasterandbronzecopyofcultstatue,original c. 500. Ht 2. 03 m. Naples, Museo Nazionale. Alinari/Art Resource.
? 110
ARTEMIS
Beneath the Archaic temple, the original excavators found a collection of valuable objects including ninety-three Lydian coins (the earliest known coinage) and intricately crafted items of gold, ivory, terracotta, and bronze. More recent investigations revealed a cache of jewelry contemporary with the Geometric temple, including many amber beads that may have been used to adorn the cult statue. The Archaic stone temple was constructed with help from the Lydian monarch Kroisos, who had his name inscribed on one of the column drums. It endured until the fourth century, when it was consumed in a fire set by a madman. The Ephesians, men and women, gave their own jewelry toward its restoration, which took more than a century. 24
The archaeological remains from the sanctuary include large numbers of animal bones, primarily those of sheep and goats, but cattle, pigs, and a wide variety of wild animals are also attested. Slightly fewer than one hundred deer bones were found around the hekatompedon in the same areas as the ovicaprid bones; this suggests that they were sacrificed. Other bones of wild animals, such as bear teeth, may have been brought to the sanctuary as offer- ings. A "horn altar" composed of goat horns within a stone casing recalls similar Apolline altars on Delos and at Dreros in Krete. 25
We know surprisingly little about the rituals conducted for Artemis at Ephesos in the Archaic and Classical periods; we can only make guesses based on later evidence. A first-century inscription describes a sacred pro- cession including a singer and several individuals specially chosen to carry salt, wild celery, a garment or cloth, and the kosmos, or accessories, of the goddess. A late lexicographer provides context for this inscription, telling of a ritual in which the cult image is brought down to the sea, laid on a bed of wild celery, and given a meal of salt. 26 According to the temple legend, Klymene, the daughter of the king, once treated the goddess to this meal as a game, and she responded by demanding an annual reenactment of the ritual. Such rites focused on the dressing and feeding of cult images are not unknown in Greece, but are more often attested in Near Eastern and Egyptian sources.
A typically Anatolian feature of the Artemision, perhaps borrowed from the cult of the Great Mother, was the eunuch priest called the Megabyzos, a word of Persian origin. The Athenian mercenary Xenophon (An. 5. 3. 6) speaks of his dealings with one of these priests, with whom he deposited money for safekeeping. The Megabyzoi were held in great honor among the Ephesians, though they faded away during the Hellenistic period. 27 Like many other ancient sanctuaries, the Artemision was a place of asylum for fugitives and suppliants of all kinds. The inviolate aura of the sanctuary was so strong that according to legend, when the Ephesians came under attack by Kroisos, they stretched ropes about a mile from the gates of their city to the columns of the temple. By remaining in physical contact with the sanctuary, they attempted to extend its protection to the city itself. 28
Ephesian Artemis, unlike her mainland counterparts, was a city goddess concerned primarily with the prosperity and safety of the Ephesians, yet her
111
ARTEMIS
great fame encouraged the spread of her cult. When sending a colony to Massilia (Marseilles) around 600, the people of Ionian Phokaia were instruc- ted by an oracle to bring with them a guide from Ephesos and a copy of the cult image. Meanwhile, an Ephesian woman named Aristarche dreamed that the goddess stood beside her and commanded her to go with the Phokaians. Strabo (4. 1. 4) tells how she became the first priestess of the goddess at Massilia, where a temple was constructed and the rituals performed at Ephesos were preserved unchanged. Another example shows how the cult could be spread through private devotion. After visiting the Artemision, Xenophon (An. 5. 3. 4-13) decided to build a miniature copy of the temple for the goddess on his land in Skillous near Olympia. Within it he placed a cypresswood copy of the cult image, and every year he held a banquet in honor of Ephesian Artemis for the people living in the district.
Artemis on Delos
Ephesos and Delos put forward competing claims to be the birthplace of Artemis, but the Delian claim became more widely accepted. Here the triad of Apollo, Artemis, and Leto was worshiped from the eighth century onward, and these cults, particularly that of Artemis, may have had Mycenaean ante- cedents. One of the enduring riddles of Delian archaeology is the nature of the cache of precious objects found beneath the Archaic (c. 700) temple of Artemis. This was a foundation deposit like the one discovered beneath the temple at Ephesos, but it consisted of true antiques: Mycenaean gold orna- ments, a cache of ivory pieces including plaques carved in relief, bronze arrowheads, and potsherds spanning the gap to the Geometric period. The excavator suggested that these were the collected votives from a Mycenaean temple of "pre-Artemis" that preceded the Archaic one and stood on the spot until it was replaced. Others have questioned this reconstruction of a con- tinuous cult because there is little evidence that the island was inhabited from the eleventh to ninth centuries. 29 Still, the deposit suggests that the Archaic temple builders wished to emphasize links to the past. Perhaps they chanced upon a long-buried hoard and piously placed the ancient treasures beneath the new temple.
The richest concentrations of Mycenaean and Geometric votives on Delos were found around Artemis' sanctuary, not that of Apollo, the dominant deity in later centuries. Even in the Classical period, the Artemision remained the spot where the most important votive offerings and heirlooms were pre- served. Among these was the famous seventh-century kore (maiden) dedicated by Nikandre to "the Far-Shooter," the oldest Greek example of a larger than life-size marble statue. Because the hands are pierced to hold attributes, the statue probably represents Artemis rather than a worshiper. Its size and proportions were inspired by Egyptian art. In the temple itself was a seated image of the goddess. Hellenistic inventories of the temple's treasures record
112
ARTEMIS
that this statue possessed an extensive wardrobe including crowns, robes, and a necklace. 30
Artemis' sanctuary was associated with two tombs said to be those of maidens from the land of the Hyperboreans, the legendary northern people who sent offerings to Apollo. According to Herodotus (4. 35), Arge and Opis came to the island "at the same time as the gods themselves. " Upon their tomb, located behind the Artemision, the Delians scattered ashes from the thighbones burned at the altar. The maidens were the subject of ancient songs, and the Delian women had a custom of taking collections on their behalf. When excavated, their shrine turned out to be a real tomb of Mycenaean date. Another pair of maidens, Hyperoche and Laodike, had a monument in the Artemision itself. Legend said that they came to bring thank offerings for the birth of Apollo and Artemis, but they died without returning home. 31 The tale of these girls who died young formed the basis for a Delian rite of passage to adulthood: both girls and boys cut their hair at adolescence and laid it on the tomb as a sign of mourning. For the girls, this was a prelude to marriage. The reason for the location of the monument in the Artemision is clear, for Artemis herself often presided over such rites. Plutarch (Vit. Arist. 20. 6) tells us that Artemis Eukleia (of Glory) had an altar and image in the marketplace of every Boiotian and Lokrian town, where she received offer- ings from couples about to be married.
Further reading
Vernant 1991 gathers some essential writings (Chapters 11-14) on the "other- ness" of Artemis, a quality she shares with Dionysos. Cole 2004 (Chapters 6-7) deals with the goddess of the wilderness in relation to the civilized spaces of polis and sanctuary. The web of connections between Artemis, Gorgo, and the prehistoric Mistress of Animals, and the goddess' patronage of warriors are explored in Marinatos 2000. Faraone 2003 rejects the consensus view that the rites at Brauron pertain to female initiation and focuses instead on the way the ritual functions to placate the anger of Artemis. On Iphigeneia, see Bremmer 2002.
113
9
THE PERSUASIVE GODDESS Aphrodite
Aphrodite was universally recognized as the Lady of Cyprus, the cosmopoli- tan island where Greek colonists and mariners were exposed at an early date to the cultures of the Near East. Because of the many similarities between Aphrodite and Semitic Ishtar/Astarte, and the lack of clear evidence for a Mycenaean Aphrodite, many scholars view the goddess of sexual desire as a relatively late addition to the Greek pantheon, borrowed from the Phoeni- cians. A persistent minority, however, argue that her roots were Indo- European, and that she was a cousin to Ushas, the Vedic dawn goddess, brought to Cyprus by the Mycenaeans. A third view holds that her ancestor was a Bronze Age Cypriot goddess who incorporated both indigenous and Phoenician elements by the time the Greeks adopted her. 1
In poetry as in cult, she was associated with blooming gardens and all the paraphernalia of female beauty: perfumed textiles, jewels, and mirrors. Incense, dove sacrifices, and myrtle crowns were distinctive features of her worship. Aphrodite was typically honored at several smaller shrines in a given city rather than one major sanctuary, which indicates an important popular element in the development of her cult. Her sanctuaries often inclu- ded a cult statue, which required housing, but only rarely were grandiose temples built for her. Similarly, few state festivals in her honor are attested except in the case of Aphrodite Pandemos, though private activities such as vows and banquets were common, particularly in connection with the securing of husbands or sea journeys safely completed. Though a mother, she is not a "mother goddess. " Above all, as in myth and poetry, she rules sexual unions of every variety, and is therefore incidentally associated with marriage and the conception of children.
Kypris: The Lady of Cyprus
Around 1200, longstanding trade between the Mycenaean Greeks and the Cypriots culminated in Greek colonization at several sites on Cyprus, including Paphos. At about the same time, a monumental sanctuary was constructed in the local style, with an open court and a covered colonnade.
114
APHRODITE
This sanctuary was destined to endure more than a thousand years, and to become the best-known cult site of Aphrodite. Here, according to Homer (Od. 8. 361-66) and Hesiod (Theog. 199), was the goddess' home, the spot where she was born from the sea, and where the smoke of fragrant incense rose from her altar. Not surprisingly, given the multicultural nature of the site, the ancient sources do not agree on whether the origins of the sanctuary were Greek, Cypriot, or Phoenician. One of the legends says that its founder was Agapenor, a king of Arkadia returning from the Trojan war. Archaeo- logical and linguistic evidence of close contacts between Arkadian and Cypriot Greeks in this period suggests that this story contains a grain of truth, but a competing version holds that the sanctuary was founded by Kinyras, an indigenous king whose descendants became the historical kings of Paphos and priests of Aphrodite. For his part, Herodotus (1. 105) says that the Cypriots borrowed the cult of Aphrodite Ourania (that is, Astarte) from Ashkelon in the Levant. 2
In spite of the fame of Paphos, few details of its early cult are known. Inscriptions show that Aphrodite had the Mycenaean title Wanassa (The Lady) until the end of the Classical period, and it is clear that her cult was closely associated with kingship on the Near Eastern model. The older structures in the sanctuary were mostly obliterated by the later Roman temple, and our only sources for the ritual life there are of Roman date. According to Tacitus (Hist. 2. 3-4), the Paphians practiced divination from the entrails of sacrificed animals, but the blood was not allowed to touch the altar, which had to remain pure. This is consistent with the early accounts of incense as a key offering. Tacitus also describes the strange image of the goddess: a large conical stone. A dark grey-green stone of matching shape, slightly over a meter high, was recovered in the excavations. 3 Other sources emphasize the importance of flowers and fragrant botanicals in the cult. The use of perfumed oil, mentioned as part of Aphrodite's toilet in her Paphian shrine in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (5. 61-63), has Mycenaean precedents. Nearby was the Hierokepia (Sacred Garden), perhaps the source for the rose garlands that filled the sanctuary. An important feature of the early cult, not mentioned in the literary sources, is the relationship between the sanctuary and the industry of bronze metallurgy.
Copper slag was found in the sanctuary itself and close by, a pattern that is repeated at other Cypriot cult sites from the Late Bronze Age, where the goddess was worshiped in conjunction with a male deity. This patronage of the island's main export product by a divine pair throws new light on the mythic (but not cultic) association of Aphrodite with the smith god Hephaistos. 4
Among the numerous Cypriot sanctuaries of the goddess, that at Ama- thous, where the population was of indigenous and Phoenician stock, was noted for its unusual, bi-gendered deity. Here the image of the goddess wore female garb, but was bearded and held a scepter. The locals called this deity Aphroditos, a name that was also known in fifth-century Athens. The
115
APHRODITE
androgyny of Aphrodite at Amathous again points to the Near East, for Phoenician Astarte is likewise known to have had a male aspect, but it is also compatible with Greek ideas of Aphrodite as the goddess born of Ouranos' genitals, who governed male sexuality. 5
The export of Aphrodite
The Greeks thought that the oldest cult place of Aphrodite in their lands was the island of Kythera, where an ancient sanctuary of Aphrodite Ourania was attributed to Phoenician founders by Herodotus (1. 105) and others. Archae- ology provides no support for the hypothesis of Phoenician influence on the island, though the sanctuary itself remains unexcavated, and the murex shells exploited by the Phoenicians for purple dye were locally abundant. Certainly this cult was well established by the time of Hesiod (Theog. 191-99), who mentions Aphrodite's brief sojourn there before her emergence from the sea at Cyprus. The remains of a fifth-century Doric temple survive on the island, and the cult statue was an armed Aphrodite who recalled the warlike god- desses Ishtar and Astarte. 6 The goddess probably made her way into mainland Greece during the tenth and ninth centuries from three locations: Cyprus, Kythera, and Krete. Excavations have revealed that the Kretan sanctuaries are among the oldest after those of Cyprus. At Kato Symi, the Archaic sanctuary devoted to Hermes and Aphrodite had a history of continuous use stretching back to Middle Minoan times, though the Minoan predecessors of the pair must have had different names. Again, at Olous there was a Geo- metric temple of Aphrodite and Ares. (Ares is not attested at the site until the double temple of the Roman period, but in other parts of Krete the pair was worshiped from an early date. ) All over the Greek world, Aphrodite is regularly found with a cult partner, either Hermes or Ares, and this appears to be an archaic feature of her worship rather than a later development. 7
Aphrodite Ourania and Pandemos
At Paphos, Kythera, Korinth, Athens, and many other places, Aphrodite was known as Ourania (Heavenly). For the Greeks, this most widely disseminated of her titles evoked the Hesiodic story of the goddess' birth from the severed genitals of Ouranos, Father Sky. They also associated the title with Aphrodite's putative Eastern origins, perhaps because Ishtar/Astarte was known as the "Queen of Heaven" and was likewise a daughter of the sky god. Aphrodite's abode was the heavens, and artists visualized the goddess transported through the night sky, or descending from heaven on a ladder, an Egyptian and Near Eastern symbol of travel between heaven and earth. 8 Much evidence for the cult of Ourania comes from Athens, and its observance there was attributed to the mythical King Aigeus. The goddess had a sanctuary in the city center near the Stoa Poikile with a statue attributed to Pheidias, and an altar
116
APHRODITE
excavated in the area was constructed around 500. In the vicinity of this altar lay a fragmentary, fifth-century votive relief of Aphrodite descending a ladder and later reliefs of the goddess riding on a goat, her favorite sacrificial animal. The iconography of Aphrodite on a goat must have been popular with Greek women, for it was often used to decorate bronze mirrors and jewelry. We find the goat and ladder motifs combined on votive reliefs from outside Attica, as well as on a silver medallion from a brothel in the Kera- meikos that shows the goddess riding through a starry sky accompanied by Hermes and Eros. 9
The sanctuary of Aphrodite by the Ilissos river, situated in a suburban area known as the Gardens, has not been located and is known only from Pausanias' description (1. 19. 2). Here was an image of Aphrodite Ourania in the shape of a herm, a squared-off pillar topped by a head. This shape was not unusual in the cult of Aphrodite, though it is primarily associated with Hermes or Dionysos. It may have been a sign of Aphrodite's bisexual nature, for the gods portrayed in this way were highly phallic; or it may have been a reminder of the goddess' aniconic image at Paphos. While the herm stood in the courtyard, the temple itself contained the best-known work of Pheidias' pupil Alkamenes, "Aphrodite in the Gardens. " Pausanias called this much- admired statue "one of the most noteworthy sights in Athens," but unfortu- nately failed to describe its appearance, leaving modern scholars to speculate based on minimal clues. A prevailing theory holds that two other Aphrodite sanctuaries in the Athens area are duplicates of the one on the Ilissos. Certainly the small sanctuaries at Daphni and on the north slope of the Akropolis are similar to one another, for both were bounded by stony hillsides with niches cut into the rock, both linked the worship of Eros with that of Aphrodite, and both received offerings of anatomical votives in the shape of male and female genitalia. These charming spots, surely filled with greenery in antiquity, correspond to the vase paintings of the Meidian school that show Aphrodite seated on a rock in a garden setting. Aphrodite's connection with vegetation at these shrines recalls the sacred gardens of Near Eastern Astarte and Cypriot Aphrodite Ourania. 10
Pheidias sculpted an Aphrodite Ourania for the Eleans, sponsors of the Olympic games. This work of ivory and gold showed Aphrodite standing with one foot resting on a tortoise, an animal associated with women in Greek folklore because it was always confined to its home. 11 In the sanctuary at Elis, Pheidias' Ourania was juxtaposed with a bronze statue of the goddess riding on a ram, by the fourth-century sculptor Skopas. This image was called Aphrodite Pandemos (of All the People), another widespread cult title of the goddess. Plato (Symp. 180d-181c) attempted to differentiate Ourania and Pandemos as two distinct goddesses, one the celestial deity of "Platonic love" and the other concerned with fleshly pleasures. There is no evidence, how- ever, to suggest that this distinction reflects cult practices or assumptions. Ourania, as we will see, is by no means aloof from fleshly pleasures, while
117
APHRODITE
Pandemos shares the iconography of the "celestial" goddess who travels through the sky.
The epithet Pandemos had to do with Aphrodite's political function as a goddess who unites the citizens in harmony. An Athenian legend about Pandemos says that Theseus founded her worship with that of Peitho (Persuasion) after he united all the people of Attica into one city. 12 Equally indispensable in matters of ero ? s and politics, Peitho was an important con- cept for the emergent Athenian democracy. It is probable that the cult was established around 500, and helped to promote sunousia, the fellowship of citizens. We hear of Athenian tetradistai, or men who gathered to feast in honor of Aphrodite Pandemos on the fourth of every month, a day sacred to both Aphrodite and Hermes. 13 Remnants of the sanctuary have been excavated on the southwest slope of the Akropolis, including a small fourth- century temple with sculpted doves. A later Hellenistic inscription from the site shows that preparations for the state-sponsored festival (known as the Aphrodisia) involved the purification of the sanctuary with a dove sacrifice and the washing of the statues. The cult of Pandemos was an exception to the rule that Aphrodite's worship tended to be less centralized and state- supervised than that of most other Olympian deities. At Erythrai in Ionia, an oracle solicited by the state toward the end of the fifth century advised that the citizens build a temple of Aphrodite Pandemos and supply it with a statue "for the preservation of the people. "14
Figure 9. 1 Aphrodite with dove, votive bronze from Dodona (? ), c. 450. Athens, National Archaeological Museum. Bildarchiv Foto Marburg.
? 118
APHRODITE
An analogue to the legend of Theseus' establishment of the cult of Aphro- dite Pandemos and Peitho is found at Thebes, where the city's Phoenician founder, Kadmos, is said to have married Harmonia, the daughter of Aphro- dite and Ares. Thebans believed that Harmonia, whose name connotes the unity of the citizens, dedicated three ancient wooden statues of Aphrodite on the akropolis. These were named Ourania, Pandemos, and Apostrophia (Averter of Evils). According to Xenophon (Hell. 5. 4. 4), the three Theban civil and military officials known as polemarchoi always celebrated a festival of Aphrodite when their term of office was completed. Similar customs are attested for city officials in Megara, Ionia, and the Aegean islands through dedicatory inscriptions, the earliest of which belongs to fifth-century Keos. 15 While the emphasis at Thebes is on Aphrodite's partnership with the war god Ares, many of these dedications pair her with Hermes. In either case, the union of polar opposites (masculine and feminine or war and love) expresses metaphorically the concepts of civic concord and harmonious order.
Spartan Aphrodite
On the Spartan akropolis, we find an arrangement similar to that at Thebes, with a temple of Aphrodite Areia (of Ares) containing at least two Archaic cult statues. Based on inscribed potsherds from the area, one of these was probably Aphrodite Basilis (Queen). In the seventh century, Spartan colon- ists of Taras and Satyrion in Italy chose to carry this cult to their new home. Taras built an akropolis temple for the goddess, and at neighboring Satyrion worshipers deposited huge numbers of terracotta figurines and pots from the seventh to the third centuries, including one inscribed with the cult title Basilis. The choice of Aphrodite as a patroness may be connected with the legend that the settlers were illegitimate sons of Spartan women. 16 A second Spartan temple was unusual in that it had two stories, each containing its own cult statue. The lower level housed Aphrodite Enoplios (Armed), an Archaic type that may have been copied from Kythera. The upper room contained an unusual cedar statue called Morpho (the Beautiful One). Here the goddess, presumably Aphrodite, was shown enthroned, veiled, and wearing fetters on her feet. She belongs to a category of cult statues deemed to be so powerful and dangerous that they required binding and restraint. The veil too fits this interpretation, for such images were often hidden from view. 17
Aphrodite and "sacred prostitution" at Korinth
On Akrokorinthos, the high rocky citadel of Korinth, Aphrodite was installed as a goddess of the city, probably under the rule of the Bakchiad aristocrats in the eighth century. As in other early cults of Aphrodite, she was depicted with weapons and had the title Ourania, signs of her Near Eastern affinities. 18 The
119
APHRODITE
Korinthian cult, however, differed from most other Greek cults of Aphrodite because the goddess owned slaves who worked as prostitutes. According to the traditional scholarly view, the practice of "sacred prostitution" origin- ated as a fertility rite, and is attested in relation to Ishtar and Asherah. For example, a class of women known as ishtaritum is described in a Babylonian text alongside courtesans "whose favors are many" and prostitutes "whose husbands are legion. "19 On the other hand, this interpretation of certain Mesopotamian cultic functionaries has been vigorously criticized as a scholarly construct, overly reliant on nineteenth-century assumptions about "fertility cult" in the ancient Near East. While the vast textual evidence from cuneiform tablets reveals a bewilderingly large variety of female cultic personnel, some of whom are regularly mentioned alongside prostitutes or in contexts that hint of sexuality, they offer no clear-cut example of a "cultic prostitute," and it is likely that this conceptual category simply does not correspond to the more nuanced and complex roles of Mesopotamian women in relation to their goddesses. 20
Not surprisingly, the practice of "sacred prostitution" at Korinth has also been called into question, since it was assumed to derive directly from the cult of Ishtar. In the Greek instance, however, the evidence is much more con- vincing, and it is important to keep in mind that prostitution for Aphrodite need not be an exact imitation of any Near Eastern model. It could have been based on Greek (mis)understandings of the roles of female cultic personnel in the Near East, or it could even be an independent development. Athenaeus remarks (13. 573d) that it was the practice of individuals to "render" hetairai (courtesans) to Korinthian Aphrodite in payment of vows when their prayers were fulfilled. An example was Xenophon, a citizen who vowed one hundred girls to the goddess in return for victory at the Olympic games. He commis- sioned Pindar to write a song (fr. 122 Snell-Maehler) for the thanksgiving sacrifice, attended by the girls:
Young women, hospitable to many, handmaidens of Peitho in rich Korinth, you who burn the golden tears of pale incense; often you fly in your thoughts to Aphrodite Ourania, the mother of Loves. She gave to you, girls, without blame, to pick the fruit of soft youth on beds of desire. With necessity, all is good . . .
Strabo (8. 6. 20) reports that both men and women dedicated sacred slaves, or hierodules, to the goddess, and that the sanctuary at one time owned more than a thousand of these courtesans, who were a major source of income. 21
As a thriving port and trade depot, Korinth was famous for its prostitutes. Sanctuaries were often expected to be self-supporting, and their income usually derived from estates belonging to the resident deity. In this case, the goddess profited from one of the main industries of Korinth, the sex trade,
120
APHRODITE
through her ownership of slaves who worked as prostitutes. Most, if not all of these slaves must have worked near the harbors, rather than on the Akrokorinthos itself. To modern ears, this arrangement sounds incompatible with "the sacred," yet there is further evidence that the prostitutes of Korinth had a special relationship with Aphrodite. It was an ancient custom that whenever the city had great need, it recruited as many prostitutes as possible to participate in the supplication of the goddess. The most famous instance occurred in 480 when, with the Persian invasion at hand, the hetairai of Korinth prayed to Aphrodite on behalf of the Greeks and the Korinthian soldiery. 22 Still, there is no evidence that Aphrodite's prostitutes acted as priestesses of the goddess, or that consorting with them was in itself a religious act, so "sacred prostitution" is probably a misnomer for their role.
Aphrodite in Lokroi Epizephyrioi
A different form of "sacred prostitution" involving temporary service to Aphrodite is attributed to the people of Cyprus, Lydia, and Lokroi Epizephyrioi by late authors including Clearchus of Cyprus, who says that parents prostituted their freeborn daughters. 23 The case for prostitution in connection with Aphrodite at Lokroi is considerably less credible than that at Korinth, for the sources are not considered reliable and the practice described by Clearchus would have been shocking to standard Greek sensibilities. He may have in mind the story that when the Lokrians were under attack from the rival city of Rhegion in the fifth century, they vowed to prostitute their virgins during the festival of Aphrodite if they were victorious. Hieron of Syracuse intervened on their behalf, and the city was saved; it is unclear whether the promised offering of virgins actually took place. 24
The gift of female sexual services in fulfillment of a vow evokes the customs of Korinth, and it is at least possible that the vow was made in a similar context, where prostitutes were a standard offering to Aphrodite. On this hypothesis, the exigencies of war drove the Lokrians to vow not merely slaves but their own daughters to the goddess, just as the Lokrians of mainland Greece devoted citizen maidens to the temple service of Athena. The famous Ludovisi throne, a ritual object of unknown function which originally stood in a Lokrian temple of Aphrodite, is carved with reliefs showing a nude courtesan playing the double flute on one side and a matron burning incense on the other: a reference to the vow, or perhaps to the different modes by which married women and (non-sacred) prostitutes served the goddess. 25
There is no question that Aphrodite's worship at Lokroi was anomalous in some ways. The oldest known structure at Lokroi is a dining complex near the seashore dating to the seventh century, not long after the initial founding of the colony (later, in the sixth century, a three-room temple was added). The U-Shaped Stoa, as it is known, enclosed three hundred and seventy-one separate pits, each with the buried remains of one or more ritual banquets,
121
APHRODITE
including pottery inscribed with Aphrodite's name. The contents of the pits were laid down from the mid-sixth to the fourth century. While dining facilities are not unusual in sanctuaries, this example is particularly early and the careful deposition of the debris - with each pot and figurine deliberately broken - is unparalleled. Whatever the function of the ritual, the early date of the stoa shows that Aphrodite's cult was of crucial importance to the colonists. 26
At Lokroi, Aphrodite's cult was closely intertwined with that of the most important goddess of Magna Graecia, Persephone. The large collection of fifth-century terracotta pinakes from the Persephone sanctuary at Mannella contain a significant number illustrating mythic and cultic scenes involving Aphrodite, including her birth from the sea. Three pinax types show Aphro- dite with her cult partner Hermes, while Eros too seems to have played a role in her worship here. In one type, she stands in a chariot drawn by a winged boy and girl as Hermes steps up beside her; in another she presents Hermes with a flower as Eros sits on her arm. A third shows cult statues of the pair standing in a temple while a young couple pours libations upon an altar decorated with a copulating satyr and deer. The general impression is that while Persephone's cult focused on pre-nuptial rites and the protection of young children, Aphrodite's cult had to do with women's sexual experience, including that of brides. 27
Figure 9. 2 The birth of Aphrodite on the Ludovisi "Throne," probably from the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Lokroi Epizephyrioi, 460-50. Museo Nazionale Romano. Art Resource.
? 122
APHRODITE
Maritime Aphrodite
Aphrodite's sanctuaries were regularly located at port cities along the major trade routes used by Greek and Phoenician merchants, important dissemin- ators of her cult. An anecdote quoted by Athenaeus (15. 675f-76a) illustrates this point. Herostratos, a merchant plying the waters between Cyprus and the Greek trading emporium of Naukratis in Egypt, purchased a small statue of Aphrodite at Paphos and continued south. Buffeted by a terrible storm, all aboard his ship prayed to the goddess to save them. Fresh myrtle sprouted around the statue, permeating the air with its sweet scent and soothing the seasick men as the skies cleared. The crew arrived safely at Naukratis, and Herostratos was moved to dedicate the image at the sanctuary of Aphrodite, and to distribute crowns of the miraculous myrtle to her worshipers. Hero- stratos is supposed to have lived in early Archaic times, and excavation has shown that the temple in the sanctuary of Aphrodite was one of the oldest structures at Naukratis, founded c. 600 by East Greek traders. Several vases were dedicated here to Aphrodite Pandemos, an appropriate choice for a colony composed of immigrant citizens from varied backgrounds. As a god- dess of sea and sky who aided in navigation, Aphrodite was called Euploia (of Good Sailing), Epilimenia (She at the Harbor), and Pontia (She of the Sea). The sanctuary of Aphrodite Euploia at Knidos was famous for its cult statue by Praxiteles, the first Classical sculptor to show the goddess nude. Surrounded by fine gardens, the temple was constructed on a circular plan so that visitors could enjoy the delights of the statue in the round. 28
Aphrodite and Hippolytos
At both Athens and Trozen, which faced each other across the Saronic gulf, Aphrodite's cult was closely linked with that of Hippolytos. Euripides' play Hippolytos tells how the hero incurred the goddess' wrath because of his devotion to chastity, and how Phaidra, the young wife of Theseus and stepmother of Hippolytos, became the tool of Aphrodite's vengeance. The Athenian cult of Hippolytos was an offshoot of that at Trozen, the result of the popularization of Theseus as an Athenian hero. On the south slope of the Akropolis, in the same area as the sanctuary of Aphrodite Pandemos (and perhaps identical to it) was a shrine of Aphrodite "at Hippolytos," also known as the Hippolyteion. Here the hero received regular sacrifices at his tomb. 29 At Trozen, on the other hand, Hippolytos was a local god whose sanctuary contained a shrine of the goddess, so that their relative status was inverted. The meaning of his name is not transparent, but it contains the root hipp- (horse), suggesting a relationship with the city god Poseidon (both Poseidon and Aphrodite were responsible for his death according to the myths). He was the principal deity in a large, important extramural sanctuary that included a number of interrelated cults. Here, the debris from the site of
123
APHRODITE
his small temple indicates activity as far back as the Geometric period. 30 Pausanias (2. 32. 1) saw the temple with its ancient statue and reported that a priest was dedicated for life to Hippolytos' service. Before marriage, maidens offered a lock of hair at his sanctuary. The complex also included a stadium, overlooked by a temple of Aphrodite Kataskopia, (She Who Observes). Near this temple was a myrtle tree, sacred to the goddess, and the supposed tombs of Hippolytos and Phaidra.
Aphrodite and Adonis
The cult of Aphrodite's paramour Adonis held a special appeal for Greek women, combining the erotic adoration of a beautiful youth with the emo- tional catharsis of lamentation for his death. The Adonis cult was an early import from the Levant, probably via Cyprus, but while many of the outward forms remained the same, its cultural context and significance changed. Adonis was modeled upon Tammuz, the consort of Ishtar whose death was annually lamented by women, and his name is a direct borrowing of the West Semitic adon, Lord. At Phoenician Byblos there was a sanctuary of "Aphrodite and Adonis," that is, the city goddess Astarte and a consort who corresponded to Tammuz. Whereas the cult of Tammuz (Sumerian Dumuzi) enjoyed near-universal recognition in Mesopotamia and his festival was so important that a Babylonian month was named after him, the worship of Adonis was tolerated by many Greek city-states but rarely gained the status of a state-sponsored cult. Adonis was viewed with some ambivalence, pro- bably because his main adherents were women, and in spite of his popularity in certain areas, he retained a fundamentally "foreign" aura. At the core of the cult lay a ritual with no connection to acknowledged sacred space; in Greek contexts before the Hellenistic period, Adonis only rarely possessed a sanctuary, temple or even an altar, making his rites anomalous.
To perform the Adonia, which took place in late summer, women ascended to the roof, where they sang dirges, cried out in grief, and beat their breasts. Sappho (fr. 140a LP) mentions that the women tore their garments, a stand- ard sign of mourning. Other features of Adonis' ritual belong to the cult in Classical Athens. A few days before the Adonia, garden herbs and cereals were sown in broken pots. These tender young plants were brought to the rooftops during the festival, to be withered in the hot sun as emblems of the youthful Adonis' death. Another custom involved the laying out of Adonis dolls as for burial. While the traditional Frazerian concept of Adonis and similar figures as dying "fertility gods" has been increasingly criticized, Detienne's analysis of Adonis as the paradigm of illicit sexuality and sterility, to be set against the fruitful union of husband and wife, has not achieved full acceptance, perhaps because it neglects the Adonis cult's Near Eastern background. 31
124
APHRODITE
Aphrodite and marriage
Aphrodite is sometimes associated with weddings, as we saw at Lokroi, but her involvement has to do specifically with the sexual component of marriage, not its social aspects. On the road from Trozen to Hermione, Pausanias (2. 32. 7) noted a sanctuary of Aphrodite Nymphia (Bridal Aphro- dite), which was connected with Theseus' abduction of the young Helen. In Hermione itself, both virgins and widows who wished to "go with a man" had to sacrifice to the goddess before marriage. The inclusion of widows shows that this was not a rite of passage, but an acknowledgment of Aphro- dite's role in successful marriages. Similarly, widows at Naupaktos went to Aphrodite's cave to pray for husbands. The participation of women at vary- ing stages of life is also evident in the venerable cult of Aphrodite at Sikyon, where the temple was served by a female warden (neo ? koros) "for whom it was no longer permitted to go with a man" and by a maiden priestess, consecrated for one year. Whereas the warden had once been married, the priestess soon would be. The cult statue was a gold and ivory image by Kanachos, the Sikyonian sculptor who created other masterworks for the Thebans and Milesians around 500. The goddess was shown seated, wearing a polos and holding a poppy in one hand and a fruit in the other. Access to the temple was restricted, so visitors gazed upon the statue and offered their prayers from the doorway. This cult is similar in nature to those of the old Achaean goddesses such as Hera or Athena and shows few signs of the Near Eastern influences we saw in other cities. Still, it is typically Aphrodisian in its emphasis on fragrance: the sacrifices were burned on juniper wood with a local aromatic herb that had erotic associations. 32
Further reading
Budin 2003 provides a detailed examination of the goddess' journey to the west from Cyprus and her prehistoric roots, with emphasis on the material evidence. MacLachlan 1992 defends the historicity of sacred prostitution against the growing number of skeptics; it should be read with Westenholz 1989, Assante 2003 and the papers collected in Part I of Faraone and McClure 2006. Williams 1986 summarizes the material evidence for Aphrodite's cult on the Korinthian citadel. Rosenzweig 2004 has full coverage of cults in Athens, primarily from an art-historical perspective, while Redfield 2003 offers many insights about Aphrodite's important role in Lokrian culture.
