THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION

 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION

Edited by
ESTHER EIDINOW
and
JULIA KINDT
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom
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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THE editors would like to thank Robin Osborne for his advice and
encouragement at the beginning of the project; and Verity Platt and Georgia
Petridou for help with photo rights. We are grateful to all, past and present,
at Oxford University Press: Hilary O’Shea, who first showed interest and
offered such helpful guidance when we approached her; Taryn Das Neves,
Annie Rose, and the OUP Picture Research team for all their help; and
Kumar Athiappan, Joy Mellor, Alison Miles, Joanna North, Sudhakar
Sandacoumar, and Elizabeth Stone who saw the book through editing and
production.
Finally, we would also like to thank all our contributors for bringing their
expertise to the handbook and for their patience in the process of its
production.
Esther Eidinow
Julia Kindt
 CONTENTS

List of Figures
Abbreviations and Conventions
Notes on Contributors

Introduction
ESTHER EIDINOW AND JULIA KINDT

PART I WHAT IS ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION?

1. Unity vs. Diversity
ROBIN OSBORNE
2. Belief vs. Practice
THOMAS HARRISON
3. Old vs. New
EMILY KEARNS
4. Many vs. One
VINCIANE PIRENNE-DELFORGE AND GABRIELLA PIRONTI

PART II TYPES OF EVIDENCE

5. Visual Evidence
MILETTE GAIFMAN
6. Literary Evidence—Prose
HANNAH WILLEY
 7. Literary Evidence—Poetry
RENAUD GAGNÉ
8. Epigraphic Evidence
CLAIRE TAYLOR
9. Material Evidence
CAITLÍN E. BARRETT
10. Papyrology
DAVID MARTINEZ

PART III MYTHS? CONTEXTS AND

REPRESENTATIONS
11. Epic
RICHARD P. MARTIN
12. Art and Imagery
TANJA S. SCHEER
13. Drama
CLAUDE CALAME
14. History
ROBERT FOWLER
15. Philosophy
RICK BENITEZ AND HAROLD TARRANT

PART IV WHERE?
16. Temples and Sanctuaries
MICHAEL SCOTT
17. Households, Families, and Women
MATTHEW DILLON
18. Religion in Communities
KOSTAS VLASSOPOULOS
19. Regional Religious Groups, Amphictionies, and Other Leagues
CHRISTY CONSTANTAKOPOULOU

PART V HOW?
20. Religious Expertise
MICHAEL A. FLOWER
21. New Gods
RALPH ANDERSON
22. Impiety
HUGH BOWDEN
23. ‘Sacred Law’
ANDREJ PETROVIC

PART VI WHO?
24. Gods—Olympian or Chthonian?
SUSAN DEACY
25. Gods—Origins
CAROLINA LÓPEZ-RUIZ
26. Heroes—Living or Dead?
GUNNEL EKROTH
27. Dead or Alive?
EMMANUEL VOUTIRAS
28. Daimonic Power
GIULIA SFAMENI GASPARRO
29. Deification—Gods or Men?
 IVANA PETROVIC

PART VII WHAT?

30. Prayer and Curse
HENDRIK S. VERSNEL
31. Sacrifice
FRED NAIDEN
32. Oracles and Divination
SARAH ILES JOHNSTON
33. Epiphany
VERITY PLATT
34. Healing
FRITZ GRAF

PART VIII WHEN?

35. From Birth to Death: Life-Change Rituals
SARAH HITCH
36. Ritual Cycles: Calendars and Festivals
JAN-MATHIEU CARBON
37. Imagining the Afterlife
RADCLIFFE G. EDMONDS III

PART IX BEYOND?
38. Magna Graecia (South Italy and Sicily)
GILLIAN SHEPHERD
39. The Northern Black Sea: The Case of the Bosporan Kingdom
MAYA MURATOV
40. The Ancient Near East
JAN N. BREMMER
41. Greco-Egyptian Religion
KATHRIN KLEIBL
42. Bactria and India
RACHEL MAIRS
43. China and Greece: Comparisons and Insights
LISA RAPHALS

General Index
Index of Passages
 LIST OF FIGURES

5.1 Herakles at a burning altar

5.2 Helios and his horses rising, with Dawn on the right and Night on
the left
5.3 Relief of Xenokrateia
5.4 Coin from Samos with image of temple and cult statue from the
reign of Domitian
5.5 Coin from Samos with image of temple and cult statue from the
reign of Etruscilla
9.1 Fragment of a terracotta figurine of a reclining female
9.2 Head of a terracotta figurine of a bald male crowned with two lotus
buds
17.1 A woman importunes a herm
19.1 Plan of the sanctuary of Delian Apollo at Delos
19.2 Plan of the sanctuary of the Great Gods at Samothrace
33.1 Votive relief from the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron, Attica
38.1 The Arethousa freshwater spring on the island of Ortygia, Syracuse
38.2 The sixth-century ‘underground shrine’ at Poseidonia (Paestum)
38.3 The Piazza Minerva, Siracusa (Syracuse)
38.4 The Temple of Apollo (Syracuse)
38.5 The Temples of Hera II and Hera I at Poseidonia (Paestum)
39.1 Greek colonies in the Northern Black Sea 590
 ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS

WE have used the Greek spelling of authors and names except in cases in
which the Latinized spelling is more established.
For abbreviations of ancient authors and their works, please refer to S.
Hornblower, A. Spawforth, and E. Eidinow, eds. 2012. The Oxford
Classical Dictionary. 4th edn, Oxford; for journal abbreviations, please
refer to L’Année Philologique; any other abbreviations used are listed
below.

ÄAT Ägypten und Altes Testament

APAAA Archaeological Papers of the American
Anthropological Association
Buck C. D. Buck. 1955. The Greek Dialects. Chicago.
CID G. Rougemont et al. 1977–1992. Corpus des
Inscriptions de Delphes. 3 vols.
CIRB V. V. Struve. 1965. Corpus Inscriptionum Regni
Bosporani.
DDD K. van der Toorne et al. eds. 1992. Dictionary of
Deities and Demons in the Bible.
DT A. Audollent. 1904. Defixionum Tabellae.
DTA R. Wünsch. 1897. Defixionum Tabellae Atticae.
IG vol. 3, pt. 3.
EAH R. S. Bagnall et al. 2013. Encyclopedia of Ancient
History. 13 vols.
EBGR A. Chaniotis et al. 1987–. Epigraphical Bulletin
for Greek Religion.
EDelph De E apud Delphos (Plutarch).
Iscr.Cos M. Segre. 1993. Inscrizioni di Cos. 2 vols.
I.Erythrai H. Engelmann and R. Merkelbach. 1972–. Die
Inschriften von Erythrai und Klazomenai (IK 1-
2).
I.Iasos W. Blümel. 1985. Die Inschriften von Iasos. 2
vols.
I.Knidos W. Blümel. 1992. Die Inschriften von Knidos I.
IOSPE V. Latysev. 1885–1916. Inscriptiones antiquae
orae septentrionalis Ponti Euxini Graecae et
Latinae. 3 vols.
I.Lindos Ch. Blinckenberg. 1941. Lindos. Fouilles et
recherches, II. Fouilles de l’acropole.
Inscriptions.
I.Milet A. Rehm and P. Herrmann. 1997–8. Inschriften
von Milet.
I.Perg M. Fraenkel et al. 1890–5. Die Inschriften von
Pergamon. 2 vols.
I.Stratonikeia M.Ç. Sahin. 1981–90. Die Inschriften von
Stratonikeia. 2 vols (IK 21–22).
JAS Journal of Asian Studies
JRAI Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
KSIA Kratkie Soobscheniia Instituta Arkheologii
LfgrE B. Snell et al. 1955–. Lexikon des
frühgriechischen Epos.
Lhôte E. Lhôte. 2006. Les lamelles oraculaires de
Dodone.
ML R. Meiggs and D. Lewis. 1988. A Selection of
Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the
Fifth Century B.C. Oxford.
NGCT D. R. Jordan. 2000. ‘New Greek Curse Tablets
(1985–2000)’, GRBS 41: 5–46
NGSL E. Lupu. 2005. Greek Sacred Law: A Collection
of New Documents (2nd edn 2009).
OF A. Bernabé. ed. 2004–6. Poetae Epici Graeci II:
Orphicorum et Orphicis similium testimonia et
fragmenta I–III.
OHP R. Bagnall. ed. 2009. Oxford Handbook of
 Papyrology.
RICIS L. Bricault. 2005. Recueil des inscriptions
concernant les cultes isiaques.
SGD D. R. Jordan. 1985. ‘Survey of Greek Defixiones
Not Included in the Special Corpora’, GRBS 26:
151–97.
SGDI H. Collitz et. al. 1884–1915. Sammlung der
griechischen Dialektinschriften. 4 vols.
Stud. Ir. Studia Iranica
TM Trismegistos. ‘An interdisciplinary portal of
papyrological and epigraphical resources’. Project
director M. Depauw.
<http://www.trismegistos.org/>.
VDI Vestnik Drevnei Istorii
Women— Women—Church. An Australian Journal of
Church Feminist Studies in Religion
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Ralph Anderson is Senior Teaching Fellow in Ancient History at the

University of St Andrews, where he teaches courses on Greek religion,
magic, and Classical reception. He is interested in divination, magic, and
approaches to lived experience in Greek religion.

Caitlín E. Barrett is Assistant Professor of Classics at Cornell University.

Her research focuses on the archaeology of religion; cult and society in
Greco-Roman Egypt; and interactions between Egypt and the Classical
world. Following the publication of her recent book, Egyptianizing
Figurines from Delos: A Study in Hellenistic Religion (Columbia Studies in
the Classical Tradition 36, 2011), she is working on a second monograph on
representations of Egyptian landscapes in Roman domestic contexts. Other
publications on Classical and Egyptian archaeology have appeared or are
forthcoming in a range of academic journals and edited volumes. She has
excavated and surveyed at Bronze Age through early modern sites in Egypt,
Greece, and the United States.

Rick Benitez is Professor in Philosophy and Classics at the University of

Sydney, where he has worked since 1992. He is the author of Forms in
Plato’s Philebus (1989) and many articles on Plato. His research and
teaching interests include ancient Greek philosophy and literature,
aesthetics, and the philosophy of law. He is currently the lead investigator
for the Australia Research Council Project, ‘Plato’s myth voice: the
identification and interpretation of inspired speech in Plato’.

Hugh Bowden is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at King’s College

London. He is the author of Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle
(2005), Mystery Cults in the Ancient World (2010), Alexander the Great: A
Very Short Introduction (2014), and of numerous articles on Greek religion
and Alexander the Great.

Jan N. Bremmer is Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the

University of Groningen (Netherlands). He specializes in Greek, Roman,
Early Christian, and Contemporary Religion as well as the History of
Scholarship. He has edited many books on Apocryphal Christian literature
and cultural history, and published most recently Greek Religion and
Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East (2008), The Rise of
Christianity through the Eyes of Gibbon, Harnack and Rodney Stark
(2010), Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (2014), and, as co-
editor with Marco Formisano, Perpetua’s Passions (2012).

Claude Calame is Director of Studies Emeritus at the École des Hautes

Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris (Centre AnHiMA: Anthropologie et
Histoire des Mondes Antiques). He was Professor of Greek Language and
Literature at the University of Lausanne. In English he published The Craft
of Poetic Speech in Ancient Greece (1995), The Poetics of Eros in Ancient
Greece (1999), Choruses of Young Women in Ancient Greece (2001, 2nd
edn), Masks of Authority: Fiction and Pragmatics in Ancient Greek Poetics
(2005), Poetic and Performative Memory in Ancient Greece (2009), Greek
Mythology: Poetics, Pragmatics and Fiction (2009).

Jan-Mathieu Carbon is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Saxo Institute,

University of Copenhagen, and a member of the Copenhagen Associations
Project. He is also a Collaborateur Scientifique of the Départment des
Sciences de l’Antiquité, where a new collection of inscribed ‘sacred laws’
is being developed. This will be published as a website, the Collection of
Greek Ritual Norms (CGRN, winter 2015). He works on Greek epigraphy,
rituals, and especially inscribed calendars.

Christy Constantakopoulou is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History in the

department of History, Classics and Archaeology, Birkbeck College. She
has published a monograph in 2007, entitled The Dance of the Islands:
Insularity, Networks, the Athenian Empire and the Aegean World, and has
co-edited, with Irad Malkin and Katerina Panagopoulou, a volume entitled
Greek and Roman Networks in the Mediterranean (2009). She is currently
working on a project focusing on interaction in the southern Aegean islands
during the third century.

Susan Deacy is Principal Lecturer in Classical Civilization at the

University of Roehampton, London. Her research focuses on ancient Greek
religion, mythology, gender, and sexuality, and she is especially interested
in deities as religious, mythological, and gendered constructs. Her
publications include the co-edited volumes Rape in Antiquity (1997) and
Athena in the Classical World (2001), and the monograph Athena (2008).
She is the series editor of Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World (2006–).
She is currently working on a monograph entitled A Traitor to Her Sex:
Athena the Trickster for Oxford University Press.

Matthew Dillon is Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient History in

the School of Humanities, University of New England, Armidale, Australia.
He has written several articles and a book on women’s religion in ancient
Greece, Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion (2002). He is
interested in all ancient religions and in Greek society.

Radcliffe G. Edmonds III is the Paul Shorey Professor of Greek and Chair
of the Department of Greek, Latin, & Classical Studies at Bryn Mawr
College. He has written on eros, midwifery, myth, and elenchos in Plato, on
magic and cosmology in the ‘Mithras Liturgy’, and on various topics
relating to Orphica, including the Derveni Papyrus and the gold tablets. He
has published Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and
the ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets (2004), an edited volume of essays entitled The
‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further Along the Path (2011),
and Redefining Ancient Orphism: A Study in Greek Religion (2013). His
current project is a study of the category of magic, entitled Drawing Down
the Moon: Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World.

Esther Eidinow is Assistant Professor in Ancient Greek History at the

University of Nottingham. She has particular interest in ancient Greek
religion and magic, and her publications include Oracles, Curses, and Risk
among the Ancient Greeks (2007, rev. edn 2013) and Luck, Fate and
Fortune: Antiquity and its Legacy (2011). She is currently working on a
monograph entitled Envy, Poison and Death: Women on Trial in Fourth-
Century Athens BC.
Gunnel Ekroth is Professor of Classical Archaeology and Ancient History
at Uppsala University. Her work is mainly focused on Greek religion,
especially different aspects of sacrificial rituals, combining texts,
inscriptions, iconography, and archaeological remains including animal
bones. Among her publications are The Sacrificial Rituals of Greek Hero-
Cults (2002), and Bones, Behaviour and Belief: The Zooarchaeological
Evidence as a Source for Ritual Practice in Ancient Greece and Beyond
(2013), edited with J. Wallensten.

Michael A. Flower is Professor of Classics at Princeton University. He is

the author of Theopompus of Chios: History and Rhetoric in the Fourth
Century B.C. (1994), Herodotus, Histories, Book IX (with John Marincola,
2002), The Seer in Ancient Greece (2008), Xenophon’s Anabasis, or the
Expedition of Cyrus (2012), and co-editor, with Mark Toher, of Georgica:
Greek Studies in Honour of George Cawkwell (1991). He is currently
editing The Cambridge Companion to Xenophon and writing a book on
fictionality in the Greek historians.

Robert Fowler has been Henry Overton Wills Professor of Greek at the
University of Bristol since 1996. His research interests are in early Greek
literature, myth, and religion. He is editor of the Cambridge Companion to
Homer (2004) and author of Early Greek Mythography (2 vols, 2000–13).

Renaud Gagné is University Lecturer in Classics at the University of

Cambridge and Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. His main
research interests are early Greek poetry and Greek religion. He is the
author of Ancestral Fault in Ancient Greece (2013), as well as co-editor of
Choral Mediations in Greek Tragedy (2013) and Sacrifices humains.
Perspectives croisées et représentations (2013).

Milette Gaifman is Associate Professor of Greek Art and Archaeology in

the Departments of Classics and History of Art at Yale University. She
received her BA from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and her Ph.D.
from Princeton University. She is the author of Aniconism in Greek
Antiquity (2012) and of The Art of Libation in Classical Athens
(forthcoming).
Fritz Graf is Distinguished University Professor in Classics at the Ohio
State University and Director of the Center for Epigraphical Studies. He
works mainly on Greek religion. Among his books are Magic in the Ancient
World (1997; originally in French, 1994), Apollo (2009), and, with Sarah
Iles Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife (2007, 2nd edn. 2012). He
recently finished a book on Roman festivals in the Greek East between
Augustus and Justinian.

Thomas Harrison is Rathbone Professor of Ancient History and Classical

Archaeology at the University of Liverpool. His publications include
Divinity and History: The Religion of Herodotus (2000), The Emptiness of
Asia (2000), and Writing Ancient Persia (2011). His main current project is
a monograph on the role of belief within Greek religion.

Sarah Hitch held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Corpus Christi

College, Oxford, where she is now the Associate Director of the Corpus
Christi College Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity. She
has published widely on aspects of Greek religion, including a monograph,
King of Sacrifice: Ritual and Royal Authority in the Iliad (2009).

Sarah Iles Johnston is Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of

Religion and Professor of Classics at the Ohio State University. She is the
author of Ancient Greek Divination (2008) and Restless Dead (1999), the
co-editor, with Peter T. Struck, of Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination
(2005), and the author or editor of several other books and many articles
and essays. She is now completing a book on Greek myths.

Emily Kearns is Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow in Classics at St

Hilda’s College, Oxford. She has written on a wide range of subjects in
Greek religion and Classical literature. Her most recent book is Ancient
Greek Religion: A Sourcebook (2010).

Julia Kindt is Associate Professor and chair of the Department of Classics

and Ancient History at the University of Sydney. She has a Ph.D. in
Classics from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Ancient History
from the University of Munich. Her publications include Rethinking Greek
Religion (2012) and Revisiting Delphi: Religion and Storytelling in Ancient
Greece (forthcoming 2016). She is a member of the editorial board of the
Journal of Ancient History and a senior editor of the Oxford Research
Encyclopaedia of Religion.

Kathrin Kleibl studied Classical Archaeology, Art History, and History of

Natural Science. She received her MA in 2003 and her Ph.D. in Classical
Archaeology from the University of Hamburg in Germany in 2007. Since
2000 she has been involved in several projects, including excavations in
Tunisia and Turkey, and interdisciplinary research on cultural contacts and
personal piety. Her research specializes primarily in Greco-Egyptian
religion, pre-Roman concepts of power and religion on Cyprus, and cultural
contacts between the Greek world and the Near East/Egypt. Kleibl is an
independent researcher and teaches at universities in Germany and Austria.

Carolina López-Ruiz is Associate Professor of Classics at the Ohio State

University in Columbus, Ohio. She studied Classics at the Universidad
Autónoma de Madrid (BA, MA), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and
the University of Chicago (Ph.D. 2005, Ancient Mediterranean World). She
has published articles on Greek and Near Eastern literatures and mythology
and on Phoenicians in the Iberian Peninsula. She is the co-editor, with M.
Dietler, of Colonial Encounters in Ancient Iberia: Phoenician, Greek, and
Indigenous Relations (2009), the author of When the Gods Were Born:
Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East (2010), and the editor of Gods,
Heroes, and Monsters: A Sourcebook of Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern
Myths in Translation (2014).

Rachel Mairs is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Reading. She has

previously held positions at New York University, the University of Oxford,
and Brown University. She has published extensively on ethnic identity and
multilingualism in the Hellenistic world, with a particular focus on Central
Asia and on Egypt. Her book The Hellenistic Far East: Archaeology,
Language and Identity in Greek Central Asia was published in 2014.

Richard P. Martin is the Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor in

Classics at Stanford University. He has applied ethnographic perspectives in
analysing Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Aristophanes, and a range of cultural
phenomena involving early Greek poetry, myth, and religion.
David Martinez is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics and
the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. His publications include
P. Michigan XVI: A Greek Love Charm from Egypt and Baptized for our
Sakes: A Leather Trisagion from Egypt. He has also written articles on
documentary Greek papyri and ancient Greek religion and magic. His
current projects include the publication of the Texas papyri and projects
which relate papyrological research to the study of early Christianity. His
teaching interests focus on Greek papyrology and paleography, Greek
language, Hellenistic authors, and early Christian literature.

Maya Muratov, currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Art and

Art History at Adelphi University, received her Ph.D. in Greek and Roman
Art and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Her research interests include cultural, religious, and social history of the
Greek colonies in the Northern Black Sea. She has been part of the team
excavating in Pantikapaion, the capital of the Bosporan Kingdom, for the
past 25 years.

Fred Naiden, Professor of History at UNC Chapel Hill, holds a degree in

Classical Philology from Harvard. His first book, Ancient Supplication,
dealt with Roman as well as Greek practices, and his second, Smoke Signals
for the Gods, dealt with the issues discussed in his chapter here. He has also
written on Akkadian and ancient Hebrew religion, on ancient Greek and
Macedonian warfare, and on Greek law.

Robin Osborne is Professor of Ancient History at the University of

Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s College Cambridge and of the British
Academy. His work ranges widely across Greek history, art, and
archaeology. He is co-editor, with Susan Alcock, of Placing the Gods:
Sanctuaries and Sacred Space in Ancient Greece (1994) and, with Esther
Eidinow and Julia Kindt, of The Theologies of Greek Religion
(forthcoming). His most recent monograph is The History Written on the
Classical Greek Body (2011).

Andrej Petrovic is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Classics and

Ancient History, Durham University. His research interests and publications
concern Greek epigraphy and religion. His current book projects, co-
authored with I. Petrovic, concern concepts of inner purity in Greek
religion, and rituals of divine bondage.

Ivana Petrovic is Senior Lecturer in Greek Literature at the Department of

Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. Her book Von den
Toren des Hades zu den Hallen des Olymp. Artemiskult bei Theokrit und
Kallimachos (2007) studies contemporary religion in Hellenistic poetry. She
has co-edited volumes on the Roman triumph (2008) and on Greek Archaic
epigram (2010). She has also published papers on Greek poetry, Greek
religion, and magic. Her forthcoming monograph, co-written with Andrej
Petrovic, discusses the phenomenon of inner purity in Greek religion.

Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge is Research Director of the Fonds de la

Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS), Lecturer at the University of Liège,
and scientific editor of the journal Kernos. She is the author of many works
relating to Greek religion, especially to Greek gods (L’Aphrodite grecque
(1994)). Her research has also focused on Pausanias, on whom she has
published a monograph entitled Retour à la source. Pausanias et la religion
grecque (2008).

Gabriella Pironti is Research Associate and Lecturer in Ancient Religions

at the University ‘Federico II’ of Naples. Her field of research is ancient
Greek religion, in particular the representation of the divine in myths and
cults. She is the author of a monograph entitled Entre ciel et guerre. Figures
d’Aphrodite en Grèce ancienne (2007), a commentary of Hesiod’s
Theogony (2008), and many works relating to Greek polytheism.

Verity Platt is Associate Professor of Classics and History of Art at Cornell

University. She is the author of Facing the Gods. Epiphany and
Representation in Greco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion (2011) and co-
editor, with Michael Squire, of The Art of Art History in Greco-Roman
Antiquity (Arethusa 43.2, Spring 2010) and Framing the Visual in Greco-
Roman Antiquity (forthcoming). Her research interests focus on Greek and
Roman art and religion, theories of vision and representation, the
relationship between texts and objects in antiquity, and the lives of the
Greek artists.
Lisa Raphals ( ) is Professor of Comparative Literature/Philosophy at
the University of California, Riverside, and Visiting Professor, Department
of Philosophy, National University of Singapore. She is the author of
Knowing Words: Wisdom and Cunning in the Classical Traditions of China
and Greece (1992), Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and
Virtue in Early China (1998), Divination and Prediction in Early China and
Ancient Greece (2013), as well as many scholarly articles on comparative
philosophy (China and Greece), history of science, religion, and gender.

Tanja S. Scheer is Professor of Ancient History at the Georg August

Universität Göttingen. Her books include Mythische Vorväter. Zur
Bedeutung griechischer Heroenmythen im Selbstverständnis
kleinasiatischer Städte (1993), Die Gottheit und ihr Bild. Untersuchungen
zur Funktion griechischer Kultbilder in Religion und Politik (= Zetemata
106, 2000), and Griechische Geschlechtergeschichte (2011). Her special
interest is cultural history, especially Greek mythology and Greek religion
in its social context.

Michael Scott is Associate Professor in Classics and Ancient History at the

University of Warwick, and formerly the Moses and Mary Finley Fellow in
Ancient History at Darwin College, Cambridge. He has written extensively
on the uses of spatial analysis in both literary and physical contexts, and
particularly with regard to Greek sanctuaries, as well as on the importance
of inter-disciplinary approaches to the study of Greek ritual and experience.
His most recent monograph is Delphi: Centre of the Ancient World (2014).

Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, Professor of History of Religions at Messina

University, is President of the Italian Society of the History of Religions,
past President of the European Association for the Study of Religions
(EASR) and honorary life member of the EASR and of the International
Association for the History of Religions (IAHR). Research interests include
the religions of the ancient and late antique world, in particular Greek and
Oriental mystery cults, Hermeticism, magic and oracles, ancient
Christianity, Encratism, Gnosticism, and Manicheism. Her most recent
publications are Dio unico, pluralità e monarchia divina. Esperienze
religiose e teologie nel mondo tardo antico (2010), Introduzione alla storia
delle religioni (2011), and La conoscenza che salva. Lo Gnosticismo: temi e
problemi (2013).

Gillian Shepherd is Lecturer in Ancient Mediterranean Studies and

Director of the A. D. Trendall Research Centre for Ancient Mediterranean
Studies at La Trobe University, Australia. Her research interests lie in the
Greek settlement of Sicily and South Italy, especially with regard to burial
customs and sanctuaries.

Harold Tarrant, after studies in the UK, worked in Australia for 38 years,
first as a professor at the University of Sydney and then at the University of
Newcastle. He has authored many publications, in particular on ancient
Platonism and related literary texts. He is Fellow of the Australian
Academy of the Humanities. Though now living near Cambridge, UK, he
remains Professor Emeritus at Newcastle and writes here as Honorary
Associate at the University of Sydney.

Claire Taylor is the John W. and Jeanne M. Rowe Assistant Professor of

Ancient Greek History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her
research interests include epigraphic culture, particularly of non-elite
groups, and poverty in the ancient world. She is author of a number of
articles on Greek political, social, and cultural history and is co-editor of
Ancient Graffiti in Context (2011).

Hendrik S. Versnel studied Classical languages at Leiden University

(1956–62) (Diss. Triumphus: An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and
Meaning of the Roman Triumph, 1970). He returned to Leiden University in
1971, where he held a chair in Ancient History from 1980 to 2000. His
expertise is in Greek and Roman religions, with an emphasis on myth and
ritual, magic (especially curse texts), self-sacrifice (devotio), and the
inconsistencies in Greek and Roman sources. His major publications
include: Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion (2 vols, 1990–3) and
Coping with the Gods: Wayward Readings of Greek Theology (2011). For
the author’s hobby in another Classical area see: Youtube, ‘Versnel
classics’.

Kostas Vlassopoulos is Associate Professor in Greek History at the

University of Nottingham. He is author of Unthinking the Greek Polis:
Ancient Greek History beyond Eurocentrism (2007), Politics: Antiquity and
its Legacy (2010), Greeks and Barbarians (2013), and co-edits the Oxford
Handbook of Greek and Roman Slaveries (forthcoming).

Emmanuel Voutiras studied Classics and Archaeology at the University of

Thessaloniki, from which he graduated in 1975. He continued his studies at
the University of Bonn and obtained his Ph.D. in December 1979 with a
thesis on Greek portraits of the Classical period. From 1984 to the present
day he has been teaching Classical Archaeology at the University of
Thessaloniki at undergraduate and graduate levels, becoming full professor
in 2000. His main research interests are Greek and Roman sculpture, Greek
religion, and Greek epigraphy. He has participated in projects for the
publication of major collections of ancient sculpture in Greece and in Italy.
In the spring of 1998 he was Visiting Professor of Archaeology at the
University of Perugia. He was Junior Fellow of the Center for Hellenic
Studies in Washington, DC, Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt
Stiftung, and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,
NJ. He is also a member of various learned societies and president of the
Centre International d’Étude de la Religion Grecque Antique (CIERGA) in
Brussels (since 2009).

Hannah Willey has recently been appointed to a lectureship in Ancient

History at the University of Cambridge and to a fellowship at Murray
Edwards College. She was previously the W. H. D. Rouse fellow at Christ’s
College, Cambridge. Her research interests cover various aspects of ancient
Greek religion and society. She is currently completing a monograph on the
interrelation of law and religion in the Greek city-state. Further areas of
research include narratives of cult foundation and religious pollution.
Forthcoming publications include articles on the lawgiver traditions,
pollution in Plato’s Euthyphro, and religion and theology in the speeches of
Demosthenes.
 INTRODUCTION

ESTHER EIDINOW AND JULIA KINDT

THIS handbook sets out to offer both students and teachers of ancient Greek
religion a comprehensive overview of the current state of the field. It aims
both to present key information about the subject, and to explore the ways
in which this information is gathered, and the different approaches that have
shaped the subject. Overall, we intend this volume not only to provide a
research and orientation tool for students of the ancient world, but also to
make a key contribution to the ongoing conceptualization of ancient Greek
relationships to the supernatural—in all their variety.
The volume traces recent scholarship as it moves on from previous
paradigms, such as ‘polis religion’, to a more broadly conceived conception
of the religious in ancient Greek culture. ‘Polis religion’ has provided an
extremely stimulating model, but tends to privilege certain official contexts
of ritual activity while marginalizing others. Although the original model
may not have intended this, its use too often results in a static and exclusive
model of communal ritual practices, promoting, for example, a division
between magical and religious ritual activities, and a focus on Athens in the
Classical period. Even in accounts in which this model is not explicitly
mentioned, the result has been the presentation of ancient Greek religion in
terms of a neat and complete narrative rather than a field of contestation and
change.
In contrast, the aim of this volume is to highlight crucial developments in
the study of ancient Greek religion, with a special focus on problems and
debates. Thus, the chapters in this volume emphasize the diversity of
relationships between mortals and the supernatural—in all their
manifestations, across, between, and beyond ancient Greek cultures—and
the various contexts in which these relationships unfold. ‘Relationships’
include both physical manifestations (e.g. ritual) and metaphysical (e.g.
discourses as evidence for beliefs)—and encompass sources that have
traditionally been categorized as ‘magic’. ‘Contexts’, in turn, include not
only, where possible, the physical contexts, with a full consideration of the
appropriate archaeological evidence, but also social, political, economic,
and temporal contexts.
We have asked our authors to include information on approaches and
methodologies, and on the history of scholarship in the field in their
respective chapters, with the conviction that such information is best
presented with the evidence it seeks to explain. We have not attempted to
cover every possible topic in individual chapters, but rather to look at
specific themes in the ritual contexts in which they occurred. For example,
discussion of the content and context of hymns can be found in Henk
Versnel’s reflections on prayers and curses (Chapter 30), and in Claude
Calame’s meditation on the stories told in ritual performances (Chapter 13).
The latter considers the ritual activities of women, a topic also discussed in,
among other chapters, Matthew Dillon’s consideration of the household as a
location of ritual practice (Chapter 17), and, with a different emphasis, by
Sarah Hitch’s examination of evidence for life-change rituals (Chapter 35).
In turn, Hitch’s chapter also considers relevant conceptions of pollution: the
dangers this poses for the community is discussed in Kostas Vlassopoulos’
chapter on religion in Greek communities (Chapter 18); and the question of
whether local heroes were perceived to cause pollution is explored in
Gunnel Ekroth’s chapter on heroes (Chapter 26). To help guide the reader to
such relevant content, cross-references have been included throughout the
handbook to illuminate overlapping themes between chapters and parts.
Finally, we have asked our contributors to draw attention to religious
activities as dynamic, highlighting how they changed over time and in
response to different contexts and relationships.

CHAPTER OVERVIEW
Part I, ‘What is Ancient Greek Religion?’, consists of four slightly shorter
chapters that set the scene for the contributions that follow. Each gives an
overview of a key dimension of ancient Greek religion, drawing attention,
in particular, to the ambiguities and apparent contradictions that emerge
from the evidence, and emphasizing the need for modern scholarship to be
aware of the assumptions and expectations of our heuristic categories.
In the first of these contributions, ‘Unity vs. Diversity’, Robin Osborne
starts this volume by challenging the very term ‘religion’ itself. In its place,
he succinctly evokes an ancient Greek ‘theology of diversity’, expressed in
the range of ancient Greek ritual practices. Alongside ritual practice,
Thomas Harrison sets the question of the nature of belief, describing in his
chapter, ‘Belief vs. Practice’, how previous scholarship has struggled with
this concept, and exploring some of the ways in which the problems it
seems to pose may be re-approached. As these chapters indicate, and this
volume as a whole emphasizes, neither belief nor practice remained static.
The nature of change over time is the focus of Emily Kearns’ reflections on
the relationship between ‘Old vs. New’ across cult practice, gods, and
religious concepts. She explores how innovation and continuity coexist,
demonstrated by the chapter’s case study on the mysteries of Andania.
Finally, Vincianne Pirenne-Delforge and Gabriella Pironti delve further into
the capacity for ancient Greek religion to encompass multiplicity: in ‘Many
vs. One’, they examine the structure of polytheism, arguing that to
understand ancient Greek gods, one must consider them to be
simultaneously one and many, at every level of their cult.
The slightly longer contributions in the following parts draw on and
exemplify such general considerations by exploring particular areas of
ancient Greek religion. They typically start from a general introduction to
the subject matter, followed by one to three case studies illustrating
problems and questions discussed in the general part. However, this
structure was not rigidly imposed, and throughout we have encouraged
authors to adopt a style of presentation that best reflects the material
presented. We start with two parts ‘Types of Evidence’ and ‘Myths?
Contexts and Representations’, which draw attention to questions of
approach; this is followed by six thematic parts.
 The six chapters that constitute Part II, ‘Types of Evidence’, introduce
different kinds of sources available for the study of ancient Greek religion
as well as the questions and problems pertaining to them. Milette Gaifman’s
contribution, ‘Visual Evidence’, introduces this part. She illustrates how a
diverse body of imagery on vases, votive reliefs, and coins allows us to
recover ancient religious beliefs and practices in a number of different
contexts. She also argues that this kind of evidence should no longer be
treated as secondary to the information gained through other sources, most
notably, perhaps, from the literary evidence—the focus of the following two
chapters. Prose texts come into focus in Hannah Willey’s chapter on
‘Literary Evidence—Prose’. Rhetorical uses of religion are explicitly
included here to illustrate what is special about the way in which ancient
Greek religion features in prose texts. Renaud Gagné’s contribution,
‘Literary Evidence—Poetry’ takes up a point raised already in Gaifman’s
chapter: that in order to appreciate how a particular category of sources (in
this case, poetry) reflects ancient Greek religion we need to study it in its
own right first, before we relate it to information gained from other texts
and contexts. Claire Taylor’s chapter on ‘Epigraphic Evidence’, emphasizes
the diversity of information on ancient Greek religion that can be gained
from inscriptions, in particular if we appreciate them as both literary texts
and material artefacts. In this way, her chapter already anticipates what
Caitlín Barrett (‘Material Evidence’) shows with regard to the material
evidence more generally: that context is key in the interpretation of the
ancient evidence. It is, in particular, this significance of context which will
emerge as a recurrent theme throughout later chapters and parts of this
volume (see, e.g., in Chapter 26). The concluding chapter in Part II, David
Martinez’s essay on ‘Papyrology’ highlights the contribution different kinds
of papyri make to the study of ancient Greek religion.
Part III of the handbook, ‘Myth? Contexts and Representations’, includes
five chapters which are focused on those traditional narratives about gods
and men that proved invariably central to ancient Greek religion (myth). It
examines the different genres in which these stories appear, and the ways in
which genre affects the presentation of these stories.
Richard Martin’s contribution on ‘Epic’ stands at the beginning of this
part. It investigates how religion is represented in epic narratives. This is
related to the way in which the performance of epic poetry itself served as a
ritual act, including both the composers and the audience. In his
contribution on drama in the same part, Claude Calame makes a similar
argument with regard to Greek tragedy, which also served as part of ritual
practice. The chapter on ‘Art and Imagery’ by Tanja Scheer, in turn,
considers the numerous visualizations of the divine the Greeks encountered
in different social contexts, including the oikos and the polis. She suggests
we take the difficult relationship between gods and their images as
symptomatic of the nature of ancient Greek religion as such, which allowed
for a spectrum of meanings and representations. In his chapter on ‘History’,
Robert Fowler investigates the intersection of myth and history, understood
here both as historical experience and as its representation (and
transformation) in ancient historiography. From his chapter, the dialectic
relationship between myth and history emerges as central to the
development of the historiographic tradition from Herodotos to modern
times. The following chapter, by Rick Benitez and Harold Tarrant on
‘Philosophy’, explores another dialectic relevant to ancient Greek religion,
that between philosophical discourse and religious beliefs and practices. Yet
while Fowler explored the dialectic between myth and history as a genuine
duality in ancient Greek thought and literature, Benitez and Tarrant
highlight how philosophy merely modified traditional religious beliefs and
practices.
The parts that follow start from the simplest of questions—‘Who?’
‘Where?’ ‘What?’ ‘When?’, and ‘How?’ These provide the central theme
for the chapters they contain, each taking a particular perspective on that
question.
In Part IV, ‘Where?’, the contributions consider a range of different
places and spaces in which religious activities took place. In the first
chapter, Chapter 16, Michael Scott reviews current debates about ‘Temples
and Sanctuaries’—what they were, and how they were placed, the roles
they played in the wider landscape, and the experience of being in them—
and discusses new approaches that explore them as multidimensional and
polyvalent sacred spaces. Having established (and questioned)
interpretations of sacred space, the next three chapters consider how
different levels of ancient society interacted with it. Matthew Dillon’s
chapter takes us into the household, with a particular focus on the role of
women in and outside family-based religious activities. From families, we
turn to the role and nature of ‘Religion in Communities’: Kostas
Vlassopoulos evaluates the role of communal religious activity, both how it
may have shaped Greek communities, and how it has been interpreted in
scholarship, and how these two interact. Finally, Christy Constantakopoulou
discusses Greek religious activity at the regional level: examining the
management of cult centres and development of different kinds—and scales
—of regional religious networks.
Part V offers contributions on the theme of ‘How’ the ancient Greeks
approached religious activity, focusing in particular on the theme of control,
and exploring the nature of religious authority and the variety of ways and
arenas in which this was exercised. The first two chapters consider the
nature of mortal and divine authority in ancient Greek religion. In
‘Religious Expertise’, Michael A. Flower examines the variety of religious
experts, and their roles in different contexts. As he states, Greek priests did
not mediate between gods and men/the city—and this raises questions about
the ways in which religious decisions were made within a community.
Ralph Anderson explores a key example of religious change in his chapter,
‘New Gods’: the ways in which communities regulated the transmission of
new deities between, and their introduction into, poleis. This theme of
regulation is pursued in the next two chapters. In ‘Impiety’ Hugh Bowden
looks into the debate about the meaning of this term (asebeia) in ancient
Greek legal discourse in particular. His analysis seeks to go beyond its
characterization as either political or religious, and/or as a way in which the
polis controlled the religious activities (or even beliefs) of its citizens. The
question of modern categories is also central to Andrej Petrovic’s chapter
on ‘Sacred Law’, which reviews the many different forms, authorities, types
of mediation, and enactment procedures of prescriptive texts concerning
ancient Greek cults, and how this is prompting new work on the nature of
cult regulation.
Part VI, ‘Who?’ considers the variety of supernatural entities at the core
of ancient Greek religion. Most, but not all of the six chapters in this part
are focused on a series of sharp contrasts that help to structure the
multiplicity of supernatural entities in the ancient Greek world. Susan
Deacy’s chapter on ‘Gods—Olympian vs. Chthonian’, for example, is
focused on the duality between Olympian and chthonian gods as one of the
most fundamental yet not unproblematic distinctions that structures the
ancient Greek pantheon. The following chapter by Carolina López-Ruiz,
‘Gods—Origins’, revolves around a key question that has concerned much
scholarship on ancient Greek religion in the past: the question of the origins
of the Greek gods. However, rather than merely reiterating the traditional
line about the origins of Greek divinity, López-Ruiz problematizes the
question of origins itself by investigating its role in Greek religious
discourse and in Classical scholarship. The question of origins is also
flagged as important in the following chapter by Gunnel Ekroth on ‘Heroes
—Living or Dead?’. She considers the special category of real or imagined
human beings that, after their death, received quasi-divine honours, and
explores the origins and transformations of hero-cults over time. Her case
studies highlight again the plurality of ancient Greek religion and the
dichotomy between life and death as different states of existence. Its
significance for ancient Greek religion is considered more broadly by
Emmanuel Voutiras in the following chapter, ‘Dead or Alive?’. Voutiras
shows how a number of different rituals directed towards the dead reflect
specifically Greek notions about life, death, and the afterlife. In this way he
draws our attention towards the ambivalent role of the dead, which could
remain powerful agents in the sphere of the living. The penultimate chapter
in this part, by Giulia Sfameni Gasparro, ‘Daimonic Power’, gives a broad
overview of the major transformations and developments in the ancient
Greek conception of daimons from the Archaic to the Roman Imperial
period. The final chapter by Ivana Petrovic ‘Deification—Gods or Men?’
concludes the investigation of intermediary powers in ancient Greek
religion by focusing on the way in which the human–divine boundary is
negotiated in processes of deification.
The five chapters collected in Part VII are focused entirely on different
forms and contexts of human–divine interaction in the ancient Greek world.
Hendrik S. Versnel’s chapter (‘Prayer and Curse’) starts off this part by
pointing towards differences between ancient and modern conceptions of
prayer (including hymns) and curse. His contribution introduces not only
structurally different kinds of prayer and curse; it also shows that in the
ancient Greek world there existed a number of intermediary forms which
position themselves between prayer and curse. The following contribution
by Fred Naiden (‘Sacrifice’) looks at what frequently features as the most
fundamental ritual of ancient Greek religion: sacrifice, in particular
communal blood sacrifice. However, rather than embracing the traditional
positions by Burkert and Vernant that have dominated debates in the past,
Naiden urges us to apply a more differentiated and critical focus. He argues
for a conception of sacrificial ritual that is both narrower and much broader
than the traditional scholarly view, and challenges the usefulness of the
term ‘sacrifice’ itself for the study of ancient Greek religion. Sarah Iles
Johnston’s chapter (‘Oracles and Divination’) draws our attention towards
divination as another central form of human–divine interaction besides that
of sacrifice. Human–divine contact, albeit of a direct, unmediated form, is
also the subject of Verity Platt’s chapter on ‘Epiphany’. Like Johnston’s
contribution, Platt highlights the dangers resulting from human–divine
interaction. Fritz Graf’s chapter on ‘Healing’ concludes this part. His
chapter shows that those undertaking healing rituals attempted to enlist the
help of the gods to find a cure for diseases that the professional doctors
could not provide, for example, through incubation.
The three chapters of Part VIII, ‘When?’, reflect on how Greek religion
structures, and is structured by, conceptions and constructions of time. The
first chapter (‘From Birth to Death: Life-Change Rituals’) examines the
phenomenon of life-change rituals in ancient Greek society, and their
interpretation in scholarship as ‘initiations’. Sarah Hitch discusses some of
the challenges being made to this approach, and demonstrates how the
evidence may be read in other ways. She raises questions about the
significance of conceptions of pollution that attend physiological changes,
particularly those of women. Jan-Mathieu Carbon’s chapter (‘Ritual Cycles:
Calendars and Festivals’) asks us to imagine the ways in which religious
ritual suffused everyday life, interacting with seasonal and agricultural
rhythms as a way of reckoning the passing of time, and marking significant
moments in the year. The final chapter of this part takes us to the time after
death: in ‘Imagining the Afterlife’, Radcliffe G. Edmonds III describes the
multiplicity of cultural imaginings about the afterlife, including the role of
the intriguing ‘Orphic tablets’ as evidence for mystery cults designed to
ensure participants received special favour after death. He evokes ‘an
ongoing contest of differing views’, which should be thought of as ‘jostling
for authority’ in particular situations.
In Part IX, the chapters ask whether and how aspects of the ritual and
belief of ancient Greek culture—in all its diversity—shaped and was shaped
by interactions with local cultures beyond the confines of the Aegean basin.
The first of these contributions, by Gillian Shepherd, considers Magna
Graecia, which she defines as incorporating both Sicily and South Italy.
These regions have produced archaeological material that perhaps most
obviously indicates Greek influence. However, as Shepherd argues, this is
not evidence for the simple replication of ritual practice and its artefacts. In
this context, she considers the transfer of cult during processes of
settlement, and the development and nature of oikist (founder) cults. From
the Greek West, we turn North, for Maya Muratov’s exploration of the
evidence for Greek cult practice in the Northern Black Sea littoral. Often
treated by scholars as a single entity, in fact, this region comprised three
distinct areas: Olbia and its environs (well known for its cult of Achilles
Pontarchos); Chersonese; and, the focus of this chapter, the Bosporan
Kingdom. The latter area is increasingly recognized as important for
scholars of Greek settlement in the Black Sea area, and this chapter
examines current scholarship, much of which is written in Russian.
From North we turn East, with four chapters that look to increasingly
distant cultures: Jan N. Bremmer examines the powerful influences of Near
East myth and cult on ancient Greek religion, and how these were
transmitted. He identifies two types of religious transfers: influences from
Mesopotamian, Hurrian/Hittite, Phoenician, and Persian religious systems,
and those from the epichoric religions, especially Luwian, Karian, Lykian,
and Phrygian, which the Greeks who immigrated to Anatolia gradually
included in their religious traditions. He draws particular attention to the
disparate nature of these influences—and urges scholars to study both their
geographical and social spread, and how they may have changed during this
process. As Bremmer notes in his chapter, Egypt has sometimes been
treated as a part of the Near East: here, interactions between Egyptian and
Greek religious cultures (from the fifth century BCE to the second century
CE) are explored in a separate chapter, by Kathrin Kleibl, focusing on
Greco-Egyptian cult. Through detailed descriptions of the objects and
organization of this cult, with particular emphasis on evidence for the
mysteries of Isis, Kleibl explores the authority and appeal of the cult to its
followers; she argues that they entered what was in effect ‘a parallel world’
that achieved ‘an effect of absolute power’. Before leaving this eastern
orientation, Rachel Mairs’ chapter explores the evidence for connections
with Greeks and Greekness in the diverse cult activities of ‘the Hellenistic
Far East’, that is, the Hellenistic kingdoms of Bactria and India. She
explains how ‘Greek cults were only part of the religious constellation of
the region’, and emphasizes the different purposes to which religious
images and practices might be put. The final chapter takes us to China,
raising questions not of cultural influence but of cultural comparison. Lisa
Raphals considers the similarities and differences to be found between
ancient Greek and ancient Chinese cultures, regarding cosmogony and
cosmology; relations and distinctions between gods and humans; and the
scope and nature of divinatory practices.
Overall, the structure of this handbook reflects the conviction of the
editors that ‘ancient Greek religion’ presents us with a complex subject,
itself raising questions as well as providing answers about ancient society.
We very much hope that the chapters here prove useful for opening up
debates and encouraging further study in one of the most vibrant areas of
scholarship on the ancient world.
 PART I

WHAT IS ANCIENT GREEK

RELIGION?
 CHAPTER 1

UNITY VS. DIVERSITY

ROBIN OSBORNE

INTRODUCTION

THE term ‘religion’ cannot be translated into Greek. The Greeks knew that
different people worshipped different gods and did so in different ways.
They also knew that worship of different gods or use of different names for
the gods tended to correlate with different cult organization and practice.
But no Greek writer known to us classifies either the gods or the cult
practices into separate ‘religions’. Modern scholars who talk of Religions of
the Ancient Greeks (Price 1999) are applying a modern category in a
modern way; whether or not this is other than highly misleading is arguable.
The absence of ‘religions’, as far as the Greeks were concerned, was a
matter of theology. The gods were not local in their interests or powers:
they held sway over the whole world. This is well brought out by the epics,
the Iliad and the Odyssey, which stand at the head of the Greek poetic
tradition (on the Homeric gods, see Kearns 2004). The war between Greeks
and Trojans that provides the background for the Iliad is not a war between
Greek gods and Trojan gods: the same Olympian deities are involved on
both sides and both sides seek to acquire the favour of the same gods by
exactly parallel cult practices, by dedication of precious objects, and by
making costly animal sacrifices (cf. Iliad 6.286ff.). Potentially, the different
gods with their different interests cancel each other out. But the universality
of the interests of each of the gods means that they can be distracted. In
some circumstances (as famously in Iliad 14.153–353 when Hera beguiles
Zeus) it is events among the gods themselves that distract them. But at the
beginning of the Odyssey the other gods are able to work out a way of
getting Odysseus back home to Ithaka while Poseidon, who is the god who
opposes him, is away taking his pleasure at a feast among the Aithiopians,
who have sacrificed a hecatomb of bulls and rams to him.
There was no limit to the variety of the gods. Although there was some
sense that there was a privileged set of twelve ‘Olympian’ gods, adding
further gods was never problematic and the twelve Olympians could be
worshipped under any variety of epithets. There was also no limit to the
number of different stories that might be told about the gods and about their
relations to each other. Right at the beginning of the extant poetic tradition,
Hesiod, in his Theogony, attempts to impose some order on the gods by
arranging them in a dynasty. Various other Archaic Greek writers tried out
their own versions subsequently, but there was never a canonical reference
text (see West 1966: 12–16 on what we know of other Greek theogonies).
Greeks were very tolerant of alternative stories about how the gods related
to one another, and even about their divine status itself.

A THEOLOGY OF DIVERSITY

When the Greeks became familiar with other peoples and their gods they
either recognized their own gods in those other gods or added a new god to
the pantheon (on new gods see, this volume, Anderson, Chapter 21, and the
chapters in Part IX). The most important witness here is Herodotos, who, in
surveying the peoples of the Persian empire comments on their cult
practices as well as on other aspects of their lives (Harrison 2000). His
description of Persian practice (1.131) gives a good indication of the way in
which he deals with divergent religious practice:
 I know that the Persians have the following customs: they do not make it their custom to set up
statues of the gods and temples and altars, but they bring mockery upon those who do so, in my
view because they do not consider the gods to be in human form, as the Greeks do. Their
custom is to make sacrifice to Zeus, climbing up the highest of the mountains, and they call the
whole sphere of the heavens Zeus. They also sacrifice to the sun, moon, earth, fire, water and
winds. In the beginning these were the only gods they sacrificed to, but they have been taught
to sacrifice to Heaven, learning it from the Assyrians and Arabians. The Assyrians call
Aphrodite Mylitta, the Arabians call her Alilat, the Persians Mitra.

Herodotos is quite happy here to identify the gods as the same despite their
being envisaged quite differently, and seems not worried at all by the almost
complete divergence of cult practice (he goes on to point out that their
sacrifices involve none of the paraphernalia normal in Greek sacrifices, no
altar, no fire, no libation, no music, no garlands, no barley grains).
Not only is the recognition of gods as the ‘same’ not prevented by
divergent beliefs and cult practices, there is no sense in Herodotos’
discussion that the way in which the Greeks worship the gods is the proper
way, from which divergence elsewhere constitutes degradation. Indeed,
famously, Herodotos reckons that the Greeks, far from coming first, got
their ideas about the gods from the Egyptians (2.4):
They [the Egyptians] were accustomed to say that the Egyptians were the first to establish the
names of the gods and that the Greeks took up the names from them, and they were also the
first to assign altars, statues, and temples to the gods and to carve images in stone.

Later (2.43), he claims to have a great deal of evidence that the Greeks got
the name of Herakles from Egypt, and quotes the Egyptians as claiming that
the Twelve Gods descended from the Eight Gods 17,000 years before the
reign of Amasis in the sixth century BCE. This puts the Egyptian gods in a
quite different league from the Greek gods, for Herodotos goes on to say
(2.53) that it was Homer and Hesiod who supplied the Greeks with the
gods’ family tree, names, roles, attributes, and forms, and that Homer and
Hesiod lived 400 years before his own time (in fact, about a 30 per cent
overestimate).
One further feature of Herodotos’ discussion is worth noting. He not only
allows that cult practices and so on may differ from ethnic group to ethnic
group, but that there may be differences of practice even within an ethnic
group. So, of the Egyptians, he observes explicitly that certain sacrificial
practices are universal across all Egypt (2.40, 41), but that, with the
exception of Isis and Osiris, not all Egyptians worship the same gods in the
same way (2.42).
 The importance of Herodotos is less as an authority—he had a rather
mixed reputation in antiquity when it came to reliability—than as a witness
to the sorts of ways in which Greek intellectuals (at least) thought about the
gods. The willingness that he displays to recognize among non-Greek
peoples the gods worshipped by the Greeks, regardless of their names and
the fact that the ways of worshipping them were quite different, is reflected
by the Greeks’ own variety of ways of referring to and worshipping ‘the
same’ gods.
Take the matter of naming the gods. Names were important, for if
sacrifices, dedications, and prayers were to win favour they needed to be
recognized by the god to whom they were offered. But Greek gods were
worshipped under many names: not only were epithets regularly added to
the name of a god (Apollo Karneios, Apollo Delios, Apollo Delphinios,
Apollo Lykios, Apollo Nomios, Apollo Pythios, Apollo Smintheus, and so
on), but gods might have alternative names—Dionysos is also Bacchus.
Scholars have sometimes taken the view that Greeks considered names
powerful, and that getting the name right was needed to make a god do
what one wanted. Indeed, in a classic formulation, Fraenkel (1950, vol. 2:
100; on Aischylos’ Agamemnon 160) wrote, ‘To know the name of a
daemon is to acquire power over him (Ei wie gut dass niemand Weiss, dass
ich Rumpelstilzchen heiss).’ But although the idea of the name of God as
powerful is familiar in Jewish religion, as far as the Greeks go, at least, this
seems to be a misunderstanding. The emphasis in Greek formulations is not
on getting the name of the god right but in calling the god by the name that
pleases them most—as Plato explicitly puts it in Kratylos (400e), ‘In our
prayers it is customary for us to pray that we may call them by the names
and places of origin that they themselves rejoice in’ (Pulleyn 1997: ch. 6).
The important theological point here is that, for the Greeks, their gods
were at the same time universal, found everywhere and powerful over the
whole world, and intensely local, manifesting themselves in particular
places, both in the support they gave for particular groups and individuals
and through actual epiphanies. Gods were recognized to be present in
different ways in different places—so Apollo inspires the Pythia to produce
oracular statements at Delphi, but his sanctuary at Delos was not an oracle.
Sanctuaries certainly traded on the fact that they had long been recognized
as places where making offerings to a specific god was particularly
effective. But it was equally possible for a god to be invoked in any place or
circumstance. One particularly nice illustration of this comes in Herodotos’
story of Ladike from Kyrene, wife of Amasis, who, threatened with death
because of Amasis’ impotence, prays to Aphrodite ‘in her mind’ and, as it
appears, in bed with Amasis (Hdt. 2.181).
Similarly, although religious expertise was recognized—Oedipus has
Teiresias summoned for his religious expertise and Kreon is depicted as
having followed Teiresias’ guidance, Euthyphro’s father goes to consult an
exegetes, the Athenian assembly listens to suggestions made by the seer
Lampon—there was nothing for which religious experts were needed
(Soph. OT 284–6, Ant. 992–3, 1058–9; Pl. Euthphr. 4c–d; ML 73. 47–61).
Not only could even animal sacrifice be performed without a priest—a
fifth-century inscription from Chios explicitly lays down that if the priest is
not present the person wanting to sacrifice should call out three times and
then do it himself (Sokolowski 1962: 129 ll.7–11; cf. RO 27. 27–8)—but no
training was needed to become a priest in the first place. Although
priesthoods were regularly restricted to those in a particular family (genos),
the Athenians democratized some new priesthoods by allotting them from
all Athenians of the appropriate gender, and, subsequently, cities frequently
put priesthoods up for sale.

RITUAL VARIATION

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that when we look at descriptions of cult

practice or prescriptions for cult practice in particular places we find
extremely wide variation. Take what is often thought of as the central cult
act, animal sacrifice. Scholars often present a composite picture of what
animal sacrifice involved (e.g. Burkert 1985: 55–7), derived largely from
Homeric descriptions (e.g. Hom. Od. 3.4–66; see further in this volume,
Naiden, Chapter 31), but there is no reason to think that there was, in fact, a
paradigmatic sacrificial ritual (cf. Bremmer 2007). In different places
different animals were killed in different ways and different things were
done with the resulting meat—which might variously be totally burned up
(‘holocaust’ sacrifices, usually of piglets), cooked and compulsorily
consumed on the spot, taken away for consumption at home, or sold. Priests
were regularly rewarded with part of the sacrificed animal, but not always
with the same part. And sometimes something quite different was done.
An extreme example of variance is provided by the sacrifices to Artemis
Laphria at Patras. We know about these sacrifices only from Pausanias, who
mentions in his discussion of Messene (4.31.7–8) that the Messenians and
the people of Patras alone received the cult of Artemis Laphria from
Kalydon in Aitolia, and then gives a full description of the major cult act at
the sanctuary at Patras in his discussion of that city (7.18). According to
that description, for the festival of the Laphria they pile up wood round the
altar and then people bring birds, ‘all sorts of sacrificial victims’, wild boar,
deer, wolf, and bear cubs. They then set fire to the wood and prevent any
beasts escaping.
This sacrifice breaks all the normal rules. The animals here are killed by
burning, rather than being killed before being cooked. Rather than the
victims being killed singly, they are killed as a group. The victims include
wild animals, which are not normally sacrificed. Although all this is odd,
none of it is completely unheard of. Pausanias stresses the ‘foreignness’ of
the name Laphria and the cult image at Patras—but foreign here turns out to
mean from central Greece. It happens that excavation at the sanctuary of
Artemis and Apollo at Kalapodi in Phokis in central Greece has now
revealed faunal evidence for the sacrifice of wild animals—boar and deer—
there. Pausanias also (10.32.14–17) knows of a festival at Tithorea, also in
Phokis, where oxen, deer, geese, and guinea fowl are burnt on a pyre.
Lucian, in his work On the Syrian Goddess (49), reports a sacrifice at
Hierapolis in which trees are set up in the sanctuary, goats, sheep, and birds
are hung up alive from the trees, and then the whole is set alight (Lightfoot
2003: 500–6). Whether one of these festivals influenced another is not
important, what is important is that these forms of sacrifice, though found
notable by Greek observers coming from elsewhere, were within the bounds
of possible sacrificial activity.
Visitors did not have to examine the small print of sacred laws, however,
or wait to see through a whole year’s calendar of festivals in order to
appreciate the variety of cult practice. That variety was written large in the
physical appearance of the sanctuaries. This applies to their buildings, their
visible history, and, above all, to their votives.
There was probably no single physical feature common to all sanctuaries.
Even the altar, which might be thought fundamental, could be absent—
various famous sanctuaries, including those of Zeus at Olympia and on
Mount Lykaion, had altars formed only from the accumulation of ash and
other debris from historic sacrifices. Images of the god were regular, but not
universal, and temples might take a wide variety of sizes and shapes, or
might be absent altogether (see further in this volume, Scott, Chapter 16).
Equally, there was probably no sort of building or monument that could not
be found in a sanctuary. Sanctuaries variously included theatres, facilities
for games, stoas, dining rooms, caves and artificial underground rooms,
spaces for public gatherings, spaces for private initiation ceremonies, art
galleries, treasuries, rooms for sleeping in, workshops—everything,
perhaps, apart from private houses. This range of features gave sanctuaries
an extremely diverse appearance. This is only to be expected, given the way
in which virtually all human cultural activities could be, and regularly were,
seen to relate to the gods and incorporated within human life (it was the
natural activities, birth, death, sex, that were more problematic; Parker
1983: chs 2 and 3).
The different structures visible in different sanctuaries related to the
particular activities that went on there. Different sanctuaries were visited by
various groups at different frequencies and for varying purposes. Some
sanctuaries attracted small family or other cult groups only occasionally.
Some sanctuaries attracted enormous crowds occasionally for their major
festivals. Other sanctuaries attracted groups of individuals, whether, for
example, individuals looking for healing by spending a night sleeping in a
sanctuary or those who had come to ask some particular question of an
oracular god (see further in this volume, Iles Johnston, Chapter 32, and
Graf, Chapter 34). Those who gathered in sanctuaries variously came to do
something or to be spectators. Some came to sanctuaries because festivals
were an opportunity to meet others, including for purposes of courtship.
Others came to sanctuaries because they were places to get away from the
rest of the world, places of asylum. Many came to sanctuaries expecting to
feast there, but in some festivals, at least, there were days when those who
came were expected to fast there (the Athenian Thesmophoria included a
day actually called Nesteia, or ‘fasting day’). On some occasions the whole
sacrificial animal was burnt up, leaving no meat for the worshippers (see
Jameson 1999).
The various activities in different sanctuaries left varying traces, not just
accidentally but on purpose. In particular, many came to sanctuaries in
order to give the god or goddess a gift. The variety of gifts had few absolute
limits. Plato in Laws (955e–956b) suggests that, in his ideal city, there
would be a ban on dedications made of ivory, because ivory is culled from a
dead animal, on iron and bronze because they are used for weapons of war,
and on gold and silver because they encourage envy. Many Greek
sanctuaries teemed with gold and silver, and from an early date ivory was
plentiful; moreover, while shields and other elements of armour may have
outnumbered offensive weapons, there are plenty of spear heads to be found
and Persian swords had a proud place on the Athenian Acropolis (Harris
1995). But Plato’s thoughts in this passage were not thoughts that no one
had previously entertained. We have a series of regulations from sanctuaries
in the Peloponnese which limit or ban jewellery or fancy clothing—though
it is striking that, in some cases, the penalty for offending is precisely to
dedicate the item in question (so LSCG 68; Parker 1983: 82–3). And there
is sensitivity too about leather, unless from sacrificial beasts (LSCG 65.22–
3).

LOCAL CUSTOMS

It was not primarily regulations that dictated what was to be found in a

sanctuary, but local custom. It is very unlikely that any authority had ever
prescribed the dedication of statues of naked young men (kouroi) at the
sanctuary of Apollo Ptoios near Akraiphnion in Boiotia, but by the time of
the Persian Wars a visitor to that temple would be met by a forest of more
than a hundred kouroi (Ducat 1971). That this was a sanctuary of Apollo
clearly played some part in attracting dedications of this form—the
sanctuary of Athena on the Athenian Acropolis attracted a large number of
statues of young maidens (korai) but few kouroi. But other Apollo
sanctuaries—including the wealthy Delphi and Delos sanctuaries—were
much less heavily populated with these petrified young men. What has
emerged from the study of votives from different sanctuaries in the same
place receiving dedications during the same period is that both particular
location (down by the harbour, up on the acropolis) and the perceived
personality of the deity involved played a part in determining what was
dedicated. So the two sanctuaries at Emborio on Chios from which votives
have been excavated yield, in one case (the Athena sanctuary on the
acropolis), dedications that celebrate fulfilment of civic expectations, and,
in the other case (the Harbour sanctuary), dedications that flag up links with
the outside world and the possibility of procuring ‘exotic’ items (Morgan
1990: 230–2).
The distinctiveness of the individual sanctuary, whether in its buildings
or its votives, reflects the distinctive character projected on to the Greek
gods by their worshippers. Greek communities worshipped the gods they
considered themselves to need in the places and ways they thought would
best fulfil that need. There was a constant dialogue between the image of a
god received from past generations and the imagination of current
worshippers. This dialogue was carried on through material gestures as well
as through words—both were intended to persuade other humans and the
god himself or herself of the style of human life that god should be
considered to support. The tradition of past generations, like the
accumulation of customary practice, whether expressed in ‘law’ or not, only
ever provided the starting point for a new generation’s rewriting of their
relationship with a particular god.
For all the homeostatic development of religious thought and cult, it
remains true that, notwithstanding the historic and geographical diversity to
be found in Greek religious practice, it was not the case that anyone could
do anything and have it regarded by fellow Greeks as acceptable religious
behaviour. Part of the diversity was itself the product of different
prohibitions. Sanctuaries put up regulations prohibiting particular practices
as readily as they put up regulations as to what was to happen. A fine
example is provided by a fifth-century regulation from the sanctuary of
Herakles on Thasos: ‘To Thasian Herakles it is not permitted (to sacrifice)
goat or pig. And not for a woman. And no ninths are given. And no
perquisites are cut. And no games’ (IG XII, suppl. 414). In this sanctuary
what could be sacrificed, who could be involved, how precisely the victim
was treated (the practice of dividing off a ninth share to be burnt entire),
and what other activities went on are all subject to strict control (on sacred
laws, see in this volume, Petrovic, Chapter 23).
Scholars have noted that it is absolutely standard for the prohibitions, and
other sacred laws, to cite no authority, by contrast to other city laws that
record how they came to be agreed (Parker 2004). If authority was needed
for the regulation of cult practice then it had to come from the gods
themselves, through an oracle (most commonly Apollo’s oracle at Delphi, a
‘central’ authority in a very literal sense given Delphi’s claim to be the
navel of the earth). Some regulations do indeed invoke Apollo as authority
(as, for example, does the great fourth-century regulation about purification
from Kyrene, RO 97), and religious practices were one of the main things
about which cities consulted oracles. (Despite Bowden’s claims to the
contrary, this is well borne out by the list of Athenian consultations in
Bowden 2005: app. 2.) But although oracles might settle local practice
when major changes were introduced, or when there was some local
dispute, in most cases there is no sign that those in charge of a sanctuary
considered that they needed any outside sanction before imposing a
particular practice. Polytheism and political fragmentation together
guaranteed that there was no central religious authority.
But for all the absence of a central authority, there were practices that no
one engaged in; human sacrifice for one. For all that there are stories of
human sacrifice told both about the mythical and about the historical past,
no cult rules required human sacrifice. The nature of the stories shows that
they are precisely parading the boundaries of what could, in any
circumstances, be accepted (Hughes 1991, esp. ch. 4). In part, the issue here
was theological: sanctuaries were places where the ultimate power of the
gods had to be respected—even non-sacrificial killing in a sanctuary was
problematic (for example, the deaths of Kylon and Pausanias, Thuc. 1.126,
134; cf. 128). Even for someone to die of natural causes in a sanctuary was
regarded as improper (Parker 1983: ch. 2).
Almost equally unacceptable was sex in sanctuaries. The question of
whether there was sacred prostitution anywhere in the ancient world, and in
particular whether claims made about Corinth by Pindar (fr. 122) and
Strabo (8.6.20) constitute evidence for sacred prostitution in the Greek
world has been much debated (Beard and Henderson 1998; Budin 2008).
But it is clear that part of what generated stories of sacred prostitution, both
within the Greek world and outside it (cf. e.g. Hdt. 1.99; Strabo 11.14.16,
16.1.20; Lucian Syr. D. 6; Eusebius Vit. Const. 3.55) was precisely the
absolute prohibition on sexual intercourse within sanctuaries, a prohibition
featured in stories as well as in sacred laws and identified by Herodotos
(2.64.1) as peculiar to Greeks and Egyptians (Parker 1983: 73–5). One of
the earliest regulations that we have from a sanctuary, that of Zeus at
Olympia, is concerned exclusively with fornication (Buck 64). Herodotos
ends his history with the story of Artayktes having sex in the sanctuary of
Protesilaos at Elaious (9.116.3; cf. 7.33). That giving birth in sanctuaries
was also thought improper (RO 102.5, Thuc. 3.104) is presumably related.

CONCLUSION

What the examples of human sacrifice and sexual intercourse show is not
simply that what might be included in cult activity had its limits, but that
those limits came to be identified as characteristic of what it was to be
Greek. What was at stake here was not primarily a matter of theology: on
the one hand, the Greeks were prepared to think that gods might indeed
ordain human death or even require human sacrifice, on the other, they
allowed infringement of the no-sex rule, like infringement of other local
rules, to be rectified by paying a fine and making a sacrifice. These
fundamental and shared expectations about not doing certain things in
sanctuaries were rather a matter of defining one’s distinctive moral stature
in the wider world. If the diversity of Greek religion is as great as the
diversity of Greek poleis, its unity is the unity that underlay the claim that
the world of the polis was Greek.

REFERENCES
Beard, M. and Henderson, J. 1998. ‘ “With This Body I Thee Worship”: Sacred Prostitution in
Antiquity’, in Gender and the Body in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. M. Wyke, 56–79. Oxford.
Bowden, H. 2005. Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle: Divination and Democracy. Cambridge.
Bremmer, J. N. 2007. ‘Greek Normative Animal Sacrifice’, in A Companion to Greek Religion, ed.
D. Ogden, 132–44. Oxford.
Budin, S. 2008. The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity. Cambridge.
Burkert, W. 1985. Greek Religion. Oxford.
Ducat, J. 1971. Les Kouroi du Ptoion. Paris.
Fraenkel, E. 1950. Aeschylus Agamemnon Edited With a Commentary. Oxford.
Harris, D. 1995. The Treasures of the Parthenon and Erechtheion. Oxford.
Harrison, T. 2000. Divinity and History: The Religion of Herodotos. Oxford
Hughes, D. 1991. Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece. London.
Jameson, M. H. 1999. ‘The Spectacular and the Obscure in Athenian Religion’, in Performance
Culture and Athenian Democracy, ed. S. Goldhill and R. Osborne, 321–40. Cambridge.
Kearns, E. 2004. ‘The Gods in the Homeric Epics’, in The Cambridge Companion to Homer, ed. R.
L. Fowler, 59–73. Cambridge.
Lightfoot, J. L. 2003. Lucian On the Syrian Goddess Edited with Introduction, Translation and
Commentary. Oxford.
Morgan, C. A. 1990. Athletes and Oracles: The Transformation of Olympia and Delphi in the Eighth
Century B.C. Cambridge.
Parker, R. 1983. Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion. Oxford.
Parker, R. 2004. ‘What Are Sacred Laws?’, in The Law and the Courts in Ancient Greece, ed. E. M.
Harris and L. Rubenstein, 57–70. London.
Price, S. R. F. 1999. Religions of the Ancient Greeks. Cambridge
Pulleyn, S. 1997. Prayer in Greek Religion. Oxford.
Sokolowski, F. 1962. Lois sacrées des cités grecques, supplément. Paris.
West, M. L. 1966. Hesiod Theogony Edited with Prolegomena and Commentary. Oxford.
 CHAPTER 2

BELIEF VS. PRACTICE

THOMAS HARRISON

IN a splendid passage of his Lectures on the Religion of the Semites,

Robertson Smith argued trenchantly that, in approaching ancient religions,
it was necessary to rid oneself of assumptions based on Christianity (Smith
1894: 16–7; for Smith, see e.g. Bell 1997: 261–2; Naiden 2013: 4–9).
Hitherto, he observed, the study of religion had been the study of Christian
beliefs, with religious duties ‘flowing from the dogmatic truths [the learner]
is taught to accept’:
All this seems to us so much a matter of course that, when we approach some strange or
antique religion, we naturally assume that here also our first business is to search for a creed,
and find in it the key to ritual and practice. But the antique religions had for the most part no
creed; they consisted entirely of institutions and practices. No doubt men will not habitually
follow certain practices without attaching a meaning to them; but as a rule we find that while
the practice was rigorously fixed, the meaning attached to it was extremely vague, and the
same rite was explained by different people in different ways, without any question of
orthodoxy or heterodoxy arising in consequence. In ancient Greece, for example, certain things
were done at a temple, and people were agreed that it would be impious not to do them. But if
you had asked why they were done, you would probably have had several mutually
contradictory explanations from different persons, and no one would have thought it a matter of
the least religious importance which you chose to adopt. Indeed the explanations offered would
not have been of a kind to stir any strong feeling; for in most cases they would have been
merely different stories as to the circumstances under which the rite first came to be
established, by the command or by the direct example of the god. The rite, in short, was
connected not with a dogma but with a myth. . . . Belief in a certain series of myths was neither
 obligatory as a part of true religion, nor was it supposed that, by believing, a man acquired
religious merit and conciliated the favour of the gods. What was obligatory or meritorious was
the exact performance of certain sacred acts prescribed by religious tradition.

These profound differences in ancient religion, as Smith perceived them,

were fundamental, then, to the approach that he adopted. Since ‘ritual and
practical usage were, strictly speaking, the sum total of ancient religions’
(Smith 1894: 20), he took as his starting point the institutions of religion,
delaying discussion of metaphysical questions. In so doing, of course—and
in his sharp distinctions between doctrine or dogma, on the one hand, and
practice on the other—he found confirmation for his starting position.
Smith’s distinctions between Christian and ancient religions, and between
belief and practice, also served another purpose, however: that of
preserving his own Christian faith from criticism. The story of the Religion
of the Semites is of an evolution, a gradual breaking free of the ‘spiritual
truth’ from the ‘husk of a material embodiment’, as his discussion of
ancient sacrifice as a sacramental act of communion makes clear (Smith
1894: 439–40):
In primitive ritual this conception is grasped in a merely physical and mechanical shape, as
indeed, in primitive life, all spiritual and ethical ideas are still wrapped up in the husk of a
material embodiment. To free the spiritual truth from the husk was the great task that lay before
the ancient religions, if they were to maintain the right to continue to rule the minds of men.
That some progress in this direction was made, especially in Israel, appears from our
examination. But on the whole it is manifest that none of the ritual systems of antiquity was
able by mere natural development to shake itself free from the congenital defect inherent in
every attempt to embody spiritual truth in material forms. A ritual system must always remain
materialistic, even if its materialism is disguised under the cloak of mysticism.

The ‘personal faith’ of Christianity, by contrast, lay ‘too deep to be touched

by criticism . . .’, as Smith wrote in an early essay of 1869; ‘no attack on the
Gospel history can have such a personal weight as is at all comparable to
the Christian’s conviction of the reality of the historical Christ’ (Smith
1912: 134).
Many aspects of Robertson Smith’s thinking—his sharp opposition
between belief and practice, his commitment to liberate the study of ancient
religion from Christianizing assumptions—have continued to structure the
study of Greek religion to this day. Especially perhaps in the last quarter of
the twentieth century, leading scholars of Greek (and Roman) religion
habitually defined their subject in terms of sharp contrasts, the absence in
antiquity of phenomena considered central to Christianity—in the phrase of
Robert Garland (1994: ix) a ‘negative catechism’. So, for example:
‘Practice not belief is the key, and to start from questions about faith or
personal piety is to impose alien values on ancient Greece’ (Price 1999: 3;
cf. Price 1984: 3, 11); ‘What mattered was the performance of cult acts, not
the state of mind of the actor’ (Osborne 1994: 144); ‘Greek religion may
then fairly be said to be ritualistic in the sense that it was the opposite of
dogmatic’ (Osborne 1994: 144); and so on.
At the same time, however, the intellectual background to Robertson
Smith’s formulation has, in many respects, evaporated. Few would now
share his underlying model of an evolutionary development culminating in
(a distinctively Protestant) Christianity. More broadly, Christianity has, in
so many areas of Western society, receded to the point that it is scarcely any
longer a meaningful point of comparison—to the extent that a Church of
England vicar making a home visit might plausibly be thought more likely
to be a stripper (Mackley 2014). New approaches in scholarship, moreover,
from social anthropology and the ‘cognitive science of religion’ (see e.g.
Sørensen 2005), have emphasized the very large gulf that exists in ‘credal’
religions between the formal doctrinal position and the beliefs manifested in
everyday ‘online’ contexts, and the inability of those charged with doctrinal
consistency to assert any meaningful control. The tragedy of the theologian,
for Pascal Boyer, is that ‘there always seem to be some nonstandard beliefs
and practices left sticking out’ (Boyer 2001: 281; cf. Tremlin 2006: 92, 96,
161, 163, 171).
The fact, then, that some religions ‘define themselves through dogmas
and orthodoxy’ (King 2003: 283), the question of the presence or absence
of a ‘creed’ in any religious system, while still undoubtedly a significant
factor, becomes markedly less central. And the way is opened up for an
approach which—rather than being based on a series of negative contrasts
taken as given—is more openly comparative.
In particular also—in parallel to the decentring of the polis as the
defining focus of Greek religion, a model which both depended upon and
reinforced the emphasis on ritual (see esp. Kindt 2012)—‘belief’ has made
a comeback, albeit a partial one. Objections to the term ‘belief’ (when
applied to Greek religion, or more generally) can broadly be said to belong
to two overarching families. The first, made in elaborate detail in the classic
discussion of Rodney Needham, focuses on the difficulty of translation
between cultures: put simply, the lack of any clear or stable vocabulary in a
range of languages, ancient and modern, equivalent to ‘belief’, the lack of
any concept of belief (Needham 1972). In the Greek context, skirmishes
have focused on the expression nomizein tous theous: a phrase translated
variously as to ‘acknowledge the existence of the gods’, to ‘worship the
gods according to cultic tradition’ or (smudging the issue) as ‘accept the
gods in the normal way’ (Versnel 2011: 552–4, 554–8; Parker 2011: 36). It
is clear that any attempt to find neat equivalents for such a concept in
foreign languages would be a fruitless one; such terms and concepts have
complex histories in any language (Needham 1972: ch. 3; cf. Smith 1977).
But, as Henk Versnel has argued compellingly, though the effort to describe
the range of (‘emic’) concepts available to a historical people may still be
an important one, it is no block to our additionally describing the same
people in our own (‘etic’) terms (cf. Versnel 2011: app. IV, esp. 548–51).
The other main family of objections—following on from Robertson
Smith—focuses on perceived differences between ancient and modern
religions, and in particular on the suggestion (supposedly) implicit in the
term ‘belief’ of an emphasis on spiritual commitment, or on assent to a set
of propositional beliefs (Price 1984: 10–11). Does ‘belief’, however,
necessarily have such implications? More recently, distinctions have been
drawn between different meanings or levels of belief: between a ‘high-
intensity’ Christian usage (belief as a deliberate commitment, adherence to
a set of dogmas, etc.) and an alternative ‘low-intensity’ usage (belief as in
common parlance), or between ‘Belief’ and ‘belief’ (Harrison 2000: 18–23;
Versnel 2011: 548).
If we were to accept that Christian religion could not in fact be reduced
to a set of credal propositions any more than ancient polytheism (cf. Versnel
2011: 552), then we might nuance this distinction further. In place of our
distinction between high-intensity and low-intensity belief, we might
instead distinguish between an (emic) Christian perspective, the Christian
(or just one Christian) ideal of personal spiritual commitment, on the one
hand, and, on the other, the reality of Christian belief and practice; or we
might distinguish between the different value placed on belief in different
contexts (Feeney 1998: 13). (Ironically, even as we have tried to free
ancient religion from Christianizing assumptions, we may have privileged a
distinctively Christian ideal of belief—one with its own history; see here
Asad 1993: 27–54.)
 If we look only for ‘high-intensity’ belief in the Greek world, it is no
surprise if we find it to be scarce. (It has been well pointed out, however,
that the discourse of ‘unbelief’ in the Greek world suggests the capacity to
conceptualize its reverse, for ‘How can one person deny the (existence of)
the gods unless (all) others do believe that they exist?’: Versnel 2011: 553.)
If we widen the search, however, we are rewarded with evidence from a
wide range of sources—from oratory, historiography, drama, epigraphy, as
well as art—reflecting ideas, for example, concerning oracles and
divination, the justice (or injustice) of the divine, the presence of an
afterlife, or the reasons for propitiating the divine.
The existence of some such level of ‘low-intensity’ belief is now indeed
sometimes presented as self-evident: ‘[Surely] even a ritual is performed in
the belief that there was some purpose in doing it’ (Parker 2011: 2). ‘One
worships the gods’, in Robert Parker’s words, ‘because, experience shows,
benefit derives from doing so. The gods are there. At this very basic level
there is indeed belief, a belief very generally shared, or at least feigned, and
in social terms not wholly safe to repudiate’ (Parker 2011: 32; cf. Linder
and Scheid 1993: 53–4; Versnel 2011: 552).
There is a danger, however, that religious belief here is seen, primarily or
exclusively, as a kind of penumbra to ritual action. Our sources, however,
unquestionably give us more than just ‘different stories’ of the origins of
rites (to use Robertson Smith’s phrase) and, indeed, in many cases they are
not concerned with rites at all. A stronger formulation than that of Parker,
for example, has it that while we might ‘conceive of beliefs which are not
put into ritual’, there is no ‘ritual which is not grounded in a set of beliefs’
(Naerebout 1997: 329; cf. 335–6 on rituals without meaning). Rituals
cannot simplistically be decoded with the use of a corresponding belief, but
they are nonetheless ‘enactments of meaning’.
Even then if you accept that beliefs do not necessarily stand in a clear,
subservient relationship to ritual action, there is another hazard: that they
are seen simply as secondary in terms of importance. (A parallel danger is
that the more clearly mediated evidence of literature is seen as simply less
substantial than ‘real religion’, whatever that might be: Harrison 2007:
374.) ‘One way of mediating’, in the words of Parker again, ‘between those
for whom Greek religion is a matter of things done at or near an altar, and
those for whom it is rather the sum of the stories, speculations, and appeals
just mentioned, is to argue that, though beliefs were held, only acts were
subject to appeal’ (Parker 2011: 2; cf. 33–4). But must we then privilege
things done over things said or thought?
Can we go further than our distinction between two levels of belief, high-
and low-intensity? How should we understand belief? ‘A man is said to
believe a thing’, wrote Robertson Smith, ‘when he cannot prove it, but has
got something towards a proof’ (1912: 111). Belief, in this sense, is usually
seen as a conscious act of assent, or as a free and responsible decision of the
will. It is also inseparably connected to an idea of the truth of what is—even
if the believer may decide to withhold his assent or if the idea asserted is
untrue (Needham 1972: 80). However, as Robertson Smith went on to argue
(very much from the position of a believer himself), this idea of belief as
conscious assent, or as a ‘hypothesis that [I feel] bound to accept till further
facts turn up pro, or con’, sits uncomfortably even with Christianity (1912:
111):
if so, whence the moral warmth that mingles with our discussion of Christianity? Why are we
eagerly apologetic in behalf of a hypothesis? What interest can we have to maintain this
hypothesis more than any other which will suit the facts equally well? I am sure no Christian
would feel that a hypothetical Christianity was worth having.

A series of alternative definitions of belief seek to capture this broader

aspect: belief as a spiritual commitment, as trust (as one might trust a friend
without seeking to test his/her words), or as disposition. So in
Wittgenstein’s image, for example, a belief is like a picture (say, a picture of
the Last Judgement) which the believer has constantly in their mind,
regulating his life, ‘constantly admonishing me’ (Wittgenstein 1966: 55).
Belief can also be seen as associated with feeling and affection (Needham
1972: 94), a perspective that brings to the surface some of the psychological
complexity and variety of belief. So, for example, ‘belief in God’ can be
seen as encompassing a whole range of emotions ‘from reverential love to
rebellious rejection’: ‘not only trust but also awe, dread, dismay,
resentment, and perhaps even hatred’ (Malcolm 1964: 107). And in yet
another long-standing strand of thought, belief has been seen as background
knowledge. So, for example, for Hume, ‘belief is an act of the mind arising
from custom’—custom being everything which ‘proceeds from a past
repetition, without any new reasoning or conclusion’, such as tradition and
authority (cited by Needham 1972: 72; cf. Wiebe 1979: 237).
This last approach to belief presents similarities with some more recent,
cognitively grounded definitions: for example, with a common distinction
between, on the one hand, intuitive or database belief, and, on the other,
reflective beliefs (cf. Tremlin 2006: 177 for variant terminology). Database
beliefs, in the definition of Dan Sperber, are ‘intuitive’ in the sense that, in
order to hold them as beliefs, we need not reflect—or even be capable of
reflecting—on the way we arrived at them or the specific justification we
may have for holding them’ (1997: 68). Reflective beliefs, on the other
hand, are derived by conscious reasoning, by teaching from parents, and so
on, and are variable and heterogeneous.
Such cognitively based definitions of belief are, of course, conceived as
rooted in the physical operations of the brain. Another crucial difference,
however, from earlier approaches is that these different forms of belief are
seen as operating in parallel to one another. Strikingly also, the focus is on
plural beliefs rather than belief. Reflective beliefs, according to Sperber
again, are ‘interpretations of representations embedded in the validating
context of an intuitive belief’ (1996: 89). By contrast, it seems, within the
ritual-belief debate in the study of Greek religion, belief is almost always
seen as singular: belief is something which you either do or do not have.
A further step then, beyond accepting as uncontroversial the presence in
Greek religion of a ‘low-intensity’ belief, is to open up the overall domain
of belief and to look in at the hugely varied propositional statements that
constitute it—and to explore particular beliefs or propositions both in their
literary or other contexts and in relation to one another. When presented
with a given statement, we should ask, in the words of an earlier theorist of
belief, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, not ‘what does it mean, inherently,
statically, absolutely; but rather: What has it meant? What has been its
meaning in this or that century; in this or that part of the world; to this or
that community?’ (Smith 1977: 17). We might examine, for example, the
performative context for any particular statement, or the range of possible
meanings available for any particular terms used (cf. Skinner 2002: 57–89).
The picture that emerges, then, is a dynamic one, in which certain beliefs
might be said only to be activated in particular circumstances (cf. Eidinow
2011: 9). The belief, for example, in the possibility of divine retribution as
an explanation of misfortune may lie dormant, as it were, until the right
circumstances align: until a notoriously sacrilegious individual, for
example, suffers a misfortune so extreme, or so well matched to his or her
crime, as to be instinctively credited to the divine (Harrison 2000: ch. 3).
Such a belief might indeed be said only to be generated as a ‘spontaneous
inference’ in that particular context (Sperber 1997: 69), developed on the
basis of a ‘lexicon’ or network of other intuitive beliefs. To pursue the
example of divine retribution, behind the conclusion that x person has been
the victim of divine retribution, there may lie any of the following, more or
less unexamined, beliefs: about the definition of ‘sacrilege’ (or the semantic
field of terms for impiety or injustice), about the appropriateness of certain
acts of human vengeance, about the likely forms of retribution, the
appropriate speed of retribution, the characters or domains of individual
gods, the behaviour appropriate to men or women, and much more.
A number of other complexities of belief might be explored. How, first,
can we begin to infer beliefs? How are beliefs expressed? And how does the
manner of their expression—a first-person assertion, an ascription to others,
or a fleeting disclosure of a presupposition—affect the nature of that
evidence?
In the Greek context, in particular, beliefs are commonly expressed in
narrative form (cf. Kindt 2006: 43–4). The story of the fulfilment of an
oracle or of an instance of divine retribution ends with all the evidence tied
up, apparently conclusively. In another sense, however, such stories remain
open-ended, with the lurking moral—the implied proposition—that the
same may happen again: that the gods have the power to punish
wrongdoers, for example (e.g. Hdt. 9.120), or that an oracle is blind to the
wealth and status of those that consult it (most famously, the story of
Croesus). These kinds of stories have, perhaps, an underestimated role in
the transmission, reinforcement, and transformation of belief. The way in
which such narrative beliefs tidy up their own narrative trails may also
mislead us, however, into a too neat a view of the explanatory role of Greek
religion (cf. Gould 1985). As readers, we cannot but see things from the
vantage point of the story’s end, the point at which the opaque prophecy
becomes clear, or the sudden misfortune explicable in terms of an earlier
action that had prompted it. If, on the other hand, you try to reconstruct the
vision of a character beset on all sides by potential omens (the situation of
Xenophon in the Anabasis, for example) or of the individual casting around
for explanations of a pattern of misfortune, we see arguably a different
picture: of boundless potentiality (cf. Naerebout 1997: 396 n. 946).
Another related complexity is the possibility of a kind of slippage in
religious contexts between seemingly literal and figurative usages, the way
in which a given proposition may shift from being, to not being, ‘in quotes’.
In the terminology of Sperber again, any encyclopaedic statement can be
rendered a symbolic statement if put in quotes (Sperber 1996: 110). So, for
example, an individual might shift from the statement ‘p is true’ to the
statement ‘ “p is the word of god” is true’, or the Christian might hesitate
between a literal and a figurative interpretation of the Eucharist.
There are, perhaps, two related dangers here. The first is that such
religious propositions are seen as characteristically distinct from others—in
so far, for example, as they are incapable of disproof (cf. Wittgenstein 1966:
53–4). Such statements, however (‘semi-propositional representational
beliefs’ in Sperber’s terminology), are by no means restricted to religious
contexts. Indeed, ‘there are many areas where, if we do not speak
figuratively, we can say very little’ (Soskice 1985: 96).
The second risk is that such statements are envisaged as merely figurative
or symbolic (and so as empty of value for the historian), that we draw too
sharp a distinction between literal and metaphorical meaning (cf. Soskice
1985: 68–70), and so focus on the fact of metaphorical or symbolic
language being deployed rather than examining the meaning that it conveys.
The statement, for example, that ‘Jesus is the lamb of God’ is clearly not
meant literally, but ‘this is not to say that the phrase is intended by
Christians as only an evocative way of describing an ordinary man’
(Soskice 1985: 89). The slippage, detected by Sperber, between the literal
and the figurative is indeed one means by which such propositions can be
lived by.
These complexities of religious belief and others—the ways, for
example, in which beliefs can be maintained despite contradictory evidence,
are reinforced through their expression in action (including ritual), or are
transmitted—are all deserving of more intense focus in the context of Greek
religion. Before that can take place, however, we need, arguably, to
emancipate ourselves further from the long legacy of the study of Greek
religion, with its false choice of ritual and belief, and to accept the sphere of
religious ‘belief’ as a more significant aspect in the study of Greek religious
experience.

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Easterling and J. V. Muir, 1–33. Cambridge.
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 CHAPTER 3

OLD VS. NEW

EMILY KEARNS

INTRODUCTION

RELIGIONS are systems that both evolve and look to the past. Like any other,
the religion of the Greeks—from the earliest times known to us until the
triumph of Christianity—exhibits continuity and change. The latter hardly
needs comment, but the former is present too. Even in the transition from
the Mycenaean period to the ‘Dark Ages’, once viewed as a more or less
absolute cultural fault line, we are becoming aware of increasing numbers
of sanctuaries which show cult continuity (Niemeier n.p.), while many
trends once viewed as typically Hellenistic can now be seen to have roots in
the Classical period (cf. Mikalson 1998). The history of such developments
is the history of Greek religion; what I am more concerned with in this brief
chapter is to tease out the structural significance of ‘old’ and ‘new’ within
the system, and to analyse the practitioners’ reactions, perceptions, and
conscious thought on old and new in religious matters.
 TRADITION AND INNOVATION: GODS,
RITUAL, THOUGHT

Greek religion may be viewed as an essentially traditional system, and

when Greeks talked about religious matters they tended to equate the old
with the esteemed. Nevertheless, as Parker (1995: 152–3) neatly puts it, ‘
“Traditional” polytheisms are subject to constant change; that is one of their
traditions.’ There is always room for new gods, new identifications of old
gods, and new associations between gods, and alongside these we can also
often detect changes in cult practice and patterns of religious thought.
Innovation (or preservation) may thus be discerned in three main areas of
the Greek religious system. Firstly (and most conspicuously in the scholarly
literature, e.g. Garland 1992; Parker 1995: 152–98), we can identify new
gods. As discussed in more detail by Ralph Anderson (this volume, Chapter
21), we can see many examples of the adoption of new objects of worship
from the fifth century onwards; they may be deities already worshipped in
other parts of the Greek world, like Pan and perhaps Boreas in Athens, or
they may be the gods of other peoples (Adonis, Sabazios, and later Isis,
Osiris, Men . . .), and they may be accepted as part of public state-funded
cult (like Bendis in Athens), or remain as objects of private worship
(Adonis). To avoid the suggestion that their promoter might wish to demote
the traditional gods of the city—as the prosecution alleged of Sokrates
(Diog. Laert. 2.40)—one might emphasize the antiquity of the new deity’s
worship elsewhere, and (if a foreign god) lay stress on an identification with
a Greek equivalent (in terms of name and typical ritual). Alternatively, the
new god might be known solely by a Hellenized form of the original name,
and perhaps worshipped with ritual of a somewhat ‘exotic’ flavour. Both
foreignness and novelty could be played up or played down.
To the Greeks, how you worshipped mattered as much as whom. There
were countless rules, some local, some almost universal, laying down what
type of sacrifice might be given to individual gods and heroes. The old
ways were tried and tested, and the fact that they were supposed to be
pleasing to the gods had often an emotional, as well as a practical, appeal.
Porphyry (Abst. 2.18) gives an anecdote (possibly of late origin) in which
Aischylos refuses to write a paean on the grounds that an older paean by
Tynnichos of Chalkis would always be preferred, just as more ancient,
simpler statues are thought to be more divine. However, there might still be
inducements to change, particularly financially motivated ones. The author
of the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, attributed to Aristotle, discusses
appropriate arguments for retaining sacrifices just as they are, and for
making them either more or less magnificent and therefore costly (1423a–
4a). Greater magnificence should be represented as an increase of the
established order, likely to please both gods and humans, rather than an
alteration, he argues, and lesser expenditure as demonstrating pleasing
piety. Changing the style of worship completely is clearly not an option.
A third area of possible change is the least tangible, that of religious
thought and mentalities. This whole phenomenon covers much ground of
fundamental importance to the religious historian, but at the same time is
relatively little discussed by the Greeks themselves. Ancient perceptions of
changes in religious outlook tend not to go beyond the view that later ages
exhibit a decline in piety (for instance, Pl. Leg. 984b–e, and compare Isoc.
Areop. 29–30, below, p. 33). At the same time, relatively new explanations
of cult and myth may be retrojected onto an earlier period and represented
as wisdom expressed by the ancients in allegorical form. This kind of
strategy is seen, for example, in the text known as the Derveni Papyrus
(from the fourth or late fifth century BCE), explicating the cosmological
meanings of an earlier Orphic theogony, and is parodied by Euripides in
Bacchae 272–97.

MYTH: CHANGE AND CONFLICT

In mythical terms, the Greeks were very clear that change had taken place
in matters concerning the gods. The theogonic traditions exemplified in
Hesiod and the Orphic poets narrated the violent overthrow of gods older
than Zeus and the Olympians, making no reference to mortals. But the idea
that such conflicts could be played out in a human-oriented arena was also
familiar: the eponymous chorus of Aischylos’ Eumenides fight for their
rights against the ‘younger gods’ through their claim to be acting justly in
persecuting Orestes. More significantly still, the same play records the view
that, before Apollo came to Delphi, the place had belonged in succession to
three older, female deities: Earth, Themis, and the Titan Phoibe. Most
scholars no longer believe this represents historical fact, but for the Greeks
themselves it entails the view that deities other than Apollo were once the
main recipients of Delphic cult. The form of worship practised there in
historical times had once been new.
The Homeric Hymns similarly narrate moments when cults were
established. Apollo comes to Delphi (in a version different from that given
by Aischylos) and Demeter comes to Eleusis, each deity giving instruction
concerning their worship. The priesthood is established (Cretan sailors in
Apollo, the lords of Eleusis and—by implication—the family of Keleos in
Demeter), and a link with the present is suggested. Similar aetiological links
occur in those less elaborate, non-hymnic traditions which speak more
briefly of the foundation of a divine cult by a hero or heroine, usually under
direct instruction from the deity, with the human founder as first priest of
the cult. Their significance for us is twofold. On the one hand, they provide
a template for innovation, the pattern cult foundations were perceived to
follow; on the other, they give a strong legitimation to tradition, by
indicating that the most familiar cults go back effectively unchanged to
primordial times and the direct instruction of the deity concerned.

CULT: INTRODUCTIONS AND ARRIVALS

We today, from our ‘etic’ perspective outside the Greek religious system,
are accustomed to speak of ‘introducing a cult’. The Greeks too talked
about ‘establishing’ sanctuaries, altars, and statues. But, in addition, they
said that the god arrived in a place—in other words, the motive force in the
action was not so much the human agents as the deity itself. Examples are
particularly easy to find in the cult of Asklepios. The inscription recording
the inauguration of his worship in Athens, in 421/0, makes the point clear
(IG II2 4960). The god ‘comes up’ to the city from the coast, and ‘arrives’;
it is Asklepios himself who decides to come to Attica; his human host
accepts his arrival and does everything possible to facilitate it. It is the
same, according to the Epidaurian miracle inscriptions, when the
‘accidental’ arrival of a sanctuary snake at Halieis announces the god’s will
to settle there (IG IV2, 1 122.69–82, no. 33; LiDonnici 1995: 111, B13); and
analogous too is the well-known case of Pan, who sent a message to the
Athenians through the runner Philippides to ask why they did not worship
him (Hdt 6.105). A human individual who ‘introduces new gods’ may well
be viewed with suspicion, but when it is the god himself who demands to be
worshipped, there is a presumption of authenticity. Non-compliance would
be foolish; multiple stories told of opposition to the arrival of Dionysos
(Pentheus, Lykourgos, the inhabitants of Attica), all ultimately fruitless.
Of course, the Greeks recognized a distinction between such ancient
times and their own day, and between mythological and more practical,
everyday forms of discourse, so the mythological model does not map one-
to-one onto the contemporary situation. Mythology dramatizes and
simplifies; in the real world, the communication lines between gods and
humans are uncertain. Therefore, confirmation for new cult institutions was
often sought and received from an oracle. Oracular pronouncements were a
very frequent incentive to religious action (and hence, often, change) for
both cities and individuals; the question ‘Praying and sacrificing to which
god will give us a better outcome?’ is a favourite, and a good proportion of
the preserved responses from Delphi and Dodona, (real and imagined) is
concerned with the regulation of religious affairs. In theory at least, oracles
were understood to supply the divine command for a new cult, which, in the
mythological paradigm, comes directly from the god instituting his own
worship.

ORIGINS: ‘ANCESTRAL’ AND

‘ADDITIONAL’

Whereas the new tends to demand justification, the prestige of the old might
seem to speak for itself. But in fact, while some rituals might be universally
recognized as ‘old’, there could be differing views on the status of other
rites, along with differing accounts of their origins. Foundation myths
lacked the status of universally recognized revelation; something else was
needed. In Athens, a more prosaic backup was provided, at least from the
late fifth century, by the attempt to classify sacrifices as ‘ancestral’ (patria
—that is, supposedly to be found in the laws of Solon) and ‘additional’
(epitheta—having come into use since that time). But one of our main
sources for this distinction also suggests the possible difficulty in agreeing
the correct category for particular sacrifices. Lysias 30 is a speech for the
prosecution of Nikomachos, who, in the last decade of the fifth century BCE,
undertook probably two codifications of state sacrifices, as part of an
overall clarification of the law. Nikomachos’ brief was evidently to bring
together into one list the ‘Solonian’ sacrifices and those which had been
added by decree at a later date; parts of what is almost certainly the
resulting calendar survive (LSS 10). The speaker in Lysias claims that by
accepting too many of the epitheta into his list—with ulterior motives
darkly hinted at—Nikomachos has increased the expenditure on sacrifice
beyond what the polis will bear, with the result that some of the patria have
gone unsacrificed. No corroborating details are given, and we do not know
whether the prosecution was successful (see Todd 1996). The important
thing, from our point of view, is the clear distinction between the two types
of sacrifice, and the differing worth attributed to them: while any sacrifice
decreed ‘by the people’ ought to be carried out, where this is not possible
precedence should be given to the patria.
The case can hardly be separated from its complex political context, but
the point made by Lysias is closely echoed much later in the fourth century
BCE in Isokrates’ Areopagitikos (29–30). Speaking of the Athenians of old,
he says ‘They did not create a procession of three hundred oxen when they
felt like it and randomly omit the ancestral (patrioi) sacrifices, nor did they
celebrate the additional (epithetoi) festivals on a magnificent scale when a
feast was involved but make sacrifices from the lowest tender in the holiest
of rituals.’ The equation of new with ostentatious and capricious, and old
with simple and pious, has a moral force at least partly independent of any
immediate context, and both underpins and goes further than the
categorization of the old as compulsory and the new as optional. (See also
D’Angour 2011: 90–8.) Of course, other points of view were possible; but
in Aristophanes’ Clouds (984–5) it is the Worse Argument that takes the
bouphonia ritual of the Athenian Diipolieia as a byword for something
absurdly old-fashioned. It is very significant that the Rhetorica ad
Alexandrum (above, p. 30) recommends the representation of change as
amplification, rather than substitution—just as implied by the word epitheta
for the post-Solonian sacrifices in Athens.

PROMPTS AND PROVOCATIONS

What circumstances stimulated the introduction of the new in religion? Was

innovation as arbitrary a process as Isokrates seems to imply? Here, it is
much easier to trace new cults than changes in cult style, and modern
historians will naturally take a different viewpoint from the orator. Some
cases would necessarily have gained the approval of the most traditional
observers; for instance, the founding of new sanctuaries when new cities
were founded. A city without sanctuaries was obviously unthinkable, and
such foundations normally mimicked closely and deliberately their originals
in the mother city, retaining contact and continuity by means of a physical
object from it (Malkin 1991). Somewhat similar regional patterns can be
observed, for example, in Attica, where, probably in the late sixth century,
the important regional sanctuaries of Eleusis and Brauron produced related
establishments in the town area (Parker 1995: 73); here, old and new
sanctuaries were necessarily linked more closely, and integrated together in
polis-wide celebrations.
More radically, new foundations often came about in connection with
some sort of crisis. It was the events surrounding the Persian Wars that
apparently stimulated the cults of Boreas, Pan, Artemis Agrotera, and
Artemis Aristoboule (among others) in Athens (see, in this volume,
Anderson, Chapter 21). In a sense, all of these new cults and celebrations
could be classed as thank-offerings in response to deliverance from danger,
but on a much larger scale than normal. Herodotos’ account enlists a great
number of gods and heroes in the struggle against the Persians, and it was
probably not only in Athens that, the crisis surmounted, new cults were
brought into prominence and new aspects were given to old. It remains very
likely that oracular consultation preceded the formal adoption of state cult
in most cases. By contrast, the remarkable diffusion of the cult of Asklepios
in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE, rather than being born from response to
a particular crisis, is better seen as part of a growing trend, essentially
independent of more specific circumstances (see Wickkiser 2008: 97–105,
2009). The momentum of growth itself had a legitimating effect, and an
Athenian audience of 422 (Ar. Vesp. 121–3) was already expected to
understand the concept of a trip to an Asklepieion for healing purposes,
before the establishment of the Athenian Asklepieia. Mythology probably
helped Asklepios’ integration into the cult pantheon; his sons are mentioned
in the Iliad, though there is no sign of his divinity there, and it cannot have
harmed his career that he was the son of Apollo, the oracular god par
excellence.
Thus far, our discussion, though drawing on specific illustrative
examples, has proceeded mainly along general lines. Perhaps inevitably, it
has tended to focus on innovation and response, matters which yield
valuable explicit statements on the roles and perceived worth of old and
new in religion, but this is only half the story; we must also consider the
numerous possibilities for their interplay in practice. Much will be
discerned in the chapters that follow, but as an introductory case study we
may consider the mysteries celebrated near the ancient city of Andania in
Messenia.

ANDANIAN MYSTERIES

When, in 370/69 BCE, a Messenian state was founded in what had been
Spartan territory, west of Taygetos, it was necessary to create proper civic
cults, presumably on the basis of whatever religious practices the various
groups of enslaved, disfranchised, and diaspora Messenians had managed to
carry out during Spartan rule. But the developed legend of the mysteries, as
given by the second-century CE writer Pausanias, was that the ritual had
been brought to Messenia in what we would call mythical times, by Kaukon
of Eleusis, and later reinforced or reformed by (the equally mythical) Lykos
and Methapos. Later, in the second Messenian War, when the national hero
Aristomenes realized that defeat and subjugation by the Spartans was
inevitable, he hid ‘something held in secret’ (en aporrhetoi) among the
Messenians, burying it on Mount Ithome and praying the gods to keep it
safe, for if it were destroyed or fell into Spartan hands Messenia would
perish forever. After the Spartan defeat at Leuktra, the Argive general
Epiteles received the instruction from a dream figure, identified as Kaukon,
to dig in a certain place on Mt Ithome and ‘rescue the old woman’. There he
found a bronze jar (hydria), which he took to the Theban general
Epaminondas, who had himself been told by a similar dream figure to
restore their land to the Messenians. Opening the jar, they found ‘the ritual’
(telete) written on thin sheets of tin, which members of Messenian priestly
families transcribed into books (4.1.5–9, 2.6, 20.3–4, 26.6–8, 27.5).
The narrative’s historicity is questionable, to say the least, but while
Aristomenes is essentially a legendary figure, there is nothing implausible
in the idea that the mysteries date back to roughly the time of their
‘rediscovery’ in the fourth century, though hard evidence is lacking
(Luraghi 2008: 236–7). In shaping cults for the new polis at the time of its
foundation, it would be highly desirable to link them with the period before
the Spartan conquest. A new construction is built using older materials
(elements from the religion of helots, perioikoi, or the diaspora), but also
claiming a very much older origin: firstly, a beginning in mythical times, if
the attribution to Kaukon is not a later addition, and, secondly, a crucial link
for the new, independent Messenian polity with the moment just preceding
its former extinction. Here, the new is essentially a recovery of the old; the
unique history of Messenia allows and even encourages a particularly
dramatic juxtaposition of the two.
Even if their real origin is later than the fourth century, the point still
stands for the received history of the ritual in the Imperial period, the
narrative as given in Pausanias. The mysteries are represented as both new,
at the birth of the modern Messenian polis, and very old. The dream
imagery of the narrative emphasizes this, with the command to ‘rescue the
old woman’ who was enclosed in a bronze chamber, near to death. This has
some links with an earlier dream, experienced by a Messenian exile, who
dreamed that he was having sex with his dead mother, who afterwards came
to life. In accordance with a common principle of dream interpretation,
‘mother’ is taken to mean ‘ancestral land’ (cf. Hdt. 6.107; Artemid. 1.79):
the land is reunited with her children, and revives. The symbolic language
in both cases indicates deliverance and new life for something old, and the
coincidence of motifs reinforces the equation of the mysteries with
Messenian identity that their talismanic status in the Aristomenes story
suggests.
 The validity of the new cult is established in part through a dream vision,
a direct communication with the divine in the shape of the heroized
Kaukon, the first hierophant, and no oracular confirmation is attested. The
ancient object found through a dream is unusual in antiquity (though
commonly reported in the Greece of more recent times: Stewart 2004,
2012), but is apparently an irrefutable witness to the antiquity of the ritual.
Writings are sometimes found in mystery rituals, but are by no means
mandatory, perhaps not even usual (there is no indication that books were in
use at Eleusis). Here, they are a palpable link between old and new. The jar
in which they were found could be viewed in the sanctuary in Pausanias’
time, making it clear that the story of the mysteries’ recovery was an
important part of the way they were perceived. In this regard, it is perhaps
significant that Pausanias treats the text as coterminous with the ritual,
speaking of ‘the telete’ as the object concealed in the jar—as indeed may
also be implied by its personification as an old woman in Epiteles’ dream.
The emphasis on a physical object as guarantor of continuity recalls the role
of the ritual elements in the establishment of a new city (Deshours 2006:
196–8), but, in this ‘refoundation’, the new city is separated from the old by
time rather than in space.
Two documents give further evidence of change and development in the
Andanian mysteries. An inscription found in the Argive sanctuary of
Pythian Apollo (Syll.3 735) is the record of an oracular response given to
‘Mnasistratos the hierophant, consulting about the sacrifice and the
mysteries’. The reply is incomplete, but certainly draws a distinction
between the two terms: ‘Sacrificing with good omens to the Great Karneian
Gods in accordance with ancestral custom. And I also tell the
Mes[seni]a[n]s to celebrate the myste[ries. . .].’ As usual, the oracle is, in
part, conservative, recommending the importance of ancestral rituals, but
the second clause, on the mysteries, probably contained more specific
instructions, relating, for instance, to date, place, or periodicity. It is clear
that the original question cannot have been ‘Is it better for the Messenians
to celebrate the sacrifice in accordance with ancestral custom?’, since such
a question would always be answered in the affirmative. So the clarification
requested must relate to some proposed modification, or at the very least,
uncertainty (for a different interpretation, see Pirenne-Delforge 2010).
The date of the inscription is unclear, though no earlier than the second
century BCE. Equal uncertainty surrounds the long and detailed document
from Messenia itself (IG V, 1 1390; on dating, Gawlinski 2011: 3–11),
setting out regulations for the proper conduct of the mysteries, and also
mentioning a Mnasistratos. The most economical hypothesis is that the two
Mnasistratoi are the same, and that the regulations of the Messenian
inscription were produced in consequence of the oracular response.
However, even if this is not so, this second inscription still represents a
blend of old and new. The secret parts of the ritual cannot be alluded to in a
public text, but we can assume that they remain unchanged. The bulk of the
regulations is concerned with the smooth running of the ritual and the
maintenance of proper order among the participants. It seems likely that the
‘sacred men’, who appear repeatedly in the inscription, take over a good
deal of such competence from Mnasistratos the hierophant (and benefactor)
and perhaps the priests and priestesses of the deities of the mysteries.
Mnasistratos has given certain books, probably the (supposed) copies of the
original metal-leaf ritual text, into the keeping of these hieroi, but this need
not imply any diminution of his hierophantic role, the essentials of which
are likely, at this date, to have been transmitted orally and visually rather
than through a written text. This long set of regulations seems to be
primarily innovative in the administrative aspects of the cult, and,
secondarily perhaps, in details of procession and sacrifice—the sort of thing
which the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum tackles in its treatment of ‘changing
sacrifices’. By contrast, the importance given to the books, placed
emphatically as the first matter to concern the hieroi after their swearing-in,
is suggestive of the link with the past and the unchanging nature of the heart
of the ritual.

CONCLUSION

Despite scholarly disagreement over the exact purpose of these two

inscriptions, one thing is clear: the articulation and development of the
Andanian cult—and, in this, it is likely to be typical of most cult complexes
—shows not merely a mélange of old and new, but a pattern in which old
and new have a tendency to acquire and represent certain significances,
both in isolation and in relation to each other. ‘Old’ may or may not be old
in a historical sense, but its antiquity is emphasized, not only guaranteeing
the venerability of the ritual’s heart, but articulating key moments in the
community’s (self-perceived) past; this is an increasingly common function
of cult in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, with many of the observances
listed by Pausanias, for instance, capable of bearing that writer’s faintly
political interpretation in looking back to their city’s glory days (cf. Swain
1996: 330–56). ‘New’ is very often implicitly represented as renewing the
ancient, re-establishing the direct contact with the divine which was held to
be the cult’s origin, possibly forming part of a series of such re-established
contacts, and providing a platform from which individuals could benefit,
and be seen to benefit, the community, and partially recapitulate the role of
the hero founder. The example we have looked at is far from exhausting the
possibilities, but will give some sense of the dynamic interaction between
perceptions of old and new in Greek religious practice and understanding.

REFERENCES
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Cambridge.
Deshours, N. 2006. Les Mystères d’Andania. Étude d’épigraphie et d’histoire religieuse. Ausonius.
Scripta Antiqua, 16. Bordeaux.
Garland, R. 1992. Introducing New Gods: The Politics of Athenian Religion. Ithaca, NY.
Gawlinski, L. 2011. The Sacred Law of Andania: A New Text with Commentary. Berlin.
LiDonnici, L. R. 1995. The Epidaurian Miracle Inscriptions: Text, Translation and Commentary.
Atlanta, GA.
Luraghi, N. 2008. The Ancient Messenians: Constructions of Ethnicity and Memory. Cambridge.
Malkin, I. 1991. ‘What Is an Aphidruma?’ CA 10: 77–96.
Mikalson, J. D. 1998. Religion in Hellenistic Athens. Berkeley, CA.
Niemeier, W.-D. ‘Cult Continuity in Sanctuaries at Miletus and Kalapodi’, unpublished.
Parker, R. 1995. Athenian Religion: A History. Oxford.
Pirenne-Delforge, V. 2010. ‘Mnasistratos, the Hierophant at Andania (IG 5.1.1390 and Syll.³ 735)’,
in Myths, Martyrs and Modernity: Studies in the History of Religion in Honor of Jan N. Bremmer,
ed. J. Dijkstra, J. Kroesen, and Y. Kuiper, 219–35. Leiden.
Stewart, C. 2004. ‘Ritual Dreams and Historical Orders: Incubation between Paganism and
Christianity’, in Greek Ritual Poetics, ed. P. Roilos and D. Yatromanolakis, 338–55. Cambridge,
MA.
Stewart, C. 2012. Dreaming and Historical Consciousness in Island Greece. Cambridge, MA.
Swain, S. 1996. Hellenism and Empire: Language, Classicism, and Power in the Greek World, AD
50–250. Oxford.
Todd, S. 1996. ‘Lysias against Nikomachos: The Fate of the Expert in Athenian Law’, in Greek Law
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Wickkiser, B. L. 2008. Asklepios, Medicine, and the Politics of Healing in Fifth-Century Greece:
Between Craft and Cult. Baltimore, MD.
Wickkiser, B. L. 2009. ‘Banishing Plague: Asklepios, Athens, and the Great Plague Reconsidered’, in
Aspects of Ancient Greek Cult: Context, Ritual and Iconography, ed. J. T. Jensen, G. Hinge, P.
Schultz, and B. Wickkiser, 55–66. Aarhus.
 CHAPTER 4

MANY VS. ONE

VINCIANE PIRENNE-DELFORGE AND GABRIELLA

PIRONTI

INTRODUCTION

THE term ‘polytheism’ has come down to us from the Hellenistic Jewish
philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who used the Greek adjective polutheos
and its cognates to describe a widespread vision of the divine that was
different from that of his own religion (Ph. Dec. 65: polutheos; Mutat. 205:
polutheia). (The majority of Mediterranean cultures considered that many
divinities existed in the world and needed to be honoured by humans.) In
the context of its emergence, the Greek word was pejorative, in the same
way that ‘paganism’ and ‘idolatry’ would soon be used in Latin
Christianity. ‘Polytheism’ began to be used during the sixteenth century, to
draw a contrast between truthful monotheism and the error of pagan
religions (Schmidt 1987). Its context, for two centuries at least, would
remain largely determined by Christian theology.
Since the nineteenth century, Greek rituals and their social embedding
have been extensively studied. In contrast, gods were left on the fringes of
new scholarly trends as past curiosities to be treated individually in
dictionaries (god of war, goddess of love, of wisdom, etc.), just like a
collection of statues in a museum. Today, the use of the term ‘polytheism’
as an explanatory category is a clear indicator that gods are returning to the
forefront of the study of ancient Greek religion (recently, Bremmer and
Erskine 2010; Parker 2011: 64–102; Versnel 2011). Scholars are focusing
on the ways in which Greek people performed rituals, not only to affirm
social hierarchies in their local communities (the horizontal ‘embedded’
perspective), but also explicitly to honour their gods (the vertical
perspective).

HOW DOES POLYTHEISM WORK?

Understanding plurality is hard work, and describing how polytheism

functions has been a matter of scholarly debate for fifty years at least. The
shift of paradigm concerning these questions is closely connected with
studies devoted to the Greek pantheon by Jean-Pierre Vernant and Marcel
Detienne (Vernant 1974; and Detienne and Vernant 1974, revisited by
Detienne 1997), and often called the ‘French structuralist approach’.
Scholars working on Greek polytheism today must still take this work into
account. We can synthesize it as follows, also taking into consideration
some more recent qualifications.
Vernant (1965, 1974) was reacting against two trends in scholarship, first,
a long-lasting ‘essentialization’ of the Greek gods, in which individual gods
were characterized as ‘gods of’ a particular domain (as mentioned), and,
second, an obsessive quest for the origin of the gods. He underlined the fact
that Greek gods were divine powers and not persons, despite their literary
and iconographical representations as anthropomorphic figures (already, for
Gernet, as early as 1931, a god was a ‘system of notions’ (1931: 222)).
Vernant emphasized the necessity of taking into consideration the
connections between deities within a pantheon: divine powers were to be
defined in contrast to other powers and limited by them. We can no longer
fully subscribe to this model. One of its main limits is the fact that seeing
the gods in opposition to each other runs the risk of underestimating the
overlap in their fields of competence. Moreover, a rigid application of the
model can still lead to identifying each god with a distinctive and exclusive
‘mode of intervention’ (Dumézil 1974: 186–256). Indeed, it gives back to
the gods an ‘essentializing’ unity that was the original point of contention
(Detienne 1997: 61–2; cf. Parker 2005: 390). Nevertheless, the core of
Vernant’s approach remains valid, when qualified by a more complex
analysis of how polytheism works.
In this perspective, a god can be seen as a complex network or cluster of
powers. On the one hand, each god is defined by his or her own powers,
competences, attributes, and so on—its own network; on the other hand, it
is characterized by relationships and associations with other gods belonging
to the same pantheon—a ‘system’ whose components cannot be studied in
isolation—for instance, in a city, with various sanctuaries and cults, or in a
literary work, with its interacting divine protagonists. Unity and plurality
are closely related at each level of analysis: each god is conceived as many
powers in a network whose core is the god’s name; many gods form
structures that we call pantheons; each pantheon is seen as an organizational
whole within its context (the whole cosmos in a theogony; the Trojan War
in epics; a scenario on the tragic stage at Athens; natural, social, and
political life in a city, etc.).
Studies on polytheism challenge the ‘canonical’ vision of Greek gods as
distinct personalities with a clear psychological profile, established once
and for all in the mythological tradition. In past decades, scholars still
needed to insist that Greek deities were approached in ritual practice and
conceived at different levels—the local, polis level, and the Panhellenic
one, in sanctuaries as in narratives (Sourvinou-Inwood 1978). This assertion
is obvious today, and the risk of ‘essentialization’ has been reduced enough
to partially rehabilitate the word ‘personality’ or the expression ‘cult
persona’ to refer to the gods. In a religious context, evoking a ‘personality’
is the way to get a handle on the gods, to pray to them, but what is finally
expected by worshippers is well and truly a manifestation of divine power.
In the middle of this tension, the name of the god is essential, providing an
evocation of the particular god in question, which pervades myth and cult,
personality and powers.
The tension between these components—single ‘personalities’ and
interrelated powers within a pantheon—remains at the core of many
discussions on how polytheism works and implies that there are different
methodological options by which to address this question. The regional
scope for studying a consistent pantheon, on the one hand, and the deity-
centred option, on the other, are the mainstreams of the study of Greek
polytheism today. Both of them can be questioned and have their
limitations. In a god-by-god analysis, one encounters the risk of being
excessively focused on the chosen deity, drawing a static and unequivocal
picture, and forgetting the relationships created by specific configurations
(see BMCR 2011.01.14). However, the regional option creates its own
distortions. It conveniently marks out connections within a local system, but
does not necessarily explain why we find, in so many places, a deity named
Athena, or Zeus, or Demeter, Apollo, and so on, often with specific cult
epithets. Accordingly, one runs the risk of resorting to a superficial and
‘canonical’ description of these deities, by describing them at a Panhellenic
level, without adequate acknowledgment of their local persona. In other
words, a study focused only on a region encounters two different risks:
either, on the one hand, ‘atomizing’ a single deity in its local
manifestations; or, on the other hand, reducing deities to their generic
description (‘god of . . .’, ‘goddess of . . .’), which is rather paradoxical in
studies trying to understand polytheism at a local level. Another way of
addressing the question of how polytheism works would be to study a
particular domain of life (marriage, protection of children, war, politics,
agriculture, seafaring, etc.) and observe how different divinities are
involved in this context. An ideal position would be to integrate all of these
approaches, but such an enterprise remains difficult to conduct, except in a
large collaborative team.
It has been stated that ‘polytheism is indescribable’ (Parker 2005: 387).
However, we cannot remain silent. We must try to understand how the
Greeks managed to conceptualize unity and diversity together (contra
Versnel 2011). Gods cannot be conceived in static terms because cults and
myths reconfigure and redefine them as personalities and, at the same time,
as powers interrelated to each other. Under the same name, a deity is at
once the cult persona worshipped in a particular place and the figure that is,
for example, described in the Iliad as feasting on Mount Olympos or staged
by Euripides in the theatre of Dionysos at Athens. The divine name has a
central value because the god is not completely absorbed in and reduced to
what is particular and temporary in its function or narrative construction
(Pirenne-Delforge 1994: 10–12). A god is still more than the heterogeneous
mosaic resulting from an arbitrary combination of epithets, images, and
narratives (contra Burkert 1985: 119, 218). To use once again the metaphor
of the network, a sum would be static, while a network is dynamic, fluid,
flexible. A god can be conceptualized like such a network: different
activities or contexts, such as the telling of myths or practice of particular
cults, let some segments and portions of the network appear (Pironti 2007:
285). The whole set of connections is not necessarily entirely activated in
each context, whatever that may be, but remains potentially available. For
instance, in a local cult, the god’s name with a cult epithet is one aspect of
the deity seen in close-up, not the expression of a completely different deity.
In this respect, myths and rituals are not unrelated bodies of evidence, but
specific languages, which resonate inside the mental frame of poets who
narrated tales, of painters who decorated Attic vases, and of worshippers
who performed rituals.
To give some flesh to these abstractions, let us take into account two
different types of divinity. The first to be tackled are what scholarship
misleadingly identifies as ‘minor deities’ or ‘personifications’, that is, the
Moirai (Pirenne-Delforge and Pironti 2010). The second example refers to a
deity belonging to the ‘highest level’ of the Greek pantheon: Hera, the wife
of Zeus himself. The methodological approach of polytheism must be the
same for both categories because both refer to divinities felt by worshippers
to be powerful agents acting in their lives at one time or another.

CASE STUDY 1: THE MOIRAI

The name of the Moirai refers to the ‘portion’ or ‘share’ that every human
—or divine—being receives. In this case, the powers of the goddesses are
closely related to the notion conveyed by their name, just like their mother
Themis (‘the divinely inspired order of things’) and many other ‘divine
personifications’ worshipped by the Greeks. They are commonly
understood to be ‘goddesses of fate’ and actually appear in mythic tales that
mainly associate them with birth and death. As traditional spinners and
weavers, these goddesses rule over everyone’s lifecycle and over the
various patterns of the ‘life thread’. This is the traditional, Panhellenic
image conveyed by tales from Homer to Pausanias and beyond. The label
‘goddesses of fate’ is not completely wrong, but is unsatisfactory, as are all
such reductive kinds of labels concerning the gods. Moreover, it is built
upon the unwarranted assumption of a universal notion of ‘fate’, common
to the Greek world and our own (as Eidinow 2011 notes). We can identify
the Moirai as powers whose specific network encompasses distribution,
reward, and regulation. On a mythical level, they interact with the stability
warranted by Zeus’ authority (Hes. Theog. 901–6; cf. Pironti 2009). On the
level of cult practices, the evidence related to them is neither numerous nor
explicit about worshippers’ expectations. This evidence includes three kinds
of texts (we do not take into account funerary inscriptions, which use a very
loose notion of ‘fate’): first, individual or familial dedications concerning
pregnancy and birth (IG II² 4547; FD III 1.560; cf. Pind. Ol. 6.41–4; Ant.
Lib. 29); second, family foundations of the Hellenistic period constructing a
kind of ‘micro-pantheon’ in which the Moirai are honoured (IG XII, 4 348;
LSAM 72); third, civic rituals attested by literary texts and inscriptions (IG
I³ 7.12; Paus. 2.11.4).
Without addressing the detail of this evidence, we can delineate the
position assumed by these goddesses in the fields of birth and family
matters. Their interventions in human lives and communities are various but
they are closely related to both lifespan and lifecycle, in narratives as well
as in cult practice. Other deities are concerned with the same fields of
intervention, but the ‘set of notions’ related to the Moirai, including
distribution, reward, regulation, is specific. They are the benevolent
protectors of the lifecycle, as well as the strict guardians of its limits. The
Moirai regulate the share attributed to everyone, determining the beginning
and the end of life, as well as the important steps that regulate life, with an
eye on the correct balance between good and evil. On a larger scale, a
family group honours the Moirai in order to perpetuate the family. In this
case, the expected intervention not only concerns individual lives and their
limits, but the consolidation of the lineage itself. Finally, on the global level
of polis religion, epigraphic and literary evidence indicates that a whole
civic community could pay homage to the Moirai. What exactly were the
expectations of a city? In the Eumenides of Aischylos, where the Moirai
and the Semnai theai are closely connected, we are told that the life of
young people is protected by both groups of goddesses since they are able
to prevent civil war (Aesch. Eum. 956–67; cf. Paus. 2.11.4, on a cult
relating the two at Sicyon). Accordingly, the balance between good and evil
at the very heart of the polis concerns a correct distribution of births and
deaths within the community. The strict regulation made by the Moirai is
one of the conditions of the survival of the entire community of the polis, as
well as of the families composing it. The three spinners and weavers
depicted in Panhellenic myths are not a fiction without any relation to cults.
Moreover, their close relationship to Zeus and the identity of their mother,
Themis, are the best indications that they are not, as has been hypothesized,
primeval goddesses of death and arbitrary dispensators of good and evil.
Instead, they are regulators, even though human beings are often unable to
grasp the cosmic dimension of this regulation and distribution, and
complain about the arbitrariness of fate and the limits inherent in human
life.

CASE STUDY 2: HERA

Hera is our second case study (Pirenne-Delforge and Pironti 2009, and
forthcoming) and our focus will be her relationship with Zeus, which is
fundamental in various tales concerning the goddess. Across the whole
Greek tradition, she is the wife of the father and king of the gods. In Homer,
she is depicted, at least at first sight, as a shrew, always getting angry at
Zeus (Hom. Il. 1.517–21; 8.407–8). The same image appears in those tales
where she persecutes the illegitimate children of her fickle husband (Hom.
Il. 15.24–30; Hes. Theog. 313–35; Ap. Rhod. 1.996–7). Taken at face value,
mythical narratives give the goddess an image that is incompatible with her
cult persona, for example, in Argos or in Samos. However, if we carefully
read the many tales or many vases depicting Hera, and scrutinize the
aetiologies of some of her cults, important insights emerge, giving us some
clues that can be used to test the validity of a ‘Hera network’. In this case,
marriage, legitimacy, power, and sovereignty are essential aspects for
determining at least a part of a definitional structure of the goddess, which
is largely rooted in the relationship between Hera and her husband and
brother, the king of the gods.
Regarding the cult persona of Hera in Argos, the aetiological evidence is
scanty. Nevertheless, we can reconstruct a mythic cycle in which the main
focus is the relationship of the goddess with Zeus: she is a parthenos,
‘unmarried girl, maiden’, then, gets married, leaves her husband, becomes a
parthenos again, and the cycle starts again (Paus. 2.38.2–3; cf. 8.22.2–3).
The concrete implementation of the cycle into local cult practice is not
completely clear, but Zeus is undeniably present in the Argive plain, as
attested by local iconography. In the fifth century BCE, a new temple and
statue were established there for the goddess. One of the pediments
depicted the birth of Zeus and the Gigantomachy, the other showed the
Trojan War (Paus. 2.17.3). A huge chryselephantine statue was
commissioned from one Polykleitos, and showed Hera seated on a throne,
wearing a crown decorated with the Graces and Seasons. In one hand,
according to Pausanias (2.17.4), the goddess carried a pomegranate, and, in
the other, a sceptre with a cuckoo. Pausanias explained the presence of the
bird on the sceptre in terms of the passion felt by Zeus for Hera in her
maidenhood: to seduce her, he changed himself into a cuckoo and she
caught it to be her pet. The bird, then, may be seen as a reference to one
part of the cycle just described.
The bird’s appearance on the sceptre is not mere chance. The latter is an
iconographical symbol for sovereignty; the bird perched on it manifests the
matrimonial dimension of Hera’s sovereign power. The birth of Zeus on the
pediment of her temple is another indication of this dimension, and it is also
alluded to elsewhere; for example, on the huge Classical temple to Hera
Teleia in Boiotian Plataia. One of the temple’s statues, carved by Praxiteles
and placed at the entrance of the edifice, represents the goddess Rhea
carrying to Kronos the stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, as though it
were the baby Zeus to which she had given birth; the other one, made by
the same sculptor, is Hera Teleia, ‘the Spouse’ herself. A further image of
Hera from the same site, whose sculptor remains unknown, was called the
‘Bride’ (Paus. 9.2.7). The ritual cycle in which Hera becomes again and
again the wife of Zeus is very clear in this case: every year in Plataia, the
Daidala festival staged the reconciliation, after a separation, of the deities in
a matrimonial context (Paus. 9.3.1–9.3.9). In Argos, as well as in Plataia,
the theogonic references present in the goddess’s sanctuary are indications
of the strong connections, on the one hand, between Hera and Zeus as
children of Kronos, and, on the other hand, between the matrimonial
relationship and divine sovereignty.
 A last element can be provided to support the view that Hera at Argos is
closely related to Zeus on both the mythical and ritual levels. Two months
of the calendar of Argos refer to marriage. The first is named Gamos,
‘Marriage’, and echoes the Athenian month Gamelion, ‘of the Marriages’,
sacred to Hera. The second, Telos, ‘Achievement’, which is another way to
express ‘Marriage’, is known in Argos and Epidauros, but nowhere else.
Scholars who have studied this calendar agree that Telos must refer to the
cult epithet Teleios-Teleia, supporting the hypothesis that the local goddess
is ritually conceived of as the wife of Zeus (REG 112, 2009, 215).
At Samos, Hera was honoured from the early Archaic period at least, in
an extra-urban sanctuary as impressive as that at Argos (Kyrieleis 1993).
The main difference between the two places is the extent of cult attendance:
regional at Argos, Aegean, or even largely East Mediterranean, at Samos
(see further, in this volume, Constantakopolou, Chapter 19). Some scholars
consider that the Hera of Samos is a completely different deity from the
Hera of Argos, on the grounds that identity is defined by place and that the
local level constructs a cult persona without relation to the Panhellenic level
(Versnel 2011: 115, 143). However, returning to the network imagery
above, although the ties and nodes forming a ‘deity network’ may expand
or contract, there is still a core, signified in particular by the name of the
divinity. We can illustrate this by a comparison between the mythical and
ritual cycle for Hera at Argos and the evidence concerning the cult persona
of Hera at Samos.
Hera is said to be born at Samos and her parthenia, ‘virginal time’, is
closely connected with the local river Imbrasos, also called Parthenos. A
fragment of Varro preserved by Lactantius (Div. inst. 1.17, 8) mentions a
range of interesting elements: the island itself was called Parthenia, because
Hera grew up there and married Zeus; her temple was very ancient and the
goddess was represented as a bride; some of the rituals in her honour were
celebrated as a wedding anniversary. Hera, viewed as a parthenos and then
a bride, refers to the first two steps of the cycle mentioned at the beginning
of this section. In Varro’s fragment, the theme of Hera’s separation from
Zeus is missing, that is the third part of the cycle, which in turn leads to a
new cycle, as we perceived in the ritual ‘turnover’ at Argos and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, we can find some trace of the ritual separation between Hera
and her husband in the aetiology and performance of the main festival of
Samos, called alternatively Tonaia or Heraia, in which the temple statue
was carried to the shore and purified (Avagianou 1991: 46–73).
The aetiology of this festival (given by the Hellenistic author Menodotos
of Samos, FGrH 541 F 1, quoted by Athenaeus 15.672a–4b) describes the
kidnapping of the temple statue by pirates, an attempt that was foiled,
apparently by the goddess herself. When the Karians found the image
abandoned by the pirates, they wrapped it in a breastplate of willow. It was
then liberated by the temple priestess, purified, and set in place once more.
If these events were commemorated in the Tonaia festival, then this may
provide the missing ‘separation’ stage. Moreover, the mention in both
accounts of willow, a plant associated with virginity, may be significant:
according to Varro, Hera was born near the tree, where her parthenia is
locally rooted; in the story by Menodotos, the use of willow to wrap the
image seems to return her to her previous status of parthenos. In the Argive
plain too, Hera was supposed to recover her parthenia every year—in the
water of a local spring (Paus. 2.38.2–3). We can argue, then, that when the
Samian priestess releases the statue from the willow, purifies it, perhaps
during a bridal bath, and restores it on its base, it returns as the bride
described by Varro. The matrimonial context, and then the deep relationship
of the local sovereign goddess with Zeus, are confirmed by some verses of
the Hellenistic poet Nikainetos of Samos (quoted by Athenaeus 15.673b)
mentioning a Samian festival with beds installed under the willow ‘by
Hera’. The epigram closes on the verses: ‘We will joyfully sing the glorious
young bride of Zeus, the queen of our island.’
In Argos and in Samos, Hera is not independent from Zeus, and the Hera
of Argos is not as different from the Samian goddess as is sometimes
supposed. One of the main ties of the ‘Hera network’ binds the goddess to
her husband, even where he seems to be absent. On a ritual as well as an
imaginative level, marriage, legitimacy, power, and sovereignty are
constitutive elements of Hera’s figure. Accordingly, her spasmodic anger in
myths not only constructs the figure of a shrew overburdening her husband
with jealousy: above all, this is her way of caring about the legitimacy of
his children and, in the end, of ensuring the safeguard of his royal and
cosmic power. As a daughter of Kronos as well as wife of Zeus, she is
deeply concerned by sovereignty. This concern, which constitutes a
fundamental element of the Hera network, might partly explain the fact that,
as early as the Archaic period, the goddess played such a prominent role at
Argos and Samos, as well as in some extra-urban sanctuaries of the Western
Greek world.

CONCLUSION

Polytheism encompasses relationships between divine powers, as Vernant

wrote many years ago. The whole system can be seen as a complex
structure, each element of which (a deity with its proper name) is both itself
a complex set of prerogatives, and at the same time, must be considered in
concert with the other elements. The two case studies presented here have
focused on the first aspect, what we have called the ‘deity network’.
However, the Moirai are closely connected with other deities such as, for
example, Zeus, Eileithyia, or Aphrodite, and these mythical and ritual
interactions emphasize, each time, one or another aspects of the ‘Moirai
network’. And, as we saw concerning Hera, her own network of powers
cannot be easily reconstructed without any reference to Zeus, even in cult
places where he seems, at first sight, to be absent. As these case studies
demonstrate, if we are to understand and describe ancient Greek
polytheism, and its multifarious potentialities, the unity and plurality of the
gods must be conceptualized together at every level.

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translation: 1999, ‘Experimenting in the Field of Polytheisms’, Arion 7: 127–49.]
Detienne, M. and Vernant, J.-P. 1974. Les ruses de l’intelligence. La mètis des Grecs. Paris. [English
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Dumézil, G. 1974. La religion romaine archaïque (2nd edn). Paris.
Eidinow, E. 2011. Luck, Fate, and Fortune. Antiquity and its Legacy. London.
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Parker, R. 2005. Polytheism and Society at Athens. Oxford.
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Versnel, H. S. 2011. Coping with the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology. Leiden.
 PART II

TYPES OF EVIDENCE
 CHAPTER 5

VISUAL EVIDENCE

MILETTE GAIFMAN

A brief glance at the scholarship of Greek religion shows that ancient

images are often cited as evidence in studies of cult practices, sacred
spaces, mythology, and perceptions of the divine. When we skim through
some of the most prominent and influential publications (e.g. Nilsson 1967;
Burkert 1985) it appears that visual representations from Greek and Greco-
Roman antiquity in a variety of media, whether painted on vases, carved in
two-dimensional reliefs, sculpted in three-dimensional statuary, or minted
on coins have something to tell us about the religious life of the ancient
Greeks (see also, in this volume, Scheer, Chapter 12). Indeed, images
emerge as indispensable in certain areas of examination. For example, our
understanding of animal sacrifice and mythology would have been far more
limited without the rich plethora of visual sources (e.g. Gantz 1993; Van
Straten 1995). It may not be difficult to acknowledge the usefulness of
ancient images in this field of enquiry, yet like any other primary source,
their use as evidence demands some close scrutiny; what can ancient
images reveal about Greek religion?
I will consider some methodological problems raised by this question by
focusing on three examples of different kinds of visual evidence: a painted
vase, a carved marble relief, and a coin. These three objects, which differ in
their material, size, and mode of production, as well as their date, original
context, patronage, function, and use, offer different perspectives on the
question at hand. Let me start with the depiction of Herakles at a burning
altar on an Attic black figure oil flask, or lekythos, from c.500 BCE, that is
on display today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Figure
5.1). The figure of the hero dressed in a lion-skin, armed with quiver and
bow, and identified by an inscription can inform studies on many facets of
Greek religion, ranging from ritual practices, via myths, to ancient
conceptions of the cosmos. Among these aspects, the depiction of meat on
two spits and the curling object atop the burning altar invites consideration
of the vase in a study of animal sacrifice specifically (as, for example, in
Van Straten 1995: 136; Gebauer 2002: 364). The portrayal of a built
ceremonial altar with volutes that recalls Archaic and Classical Greek altars
uncovered in archaeological excavations (Yavis 1949: 95–105) suggests
that the image is somehow linked to ancient realia. One may therefore
presume that other elements in the scene are also related to the actualities of
the past and can give us a glimpse into the inaccessible experiences of
Greek animal sacrifice. In this case, the depicted spits and the object atop
the flaming altar may be suggestive of ancient practices. They offer ideas
about the grilling of meat and the placement of animal parts on the burning
fire, and can help a modern reconstruction of the sacrificial process.
Furthermore, the examination of the vase together with other sources
suggests that the depicted long spits and the curling object on the sacrificial
platform could be identified as visual references to splanchna, namely the
burning of the entrails, and the victim’s tail that was offered to the god (Van
Straten 1995: 128–41).
FIGURE 5.1 Herakles at a burning altar. Black figure Attic lekythos, attributed to the Sappho
Painter, c.500 BCE. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 41.162.29. Rogers Fund, 1941.
www.metmuseum.org.

For scholars seeking to conjure up the realities of Greek animal sacrifice

(see, in this volume, Naiden, Chapter 31), the image on the New York
lekythos and similar depictions may prove invaluable, particularly because
textual sources provide only a partial idea about the practical aspects of the
ritual. However, one must proceed with caution, for images offer limited
information. The lekythos in New York suggests that spits were used in the
course of Greek animal sacrifice, yet it does not yield any information about
the details of the procedure, such as who placed the meat on the spits,
which body parts were grilled in this way, and who performed the minutiae
of the ritual. Furthermore, unlike other similar scenes, on the lekythos there
is no portrayal of wood placed atop the burning altar. There is no attempt to
indicate who put on the fire and how. We may tell that a sacrifice is taking
place, but the image’s objective is not to instruct the modern viewer about
the actual steps of the sacrifice. In fact, the lekythos does not purport to be a
reflection of reality; Herakles is not a historic figure, he is a mythological
hero. He is alone at the altar, whereas animal sacrifice required the
participation of more than one person. Close consideration of the vase
shows that the painted lekythos contains only a selection of elements related
to realia.
The burning tail on the altar offers a case in point for the complex
relationship between depiction and what we may tell about ancient reality
from other sources. While textual sources and archaeological remains
indicate that, in actuality, the god’s portion could include a variety of body
parts from the sacrificial victims, such as the tail and the thighbones, the
New York lekythos and similar sacrificial scenes feature only a curling tail
atop the burning altar. In this corpus, the tail emerges as the chosen visual
reference to the god’s portion in the sacrifice. The reasons for this particular
choice may vary. They may be the result of some pictorial tradition among
a group of pot-painters. They may be guided by the tail’s distinctive form,
which renders it easily recognizable as the god’s portion, probably more
than other anatomical parts of the victim. They may also be related to the
possible meaning the burning tail might have had in antiquity; according to
a scholiast to Aristophanes Peace 1053, the tail’s reaction to the fire was
taken as a sign for the sacrifice’s success. If this is the case, then the choice
of the tail may be a way of asserting that the offering is propitious (Van
Straten 1995: 122, 190–1). The example of the curling tail atop an altar
demonstrates that the choice to depict a particular feature which bears some
resemblance to an element from reality is not guided by a simple wish to
reproduce that element. Rather, the incorporation of certain elements in an
image results from a complex combination of demands and constraints of
pictorial representation and its production that is often difficult to unpack.
There are additional limitations to deploying images for the
reconstruction of religious practice; certain aspects of ancient ritual practice
cannot be detected in the visual record. For instance, the actual killing of
the animal in the course of the sacrifice is hardly ever shown in ancient
images, and the consumption of meat is completely absent (see most recent
discussion in Naiden 2013: 23). The case of animal sacrifice is not unique.
Other practices of Greek religion that are known from textual sources are
not shown in Greek imagery. For example, the making of libations in the
course of the Greek symposium is well attested in ancient sources, yet no
depiction of the actual pouring of liquids in a sympotic context is known
(Lissarrague 1995). Such discrepancies in our evidence show once again
that images do not offer full reflections of reality, and caution us against
uncritical deployment of imagery for the purpose of historical
reconstruction. One must keep in mind that, like textual sources, images are
governed by the particularities of their genre, authorship, mode of
production, and audiences.
The presence of Herakles on the New York lekythos invites us to consider
the painted pot with regard to the study of Greek myth, specifically the
complex mythology of the great hero. The vase’s distinctive imagery
implies a reference to a specific myth. The single scene that encompasses
the entire lekythos includes not only Herakles and a crouching dog beneath
him, but also three other figures identified by inscriptions. On the side of
the lekythos that is opposite Herakles’ sacrifice, Helios—the ‘Sun’—is
shown as a bearded man with a radiating sun disk above his head, whose
lower body is cut off by the ground-line (Figure 5.2). He rises above four
frontal horses, while holding a goad and the reins of a chariot. On his right
is Eos—‘Dawn’—depicted as a woman with an orb above her head. She
directs with her goad the horses that move upwards to the right, while the
female figure of Nyx—‘Night’—who also has an orb above her head,
commands her horses upwards, to the left. Only the heads of Dawn and
Night and the upper bodies of their horses are visible; they emerge above
the descending brown trails whose nature is unclear and could be dark
clouds or perhaps streams (Mertens 2010: 100).
FIGURE 5.2 Helios and his horses rising, with Dawn on the right and Night on the left. Black figure
Attic lekythos, attributed to the Sappho Painter, c.500 BCE. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
41.162.29. Rogers Fund, 1941. <www.metmuseum.org>.

The labelled protagonists in mid-action, the allusion to a specific location

suggested by Herakles’ position atop a rocky terrain, and the reference to a
time of day indicated by the rising chariot of the Sun suggest that the vase
refers to a specific mythological event. Presumably, the identification of the
depicted myth could expand our knowledge of the stories about Herakles in
Athens of c.500 BCE. However, the attempt to identify the vase’s subject
through an examination of the vase in conjunction with other images and
texts related to Herakles yields varying results. The vase could be
interpreted as a portrayal of a moment in the course of Herakles’
confrontation with the Sun while on his way to steal the herd of Geryon
(CVA USA 8: 93–4), or a moment in the course of Herakles’ travels to the
underworld in order to bring back the three-headed dog, Kerberos (Pinney
and Ridgway 1981). The crux of the problem lies in the uniqueness of the
image. No other ancient source, whether visual or literary, includes
Herakles’ sacrifice alongside this particular combination of figures. The
consequences of the challenge are witnessed in the entry for Herakles in the
standard reference work for the iconography of Classical mythology, the
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). The lekythos is
listed under three rubrics, namely non-narrative scenes, the tenth labour of
Herakles, and the eleventh labour (LIMC s.v. Herakles, nos 1341, 2547,
2623).
The oil flask demonstrates some of the complexities entailed in
identifying mythological scenes. The vase suggests a reference to a specific
event, yet, due to the image’s uniqueness, it is unclear which myth it refers
to. Consequently, the entry in the LIMC maintains the possibility that the
scene could also be regarded as non-narrative. Obviously, not all
mythological scenes are like the one of the New York lekythos, and many
are easily identifiable. Yet often images diverge from other visual or literary
representations of the same theme. In the case of our lekythos, even if we
assume that the vase refers to Herakles’ journey to the underworld, it is still
unique in its depiction of the hero’s sacrifice atop a rocky terrain in the
presence of a dog, who may be Kerberos, and in conjunction with the rising
of the Sun, Dawn, and Night. The New York lekythos shows that a
mythological episode may be known from imagery, independently of a
literary tradition. For the vase may refer to a story that has not survived in
any other source, or it may articulate its own variant of a myth concerning
Herakles.
The methodological difficulties of identifying the myth in an image arise
from a fundamental discrepancy between past and present. In Classical
antiquity, myths were transmitted in a variety of ways—orally, visually, and
textually—and images played a prominent role in articulating and
propagating them in society (see also the chapters in Part III of this
volume). Since, by their very nature, myths are mutable and assume a range
of guises in different contexts (Graf 1993: 1–4), there could be visual
versions of myths that are unique and/or do not have literary parallels. For
these reasons, in some cases, a mythological scene is known only from
images and its relation to some literary tradition is unclear. This is the case
of the well-known image of Ajax and Achilles playing dice shown on the
amphora by Exekias (Vatican Museums, cat. no. 16757), for which there is
no clear literary source (Boardman 1978: 19–20). In other instances, a
depiction of a single episode, or a group of myths, is attested in the visual
record well before its appearance in texts. For example, the twelve labours
of Herakles are first witnessed as a group on the metopes of the Temple of
Zeus at Olympia in c.460 BCE, centuries before the earliest surviving literary
compilation of the hero’s feats (Gantz 1993: 381–2).
In contrast to the varied ways in which myths were circulated in the
ancient Greek world, the modern study of Greek mythology tends to
privilege texts because of the narrative nature of myths. Consequently, a
pervasive approach to images is to link them with stories known from
literary sources. Yet the examination of images in the study of Greek myths
need not be limited to the identification and classification of a represented
scene, or to their deployment as evidence for the existence of a myth in a
particular time and place. For visual representations, by their very nature,
operate differently from texts (see, most recently, Osborne 2011), and while
images do not tell stories the way texts do, they have much to teach us
about other aspects of Greek mythology in antiquity. Perhaps more than any
other source, ancient images speak to the spread and embeddedness of
Greek mythology in ancient societies, as myths were evoked visually in
different ways, whether on simple household items or grand sanctuaries.
Looking at our lekythos, we may not be able to tell with full certainty which
episode in Herakles’ travails the vase alludes to, yet it reveals a particular
idea about Herakles’ persona in Athens of c.500 BCE. The great hero, known
for his bad temper and lack of self-control, is shown in the midst of a pious
act. The vase presents a vision of Herakles as a solitary calm man, engaging
in one of the major rituals of Greek religion.
 The vase’s images of moving luminaries solicit an examination of the
New York lekythos in the context of a study of Greek cosmology. The
chariots of the Sun and Dawn (Figure 5.2) recall the Homeric poems’
descriptions of Sun and Dawn rising from Okeanos at daybreak (Hom. Il.
7.421–3), and the movement of Dawn and Night in opposite directions
brings to mind Hesiod’s account of the underworld and the place where
Night and Day cross and greet each other (see Hes. Theog. 746–54, with
Pinney and Ridgway 1981: 142). Furthermore, the New York lekythos
features one of the earliest surviving renditions of the progression of the
celestial bodies (Lacroix 1974: 101–6) and the Sun, Night, and Dawn in
human form (see LIMC s.v. Astra no. 3, s.v. Eos no. 1). These depictions
speak to an interest in the advancement of time among makers and
consumers of humble clay objects in Athenian society at the turn from the
sixth to the fifth century BCE.
Thus far, I have considered the vase as ancillary to different areas of
research of Greek religion. The image on this pot, however, was not
conceived as a document for modern historians, museum displays, and book
illustrations. Like any other ancient image, it demands to be examined in its
own right, as integral to the oil flask on which it is rendered and in relation
to its original context. Such holistic examination offers new insights to the
historian who is interested in religious ideas that were articulated in images.
Taking this approach, we may note that the positioning of the paintings on
the pot’s cylindrical surface presents Herakles’ sacrifice as
contemporaneous with the advancing luminaries. The hero’s quiet ritual,
performed apart from society, parallels the movements of the Sun, Dawn,
and Night. This juxtaposition that links the two events may be interpreted as
two powerful visual comments: a new day dawns when Herakles makes his
unique offering at the altar; or, when the day rises, Herakles makes a unique
offering.
The vase’s find-spot in an Attic tomb indicates that, like most oil flasks
of its kind, it was made and used as a grave good (e.g. Houby-Nielsen 1995;
Oakley 2004: 9–11). While the pot’s final site of deposition could suggest
that the vase portrays a moment during Herakles’ journey to the
underworld, the archaeological context does more than support a possible
identification of the depicted event: it highlights a specific aspect of the
hero’s personality. Like the lekythos that served to connect the living and
the beloved who passed away, Herakles is a figure that bridges the gaps
between those who are alive and the dead. The hero, who was eventually
deified, also embodies a link between mortals and immortals. The trait of
connecting the perceptible world and spheres beyond human sight is also
witnessed in other elements of the vase’s imagery: Herakles’ sacrifice,
using spits upon an altar, resembles actuality and, at the same time, is
unattainable to mortals because of its isolation, mode of execution, and
grand scale. In their motion and appearance, Dawn, Sun, and Night shuttle
between the seen and comprehensible parts of the cosmos and those that are
invisible and incomprehensible; they have anthropomorphic features and
are recognizable thanks to their labels, while their bodies are incomplete
and they rise from enigmatic trails of unknown nature. The funerary gift
and its imagery open a window onto some of the ways in which the
connections between the realm of living mortals and the spheres beyond
humans’ reach were articulated in Athens of c.500 BCE, in ritual practices,
mythological thought, and conceptions of the cosmos.
In antiquity, the Attic oil flask was hidden from the public eye. In
contrast, the marble relief from New Phaleron in Piraeus was in plain view
(Figure 5.3). The carefully carved image was placed atop an inscribed stele,
indicating that it is a dedication (for an early account, see Svoronos 1908:
493–506). This find, alongside an inscribed list of gods that was found in its
vicinity, received ample scholarly attention from historians of Greek
religion (e.g. Larson 2001: 131–4), epigraphists (e.g. Guarducci 1974), and
Classical archaeologists and historians of art (e.g. Güntner 1994: 78–80).
Much of the discussion revolved around the texts associated with the relief.
Let us, however, begin by putting some art historical tools to the test and
explore the evidentiary value of an ancient image by considering the relief
independently of other ancient documents.
FIGURE 5.3 Relief of Xenokrateia. Marble, 50 × 65 cm, c.410 BCE. Athens National
Archaeological Museum, 2756. © Vanni Archive/Art Rescource, NY.

First, this case highlights the usefulness of stylistic analysis for the
historian (Neer 2010: 6–11). Here, elements of style, such as facial features,
postures, and drapery resemble works of the latter half of the fifth century
BCE, such as the Parthenon Frieze, and the Nike Balustrade. Together with
the relief’s find-spot, and the Pentelic marble from which it was made, they
suggest that it was produced in Attica in the very end of the fifth century
BCE (e.g. Ridgway 1981: 131–3). Iconographic examination is another tool
for examination. In this example, it allows for the identification of two
deities. The unique seat on the far left gives clues about the youthful figure
occupying it. Composed of a bowl supported by tall legs, it has a decorative
griffin attached to its edge serving as armrest, while two coiled snakes form
the handles and back. The so-called tripod-throne (e.g. Linfert 1967: 151 n.
3) indicates that the seated youth is Apollo. The reference to Delphi made
by the omphalos and eagle beneath the deity’s right foot gives greater
specificity to Apollo’s identity; it presents him as Pythian Apollo. A second
deity is recognizable on the far right. The bull with a man’s head conforms
to the iconography of the river god Acheloos (LIMC s.v. Acheloos: 24 no.
197, 30).
 Iconography is helpful, yet it is also limited. On this relief, for instance,
apart from Apollo and Acheloos, the figures are insufficiently distinguished
to allow their identification with full certainty on the basis of their
appearance and attributes alone. However, visual analysis can do more than
help ascribe names to figures; it can shed light on numerous aspects of an
image. For instance, the female figure standing behind Acheloos
exemplifies how, in Classical Greek art, stylistic and iconographic features
differentiate between living beings and visual representations. The figure is
wearing a tall form of headgear known as a polos and a sleeveless tunic,
while her hair, coming down to her shoulders, recalls hairstyles of the
Archaic period. The archaizing features, dress, and hieratic demeanour
resemble those of statues of goddesses depicted in c.400 BCE (e.g. de Cesare
1997: figs. 67, 68), and indicate that on the far right is a female statue,
possibly of a goddess.
Visual cues, such as height, dress, gesture, and attitude also help
distinguish between groups. For example, in the foreground a female figure
raises her hands in veneration towards a much taller male figure, who bends
downwards in her direction, while placing his right foot on a rectangular
block. The boy in the front stretches his arm and grasps the larger figure’s
cloak. In this case, the female figure’s gesture, the different behaviours, and
relative sizes indicate that these are a woman and child approaching a god.
This observation also implies that all the other standing figures are also
likely to be divinities, since they are all of similar height to Apollo and the
god in the foreground. Most of the deities are difficult to name, yet certain
connections among them are notable. For example, Apollo’s proximity to
the goddess next to him suggests that she is somehow affiliated with him,
whereas the veils worn by three of the goddesses on the right point to an
affinity among them.
The observations made thus far help us gain a better grasp of the moment
portrayed in the relief, although they do not tell us under what
circumstances it was made, or who commissioned it. Consequently, for the
historian interested only in facts, an approach grounded in visual analysis
alone may be of limited use. The scholar of religious thought, however,
could find this line of enquiry of great value. For example, the relief from
New Phaleron offers invaluable evidence about women and children in
Attic religion of c.400 BCE. Unattended by a mature man or any other
companion, the female venerator and the boy come into close proximity to
the god, and their awe is met with the deity’s attentiveness; she looks the
god in the face, as the boy touches his clothes. While it is impossible to
ascertain the historic truthfulness of the depicted event, the relief speaks to
a subjective perception of precious intimacy between these worshippers and
a god. The presence of numerous divinities underscores the uniqueness of
the moment; although so many gods and goddesses are nearby, and
Apollo’s toes gently touch the woman’s clothes, the two mortals interact
with only one deity. While most of the divinities do not acknowledge the
unfolding event—they either turn to each other, or are consumed in their
own thoughts—Acheloos from afar and Apollo from behind see the event.
The god of Greece’s longest river and the Pythian divinity witness the
epiphany experienced by the woman and the boy. The relief provides
irrefutable proof that at least the commissioner of this marble object
envisioned such a remarkable religious experience.
Other ideas current in Classical Attica can be discerned. Apollo’s unique
seat speaks to a particular perception of the tripod and the god. The coiling
snakes bring to mind Apollo’s triumph over the monstrous Python (Ogden
2013: 40–8, and, e.g., LIMC s.v. Apollo no. 998) and the snake column of
the golden tripod dedicated in Delphi after the victory over the Persians in
479 BCE (Hdt. 9.81; Thuc. 1.132), while the griffin recalls attachments on
cauldrons of the seventh century BCE. Along with the omphalos supporting
the god’s feet, these decorative elements transform the tripod—originally a
cooking implement—into an age-old grand throne of the oracular deity of
Delphi that elevates its occupier to a supreme position (Papalexandrou
2005: esp. 9, 185, 189–90). The presence of Acheloos on the other edge of
the relief reinforces Apollo’s primacy. The two divinities framing the relief
share the association with a geographic location, yet the bovine deity
appears as though he were a worshipper approaching the Pythian divinity.
The relief offers a specific vision of the god of Delphi; he is the enthroned
sovereign, who, while resting his feet upon the navel of the earth, oversees
the unfolding event and the entire scene.
Thus far, I have not taken into account the inscriptions associated with
the relief. I have pursued this approach in order to demonstrate how close
analysis of an image can bring to light ancient ideas pertinent to the history
of religion: ideas that were articulated visually. The relief demands further
examination along this line of enquiry of other components such as the
female statue behind Acheloos and the goddesses on the right. Let us,
however, now turn to the texts. The dedication that was inscribed on its
supporting stele names Xenokrateia, mother and daughter from the deme of
Cholleidai, as dedicator of the gift to ‘Kephisos and his altar-sharing gods’
for the sake of and/or in gratitude for teaching (IG I3 987/IG II2 4548). The
text sheds additional light on the image; the woman and child of the relief
can be linked with Xenokrateia and her son, and the inscription’s primary
dedicatee, Kephisos, is likely the god that greets them. Seen in its entirety,
the votive monument emerges as an illuminating document for the historian
interested in the religious experience of individuals. Both image and text
reveal an investment in personal devotion. They speak to, on the one hand,
an intimate encounter between two individuals and a god in the presence of
other divinities, and, on the other hand, Xenokrateia’s dedicatory act and
her thankfulness and hope for the growth of education.
The second inscription associated with the relief was found in the same
area and includes a list of gods in the dative case (IG II2 4547). The
presence of Pythian Apollo and Acheloos in this text suggests that, although
it was carved on a separate stone, it is somehow related to the relief; both
Xenokrateia’s gift and this inscription may have been part of the same
sacred precinct. In addition to another votive relief that was also uncovered
in New Phaleron (Athens, National Archaeological Museum, no. 1783),
Xenokrateia’s gift sheds light on the history of private devotion and
sanctuaries founded by individuals in this part of Attica in the late Classical
period (Vikela 1997: 222–4). This case exemplifies how, alongside other
materials, carved reliefs and images in general are invaluable for the
historian who seeks to reconstruct a particular landscape of religious sites.
The relief of New Phaleron demonstrates that, like any image
accompanied by a text, inscribed votive reliefs demand a holistic approach
that takes all of their components into account (Gaifman 2008). However,
one should beware of privileging one element over another. For historians
of religion who are primarily trained in reading texts, the natural tendency
is to prefer the textual to the visual. Consequently, the image may become
ancillary, and its examination guided by available writings and focused on
the identification and classification of depicted figures while other visual
components are completely ignored. This line of enquiry has resulted in a
decades-long debate around the identification of the figures on
Xenokrateia’s votive, with no resolution in sight (for different
identifications, see Beschi 2002: 34), as well as discussions that do not
mention the presence of Apollo and Acheloos (e.g. Van Straten 1981: 90).
Alternatively, one could consider image and available texts side by side.
In the case of Xenokrateia’s votive, for example, the comparison of the
image and the texts highlights notable differences. On the relief, Pythian
Apollo and Acheloos stand out among all other figures; they frame the
relief, and are the only gods who are clearly recognizable, even without
additional attributes that may have been originally painted on the surface. In
contrast, these two gods are not mentioned in the dedication, while on the
list that was found nearby they are neither first nor last—Apollo is third and
Acheloos is seventh among the ten gods and groups of divinities mentioned.
Furthermore, while the identity of the dedicator, or the occasion for which
the relief was made, cannot be learned from the image alone, the dedicatory
inscription does not record any vision of the god, nor does the list articulate
Apollo’s superior position. These discrepancies suggest that image and text
operated together: that one was not ancillary to the other, but rather that
they complemented each other.
The approach proposed here highlights aspects of the relief from New
Phaleron in addition to other traits that have already been recognized;
Xenokrateia’s gift has furnished an example for an image related to
divination (ThesCRA s.v. Divination gr.: 23 no. 148), a representation of
Greek veneration (ThesCRA s.v. Veneration gr.: 184 no. 10), and a depiction
of a site of worship (ThesCRA s.v. Representations of Cult Places gr.: 400
no. 113). Additionally, the votive has been recognized as a useful relic from
a cult site in New Phaleron and a striking piece of evidence for the religious
life and patron divinities of women and children (e.g. Dillon 2002: 24–5;
Parker 2005: 429–30; Lawton 2007: 46–50). However, when considering
image and text as complementary elements of Xenokrateia’s gift, its
profound devotional statement comes to light; the relief asserts that this
woman’s dedicatory act was conceived as inseparable from an epiphany
that was envisioned as occurring under the watching eye of the Pythian
Apollo somewhere between the Delphic omphalos and the river Acheloos.
We have no way of telling whether indeed Xenokrateia experienced such an
epiphany and whether her son truly touched the garments of the god. Yet,
unknowingly, she bequeathed to the modern historian a gift that reveals the
way she sought to visualize her relationship with the divine.
 The two examples I have considered thus far are among the group of
ancient images produced for and on behalf of individuals and families. Such
depictions may have resonances with communal ideologies yet they were
neither made on behalf of a city-state, an ethnic group, and/or governing
authority, nor do they purport to be representative of such entities.
Obviously, private individuals were not the only ones to patronize religious
imagery. We may apply a similar approach that considers the religious ideas
and the role of images within religious experience in relation to
commissions on behalf of sovereigns and/or public groups in the public
sphere. Coins, for instance, were minted by city-states, kings, and emperors,
and often feature religious imagery. What can numismatic evidence tell the
historian of religion? From the outset, one must recognize that the
commonality of religious subjects on ancient coins need not undermine
their fundamental significance. Minted depictions of divinities, heroes,
sacred sites, ritual implements, and objects associated with the holy speak
to the pertinence of religion, beyond its own practice and theory. In
antiquity, time and time again money was linked with the divine, myth, and
worship. The sacred was embedded in everyday economic exchanges and
articulated social and political identities and relationships.
Take, for example, a coin that was minted in Samos under the Roman
emperor Domitian (Head and Poole 1892: 372). Like similar coins in its
series, the obverse shows a laureate head of the emperor accompanied by an
identifying label, and the reverse features a temple, namely a structure with
a pediment and four columns that is raised on three steps (Figure 5.4). In
the centre of the building stands a columnar female figure with hands
extended to the sides, tall headgear, and fillets hanging from her arms. The
figure’s archaizing features and place within the temple suggest that it is a
statue that is worshipped. The shrine is accompanied by the legend
ΣΑΜΙΩΝ, of the Samians. Without any additional information, the coin
tells us of the adoption of a particular sanctuary as the marker of local
identity to be shown on the coin’s reverse as the counterpart of the standard
imperial portrait that was minted on the obverse of coins throughout the
empire. The recurrence of the minted image of the Samian shrine from the
reign of Domitian to the reign of Gallienus further highlights its
significance. For centuries, the elite of Samos selected a sanctuary with a
distinctive statue as the polis’ emblem alongside the regular Roman image
of the obverse (see further, Weiss 2005).
FIGURE 5.4 Coin from Samos with image of temple and cult statue from the reign of Domitian 81–
96 CE. British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

In light of Samos’ centuries-long cult of Hera (see in general, Walter

1965), the sanctuary on the coinage has long been identified as the
renowned Samian Heraion (Head and Poole 1892: 372). This well-founded
identification invites further consideration of the coin’s evidentiary value.
For example, does the shrine on the Samian issue reflect the appearance of
the religious architecture on the Ionian Island in the first century CE? Are
we to imagine Hera’s temple set on three steps and with a statue in the
centre between four columns? Since, in antiquity, statues that were
worshipped in religious practice were not placed at the entrance to the
temple, the simple answer to these questions is negative. It is indeed
reasonable to hypothesize that the minted image echoes some elements of
reality, yet the task of identifying them by considering other sources is far
from simple. For instance, Vitruvius describes the Samian Heraion as Doric
(Vitr. De arch. 7 preface 12), whereas the shrine on the coins is always
Ionic, leaving us to wonder whether the Roman architect described the
same holy structure as the one shown on the numismatic material. On the
Domitianic issue the lintel is flat, whereas in the vast majority of later
emissions it is arched (Head and Poole 1892: 372–94), as, for example, on a
coin from the reign of Etruscilla (Figure 5.5). We may only wonder about
the significance of this variance. Do the coins reflect the appearance of a
particular structure? Is the building shown on the Domitianic issues
different from the one portrayed on later coins? The suggestion in response
to these quandaries that the entire series from Samos features a Roman
building’s interior, a free-standing small shrine, or perhaps an aedicula
(Price and Trell 1977: 135), may be compelling yet cannot be confirmed.
FIGURE 5.5 Coin from Samos with image of temple and cult statue from the reign of Etruscilla
249–251 CE. British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

The Samian coinage offers a case in point for the profound difficulties of
using numismatic imagery for the reconstruction of the actualities of
religion and cult sites. We can imagine that some elements from reality may
have been preserved in minted imagery, yet coins prove to be particularly
challenging as documents for the sake of accurate reconstruction.
Furthermore, one must keep in mind that depictions of monuments and
objects on coins do not necessarily relate to actual structures that existed in
reality. There are indeed instances where there is no certainty that there ever
was a temple at a site that minted a coin with such an image (e.g. Burrell
2004: 310–12).
Numismatic evidence can shed only partial light on ancient actualities,
yet the manner in which certain religious subjects are shown can be
instructive. For example, throughout the Samian series, the statue in the
temple has a distinctive silhouette, tall headgear, and hanging fillets. We
cannot tell with certainty what the real ancient statue of Hera actually
looked like, or whether the figure on the coin resembles its presumed
original (see e.g. O’Brien 1993: 21–38). We can assert, however, that, in
contrast to ancient realities in which the image of the goddess in the temple
was not easily viewable, on the numismatic picture it is rendered as visible
and easily recognizable. From an inaccessible sacred object that perhaps
could have only been seen on special occasions, the statue of Hera was
turned into an easily accessible emblem seen on coins in everyday
transactions.
The Samian coinage demonstrates the power of what may be termed
visual rhetoric in Greek antiquity. Hera’s ancient statue remains etched in
our imagination in the form presented on the minted images of Samos. The
choice to depict this particular figure of Hera from among other available
portrayals of the goddess is telling. By selecting a non-naturalistic and
recognizably Archaic figure, the Samians evoked their own ancient past. In
fact, for centuries of Roman dominance, the distinctive statue was minted
on coins, not only within a temple, but also on its own, and side by side
with divinities and figures (Head and Poole 1892: 371–95). The elite of
Samos placed at the heart of its imagery a visibly ancient image of worship
and thereby celebrated the great antiquity and continuity of the famous cult
of Hera.
The recurring emblem of the ancient statue could also serve to articulate
power relations. On most of the coins in which Hera’s statue is placed
within a temple, it is set within a visibly Roman structure. Apart from
Domitianic issues that show a flat roof, most other emissions feature the
temple with an arched lintel and columns with spiral fluting—two
architectural elements that arise under Rome. The ancient image framed by
a visibly Roman building makes a poignant statement; religious Samian
traditions from deep antiquity continue to thrive under the roof of Roman
rule. The religious image served to articulate relations not only with the
great imperial force, but also with other city-states. The Samian statue is
similar to statues depicted on coinage of other Anatolian city-states, such as
Artemis of Ephesos (see e.g. Head and Poole 1892: 112). While the
argument that this resemblance shows that the different Anatolian images
shared a common root is difficult to prove (O’Brien 1993: 21–38), the
visual impact of this resemblance is apparent. Similar cultic images on
issues of different locations imply some connections between these
different poleis; through their choices of religious imagery different city-
states affirmed their ties. Overall, close consideration of minted images
reveals religion’s central role in articulating an intricate nexus of identities.
The coins of Samos were struck centuries after the Athenian lekythos was
deposited in a tomb, and Xenokrateia’s relief set up in New Phaleron. While
each of these objects was made under different circumstances, their close
examination reveals their visual force. All three belong to cultures in which
images asserted and propagated perceptions and ideologies. One may
choose to treat images such as these as ancillary to other evidentiary
material, and as illustrative of other elements of life in the ancient world.
However, such approaches disregard the central role visual representations
played in antiquity. The challenge facing the historian of religion is to
approach ancient imagery within the context of the sophisticated visual
culture to which it belongs. By adopting the art historian’s eye, treating
each case in its own right, and taking into account the original context and
accompanying texts when available, we may overcome some of the
difficulties on the way, whether missing archaeological data, or
unidentifiable figures. In this way, we may begin to grasp the power of
ancient images and explore the complex ideas they articulated regarding all
aspects of Greek religion, the divine, ritual practices, myths, cosmology,
and places of worship.

SUGGESTED READING
See Sourvinou-Inwood 1991: 3–23 for approaches to material evidence. See
Giuliani 2013 for myths in images in Greek art. See Platt 2011: 31–50 on
how votive reliefs articulated and shaped religious ideas and experiences.
Lacroix 1949 is a learned and immensely rich source on Greek numismatic
material for the study of Greek religion. See also Howgego 2005 for a
discussion of coin imagery, specifically in the Roman provinces,
particularly 2–7 on religion and myth.

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42.
Boardman, J. 1978. ‘Exekias’, AJA 82: 11–25.
Burkert, W. 1985. Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, trans. J. Raffan. Oxford.
Burrell, B. 2004. Neokoroi: Greek Cities and Roman Emperors. Boston, MA.
De Cesare, M. 1997. Le statue in immagine. Studi sulle raffigurazione di statue nella pittura
vascolare Greca. Rome.
Dillon, M. 2002. Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion. London.
Gaifman, M. 2008. ‘Visualized Rituals and Dedicatory Inscriptions on Votive Offerings to the
Nymphs’, OAth 1: 85–103.
Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. Baltimore, MD.
Gebauer, J. 2002. Pompe und Thysia. Attische Tieropferdarstellungen auf schwarz- und rotfigurigen
Vasen. Münster.
Giuliani, L. 2013. Image and Myth: A History of Pictorial Narration in Greek Art, trans. J.
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Graf, F. 1993. Greek Mythology: An Introduction. Baltimore, MD.
Guarducci, M. 1974. ‘L’offerta di Xenokrateia nel sanctuario di Cefiso al Falero’, in Φόρος. Tribute
to Benjamin Dean Meritt, ed. D. W. Bradeen and M. F. McGregor, 57–66. Locust Valley, NY.
Güntner, G. 1994. Göttervereine und Götterversammlungen auf attischen Weihreliefs.
Untersuchungen zur Typologie und Bedeutung. Würzburg.
Head, B. V. and Poole, R. S. 1892. Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Ionia. London.
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the Danish Institute at Athens 1: 129–91.
Howgego, C. J. 2005. ‘Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces’, in Coinage and Identity in the
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Lacroix, L. 1974. ‘Chevaux et attelages légendaires’, Études d’archéologie numismatique: 67–106.
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Linfert, A. 1967. ‘Die Deutung des Xenokrateiareliefs’, MDAI(A) 82: 149–57.
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Tecusan, 126–44. London.
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Oakley, J. H. 2004. Picturing Death in Classical Athens: The Evidence of the White Lekythoi.
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Greece. Lanham, MD.
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 CHAPTER 6

LITERARY EVIDENCE—PROSE

HANNAH WILLEY

INTRODUCTION

THE first-century BCE Stoic philosopher Poseidonios distinguished three

routes by which reverence of the gods had been transmitted to his age: by
the philosophers, by the poets, and through the cities’ laws. His rough
contemporary, the Roman scholar Varro, famously constructed a similar
trichotomy in his distinction between theologia naturalis, theologia
fabularis, and theologia civilis.
Few scholars today would explicitly endorse the Varronian division
(Mikalson 2010: 16f., who distinguishes between the ‘gods of
philosophers’, the ‘gods of poets’, and the ‘gods of cult’ is a notable
exception. See Feeney 1998 and Sourvinou-Inwood 1997 for criticism of
this approach). We may, nonetheless, usefully begin with these
classifications, because the deep-seated attitude which underpins them has
influenced the development of the modern study of ancient Greek religion
in ways which are interesting and pertinent for a discussion of prose sources
in particular. Furthermore, it is precisely through critical reactions to this
sort of attitude and related perspectives that some of the seminal recent
shifts and developments in scholarly engagements with prose sources were
made possible.
To begin, we might ask where, if at all, non-philosophical prose texts fit
into this neat division of sources for the religious attitudes and practices of
the Greeks. Alongside philosophical works, a wide and heterogeneous array
of prose texts from the ancient world survive. To offer a non-exhaustive and
overlapping list, historians, geographers, mythographers, travel writers,
medical theorists, essayists, orators, (auto) biographers, and satirists all
provide us with further prose sources for the study of Greek religion. If
these sources are to be accommodated within the tripartite framework at all,
is it that they are to be straightforwardly equated with a supposedly isolated
theologia civilis? If so, can they be construed as unproblematic quarries of
information about ‘popular’ religion and cult, to be mined by historians?
And, finally, can we simply isolate philosophical prose sources from others
in the way that this approach encourages?

PROSE SOURCES AS RELIGIOUS TEXTS

Tom Harrison (2007) recently made a plea for religious historians to include
a wider range of texts in their purview. Texts which are not (unlike e.g.
Hesiod’s Theogony) overtly religious in either their subject matter or
(unlike e.g. Athenian tragedy) their performance context too often ‘receive
attention only rarely and for a limited set of purposes’ (Harrison 2007: 375).
Prose texts have often proven particularly vulnerable to such narrow
treatment. In one extreme but revealing case, Patricia Easterling contrasts
‘Greek poetry’, glossed as ‘our literary sources’ for Greek religion, with its
inadequate alternatives—epigraphy is mentioned—without making
reference to prose sources at all (Easterling 1985: 34). Too frequently, prose
sources are not considered as texts which play an active role in the religious
life and religious experience of the Greeks (unlike, for example, plays or
hymns performed in festival contexts).
Such preconceptions arise in part because of a deep-seated dismissive
attitude to the creative ambitions and capabilities of the prosaic. In the
second century CE, the orator Aelius Aristides felt the need to offer a
lengthy apologia for his pezos logos—‘pedestrian language’—in a prose
hymn composed for Sarapis (see Goldhill 2002: 5). It would be folly to
deny the prominence of verse in expressions of significant, involved, and
influential Greek reflections on and engagements with their gods (a
prominence with which Aristides self-consciously plays here), but nor is it
the case that such reflections and engagements were the sole privilege of
verse (and ‘philosophical’ prose) texts. Herodotos (2.53) famously
recognized the influence of the poets on Greek conceptions of their gods
when he attributed to Homer and Hesiod the making of the theogony of the
gods, the allocation of their names, honours, and skill sets, and the
illumination of their appearances. But it would be a mistake to react to
Herodotos’ statement by seeing him as divorcing categorically the creative
projects of the poets (who themselves shape a religious world) from the
(more detached) exposition of the historian, who may comment upon this
world but not actively shape it. For all the various and profound differences
between Herodotos and the poets he mentions, and between their respective
projects, we will see that we encounter in Herodotos (or, for example,
Pausanias or Lykourgos) an involved, distinctive, and creative religious
thinker in his own right.
Again, even if prose texts lack the concrete performative religious
contexts of tragedies (see, in this volume, Calame, Chapter 13) or cultic
hymns (see, in this volume, Versnel, Chapter 30), it would be a mistake to
infer that they could not, therefore, engage with, frame, or influence
religious experiences. Scholars rightly call for a sensitivity to the unique
contextual circumstances of different sorts of verse text, from victory odes
to Homeric hymns and civic tragedies, and the inevitable bearing of these
circumstances on the reception of these texts by their ancient audiences. But
we should perhaps avoid too diametrical a contrast between poetic texts,
which are ‘not just a text but a text, a song, a dance, a performance, a ritual’
and a prose text as ‘just a text . . . a simple text’ (Fowler 2013: xii, referring
to historiography). Even without a concrete performative religious context,
prose texts can key into or subtly play with religious contextual frames
(such as, for example, dedication or divine inspiration), to engage actively
with the religious experience of their audiences. They may even present
themselves as religious artefacts. Heraklitos, for example, is said to have
dedicated his work in a temple of Artemis. More obliquely, Plato can
appropriate the traditionally poetic notion of inspiration and have his
Athenian stranger construct the imagined community of Magnesia by
following ‘wherever the god leads’ (Leg. 968B10f with Nightingale 1993:
282f.). We will explore under ‘Repositories of Information?’ and, again,
through our test cases, how recent trends in scholarship have elucidated
some especially striking ways in which the texts of authors like Herodotos,
Aristides, and Pausanias actively engage with and frame contemporary
religious experiences.

REPOSITORIES OF INFORMATION?

Though a text’s ‘prosaic’ nature might discourage us from engaging with it

as a creative and distinctive reflection on the gods or an active and involved
engagement with religious life in the ways outlined above, this very same
quality has often encouraged scholars to mine prose sources for the insights
they offer into ‘lived’ Greek religion. The apparently straightforward nature
of prose has a particular way of tempting the reader to acquiesce in the
authority of the author’s account of reality and lived experience (Goldhill
2002: 43). Mikalson reflects on how Herodotos’ approach to religion strikes
him as ‘less artificial, more direct’ (2003: 7), while the apparent
transparency of Pausanias’ report was, for generations, taken more or less at
face value, famously earning his work the title ‘Baedeker of the ancient
world’ (see Elsner 1994: 226ff.; Alcock 1996). Against this sort of
tendency, recent decades have seen important calls for the historian of
Greek religion to maintain and pursue a hypersensitivity to the context,
genre, and agenda of all ancient sources (see e.g. Sourvinou-Inwood 1991,
1997). It is notable, however, that it remains a persistent concern for
scholars to caution against our deep-seated tendency to slip into the habit of
reducing these works to a series of ‘isolated mentions of certain ritual
practices’ or ‘a mere list of propositions about the gods or their intervention
in human life’ (Harrison 2007: 375f.). As we shall see, it is often precisely
through self-conscious reactions against a treatment of prose sources as
mere repositories of information that the more sophisticated and rewarding
enquiries into these sources in recent scholarship in the field are developed.
 In addition to engendering the allusion of straightforward cultic
information, prose sources have also, in the past, been privileged as more or
less transparent repositories of genuine, unconstructed attitudes and beliefs.
The performance of law-court speeches before a jury of Athenian citizens,
for example, was held to ensure their accuracy as a source for Athenian life,
‘a quarry from which to win insights into what the Athenians really
thought’ (see Martin 2009: 1). Finally, the lure of first-person narratives of
religious experiences and emotions is a rare and therefore seductive
commodity amongst our sources. When combined with the ‘more direct’
tone of prose texts it is even more liable to generate, for the reader, a sense
of transparency. Aristides’ Sacred Tales were, for example, once celebrated
as providing a unique and unqualified opportunity ‘to penetrate to the
subconscious level’ of their author (Behr 1968: xiii).
The practice of mining texts in this way is, unsurprisingly, full of pitfalls
and results in distorting reconstructions. A naïve reading of Pausanias’
Periegesis would, for example, elicit the false conclusion that the Imperial
cult impacted little on the religious landscape of Greece in the second
century CE. Again, an uncritical acceptance of the testimony of Herodotos
and Strabo yields evidence for sacred prostitution in Aphrodite temples at
Babylon and Corinth respectively, yet very few scholars now accept that
sacred prostitution existed in either locale (e.g. Budin 2008).
These are especially clear examples, but they illustrate more general
methodological issues. We must be sensitive to the historical reliability of
our sources as witnesses to cultic practices. The geographic, chronological,
or cultural distance which separates authors from the religious practices
they describe bears on this question of reliability. Importantly, of course, an
‘unreliable’ source is not an uninteresting one. The question is rather what
we can learn from it. If Herodotos’ account of sacred prostitution in
Babylon, or Lucian’s detailed description of the Temple of the Syrian
Goddess at Hierapolis (complete with 1800-foot phalluses which are
ascended biannually by a man who remains perched on the tip for seven
days), are found wanting in the historicity, or even plausibility, of certain of
their claims, they remain interesting for the historian of Greek religion. The
way these authors shaped and constructed these narratives teaches us much,
not only about their social, political, cultural, and intellectual environments
and agendas, but about their own distinctive religious attitudes as well.
 Of course, ‘writers are not reporters’ (Rutherford 2013: 339). Their
accounts may have been influenced and shaped by ‘the genre of the work,
the literary context, the writer’s own world, or his imagination’. On the
most rudimentary level, authors operated with their own implicit or explicit
principles of what was and was not worthy of inclusion in their work.
Information about the gods, ritual practice, and religious attitudes are
included or passed over depending on the particular criteria in operation.
Thucydides’ Greece is populated with fewer sanctuaries and festivals than
Herodotos’ world, divine intervention is not generally inferred from events,
and, while speakers may occasionally engage in religious argumentation,
such argumentation and religious institutions play a minimal role in the
unfolding of events. Rather than postulating a shift in the role of religion in
Greek life from the period of the Persian to the Peloponnesian Wars, we
need to consider the distinctive and reflective way in which each author
perceived their work and, in general, consider personal preferences as well
as generic constraints and pragmatic contexts.
What, finally, of a personal perspective: do prose sources, ostensibly free
from the poetic distancing which renders us wary of reading as
unadulterated facts the first-person register of Hesiod or Theognis, provide
any sort of insight into individuals’ religious experiences and emotions?
Here, too, there are limitations and difficulties. We cannot straightforwardly
equate the narrator’s with the author’s voice. Literary texts do not provide a
direct pathway to beliefs, experiences, and emotions.
Lucian’s diverse oeuvre provides a striking illustration of the complex,
playful ways in which the narrator’s voice can be constructed in prose.
Scholars once questioned the authenticity of his De Dea Syria. The real,
satirical Lucian, it was felt, could not possibly have described the Syrian
goddess in such an apparently reverent and serious tone. As Jas Elsner
(2001) highlights, the author claims to be an Assyrian with first-hand
experience and yet he adopts the Ionian Greek of Herodotos (the archetypal
outsider looking in) and a Greek cultural framework through which to view
this most holy of Syrian sites. The narrator is thus, within this text, a
deliberately difficult persona to place—how he relates to Lucian is a
question raised but precisely left unresolved. Lucian, no doubt, constitutes a
very particular, self-conscious example, yet he serves to remind us of a
general methodological caveat, applicable also to prose texts before the
advent of the Second Sophistic. Of course, literary posturing need not
exclude genuine sentiment (Hutton 2005: 307): that Lucian can poke fun at
the Syrian goddess and her worshippers does not imply that he cannot
sincerely count himself among them.
This is not to deny that some prose sources offer distinctive and
interesting insights into the ways in which an individual Greek might
articulate and represent his own relation to the gods and the nature of his
religious experiences. Robert Parker has charted the close relationship that
Xenophon, in his Anabasis, presents himself as having with Zeus Basileus
(Parker 2004: 151). Again, returning to Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales, we
find a striking example of an individual represented as having a distinctively
strong connection to a particular deity. In recounting his maladies and the
close and beneficial relationship with Asklepios they occasioned, Aristides
gives us insight into how one might, in this period, express and represent
one’s religious experiences: we encounter bouts of euphoria, fear, and
disorientation. These accounts and representations are, of course, highly
constructed (see Petsalis-Diomidis 2010). Aristides, the consummate
pepaideumenos, appeals to literary, artistic, and cultic paradigms in
communicating his personal experiences of the god. So, when Athena
appears to him in a dream, she explains her inclination to help him by
noting his similarity to Homer’s Odysseus and Telemachus. Not only is she
Homer’s Athena she is also Pheidias’: she appears ‘with her aegis and the
beauty and magnitude and the whole form of the Athena of Pheidias in
Athens’ (2.41 K, trans. Behr, cf. 2.65 K). Might Aristides’ constructed
accounts serve as plausible accounts of genuine experiences? And, more
interestingly, might individual, lived religious experiences themselves be
framed by these sorts of literary, artistic, and cultic paradigms? A hard-and-
fast distinction between literature and ‘real life’ is, as ever, difficult to
maintain.

CRITICAL PROSE SOURCES

I turn finally to the particular interpretative difficulties which so-called

‘critical’ texts pose for the scholar of Greek religion. A distinctive difficulty
attaches to their descriptions of the beliefs and practices of others (often
unspecified groups or characterized simply as ‘the many’). When Plato has
his Athenian stranger describe the ‘many people’ who share a belief (taught
to them, we are told, by leaders of teletai) that crimes in this life will be
punished in Hades and that those who inflict harm on others will suffer the
same themselves upon reincarnation (Leg. 870d–e), we would do well to
ask how accurate a description of a genuinely held belief this is, and how
widely it was held. Indeed, there is a danger that in presenting (or indeed
constructing) religious attitudes, which are subsequently criticized, such
critical thinkers burden these unspecified groups of people with explicit
theological commitments which they would never have themselves
specified or articulated in such a way. So, when Heraklitos refers to those
who ‘pray to images as if they are conversing with houses, not recognizing
who gods and heroes are’ (B5), are we to infer a widespread and/or explicit
view that there was simply no distinction between god and statue?
In approaching sources which express critical attitudes towards the gods,
the stories told about them, or the rituals performed for them, scholars have,
in the past, been too ready to generalize. There is a tendency to take
criticism of a particular religious practice or attitude as an indication of a
hostile attitude to traditional religion as a whole (e.g. Gregory 2013 on
Heraklitos). Consequently, other engagements with traditional religious
thought or practice found in the same author are read in such a hostile light
(see Harrison 2007: 382, 2000: 13f. for criticism of this approach).
The Hippokratic treatise On the Sacred Disease provides one well known
example of a text which develops critical attitudes towards certain aspects
of contemporary religious practices but does so in a very complex and
nuanced way. The author attacks the ‘magicians, purifiers, beggar-priests
and charlatans’, who pretend that, through their piety and mysterious
knowledge and through an inscrutable ability to coerce and subject the
divine to human will, they can cure their clients of the ‘sacred disease’. At
first sight, we might be tempted to see here a secular healer mounting a
general campaign against religious conceptions of health and disease. A
closer look at the text, however, discloses a more complex situation. The
author’s invectives are not directed at such religious conceptions per se but,
more specifically, at these ‘magical’ practices and practitioners. Indeed, the
author levels a charge of impiety against these individuals. Furthermore, far
from writing divinity entirely out of the picture, the author informs us that
‘all diseases are divine and all human’. Thus, while he may well diverge
from traditional patterns of religious thought in certain ways (such as in the
belief that the gods do not send illnesses), the Hippokratic author himself
engages in creative religious reflection of his own, and appeals to familiar
values of piety and impiety in order to denigrate his opponents. A lingering
question remains as to whether or not the author’s theological position
leaves room for any role for the supernatural, whether through temple
healing, prayer, or supplication, say (as opposed to the magician’s spells), to
make a positive contribution to healing (a view which is found elsewhere in
the Hippokratic corpus: Reg. IV 87 with van der Eijk 2005: 72f. and
Gregory 2013: 69ff. For On the Sacred Disease, see also Lloyd 1979: ch.1).
The practice of generalizing from a particular critique or objection to a
universal hostility to traditional religious practice and belief bespeaks two
problematic underlying assumptions. First, is the notion that such critical
thinkers conceived of Greek religion as a coherent unity, which could be
straightforwardly challenged or rejected as such. This is a far from obvious
assumption (see Parker 1996: 210, 1997: 148). Plato’s distaste for tales of
warring gods or for the view that divine favour may be bought, for example,
sit comfortably alongside his repeated and creative appropriations of the
notions of initiation and inspiration. The second, still more questionable,
assumption, is that rationality and religiosity must pull in opposite
directions—such great ‘rational’ thinkers, it was maintained, could not
possibly have entertained such ‘primitive’ religious notions. Hugh Bowden,
for example, has traced a trend in scholarship on Xenophon to see his
religiosity as ‘a disappointment . . . treat[ed] at best as a forgivable personal
eccentricity, and at worst as a sign of his mediocrity’ (Bowden 2004: 229).

TEST CASES

I turn now to three brief test cases from different genres and periods to
illustrate some of these challenges and opportunities which prose sources
present to the religious historian: the ways in which profitable and
illuminating engagements with prose sources can be achieved through a
critical sensitivity to the pitfalls which we analysed in the previous sections.
This will enable us to illustrate some of the recurrent methodological
questions which arise in the use of prose sources.

Oratory
Oratory offers one case in which scholars have demonstrated the
importance of maintaining a heightened sensitivity to the relation between
the pragmatic and generic context in which an author operates, and that
author’s distinctive ways of talking and thinking about the gods. Parker
seeks to explain why certain ideas about and responses to the gods, which
were eminently thinkable for an Athenian living in the Classical period and
explored in other contexts (e.g. Greek tragedy), were kept out of the
rhetorical corpus (Parker 1997). Strikingly absent, for example, is the
‘plaintive and accusatory, or pathetic’ (156) tone adopted by several tragic
heroes in the face of their gods; in its place we find a staunch ‘civic
optimism’ (159) in which the possibility that the gods might turn on Athens
or had done so in the past is never explicitly raised and often resolutely
denied (Dem. 1.10 constitutes, as Parker notes, a striking illustration).
Does this discrepancy bespeak a distinction between the gods of the city
and the gods of the poets, theologia civilis and theologia fabularis?
Thucydides’ description of Athens in the grip of disaster should caution
against such a neat, Varronian response: plague is ravaging the population,
‘supplication, divination and all such things’ have proven futile and are,
eventually, abandoned altogether (2.47ff.). The gods are perceived not to be
answering the prayers of their worshippers; relations between the city and
its gods have broken down completely. Thucydides further alludes to an
oracle, remembered at this time, in which Apollo promised the Spartans
(Athens’ opponents) his support in the war (2.5.4). Thucydides here casts
Athens in her own tragic action, in which despair of divine benevolence and
aid is presented as a recognizable and plausible response to disaster in near-
contemporary society.
Even within rhetorical speeches, the presumed benevolence of the gods
does not extend to individuals, particularly one’s political or legal
opponents (Parker 1997: 152). Indeed, few of Demosthenes’ adversaries
escape the accolade ‘enemy of the gods’ and threats of divine vengeance
are commonplace. Even if in oratory, then, you are never free to avow that
the gods have abandoned the city in order to scare your fellow citizens into
voting in your favour, this does not imply a conception of gods who provide
only good things. Nor can we simply put this down to a categorical
imperative to flatter the audience since orators are perfectly able to castigate
the demos for its past failings. Rather, it tells us something about attitudes
to divine engagement in the city’s life. Despair, as Parker says, is an
inappropriate response for one who aspires to leadership of the polis
(155ff.). To adopt the victor’s (or at least not the victim’s) stance is vital,
since positive relations with the gods are a precondition for civic and
individual success. The distinctive approach of oratory to the question of
divine engagement in civic life thus does not highlight a doctrinal
theological divide. Rather, it illustrates the significance of generic and
contextual constraints on the views expressed and questions explored about
the gods at a given point in a given text.
Within the rhetorical corpus, generic and contextual constraints may be
further broken down. In the context of the public funerary speeches (as
distinct from forensic or political oratory), for instance, where blame for
defeat or disaster cannot be placed upon the citizens being honoured, divine
opposition is sometimes invoked, albeit usually in ‘rather veiled terms’
(Parker 1997: 155). So, for example, Lysias (2.58) speculates over who was
to blame for disaster in the Hellespont, ‘whether the ineptitude of the
commander or the intention of the gods’. Demosthenes, in his eulogy for
the dead, mentions the disposition of the daimon, necessity, and chance as
factors which could decide the fate of dutiful men who stood firm (60.19).
More accusatory is Isokrates’ claim in his Panathenaicus that when just
men fare worse than unjust this may be explained by the negligence
(ameleian) of the gods (1.186). Though the anger of Zeus, or Apollo’s
preference for the other side, are still not explanatory options here, we
begin to see that a range of attitudes could, nonetheless, be expressed, even
within the limits set by the generic and socio-political conventions which
governed such public speech.
In a recent monograph on the religious argumentation of Demosthenes,
Gunther Martin explores this sort of variety within the rhetorical corpus
(Martin 2009). He analyses how different authors adopt different
approaches, generating distinct and coherent public personas through the
nature of their engagement with religious arguments and ideas. He points,
for example, to Aeschines’ and Isokrates’ preference for pollution as an
argumentative ploy, and the particular emphasis in Lykourgos on the need
for appropriate relations between individual, state, and gods, both to be
contrasted with Demosthenes’ frequently observable reluctance to engage
with religious topics (204ff.). We see, then, the flexibility of Athenian
attitudes to the gods and their role in civic affairs, and the need to avoid
generalizations from isolated statements found in our prose sources: what a
given author hoped would be persuasive and appropriate in a given context
should not be inferred to characterize Athenian attitudes as such.
Furthermore, even where a particular kind of religious argumentation is
adopted, there remains room for an individual author to approach the trope
in a creative manner. For Parker, Lykourgos’ attitude to delayed divine
punishment (‘If the perjured man does not suffer himself, at least his
children and all his family are overtaken by dire misfortunes’ (1.79, trans.
Burtt 1954), constitutes an ‘easy moralism’, which, he suspects, has its
counterpart in ‘conventional piety’ (1997: 153f.). Not only, however, is this
not the only attitude to be expressed on the question of divine punishment
(see, for instance, Lys. fr.9.4 ap. Athen. 551a–52b, with Harrison 2007:
379), it is also not as unreflective as we might at first assume. The ways in
which Lykourgos emphatically implicates the jurors, both as citizens and
dikasts, into the oaths which they have themselves sworn—infractions of
which the gods are said to police—are striking. The theme of relations
across generations recurs with regard to the dikasts in a pointed way. It
would be ‘most terrible,’ Lykourgos warns the jurors, if they failed to live
up to the virtue of their ancestors—who, in their allegiance to their oath,
had the gods behind them—and failed to convict one who had so broken his
oath and disgraced the city. Here we see the creative way in which
Lykourgos employs this often-expressed view about divine penalties to
challenge his audience to think about their own relationships with the gods,
their ancestors, and descendants: What would constitute their maintaining
their own oaths and so protecting themselves, their offspring, and the
honour and memory of their forefathers?
These speeches are, then, of great interest to the religious historian. They
tell us about the ways in which different orators creatively engaged with,
suggested, and deployed diverse conceptions of the gods and of their
interactions with mortals. However, they must not be reduced to
straightforward, unproblematic, and unencumbered reflections of
‘Greek’/’Athenian’ attitudes.
Herodotos
Herodotos has Greeks (and non-Greeks) praying and sacrificing, swearing
and cursing, consulting oracles and interpreting omens, as well as
evaluating appropriate behaviour towards the gods, inferring divine agency,
and engaging in religious argumentation. Is this all Herodotos provides for
the religious historian? And what sort of issues must be borne in mind when
approaching his Histories as source? I highlight here in particular the
importance of viewing Herodotos as a creative religious thinker and the
limitations of too simplistic an account of his religious attitudes.
First, however, we must return to the problem of ‘mining’. In
‘Repositories of Information?’ above, we noted in passing the difficulty in
taking at face value Herodotos’ engagement with the religious behaviour
and beliefs of non-Greek peoples. Even remaining within Greece, we can
easily illustrate the limitations of extracting details of religious practice and
belief from Herodotos’ text without due consideration for the context of his
work as a whole. In instances in which another account of events survives,
we can see clearly the way an account may be shaped by the particular
agenda and interests of a given author. The Greeks’ dedication at Delphi
after their victory at Plataea, described by both Herodotos and Thucydides,
provides one such example. Herodotos tells us that the Greek commanders,
‘having collected the loot, set apart a tithe for the god of Delphi, from
which was dedicated that gold tripod which rests upon the bronze three-
headed serpent, very close to the altar’ (9.81.1). Thucydides provides
further complicating details: the Spartan regent Pausanias, we are told, took
it upon himself to have inscribed on this tripod the following elegiac verse:

The leader of the Greeks, after destroying the army of

the Medes, Pausanias, dedicated to Phoebus this
memorial.

The Lakedaimonians, however, immediately defaced that inscription from

the tripod and inscribed the names of all the cities which together defeated
the barbarians and set up the dedication’ (1.132.2).
Whereas Herodotos presents us with an image of Hellenic unity—the
Greeks give thanks to the god Apollo at his Panhellenic shrine—
Thucydides is concerned with the excesses of the Spartan general
Pausanias; already we see the first cracks in the façade of Greek unity in the
lead-up to the Peloponnesian War. Whatever the accuracy of Thucydides’
information, the religious historian cannot dissociate these divergent
accounts of the same religious act from the political dynamics of the
different wars about which Herodotos and Thucydides write. These authors,
then, are not merely interested in supplying us with isolated bits of
information concerning religious practice. They reflect on and engage with
religious practice as one aspect of a broader set of preoccupations.
Herodotos’ engagement with the oracle at Delphi provides another
illustration of this principle. In recent years, much attention has been paid to
the role played by oracles and oracular consultation in Herodotos’
Histories. Showcasing, as they do, issues of knowledge and interpretation
and divine–human interaction, oracles afford Herodotos with opportunities
to reflect on the character of enquirers, both individuals and city-states, on
human behaviour and relations with the divine more broadly, and on the
authoritative status of his own work and the interpretative demands it places
on his readers (see e.g. Barker 2006; Kindt 2006).
If Herodotos ‘uses’ religious institutions and ideas to think through
broader questions in this way, it is important to stress that he is not merely
taking a ready-made set of tropes from traditional religion in a one-way
transaction: rather, his own involved, reflective, and creative engagement
with Delphi constitutes part of the messy conglomerate to which we refer
as ‘Greek religion’ (see Harrison 2007: 374). Furthermore, we should
recognize the possibility that literary texts may inform and frame religious
experience, that is to say, that the lessons learnt from reading Herodotos
about oracular enquiry, divine anger, and the pendulum of fortune, for
example, may plausibly bear on how one views one’s own interactions with
the gods (cf. Barker 2006: 3).
Finally, a brief word on the complex matter of Herodotos’ religious
outlook. Herodotos, in particular, has been subject to fierce debates over the
question of his personal religiosity. Whereas, at one extreme, scholars have
viewed Herodotos as self-consciously moving away from accounts which
make appeal to divine causation, and as generally sceptical of traditional
Greek attitudes, at another extreme others have viewed his project as
theological through and through and have found in the Histories a
sustainable system of religious beliefs (cf. Lateiner 1989; Goldhill 2002:
11ff.; Harrison 2003). Of course, there is considerable middle ground
between these two extremes. Part of the reason for this range of positions is
the variety of attitudes which can plausibly be found in Herodotos’ text (see
e.g. Mikalson 2003: 146).
We find dismissals of particular claims about the gods (e.g. 5.86.3) and
some notable absences (e.g. the omission of gods in Herodotos’ account of
the history of East–West hostilities, 1.1–5 with Goldhill 2002: 14). Yet,
such features of the text do not warrant the conclusion that Herodotos could
not possibly have taken seriously those aspects of Greek religion with
which he was evidently preoccupied. There are, furthermore, a few cases in
which he expressly favours an account which appeals to divine causation
(e.g. 8.129) or alludes to divine chance, divine communication, or divine
anger (e.g. 4.205, 5.92.3, 9.100, 6.27). We cannot dismiss all these passages
as merely a means of appealing to the (less well-educated) masses or
reporting unreflectively traditional views (see Gould 1994: 94; Harrison
2000: 1–30).
In a different vein, Robert Fowler has shown how Herodotos approaches
reflection on the gods in a way that is qualitatively different from the sort of
approach that we encounter in Homer or Hesiod, and how this difference
relates to the very different nature of Herodotos’ enquiry and project as he
conceived it. We do not find in the pages of Herodotos the types of
interactions between gods or between gods and men that we encounter in
the verses of Homer and Hesiod. Instead, the inquisitive and
epistemologically circumspect histor adopts an approach to the gods which
is fundamentally continuous with his approach to the human sphere: he
infers the gods’ agency and overall direction of human affairs from events
within the limitations and conditions of his uninspired and conjectural
inquiries (Fowler 2010, 2011: 59ff.). We might relate this suggestion of a
qualitatively different approach to reflection on the gods to a broader
tendency in prose sources, from history to oratory to philosophical and
medical works, to appeal, not to individual named gods, but, arguably in a
more epistemologically circumspect way, to generic divine powers
unidentified by name (e.g. to theion, ho theos, hoi theoi).
Of course, there is a great deal more that could be said about the complex
question of Herodotos’ religiosity. But the considerations sketched out here
suffice to caution against over-schematizing Herodotos’ approach to the
divine, and to offer some sense of the ways in which Herodotos confronts
the religious historian with a distinctive, involved, and creative way of
thinking with and about religion.

Pausanias
As Pausanias leads us with confidence and authority across the Greek
world, it is all too easy to forget that this is, in many ways, a world of his
own making. Louise Bruit Zaidman and Pauline Schmitt Pantel, for
example, make central use of Pausanias—the ‘indefatigable curious
traveller’—in their reconstructions of the cult life of the Greek sites (2000:
18), without, however, addressing the question of the motivations and
complications which underpin Pausanias’ account. Yet Pausanias himself
remarks explicitly that he is omitting what he deems trivial in favour of
those things ‘most worthy of being recalled’ (3.11.1, cf. 1.39.3, 8.54.7)—
the subjectivity of his account is clearly marked. If Pausanias’ experiential
style can sometimes lure the reader into feeling they have ‘seen’ a site in all
its detail, his emphasis on ritual and cult as lines of continuity between past
and present (‘still in my day . . .’) lure the reader into accepting the
authenticity of his imperial text as a straightforwardly veridical testament to
Archaic and Classical Greek religion, as if those Archaic and Classical
cults, monuments, and stories had not gone through diverse and complex
processes of reception and modification in the intervening centuries (see
Pirenne-Delforge 2006 for an illustration). Pausanias has a tendency to
overlook the more recent past in favour of ancient history (we noted in the
section ‘Repositories of Information?’ his relative marginalization of the
Imperial cult), viewing and evaluating stories about gods and heroes and
practices performed in their honour through a framework which privileges
age and tradition as criteria of assessment (see Hutton 2005: 305; Pirenne-
Delforge 2008: 337ff.). Such criteria render Pausanias’ construction of
Greece and Greek identity ‘a form of resistance to the realities of Roman
rule’ (Elsner 1992: 5). The relatively static image of Greek culture which
Pausanias affords should be read with caution.
Pausanias’ invaluable insights into local cults need similarly to be
approached with care. The pronounced emphasis in Pausanias’ text on the
poikilia, the rich variety of Greek culture, finds a careful counterpoint in his
underlying assumption of Panhellenic unity in relation to which he
understands and portrays such local diversity. In Pausanias we find a
Greece which seeks to be understood neither through nor against Roman
rule (see Hutton 2005: 311ff.; Pirenne-Delforge 2006, 2008). In
constructing a Panhellenic perspective against which to view local religion,
Pausanias, at the same time, constructs himself as an authority capable of
this kind of exegesis and illumination. He not only relays but also eruditely
contrasts and passes judgement on local accounts (e.g. 2.23.5f.). Pirenne-
Delforge has explored, inter alia, Pausanias’ approach to the ‘universal’
Greek pantheon in the face of local diversity, through his pointed use of
vocabulary: the term theos, she notes, is never qualified by the term
epichorios, which is elsewhere common as a description of local practices,
tales, and even heroes and daimones in Pausanias’ work. Again, we also
find Pausanias relating figures which are identified locally solely by an
epiklesis (cult title) to gods of the traditional pantheon (such as his
association of the Agathos Theos at Megalopolis to Zeus) (Pirenne-
Delforge 2008: ch. 5). We see here, then, how a given author’s interests and
agenda might yield a reflective and creative (but not necessarily accurate)
way of shaping information about cults and gods. In relating local religious
phenomena to Panhellenic ones, Pausanias engages in a novel equivalent to
interpretatio Graeca, which may not reproduce the way individual local
communities themselves perceived these cults and figures of worship, or the
way they felt they related to wider Greek models.
A productive way in which some religious historians have approached
Pausanias and his text is to think of him as a pilgrim writing for other
pilgrims (see e.g. Elsner 1992). But what do we mean by ‘pilgrimage’?
What sort of motivations does the term imply on the part of the ‘pilgrim’?
What sort of relationship does it envisage between ‘pilgrim’ and god?
Rutherford has explored the relation between Pausanias’ text and the Greek
practice of theoria (itself a complex term encompassing, for example, both
civic delegations to sanctuaries and individual attendance at festivals)
(Rutherford 2001). Theoria blurs the distinctions between intellectual
activity and religious experience, or between pilgrimage and ‘recreational
sightseeing’: to view and to discuss the sites and sounds of religious
festivals was, as Rutherford has well illustrated, as much part of the
religious experience as the sacrificial act, sung paean, or Dionysiac tragedy.
Against this background, Pausanias’ Periegesis is itself part of a religious
complex of activities—a vicarious form of engaging in the religious activity
of theoria. Pausanias’ text (like Herodotos’ oracle-narratives) may also
frame or inform religious experiences. By repeatedly re-enacting Pausanias’
theoria for us, the text may shape how we understand or undertake theoria
ourselves.
So, finally, does Pausanias’ text provide us insight into ‘personal’
religious experience? For some scholars, Pausanias’ self-conscious status as
pepaideumenos is inconsistent with an identity as pilgrim; his apparent
piety constitutes a literary persona befitting an author of the Second
Sophistic. I stressed above, in ‘Critical Prose Sources’, that self-consciously
critical, sophisticated, and educated thinkers need not espouse general
hostility to traditional religious attitudes and practices. They may, rather,
develop distinctive ways of thinking about such attitudes and practices. To
overlook or explain away such passages as Pausanias’ famous claim (8.8.2–
3) that, since visiting Arcadia, he has come to re-evaluate his opinion of
certain logoi, which he once dismissed as silly stories but now sees contain
some kind of wisdom, in favour of a ‘rational’ reading of the Periegesis, is
to oversimplify a complex text (see Hutton 2005: 304f.).
Pausanias’ description of the oracle of Trophonios at Lebadeia provides
an example of his own engagement with the religious sites he observes and
describes. His account is both detailed—describing the complex preparatory
rituals undertaken before an oracle consultation and precise architectural
details—and emotionally charged. A prospective consultant who receives
positive omens from the preparatory sacrifices ‘goes down with true hope’,
receives his oracle (after a claustrophobic and dramatic entry), and leaves
‘possessed with terror and hardly knowing himself or the things around
him’, unable, temporarily, to laugh or to think straight (9.39.4–14, trans.
Levi 1979, with modifications). The echoes between this description and
Aristides’ evocative ‘personal’ accounts of his encounters with Asklepios
are pronounced (see e.g. 2.23 K for Aristides’ altered perception on seeing
the god). At the same time, both authors intimate the limits of the
communication of religious experiences. The inadequacy of Aristides’
words as an accurate record of all that he experienced in his dealings with
Asklepios is a constant refrain of the work (e.g. 1.1, 2.1, 2.8 K),
emphatically reminding the reader of what is not being communicated.
Similarly, Pausanias’ own experience when he ‘went down to Trophonios’
is left unspoken. For this, the reader will have to visit themselves, since
each person experiences it differently.
 Pausanias’ account of Trophonios also includes a cautionary tale, through
which Pausanias, like Herodotos, teaches us how not to approach the oracle.
He tells how one of Demetrios’ bodyguards, who fulfilled none of the
proper rites and had intended to rob the shrine, was killed going down, his
body appearing elsewhere (9.39.12). By including this story, Pausanias
participates in shaping the expectations and experience of the visitor and in
praising the god. Pausanias’ description of the oracle at Lebadeia, then, well
illustrates several of our principle concerns: it engages actively and
reflectively with this religious site and offers a unique representation of an
individual’s experience of it, while, at the same time, self-consciously
recognizing its own limitations as an account of religious experience.

SUGGESTED READING
Feeney 1998, though focused on Rome, is an excellent introduction to the
question of literature’s relationship to religion. Harrison 2007 explores
many of the issues surrounding literary sources specifically in the context of
Greek religion. Goldhill 2002 offers an accessible and lively account of the
development of prose as a distinct literary style in the Classical period.
Studies of individual authors and their approach to religion are numerous
(see e.g. Hornblower 1992 on Thucydides, Parker 2004 on Xenophon,
Osborne 1997 on Heraklitos, and Petsalis-Diomidis 2010 on Aristides). For
the orators, see Parker 1997 and Martin 2009. Mikalson 2003 and Harrison
2000 provide divergent studies of the religion of Herodotos. For Pausanias,
Elsner 1992 remains important, while Pirenne-Delforge 2008 offers both a
helpful overview of past approaches and a rich, close reading of the
Periegesis.

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the Nature of Greek Divinity, ed. A. Lloyd, 35–42. Swansea.
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 CHAPTER 7

LITERARY EVIDENCE—POETRY

RENAUD GAGNé

A well-known anecdote from Strabo (8.3.30) describes how the sculptor

Pheidias designed his masterpiece, the great statue of Zeus in the sanctuary
of Olympia, as a reflection of three verses from Homer’s Iliad (1.528–30).
The most prestigious and authoritative cult image of the high god is there
presented as the solid shape of epic verse, a massive stone monument
carved out of a monument of poetry. The locus classicus on the question of
poetry as the template for divine forms is Herodotos 2.53, where the
historian famously writes that Homer and Hesiod ‘taught the Greeks of the
descent of the gods, and gave to all their several names, and honours, and
arts, and indicated their outward shapes’. For Herodotos in that passage, the
main point is that the poems of Homer and Hesiod, the oldest Greek poems,
are in fact relatively recent, and much older sources are now available to
actual scrutiny—a new, tangible knowledge opened by historie over the
territory previously held by the Muses and the masters of their truth.
Other critics of Homer and Hesiod, such as Xenophanes (DK B 14–16)
or Empedokles (DK B 27–9), contested the anthropomorphism of epic in its
depiction of divine bodies, and offered alternatives that emphasized the
gods’ non-human form (on epic, see also Martinez, Chapter 11 in this
volume). The authority of the early poets was the great rival that had to be
supplanted. Early historiography and the other forms of novel wisdom and
science that flourished at the time, including the ethical and natural
investigations that will come to be known as philosophy, had to break down
the hold of the poets on aletheia in order to carve their own epistemic
space, often through the language of poetry itself. That sustained
contestation of the old foundations of knowledge constitutes a watershed in
the history of Greek culture. Transformed into something else by the
appropriations of exegesis, or reduced to fiction and confined to the
aesthetic realm, the special claim of inspired poetry to access a privileged
reality eventually lost its former predominance in the course of the Classical
period, although it never disappeared entirely. Poetry continued to play a
major part in subsequent phases of Greek religion, in the Hellenistic and
Roman periods, but the stage had been thoroughly changed. Still a
fundamental medium for expressing the religious imagination, as well as a
central presence in cult, poetry’s authority now derived mostly from
symbolic capital and reinterpretations and the archive, less from the
production of new texts. Callimachus was indeed an important religious
thinker of his time, but no one could confuse him with Hesiod. The present
chapter will be concerned with some of the religious roles of poetry before
that fundamental cultural shift. It will attempt to answer one question: What
kind of evidence does Archaic and Classical verse provide for the study of
early Greek religion? It will not seek to assess the notoriously difficult task
of using poetry as a source of religious realia, painstakingly mined in the
hope of recovering echoes of ritual language, cult practices, sanctuary
space, or even belief. Rather, it will be interested in poetry itself as an agent
of religious thought.
The impact of poetic texts on the religious imagination of their audiences
is a particularly important aspect of the question at hand. One recurrent
assertion in our sources is that poetry coloured what the Greeks saw when
they saw a god. The vivid narratives of epic, the catalogues of didactic
poetry, hymnic evocations, oracular hexameters, the sumptuous tableaux of
monodic lyric, the marriage of movement and verbal image enacted in
choral performance, or the three-dimensional mimesis of drama, all forced
their audiences to conjure synesthetic images of divinity. Sometimes a
single adjective can serve as the support of that vision, as the epithet
glaukopis so commonly applied to Athena, or boopis for Hera, words that
were interpreted in wildly different ways early on, as the scholia attest. A
whole passage will trace the particular contours of the god’s shape on other
occasions, as in the description of Typhon in Theogony 823–35. But most of
these texts often contained precious little descriptive detail of divine bodies,
and the imagination of the individual audience member was left to its own
devices when supplying the missing details.
Still, the audience regularly had to conjure these forms in the mind’s eye
through the exigencies of narrative, with their attributes and specificities.
The ideal, yet uncannily impersonal, anthropomorphic appearance that is so
often chosen to embody the presence of divinity in narrative frequently
suggests the awesome, ineffable power which inhabits that morphe of a
moment, and actually threatens mere mortals when it is revealed to them in
its full power (e.g. HH 2.275–80; HH 5.181–90). The fragmentary
focalization of poetry is the necessary channel for the contemplation of that
reality beyond vision.
It is, of course, wrong to believe that the physical images of the gods (on
which, see Scheer, Chapter 12 in this volume) were dependant on the
images of song, or vice versa. The representational dialogue between
poetry, on the one hand, and sculpture and painting on the other, was a
complex one at any time, and it certainly went in both directions, with each
medium speaking its own language. The difficulty of translating one into
the other is well illustrated by an anecdote found in Ion of Chios’ Epidemiai
(FGrH 392 F 6), where the tragedian Sophokles, a contemporary of Ion, is
found berating a pretentious man at a symposion for misunderstanding the
different colour idioms of poetry and painting. When ‘the poet’ (that is,
Pindar) depicts Apollo as ‘golden haired’ (chrysokomas), this does not
mean that the painter should represent the god with blond hair, Sophokles
says in the text, as the painting ‘would not be as good’ if the artist actually
made the god’s hair golden rather than black (the quote comes from Ol.
6.41). The codes of each art cannot be converted so easily into the other.
Notwithstanding the interesting aesthetic issues raised by the anecdote,
what stands out for us is the actual misinterpretation staged by the story,
and the method of resolution to the disagreement: Sophokles vanquishes his
foe by an overwhelming demonstration of culture and rhetoric.
The poor pedantic grammarian clearly had no chance before the great
playwright. But his ‘error’ of literalism must have been a perfectly common
reading of the poetic image, one that would have been reproduced countless
times at other symposia, and it is probably fair to say that, in the majority of
these cases, one of the most prominent poets of the age was not there to
offer an authoritative solution. Who controls the poetic images of the gods?
And, more importantly, who controls their interpretation? The flagrant
contradictions that existed between the different kinds of divine
representation were there for all to see and to decode. The visual culture of
divinity that informed symposiasts in the time of Sophokles was
characterized by great diversity and disagreements, constantly confronted to
each other and creatively reinterpreted, where the many different images of
the gods produced by interaction with poetry were never far from the mind.
How could they be? A pillar of the education of everyone in the cities, male
and female, citizen and slave, the performance of poetry remained a
fundamental tool of socialization throughout people’s lives, both as a shared
object of reflection, and as a marker of discrimination: the touchstone that
allowed one to make a distinction between those who belonged in the group
and those who did not. This was especially true of participation in the local
choral dances and songs that played such an important role in the ritual
lives of the poleis and the upbringing of both girls and boys in the Greek
world, but it was certainly not confined to choreia. That is the essential
reason behind Plato’s attacks on Homer and tragedy. Conflicts of
knowledge lie at the heart of Greek religion.
A live web of different poetic cultures criss-crossed the Greek world,
composed of a great many intertwined strands in a constant but
circumscribed process of change. Few songs were entirely local, and the
commonly used terms epichoric and Panhellenic, which remain very useful
in this regard, must be handled with caution if we want to avoid overly
artificial distinctions. Song culture in the Greek world was never just a
matter of social coherence and cultural cohesion, but offered the individual
a vast grid of potential alternatives, stances, and choices of reference for
any situation. Poetry was one of the main mediators of divine reality, a
comprehensive cognitive filter that provided the individuals with the
building blocks of their imagination on the matter. What these blocks
actually were for each individual, and what he or she did with them at
various times, was ultimately a matter of chance, life history, and personal
choice.
What the Greeks knew about the gods, not only their bodies, obviously,
but also their genealogy, their activity, their attributes, they predominantly
knew by the intermediary of song—and not just works by Homer and
Hesiod. It is, first and foremost, through these songs that the narratives of
myth took shape and were transmitted over the generations and the many
lands of the Greek world, as numerous speeches and dialogues attest.
Pausanias, for instance, can still accept the authority of the grand old epics
as a basis for plausible investigation, against the mere opinion (pheme) of
local tradition (9.41). Poetic language found its way into the language of
ritual practice, such as the Bacchic gold leaves, or the cult epithet
kraterophron applied to Herakles, which clearly derives from hexameter
poetry, and found its way to sanctuaries from Sicily to Phrygia (Leumann
1950: 327). Over and above the old wives’ tales mentioned by Plato (Resp.
350e; Hp. mai. 285e–6a; Grg. 527a), or the casual talk at the symposion, it
was the finally crafted songs of the poets that shaped the references
informing the Greek religious imagination concerning the nature of their
gods.
But what these songs said about the gods was far from uniform, of
course. Some of the most basic facts about a god could vary from text to
text: Aphrodite is the daughter of Ouranos in Hesiod’s Theogony 154–206,
but her parents are Zeus and Dione in Iliad 5.370. These variants can be
found concerning many aspects of the genealogy, attributes, and activity of
most of the gods found in our sources. When the characters of Plato’s
Symposium try to define the nature of the god Eros, to take a notorious
example, wildly different interpretations of the most basic traits of his
power and character are proposed, many of them grounded in the words and
generic language of competing poetic representations, starting with
Homer’s Iliad and Hesiod’s Theogony, and ending with tragedy. A deep and
playful experimentation with contemporary forms of Greek thought, the
dialogue attests to the great flexibility of divine representations in the
sympotic culture it portrayed, and the essential roles played by songs in
justifying the competing claims to its knowledge.
Poetry offered much ground for such spectacles of disagreement about
the gods, both in its claims to embody tradition and in its appeals to the
novelty of a break with the past. The many different portraits of the
invisible presented by poetry in this religious system, based on the
‘unknowability’ of divinity, were constantly contested. The variety of poetic
voices that were vying for authority at the time is impressive and
noteworthy. Some traditions had clear ideological agendas, others cultivated
a more open polyphony, but all strove for distinction. In the contests of the
symposium, the musical agones, or the dramatic competitions, verse was
shaped through conflict with other verses, and the meaning of songs was
grounded in a poetics of contrast. That is a situation already in place in our
earliest records. Far from passively reflecting the deep structures of myth,
or the versions of native lore, poetic depictions of the gods were actively
engaged in moulding the tales themselves, configuring them to the specific
orientations of their text and authorial voice, and often engaged in
competition with other contemporary texts and figures.
The song that claimed authority on divine matters could invoke the
presence of the Muses, and assert a direct access to the inspired knowledge
provided by the daughters of Mnemosyne. Other songs could claim the
authorship of poets with special links to the divine, such as Epimenides,
Musaios, or Orpheus. Most, however, did not do either. They all had, in any
case, to negotiate a place in relation to tradition, a stance between the poles
of appropriation and contestation. Following the path of tradition meant
inscribing a song over other songs, participating in a concert of voices that
was both synchronically and diachronically larger than the individual
performance of the here and now. Without moving away too far from the
expectations of tradition, the song had to mark its specificity, and build the
characteristics that made it stand out. Not limited to introductory hymns or
proems such as Hesiod’s Theogony 1–115 or Works and Days 1–10, or
those emphatically self-reflexive passages of programmatic statements such
as Iliad 2.484–92, the construction of authority and the definition of a
song’s situation in regard to tradition were more generally woven deep in
the text as a whole, patterned with a myriad different strands. The internal
logic of a poem is part of the armature of its authority. Only by taking the
time to enter the text through close reading, and engaging with the nuances
of its language and imagery, can these patterns be made discernible and
properly assessed. I propose, in what follows, to look at one particularly
rich example of that poetic negotiation of tradition, the claim to authority of
the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, an important ‘literary hymn’ from the sixth
century BCE (on hymns, see also Versnel, Chapter 30 in this volume).
‘How shall I hymn you, well-hymned (euhymnos) as you are in every
respect?’. With these words from line 19, the poet of the Homeric Hymn to
Apollo marks the transition that will lead away from the divine realm of
Olympos and the introduction of Leto’s son to the society of the gods into
the human landscapes of cities and cult and the celebration of Zeus’ son in
the world of men. The inscription of the divinity in the space and time of
the hymnic narrative conjures a veritable map of the deity that is made an
immediate interlocutor in the present of the performance: it locates him in
myth and cult, and weaves a web of correspondences between that distant
configuration and the hic et nunc. Line 19 opens the section of the hymn
that is devoted to the presence of the god on the island of Delos. Apollo is
‘well-hymned’, in that ‘fields of song’ are laid down for him everywhere:
the whole land glorifies him. That statement contains a complex poetic
programme of great religious significance.
The ‘fields of song’ image of line 20 underlines the profound imbrication
of land and poetry staged by the hymn. The passage goes out of its way to
express the reach of these fields of song, which are found in all possible
areas, both high and low, enumerated in lines 21–4. The imbrication of land
and poetry that makes Apollo euhymnos is boundless, which is what makes
the choice of the poem so difficult. The singer has to decide where and
when his song is to be set in this limitless field of possibilities. As all land
brings joy to Apollo because of what he has done there and the songs that
celebrate these events, the hymn can start from anywhere. From this general
statement of spatial universality, the poem moves to the specifics of precise
location. The transition is marked by another question, which points to one
event, the birth of Apollo, and the place where it happened, the island of
Delos. To further emphasize where the island is, and its relative position in
regard to other places, the passage proceeds to relate all the locations where
the birth of Apollo did not happen, spaces defined by a lack in comparison
to Delos (lines 30–46). This is more than a priamel. The identification of
that negative space, the enumeration of all the sites that refused to welcome
Leto when she was about to give birth to the god, is organized as a circular
spiral topography around the island. The whole Aegean is traced by this
map of names. Only by virtue of the stories that did not happen in these
locations is the story of Delos made possible. As has long been recognized,
most of the sites named in the list have a significant cultic link to Apollo
(see Kowalzig 2007: 72–80). But what stands out from the spatial web of
the poem is the way these places—some of them, like Athens, Samos, or
Miletos, significant regional powers in the sixth century BCE—are
positioned in a relation of dependence to the tiny island of Delos. The great
gathering is located in the centre of the circle drawn by the peregrinations
of Leto around the sea. The lands that once refused the arrival of the god at
the edges of the Aegean now rejoice in his honour at its middle.
 Just as the songs that praise Apollo are embedded in all regions of the
world, the sanctuaries of the god are innumerable, as well as the places that
find favour with him. But no location is beloved by the god more than
Delos, we are told, when the Ionians are assembled for the festivities (146–
8). At the heart of this event is a peerless wonder: the local chorus of the
Delian Maidens described in 156–76. The Maidens ‘know how to imitate’
the voices of all men, so that ‘anyone might think it was he himself
speaking’ (162–4). All song is concentrated in their song: they reproduce
what comes from outside, and embody its likeness in all aspects of language
and sound. In this, they function as a parallel to the centripetal force of the
festival itself, its ability to gather the whole Aegean in one central location.
Just as the island becomes host to the entire region, the chorus of the Delian
Maidens contains the songs of all men.
The song they start with is a hymn to Apollo, followed by a hymn to
Artemis and Leto, before they ‘turn their thoughts to the men and women of
old and sing a song that charms the people’: another hymn (158–9).
Through this evocation of the Maidens’ choral mimesis, what the passage is
underlining is the breadth of their range: both gods and mortals, both male
and female, their song encompasses the core of poetry. It is a hymn to
Apollo that stands at the beginning of their miraculous performance, one
that is located at the very heart of the nexus of Apolline song and place
staged by the poem. The invitation to contrast the hymn presently
performed in the hic et nunc of the audience with the hymn of the Delian
Maidens portrayed in the text could not be clearer.
The point is explicitly brought forward by the direct encounter of the
persona of the text’s author himself with the Delian chorus at lines 165–76.
Switching to a dramatic mode, the poet addresses the chorus directly, as if
present on site ‘here’ (enthade) in Delos, and asks them to commemorate
his song for all time to come. When a man next comes from abroad to ask
who is their favourite singer, they are to answer: ‘it is a blind man, and he
lives in rocky Chios; all of his songs remain supreme afterwards’ (166–73).
There can be little doubt that the blind poet is related to the first-person
singular voice of the text, as embodied in performance, something that
makes the shift of the first-person plural of the next line particularly
puzzling. Is this a reference to a group of singers? Does it point to the
plurality of rhapsodic performances that are to follow (Nagy 1996: 214–
25)? Various scenarios have been proposed, and none has been generally
accepted. What is certain is that the statement concerns the persona of the
poet, and continues the description of the exchange that is to be made
between him and the chorus. While the collective chorus sings the praise of
the individual poet whose song has come to it, the collective performers of
the epic poetry embodied by the poet will sing the praise of the individual
chorus, and the individual island, in the countless lands and cities where
they will carry their song. Following the centripetal movement of songs and
lands towards Delos, the centrifugal diffusion of the hymn throughout the
region furthers the depth of praise offered to the god. The chorus that
contains all other songs has identified this one hymn as the superior song.
As it unfolds in performance here and now, the answer to the question of
how the poem is to hymn the well-hymned god involves every member of
the audience in a landscape of other songs and performances that trace the
contours of a vast area of significance. Appropriating the authority of the
fixed chorus of the maidens, the mobile hymn of the blind poet of Chios
establishes itself as the one voice that stands out in the whole of the
Aegean.
The narrative circle is complete, and the poem consequently gives signs
of closure. But the first-person voice of the narrator continues its
intervention and announces that ‘and myself, I shall not cease from
hymning the far-shooter Apollo of the silver bow, whom lovely-haired Leto
bore’ (177–8). Building on a variant of the traditional formulas that usually
end hymns and point forward to another performance, these two lines
reverse expectations and lead us back to a new beginning, the start of the
hymn’s second half, the so-called ‘Hymn to Pythian Apollo’. The parallel
between the two constructions is clearly emphasized. The question of line
19 is restated word for word at line 207: ‘How shall I hymn you, well-
hymned (euhymnos) as you are in every respect?’ The new answer leads to
the evocation of a different map of significant space.
As in the first half of the hymn, the lines that answer the question open
the vista of alternative songs and stories that the poem could follow. The
section, similarly, is traced around the evocation of a distinctive space. The
parallel is striking: an initial scene on the summit of Olympos (186–206) is
followed by a series of itineraries that map out an area of relevant
geography. In search of the seat of his great oracle, Apollo descends from
the great northern mountain to travel south, passing through a variety of
places on the way (lines 216–44). As in the case of Delos, the site of Delphi
is chosen as the result of a rejection from another land (245–99). Apollo’s
subsequent search for the ministers of his new oracular shrine will take him
back to Crete, the site of the original starting point for the great circular
trajectory of the ‘Hymn to Delos’ (lines 409–39). But instead of drawing a
circle around the east of Greece, his trajectory in guiding the Cretan men to
Delphi goes in the opposite direction, and adds the whole western part of
the Greek landmass to the map of Apolline space drawn by the poet, taking
on all of the Peloponnese in the process. The three itineraries of the hymn
touch, but do not overlap. They correspond to the three regions of
humankind identified by the poem: ‘those who live in the fertile
Peloponnese’, ‘those who live in the Mainland’, and ‘those who live in the
seagirt islands’ (247–52). Giving shape to a space that goes from Olympos
in the north to Crete in the south, from the Ionian Sea to the coast of Asia
Minor, they encompass the whole of ‘non-colonial’ Greece, at any rate. The
endpoint of the last two, Delphi, is placed right at the nominal centre of this
Apolline geography. Just as Delos is displayed as the middle point of the
Aegean in the first part of the hymn, Delphi comes out as the centre of
Greece. The poetic landscape created by the deployment of geographical
lists in the poem, and the elegant combination of the parallel,
complementary spaces from the two halves of the hymn, formalizes the
traditional proposition that Delphi is the navel of the world.
The choice of Delos and Delphi allows the hymn to incorporate all the
spaces and, by extension, all the other songs of the well-hymned god. The
poem’s evocation of time follows a parallel course. Essential to the idea that
the songs are grounded in space is the idea that these spaces commemorate
an event. The focus of each half of the hymn on a particular location is a
celebration of an event that took place there in the distant past, and of the
rituals that still commemorate it even now. To understand how the two
moments are complementary, and how their combination can be said to
evoke a complete image of the god in the world, it is important to consider
how each event is linked to a different episode taking place on Olympos in
the text.
The first moment, the birth of Apollo on Delos, is associated with the
arrival of Apollo on the divine mountain, and his first acceptance into the
society of the gods (1–13). The threat of divine conflict is an important
thread of this episode. It is Hera’s hostility to Leto that creates the crisis of
Apollo’s dramatic birth, and his arrival on Olympos has ominous overtones
of potential struggle. A powerful young god carrying a stringed bow, he
provokes fear among the gods when he first appears to them. Apart from
Zeus, they all rise in his presence, trembling. Will the young god contest the
power of his father and reignite the War in Heaven with the claim of a new
generation? His warm welcome by Zeus immediately appeases the tension.
Disarmed of his bow by his mother, offered the nectar of divine society by
his father, Apollo has entered the community of the gods without strife. The
hymn begins with the outcome of its initial narrative, the mutual
recognition of father and son, and the overcoming of Hera’s hostility, a
divinity that, as it happens, was prominently honoured on the island of
Delos.
The second part of the hymn, which also starts on Olympos, follows a
parallel structure to the first part. Now established as a powerful god
throughout the world, with major sanctuaries in Lydia and Lykia, in
Miletos, Delos, and Delphi (179–85), Apollo is no longer the young god
making his way to the land of his father, but a great voice at the heart of
Olympos. The festivities of the gods described in the poem are reminiscent
of the festivities of men taking place on Delos, with a clear echo
underscored between the chorus of the Muses and the Delian Maidens. The
Muses, like the Maidens, sing of gods and men, and their song is also a
hymn (190). All the gods who are named as participating in those festivities
belong to the same generation; that is, they are all children of Zeus, a fact
foregrounded by Aphrodite being identified as Zeus’ daughter (195), a
statement that clears any possible confusion with other traditional
genealogies. United in a great circle dance, holding each other by the wrists,
the generation of Zeus’ children rejoice in harmony—indeed, Harmony
herself is part of the choral celebrations (for Harmony as a daughter of
Zeus, see Gantz 1993: 215). Apollo is at the centre, leading the dance with
his kithara under the joyful gaze of Zeus and Leto (201–6). His generation
is united in its celebration of Olympos, with Apollo at its head. An answer
to the unstringed bow of the first half of the poem, the stringed kithara seals
the union of generations, the renunciation of strife, and the power of song to
embody the rhythms of cosmic concord (cf. Monbrun 2007).
After going up to Olympos, Apollo now moves away from it as one of its
agents. It is outside of Olympos that the stringed bow reappears as a
defining attribute of the god. The central event of the hymn’s second half,
the foundation of Delphi, is built on a moment of violence, the slaying of a
dragon by the god. This Delphi is the place where the dragon rots. A long
ring-composition at the core of this section relates how Hera, furious at the
birth of Athena, resolved to stay away from the company of the gods and
produce a child of her own: Typhon (300–74). A particularly vivid scene
describes how she hit the ground with the flat of her hand and demanded
the child from the primordial powers of earlier generations (334–9). The
primordial forces she addresses are the previous rulers of heaven, among
whom are the defeated enemies of Zeus, now locked in Tartaros.
Demanding, as she does, that her child be more powerful than Zeus, just as
Zeus was more powerful than Kronos, is nothing less than to tear the
cosmos asunder. Hera’s rage reopens the War in Heaven (Strauss Clay
2006: 67–71).
The awesome Typhon, traditionally portrayed as the greatest threat and
the last challenge to the order of Zeus, is made the son of Hera in this
version and this version alone. Prominently linked to Ge, the divinity
usually identified as Typhon’s mother, in her prayer for the child, it is Hera
who becomes the mother of all danger in the poem. This is a distinctive
version of the myth that writes itself upon tradition and belongs to the
distinctive narrative logic of the text. The birth of Typhon is the reverse
mirror of the birth of Apollo, Typhon the cosmic challenge that Apollo
emphatically is not. Hera’s opposition to the birth of Apollo in the first half
of the hymn is answered by her own pregnancy in the second half in
opposition to the birth of Athena. That continued antagonism is marked by
a contrast to the refusal of lands to welcome Apollo in both halves of the
hymn: the earth herself accepts the birth of Typhon. It is on the future site of
Delphi that he is welcomed by the dragon to be reared, not on Olympos, as
Apollo, and from there that he will launch his assault on Olympos. Apollo’s
foundation of Delphi is inscribed on the site of the alternative world
threatened by the arrival of Typhon.
The poem is entirely silent about the battle of Zeus and Typhon. It only
mentions Apollo’s slaying of the dragon on the future site of the temple, the
point of departure, and conclusion of the poem’s long ring-composition on
the birth of the great adversary of divine order. Just as Herakles, that other
son of Zeus, will be famous for exterminating the offspring of Typhon at the
four corners of the world, Apollo slays the creature that reared the monster
at the very centre of the universe. This highly selective reference to one of
the determinant events of Archaic Greek cosmogony allows the poem to
activate a relevant background of meaning against which to highlight the
specificities of its own themes. The slaying of the dragon confirms the final
triumph of the young god over the enmity of Hera—the dragon is an
intermediary that allows for the avoidance of a direct confrontation between
the gods of the Olympian pantheon. By killing the beast and laying down
the foundations of his temple, Apollo vanquishes once and for all the forces
that have opposed him since his birth.
His victory confirms the cosmic power of Zeus. Just as the birth of
Apollo happens despite the attempts of Hera to limit the reproductive
powers of her husband, the death of the dragon consecrates the failure of
her own reproductive power and her challenge to his rule. With the killing
of the serpent, Apollo becomes an integral part of his father’s final and
complete dominion over the universe. Male rule is definitively imposed
over female opposition. The powers of earlier generations, Ge and Ouranos,
as well as the Titans, are defeated once and for all. The foundation of
Delphi on this site seals the constitution of Olympian order. Literally built
over the corpse of the creature that reared the last challenge to it, it
consecrates the alliance of later generations against the older forces of
primordial times. Just as it is literally at the centre of space, Delphi is thus
also figuratively at the centre of time. It is certainly not a coincidence that
this is the place that will become the seat of the oracular voice that knows
‘what has been, what is, and what shall be’: a channel for the knowledge of
Zeus himself.
Reducing the internal logic of a poem to a combination of discrepancies
imperfectly brought together by chance hardly does justice to the intricate
parallels that make the different parts of the text echo each other, and that
were experienced as a whole by the audiences of the text that we actually
have. The combination of the Delian and Delphic halves of the Homeric
Hymn to Apollo is more than an assemblage of disparate elements, but a
carefully crafted tableau built on parallels and responsions. Grounded in
these two complementary poles, the presence of the god is projected over
the entire Greek domain, and inscribed in the fabric of time that made the
universe what it is. The aim is to encompass the full range of the god’s
presence. The song makes a claim over all other songs of Apollo, elevating
the hymn over any one event, any one place, or any one performance.
Designed for perennity throughout the cities of Greece, the poem gives an
authoritative shape to the power of the god. Its own recurrent performance
over the centuries is a powerful answer to the repeated question of lines 19
and 207.
The hymn conjures an image of the god that claims the authority of
tradition as a whole. The rhetoric of Panhellenism it deploys from
beginning to end projects an all-encompassing vision that surpasses the
perspective of any one place of cult or any one song, and ties them all
together in one general picture of common significance. The discourse of
authority displayed by the hymn could nominally sustain itself in any
performance or occasion. But at no time was there any outside force to
defend it efficiently, no priesthood or recognized arbiters of orthodoxy to
remind the audience of its truth and tell them what it meant (Parker 2011:
40–63). That is a predicament it shares with most other poetic texts. What is
the meaning of Zeus Aigiochos? Is it Zeus ‘the Aegis-Bearer’, or ‘Goat-
Rider’ Zeus (see West 1978: 366–8)? What is the meaning of Hermes
Eriounios? Is it ‘Benefactor’, or ‘Fast-Runner’ (see Leumann 1950: 123)?
Is Hermes Diaktoros ‘the Dispenser’ or ‘the Guide’? Is there one correct
answer to such questions? The old formulaic epithets, obscured and
misunderstood with the passage of time, became invitations for
reinterpretation and exegesis, with little stability in place. The endeavours
of rhapsodes to explain the real sense, the hyponoia, of the poems they
performed were regularly derided, for instance (see Richardson 2006). The
interpretive cultures of the symposium were notoriously variegated (see e.g.
Pl. Prt. 347e). And attempts, like that of the Derveni Commentator’s
exegesis of an Orphic ‘hymn’, to impose meaning on a text—and, in this
case, propose a reading of broad ritual and theological significance—had
marginal impact at best. The authority of the poem could be denied as easily
as what we find in Herodotos, for instance, or dismissed entirely, as the
works of so many ‘Presocratics’ attest. It could be transformed by
allegorical exegesis, something that already appears in our sources in the
sixth century BCE, and that is well attested in the Classical period (Struck
2004). It was, in any case, always mediated by the individual agency of
every member of the audience, who undoubtedly understood it in different
terms from most of their peers, with no recognized voices able to steer a
clear and common direction. Sophokles could not direct the interpretation
of every member of his audience, as he did that poor grammarian in the
symposium described by Ion of Chios.
 When the Muses tell Hesiod that ‘we know how to say many false things
similar to genuine ones, but we know, when we wish, how to proclaim true
things’ (Theog. 27–8), one implication is that the two opposites are almost
undistinguishable to the human audience, and each one can lead to the
other. In other words: the interpretation of the song is as important as the
song itself in uncovering the truth it holds, a teaching repeated in countless
verse traditions of later periods, from the riddles of the symposium and
popular oracular poetry to the most refined melic poems of Pindar, who
spoke ‘for those who can hear’ (see e.g. Ol. 2.85). Nowhere was this truer
than in the massive spectacles of shattered knowledge and fragmented
perspectives offered by tragedy to Athenian audiences throughout the
Classical period, with their discordant voices, powerless choral songs, and
open-ended irony. These plays recurrently staged the main figures of the
heroic past faced with a world coming apart at the seams, the mutability of
human fortune, and the enigma of divine inscrutability—powerful foci of
reflection on the fundamental religious issues of the polis. As play after
play explored and reconfigured the delicate edifices of tradition on divine
justice and ritual action, on the cultic landscapes of the past and their many
ramifications in the present, each spectator was confronted with choices of
interpretation and involvement that were entirely personal (see Budelmann
2000 for the plays of Sophokles).
The religious role of tragedy is a vexed question of scholarship that
cannot be properly addressed here (see Calame, Chapter 13 in this volume).
Most scholars, at this point, would agree that drama should not simply be
equated with ritual. Dionysos, at any rate, certainly does not hide behind
every mask, and it would be absurd to reduce tragedy to the religious
dimensions of the plays, as some have done at times. These religious
dimensions, for many members of the audience, had very little significance
indeed. But they clearly did matter to most, and the constant questioning of
the foundations of religious knowledge by tragedy was hardly just an
aesthetic concern. Tragedy’s ‘discourse of religious exploration’, to cite
Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, opened a space that invited a real and
constantly renewed engagement from every single viewer with the meaning
of piety and cosmic order, ritual practice, and religious belief (Sourvinou-
Inwood 2003). The protagonists of the plays were, in the great majority of
cases, the central figures in the religious universe of the audience, and many
tragedies ended with the foundation of a cult, the creation of a direct link
between the dramatic mythos that had just unfolded and the ritual life of the
present. Considering that most of these aetiological stories were set outside
of Attica, tragedy actually provided its Athenian audiences with a detailed
map of cult in the wider Greek world, and even beyond—reinvented for the
occasion, of course. The rituals that were described and performed in every
play, in any case, from sacrifice to supplication, from hymnic singing to
libation and choreographed schemata, were in direct dialogue with the
everyday religious experiences of the audience. In some cases, it can be
demonstrated that tragedy did not only reflect cultic practice and
imagination, but profoundly modified it (see e.g. Henrichs 1978). The fact
that this discourse, and indeed performance, of religious exploration can be
read as a fundamental element of stability and order, a powerful
reaffirmation of the religious system of the polis, or as a transgressive
questioning of religious norms designed to leave the spectators with more
queries than answers, is a testament to the inexhaustible richness of these
texts, and the intractable hermeneutic challenges they have and will always
continue to pose.
The great popular events of the dramatic festival were, by all accounts,
the most spectacular types of poetic performance of their day, but they
should not be allowed to overshadow the many other types of poetry that
existed at the same time, and we should always remember that nowhere did
they play a comparable role to the one they had in Athens at a specific time.
Pindar, for instance, presents a whole different world of negotiations with
many of the same theological traditions engaged by Aeschylus. The poetic
literacy and religious competence needed to navigate the many voices of
truth offered by authoritative song in the Archaic and Classical period
varied a great deal from person to person, let alone group to group, city to
city, region to region. Yes, Greek religion had no Church and no Scripture,
as we are often reminded. But we should cease to present the flexibility of
its system of authority, based on competition and rivalry, as an absence. The
many unmediated choices of the individual before the grandiose claims of
poetry to reveal images of divine truth created a mosaic of possibilities of
immense cultural potency. This cut and thrust of immediate reception and
culture in movement has left little trace, and it cannot be measured or
quantified, like foundation deposits, the size of altars, or the prices of
sacrificial animals on inscriptions, any more than it can be modelled, like
social interactions. But it is no less important than sanctuaries or sacrifice or
festivals to make sense of Greek religion. The many discrepancies of
poetry, just as the even greater divergences and disagreements of its ancient
(and modern) understandings, are not indications that these texts mattered
little for the religious life of their audiences, but a fundamental
characteristic of that lively and constantly shifting religious system, and the
choices confronted by each individual. Greek religion cannot be limited to
cult, whatever we mean by ‘cult’. Without the vast web of poetic worlds
painted in our texts, and the challenges to scholarly interpretation they
entail, our knowledge of the possibilities of Greek religious experience
would be thoroughly diminished, and much staler. The platitudes of
positivistic certainty dismiss ‘literature’ from the study of Archaic and
Classical religion at our loss. The many poetic texts that have come down to
us contain a rich but circumscribed pool of meaning, which must be
analysed for itself, not merely used to find reflections of something else, if
we want to make any sense of the Greek religious imagination. The
hermeneutic analysis of poetry is an essential part of any real understanding
of early Greek religion.

SUGGESTED READING
Calame 2009b [2006] is a particularly important methodological overview
of recent scholarship on poetry and religion, while Calame 2009a [2000]
offers a current introduction to the poetics of myth, with good bibliography.
The synthesis of Parker 2011: 20–31 and Versnel 2011: 151–237 offer
stimulating general discussions of poetry and early Greek religion, with a
full set of references. Much of the scholarship of the last decades on the
question has been shaped by the very different approaches of Vernant (see
Vernant and Vidal-Naquet 1988 and Vernant 1990) and Burkert (see 2001
and 2007). For the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, see Calame 2013, with
extensive bibliography. For religion and tragedy, Seaford 1994, Henrichs
1994/1995, and Parker 2009 offer interesting paths through the scholarship.

REFERENCES
Budelmann, F. 2000. The Language of Sophocles. Cambridge.
Burkert, W. 2001. Kleine Schriften I. Homerica, ed. Ch. Riedweg. Göttingen.
Burkert, W. 2007. Kleine Schriften VII. Tragica et Historica, ed. W. Rösler. Göttingen.
Calame, C. 2009a [2000]. Greek Mythology: Poetics, Pragmatics, and Fiction. Cambridge.
Calame, C. 2009b [2006]. Poetic and Performative Memory in Ancient Greece. Cambridge, MA.
Calame, C. 2013. ‘The Homeric Hymns as Poetic Offerings’, in The Homeric Hymns, ed. A.
Faulkner, 334–57. Oxford.
Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. 2 vols. Baltimore, MD.
Henrichs, A. 1978. ‘Greek Maenadism from Olympias to Messalina’, HSCPh 82: 121–60.
Henrichs, A. 1994/1995. ‘ “Why Should I Dance?” Choral Self-Referentiality in Greek Tragedy’,
Arion 3: 56–111.
Kowalzig, B. 2007. Singing for the Gods. Oxford.
Leumann, M. 1950. Homerische Wörter. Basel.
Monbrun, P. 2007. Les voix d’Apollon. L’arc, la lyre et les oracles. Rennes.
Nagy, G. 1996. Poetry as Performance. Cambridge.
Parker, R. 2009. ‘Aeschylus’ Gods: Drama, Cult, Theology’, in Eschyle à l’aube du théâtre
occidental, ed. J. Jouanna and F. Montanari, 127–54. Vandoeuvres.
Parker, R. 2011. On Greek Religion. Ithaca, NY.
Richardson, N. J. 2006 [1975]. ‘Homeric Professors in the Age of the Sophists’, in Ancient Literary
Criticism, ed. A. Laird, 62–86. Oxford.
Richardson, N. J. 2010. Three Homeric Hymns. Cambridge.
Seaford, R. 1994. Reciprocity and Ritual. Oxford.
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 2003. Tragedy and Athenian Religion. Lanham, MD
Strauss Clay, J. 2006. The Politics of Olympus (2nd edn). Princeton, NJ.
Struck, P. 2004. Birth of the Symbol. Princeton, NJ.
Vernant, J.-C. 1990. Myth and Society in Ancient Greece. New York.
Vernant, J.-C. and Vidal-Naquet, P. 1988. Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece. New York.
Versnel, H. S. 2011. Coping with the Gods. Leiden.
West, M. L. 1978. Hesiod: Works and Days. Oxford.
 CHAPTER 8

EPIGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

CLAIRE TAYLOR

INTRODUCTION

THE epigraphic evidence for ‘Greek religion’ is vast, and inscriptions have
made an enormous contribution to how historians have understood many
aspects of cult activity in the Greek world. Produced for a multitude of
purposes, these texts were recorded on a variety of durable as well as non-
durable materials (stone, lead, gold, pottery, wax, talc, bones) and found in
a range of contexts (sanctuaries and other public spaces, cemeteries, private
houses). Because there was no separation between ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ in
the ancient Greek world in the post-Enlightenment sense, and because
religious activity was embedded into all aspects of Greek life, almost all
forms of epigraphic evidence tell us something, direct or indirect, about
‘Greek religion’. It is a diverse body of material that provides a wealth of
information about numerous different parts of religious life and experience,
and there is subsequently a multitude of ways in which to interpret this form
of evidence. This chapter offers some reflections on how past approaches
and recent trends in epigraphic studies can contribute to current debates
about various aspects of ‘Greek religion’.
 As with all epigraphic evidence, inscriptions concerning ‘Greek religion’
raise questions not just about the textual content, but also about what was
considered important to record in specific contexts. But inscriptions do not
simply provide a body of knowledge about what happened in a particular
cult. They are fundamental to understanding a host of other issues too: from
audience and performance culture to commemoration and display, from the
interplay between writing and oral tradition to the construction of cultural
memory, from the symbolic statement of power and authority to the
materiality of text (and so on). Inscriptions reveal not only how cults were
organized, but also how the written word was used to interact with the gods
and express religious devotion, to demarcate space, and to negotiate social
relationships within religious contexts. As should be clear from this
overview, inscriptions are incredibly varied. Some are monumental, very
large objects, set up in central, public places by religious or political
authorities, and were no doubt costly, whereas others are small, not meant
to be viewed by large numbers of people (or people at all), and intensely
personal. In addition, there is regional diversity and change over time.

APPROACHES AND QUESTIONS

Given the immense volume of material, epigraphers have tended to

concentrate on specific types of inscription that illuminate particular aspects
of Greek cult (regulations, dedications, sacrifice, oracles, etc.) or have
focused on material from specific sites or sanctuaries (e.g. Delos, Delphi,
Olympia). The study of inscriptions relating to Greek religion has both
shaped and mirrored historiographical trends in the practice of ancient
history as a whole, but, in doing so, it also reveals the assumptions and
preoccupations of historians and epigraphers: from magisterial collections
of all material from particular regions or sites (IG) to studies of legal
aspects of Greek cult (Sokolowski 1969), to examinations of women’s role
in ritual (Osborne 2000) or the religious experience of worshippers (Parker
2011). These different approaches are all illuminating in their own right,
and show the wide range of ways this material can be used. Since 1991, the
Belgian journal Kernos has published annually an Epigraphic Bulletin for
Greek Religion that collects ‘information on recent epigraphic discoveries
and publications that enrich our knowledge of religion and cults in ancient
Greece’ (Chaniotis 1991: 287). With its indices and cross-referencing to
other epigraphic collections (notably SEG), this aims to provide a useful
(and highly usable) tool for scholars and students wishing to be kept up to
date with recent finds and new interpretations; a glance at these indices
demonstrates the wide range of topics to which epigraphic evidence
contributes.
One way in which epigraphic material is useful is that it provides a
different emphasis from literary or archaeological sources on certain aspects
of religious life. The description of sacrifice, for example, as one of two
broad types, Olympian or chthonian, is more prevalent in literary texts than
in epigraphic ones (Scullion 1994, 2005; Ekroth 2007). Literary texts that
describe sacrificial cakes appear to emphasize ‘the spectacular and
exceptional’, whereas, when cakes are mentioned in epigraphic material, it
seems as if they have a role in defining some functional aspect of the deity’s
cult because the material often goes into great detail about the precise kind
of cake necessary for a particular ritual (Kearns 1994: 70). Sacrificial rituals
leave different traces in different types of source material, so it is necessary
to be aware of the processes behind, and reasons for, their appearance in the
historical record. As Auffarth rightly points out when discussing the
epigraphic depiction of sacrifice, ‘we [today] see many local differences
and nothing else. For the Greeks it is otherwise: they see the normal ritual .
. . [but] there is no inscription about normality’ (Auffarth 2005: 21, also 14–
16; my italics). When using epigraphic evidence we must, therefore, be
sensitive to the different processes that encouraged the recording of
information about religious phenomena on inscriptions of different kinds
compared with those which prompted their appearance in poetry, or, indeed,
those which led to their appearance in the archaeological evidence. These
are unlikely to be the same.
Many surveys of Greek epigraphy mention different types of inscription
that are associated with religious activity, for example, religious
regulations, dedications, oracles, records of sanctuary administration, and
so on (see Guarducci 1987: 244–325; McLean 2002: 189–95). Indeed, one
of the most frequently studied forms of epigraphic evidence associated with
Greek religion during the twentieth century was ‘sacred law’ (Sokolowski
1969). But ‘sacred law’ as a category is unsatisfactory (and has been the
subject of criticism since the 1970s: Lupu 2005: 3–9; see further Parker
2004). According to Lupu (2005: 4), the term ‘sacred law’ covers material
as diverse as ‘laws, decrees, statutes, regulations, edicts, treaties, contracts,
leases, testaments, foundation documents, and oracles . . . issued by
federations, states, civic subdivisions and magistrates, royalty, sanctuaries,
religious organizations, or private individuals’. This is hardly a narrowly
defined group. In essence, ‘sacred law’ as a category reflects the interests of
scholars in the political and legal history of the polis as the central feature
of Greek life, but this is not the only form of political organization in, nor
indeed the only lens through which to view, the Greek world (Morgan 2003;
Vlassopoulos 2007; Ismard 2010). Furthermore, law-making in the ancient
Greek world usually involved some form of religious ritual: in Athens the
assembly—as primary legislative body—performed sacrifices before each
meeting, discussed religious matters, and recorded its decisions on
inscriptions that called directly on the gods. Therefore, categorizing ‘sacred
law’ as something separate and distinct from ‘non-sacred’ law runs the risk
of misinterpreting Greek culture considerably.
The interest in ‘sacred law’ also shows how scholars have traditionally
emphasized the text as the pre-eminent topic of investigation; in a sense,
this is understandable given that these are some of the most discursive of
inscriptions and they give a wealth of information (selective though this is)
about ‘what happened’ within specific cults. However, few discussions of
this material assess the inscriptions as objects in their own right, taking into
account their physicality outside of the standard epigraphic publication
information. Nor do they assess their materiality, how they interact with the
space in which they are set up and the people who move(d) within it, or
how this might change over time (see, for example, Prêtre 2011; Scott
2011). There are, of course, new approaches that move away from polis-
centred treatments and focus on topics such as gendered ritual (Osborne
2000), behavioural norms (Stavrianopoulou 2009), or the relationship
between written texts and oral utterances (Hitch 2008), but even taking into
account the wide range of evidence covered by the term ‘sacred law’, these
inscriptions are considerably outnumbered by the more formulaic (and
therefore less textually interesting) dedicatory inscriptions.
Dedications themselves, on the other hand, do provide excellent evidence
for thinking about inscriptions as objects as well as texts, and constitute a
considerable body of evidence. Examination of the variations in language
provides information about the ritual presentation of dedicatory activity and
therefore people’s relationships with the gods (Lazzarini 1976), but
although vast numbers of votives were inscribed, most—such as (for
example) fibulae, coins, or jewellery—were not, so we only know through
examining their context why they were dedicated and by whom (see Philipp
1981; van Straten 1992; Comella 2002). Although there are, no doubt,
exceptions, viewing inscribed dedications as a distinct group from
uninscribed dedications is problematic in terms of understanding the
practice itself (rather than an aspect of that practice as represented by a
particular type of object at a specific site): for this, the epigraphical material
must be seen alongside archaeological finds and iconographical
interpretation. It should also be noted that much dedicatory activity
(perhaps most?) was of items not made of durable materials such as food
(Kearns 1994), drink (Jouanna 1992), or clothing (Cleland 2005), that is,
things that do not readily survive. Epigraphic evidence—helpful though it is
—can therefore only provide the most fleeting glimpse into this
commonplace part of Greek religious life.
One way in which questions about epigraphic evidence might be further
developed is in exploring how the materiality of inscriptions shaped the
ways in which people interacted with the text, that is, how the object itself
provided contours for the ritual experience (Tilley 2007: 19). Dedications
provide an obvious starting point because many of these include texts, but
they are also objects with a physicality and presence within a sanctuary,
and, as such, they embodied the rituals of their dedicators, or visitors to the
sanctuary, or its priests. In some cases, writing itself was the dedication, for
example the abecedaria at the seventh-century BCE sanctuary of Zeus on
Mount Hymettos in Attica (Langdon 1976). Raising questions about the
materiality of inscriptions is important because it locates such epigraphic
evidence within a variety of social and temporal networks, rather than
viewing them as things divorced from their context(s), regarded simply as
texts that deliver a message for historians to read (Foucault 2002 [1972]:
118). Considering texts as objects alerts us to the ways in which the rituals
they allude to were embodied and given meaning, and how these meanings
might change over time (Hurcombe 2007).
What is not recorded by the epigraphic evidence, or what is lost, is
arguably as important as what survives. Inscriptions can allude to aspects of
cult practice that would otherwise remain unknown. But this is not the same
as having evidence for that practice itself. The clothing catalogues of the
sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia in the east of Attica are a good example of
this. These fourth-century BCE inscriptions are immensely valuable for
documenting women’s dedications of clothing to the goddess (IG II2 1514–
30). They demonstrate the range of clothes dedicated, specify their colours
and patterns, and show, in some cases, that these are high-status items
(Linders 1972; Cleland 2005). As such, they give an insight into aspects of
the cult otherwise unknown, and allow archaeologists to repopulate the
buildings of the sanctuary with people and their activities.
However, the published inscriptions were not set up in the sanctuary at
Brauron itself, but on the Athenian Acropolis, where another sanctuary of
Artemis was located (Linders 1972; Rhodes and Dobbins 1979). Similar
inventories (reportedly copies) have been found at Brauron in the
excavations of the 1950s, but they remain unpublished (SEG 37.30). Insofar
as details of these have emerged, it seems that there are some differences
between the two groups of inscriptions which might not be fully explained
by patterns of survival: the Brauron examples record dedications of utensils
and furniture (SEG 37.34), whereas there is no surviving fragment from the
Acropolis which records this type of material; the Brauron inventories are
supposed to date from 416/5 (the archonship of Arimnestos), whereas the
Acropolis inventories record dedications in the 340s (Linders 1972; Peppas-
Delmousou 1988). Whilst it is possible to suggest reasons for these
differences, and to use these to investigate the relationship between the two
sanctuaries (Linders 1972), the texts of the inventories themselves provide
little information about the mechanics of dedication (in contrast to the fact
of those dedications) and the clothes, of course, do not survive. Because of
the fragmentary nature of the lists it is difficult to tell how they were
coordinated, whether they are comprehensive or recorded a fraction of the
dedications (the best? those from a certain group of women? those located
in a specific part of the sanctuary? those moved elsewhere?). We do not
know how (or whether) the clothes themselves were displayed, or whether
they were buried in the sanctuary and therefore invisible to the visitor
(recent archaeological discoveries, including wooden shoes found in 2011,
suggest the latter as a possibility). We do not know whether these lists were
supposed to be read, nor indeed who would be interested in reading them.
We can only speculate about the reasons for the documentation of these
items rather than other dedications that were numerous (terracotta statues:
Mitsopoulos-Leon 2009; votive reliefs: Steinhauer 2001). Considering the
context of display, and asking why and for whom inscriptions were set up,
is crucial for understanding epigraphic evidence, and crucial for interpreting
aspects of Greek religion.
Thinking about epigraphic evidence, therefore, not just as ‘texts on
stones’ but as historical documents produced for specific, and sometimes
opaque, reasons, as well as objects within a landscape (human, physical, or
ritual) is essential for understanding inscriptions in general, and no less true
for assessing religious practice or experience within the Greek world. It is
also necessary to consider how inscriptions shape, and are shaped by,
historiographical trends, and how they can be variously contextualized (by
site, genre, time, size, reuse, etc.). Following the organization of this
handbook, the remainder of this chapter examines aspects of epigraphic
evidence for ‘Greek religion’ by asking three questions: What does the
epigraphic material reveal about how Greeks negotiated religious power
and authority? How was religious devotion expressed (or how was cult
activity experienced)? How did religious practice structure communities?
These are necessarily selective topics, but they are chosen because they
draw on three key themes of epigraphic interpretation: monumentality,
commemoration, and connectivity across time and/or space. These are not
mutually exclusive categories but intricately intertwined, as will become
clear below.

MONUMENTALITY AND AUTHORITY

As is evident from other chapters, religious authority in the ancient Greek

world was not laid down by means of sacred texts, dogma, or priests, but
was configured in a number of different ways (see, e.g., in this volume,
Flower, Chapter 20). One of these was through the monumentalizing of
decisions, processes, and religious practice through epigraphic display.
Power and authority are negotiated in a variety of ways in inscriptions: they
might demonstrate the power of the gods, the power of political authorities,
the economic power of the sanctuaries themselves, or the social hierarchies
of the people who used them.
 Evaluating the mechanisms by which inscriptions dealing with religious
matters contribute to the negotiation of power structures in the ancient
world is one clear way to approach them as evidence, but these mechanisms
are, of course, varied, and the reasons behind the setting-up of these texts
are also diverse. Without epigraphic evidence, the importance of regulating
behaviour at festivals, maintaining the sacredness of sanctuary space, or
detailing the sacrificial requirements for specific occasions would be much
less clear to us. It is the monumentalization of regulations (rather than the
fact that regulations existed), which allows us to know that, for example,
women were required to wear modestly decorated, non-transparent clothes
in the procession of the Great Gods at Andania during the first century BCE
(IG V, 1 1390; Ogden 2002); that it was not permitted to bring flowers or
gold objects not intended for dedication into the sanctuary of Despoina at
Lykosoura in Arkadia (IG V, 2 514; Loucas and Loucas 1994: 248–50); or
that the deme of Thorikos in Attica required the sacrifice of a ‘tawny or
black goat, lacking its age-marking teeth’ to Dionysos in the month of
Anthesterion (SEG 33.147, l.33–4; Lupu 2005: 139–41). But inscriptions
allow us to do more than just ‘fill in the gaps’. They raise questions about
the processes behind monumentalization, the choices made about what to
include and what to exclude, and the different ways in which power was
negotiated and authority constructed within epigraphic texts.
Monumentalization may suggest that many inscriptions that deal with
matters of cult practice are concerned with power or authority in one form
or another, but this is a generalization and the most important conclusions
lie in the nuance. Religious authority was not only configured by regulation,
it was configured by practice too (Kearns 1995; Hellström and Alroth
1996). Inscriptions may have played a role in shaping these practices, they
may indeed have been a part of those practices, but they are not
uncomplicated fossilizations of those practices. The regulations at Andania,
for example, certainly give historians a sense of what was important for the
cult to promote, but we cannot tell from the stone whether their interest in,
for example, women’s dress reflected a status quo of austerity that required
legitimization or one of excessive consumption that needed curtailing, or
whether there were different concerns at different times. The setting-up of
inscriptions may demonstrate the concerns of the religious authorities in
Andania to ensure the mysteries were correctly performed, but we do not
know the context of those concerns and, consequently, can interpret the
responses in different ways.
Cult regulations, therefore, show the contours of religious authority and
how these might be expressed. Whoever the issuing body, the fact of
recording—the setting of a decision in stone—implies that the control of
ritual practice was a motivating factor behind cult regulation. But there is
not always a direct relationship between the publication of cult regulations
and a desire to control cult practice, and examination of the relationship
between orality and writing suggests a more complex connection between
monumentalization and religious authority than first appears to be the case.
On the surface, it seems that the monumentalization of decisions or
regulations might be important so worshippers know the rules for a
particular ritual, procession, or sacrifice. Monumental texts are often set up
in prominent places (sometimes, though not always, within sanctuaries),
allowing ready access to those who wished to consult them. But who, in a
society in which religious knowledge was deeply embedded within
everyday life, would have checked these texts to find information without
knowing the answer in advance? As historians, we tend to use inscriptions
as mines of information about ‘what happened’ within a particular cult. But
we are outsiders; we have limited prior cultural knowledge, apart from what
we can piece together from other surviving pieces of evidence. This simply
would not have been the case in the ancient world where this type of
information was passed down orally, reinforced through practice,
normalized and embedded into the framework of everyday life (Auffarth
2005; Chaniotis 2009, 2010). We should not assume that writing was the
primary form of exerting religious authority or that these texts do so in
uncomplicated ways.
Indeed, sometimes inscriptions may have been produced to give only
very specific information, like costs and expenditure of sacrifice, to obscure
knowledge by controlling access to it, or as a means of social control
(Thomas 1989; Linders 1992; Versnel 2002). They may be more concerned
with, say, the demonstration of accountability, than with the dissemination
of knowledge. The prosecution of Nikomachos, an Athenian charged with
codifying and inscribing the laws at the end of the fifth century—which
included a large number of cult regulations—demonstrates the sensitivity of
writing down religious material (Lysias 30: Thomas 1996; Todd 1996), and
it has been suggested that, during this period, writing was used more often
in religious contexts by marginal groups, such as those following Orphic
practices (Henrichs 2003). This might be correct as far as some texts go,
although it rests, of course, on the centrality of polis religion as the
definitional paradigm through which ‘marginality’ is created (a position
which this handbook challenges). But the regular recording of names on
dedications and grave epigrams, or the use of inscribed inventories within a
range of sanctuaries, demonstrates that writing was not considered
problematic in every context. Associating oneself personally with a written
text through naming was not marginal at all but incredibly frequent, and
practised, as far as we can tell, by a very wide cross section of ancient
society. Marginality, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.
Writing appears to have an important place within certain types of ritual
behaviour, but examination of cursing, for example, demonstrates that the
exertion of authority though writing in religious contexts need not take a
monumental form. Placing a curse on someone aimed to affect a change in a
person’s behaviour; it was therefore conceived of as a repositioning of the
networks of power of daily life. As far as we can tell, cursing was most
likely a secretive, or rather, semi-secretive practice. It was not the reading
of the tablet itself which exerted control over the targets of the curse, but
instead the knowledge of it disseminated through rumour, gossip, or threats
which held power for the writer (Eidinow 2007). The objects on which the
texts are recorded—those which survive are found mostly on lead tablets
although other materials were used—are a key part of the ritual behaviour;
their materiality sometimes (though not always) mirrors the evocation of
the curse, their deposition highlights the chthonic nature of the deities
called upon (Eidinow and Taylor 2010). The practice of writing is clearly
part of this ritual, but reading the tablet after deposition is not central to its
effect.
The division between writers and readers is a useful distinction that can
be applied to monumental texts too. Who the audience (or the audiences)
for such inscriptions was primarily intended to be—or whether they were
important at all for the writers of the texts—is very much open for debate.
But it makes a difference to our view of ritual behaviour and experience
whether the people taking part in the rituals were supposed to read those
inscriptions and act accordingly, as opposed to others located in a different
time or space (the monument as display), or even the gods themselves (the
monument as symbol). That is, it makes a difference whether authority was
configured through the practice of writing itself, rather than the practice of
reading the texts, performing the rituals, or interacting with the inscriptions
in other ways. We return again to questions about the materiality of
inscriptions: the sensory perception of these objects (in addition—or as
opposed—to the text) might be a key part of the religious experience, a
powerful reminder of the authority of the gods, a physical symbol of a visit
to the sanctuary or participation in a festival. Monumentality, therefore,
intersects with questions of authority on multiple different levels. It is
sensitivity to the epigraphic habit, the location of writing and reading within
a culture that prized orality, and the physical, material, and spatial contexts
of inscriptions that allows these questions to be explored.

COMMEMORATION AND DEVOTION

Religious devotion was articulated in a number of ways from dedication to

sacrifice, prayer, music, and dance. It is in this sphere, however, where the
gap between recorded practice and actual practice is probably the greatest:
performance of rites and their commemoration are not the same thing.
Inscriptions are not merely snapshots of sacrifices, dedications, or prayers,
but a commemoration of specific—and selective—aspects of these
practices. This is clearest (and most frequently discussed) with regard to
funerary rituals. Inscribed grave stelai do not simply indicate who was
deceased, but present them in ways that more often than not highlight—and
very often seek to enhance—their social status (Meyer 1993; Tsagalis
2008). These are not clear-cut reproductions of the deceased’s place within
the world; they are representations of it, with all the selectivity that this
implies. In sum, our knowledge of large parts of Greek religion is mediated
through commemorative practice (see further, in this volume, Edmonds,
Chapter 37, and Voutiras, Chapter 27).
It is, of course, not only funerary rituals where this is the case. Other
forms of religious devotion also show the gap between performance of
rituals and their commemoration. Inscribed prayers, for example, do not
record the actual speaking of a request, but commemorate a particular
moment within the communication between human and divine, of which the
surviving text is just one part. Prayer is a way of requesting action, part of a
process, of which the epigraphic recording of words is just one aspect, and
which is completed with the dedication of a votive offering (Depew 1997).
The writing down of a prayer is not, however, necessary for its
effectiveness; it is a part of the interaction chosen for commemoration, an
alternative or an addition to the thank-offering. Likewise, inscribed hymns
record selective aspects of religious song: they record the words rather than
its music, the movement it inspires, or the aural impact on the audience for
whom it is performed. They are inscribed to commemorate the performance
of the song at a particular event and provide a focal point for future
generations to remember past rituals (Alonge 2008). They are not inscribed
as an aide-memoire for future performance and should not be treated by
historians as such.
Selectivity is, therefore, a key part of commemoration. But so is
temporality: commemoration lengthens the temporal impact of a selected
aspect of a ritual from a single moment in time and makes it visible across
time and space. Viewing inscriptions as commemorative objects therefore
raises questions about their potential as sites of cultural memory, and
emphasizes that they were often points of interaction between people,
objects, and texts, rather than just stones which passively recorded rituals
(Connerton 1989). This shifts the focus from the writing of a text to its
reception, that is, the inscription’s impact, not only within the immediate
context of its ritual production, but also how it shaped responses to ritual
practice and experience. Here, we see ways in which highly personal forms
of religious devotion are cross-cut by, and indeed in themselves shape,
structures of authority.
Examination of the personal experience of religious practice is a key
development in recent scholarship (Purvis 2003; Instone 2009; Kindt 2012).
Epigraphically, this can be investigated in many ways, for example, by
examining mark-making in the form of name inscriptions and drawn
images. This is an important and ubiquitous form of religious expression,
seen most clearly, for example, in the inscribing of Jewish or Christian
symbols (Chaniotis 2002). Footprint drawings might be seen in a similar
light (and show, incidentally, that epigraphic communication is not always
bound up in ‘the text’). Although there are a variety of explanations for the
appearance of inscribed footprints, it is likely that, in some contexts, they
commemorated epiphanies (Kötting 1983; Dunbabin 1990). Direct
interaction with the divine through epiphany is an intense and personal
experience worthy of recording, but commemoration of it does not always
require expression in a literate or textual form (Macdonald 2005; Webster
2008; in general, Harris 1995). It has the potential, however, of having a
significant impact on an individual and the community (see, for example,
SIG3 398, which describes the intervention of Apollo in Kos).
Inscriptions appear not infrequently on cult buildings (although often in
very specific places), taking the form of prayers, invocations, or names. A
number of examples come from Egypt, where Greeks inscribed their names
and prayers on religious shrines as a means of demonstrating their presence
and piety through pilgrimage (Nachtergael 1999; Rutherford 2003; Mairs
2011), but this is a phenomenon which is visible across the Greek world
from Athens to Thasos to Asia Minor (examples are known from
Aphrodisias, Lagina, and Sagalassos). In some of these cases (Thasos,
Athens, Lagina), the inscriptions form clusters of numerous names, in
others only single names are found (Sagalassos). These demonstrate the
importance of commemorating presence within a cultic environment; they
are a personal manifestation of piety much like the mnesthe-formula
prayers, which request remembrance of (usually) a named individual to a
god (on not reading such texts as vandalism, see Baird and Taylor 2011).
These occur commonly in the Greek East, appearing not only in sanctuaries,
but also in private homes as well as in public spaces (Rehm 1940; Baird
2011). The expression of religious devotion through writing and mark-
making may take different forms in different places at different times, but it
clearly permeated a wide variety of Greek societies and was an important, if
overlooked, aspect of religious expression.
Considering aspects of commemorative practice is important if we wish
to understand the relationship between the production, maintenance, or
reuse of inscriptions (or even their destruction), and their role in, and
contribution to our knowledge of, Greek religious practice. The texts
recorded by inscriptions are not isolated from the practices, beliefs, or
cultural impulses of people in the Greek world and should not be seen as
such. It is commemoration, rather than the transmission of knowledge,
which underlines the choices made when recording a text on a stone or
another object: inscriptions rarely record wie es eigentlich gewesen ist.
CONNECTIVITY: RELIGION, PEOPLE, AND
PLACE

In recent years, historians have stressed the ways in which inscriptions

connect people and places together. This is not simply in terms of what the
texts say and the mental maps created through the genre(s) they construct,
but in terms of where they are set up, their symbolic value, through the
process of writing, and the politics of display (Scott 2011; Shear 2011;
Taylor 2011; see also, in this volume, Constantakopoulou, Chapter 19).
Epigraphic religious practice created and maintained social ties, actively
sought to link with the past and mediate the future, and positioned groups
(religious and ‘secular’) with regard to others.
Large numbers of inscriptions take the form of lists, which demonstrate
some of these themes. Lists record financial contributions of worshippers at
sanctuaries (Migeotte 1992), temple accounts and inventories (Davies
2001), names of priests (Fraser 1953), or membership of religious
communities (Arnaoutoglou 2003). As such, they detail the diversity of
personnel involved in Greek cults as participants, contributors, and officials.
In some cases, these involve financial transactions between, or donations
from, members of the local community to a cult. At the sanctuary of Athana
Lindia in Lindos, an inscription recording those who contributed to the
restoration of cultic objects (decoration for the cult statue, receptacles used
in ritual) was erected in the last quarter of the fourth century BCE (IG XII, 1
764 = Lindos II 51; Migeotte 1992: no. 39). This is a long document:
displayed on both sides of a large stele are the names of over 250 (perhaps
as many as 300) donors, arranged according to locality (that is, by deme),
including some women and children. No financial information about the
donation is given here, but lists such as these frequently reveal this
information and so indicate the mechanisms behind the economics of cult:
often they detail how much each person has donated to the upkeep of the
sanctuary or festival (see, for example, IG XII, 9 1189, in which
contributions range from 10 to 700 drachmas for the restoration of the
sanctuary of Artemis Proseoa in Histiaia at the end of the second century
BCE; Migeotte 1992: 191–4).
 The fact that specific financial information is not recorded here might
indicate that equal contributions were made by all the participants, or
perhaps that donations took the form of objects (vases and decorations)
rather than money. However, the fact that these details are not specified also
serves to divert attention from the transactions themselves and focuses it
instead on those who made the contributions. In this way it foreshadows the
Lindian Chronicle, an inscription set up in the same sanctuary 200 years
later, written as an historical inventory of dedications (Higbie 2003). As
Scott has pointed out, the dedications recorded here no longer existed by the
time the inscription was made; the inscription constructs a version of the
Lindian past in which dedication to the sanctuary located Lindos within
historical networks of power and in which ‘the people are more important
than the things’ (Scott 2011: 246).
In a similar way, our list (Lindos II 51) emphasizes the people
contributing to the sanctuary and their relationships to one another rather
than the financial value of their contributions. The large number of families
recorded here (fathers and sons, brothers, wives, children) roots
participation in cult within membership of the community and stresses the
importance of family ties within this context (sometimes brothers even
contribute together). The inscription therefore not only honours the
contributors for their donations, providing encouragement for the future,
but, at the same time, embeds (at least this) cult activity within the family
and the deme. Visitors to the sanctuary would have clearly seen a family’s
piety through this inscription. It is families and local communities that
provide the structure for participation in religious activity here.
Lists like these, therefore, raise questions about display, and where to
locate that display in various networks (temporal, historical, communal,
etc.). They also highlight the community relationships that lay behind,
indeed shaped, religious experience. As objects they form visual
connections with other inscriptions at the sanctuary, commemorating the
contributions made to the cult and providing an honorific environment for
those to be remembered. Not only do lists like these preserve information
for the future, but they also present a version of past Lindian society to
which local families can easily link themselves by recognizing their
ancestors’ contributions. Inclusion on such lists is also a way to
demonstrate belonging, to highlight social bonds within a community, or
perhaps exclude groups from it: Lindos II 51 does not include foreigners
amongst the donors, and there is a high correlation between the demes of
these contributors and those within Rhodes which were politically powerful
(Bresson 1988). As such, epigraphic evidence like this shows how religious
practice both created and defined communities, reinforced local hierarchies,
and provided a forum for negotiating social networks and social status.

CONCLUSION

Albert Henrichs describes ‘the bulk of religious inscriptions . . . [as]

centrifugal . . . in that they reach beyond the ritual realm into adjacent areas
of polis life, or because they deal with aspects of Greek religion which are
peripheral, marginal or highly personal’ (Henrichs 2003: 44). Whilst there
are certainly inscriptions that fit this description, perhaps it is necessary to
redefine what is considered ‘central’ about Greek religion according to the
epigraphic evidence tout court rather than according to the disembodied
texts they convey. Our knowledge of the ‘epigraphic habit’, and the
questions this raises about monumentality, commemoration, and display, as
well as temporal, spatial, and social connectivity, allows us to investigate
this diverse material from a variety of angles. The diversity of epigraphic
evidence mirrors the diversity of practice of religion in the Greek world, but
it also reflects the diversity of personnel involved. It is no surprise, then,
that there are many different ways to analyse this material, but, at the very
minimum, it is necessary to interrogate epigraphic evidence both as
historical writing in its own right and as objects that have material
properties. Inscriptions do not uncomplicatedly record ‘what happened’ in
Greek cults, but they certainly provide a wealth of information about a
variety of aspects of Greek religion if we ask the right questions of them.

SUGGESTED READING
The annual publication of the Epigraphic Bulletin for Greek Religion
(EBGR) in the journal Kernos is indispensable, as is the Supplementum
Epigraphicum Graecum (SEG, now available online). Epigraphic
handbooks, such as John Bodel’s Epigraphic Evidence: Ancient History
from Inscriptions or A. G. Woodhead’s The Study of Greek Inscriptions,
give general advice on how to access, use, and interpret inscriptions. B. H.
McLean’s An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellenistic and
Roman Periods contains useful discussions of ‘religious’ inscriptions with
many examples, as does M. Guarducci’s L’epigrafia greca dalle arigini al
tardo impero (in Italian), and archaeological site reports often include a
volume (or volumes) on inscriptions (for example, the Inscriptions de
Délos). Collections of texts, such as Sokolowski’s Lois sacrées des cités
grecque and Lois sacrées de l’Asie Mineure are so frequently referred to
that they have their own abbreviations: LSCG, LSAM (expanded and
updated by Lupu, Greek Sacred Law, abbreviated as NGSL2). There are
numerous inscriptions concerned with religious matters to be found in
volumes such as Meiggs and Lewis (ML) or Rhodes and Osborne (RO).

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 CHAPTER 9

MATERIAL EVIDENCE

CAITLÍN E. BARRETT

INTRODUCTION

A rich material record and fine-grained chronology make the ancient

Mediterranean a particularly productive setting for the archaeology of
religion. Although synthetic studies of Greek religion have historically been
largely text-based, newer studies increasingly embrace a more integrated
approach, engaging material evidence seriously (cf. Kindt 2011, 2012). The
study of material evidence for Greek religion appears to presuppose some
consensus on the understanding of at least three terms: ‘Greek’, ‘religion’,
and ‘material evidence’. However, as this chapter and this volume, Chapters
1–4, demonstrate, all of those terms become increasingly slippery on closer
investigation.
The archaeology of Greek religion is so wide-ranging that it is difficult to
isolate one set of dominant trends, and any two scholars might make
different selections (cf. the ‘areas of current debate’ in Kindt 2011: 701–5).
The following discussion emphasizes contemporary developments in the
archaeology of Greek religion that echo certain themes in the present
volume: (1) reassessing received definitions of ‘Greek religion’; (2)
adopting a broader chronological perspective, including the Hellenistic
period; and (3) re-evaluating the ‘polis religion’ model (as formulated by
Sourvinou-Inwood 2000a, 2000b).
The identification of material culture as ‘religious’—and, if religious, as
evidence for specifically Greek religion—is often contentious. Much recent
literature addresses the archaeological identification of religious sites and
ritual activity, while also reconsidering the complicated relationship of
‘ritual’ to ‘religion’ (see the section ‘The Archaeology of Religion: History
and Theory’ for references). Additionally, another area of burgeoning
research—the study of continuity and transformation in Hellenistic religion
—illustrates the complexity inherent in describing religious practices as
‘Greek’. Throughout the eastern Mediterranean and beyond, Greco-
Macedonian dynasties came to rule foreign populations, reshaping not only
the borders of the Greek world but also the nature of ‘Greek’ religion. As
far afield as Sudan and Afghanistan, Greeks and ‘others’ employed
Hellenizing religious artefacts and architecture (Burstein 1993; Mairs 2007,
forthcoming; Török 2011), and people who considered themselves
‘Hellenes’ engaged with a diverse array of foreign religious traditions, from
Egyptian and Near Eastern cults to Buddhism (e.g. Scott 1985; Barrett
2011; Kloppenborg and Ascough 2011: 26–33, 211–17). Such
developments problematize the concept of ‘Greek’ religion, requiring
critical analysis of the phenomenon of ‘syncretism’ (Shaw and Stewart
1994; Clack 2011) and the relationship of religion to cultural and ethnic
identities.
Additionally, archaeological interrogations of the nature and boundaries
of ancient Greek religion complement recent reassessments of the ‘polis
model’ of cult (on which, see Kindt 2009; Rives 2010: 268–76; Eidinow
2011; Kindt 2012). Material evidence for household and/or personal rituals,
such as domestic cult or magical rites, demonstrates the complexity of
cultic relationships between individual, household, and polis; and the
Hellenistic period saw civic cult adapt to new socio-political contexts, as
many poleis surrendered their autonomy to kings.
Beyond these developments, others might be noted. Numerous studies
integrate material and textual data to reconsider specific aspects of Greek
religion. For example, divine images’ nature and functions continue to
undergo much scrutiny (e.g. Platt 2011; Gaifman 2012), as does the
interrelationship of magic and religion (a topic whose full bibliography is
too extensive to cite here, but note the appearance of four major new books
within the past decade: Eidinow 2007; Collins 2008; Kindt 2012: 90–122;
Wilburn 2012). Similarly, broadening traditional images of Greek religion is
a growing focus on sacred space beyond the sanctuary, from household cult
to sacral landscapes (see ‘Contextualizing Sacred Space: Mapping, Remote
Sensing, and Landscape-Based Approaches’).
Material culture provides rich evidence on these and many other topics in
Greek religion, but to make sense of that evidence, interpretation remains
necessary at every stage of the archaeological process. Accordingly, this
chapter not only surveys developments in the field, but also examines some
methodological and theoretical challenges in interpreting material culture.
Illustrating some of these challenges are two case studies focusing on the
contextual analysis of terracotta figurines: one from a sanctuary on
Hellenistic Delos, and one from a refuse deposit in Classical Athens. These
case studies also illustrate some benefits that arise from reconsidering the
category of ‘Greek religion’, especially through more thorough
incorporation of Hellenistic data, re-evaluation of the ‘polis model’, and
contextualization of ritual actions within specific religious settings.

MATERIALS AND DATA

In addition to rich textual data (this volume, Chapters 6–8), ancient Greek
religion boasts a material record incorporating (inter alia) religious sites,
artefacts, iconography, regional survey data, and ancient botanical, faunal,
and human remains. However, the relationship of this data to ancient
religious practices and beliefs is frequently less than straightforward.
Religious sites range from the relatively obvious (e.g. sanctuaries with
monumental temples, see, in this volume, Scott, Chapter 16) to the
archaeologically near-invisible (e.g. sacred groves with few or no built
structures: Birge 1982, 1992: 85–99; Conan 2007). While regional surveys
help counteract scholarly biases towards large, visible temple sites (see
‘Contextualizing Sacred Space: Mapping, Remote Sensing, and Landscape-
Based Approaches’), some types of ancient sacred space remain
archaeologically undetectable. For example, many household rituals
probably occurred in multifunctional settings where they would leave few
archaeological traces (cf. Jameson 1990a: 104–6, 1990b: 192–5). The
supposed centre of domestic ritual, the hearth, is often difficult to locate
archaeologically, and may frequently have consisted of little more than a
portable brazier (Jameson 1990a: 105–6, 1990b: 193; Tsakirgis 2007: 230).
The use of artefacts or ecofacts as evidence for ancient religion requires
similar unpacking. Objects that functioned primarily as religious
implements—say, the sistra (sacred rattling instruments) used in
Hellenistic/Roman adaptations of the Isis cult—may be readily identifiable.
However, many objects could function in both religious and practical
contexts; for example, a craftsman might dedicate his tools at a temple,
transforming them into votives (Van Straten 1981: 92–6). In such situations,
archaeological context is essential to interpretation. Accordingly, the
material evidence for ancient Greek religion is rich, but not transparent.
Interpretation is necessary at every stage of the archaeological process,
requiring careful grounding in archaeological theory and methodology.

THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF RELIGION:

HISTORY AND THEORY

Awareness of archaeological theory can help scholars become conscious of

their own interpretive biases, an important consideration when studying
religious practices in cultures distant from one’s own. This section,
therefore, surveys several major theoretical developments in the twentieth-
century and twenty-first-century archaeology of religion, with special
attention to their applications in Classical archaeology.
At its origins, Classical archaeology focused less on theory and
methodology than on acquiring beautiful objects. Elite Renaissance
collectors adorned their homes with ancient artworks, and, by the
eighteenth century, interest in ancient art inspired excavation at sites like
Pompeii and Herculaneum. The nineteenth/early twentieth centuries saw the
development of modern archaeological field techniques, including the
stratigraphic method of excavation, some of whose pioneers in Classical
archaeology included Giuseppe Fiorelli at Pompeii and Heinrich
Schliemann at Troy.
In the 1960/1970s, many scholars advocated for a so-called ‘New
Archaeology’. This ‘processualist’ movement positioned archaeology as an
anthropological science, testing hypotheses through deductive reasoning to
discover ‘laws’ of human behaviour (Binford 1962, 1972: 84, 89–100;
Watson, LeBlanc, and Redman 1971; Watson 1976). This movement
encouraged certain methodological advances but fostered relatively little
research on ancient religion; many processualists focused on cultures’
ecologically adaptive aspects, downplaying religion’s active ability to shape
society (see critique in Insoll 2004a: 46–51).
In the 1980/1990s, a generation of ‘post-processual’ archaeologists
critiqued the processualist project. Many post-processualists viewed
archaeology as a social science or art (Dark 1995: 19–24), conceptualizing
material culture as a ‘text’ to interpret (Hodder 1992; Hodder and Hutson
2003). This ‘humanistic’ orientation facilitated more work on ancient
symbolism, ideology, and religion (Preucel and Hodder 1996: 299–412).
However, some post-processualists’ scepticism of the possibility of
obtaining objective truth about the past made it harder to formulate rigorous
methodologies for empirical study (see critiques in Kohl 1993: 16; Renfrew
1994b: 3–5).
The processualist movement and post-processualist critique originated
largely in New World and prehistoric archaeology, but many Classical
archaeologists came to engage with research questions and methodologies
associated with these movements (see recent overviews in Whitley 2001:
12–16, 42–59; Kindt 2011: 699–700). One of the most important recent
movements in the archaeology of ritual and religion developed partly from
an Aegeanist’s response to the processualist/post-processualist debate.
Colin Renfrew’s excavations at a Bronze Age Cycladic shrine inspired his
influential attempt to systematize the archaeological identification of ritual
sites (1985, 1994a, 2007; Renfrew and Bahn 1991: 408–9), contributing to
the development of the ‘cognitive archaeology’ or ‘cognitive-processual’
movement (Renfrew 1985, 1994a; Renfrew and Zubrow 1994; Flannery
and Marcus 1996). Seeking to articulate methodologically rigorous ways to
study the ‘ancient mind’, cognitive archaeology addresses topics often
absent from processual archaeology, but maintains a realist philosophical
stance (Renfrew 1994b: 4, 10).
 The past two decades have witnessed a great proliferation of scholarship
on the archaeology of ritual both within and beyond the Mediterranean,
much of it engaging directly or indirectly with Renfrew’s work (see Insoll
2011, with extensive bibliography; and now Wesler 2012). The checklist
format of Renfrew’s method for identifying religious sites has attracted
some critique (Insoll 2004a: 96–7; Kindt 2011: 699). Additionally, as
Renfrew himself notes (1985: 22), his guidelines are better suited to
sanctuary than domestic cult; they emphasize sites and rituals clearly
separated from everyday routine (as critiqued in Insoll 2004a: 97; Fogelin
2007: 59–61). In contrast, Insoll (2004a, 2004b) argues for the
embeddedness of religion within daily life—a perspective we might
consider particularly appropriate with regard to the Greek experience, given
the absence of any ancient Greek term corresponding in all particulars to
‘religion’. Much recent research also builds on Renfrew’s work by further
exploring the complex relationships between ‘ritual’ and ‘religion’: as many
scholars note, not all rituals need be religious (e.g. Kyriakidis 2007;
Verhoeven 2011; Elsner 2012), and rituals should be understood in the
context of a broader spectrum of ‘ritualizations’ (Bell 1992, 1997). The
material record of Greek religion provides a rich data set for testing
different theoretical perspectives (cf. Renfrew 1980: 296–7; Snodgrass
1987: 3) and developing new approaches. Classical archaeologists thus
have much to offer, not only to the study of Greek religion, but to
archaeology as a discipline.

METHODOLOGIES

Just as the theoretical frameworks we bring to the data will shape our
interpretations of ancient Greek religion, so will our choice of
methodological tools influence the types of data available to us. The past
few decades have seen significant expansion and refinement of
methodologies for survey, remote sensing, excavation, and object analysis.
Within the vast topic of archaeological methodologies for the study of
Greek religion, the following discussion will concentrate on three themes:
(1) mapping and landscape-based approaches to sacred space; (2) object-
based approaches to ancient ritual actions; and (3) the importance of
archaeological context. At any religious site, archaeologists’
methodological choices will profoundly shape the amount, nature, and
quality of the resulting data, with important implications for those data’s
use as evidence for ancient cult.

Contextualizing Sacred Space: Mapping, Remote

Sensing, and Landscape-Based Approaches
Popular perceptions of archaeology often emphasize excavation, but
archaeologists also examine the ancient landscape through less invasive
means. Landscape-based and mapping-based approaches generate data on
patterns of spatial use, both at the level of the individual religious site and
the broader level of the sacral landscape. A range of tools provide data on
the organization of sacred space (within the sanctuary and beyond) and help
situate individual religious sites within broader spatial and temporal
frameworks.
Remote sensing can detect buried features without excavation, providing
a broad picture of sites’ layout and history. Such techniques have been
productive at numerous ancient Mediterranean religious sites.
Magnetometry, for example, can reveal plans of sanctuaries and burial
complexes (e.g. Aspinall, Gaffney, and Schmidt 2008: 162–5; Herbich
2009). Other useful remote sensing methods include resistivity survey,
ground-penetrating radar (Gaffney and Gater 2003), aerial photography, and
satellite data (Parcak 2009).
The broad geographical scope of another technique, surface survey, helps
contextualize individual sanctuaries within larger landscapes. For ancient
Greek religion, surface survey has revealed regional and chronological
changes in patterns of sanctuary use (Alcock 1994; Kindt 2011: 698) and
uncovered small rural sanctuaries, traditionally underrepresented in
scholarly literature (Catling 1990; Alcock 1994: 254).
Geological surveys provide another type of data on ancient religious
landscapes, helping situate sanctuaries within their physical environment.
For example, at Delphi, geological evidence has fuelled debates on the
existence of psychoactive subterranean gases, a controversy with
implications for the functioning of the Delphic oracle (Lehoux 2007;
Piccardi, Monti, Vasselli, Tassi, Gaki-Papanastassiou, and Papanastassiou
2008).
Finally, a valuable opportunity for relating sacred sites to broader sacral
landscapes comes from software for integrating, visualizing, and analysing
data from survey, remote sensing, and excavation. Geographic information
systems (GIS) provides a powerful tool for spatial analysis, enabling
archaeologists not only to map sites, but to generate and test hypotheses
about the ancient landscape (e.g. Wheatley and Gillings 2002; Conolly and
Lake 2006). Another potentially helpful tool is 3-D modelling, recently
employed for the Sanctuary of the Great Gods at Samothrace to investigate
the effects of architecture and topography on initiates’ experiences
(Wescoat, Thayer, and Harrington forthcoming).

From Objects to Rituals

Another type of data, suited to a different range of research questions,
comes from studying individual objects. While the artefacts that best
captured early researchers’ attention were often beautiful or monumental,
modern archaeology places equal weight on unimposing objects like pottery
sherds or animal bones. The resulting broader range of available data helps
provide a more comprehensive picture of Greek ritual behaviours.
A variety of evidence may help us associate individual artefacts or
ecofacts with ancient religious practices. An object’s archaeological context
may suggest religious functions; for example, botanical remains from the
Samian Heraion were probably floral offerings (Kucan 2000: 105). Textual
or iconographic evidence may indicate certain objects’ use during religious
rituals, as with artistic depictions of figures pouring libations from phialai.
Alternatively, the iconography on an object itself may portray ritual
activities, as with terracotta figurines depicting festival processions (for
which, see Ballet 2000: 99–100).
Archaeometry and archaeological science can also help connect artefacts
and ecofacts to ancient rituals. For example, faunal analysis of sacrificial
and feasting remains may inform about the origins and practice of Greek
animal sacrifice (Hamilakis and Konsolaki 2004; Naiden 2012: 57–63; cf.
Insoll 2004a: 71–6; see also, in this volume, Naiden, Chapter 31).
Archaeobotany can reveal plant offerings at religious sites (Tipping 1994;
Kucan 2000: 105) or investigate the origins of unprovenanced objects of
cult (Chester 2009). Residue analysis of ritual vessels may expose
substances used in divine offerings, consumed in feasts, or deposited as
grave goods (Hodos 2006: 117; Osborne 2007: 88; Tzedakis, Martlew, and
Jones 2008). Archaeometric approaches like archaeometallurgy and ceramic
petrography (among others) provide further data on ritual objects’
production, distribution, and consumption, helping situate rites within
broader economic and social frameworks.

Archaeological Context
Finally, an understanding of archaeological context is essential to
connecting physical remains to religious activities. Archaeological context
has three major components: matrix (the sediment around an object),
provenience (the object’s location in three-dimensional space), and
association (the object’s spatial relationship to other artefacts, features, and
ecofacts). Archaeologists must further determine whether artefacts come
from primary or secondary contexts, and what natural and cultural
formation processes shaped those deposits (Schiffer 1987). In situ deposits,
or de facto assemblages, were left behind when people abandoned an
activity area (Schiffer 1987: 89–97; Ault and Nevett 1999). More common
are refuse deposits, which Schiffer (1972: 161, 1987: 58) divides into
primary refuse (deposited at the location of use) and secondary refuse
(deposited elsewhere). Stripped of archaeological context, ritual objects
may retain their aesthetic qualities, but we cannot know how people
actually used them. Looting and undocumented digging irretrievably
deprive artefacts of their human connection; that is, the contextual data
associating objects with people.

CASE STUDIES IN CONTEXTUAL

INTERPRETATION
As case studies in contextual analysis, let us examine two terracotta
figurines from very different contexts: one from a discard context in the
Classical Athenian agora, and one from the Samothrakeion on Hellenistic
Delos. The following discussion uses these figurines to illustrate several
themes emphasized earlier: (1) the reassessment of received definitions of
‘religion’ in general, and ‘Greek religion’ in particular; (2) the value of a
broader chronological perspective on Greek religion, including the
Hellenistic period; and (3) the ongoing reassessment of the ‘polis model’ of
Greek religion. The examination of these figurines also illustrates several
theoretical and methodological points, including the importance of
contextual analysis, the informational value of seemingly minor ‘small
finds’, and the necessity of situating individual religious locations within
broader landscapes.

Description of the Objects

The first figurine to be examined (Figure 9.1) comes from a fifth/fourth
century BCE discard context in the Athenian agora (inventory nr. Agora
T4128; previously published in Nicholls 1995: no. 51, pl. 106). Agora
T4128 preserves the upper portion of a hollow, double-moulded terracotta
figurine (height: 64.0 mm). The fragment shows the head and chest of a
round-faced, seemingly nude, female with large, exaggerated facial
features, wearing a floral wreath. Her pose is that of a reclining banqueter;
the angles of head, neck, and shoulder suggest a reclining posture, and a
slight protrusion below the breasts may represent an object (cup?) in the left
hand. Her hair’s shortness suggests slavery. Knife-scraped vertical striations
on her neck evoke age. The fabric is fine and brown, with occasional sand
inclusions. The top of a rectangular vent appears on the roughly modelled
back side, which preserves a speck of pink paint; traces of white
undercoating survive on front and back.
FIGURE 9.1 Fragment of a terracotta figurine of a reclining female, from a well in the Athenian
Agora, fifth/fourth cent. BCE (Athenian Agora T4128). Photograph: C. E. Barrett.

Nicholls (1995: 439–41) identifies this figurine as an aged hetaira

(courtesan), possibly a character from theatrical performances. Vases depict
hetairai reclining at banquets (Kurke 1997: 135–7), and some Classical and
Hellenistic terracottas portray hetairai, masks of hetairai, or actors dressed
as hetairai (e.g. Hart 2010, nos 62, 66, 89, 90; Jeammet 2010: no. 119).
The second figurine (Figure 9.2) comes from the second/first century BCE
Samothrakeion on Delos. This object (Delos Museum inventory no. A1758)
represents the head of a hollow, double-moulded male figurine (published
most recently in Barrett 2011: 279–84, 385–91, 471). The head (height:
46.6 mm) is round and bald, with creased, furrowed brow, large mouth, and
flat, broad nose. Atop his head are two lotus buds, common on Egyptian
figurines of child-gods such as Harpokrates. The mouth is partially open,
and a preserved neck fragment suggests a tilted head; parallels suggest the
figure may be dancing or singing (Barrett 2011: 247, 260–1). The semi-
fine/coarse brown fabric is consistent with an Egyptian ‘Nile silt’, possibly
limestone-tempered (Barrett 2011: 83–7). Traces of white coating are
visible. This terracotta also has close iconographic parallels in Greco-
Roman Egypt, where such figurines appear to represent indigenous deities
and/or priests. The bald head and furrowed brow evoke the features of the
so-called ‘Pataikos’, a dwarf form of the Memphite creator-god Ptah, and
the lotus buds suggest Ptah–Pataikos’ occasional syncretism with
Harpokrates. Similar facial features and lotus buds also characterize
Egyptian figurines of cult officiants dancing or carrying divine statues
(Barrett 2011: 260, 270–84).
FIGURE 9.2 Head of a terracotta figurine of a bald male crowned with two lotus buds, from the
Samothrakeion on Delos, second/first cent. BCE (Delos Museum A1758). Photograph C. E. Barrett.
Copyright Hellenic Republic, Ministry of Culture and Sports, General Directorate of Antiquities and
Culture Heritage/Twenty-First Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities.
(For permission to examine the two figurines discussed in this article, I thank John Camp (Athenian
Agora); Panagiotis Hatzidakis (Delos Museum); and Dominique Mulliez (École Française
d’Athènes). I also thank Véronique Chankowski and Catherine Pottet-De Boel for access to the ÉfA
archives.)
Context: Linking Artefacts to Religious Practice
Both figurines can serve as test cases for the archaeological identification of
evidence for ‘Greek religion’. How do we identify an artefact as
‘religious’? Are either or both of these figurines ‘religious’ objects? If so,
how and why—and to what degree is that religion ‘Greek’? Archaeological
context provides a necessary link between artefact and practice, enabling us
to link one figurine to religious practices while suggesting that the second
may never actually have seen ritual use. Yet, even for the figurine
demonstrably used in a religious context, questions remain: In what ways is
that religion ‘Greek’, and what are the cultural boundaries of ‘Greek’
religion?
Although scholars often associate terracotta figurines with popular cult,
iconography alone provides little solid evidence connecting either figurine
to Greek religious practice. The Athenian figurine’s sympotic and possible
theatrical associations could be take to evoke a Dionysiac sphere, while the
Delian figurine’s imagery recalls Egyptian deities and priests. However,
consumers might have valued such objects for many possible reasons. To
investigate their uses—including any role in actual religious practice—we
need to move from iconography to archaeological context.
In only one case—the Delian figurine—does archaeological context
suggest actual cultic use. Despite its Egyptian manufacture, this object
derives from the Samothrakeion on Hellenistic Delos. Site reports and field
notes suggest the figurine was in situ (Chapouthier 1935: 87; Barrett 2011:
386–7) and probably served as a votive offering (cf., on votive figurines,
Alroth 1988).
The Athenian figurine, in contrast, comes from a disposal context: a well
in the agora (Shear 1975: 359; Nicholls 1995). The well’s upper fill
contained a large deposit of coroplastic material: at least 21 figurines, 1
archetype, and at least 40 terracotta moulds (Nicholls 1995: 405), all
displaying a wide range of iconographic types (Nicholls 1995: 413, 476–
84). The presence of production materials (moulds, archetype) and discards
(unfinished, damaged pieces) suggests workshop debris, and many moulds
share distinctive technical features indicative of a single workshop
(Nicholls 1995: 409, 412, 482). Accordingly, this deposit probably contains
a coroplastic workshop’s debris.
 The analysis of such debris provides much evidence on figurine
production, but less on consumption or use. The figurines in this deposit
never reached consumers; they were discarded after production, perhaps
because of manufacturing flaws, or a lack of buyers, or the workshop going
out of business. Had it found a consumer, this figurine might well have
wound up in a range of possible religious contexts; figurines with similar
iconography appear at sanctuary sites (e.g. Eleusis: Nicholls 1995: 439 n.
162) or in graves (Hart 2010: no. 62). However, other functions are also
possible, and different potential buyers might have made different choices
for the object’s use.
In contrast, the Delian figurine clearly derives from a religious use-
context—but here we encounter complications concerning that context’s
supposed ‘Greekness’. The figurine comes from a sanctuary in the heart of
the Cyclades, on an island sacred to Apollo; but, by Hellenistic times, that
island also had a large foreign population and an extremely cosmopolitan,
international cultural milieu. The sanctuary in question served deities long
worshipped by Greeks, but possibly of non-Greek origins. Worshippers at
the Delian Samothrakeion seemingly identified the Samothracian Megaloi
Theoi with the Kabeiroi, an identification attested to elsewhere in antiquity
(Bruneau 1970: 379–90, 395; Cole 1984: 78–9; Barrett 2011: n. 1583)—but
the origins of both Samothracian gods and Kabeiroi remain disputed, with
non-Greek origins sometimes suggested for both (Hdt. 2.51; Diod. Sic.
5.47.2–3; Cole 1984: 10; Barrett 2011: n. 1601). Complicating matters
further, the figurine itself appears thoroughly Egyptian in iconography and
manufacture. In what respects, then, does this artefact attest to a specifically
‘Greek’ religion?
Other artefacts associated with A1758 similarly problematize the borders
of ‘Greek religion’. Another terracotta figurine from the Samothrakeion
also draws on Egyptian religious iconography, representing the Egyptian
dwarf-god Bes (Barrett 2011: 275–8). Two additional figurines—a
hunchbacked, possibly dwarfish figure and a dog wearing a bulla—may
also evoke parallels from Greco-Roman Egypt (Barrett 2011: 384–6), where
their imagery could suggest a range of possible associations, from religious
ritual to daily life (see, e.g. Boutantin 2014: 217–35 on the multivalent
iconography of dog figurines). Unlike the imported A1758, however, all
three of these figurines have local clay fabrics (Barrett 2011: 81),
suggesting they were produced on Delos itself. Furthermore, they share the
sanctuary with a range of figurines whose iconography is much more
traditionally ‘Greek’, including images of Aphrodite, herms, a lion, horses,
and various human figures without divine attributes (Chapouthier 1935: 87;
Laumonier 1956: 15).
Indeed, A1758’s dedication at a Delian sanctuary of the Megaloi
Theoi/Kabeiroi may suggest conscious negotiation between originally
distinct religious traditions. Much remains unknown about the mystery cults
of the Samothracian gods and Kabeiroi, but the Kabeiroi appear sometimes
to be portrayed as dwarfs or pygmies (Burkert 1985 [1977]: 282; Daumas
1998; Schachter 2003: 130–1; Bowden 2010: 59–61). At least two
dedications at the Samothrakeion—A1758 and the Bes figurine—represent
Egyptian dwarfs or dwarf-gods. Although Hellenistic audiences valued
images of dwarfs for various reasons, the sanctuary context here suggests
more specific readings. In dedicating such images at this sanctuary,
worshippers may, like Herodotos (3.37), have constructed parallels between
Egyptian dwarf-deities and the Kabeiroi (Barrett 2011: 388–91). The
sanctuary’s Delian location enhances the likelihood that the dedicator
recognized the figurines’ Egyptian resonances; a major trading hub,
Hellenistic Delos hosted some expatriate Egyptians and flourishing cults of
Isis and Sarapis (Barrett 2011: 119–20).
Many questions remain. Did a single worshipper dedicate multiple
figurines with Egyptian associations, or do they represent multiple
dedications? Also unknown is the donor(s)’ cultural affiliation. Was
A1758’s dedicator an Egyptian expatriate, or a member of some other
segment of Delos’ diverse population? Greeks, Italians, Phoenicians,
Syrians, Egyptians, and Arabs were all present on the island (Bruneau 1972:
115–16; Baslez 1977; Barrett 2011: 119), and adherents of Egyptian cults
on Delos had similar far-flung origins (Roussel 1916: 266–7, 280–4; Baslez
1977: 35–65; Barrett 2011: 321–420). The port’s international, multi-ethnic
setting may have provided particular motivation for residents to explore the
compatibility of originally disparate religious practices.
Ultimately, the Samothrakeion figurine raises as many questions as it
answers about the boundaries of ‘Greek religion’. In place of neatly
delineated categories for ‘Greek’ and ‘other’ religious traditions, this
artefact points to an ongoing process of negotiation, in which ritual activity
in sacred space enabled individuals to create, break down, and reshape
cultural and religious identities.
Tradition and Transformation in Greek Religion
A comparison of the fifth/fourth-century BCE Athenian and second/first-
century BCE Delian figurines also illustrates certain continuities and
discontinuities between Classical and Hellenistic religious practices.
Certainly, the Delian figurine testifies to the altered socio-political context
of the Hellenistic world, with its increased international connectivity and
religious cosmopolitanism. Additionally, the Samothrakeion find-spot
recalls the Hellenistic expansion of mystery cults like that of the Megaloi
Theoi (Lawall 2003; Barrett 2011: n. 1582; Wescoat 2012).
However, other aspects of these artefacts evoke continuity from Classical
to Hellenistic times. The use of mould-made terracotta figurines, in a
variety of contexts, characterizes both Classical and Hellenistic sites.
Despite the Delian figurine’s foreign fabric and iconography, its producers
employed manufacturing techniques that originated in Greece (Uhlenbrock
1990: 16–17; Muller 1996: 28–47) and were, in large part, already familiar
to the producers of the earlier Athenian figurine. Furthermore, figurines
similar to the Athenian T4128 survived into the Hellenistic period, when
terracottas of reclining female banqueters appear as far afield as Seleukid
Babylon (Langin-Hooper 2007: 152–3). Even in changing cultural settings,
the continuing ubiquity of mass-produced figurines suggests some
perceived continuity in popular needs.

Re-Evaluating the ‘Polis Model’

Finally, these figurines also illustrate some issues with the ‘polis model’ of
Greek religion. The Samothrakeion figurine’s international associations
emphasize identities larger in scope than polis citizenship. Rather than
reaffirming a specific polis’ institutions or prestige, this object’s donor
signalled membership in broader religious and cultural networks—a
potentially useful choice for someone at an international trading port. In
contrast, the Classical figurine’s iconography shows little foreign influence,
and it comes from a polis—Athens—that, even in Hellenistic times,
remained religiously traditional in many ways (Mikalson 1998); Hellenistic
figurines from Athens (e.g. Thompson and Thompson 1987) display
significantly less foreign iconographic influence than their Delian
counterparts. Yet, even in Classical Athens, the popularity of mass-
produced terracottas, designed for individual consumption and use, may
speak to practices not fully encompassed within the ‘polis model’.
Certainly, structural parallels existed between civic cult and some aspects of
household cult (Bruit Zaidman and Schmitt Pantel 1992: 80–91; Boedeker
2008; Faraone 2008), and similar terracotta types might appear in both
households and sanctuaries (cf. Barrett 2011). However, terracottas’ broad
accessibility, inexpensive materials, and wide array of iconographic types
enabled much individual choice in their purchasing and use. Such
circumstances problematize assumptions that the polis necessarily acted as
primary mediator of citizens’ religious experience.

CONCLUSION

The figurines in our case studies thus illustrate several themes central to this
volume’s re-examination of ancient Greek religion. For one thing, they
demonstrate the challenges of defining borders for ‘Greek religion’.
Additionally, a comparison of these figurines illustrates both continuity and
transformation between Classical and Hellenistic times, as Hellenistic
Greeks perpetuated many Classical practices—including the use of mass-
produced figurines—while adapting those traditions to the changing
religious needs of a socially and politically shifting world. Finally, these
popularly accessible objects contribute to a reassessment of the ‘polis
model’ of Greek religion, testifying to the interactions of civic cults with
other forms of religious practice.
These artefacts’ examination also illustrates several theoretical and
methodological points, particularly the indispensability of contextual
analysis. Both objects come from known contexts, but a figurine in situ in a
sanctuary can provide very different information about religious practices
than a figurine from a disposal context. Furthermore, these artefacts also
illustrate the informational value of seemingly humble ‘small finds’. The
terracottas’ inexpensiveness and accessibility make them particularly useful
as evidence of popular practices, as such objects were available to many
social strata. Finally, these artefacts illustrate the importance of situating
individual religious sites within broader landscapes. Simply associating an
artefact with a particular sanctuary may not always be sufficient; we also
need to understand that sanctuary’s role within a larger network of religious
sites, local, regional, and international. So, to understand why someone
might dedicate an Egyptian figurine at the Delian Samothrakeion, we need
to examine not only the Samothrakeion but also the broader religious and
social landscapes of Hellenistic Delos; just as the island provided a
commercial meeting point for much of the eastern Mediterranean, so too
could worshippers enact a similar cosmopolitanism in Delian sanctuaries.
As the study of Greek religion moves on to new questions and new
approaches, the rich material record will remain central to such
investigations. Classical archaeologists are increasingly engaging with
theories and methods from other disciplines, including anthropology, art
history, religious studies, philosophy, archaeometry, and the study of
cultures adjacent to the Classical world: Egyptology, Assyriology, Indology,
Meroitic studies, and more. The twenty-first-century archaeology of Greek
religion is thus a truly multidisciplinary field, contributing to wide-ranging
academic discourses while continuing to uncover new material evidence for
ancient Greek religion.

SUGGESTED READING
Within the vast literature on the archaeology of religion and ritual, two
helpful starting points for further reading include the Oxford Handbook of
the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion (Insoll 2011) and the essays in
Kyriakidis’ (2007) recent edited volume, which offers a multidisciplinary
perspective and an overview of current debates. Renfrew’s (Renfrew 1985;
Renfrew and Zubrow 1994) work on ritual sites and ‘cognitive
archaeology’ remains essential reading, and Bell’s (1992, 1997) studies of
ritual and ritualizations have influenced many archaeologists. A useful
introductory text on contemporary archaeological theory is Hodder and
Hutson 2003. Trigger 2007 is the standard history of archaeology as a
discipline. On the history of Greek archaeology in particular, see Morris
1994, Whitley 2001, Dyson 2006, and Osborne and Alcock 2012.
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B. Wescoat and R. Ousterhout, 66–113. Cambridge.
Wescoat, B., Thayer, K., and Harrington, J. M. forthcoming. ‘Passage and Perception in the
Sanctuary of the Great Gods, Samothrace’.
Wesler, K. 2012. An Archaeology of Religion. Lanham, MD.
Wheatley, D. and Gillings, M. 2002. Spatial Technology and Archaeology: The Archaeological
Applications of GIS. London.
Whitley, J. 2001. The Archaeology of Ancient Greece. Cambridge.
Wilburn, A. 2012. Materia Magica: The Archaeology of Magic in Roman Egypt, Cyprus, and Spain.
Ann Arbor, MI.
 CHAPTER 10

PAPYROLOGY

DAVID MARTINEZ

THE central concern of Greek papyrology is editing, interpreting, and

publishing papyrus texts, some literary, but others of a documentary nature,
which concern the public institutions and private affairs of Greco-Roman
society as it developed in Egypt from 332 BCE (Alexander’s taking control
of Egypt) to CE 641 (Arab conquest). A third category, sub-literary, falls
between those two broad types, comprising materials such as popular songs
and hymns, school exercises, and magical texts. The following chapter
explores some contributions of papyri to the study of Greek religion under
three headings: documentary texts, Orphic materials, and, more extensively,
the Greek magical papyri.

INTRODUCTION

When Greek colonists streamed into Egypt in the wake of Alexander’s

conquest, the gods, religious traditions, and beliefs that they brought with
them made little initial impact on the native population; the weight of
influence rather moved in the other direction (Youtie 1955: 361 = 1973:
1.549). The numerous local Egyptian deities and their cults, grounded in the
vivid and potent institutions of the temples throughout the country, held
considerable allure for the new settlers. In fact, long before the Hellenistic
period Greeks esteemed the antiquity and authority of Egypt in things
religious (Henrichs 2003: 224–7); Herodotos’ contention that the Egyptians
invented the gods’ names (2.50) is well known. Just as striking is one of the
earliest Greek papyri, the ‘Curse of Artemisia’ (fourth cent. BCE), probably
originating in the ancient Greek community of the Hellenomemphites
(Thompson 2012: 89–90), which invokes the Egyptian god Oserapis and
was deposited in his temple in Memphis (Bell 1953: 3–4). That same deity,
merged with Zeus and Pluto, later becomes enshrined in the Ptolemaic
Serapis cult (see also, in this volume, Kleibl, Chapter 41).
This forceful appeal was buttressed by a religious and a social tendency:
synthesis or syncretism of divinities and their worship, an impulse well
attested in papyri (Bell 1953: 15–16), and intermarriage (Youtie 1955: 361
= 1973: 1.549; Lewis 1983: 32–3, 1986: 27–9; Clarysse and Thompson
2006: 2.297, 327–8;).

DOCUMENTARY PAPYRI

The first papyrus we will consider falls under the rubric ‘documentary’, or
‘non-literary’. These texts relate to government, business, legal matters, and
everyday life: documents such as leases, loans, receipts, petitions to
officials, private letters, and so on (Palme 2009). Although religious
perspectives gleaned from them are frequently anecdotal and incidental to
their main purpose, they afford invaluable insights into cultic ideas and
practice. We will begin with a petition called an enteuxis (addressed to the
reigning monarch but usually handled by local officials), which illustrates
the two tendencies mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Asia to king Ptolemaios, greetings. I am wronged by Pooris the householder. For my husband
Machatas was billeted in the village Pelousion and he divided (the property) with Pooris and
constructed in his space a shrine to the Syrian goddess and Aphrodite Berenike. There was also
a half-finished wall between the space of Pooris and that of my husband, and now that I wish to
finish the wall to prevent trespass into our parts, Pooris has forbidden me to build it, although
 the wall does not belong to him, but he is contemptuous of the fact that my husband is dead. So
I ask of you, king, if it is clear that the wall is ours, to order Diophanes the governor to write
Menandros the overseer not to permit Pooris to forbid us from building it, in order that, having
had recourse to you, king, I may obtain justice. (P. Enteux. 13, 222 BCE, Magdola; TM 3290)

The actors and circumstances of this text reflect the cultural amalgam
prevalent in the papyri (Hengstl 1978: 374–5). Asia’s deceased husband
Machatas, a good Greek/Macedonian name, served in the army of Ptolemy
III (Euergetes I) and was stationed in the Fayumic village Pelousion. The
woman—whose own name, Asia, indicates she is Syrian—files this petition
against Pooris, upon whose household Machatas was billeted, a hard fact of
life for many native Egyptians (Lewis 1986: 21–4). The billeting
arrangement was long term or possibly permanent, since Machatas divided
the property with Pooris, built on his side a domestic shrine (Otto 1905:
169–70; P. Enteux. pp. 15–16), and was in the process of constructing a
privacy wall.
He probably built for his wife the shrine dedicated to the Dea Syria, that
is Atargatis, the northern Syrian name and manifestation of the goddess
Astarte, whose worship among the Greeks and identification with
Aphrodite were long established (Bell 1953: 14–16). Aphrodite, in turn,
provided a convenient link with the reigning queen Berenike II, since
Ptolemaic queens were typically identified with that goddess (Rowlandson
1998: 28–9). The synthesis of the Dea Syria, Aphrodite, and Ptolemaic ruler
cult afforded the couple a comfortable compromise and provides us with an
excellent example from the early Ptolemaic period of how intermarriage
disseminated cults. As a result, the familial loyalty to the Syrian goddess
ran deep; based on an inscription (I Fay. III 150), we know that, twenty-six
years later, two of Machatas’ sons were serving as priests in her cult
(Rubsam 1974: 136–8; Rowlandson 1998: 28–9).

ORPHICA

By far the most significant text for the documentation and understanding of
Orphic ideas is the Derveni Papyrus. Discovered at the pass of that name
near Thessaloniki in 1962, the partially preserved roll was part of the
charred remains connected with a funeral pyre. It preserves a curious
mixture of prose and poetry, a substantial part of it being a commentary on
verses attributed to Orpheus. The roll itself dates to the mid- to late-fourth
century BCE; its text, however, especially the poetry, is likely earlier
(Bernabé 2007: 99). A vast literature on the papyrus has accumulated and
thorough editions, introductions, and studies abound (e.g. Laks and Most
1997; Betegh 2004; Kouremenos, Parássoglou, and Tsantsanoglou 2006;
more briefly, West 1983: 75–101; Bernabé 2007). The Egyptian papyri also
offer valuable perspectives on Orphica, a striking example being an edict
from the reign of Ptolemy Philopator (222–205 BCE):
By the kings decree: Let those throughout the land who perform initiations into the mysteries
of Dionysos sail down to Alexandria, those as far as Naukratis within 10 days from the day that
the decree is posted, those further inland than Naukratis within 20 days, and let them register
themselves with Aristoboulos at the record office, within three days from the day they arrive,
and declare at once from whom they have received the rites as far back as three generations,
and submit their sacred text [hieros logos], sealed, having inscribed each his own name. (BGU
VI 1211 (215–205 BCE; TM 4527))

‘Those . . . who perform initiations into the mysteries of Dionysos’

translates tous—telountas toi Dionysoi (LSJ s.v. teleo III; Waanders 1983:
228–9). Plato (Resp. 364b–e) famously describes itinerate (literally,
‘begging’, agurtai) priests and prophets who frequent the doors of the rich
and try to persuade individuals, and even cities, of the power of rituals
contained in ‘a jumble of books’ by Orpheus and Musaios to expiate sins in
this life and provide freedom from terrors in the next. This, in turn,
corresponds closely to Theophrastos’ account of the Orpheotelestai, ‘those
who perform the rites of the Orphic mysteries’, whom the ‘Superstitious
Man’ with his family visits monthly to participate in said rites (Char. 16.12;
Diggle 2004: 369–70).
What purpose did the mandates laid on these individuals serve? Perhaps
Philopator wished to exercise a certain quality control over those
throughout Egypt who were dispensing initiatory and cleansing rituals in
Dionysos’ name, not only to have a record of the practitioners through
registration, but also to evaluate the depth of their practice by identifying
possible quacks and upstarts, and somehow to scrutinize the most important
tools of their trade, their holy writings or handbooks (Henrichs 2003, and,
with regard to this decree: 224–31). As an ardent devotee of Dionysiac
worship (Burkert 1993: 263), Philopator had an important stake in this
oversight of popular preachers who advocated an Orphic expression of it, of
which he may have held suspicions (for various interpretations: Henrichs
2003: 224–31; Herrero 2010: 53).
Some scholars have, in fact, suggested that the very fragmentary P.
Gurob 1 (TM 65667), dated to about the same period, could represent just
such a hieros logos that Philopator decreed be submitted to him (Burkert
1987: 70–1; Herrero 2010: 54). Whether or not that is the case, it certainly
conveys a notion of what such a text might have looked like. Structurally, it
consists of prose instructions for performing rituals and for speaking insider
formulae (‘tokens’, ‘passwords’), interlaced with sections of poetry
(probably hexameters), which appear to be prayers. M. West’s translation
conveys an idea of its fragmentary nature and the restorations that he
accepts or proposes in the square brackets (West 1983: 170–1, with slight
adaptations). The metrical prayers are indented and in quotes:

having what he finds | . . . [Let him] collect the raw pieces | . . . on

account of the sacrament:
Accep]t my [offering] as the payment [for my lawless]
fath[ers].
Save me, gr[eat] Brimo [
And Demeter (and?) Rhea [
And the armed Kouretes; let us [
] that we may make a fine
sacrifice
] a ram and a he-goat
] boundless gifts.’
. . . and pasture by the river | . . . [ta]king of the goat | . . . Let him
eat the rest of the meat | . . . Let x not watch | consecrating it upon
the burnt up | . . . Prayer of the [ ]:
Let [us] invoke [ ] and Eubouleus
And let us call upon [the queen] of the broad [Earth].
And the dear [ ]s. Thou, having
withered the [
[Grant the blessings] of Demeter and Pallas unto us.
O Eubou]leus, Erikepaios,
Save me [ Hurler of Light]ning’
 THERE IS ONE DIONYSOS Tokens | . . . GOD THROUGH
BOSOM | . . . I have drunk. Donkey. Oxherd | . . . password: UP
AND DOWN to the | . . . and what has been given to you,
consume it | . . . put into the basket | . . . [c]one, bull-roarer,
knucklebones | . . . Mirror

The papyrus, although fragmentary, reveals core Orphic notions and mythic
strains, syncretistically blended with ideas from other traditions (West 1983:
171; Hordern 2000: 132; on Orphism, see also, in this volume, Edmonds,
Chapter 37). Apparently at the heart of the two metrical prayers are the
invocation of prominent deities and an appeal for salvation (soison me,
‘save me’). The first prayer addresses the figure Brimo, along with
Demeter, Rhea (or perhaps Demeter-Rhea) and the ‘armed Kouretes’.
Brimo (Hesychios = ischura, ‘mighty’) is associated with chthonic
goddesses of the Artemis-Hekate, Demeter, and Persephone circle (Kern in
RE III 1 853–4; Bernabé and Jiménez 2008: 155–6). The first line of the
second metrical prayer preserves further invocations: ‘Let [us] invoke [ ]
and Eubouleus And let [us] call upon [the queen] of the broad [Earth]’ and
then, ‘[Eubou]leus Erikepaios save me’, two well-established names of
Dionysos (Bernabé and Jiménez 2008: 102–3, 154).
The ritual of this text also involves passwords (‘One Dionysos’, ‘God
through Bosom’, ‘Up Down’) and redemption: ‘Accep]t my [offering] as
the payment (poinas) [for my lawless] fath[ers].’ The ‘payment’ or
‘penalties’ are associated with ‘fathers’, and, as West has restored, ‘lawless’
fathers, comparing an important Orphic testimonia cited from
Olympiodoros (OFK 232), in which Dionysos seems to be receiving a
prophecy or oracle regarding his future function as a god: ‘Men will send
hecatombs always in annual season and perform the rites, seeking release
from their forefathers’ unrighteousness; and you in power over them will
free those you wish from toils and endless frenzy’ (trans. West 1983: 99; cf.
also one of the Bacchic gold tablets, Bernabé and Jiménez 2008: 266, trans.
151 (L 13); Graf and Johnston 2013: 38 (27 Pherae 1)).
Pollution due to hereditary sin is a well-established motif in the religious
sensibilities of the Greeks (Parker 1983: ch. 6, esp. 203–6) and of other
civilizations. Given the context of Orphic myth, where human beings rise
from the soot of the Titans after Zeus vaporized them for dismembering and
partially consuming Dionysos (West 1983: 164–6), some scholars have
interpreted this ancestral crime to be that of the Titans (Bernabé and
Jiménez 2008: 156–8). This trope indeed emerges at the end of the papyrus
in the third prose section, which speaks of the toys (a cone (or top), bull-
roarer, knucklebones and mirror) used by the Titans to lure the divine child
away from his protectors, the armed Kouretes, who appear in the first
prayer, and who also guarded the infant Zeus (West 1983: 154–9; Guthrie
1993: 120–6; cf. also PSI VII 850; Herrero 2010: 55–6).
The papyrus’ first two ‘passwords’, which precede the description of the
toys, may also figure into this context of ritual connected with the infancy
narrative of Dionysos. In his famous study of the ‘One God’ formula,
Peterson (1926: 139–40) suggests that the acclamation ‘One Dionysos’
reflects a divine epiphany. Indeed, immediately following is a description of
the Sabazian ritual act accompanied by the mystic formula theos dia
kolpou, ‘God through the bosom’ or ‘lap’, in which a golden snake is
inserted through the initiates’ clothing on the bare skin, then withdrawn, a
kind of allegory of Zeus’ union with his daughter Persephone, resulting in
Dionysos’ birth (Clement Protrep. 2.15; West 1983: 97; Hordern 2000:
134).
I conclude this section with part of the Plato passage (Resp. 2.364b–c)
referenced earlier:
But beggar priests and prophets go to the doors of the rich and try to convince them that they
have at their disposal divine power, procured by sacrifices and spells, to rectify with
pleasurable festivals any crime he or his ancestors have committed against another, or likewise
for a small price to harm whatever enemy he has designs on, by supposedly persuading the
gods with certain charms and binding spells to be at their service.

Plato apparently conflates the popular Orphic/Dionysiac ‘begging priests’

who administer rites of purification and salvation, and popular magoi, who
service their clients with spells that bind both gods and men. If so, this
should not surprise us. Both possessed, in their religious and ritual arsenal,
words of power that had miraculous effect.

THE GREEK MAGICAL PAPYRI

In Pagans and Christians, Robin Lane Fox (1986) characterizes ancient
magic as follows:
The art of magic was varied, but it divided, broadly, into two. Most of its spells can be defined
as a type of sorcery which was used for competitive ends. They enlisted a personal spirit and
deployed the power of words and symbols in order to advance a suit in love or in the law
courts, to win at the games, to prosper in business or to silence envious rivals. . . .
In the Imperial period Greek magical texts also catered for clients who had more spiritual
aspirations. They served their wish to win immortality for their soul, to escape the confines of
fate and necessity, and to confront a supreme god alone, in a personal ‘introduction’.

In this section we explore aspects of the significant contributions made to

the study of religion by the Greek magical papyri in the Greco-Egyptian
society which produced them. We will consider two texts from that corpus,
an oracular spell entitled, ‘An Invocation to Apollo’ (PGM I 263–347), and
‘A Marvellous Binding Love Spell’ (PGM IV 296–433), both from fourth-
century CE magical handbooks, the working copies of professional magoi
(Brashear 1995: 3412–20; Martinez 1995: 6–8). With regard to Lane Fox’s
analysis, the love spell belongs squarely in the realm of practical,
competitive, or ‘agonistic’ magic, also sometimes called ‘aggressive’
magic: it seeks to constrain persons or force a certain kind of behaviour
against their will. It does, however, especially toward its conclusion,
incorporate elements of the more ‘spiritual’ type. The oracular spell
straddles the boundary between the two forms. Whoever asks an oracle
from a god in ancient Greece, even from the very earliest times, is often
seeking advice on practical issues of life, love, money, and competition in
the human arena (Parke 1967: 263–73; SB XII 11227 = Hengstl 1978: 164
(no. 66)). Conversely, receiving a direct word from a god involves some
sort of divine encounter (see also, in this volume, Johnston, Chapter 32 and
Platt, Chapter 33).

The Multicultural Chthonic/Solar Pantheon

Both texts well illustrate the two-tiered structure of many spells in the
PGM: logos (the ‘incantation’ directed to various divine beings and
spiritual powers, urging them to perform the wishes of the spell operator)
and praxis (the ‘act’ or ritual accompanying the logos) (Martinez 1991: 8).
The praxis of the oracular spell (PGM I 263–96) prescribes a sacrificial
ritual, while utilizing a phylactery made from a seven-leaved spray of laurel
(Apollo-Helios’ plant; Hopfner 1974: 294–8, §516), a lamp ‘not painted
red’ (the colour associated with Apollo-Horus’ enemy Seth; Betz 1985:
336), and the head of a wolf. Then one recites the logos (296–327),
followed by a shorter praxis and logos (327–47). The main logos presents a
number of difficulties (Smith 1984–1985; Hopfner 1990: 364–5 §218). The
dominant structure is that of two hexametric hymns (in which the metre
breaks down at several points): PGM I 296–314 (PGM hymn 23, vol. 2,
262), and PGM I 315–27 (PGM hymn 4.7ff., vol. 2, 239–40). The first of
these falls into two distinctive sections; since some hexameters are
problematic, I present the text as prose.
296–304: Lord Apollo, come with Paieon, answer me concerning what I ask with an oracle,
Lord. Master, leave Mount Parnassus and Delphic Pytho, while our consecrated mouths speak
things not to be uttered, first angel of god, great Zeus Iao, and you the heavenly keeper of the
kosmos, Michael, and you, Gabriel archangel, I invoke. Come from Olympos, Abrasax, who
rejoices in the East, may you come mercifully, who watches over the West from the East,
Adonai; all nature trembles before you, father of the kosmos, pakerbeth.

The identification of Apollo with his Egyptian counterpart, the sun god
Horus, appears as early as Herodotos (2.144.2 with Lloyd 1975 3.111; more
generally Fauth 1995: 41–56). In the first lines of our logos, however, ‘the
most Greek of all gods’ (Otto 1954: 78) appears in his full Hellenic garb,
his name immediately linked with his epiclesis and hymn Paean,
represented in our text as a separate deity or at least an alter ego (Graf
2012). Our spell summons him from his prophetic shrine of Delphi and the
closely adjoining Mount Parnassos, sacred to Apollo as the home of the
Muses, who form his choir and share with him oversight of artistic and
literary inspiration. Although the epithet angelos, ‘messenger’, more
frequently characterizes Hermes, the fuller title here given Apollo, ‘First
angel of Zeus’, makes good sense from a Greek point of view, in that
Apollo declares the purpose of his oracle ‘to prophecy for men the unerring
will of Zeus’ (Hom. hym. Apollo 132; ‘Zeus’s mouthpiece’, Fontenrose
1959: 252).
That ascription, however, provides a kind of fulcrum point on which the
invocation tilts in a different direction. Zeus is identified with Iao (also
PGM V 471–2; cf. IV 2773; Cook 1914: 232–5; Ganschinietz 1914: 714–
15), the standard Greek version of the Hebrew name for God, the
Tetragrammaton, YHWH (Yahweh; Ganschinietz 1914; Aune 1995),
accompanied by his supreme angeloi, Michael and Gabriel. The Yahweh
theme continues, first with ‘Abrasax’, a celebrated magical appellation of
obscure etymology (with the numerological value 365), but which occurs
most frequently with Iao and other Yahweh names, referring to the same
great demiurge (Brashear 1995: 3577). Our spell summons him, ‘come from
Olympos’, which backtracks to the identification of this Yahweh cluster
with Zeus. Next comes Adonai, ‘Lord’; a common Yahweh designation and
in Jewish tradition the Qere (what was read in the synagogue) for YHWH
(Weingreen 1959: 23). Then follows the Sethian pakerbeth (for its ironic
identification with Apollo/Horus as well as Yahweh, see Smith 1984–1985:
210; Martinez 1991: 33, 80; Aune 1995: 7–8; Fauth 1995: 61).
In the second part of the oracular spell’s first hymn, this idea of the one
great solar divinity under a multitude of names and symbols takes
fascinating form (305–14):
I adjure god’s head, which is Olympos, I adjure god’s seal, which is his vision, I adjure your
right hand, which you held over the kosmos, I adjure god’s krater which possesses riches, I
adjure the eternal god and Aion of all, I adjure self-existing Nature, mightiest Adonaios, I
adjure Eloaios, setting and rising, I adjure these holy and divine names, that they send me the
divine spirit and that he accomplish what I have in my heart and mind.

The hymn-spell shifts rhetorically from invocation to adjuration, with the

word horkizo (‘I adjure’) repeated seven times with seven aspects and
names of the deity designated in the previous section as the ‘father of the
kosmos’. In the first four of these, various body parts, properties, and
equipment of the great demiurge incorporate the kosmos itself, with his
head as ‘Olympos’, most likely with its equivalency to ‘heaven’ (Schmidt
1939: 277–9, 291–2). The hymnist then adjures his ‘seal’, that is, his
‘vision’ (horasis), suggesting a Stoic sense to the word, vision being an
actual emanation from the eye (Lindberg 1976: 8–11), here the sun god’s
beams or radiance, with which he looks upon the earth (Hom. Od. 11.16),
and that also being his outward physical manifestation, stamp, or ‘seal’
(sphragis) by which he is known. The notion approximates a hypostasis,
similar in the New Testament to Hebrews 1.3, describing Jesus as the
‘stamp’ or ‘seal’ (charakter) of God’s essence (hypostasis), and the
‘radiance’ or ‘effulgence’ (apaugasma) of his glory.
The right hand of the demiurge that he ‘held over the kosmos’ probably
does not describe protection or nurturing (for which ‘holds over’ would be
more appropriate), but the initial creation of it (cf. Isaiah 48.13; 4 Ezra 3.6).
Creation motifs possibly continue in the next adjuration of the god’s mixing
bowl (krater), which has Orphic overtones (West 1983: 11, 262 n. 3;
Hopfner 1990: 365 § 218; Copenhaver 1992: 131; as a creation trope, Pl. Ti.
34b–5, 41d). Our spell’s obscure reference to this krater motif portrays it in
cornucopic fashion: that which holds abundance.
This adjuration section summarizes these first four Greek-Orphic based
designations in the Kosmokrator title Aion (‘endless time’), in PGM a
common equivalent of Helios (Drijvers, ‘Aion’, DDD 22; Betz 1985: 331–
2), and then reverts to Yahweh names, Adonaios (here in its declinable
form) and Eloaios (Betz 1985: 334). Philosophic ideas again emerge with
Adonaios’ bi-name, ‘self-existing Nature’, reflecting Hellenistic Jewish and
middle Platonic notions of God as true and absolute existence (LXX Ex.
3.14 ego eimi ho on, ‘I am the one who is’; Philo, Op. 172; Abr. 121;
Merkelbach and Totti 1991: 163; Dillon 1996: 136, 155). The fact that both
Jewish names are to be identified as the sun god is shown by the epithets
‘setting and rising’. The ‘divine spirit’, which the demiurge is called upon
to send, is the spirit of the dead, about whom more will be said (see ‘The
Funerary Context’, below).
Before considering the second hymn of the oracular spell, we will
introduce and begin a detailed discussion of the second of our two texts, the
Philtrokatadesmos Thaumastos, ‘Marvellous Binding Love Spell’ (PGM IV
296–406), which offers us both similar and varied perspectives on the
multicultural pantheon and theology of the magical papyri. In addition to
our handbook text, versions of this spell occur in five defixiones (lead
tablets), a fact which evinces its considerable fame and prestige (on the
tablets, Daniel and Maltomini 1990: 174–213, nos 46–51; Martinez 1991:
passim, esp. 6–8, 131–2).
The praxis section (296–335) prescribes making a male and female
effigy, writing magical formulae on the female, piercing different parts of
her body with thirteen needles, binding them to the tablet on which the
logos is written, and depositing the ensemble on a grave (a similar female
figure was actually excavated with one of the tablets mentioned above;
Kambitsis 1976, plate 31; Faraone 2002: 319–23; Wilburn 2012: 28–31).
The long, involved logos (335–406) I translate selectively as follows:
I deposit with you this binding spell, gods of the underworld, Yesemigadon and Kore
Persephone Ereschigal and Adonis who is barbaritha, (and) Hermes-Thoth of the underworld
phokentazepseu aerchthathou misonktaik albanachambre and mighty Anoubis psirinth, who
 holds the keys to the gates of Hades, and (with you), chthonic spirits, gods and goddesses who
suffered untimely death, lads and maidens . . . I adjure all spirits who are in this place to help
this spirit. And rouse yourself for me, whoever you are, whether male or female, and go into
every place . . . and bring NN, whom NN bore . . . Because I adjure you by the fearful and
dreadful name of him, at the hearing of whose name the earth will open, at the hearing of
whose name the demons will greatly fear, at the hearing of whose name the rivers and the rocks
are cleft. I adjure you, nekydaimon . . . by the name barbaritha chenmbra barouchambra, and
by the name abrat Abrasax sesengen barpharanges, and by the glorious aoia mari, and by the
name marmareoth marmarauoth marmaraoth marechthana amarza; maribeoth . . . Do this,
bind her. . . . For I am Barbadonai, who conceals the stars, the bright ruler of heaven, the Lord
of the kosmos atthouin iathouin etc.

At first blush the invocations of the first hymn of the oracular spell and
those in this prosaic love spell and the deities invoked seem quite different.
The love spell employs a more self-conscious syncretism, with Persephone
united with her Babylonian counterpart Erschigal and Hermes with the
Egyptian Thoth. In addition, the deities in the love spell bear the description
‘chthonic’ (katachthonioi).
A measure of scrutiny, however, reveals those differences to be not as
significant as they first seem. Indeed, the gods at the outset of the love spell
are the traditionally chthonic Persephone, Hermes-Thoth, and Adonis,
whereas the oracular spell first invokes the supremely Olympian Apollo
(with Paian and, by implication, the Muses) and Zeus. Those latter gods,
however, merge quickly with the Hebraic Iao-Adonai(-Abrasax) cluster,
corresponding to the even larger framework of the solar demiurge, who
‘rejoices in the East’ but ‘who inspects (watches over) the West from the
East’. That last ascription has a significance that extends beyond the
directional journey of the sun or its gaze. ‘The West’ in Egyptian theology
commonly designates the underworld (cf. the epithet of the god of the dead,
Osiris, ‘First of the Westerners’; Frankfort 1948: 197–8), and the sun god’s
concern with it characterizes him as a chthonic as well as heavenly deity
(more on this below; see ‘The Funerary Context’).
A more significant difference, one that stems, at least in part, from the
oracular spell’s hexametric structure, is the love spell’s considerably
stronger emphasis on the power of names. It is at this point that influence
from Hebraic and Egyptian religious perspectives emerges most
prominently in Greek magical texts. We may take as an example a famous
passage from the Book of the Dead. As the deceased stands before the
entrance of the blessed realm, the parts of the gates speak to him:
‘I shall not let you enter through me’, says the beam of this gate, ‘Unless you tell me my name.’
 ‘Plummet-of-the-Place-of-Truth is your name.’ . . .
‘I shall not let you pass over me’, says the threshold of this gate, ‘Unless you tell my name.’
‘Ox-of-Geb is your name.’ . . .
‘I shall not open for you’, says the bolt-clasp of this gate, ‘Unless you tell my name.’
‘Eye-of-Sobk-Lord-of-Bakhu is your name.’ . . .
‘You know us, pass over us.’ (Lichtheim 1976: 2.130)

So vital was knowledge of the true and secret name, that in Egyptian
conception it becomes a means of salvation. We remember from the
previous section on Orphica the redemptive power of ‘passwords’.
In our love spell, the operator displays his prowess in name power by his
prolific use of voces magicae (‘magical words’) or, more appropriately,
nomina barbara, ‘foreign names’, after the traditional Greek or Egyptian
ones, expressed in italics in the translation given in this chapter. Some have
been successfully deciphered on the basis of Hebrew, Egyptian, and other
languages. Passages from the PGM help us understand the ethos behind
them: ‘Come Lord Hermes . . . obey me . . . I know your foreign names:
pharnarthar barachel xtha’ (VIII 15–21); ‘Greatest Typhon, hear me, for I
speak your true names ioerbeth iopakerbeth’ (IV 277–8); ‘Arktos . . . I
entreat you . . . that you do such and such because I invoke you by your
holy names . . . which you cannot resist; Brimo rhexichon etc.’ (VII 686–
92). Practitioners of magic considered these names more ancient and
authentic, and thus, as in the Book of the Dead, effective for inducing divine
action. Indeed, those who have accurate knowledge of them have power
over the divine and demonic beings they invoke. The oracular spell
certainly does not neglect them, with its use of the name pakerbeth (see
‘The Multicultural Chthonic/Solar Pantheon’, above) and a string of nomina
barbara at the end of its second hymn (see the next section).

The Funerary Context

Returning now to the oracular spell, the second hymn of the logos (315–27)
is actually an excerpt from an independent hymn to the sun god, which
occurs in various versions in three other passages in PGM (IV 436–61;
1957–89; VIII 74–81). A composite edition of it, based on all of the
versions, appears as PGM hymn 4 (vol. 2, 239–40 = Heitsch 1963: LIX 4).
Its presence in four forms among the magical papyri attests to a similar
level of prestige as our Philtrokatadesmos Thaumastos. I translate it as it
stands in our oracular spell in PGM I, but in the interpretation that follows I
incorporate elements of the other versions (and the composite edition).
Hear, blessed one, I summon you, governor of heaven and earth, of chaos and Hades, where
dwell . . . send this daimon, by night forcibly driven by my incantations, by your commands,
from whose corpse this is, and let him declare to me all that I desire in my thoughts, speaking
truthfully, (send him) in gentleness, mildness, and not being of hostile mind toward me. And do
not you be wrathful at my sacred incantations, but keep my whole body intact to come to the
light; for it is you who prescribed the learning of these things among men. I invoke your name,
equal in numerical value to the fates themselves: achaipho thotho, etc.

The poem invokes the sun god as ‘governor of heaven and earth, of chaos
and Hades, where dwell . . .’; here our text omits some material. Other
versions of the hymn supply what is missing: ‘where dwell men’s spirits
who previously looked upon the light. And so now I pray, blessed,
immortal, master of the world, if you traverse the hollow of the earth in the
place of the dead, send me this daimon in the middle hours of night’ (PGM
hymn 4.8–13). Whereas Odyssey book 11 describes the realm of the dead as
a place where ‘the bright sun never looks down with its rays’ (15–16), here
we see the Egyptian notion of the underworld frequented daily by Helios.
The ‘chthonic-Olympian gap’, so characteristic of the Homeric religious
worldview (Burkert 1985: 199–203, 205) does not apply in the Egyptian
perspective, as Jan Assmann observes (2005: 392): ‘Egypt differed radically
from religions that made a strict distinction between deities of the sky and
of the netherworld. In Egypt, the sun god embraced both realms.’
As supreme chthonic deity, the solar demiurge has the authority to
mobilize the lesser denizens of that realm, including the spirits of the dead.
The singer of our hymn calls upon him to do so; he has a particular ghost in
mind: ‘. . . send this spirit—from whose corpse this is’. It is likely that our
spell operator performs the hymn at a cemetery, where he has identified a
particular tombstone that designates the corpse as an ahoros, that is, one
who died a premature death, before their fated time, or one whom he knows
to be a biaiothanatos, one who died a violent death. The latter class may
include one who fell in battle or someone murdered or executed (Waszink
1952; Johnston 1999: 148–53, for the complexity of this category). The
former group particularly comprised those who died young, especially girls
unmarried and/or without children, as the love spell (‘lads and maidens’)
and gravestone epitaphs of the period make clear: ‘Weep for my young age,
one dead before her time and unmarried’ (SB III 6706.16; Martinez 1991:
48; in general Johnston 1999: ch. 5, esp. 175–6).
 Such spirits form a special chthonic cohort, who, like the dismal ghosts
conjured by Odysseus (Od. 11.38–41), have not been fully integrated into
the chthonic community, because their death occurred before the proper
time, and, in the case of the ahoroi, before they fulfilled their humanity.
Magical spells in the papyri and curse tablets press these spirits (along with
the ataphoi, ‘unburied’) into their service because of their availability and
anger with regard to their untimely deaths, deprived honours, and limbo
state (DT 23.19–20 (third cent. CE); cf. 22.30–1; 25.4–5 et al.).
The ‘Marvelous Binding Love Spell’ instructs one to write the logos on a
lead tablet (to which are attached male and female figurines) and then
‘Place it at sunset by the grave of one who died a premature or violent
death’ (PGM IV 333–4). Later, the inhabitant of this grave is called the
nekydaimon, ‘spirit of the dead’, who is conjured on the authority of the
chthonic deities and of the all-powerful name of the supreme sun god and
sent to infect the beloved victim with hopeless erotic desire for the spell
operator. He does so with the help of other ghosts who roam about the same
cemetery where the operator performs the magic.
We have seen that these notions of the untimely, violently dead,
occupying a liminal region between the depths of the underworld and the
normal human realm, play a vital role in Greek literature from Homer
onward (see, in this volume, Voutiras, Chapter 27). They undergo, however,
considerable development in the late antique magical papyri and other types
of magical documents. In the love spell the nekydaimon has eros-inducing
powers. In Homer, whereas only the soul of Teiresias has oracular powers,
in our hexametric spell the ahoros conjured at the grave is to ‘declare to me
all that I desire in my thoughts, speaking truthfully’. The manipulated
spirits, however, gain these powers by virtue of their relationship to the
upper echelons of the chthonic hierarchy. A prominent deity or group of
deities must send the daimon, and in the oracular text it does not participate
willingly: ‘forcibly (hyp’ ananke) driven by my incantations, by your [the
sun god’s] commands’ (PGM I 318). The love spell expresses this ananke,
‘necessity’, apropos to its greater emphasis on names of power: ‘I adjure
you nekydaimon by the fearful and dreadful name of him, at the hearing of
whose name the earth will open, at whose name the spirits will greatly fear,
. . . Do not disobey, nekydaimon, the commands and names’, and so on
(PGM IV 356–68).
The Oracular Procedure
Having surveyed the divine personnel and the funerary mechanics of both
texts, we may now explore the hexametric spell’s oracular setting and
procedure. As we have seen, the sun god sends the spirit of the dead to
pronounce the oracle. Other versions of the second hymn fix the time frame
of this event more precisely than that of PGM I: ‘Send me this daimon in
the middle hours of the night’ (PGM hymn 4.12). This temporal framework
elucidates the oracular procedure as a dream visitation, and, by extension,
possibly incubation, that is, an enquirer spending the night in a temple and
experiencing a visitation from a divine being who most often provides
healing or a prescription for such (see, in this volume, Graf, Chapter 34).
Our hymn may have originally served some cultic function in this context,
such as a hymn sung before the enquirer lay down to sleep (Merkelbach and
Totti 1990: 11, §20).
One of its other versions (PGM VIII 74–81) occurs in a spell which bears
the title ‘Request for a dream oracle of Bes’ (64). For one who had any
knowledge of oracular sites in Egypt, that phrase would point to the
Thebaid town of Abydos, the location of the Memnonion of Sethos I, an
ancient cult centre of Osiris established in the nineteenth dynasty, which
supported a famous incubation/dream oracle of Osiris-Serapis during the
Hellenistic period (Frankfurter 2005: 238). The oracular character of the
temple continued into the Roman era, but with the dwarf-like, apotropaic
deity Bes assuming the main prophetic role (Ammianus Marcellinus
19.12.3–6; Frankfurter 1998: 169–74). This Bes oracle rose to international
fame, and in addition to traditional incubation apparently employed a
‘ticket’ schema of consultation in which the enquirer presented the god (i.e.
his priest) with two papyrus chits stating opposite scenarios (‘Shall I keep
my job?’ . . . ‘Shall I lose my job?’). The god was to ‘bring out’ the correct
answer (Ammianus Marcellinus 19.12.3–6; SB XII 11227 = Hengstl 1978:
164–5; Clarysse 2009: 571, 579).
It would not be surprising to find a hymn to the sun god associated with
Bes’ famous oracle, since Bes himself, and other Bes-like divinities,
evinced strong solar affiliations and had links to other solar deities. A
popular art form known as the Horus-cippi, which flourished in the Greco-
Roman period, closely associates Bes with Horus-Harpokrates, the son of
Osiris and the youthful solar deity (the Egyptian equivalent of Apollo, with
whom the oracular spell began). Representative of this form (of which there
are hundreds) is the Metternich Stele (360–343 BCE), which portrays the
face or mask of Bes above Horus, who displays his cosmic-solar prowess
and mastery of chaos, holding snakes and scorpions and other animals in his
hands and treading on crocodiles (Frankfurter 1998: 47–8; Clarysse 2009:
583 and cf. figure 24.11). If this hymn to the sun god, from which the
second part of our spell is excerpted, had its origin in the Abydos Besas
oracle (Merkelbach and Totti 1990: 10–16) or some other well-known
incubation shrine, this could help explain its fame and wide dissemination.
Whatever its initial Sitz im Leben, it has been lifted from that context and
employed in various settings in the PGM, allowing individuals to access the
sun god’s power to mobilize the spirits of the dead for oracular
communication through dreams in private contexts, in this case, a kind of
merger between dream incubation and a ghost-conjuring ritual, performed
at a cemetery.

CONCLUSION

Although the magical technology of our two spells involves both writing
and speaking, the former emerges more prominently in the love spell, which
has a decidedly documentary focus. Its praxis says to inscribe the logos on
a lead tablet, bind the male and female effigies to it, and then ‘Place it by a
grave of one who suffered a premature or violent death.’ The inscribed lead
tablet is not only a vital part of the materia magica, but also figures in the
opening words of the logos itself: ‘I deposit with you, gods of the
underworld, this binding spell.’ This fulfils the prescription of the praxis
(‘place it beside’; paratithon) but also goes beyond it, by use of
parakatatithemai, ‘I deposit’. In other words, the act of laying the written
text at the grave makes the underworld deities and daimones the guarantors
of the spell and responsible for its execution. This idea of the written text as
a deposition occurs fairly often in curse tablets (Martinez 1991: 36–7).
Our oracular spell, with its hymnic style and hexametric structure,
emphasizes oral performance more strongly. But both orality and writing
are important for both; and we should not assume, based on presuppositions
about written and oral stages of epic poetry, that the greater emphasis on the
written text suggests a later stage of development and perspective. The
fourth-century BCE ‘Curse of Artemesia’ (PGM XL) has a similar
documentary focus. In it, a women curses her (apparently) estranged
husband for depriving her deceased daughter of her funerary gifts:
‘Artemisia has set down this appeal, beseeching Oserapis and the gods
seated with Oserapis to render judgment, and while this appeal lies here, by
no means may the father of the little girl find the gods merciful.’ Vital to the
spell’s success is the fact that the operator has ‘set it down’ in the temple of
the great god Oserapis in Memphis, and its continued effectiveness depends
on it staying there, ‘on deposit’ as it were. The written text itself secures the
vital link between the operator and the chthonic powers.
But the fundamental technology that the love spell employs is names of
power, and this it does by stylistic crescendo. It begins with the depositing
of the spell with the great underworld gods, followed by their magical, or
true, names. The operator extends the deposition to the daimones or ghosts
who occupy the cemetery, adjuring them to assist the nekydaimon. He,
however, takes the name magic to a heightened level, when he threatens to
utter the supreme and secret name of the great god, who is Iao-Adonai-
Abrasax, as in the oracular spell. But unlike the oracular spell, those names
are engulfed by numerous nomina barbara, which, with those three great
names, seem almost ‘cover names’ for the greatest, unutterable name,
which will cause cosmic ruin if actually pronounced.
But if that were not daunting enough, the spell’s threatening crescendo
reaches a henotheistic apex, when the operator demands the daimon’s
obedience, claiming to become the great demiurge himself: ‘I am
Barbadonai, who conceals the stars, the bright ruler of heaven; the lord of
the kosmos’ (PGM IV 385–6). Although the ‘I am’ revelatory formula has
currency in all three of the major religious traditions which stream into the
PGM: Egyptian, Jewish, and Greek (Martinez 1991: 92–4), the entire
structure of the love spell seems to take its cue from Egyptian funerary and
soteriological ideas. As we saw in the Book of the Dead passage cited (see
‘The Multicultural Chthonic/Solar Pantheon’, above), the deceased gains
access to the divine realm through knowledge of names of power; but in
Egyptian religion, ultimate salvation occurs only when the dead himself
becomes Osiris (Morenz 1975: 197–8, 206–7).
 But what is disconcerting to modern sensibilities is the fact that this
cosmic drama of ascent and assimilation through the power of names,
culminating in merger with the supreme divine personality itself, unfolds
for the purpose of manipulating lower spiritual powers for the crass goal of
forcing a girl to submit to the operator’s desires. The contrast with which
we began this section between competitive/practical and revelatory magic
has helped students of this fascinating phenomenon understand its varied
textures and functions. But for many of its practitioners, perhaps that
distinction did not mean that much.

SUGGESTED READING
For papyri and papyrology in general, see Turner 1980, OHP, and
papyri.info. A fine, although somewhat dated, lexicon of religion in the
papyri is Ronchi 1974–1977. Two helpful monographs on the subject are
Bell 1953 and Rübsam 1974. For the magical papyri the standard edition of
texts is PGM with the English translation of Betz 1985. Several texts
published after PGM are collected in Daniel and Maltomini 1990–1991.
Introductions to the magical papyri: Betz 1985; Brashear 1995 with an
exhaustive annotated bibliography. For an excellent collection of essays, see
Faraone and Obbink 1991.
Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. I thank Chris Faraone
for reading the section on magic and making many helpful suggestions and
Bryan Kraemer for advice on a number of points.

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beginning with P.) follow the conventions of Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic, and
Coptic Papyri, Ostraca, and Tablets, ed. J. F. Oates, R. S. Bagnall, S. J. Clackson, Alexandra A.
O’Brien, J. D. Sosin, T. G. Wilfong, and K. A. Worp. 2001 (5th edn). Latest edition online:
<http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/papyrus/texts/clist.html>.
Assmann, J. 2005. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. Ithaca, NY.
Aune, D. 1995. ‘Iao’, RAC 17: 1–12.
Bell, H. I. 1953. Cults and Creeds of Graeco-Roman Egypt. Liverpool.
Bernabé, A. and Jiménez san Cristóbal, A. E. 2008. Instructions for the Netherworld. Leiden.
Betz, H. D. ed. 1985. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. Chicago.
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Bibliography (1928–1994)’, ANRW II.18.5: 3380–684.
Burkert, W. 1987. Ancient Mystery Cults. Cambridge, MA.
Burkert, W. 1993. ‘Bacchic Teletai in the Hellenistic Age’, in Masks of Dionysos, ed. T. H. Carpenter
and C. A. Faraone, 259–75. Ithaca, NY.
Clarysse, W. 2009. ‘Egyptian Religion and Magic in the Papyri’, OHP: 561–89.
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Cook, A. B. 1914–1940. Zeus. Cambridge.
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Dillon, J. 1996. The Middle Platonists. Ithaca, NY.
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233–54. Leiden.
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Graf, F. 2012. ‘Apollo’, OCD: 118–19.
Graf, F. and Johnston, S. I. 2013. Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold
Tablets. London.
Guthrie, W. K. C. 1993. Orpheus and Greek Religion. Princeton, NJ.
Heitsch, E. 1963. Die griechischen Dichterfragmente der römischen Kaiserzeit I. Göttingen.
Hengstl, J. 1978. Griechische Papyri aus Ägypten. München.
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Ancient Greece,’ HSCPh 101: 207–66.
Herrero de Jáuregui, M. 2010. Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity. Berlin.
Hopfner, T. [1921, 1924] repr. 1974, 1983, 1990. Griechisch-ägyptischer Offenbarungszauber. 2 vols
in 3. Amsterdam.
Hordern, J. 2000. ‘Notes on the Orphic Papyrus from Gurôb (P. Gurôb 1: Pack2 2464)’, ZPE 129:
131–40.
Johnston, S. I. 1999. Restless Dead. Berkeley, CA.
Kambitsis, S. 1976. ‘Une nouvelle tablette magique d’ Égypte’, BIFAO 76: 213–23.
Kouremenos, K., Parássoglou, G. M., and Tsantsanoglou, K. 2006. The Derveni Papyrus. Florence.
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64.
 PART III

MYTHS? CONTEXTS AND

REPRESENTATIONS
 CHAPTER 11

EPIC

RICHARD P. MARTIN

INTRODUCTION

UNTIL the mid-twentieth century, the poetry attributed to Homer, Hesiod,

and the authors of the ‘Epic Cycle’ provided the earliest written evidence
for Greek religious practices of sacrifice, dedication, prayer, cult song, and
funeral ritual. In addition, such poetry—especially the Iliad and Odyssey—
created an indelible impression about how Greeks imagined the gods: their
familial relations, desires, and interaction, for better or worse, with mortals.
While forced by lack of other data to use hexameter poems as testimony for
practices and beliefs, modern scholars were less comfortable adopting the
judgement of Herodotos, who credited Homer and Hesiod, above all, with
actually forming the Greek religious imagination (Hdt. 2.53). In his
excursus on Egypt, the fifth-century historian writes:
where each of the gods arose from, or whether all had always existed, and what they were like
in form, they [the Greeks] did not know until yesterday or the day before, one might say. For I
reckon that Hesiod and Homer existed not more than four hundred years before me, and it is
they who taught the Greeks the origin of the gods (theogonie), gave the gods their titles
(eponymiai), distinguished the honours due them (timai) and their skills (technai), and
indicated their forms.
In effect, Herodotos transfers to the poets what Hesiod, in the Theogony
(73), credited to Zeus, who, after the victory over his father Kronos,
assigned honours (timai) to each of the immortals. Because Herodotos also
makes implausible or demonstrably wrong assertions that the Greek religion
largely came from Egypt, and that certain named individuals were solely
responsible for introducing such institutions as the cult of Dionysos, his
observations about the broad influence of poetry on religion have met with
some scepticism (Asheri, Lloyd and Corcella 2007: 34–6, 274–5; see also,
in this volume, Kleibl, Chapter 41).
The decipherment of Linear B in 1952, combined with increasingly
sophisticated studies of polytheistic religions, made the fictional images of
epic look more idiosyncratic than had been suspected previously. Gradually,
these images have come to seem less representative of the complex picture
reconstructed from archaeological, linguistic, and epigraphic evidence. Epic
leaves much unmentioned that must have been important ‘on the ground’,
or stylizes it beyond easy recognition. Consequently, the bold statement of
Herodotos about the role of poetry now seems less extreme a position. It is
not impossible that fiction played the role Herodotos accords it.
In approaching ‘religion’ in Greek epic, we need to keep in mind that
diverse traditions, a range of narrative options, and the changing rhetoric
needed to satisfy various audiences prevent the easy reading of epic as
embodying long-held Greek views. The depictions in epic must be
interpreted, first of all, as part of a self-contained poetic imaginary, and only
later as a source to be aligned with other religious discourses in Greek life
of the eighth through sixth centuries BCE. Furthermore, the world of the two
poets named by Herodotos existed alongside religious representations from
now lost epics, especially the series of ‘Cyclic’ poems on the Trojan War
and poems about traditions from Thebes or Corinth. In the pitiful fragments
remaining (West 2003) we find such disparate depictions as Poseidon
coupling with the Fury (Erinys) in the form of a horse (Thebaid fr. 11);
Zeus in pursuit of Nemesis, who takes the form of a fish, and ultimately
bears Helen (Cypria fr.10); and Zeus dancing (Titanomachy fr. 8). The lost
epics also contained details at odds with what became mainstream
traditions: that the gods were originally worshipped in the form of pillars
(Phoronis fr. 4, and Eumelus fr. 28); that the world emerged from the upper
air, Aither; that Zeus was born in Lydia; and that Cheiron the Centaur first
taught humans oaths, sacrifices, and the ‘patterns of Olympos’
(Titanomachy frr. 1, 2, and 13 respectively). The superiority of the Iliad and
Odyssey over these other epics was recognized by Aristotle (Poet.
1459a37), and it is largely due to such aesthetic judgements that we owe the
poems’ survival. If, however, we possessed only the Cycle and other non-
Homeric works, religious elements would appear more bizarre, arbitrary,
and primitive than in the view given by the relatively more rational Homer
and Hesiod.
This chapter will focus on three types of Homeric episodes that bear a
‘religious’ meaning, while distinguishing, as far as possible, literary
intention from the representation of actual ritual. As we shall see, however,
to avoid false dichotomies one must articulate the modes in which stylized
acts and conventions—verbal and gestural—form a bond between the
fictional and the ‘real’.

HEROES IN THEIR CUPS

Like Herodotos, the poet of the Iliad takes an historical perspective. The
warriors at Troy are sundered from the ordinary world of the present-day
audience. Apart from the individual heroic deeds that can, in these latter
days, only be accomplished by two men (such as Hektor lifting a huge rock:
Il. 12.447–9), the most conspicuous sign of the chronological chasm
imagined by Homeric poetry occurs in the story of the wall hastily
constructed by the Achaians atop the bodies of their war-dead. To
Poseidon’s objection that the new construction, made without a sacrifice to
the gods, will obscure the fame of the city wall built earlier by him and
Apollo, Zeus promises that the two gods will eventually overturn the threat
(Il. 7.442–63). In a flash-forward (Il. 12.5–35) Poseidon and Apollo are
described flooding the plain, after the Trojan War, erasing all traces of the
Achaian monument. Thus, the Iliad re-imagines heroic ritual actions, but, at
the same time, distances itself from a period when gods and heroes were in
contact on the battlefield. In this regard, it resembles the poetry of Hesiod,
in which the age of heroes is sandwiched between the ages of Bronze and
Iron, thus clearly marked off from the era of the narrating poet (Op. 156–
73). Unlike the Hesiodic vision, however, the Iliad deletes links to a
possible hero-cult, at least in the case of rituals surrounding the bones of
individual warriors at Troy. For, as the poem implies, the absence of the
wall means that the bodies it covered were also swept away. By contrast,
Hesiod’s mention of the god-like beings from the Gold and Silver ages
dwelling ‘on the earth’ (epichthonioi) or ‘beneath the earth’
(hupochthonioi) (Op. 123, 141) who are honoured after death appears to be
a conscious allusion to a hero-cult (Nagy 1999: 151–4).
Generational difference may be a factor in depictions. Nestor, whose life
spans three generations, has special status and vigour (Frame 2009). Even
among younger heroes, only Nestor easily lifts the ornate drinking vessel
that he brought to the war (Il. 11.636–7). At a crucial point in the battle,
Nestor escorts the wounded healer Machaon off the field to his own hut.
There his maid and war-prize, with the significant name Hekamede
(‘working with special skill from afar’), provides a drink (kykeon 624) of
wine, cheese, and barley groats.
The poem does not specify that Nestor now performs a ritual. Only the
descriptions of Hekamede as ‘like a goddess’ (638) and the barley as
‘sacred’ (hieron, 631) hint at religious associations. Yet within Archaic
hexameter poetry, the kykeon is clearly homologous to ritual by being a
‘dietary symbol for suspended worlds’ (Kitts 2001: 311). Furthermore, the
Archaic Hymn to Demeter designates as kykeon the mixed beverage (minus
the cheese) that the goddess herself drinks while disguised at Eleusis. The
hymnic reference clearly alludes to drinking kykeon (thus named) as central
to the Eleusinian ritual complex. Finally, the specific contexts, composition,
and diction used to describe the Greek kykeon support an ancient Indo-
European heritage akin to Vedic soma rituals (Watkins 1978). In sum, the
Iliad’s depiction of an apparently casual drink has definite ritual resonances,
though within the poem it is simply heroic protocol. By tying the kykeon
ritual to the oldest warrior, Nestor, the poem may hint at its antiquity,
although only comparative study reveals broader meanings. This strategy of
‘secularization’ often marks Homeric poetics. In the Iliad, it extends even to
the depiction of battle itself, since this can be viewed as an overarching
ritual dedicated to the gods (Martin 1983; cf. Hiltebeitel 1990). Larger
questions of the audience’s awareness of such deep connections, and of
possible ritual origins of epic, deserve consideration.
Another well-wrought vessel brought from home (depas at Il. 16.225—
same word for Nestor’s at Il. 11.632) is significant in terms of special
connections with the hero who uses it. Just as only Nestor could hoist his
cup, so only Achilles drinks from this one, and the libations he pours from
it are exclusively to Zeus, in his role as patron of Dodona (Il. 16.225–7). To
mark the importance of the scene, the poet describes Achilles taking the cup
from a chest packed by his mother Thetis, purifying it with sulphur,
washing his hands, and carefully taking a position in the centre of his
forecourt. Unlike Nestor’s provision of the restorative kykeon, Achilles’
pouring from the cup is a recognized ritual act, accompanied by a prayer to
Zeus as ‘lord of Dodona, Pelasgian one’ (Il. 16.233) unparalleled within
epic. In his recital of the past favour that Zeus granted in honouring him,
Achilles expatiates about the distant cult site in the northern Greek territory
Epiros, mentioning its bad weather and its oracle-interpreter priests the
Selloi, who sleep on the ground with unwashed feet. After the ethnographic
details, he begs Zeus to grant his retainer, Patroklos, glory-bringing power
(kudos), a spectacle that will, in turn, reflect well on himself. His final wish,
for Patroklos to return unharmed after repelling the Trojans, is only half
fulfilled by Zeus (Il. 16.249–52)—a unique outcome for epic prayers.
Greek lore recorded that Pyrrha and Deucalion, the Flood survivors,
established the shrine of Zeus at Dodona; that Neoptolemos, son of
Achilles, later came to colonize the surrounding area; and that Achilles
himself had divine honours there (Plut. Pyrrh. 1.1–4). Odysseus allegedly
visited Dodona to obtain instructions from Zeus’ oracle-giving oak tree
about managing his homecoming (Od. 14.327–30, 19.296–9). Archaeology
has confirmed the importance of this cult site from Mycenaean to Greco-
Roman times. Connecting the two central Homeric protagonists, Achilles
and Odysseus, with the mythically oldest oracular site (predating Delphi)
seems more than accidental. A historicizing drive behind epic here, too,
may express the antiquity of tradition, underlining the genre’s deep roots.
Another way of viewing the connection raises a principle of general
importance for ‘epic’ religion: sometimes details about particular cults or
gods may be selected for their thematic resonance within the poetry. The
Selloi are doubly marked as having a paradoxical connection with the earth
—on the one hand, impure, contrary to usual Greek qualifications, but, on
the other, possessing special mantic powers. We are reminded of the
prophet Melampous (‘Blackfoot’) (Gartziou-Tatti 1990). These curious
details, seemingly inessential to Achilles’ prayer, take on new meaning
subsequently. Hearing of the death of Patroklos, Achilles himself defiles his
head and body with dust and ashes, and sprawls in the dirt (Il. 18.23–7).
Although stemming from crushing grief, these actions also carry signals of
ritual debasement, as if Achilles (like the Selloi) is wholly removed from
the world of mortals. The self-abasement of the suppliant Odysseus in the
ashes of the Phaiakians’ hearth (Od. 7.153–4) functions similarly. Both
scenes bring together literary suspense—establishing a ‘dead’ point in the
plot—with stylized ritual behaviour.
Another libation by Achilles further underlines his capacious ‘heroic’
religion. During a magnificent funeral, the pyre of Patroklos will not light
(Il. 23.192), so Achilles pours libations from a splendid goblet beseeching
the winds Boreas and Zephyros. There ensues a carefully narrated type-
scene of message-bringing and guest reception, as the divine Iris transmits
Achilles’ request, and the winds rush across the sea to whip the flames (Il.
23.200–21). All night long, as the pyre rages, Achilles pours libations on
the ground. Worth emphasizing is the narrative elaboration, based on the
supremacy of the protagonist and the highly significant point in the plot.
The poet creatively builds an initial failure of ritual (the smouldering pyre)
into a spectacular display of the power of Achilles’ prayer that instantly
rouses the cosmos.
Finally, Nestor’s looming stature as ritual actor is glimpsed again when
the poet of the Odyssey uses heroic libations for ironic effect (Od. 3.40–64).
Telemachus and Athena (disguised as Mentor) approach the aged Pylian at
a bull sacrifice (feeding 4500 persons) for Poseidon. Nestor’s son
Peisistratus formally greets the elder of the pair with wine in a golden cup
and directs him to pray to Poseidon, after which Telemachus will do the
same. The prayer of Athena/Mentor is for glory for Nestor and his sons, and
a ‘grace-filled return’ (khariessan amoiben) for the rest of the Pylians,
along with fulfilment of the mission of Telemachus. ‘So she prayed,’ says
the poet (Od. 3.62) ‘and she herself was bringing all to fulfillment.’ While
an audience is surely amused at the sight of Athena thus getting the best of
her traditional rival, and Nestor’s familial patron, at the sea-god’s own feast,
we should also note the close resemblance of her prayer to epigraphically
attested formulations (e.g. CEG 326, the seventh-century BCE Mantiklos
dedication, on which see Day 2010: 36–48). Hers is, in other words, the sort
of utterance that could easily have been made in non-literary contexts in the
Archaic period. The relationship to ‘real’ ritual is further complicated by
recent discoveries at Ano Englianos (site of a Pylian ruler’s palace),
evidencing repeated massive ritual consumption of cattle: the Odyssey’s
bull feast may echo real rites (Stocker and Davis 2004).
In sum, the rituals associated with cups are representative of the tendency
to ‘heroize’ religion, but this is not solely epic exaggeration: in Mycenaean
times and earlier, at least some outsized displays and practices already
Archaic, from Indo-European times, did in fact exist.

CALLING ON THE GODS

Epic has an inherent aesthetic bias towards the evaluative prizing of well-
done actions and ‘performances’. Most conspicuously, forceful speaking
equates with powerful deeds as paired ideals of heroic behaviour (Il. 9.443).
Other ‘deeds’ such as prayer, vows, sacrifices, and dedications, comprising
a tight nexus of ‘religious’ acts, are thus also given poetic accreditation
through Homeric song. Once again, there is the danger of being misled into
thinking that any offering might embody an actual rite, rather than a
stylized and composite vision within a fiction. Primarily, such rites arise as
poetic events, highlighting and motivating narratives.
In this brief account, we can focus only on one subcategory: prayer.
While offering us a prime example of the ‘conative’ use of language—
words employed to influence divinities—prayers are also rhetorical
performances featuring conventional tropes. The ‘type-scene’ of prayer has
been analysed as having components such as the raising the hands,
invocation of a god, recollection of past favours, and requests (Morrison
1991: 146–9; Edwards 1992: 315). Yet bare typological accounting does not
capture the kaleidoscope of styles found in individual prayers, shaped as
they are by episodic characterizations.
Within epic, prayers occur in virtually every major episode, and cover a
broad spectrum. At one end, they are simply courtesy gestures, as when
Odysseus in disguise, gladdened at the reception by his swineherd Eumaios,
says ‘may Zeus and the other immortals grant you that which you most
desire’ (Od. 14.53–4). The same hero, in a slightly different formulation,
prays to Zeus that Telemachus obtain ‘as much as he desires’ (Od. 17.354–
5). An audience finds irony in these simple wishes because it knows that
both son and swineherd themselves desire the triumphant return of the long-
absent hero heard praying. In these cases, what might have been taken as a
prayer for general, longer-term satisfaction, is shown by the narrative to
have a specific, shorter-term result.
Other prayers within the Iliad and Odyssey are more readily categorized
by their intended time frames. Odysseus, in a footrace during the funeral
games for Patroklos, for example, utters a prayer for more speed, which
Athena grants at once (Il. 23.768–72). Immediate results are also called for
by warriors in the heat of battle, as when Menelaos, casting his spear, prays
that Zeus let him take vengeance on Paris for abducting Helen. Elevating
his individual, short-term prayer to the level of general principle, he
requests victory ‘so that even one of the men to come might shudder to
wrong a host who provides friendship’ (Il. 3.351–4). The prayer to Apollo
by the wounded Glaukos for immediate aid (Il. 16.514–26; trans. Lattimore
2011) is a good example of how epic uses expansion to turn a simple
request into a more vivid episode: calling on the god to listen ‘somewhere
in the rich Lykian countryside or here in Troy’, Glaukos details the crisis
(‘my blood is not able to dry and stop running, my shoulder is aching
beneath it, I cannot hold my spear up steady’), informs Apollo of
Sarpedon’s death, and requests healing so that he may rouse his Lykian
comrades to recover the corpse.
Incongruous as such lengthy self-diagnosis might seem from someone in
pain on the field, the prayer nevertheless convinces the audience of the
seriousness of Glaukos’ wound, sums up the plot, and foreshadows the next
phase of battle, even as it affirms Apollo’s constant support for the Trojans.
It well illustrates epic’s interweaving of characterization, exposition, and
religion, through the device of speech directed to the gods.
At times, the request for immediate intervention is accompanied by a
vow to repay the god later. Thus, Pandaros, encouraged by the disguised
Athena, includes in his prayer to Apollo a promise to sacrifice a hecatomb
of firstling lambs on his return home to Zeleia (Il. 4.119–21). At other
times, such a vow is accompanied by a material sign of dedication, as a
promise of future sacrifice once the outcome is assured. An especially
elaborate scene with this structure comes when the priestess Theano leads
the women of Troy to the Temple of Athena to place a robe (peplos) on the
lap of the goddess’ statue, with a ritual cry (Il. 6.297–311). The request that
Athena stop the enemy warrior Diomedes is followed by a promise to
dedicate twelve heifers ‘immediately’ (autika nun, Il. 6.308). This Athena
denies (Il. 6.311), though it is unclear whether her statue makes a gesture of
the head, or the listening audience (not the Trojan women) simply realizes
her refusal. The offering scene has reminded some of a parallel in the
Athenian ritual year, the offering of a peplos to the city’s patron goddess
during the Panathenaia festival. This apparent correspondence, however,
rather than being a straightforward injection into epic of one ‘actual’ event,
is better understood as a multilayered evocation of cultural practices
involving weaving, women, and celebration (Nagy 2012: 266–72).
It is psychologically apt that Homeric prayers occur when mortals need
divine help to influence forces beyond their control. The natural bias
towards the future, in wishes that point gods towards a certain course of
action, is balanced in many prayers by reference to the speakers’ ritual piety
in the past. Penelope prays to Athena that her son Telemachus safely escape
the suitors, while reminding the goddess of her husband’s past sacrifices of
heifers and sheep (Od. 4.761–6). This ‘reminder’, a frequent convention in
both literary and non-poetic prayers, takes on new vividness in Penelope’s
version as she plays on the sound shared by the verb mnesai (‘be mindful’,
4.765) and the noun mnesteras (‘suitors’) in the next line (Od. 4.766).
Poetic creativity at the level of character-speech not only underlines the
essential basis for her request, but also affirms her reputation for clever
inventiveness.
The entire Iliad is put into motion by a similar act of parental prayer,
when the priest Chryses seeks the return of his daughter, taken as a prize of
war for Agamemnon. Beseeching the commanders, Chryses frames his
supplication with a wish that the Olympian gods grant the destruction of
Troy and departure of the besiegers, followed by an admonishment to
revere the god Apollo (whose sceptre, with its ritual fillets, he bears as a
sign of office). Roughly dismissed by Agamemnon, the old man calls on his
patron god. His invocation, adorned with the god’s titles and named
sanctuaries, recalls his past worship—the building of a shrine and offerings
of bulls and goats—but is focused on the future: ‘through your arrows, let
the Danaans pay back my tears’ (Il. 1.35–42). The subsequent plague leads
to the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles, the latter’s withdrawal,
the supplication of Zeus by Thetis (Il. 1.502–10), the crushing loss of
warriors on both sides, and, finally, another old man’s supplication for his
child’s return (Priam for Hektor’s corpse).
 In their epic deployment, then, prayers mark moods and predict narrative
trajectories. The motif of vengeance fits especially well with prayer; once
stated by an aggrieved party and approved by a god, the desired payback
becomes a poetic goal, as the audience knows the final outcome, although
not the exact method by which it will be achieved. Polyphemus the
Cyclops, blinded by Odysseus, prays to his father Poseidon for vengeance,
mentioning two narrative options—either that his enemy never get home, or
that he makes it back to Ithaka late, with no crew, and embroiled in
domestic strife (Od. 9.528–36). The latter happens, as had been predicted
by the Ithakan prophet Halitherses (Od. 2.171–6). Such parallels between
prayer and prophecy highlight the close relationship among mortal desires,
divine plans, and the abilities of some humans to articulate the future. The
vengeance motif gains more persuasive authority each time an audience
hears of another application, and thus guides listeners’ expectations. The
reverse of the interaction between Poseidon and his son Polyphemos is
narrated by Phoenix, as part of his appeal to Achilles in the Embassy scene
(Il. 9.447–57). As Phoenix recounts the event that led to his eventual role as
Achilles’ guardian, we are reminded of the essential similarity between
praying and cursing. (In Greek, the latter verb is a prefixed form of the
former: kataraomai ‘curse; pray against’ vs. araomai ‘pray’; see also, in
this volume, Versnel, Chapter 30.) For alienating the affections of his
father’s concubine, Phoenix was condemned by his father’s curse (abetted
by Zeus and Persephone) to be childless. (A similar parental curse featured
in the lost epic Thebaid: fr. 2 West.) In sum, the representation of Homeric
prayers as almost always successfully fulfilled primes the listeners of epic
for predictable results. The totality of such recurrent plot events—shown or
recollected, narrated by the poet or the characters—crystallizes into a form
of belief. Epic thereby regulates the religious imagination.
Conditionally cursing oneself is the core action within oath-taking. Two
key scenes in the Iliad represent this ceremony in elaborate detail (Kitts
2005). Comparisons with ancient Near Eastern sources make it plausible
that the epic here captures the features of actually occurring ritual (whether
contemporary or historical). In each scene, the accompanying prayer is
highly developed. Before the duel of Menelaus and Paris, Agamemnon calls
on Zeus ‘ruling from Ida, greatest most glorious’, the sun Helios, rivers, the
earth, and (euphemistically) ‘those who take vengeance in the underworld
on oath-breakers’, before setting out in precise legal detail the binding
conditions under which the fight will take place and the consequences for
either side, Greeks and Trojans (Il. 3.275–300). Anonymous warriors on
both sides add a prayer that oath-breakers should be killed, their brains
flowing out like the wine poured in libation. When Achilles is ready to
return to the war, Agamemnon carries out his second oath ritual, this time
invoking the same divinities (and explicitly naming the Furies) to attest to
the fact that he did not violate Achilles’ war-bride Briseis (Il. 19.255–65).
Unlike the epic appropriation of prayer format elsewhere for exposition and
characterization, these two examples offer cases where dictional
elaboration, rather than doing aesthetic work, instead provides the
specificity that one would require in a performative utterance with social
consequences for the real world.
Realistic as prayer and related rituals appear to be within early Greek
epic, one key factor separates fictional representations from actual
experience: the point of view available to an omniscient narrator. Through
the technique of juxtaposition, the poet can, without further comment,
produce for an audience effects of suspense, characterization, and
distancing that are clearly different from what the fictive participants
experience within the poem. Early in the Iliad, a clear example arises when
an elite group is summoned by Agamemnon to sacrifice to Zeus a 5-year-
old ox (Il. 2.402–18). The commander prays to cast down Priam’s palace
and slay Hektor before the sun sets that day. The narrator’s point of view
intervenes, however, to present a different perspective: ‘He spoke, but none
of this was the son of Kronos yet authorizing; he accepted the holy victims,
but was adding to the dire hardship’ (Il. 2.419–20). The narrative tailpiece
to the prayer is thus more in tune with the brief but brilliant lines that occur
just before Agamemnon initiates his exclusive sacrifice, and that provide
yet another angle of vision. Ordinary fighters cook their own dinners among
the ships, ‘each man sacrificing to one or another of the eternal
gods/praying to evade death and the grind of Ares’ (Il. 2.400–1). With grim
irony, Agamemnon’s overconfident prayer for conquest contrasts with the
words of anonymous soldiers who wish merely to survive.
Perhaps the most intricate of such complex contrastive scenarios is that
which pairs prayers by Penelope and Odysseus, after their first meeting in
twenty years (Od. 20.60–90). Unaware (apparently) that she spoke with her
husband the previous night, Penelope, in tears, prays to Artemis to be killed
instantly or swept off by a blast of wind, as once were the daughters of
Pandareus, rather than marry a lesser man. Odysseus, hearing his wife’s
laments, begs Zeus for a double omen (Od. 20.98–101), verbal and visual
(pheme and teras). Zeus obliges: his flash of lightning prompts a serving
woman nearby to pray that the suitors die on this day (Od. 20.102–21). As
in the Iliad scene of multiple prayers, the poet here voices three points of
view within a short compass. Once again, there is a subtle balance between
rite and literary application. On one hand, Odysseus carries out what was
most likely a standard divinatory practice (cledonomancy, or praying for
omens), one possibly having an Archaic heritage. (The employment of an
ox-hide recalls the medieval Irish tarbfheis divination rite (MacKillop 2006:
56–8) used to determine the identity of a new king.) On the other, the poet
has incorporated his ritual prayer into a larger compositional unit full of
poignancy and suspense.
Are these patterns purely poetic convention? Since the bulk of our
testimony, even from later periods, also comes from poetry, it is difficult to
answer. But ancient works that at least purport to record or comment on
contemporary events (the plays of Aristophanes, the histories of Herodotos,
Thucydides, and Xenophon, Plato’s dialogues, and Athenian oratory)
confirm that the basic structures of Homeric prayer might still have been
heard in real society during the Classical period. What the Iliad and
Odyssey do describe, which later works largely screen out, are the
lineaments of beliefs: the immediacy of divine action; the general efficacy
(but also failure) of prayer and sacrifice when gods have other designs; the
moments in which prayer is suitable; and the assumption that all people in
situations of stress depend on the gods (as the young Peisistratus asserts at
Od. 3.48). The sort of ‘thick description’ that the ethnographer of religious
practices in real situations has to observe or elicit is put on display—albeit
in stylized poetic form—in the social interactions we see through epic.
While it remains true that a fictional narrative is driving such theological
speculation, it would be hazardous to assume that Greeks of the Archaic
period did not invest belief in their poetic traditions, or did not
accommodate their daily lives to some approximation of the religious
imaginary therein.

GODS AND SONGS

When the elderly Phoenix wants to persuade Achilles to re-enter the fight
before Troy, he employs (among other strategies) an allegory about
personified prayers of supplication, the Litai (Il. 9.502–14). Describing
them as lame and aged daughters of Zeus, who slowly follow in the path of
Ruin, to heal its victims, the old man observes that the Litai also punish
those who refuse them (and thus implies Achilles should heed his own
supplications). This vignette of a character employing an unabashed
religious fiction offers a valuable counterpoint for the rhetoric of the Iliad
itself. Unlike Phoenix, the poet does not construct personifications of the
divine that then act according to some limited plot line, the purpose of
which is to illustrate a moral or ethical truth (how supplication works, for
example). In fact, the Iliad commands attention precisely because it is not a
didactic epic. The very act of supplication, which runs through it like a
spine, is constantly questioned, nuanced, or held in suspense until,
ironically, Achilles himself, meeting with the suppliant Priam, tells the old
man a didactic story (the tale of Niobe: Il. 24.601–20) before returning
Hektor’s corpse. Unlike allegory, Homeric poetry creates three-
dimensional, believable figures with individual characteristics, from the
quarrelling Zeus and Hera to the errant Aphrodite. Nevertheless, as early as
the sixth century BCE, allegorical interpretation was applied to Homeric
poetry, as we learn from ancient testimonia about Theagenes of Rhegion,
who read the Battle of the Gods episode in the Iliad as a clash among the
personified elements of fire, water, and air (Ford 2003: 68–76). Homer’s
status as ‘theologian’ dominated late antique discussions (Lamberton 1989).
Without adopting this influential mode, we must still acknowledge that
epic, at the macro level, sets itself up as a sort of privileged communication
between a poet and the gods, in particular between an inspired singer
(aoidos) and the Muses or Apollo. It is thus a religious, and probably
‘ritual’, act, both for composers and their audiences. Cult festivals—the
most likely setting for Homeric performances—would have reinforced the
religious framing (as with Athenian drama, performed in ritual conditions
within the precincts of Dionysos). We should take this framing conceit at
face value, but also should expand it by examining the variety of divine–
mortal communications in the poems, especially those mediated by
prophetic figures. In this way, a fuller realization can be achieved
concerning the genre’s self-positioning as narrative sent by gods.
Hesiod’s Theogony gives the most elaborate depiction of divine sources
of poetic information. The Muses visit and inspire the bard, and command
that he sing of them, their father Zeus, and all the immortals, just as the
Muses themselves eternally commemorate their divine relations (Theog. 1–
34). His role therefore borders on that of the seer, both as one who has seen
goddesses in person, and one who knows all that will be and that was
(Theog. 32). The proems of the Iliad and Odyssey represent a poet–divinity
transaction in shorter form. The narrator calls on an unnamed ‘goddess’ in
the first line of the Iliad to ‘sing the wrath of Achilles son of Peleus’, asking
specifically which of the gods joined the hero in strife with Agamemnon,
and then immediately providing (or ventriloquizing?) the answer: Apollo.
The opening thus makes a request to one god for information about another,
and the narration unwinds from this naming of divine origin. The Odyssey
poet, by contrast, names the goddess from whom he seeks information
(Mousa, Od. 1.1), asks to be told in detail (ennepe) rather than for a song,
but keeps his protagonist hero unnamed for another twenty lines. Unlike the
Iliad proem, a god’s action is mentioned in the Odyssey’s (Helios
annihilated the crew members who devoured his cattle), and the
introductory segment closes with more detail about the transaction in
progress: the Muse is additionally invoked as ‘goddess, daughter of Zeus’
and asked to tell the tale from whichever point she chooses. As in the Iliad,
here too the storyline is immediately tied directly to divinities: Athena, who
approaches Zeus on behalf of her favourite, Odysseus, now that Poseidon
has left for a feast among the Aithiopians.
Both the Iliad and Odyssey provide more details about the divine role in
epic composition. When the Iliad poet begins the extensive Catalogue of
Ships, he calls on the Olympian Muses to ‘bring to mind’ (mnesaiath’, Il.
2.492) the names and numbers that, left to his own devices and physical
capacity, he could neither recall nor narrate. It is their immortal existence,
as opposed to distant, mortal ephemerality, that forces the poet to call on
their collective memory, ‘for you are goddesses and you are present and
know all, while we hear only the fame (kleos) and know not a thing’ (Il.
2.485–6). This concise summary of epic poetics is also a theological
statement built upon on the essential and stark contrast running throughout
Greek thinking about the relative strength of gods and mortals.
 The Odyssey’s depictions of two bards—Phemios in Ithaka and
Demodokos among the Phaiakians—contain several further hints about the
key role of divinity. Penelope specifies the local poet’s repertoire as
comprising ‘works of gods and humans’ (Od. 1.338) when she attempts to
make Phemios change his tune, while her son’s spirited defence of the
poet’s current rendition (the ill-fated return of the Achaians from Troy)
mentions the gods only as the ultimate cause of the sorrowful events
narrated (Od. 1.346–52). The blind Demodokos, beloved of the Muse (Od.
8.63) is moved by her directly to sing glorious deeds of men (Od. 8.73).
When he tells the less respectable stories of gods (the adultery of Ares and
Aphrodite) the bard is conspicuously not said to be guided by the goddess
of song (Od. 8.266). Odysseus, who himself tells stories like a bard, praises
the entire race of poets as beloved of the Muse, who instructs them in the
ways of song (Od. 8.480–1); slightly later he envisions the possibility that
Apollo taught Demodokos (Od. 8.488). Towards the end of the poem,
Phemios supplicates the raging Odysseus with a veiled warning that to kill
him would bring suffering, because he sings to gods and morals, and,
though self-taught, yet draws on the ways of song that a god ‘has planted in
my mind’ (Od. 22.345–8). The intervention of Telemachus to save Phemios
prevents us from discovering whether his further argument, that he is fit to
sing to Odysseus ‘as to a god’—(Od. 22.348–9) had persuasive force. But
that the bard could venture it suggests how epic and personal praise poetry
for mortals in the form of hymns were closely related performance
registers.
The notion of divine inspiration extends beyond poets to all who show
some special talent, such as carpenters (Il. 5.60–3). Athena (as Mentor)
generalizes the principle that a divinity provides assistance at need to those
who are already in some way promising (Od. 3.25–8). But, in epic, the
other major category of inspired actors is prophets (including readers of
bird signs and other diviners), like the seer Kalchas, who guided the Greeks
to Troy and owed his craft to Apollo (Il. 1.72). One of the interesting
realistic devices of Homeric poetry is its refusal to impose one prophetic
point of view, as we have seen in the case of prayers. The contestation over
interpretation of signs often becomes the main point of a scene. For
instance, when Telemachus has vowed vengeance against the suitors and
Zeus sends as confirmation two fighting eagles, the aged seer Halitherses
warns that Odysseus is on his way home (Od. 2.157–76). The suitor
Eurymachos dismisses this on the grounds that not all bird signs are
‘fateful’ (enaisimoi). Like Agamemnon, who similarly scorns a prophet in
the beginning of the Iliad, Eurymachos eventually meets a bad end (in his
case, shot down by Odysseus). An audience is thus forced to withhold
judgement about the immediate contest of interpretations until the plot
winds up. Such scenes demonstrate that, at least in the Homeric imaginary,
one could dispute the workings of the whole semiotic system, or whether
the notion of signs (of special bird signs, or the sound of thunder, etc.) is
even operative. The challenge of Eurymachos is not to offer an alternative
explanation, but to question the very basis of interpretation.
The most famous scenario of contested interpretation occurs at Il.
12.195–250 when Hektor, leading a charge against the Achaian wall, sees
an eagle drop a snake it has just killed among the troops. His brother,
Polydamas the seer, tries to dissuade him from the attack: the Trojans might
fail, just as the snake failed to bring home its prey. Hektor lashes out (Il.
12.233), insisting that Zeus is on their side, and adding the oft-quoted line
‘one bird of omen is best—to defend the fatherland’ (Il. 12.243). Ironically,
the audience does know that the ‘will of Zeus’ tilts towards honouring
Achilles. The episode therefore presents an arresting characterization of
different ways of being: not that of the ‘religious’ versus the ‘rational’ man,
as has often been propounded, but between men voicing competing brands
of theological semiosis. Which signs one relies on are open to dispute, as is
the authority by which mortals know the will of Zeus.
Paradoxically, the Homeric audience does know the god’s will, because it
hears the voice of the poet. It is significant that the only means of mantic
communication within Homeric epic that is never questioned is that based
on direct voices from gods, unmediated by readers of signs that are exposed
to interpretive disputation. When Helenos overhears Apollo and Athena
agreeing to encourage a duel, and relays this information to his brother
Hektor, nobody questions his veracity (Il. 77.37–53). The activity of
Helenos is iconic for the activity of the Archaic poets, who present us with
the dialogues of the gods, as if directly and intimately overheard. Homer
and Hesiod frame their poems as representing what they have apprehended
from the gods, via the Muses. This carries more meaning than a literary
conceit.
 CONCLUSION

Epic balances the heroic size and uniqueness of some rituals (Nestor’s and
Achilles’) with the ordinary circumstances and rhetoric of others (prayers).
The occurrence of both types in the poems—the ‘heroic’ but also the
‘demotic’—should not be taken as an awkward compromise. Rather, we
might understand this double aspect as metonymic for the complementary
blending of elements that occurs naturally in any set of religious practices
and beliefs, ancient or modern. Greek epic is neither a transparent window
onto Archaic beliefs, nor a fascinating, unreal entertainment. Overall, if we
follow the definition of the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, ‘epic’ religion is
itself a valid variety of religion: a ‘system of symbols which acts to
establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in
men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and
clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods
and motivations seem uniquely realistic’ (Geertz 1966: 4).

SUGGESTED READING
On religion in Homer, Burkert 1985: esp. 119–89, still provides a good
starting point. Kearns 2004 offers an overview of more recent work. Gould
1985 contextualizes poetic depictions within a wider analysis of Greek
practices as does Price 1999: esp. 11–46. Nagy 1999 is a detailed study of
heroes in cult and poetry. Burgess 2001 provides a full analysis of the
Cyclic epics. Crotty 1994 studies the poetics of supplication ritual in epic.
Muellner 1976 is an essential semantic analysis of the workings of Homeric
‘prayer’. Segal 1994 discusses bardic inspiration, as does, more broadly,
Murray 1996. On Hesiod’s religious thought, see Strauss Clay 2003.

REFERENCES
Asheri, D., Lloyd, A. and Corcella, A. eds. 2007. A Commentary on Herodotus, Books 1–4. Oxford.
Burgess, J. S. 2001. The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle. Baltimore, MD.
Burkert, W. 1985. Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, trans. J. Raffan. Oxford.
Crotty, K. 1994. The Poetics of Supplication: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Ithaca, NY.
Day, J. 2010. Archaic Greek Epigram and Dedication: Representation and Reperformance.
Cambridge.
Edwards, M. W. 1992. ‘Homer and Oral Tradition: The Type-Scene’, Oral Tradition 7: 284–330.
Ford, A. 2003. The Origins of Criticism: Literary Culture and Poetic Theory in Classical Greece.
Princeton, NJ.
Frame, D. 2009. Hippota Nestor. Washington, DC.
Gartziou-Tatti, A. 1990. ‘L’oracle de Dodone. Mythe et rituel’, Kernos 3: 175–84
Geertz, C. 1966. ‘Religion as a Cultural System’, in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of
Religion, ed. M. Banton, 1–46. London.
Hiltebeitel, A. 1990. The Ritual of Battle: Krishna in the Mahābhārata. Albany, NY.
Kearns, E. 2004. ‘The Gods in the Homeric Epics’, in The Cambridge Companion to Homer, ed. R.
Fowler, 59–73. Cambridge.
Kitts, M. 2001. ‘Why Homeric Heroes Don’t Eat Quiche or the Perils of Kukeon’, Literature and
Theology 15: 307–25
Kitts, M. 2005. Sanctified Violence in Homeric Society: Oath-Making Rituals in the Iliad.
Cambridge.
Lamberton, R. 1989. Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the
Epic Tradition. Berkeley, CA.
Lattimore, R. 2011. The Iliad of Homer: New Introduction and Notes by Richard Martin. Chicago.
MacKillop, J. 2006. Myths and Legends of the Celts. London.
Martin, R. P. 1983. Healing, Sacrifice and Battle: Amechania and Related Concepts in Early Greek
Poetry. Innsbruck.
Morrison, J. V. 1991. ‘The Function and Context of Homeric Prayers: A Narrative Perspective’,
Hermes 119: 145–57.
Muellner, L. C. 1976. The Meaning of Homeric EYXOMAI through its Formulas. Innsbruck.
Murray, P. 1996. ‘Poetic Inspiration in Early Greece’, JHS 101: 87–100.
Nagy, G. 1999. The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (2nd edn).
Baltimore, MD.
Nagy, G. 2012. Homer the Preclassic. Berkeley, CA.
Segal, C. 1994. Singers, Heroes, and Gods in the Odyssey. Ithaca, NY.
Stocker, S. and Davis, J. 2004. ‘Animal Sacrifice, Archives, and Feasting at the Palace of Nestor’,
Hesperia 73: 179–95.
Strauss Clay, J. 2003. Hesiod’s Cosmos. Cambridge.
Watkins, C. 1978. ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Grains’, TAPhS 122: 9–17.
West, M. L. 2003. Greek Epic Fragments. Cambridge, MA.
 CHAPTER 12

ART AND IMAGERY

TANJA S. SCHEER*

IN the Temple of Athena at Troy stood the image of the goddess. So says
Homer’s Iliad in an impressive episode (6.297). This image is visited by the
Trojan women, under the leadership of Queen Hekabe and the priestess
Theano, and receives a precious gift. They lay a splendid garment ‘on her
knees’ and beg the statue for deliverance from the perils of war, but the
goddess ‘nods refusal’. The image of Athena at Troy is obviously a statue
of anthropomorphic form, although this is not stated. Access to the image,
and therefore its visibility, is restricted: the priestess keeps the key to the
temple, and controls access.
To what extent did the women (and naturally also the men) of Classical
Athens feel themselves directly addressed when they heard this tale—for
instance, on the occasion of the rhapsodes’ performance at the Great
Panathenaia (Pl. Ion 530b; cf. Sourvinou-Inwood 2011: 284–307)? Did it
seem to them representative of their own experience of the depiction of the
divine in the context of private and civic space? To what degree did the
scenario correspond to the expectations and ritual customs that
accompanied the depiction of the divine in contemporary Athens (cf.
Sourvinou-Inwood 2011: 307–11, see also, in this volume, Platt, Chapter
33)? Which forms of this visualization were familiar to an Athenian
audience from their own environment (Gaifman 2006)? Did the Trojan
women’s dealings with the image of the goddess in the temple strike the
Athenians as a useful way of obtaining their request? Was the presence of
the divine a prerequisite for the granting of their plea (for the different
theories regarding religious perception cf. Eich 2011: 56–92)?
My remarks will focus on Athens as a particularly important example.
The extant sources do not suggest that the citizens of the other Greek poleis
like Tegea, Corinth, or Syracuse acted differently in dealing with the images
of the gods.

DIVINE IMAGES IN THE OIKOS AND IN

PUBLIC SPACE

The form of the gods was imparted to the Athenians in word and image
from their childhood: even wet nurses, according to Plato in the fourth
century BCE, would tell stories and myths to children (Laws 887d). With the
acquisition of language came the knowledge of traditional tales, whose
protagonists were gods and heroes. These tales could also be absorbed
visually in many Athenian households: inside the home, Athenians could
have their first encounters with images of the gods. The appearance and
deeds of the gods were represented on many thousands of Attic vases, from
c.650 BCE in black figure and from 530/25 BCE mostly in red figure. On
wine and water vessels, drinking cups, and various containers for household
supplies, myths and images of the gods came into the Athenian home
(Gaifman 2006: 264–6; Platt 2011: 93–6). The vase painters confirmed
what was made clear in the mythic tales: the gods, in their visible forms,
were not restricted to natural human shapes. Hermes, for example, was
depicted in vase paintings not only as a handsome young man, as in
Homeric epic, but in the shape of a herm, a pillar whose only
anthropomorphic elements were the head of a bearded man with an Archaic
hairstyle and a phallus (Siebert 1990). But the meaning of vase paintings as
visualizations of the divine in private space can be reconstructed only with
difficulty. The literary sources scarcely mention this sort of painting, so our
knowledge of the nature and manner of its reception must rest on conjecture
(for the different interpretations cf. Schmidt and Stähli 2012).
It is hard to say to what extent children came into contact with visual
representations of the gods in the context of the domestic family cult. The
‘ancestral gods’ of a family were evidently conceived of as tangible and
concrete—otherwise it is hard to explain why the Athenian Leokrates, in
the fourth century BCE, incurred the reproach of having betrayed his
fatherland because he left Athens after the Battle of Chaironeia and had his
household gods sent on to Megara (Lycurg, Leoc. 25; Scheer 2000: 226–7).
But the children of the Athenians may certainly have learned from family
rituals that pictorial or even anthropomorphic representations of the gods
were not absolutely necessary for cultic worship. Hestia, for instance, was
worshipped at the hearth without an image, and Zeus Ktesios, who guarded
household property, may have been embodied only by a bulbous
earthenware vessel (Ath. 11.473b; Parker 2005: 19; Gaifman 2012: 126).
The first three-dimensional images of the gods encountered by Athenian
citizens in public spaces probably did not represent the goddess Athena.
Instead, it was Hermes who stood before the entrances of houses (Ar. Plut.
1153) and at street corners, in the partly human representation of the herm.
The Athenians felt the four-sided Hermes pillars to be particularly typical of
their city (Thuc. 6.27; Gaifman 2012: 66).
The great number of the herms, as well as their proximity to houses and
the free access to them, may have contributed to their popularity, which is
also reflected in their occurrence in vase paintings (see, in this volume,
Dillon, Chapter 17). Passers-by and people on their way home are shown in
confidential talk or physical contact with herms, whose age can evidently
even be adapted to the people facing them (Ar. Nub. 1479–81; Zanker 1965:
95; Siebert 1990: no. 105, 141; similarly also Steiner 2001: 134). The
Athenians’ indignation at the mutilation of the herms during the
Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 6.27; cf. Lys. 6.11; Osborne 1985; Parker 1996:
80–2; Scheer 2000: 234–9) is also attributable to the fairly close connection
that every individual had established from childhood with this sort of statue.
The prevalence of herms was one indication of how strongly the space of
the city was marked by depictions of the divine. Anyone going out of his
house saw a herm in front of him, and anyone coming overland to Athens
was accompanied by herms that the tyrant Hipparchos is supposed to have
had erected between the Attic demes and the agora in the sixth century BCE
(Pl. Hipparch. 228c–229a; Rückert 1998: 57–8; Crawley Quinn 2007: 93–
5). And the herm was only one of a dense net of images of various gods that
covered the city. The Athenians’ access to images of Athena, in comparison
to the herms, was quite restricted: as in epic Troy, the statues of the city’s
goddess were to be found especially on the Acropolis and within
sanctuaries. But from the fifth century BCE onwards, anyone rounding Cape
Sounion in a ship likewise saw the spearpoint of the monumental bronze
statue of Athena on the Acropolis glinting in the sun (Paus. 1.28.2), a sight
that must also have attracted the glance of everyone who looked upwards in
the city itself (Gill 2001: 270). The designation of this statue as ‘Athena
Promachos’ is first attested much later, in the fourth century CE (Schol.
Dem. 22.13). The detail of the shining spearpoint, however, evoked the
statue of Athena, as well as associations with the totality of other images of
Athena in the city and on the Acropolis: the goddess, visible to all,
dominated the city.
On the occasion of public festivals, the ubiquity of depictions of the
various gods in public spaces was impressed upon all residents of the
Athenian polis. In the Panathenaic procession, for example, young girls
acting as kanephorai (basket bearers) and young men of military age on
horseback escorted the peplos for Athena (Neils 1996a: 185; Parker 2005:
263–4; Connelly 2007: 33–9). Just as at Troy, the goddess of the city
received a garment as a gift.
The Panathenaic Way led the girls and youths past the image of Athena
in the Temple of Hephaistos, and they encountered both the herms in the
agora (Ath. 4.167; Paus. 1.15.1; Rückert 1998: 74, 88) and the statue of
Hermes Propylaios on the ascent of the Acropolis (Paus. 1.22.8; Rückert
1998: 65). On the Acropolis they were greeted by the colossal, 9 metre-high
bronze statue of Athena Promachos, whose spearpoint they had, until then,
perhaps seen only from below. Here, innumerable private and public votive
offerings—votive reliefs, statues, statuettes, painted clay tablets, and so on
—recalled the form of Athena and other gods (Keesling 2003; and generally
on the meaning of the votive offerings, Kindt 2012: 64–7). At the same
time, the rear tympanum of the Parthenon was visible, evoking the image of
Athena and her deeds for the city. During the festival of the goddess, the
doors of the temples stood open and allowed the temple images on the
Acropolis to be seen—these too differing greatly from one another in shape,
size, material, and age. In contrast to the situation in mythical Troy, there
stood on the Athenian Acropolis not one image of the goddess, but many.

CONCRETE CONTEXTS OF
VISUALIZATION: THE ATHENA POLIAS,
THE PALLADION, AND THE ATHENA
PARTHENOS

From this multiplicity, two statues of the civic goddess particularly stood
out: the so-called Athena Polias and the Athena in the Parthenon. These two
famous images make clear the methodological difficulties of reconstructing
the contexts, the perception, and finally the religious meaning of divine
images in Athens, and indeed in Greek culture as a whole. The statues
themselves—and this is true of the overwhelming majority of divine images
in Greece—have not survived. The literary references prove to be
fragmentary, ambiguous, and chronologically late.
Pausanias describes the Athena Polias as the holiest object of the
Athenians (Paus. 1.26.6). But every detail of the image’s context turns out
to be controversial, including its appearance, its origin, and its location on
the Acropolis. The statue apparently was made of olive wood (Schol. Dem.
22.13). Its size is unclear (for discussion, see Herington 1955; Romano
1980: 47; Kroll 1982; Mansfield 1985: 135–88). Nor is it even certain if the
goddess was depicted sitting or standing. Accordingly, it cannot be
determined if other images of Athena on the Acropolis, either ‘seated’
terracotta statuettes or ‘standing’ marble statues, may have referenced this
image of Athena (cf. Demargne 1984: nos 15–25; Ridgway 1992: 122). The
statue wore clothes and jewellery (Kroll 1982: 68). In the fifth century BCE
it seems to have held an owl in one hand and an offering bowl in the other
(Ridgway 1992: 120–1; Lapatin 2001: 78). It is uncertain, however, when
these attributes were added.
The stories of its origin also indicate that the aesthetic qualities of this
image were not very important: it is not attributed to a sculptor. On the
contrary, it was the lack of a human creator that emphasized the importance
of the statue. But even the ancient sources disagree on its provenance: it is
said to have been erected by the Athenian kings Erichthonios (Apollod.
Bibl. 3.14.6) or Kekrops (Euseb. Praep. evang. 10.9.22). Pausanias even
reported that the statue had fallen from the sky in ancient times (Paus.
1.26.6). It is probable that, in the fifth/fourth century BCE, it was, in fact,
already a very old wooden image, which was evacuated to the Athenians’
ships during the Persian Wars (Scheer 2000: 215–18). But this is not
explicitly stated in the sources. The location of this image cannot be
completely reconstructed either. At the end of the fifth century BCE, the
statue stood in what is now known as the Erechtheion, which served as
successor to the old Temple of Athena, that was destroyed or at least
severely damaged in the Persian Wars. It is not certain where it was stored
in the over fifty years between the Persian invasion and the completion of
the Erechtheion in the last quarter of the fifth century BCE (on the
topographical uncertainties, see Ridgway 1992: 124; Harris 1996: 202–4).
The religious contextualization of this image is difficult. It certainly
seems that this statue was the recipient of the peplos, but the reconstruction
of this ritual devotion to the statue raises questions. It is not clear from the
sources whether the ceremonial gift of a garment was given only every four
years at the Great Panathenaia (Parker 2005: 265) or also in the intervening
years, on the occasion of the Lesser Panathenaia (Sourvinou-Inwood 2011:
267). Indications that the peplos for Athena was presented in the
Panathenaic procession as the sail of a ship have reinforced the suspicion
that it was too large for the ancient—and hence small—wooden statue.
Therefore, the latter could not have been clothed in the Panathenaic peplos,
but would have required another, smaller garment (Mansfield 1985: 43–5;
Barber 1992: 113–14). Only this smaller peplos, then, would have been
woven by the Athenian women, while paid male artisans must have made
the true Panathenaic peplos (Mansfield 1985: 54). But the size of the statue
is also unknown; nor is the size of the wheeled ship certain. Therefore, an
oversized peplos for the statue of the goddess remains hypothetical (for
discussion, see also Reuthner 2006: 322).
Finally, it is unclear whether the image of Athena Polias really wore the
Panathenaic peplos at all, or whether the garment was, as in the Homeric
phrase, merely ‘laid on its knees’ (Hom. Il. 6.273). In any case, a robing of
the image did not take place immediately, but is conceivable only within the
framework of another festival, the Plynteria, which took place ten months
after the Panathenaia (Parke 1977: 38–41; Neils 1996a: 185; cautiously
Romano 1980: 51). This second ritual context, in which the old wooden
image of Athena on the Acropolis played a role, also gives an example of
the difficulties caused by the material. By tradition, women from the family
of the Praxiergidai were responsible for carrying out the ritual (IG I3 7;
Romano 1980: 47–9; Neils 1996a: 185). Once a year the Polias was taken
from its base, clothed and cleaned. The day of the Plynteria was considered
a day of bad omen, probably because the image of the goddess was not in
its place (Xen. Hell. 1.4.12; Plut. Alc. 34.1; Scheer 2000: 59). To the
question of whether the goddess wore only a cleaned dress or a new one,
the sources give as little answer as to the broader question of whether this
garment was the actual Panathenaic peplos (Sourvinou-Inwood 2011: 150 n.
51, 158). Philochoros (FGrH 328 F64b from the third century BCE) and
inscriptions from the second century BCE (IG II2 1006.11–12; IG II2
1008.9–10; IG II2 1011.10–11) report the procession of an image of Athena
to Phaleron on the sea, with the participation of the ephebes. Whether this
information relates to the image of Athena Polias is controversial: the
procession is either connected with above-mentioned Plynteria for Athena
Polias (Sourvinou-Inwood 2011: 159; probably so, according to Parker
2005: 478, while Romano 1980: 49–50 is sceptical) or, according to another
hypothesis, this ritual was for the Athenian Palladion (Mansfield 1985:
424–33; Robertson 1996b: 33, 389–91). This brings up another image of
Athena, whose possession was apparently claimed by the Athenians:
Athenian judges met in cases of accidental manslaughter ‘epi Palladio’, at
the Palladion (Arist. (Ath. Pol.) 57.3; Paus. 1.28.8; Ael. VH 5.15). Beyond
its own venerable and precious images of Athena on the Acropolis, the city
of Athens wished apparently to possess also, in the Palladion, the most
famous image of Athena in Greek history (Demargne 1984: nos 67–117;
Sourvinou-Inwood 2011: 246–62). Such a claim made the connection with
Troy direct: the Palladion—as the Epic Cycle states (Iliupersis fr. 1 Allen =
Dionysios Hal., Ant. 1.68, 2–69; Bettinetti 2001: 71–3)—is said to have
been a gift from Zeus to the Trojans, and had guaranteed the safety of Troy
for ages. Originally it had fallen from heaven, as the Athena Polias had
supposedly fallen to the Athenian Acropolis. Only after Odysseus and
Diomedes stole the Palladion could Troy be conquered. Attic vase paintings
of the fifth century BCE attest to knowledge of the Palladion myths in
Classical Athens (Platt 2011: 93–5; Sourvinou-Inwood 2011: 241). But
making the presence of this divine image believable in Athens—it was also
claimed by cities such as Argos, Sparta, and later Rome (Paus. 2.23.5;
Faraone 1992: 7; Scheer 2000: 91)—required substantial adjustments in the
mythological tradition: either the Athenians had received the Palladion
already in Troy, or, on their way home from Troy, Diomedes and his
Argives accidentally landed on the coast of Attica, considered it enemy
territory, and attacked it. In defending his country, the Athenian king
Damophon forcibly took the Palladion from the Argives (Schol. Dem.
23.71; Paus. 1.28.9; Bettinetti 2001: 74).
In any case, this image did not stand on the Acropolis. The location of
the ‘epi Palladio’ law court has yet to be identified; the still uncertainly
located ‘Temple on the Ilissos’ (Krumme 1993: 213–27; Robertson 1996b:
392–408) has been proposed as a possible site for the Palladion. It is
unclear whether, when, and how an Athenian Palladion was made
accessible to the citizens, whether it was already an object in that
procession of the ephebes to Phaleron in Classical times, and whether it
received other cultic honours and was cared for by special cultic personnel
(Sourvinou-Inwood 2011: 246). In this case, late literary sources connect
Athens with a foreign divine image with the potential to overshadow the
locally most important local depiction of the city goddess, the image of
Athena Polias. But this did not happen. It cannot be ruled out that the claim
to the Trojan Palladion was mostly a matter of mythographical construction
and was not really reflected in the religious life of Classical Athens.
In its immediate neighbourhood another divine image competed with the
old wooden statue of the Polias: the gold and ivory Athena of Pheidias, the
most materially precious divine image in Athens and perhaps the most
impressive of all representations of Athena. This statue does not survive
either, but on the basis of copies and coin images an idea of its appearance
can be reconstructed (Demargne 1984: nos 20–2; Nick 2002: 177–205). The
gold and ivory colossus was 12 metres high (Plin. HN 36–18; Paus. 1.24.5–
7; Lapatin 2001: 62–78). At least forty talents of gold, in the form of
removable gold plates, were used for the dress of the goddess (Thuc, 2.13.5;
Lapatin 2001: 64), and her flesh consisted of ivory over a wooden core. The
goddess was represented standing with her weapons, with a statue of Nike
in her hand and a shield set on the ground beside her. The relief on the
shield referred once again to Athenian prehistory, showing Theseus, king of
Attica, in heroic times, defeating the Amazons who were said to have
attached Athens (Lapatin 2001: 66, with references). This monumental
image also stood on the Acropolis, in the Parthenon. The base of the statue
has survived, and thus its location is known. A pool of water in front of the
statue created a constant humidity (Paus. 5.11.10) that helped protect the
delicate material and reflected the sheen of the gold (Steiner 2001: 102).
The Athena in the Parthenon differed from the old image of the Polias
not only in appearance, but also in origin. While the provenance of the
wooden image is lost in the mists of history, the divine images of the fifth
century BCE came into being through the involvement of the citizens. The
gold and ivory image in the Parthenon was probably financed by order of
the Athenian assembly as a gift of thanks to the goddess for victory in the
Persian Wars. Building accounts show expenditures for production of the
statue in the years 447–438 (IG I3 436–51, 453–60; Lapatin 2001: 64). This
image was conspicuous for its tremendous material value and prompted the
suspicion that there had been financial irregularities in its manufacture:
sources suggest that the sculptor Pheidias was accused of embezzling ivory
during the making of the image (Schol. Ar. Pax 605; FGrH III B, 328 F 121
(Philochoros); cf. Plut. Per. 31.2–3; Platt 2011: 108–9).

COMPETITION AMONG IMAGES AND

HIERARCHIES OF MEANING

While the Trojan women of the epic-mythological tale entered a temple in

which there was a single image of Athena, the Athenians of Classical times
were confronted with a wealth of pictorial representations, including the
Athena Nike and the Athena ‘Lemnia’, among the other important images
of Athena on the Acropolis. Did the Athenians develop criteria for ranking
the plethora of representations around them? Are these criteria recognizable
in the terminology of the literary sources? How important was the aesthetic
success of the images’ execution? In short, which image of Athena on the
Acropolis was the most important for the women and men of Athens—the
Parthenos, glittering with gold, or the wooden statue in the Erechtheion?
There can be no simple answer to this question. Programmatic or even
normative statements concerning the history of the imagery, the hierarchy
of images, or ideas about the relationship of gods and images are largely
absent from the written sources.
Perfectly anthropomorphic form was not a decisive criterion for the
ranking of a divine image in a ‘hierarchy of images’. Only rarely do the
ancient sources support the long-held modern theory (Winckelmann 1764:
5–6; cf. Gaifman 2012: 18–28; and, in this volume, Gaifman, Chapter 5)
that representation of gods in Greece developed linearly from ‘aniconic’
images of early times to anthropomorphic imagery in the Classical and
Hellenistic worlds. The kernel of this notion is first found in a passage of
Pausanias (7.22.4): ‘In earlier times, unworked stones were also worshipped
as divine statues by all the Greeks.’ More recent scholarship (Donohue
1987: e.g. 16–17, 186–7, 227–9; Gaifman 2012: 10) has emphasized how
fully anthropomorphic images, satisfying the highest artistic standards,
existed alongside aniconic representations of the divine, in both the
Classical as well as in the Hellenistic periods. Dissemination of
anthropomorphic images of gods brought with it no formal commitment to
a (fully) anthropomorphic form: herms are attested as a particularly popular
form of imagery in Athens only from the sixth century BCE, not as primitive
survivals, but rather as a new form of representation (Steiner 2001: 82). In
many cults, direct representation of the divine seems to have been
unnecessary to the very end (Gaifman 2012: 32).
Instead, the assignment of importance to an image probably depended on
perspective: the artistically modest execution of certain representations—
and in this regard the Athena Polias as well as the Palladion is evidence—
could be more than offset by the attribution of a miraculous and prestigious
past: in the context of the construction of a civic past, the category of ‘age’
moves to the foreground (cf. also Aesch. T 114 Radt = Porph. Abst. 2.18).
Particular prestige can be attached to individual visualizations if they have a
connection with the mythological narratives of early Greek history, and can
serve as visible evidence for the early period of their city and its close
connection to the divine (Eich 2011: 340). This does not mean, however,
that representations created from precious materials had only a decorative
significance. This conclusion has often been drawn by modern scholarship,
especially in regard to the gold and ivory image of Athena in the Parthenon,
to which there has been a tendency to deny cultic significance (see e.g.
Herington 1955; cf. Scheer 2000: 4–5, with references; Lapatin 2001: 78).
The source information on this statue actually refers most often to its
material, rather than describing cultic rituals (Ar. Av. 667–70; Eq. 1169–70).
But this is not surprising, in view of its unusual size and extravagant
materials. Indeed, the scrupulous attitude towards divine images and their
role in public exchange among citizens—an attitude not primarily
conditioned by aesthetic pleasure—becomes particularly clear in the case of
this statue. Plutarch (Per. 31.4) tells the anecdote that Pheidias was accused
especially because he had secretly depicted himself and Perikles in the
Amazon battle reliefs on the shield of the Athena statue. Regardless of this
story’s historicity, it shows, on the one hand, that important divine images
were examined in detail, and, on the other, that civic images of the gods
were depictions over whose creation the community wished to exercise
control. The statue of Athena in the Parthenon was not to be used as an
opportunity for individuals to enrol themselves, literally or figuratively, in
the city’s history.
Ancient sources, such as Pausanias, mostly took for granted the presence
of multiple three-dimensional representations of the same deity in a single
sanctuary or even in a single temple (e.g. Paus. 2.17.3; Scheer 2000: 132–
6). However, this became a problem in modern times, when scholars began
to posit a fundamental qualitative difference between ‘cult image’ and
‘votive offering’ among divine images (Scheer 2000: 4–5, with references;
Mylonopoulos 2010b: 4–6). In this modern interpretation, the images of
Athena on the Acropolis would be divided into cult images on the one hand
—that is, images that had their own epithets, stood in a central position in a
temple, had their own altar and priest—and votive offerings on the other,
which were regarded ‘only’ as works of art. Accordingly, the wooden
Athena Polias and the image of Athena in the Temple of Nike, for example,
functioned as cult images, whereas the monumental bronze statue of the
Promachos and the great gold and ivory image in the Parthenon would have
belonged to the lesser category. Accordingly—so goes the argument—the
statue in the Parthenon would be a votive offering of no real religious
significance, a mere work of art, a representation of the city of Athens, a
display of power to the allies, even just a repository for gold in the
framework of city finances (cf. the late effect of this thesis in Deacy 2008:
111). The Parthenon itself, by this chain of argument, turns out to be a
‘treasury’, to which the function of a temple is denied (cf. e.g. Preißhofen
1984: 15–17).
For the modern term ‘cult image’, as defined by the criteria listed above,
there is no analogous expression in Greek. The ancient terminology in the
literary sources for depictions of the divine can vary according to genre and
author (Scheer 2000: 33–4). A passage in Thucydides (2.13.3–4) was
obviously a major impetus for the ‘cult image versus votive offering’ thesis:
at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, Perikles considers the
possibility that the gold of the Parthenos could be used for the public good
in the most pressing necessity of war (Scheer 2000: 168). At a time of
particularly vital need, the polis evidently believed itself authorized to
borrow from the property of the gods (Scheer 2000: 164–5). But the temple
images of Athena do not seem to have been directly subject to such
borrowing. Thus, the Athena Parthenos was not merely a repository of gold
that was arbitrarily available to the city: in an emergency the removable
ornaments of the old wooden statues could also be subject to loans. On the
whole, however, the institutions of the polis—and, with them, the totality of
the citizens—saw the protection of the divine images as an urgent task: the
true value of the images lay not in their material but in their religious
powers (Gordon 1979: 24).
Even the alleged ritual deficits of the Athena Parthenos are a matter of
perspective: for technical reasons, certain rituals, such as bathing, clothing,
or carrying the statue in a procession, could not be performed on the gold
and ivory colossus. In this case, the religious images proved to have
complementary functions (Lapatin 2001: 78) without necessarily falling
into hierarchies. If the citizens of Athens developed criteria for establishing
a hierarchy of existing depictions of the divine within the city, these may
not have been uniform but dependent on historical period, context, and
recipients. A separation into ‘cult images’ and mere ‘votive offerings’ was
hardly prominent among them. For example, in general, the Athena
Parthenos was seen wholly as an object of ritual attention: the inventories of
the fourth century BCE attest to a table for offerings, and thus to ritual
activity, in the cella (IG II2 1421.112; Harris 1996: 93; Scheer 2000: 139–
43; Graf 2001: 230; Platt 2011: 91). However, normally, the temple images
were donated as a gift to the deity—they were votive offerings. This
connected the Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon with the other images of
Athena on the Acropolis. A divine origin—mentioned for the Athena Polias
by Pausanias—was the exception for Greek divine images (Graf 1979: 33–
41; Scheer 2000: 83–4). But that an especially sacred (and not merely
historic) quality arose from the ascription of such an origin (so Bettinetti
2011: 7–10), and that such an origin was ascribed to the images in Classical
times, cannot be generalized.

VISUALIZATION AND THE PRESENCE OF

THE DIVINE

Divine images were placed in sanctuaries as gifts to the deity, and it was
believed that the gods took pleasure in them. This was the original meaning
of the term agalma, ‘showpiece, that which gives joy’ (Burkert 1985: 91;
Scheer 2000: 33; Kindt 2012: 45). If the importance of Greek divine images
varies according to context, there is also a notable lack of normative texts
on the question of how the Athenians, and all the Greeks, imagined the
relation of the gods to their depictions generally. Did they consider the
images as mere aides-memoires, as artistically valuable furnishings of the
sanctuaries, or as the gods themselves, who were visible, tangible in space,
and possibly accessible through them? The surviving statues do not allow
direct conclusions about Greek concepts of identity. At least in public
contexts, and beyond the act of solemn installation (hidrysis), no use seems
to have been made of the possibility of magically animating temple images
and thus of artificially establishing an identity for the divinity and image
(Hock 1905: 48; Scheer 2000: 111–15; Steiner 2001: 115–18, too
optimistically). That statues supposed to have fallen from heaven were
thought from the outset to be animated (so Faraone 1992: 5), or even, as in
the ancient Near East, that magical–religious consecration was a
requirement for a ‘cult image’ is not a legitimate generalization.
Since early times—and this is already evident in the epic context—
statues could certainly be addressed with the name of the deity represented
(Gaifman 2012: 31), or spoken of as ‘the goddess’ (Romano 1980: 257).
Occasionally, there is mention of miracles ascribed to divine images, such
as speech, movement, trembling, sweating, and bleeding (Hdt. 7.140; Graf
2001: 238; Steiner 2001: 105). After the theft of a temple statue, it was said
that the sanctuary in question ‘was abandoned by the goddess’ (Paus.
9.33.6). Some elements of prayer and sacrifice, as described in the literary
sources, also suggest that the granting of a prayer was considered
particularly likely in the presence of the image, and that people sought
closeness to the images through sight or touch (Scheer 2000: 66–77; Steiner
2001: 112–13). But ritual acts such as the washing, clothing, and feeding of
certain statues were always ambiguous (Scheer 2000: 54–66; Graf 2001:
230–1): it is not clear from the sources whether Athenian rituals were
applied directly to a deity thought identical with the image of the Polias or
were directed to an invisible goddess ‘behind’ or beside it (Scheer 2000:
97). People were aware, however, of the images’ earthly origin. Apart from
the rare cases of ‘images fallen from the sky’, the statues were traced back
to human commissioners and creators (Scheer 2000: 103–8). If an important
image of the god was lost, this was an unfavourable sign, but did not
necessarily mean that the god had given up the affected city: in the cult
context, images of the god were replaceable (Scheer 2010: 235–8). They
possessed uniqueness only as works of art or as symbols of civic cultural
memory (Scheer 2000: 269; Eich 2011: 356–7).
These ambiguities cannot be placed in any chronologically linear
development, in the sense that the Athenians believed in early Archaic
times that their Athena Polias was the goddess herself; later, at the end of
the fifth century BCE, distanced themselves from such representations, and,
finally, in the Hellenistic period, classified the city’s divine images as mere
works of art under the influence of philosophically conditioned
‘enlightenment’ (cf. the criticism of Graf 2001: 226; see also Neer 2010:
185–8). Worship and criticism of the images seem rather to have been
parallel phenomena from the beginning. Xenophanes of Colophon provoked
his contemporaries in the sixth century BCE with the statement that if cattle
were to create images of gods, they would probably have the shape of cattle
(DK B 14; B 15), while Heraklitos of Ephesos compared the prayers of his
fellow citizens before divine images to a conversation with empty houses
(DK F 5; Scheer 2000: 121; Steiner 2001: 121–2). And a class-specific
analysis of these contradictions—distinguishing between the ‘educated’,
who would have seen the images only as works of art, and the ‘simple folk’,
who would have identified them with the deities themselves—cannot be
verified from the sources (Scheer 2000: 35–43; Graf 2001: 229).
 A universal idea of a lasting unity between god and image cannot be
proved for Greek culture. The mythological tales emphasized the mobility
of the gods. These gods were depicted rather as visitors whose advent made
the threshold of their sanctuary tremble and whose presence in the
sanctuary was not taken for granted (cf. Callim. Hymn 2.1–3; Scheer 2000:
115–18). But, at the same time, they were not entirely ‘absent’: in the end, it
had to be possible for the devotee to summon the deity successfully in order
to obtain a hearing. Divine images were necessary neither for prayers nor
for offerings. The lasting proliferation of three-dimensional depictions of
the divine in the sanctuaries, however, indicates that the images fostered
promising conditions for successful sacrifice and prayer, and were regarded
as helpful in creating the necessary divine presence. The term hedos, which
could equally have the general meaning of ‘seat’ and indicate a divine
image, is instructive in this regard (Scheer 2000: 120; Graf 2001: 229). The
literary sources leave enough room at least for concepts of the temporary
presence of the gods in or near their images. Visualizations can be
understood as an attempt to bridge the gap towards the realm of the divine
(Vernant 1991: 153), as ‘efficient tools for human communication with the
divine sphere’ (Pirenne-Delforge 2010: 122). Another theory has assumed
that divine images had a specific function as vessels: in the images, divinity
is present for human nature in an endurable way (Steiner 2001: 87–9).
However, it cannot be ascertained from the sources that this quality can be
ascribed only to old xoana, in contrast to artistically elaborated statues that
were seen as ‘dead things formed by human labour’ (Steiner 2001: 104): an
idea that, once again, makes the Athena Parthenos seem to be of less cultic
value than the Polias. It was probably left to the individual worshippers to
decide; they could understand the image of Athena on the Acropolis as a
certain kind of epiphany of the divine (Platt 2011: 122) or believe that the
goddess actually lived in her images (Steiner 2001: 88). They could take
divine images and sanctuaries as potential seats of the divinity (Scheer
2000: 123–5), or assume that depictions of the gods were markings in the
space in which, and near which, one could imagine the gods as temporarily
present (Gaifman 2012: 34). In general, the depictions in the sanctuaries
were seen as an aid by which one hoped to be able to evoke the godlike
presence, which was not taken for granted but was necessary to the success
of a request. The radiance of the Parthenos and the simple form of the
Athena Polias, ennobled by venerable age, worked together towards the
Athenians’ goal of successfully inviting the invisible goddess Athena to
their city’s Acropolis. The difficulties of trying to work out a unified
conceptualization of the relationship between gods and their images in
Greek culture are probably due to more than the patchiness of the sources.
Rather, the inconsistencies and flaws in the sources are signs that there was
no definite belief that would have been required of viewers and worshippers
in all poleis or in every period of Greek history.
For the inhabitants of Athens there was, at no time, a personal obligation
to worship images as gods. The ambivalence of the ritual opened a certain
freedom of thought—naturally not about the existence of the gods per se,
but about the relationship between the gods and the images. Some
Athenians may have enjoyed the image of Athena in the Parthenon as an
outstanding work of art. Some others probably considered the ancient
wooden statue of the Polias important merely as an object affirming
Athens’ ancient traditions. Yet other citizens may have preferred to address
their personal requests, prayers, and libations to the herms before the doors
of their houses, and believed that they were then in the presence of the god.
All of them were free to do so. If, however, they actively and with evil
intent violated the pictorial property of the gods, for example, by removing
votive offerings or mutilating the herms, this religious freedom came to an
end. Then, at least, it became clear that, for their fellow citizens, these
divine images were not just skilfully made aides-memoires or illustrations
of mythological tales. No one was required to worship the images, but those
who damaged or stole them were punished with death (cf. Ael. VH 5.16;
Scheer 2000: 152–61).
On the whole, the Athenians of the Classical and of the Hellenistic era
believed they were part of a long tradition when they brought the
Panathenaic peplos to the image of Athena Polias: in the mythical Temple
of Troy something similar is said to have happened. That the goddess could
still refuse to grant her presence or could nod her refusal was another
matter.

SUGGESTED READING
In recent years, several monographs have been devoted to the relation of
gods and images in Greek religion, with varying emphases. Scheer 2000
stresses the function of images as a means of bringing about the temporary
presence of the divine, Steiner 2001 sees the images primarily as vessels
which both hide and make visible the divine within them, and Platt 2011
makes central the epiphany as an opportunity for visualization. Eich 2011,
on the other hand, has stressed the historic function of divine images as a
‘storehouse of collective memories’. Gaifman 2012 has treated in detail the
role of aniconic cult objects in Greece.

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Ancient Athens, ed. J. Neils, 103–117. Princeton, NJ.
Bettinetti, S. 2001. La statua di culto in pratica rituale greca. Bari.
Burkert, W. 1985 [1977]. Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, trans. J. Raffan. Oxford.
Connelly, J. B. 2007. Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece. Princeton, NJ.
Crawley Quinn, J. 2007. ‘Herms, Kouroi and the Political Anatomy of Athens’, G&R 54: 82–105.
Deacy, S. 2008. Athena. London.
Demargne, P. 1984. LIMC II.1, II.2, 955–1044 s.v. ‘Athena’.
Donohue, A. A. 1987. Xoana and the Origins of Greek Sculpture. Atlanta, GA.
Eich, P. 2011. Gottesbild und Wahrnehmung. Studien zu Ambivalenzen früher griechischer
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Faraone, C. 1992. Talismans and Trojan Horses. New York.
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Gaifman, M. 2012. Aniconism in Greek Antiquity. Oxford.
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Gordon, R. L. 1979. ‘The Real and the Imaginary: Production and Religion in the Graeco-Roman
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Neils, J. ed. 1996a. Worshipping Athena. Madison, WI.
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Nick, G. 2002. Die Athena Parthenos. Studien zum griechischen Kultbild und seiner Rezeption.
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Parke, H. W. 1977. Festivals of the Athenians. London.
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* Translation: Jay Kardan.
 CHAPTER 13

DRAMA

CLAUDE CALAME*

INTRODUCTION

THE ideas of action and practice are fundamental in the rich Greek lexicon
of ritual. The different ways of performing ritual establish the relationship
between gods and mortals. Above all, by means of rhythmic and poetic
language presented as a musical offering, mortal men and women invoke
the collaboration of gods and heroize figures to mitigate the ephemeral
nature and the accidents of their existence. Ritualized invocation assumes
different forms of sung poetry: the cultic hymn that calls upon the divine
presence in order to propose a do ut des contract; the paean addressed
generally to Apollo, with its propitiatory or expiatory force; the dithyramb,
with its often-narrative character, which makes an offering to the deity out
of a heroic tale; the prosodion (song of procession) as a processional chant;
the Homeric hymn with its narrative aetiology of a god’s function and its
use as a rhapsodic recitation at a contest inserted into a great cultural
celebration; and further, as we shall see, comedy and tragedy inserted into a
mousikos agon, a musical contest generally dedicated to Dionysos.
 It is no accident that this semantic field of ritual is particularly that of
tragedy: ritual in tragedy, by means of the dramatization of ‘myth’, and
tragedy as ritual dedicated to the divine. There are no ‘myths’ in Classical
Greece, but a heroic past of the community designated by Herodotos and
Thucydides as palaia or archaia (‘things of old’), or even patroia (in
reference to the deeds of fathers and ancestors). Tragedy derives from the
different forms of song that belong to the great indigenous genre of melos
(‘lyric’ song), and that present themselves as acts of speech and,
consequently, as acts of song and of cult; as such, tragedy is one of the
poetic forms without which the narratives about gods and heroes of Greek
mythology would not exist. Like other forms of the ritual poetry that is
melos, Classical Athenian tragedy transforms the narration and
dramatization of a ‘mythical’ heroic action into a ritual performance
intended for the divinity. From Homeric poetry to Attic tragedy, mythos
often means not a ‘myth’, but a heroic tale presented as a discursive
argument. Attic tragedy is significant for Greek polytheistic and civic
religion as much in its presentation of the relationships between mortals and
gods as by the fact that, as drama (e.g. Ar. Ran. 920–3), it constitutes a
ritual relation with divinity.

TRAGEDY AS DRAMA AND AS RITUAL

The Mousikos Agon of Tragic Performances

It has been pointed out that tragedy as a musical performance is part of a
tetralogy: three tragedies often dramatizing in sequence the same heroic
plot, and a satyr play which is sometimes related thematically to the
archaion (the old and heroic action) dramatized in the tragic sequence. The
musical production of the tetralogy is itself in competition with the
performance of two other tetralogies in a musical contest, or mousikos
agon. Generally conceived in choral terms in the Classical era, this
dramatized performance of the most striking episodes of the great heroic
saga is centred on the Trojan War (of which Achilles, Agamemnon, and
Helen are the principal protagonists, along with the gods) and the Theban
saga (Oedipus and his descendants along with the Seven against Thebes).
From the standpoint of its temporality, the contest among the three tragic
tetralogies took place at Athens during the Great Dionysia. Opened by a
prelude in which poets and actors were presented to the public and the
programme of musical contests was announced, the mousikoi agones began
with the contest of dithyrambs: ten choral groups of fifty adult singers,
choristers representing each of the ten tribes of democratic Athens, then ten
choirs of fifty young men, each choir—like the adult choirs—financed by a
single choregos. Next came the competition of the five comedies, each
undertaken by a choral group of twenty-four singers, followed by the three
days devoted to the three tragic tetralogies, each performed by a chorus of
twelve, and later of fifteen, choreutai (see especially Demosthenes Meid.
10, citing the law of Euagoras that may have dated to the fifth century BCE).
Nearly one-fifth of the citizenry of Athens took an active musical part in the
celebration of the Great Dionysia—a choral and musical celebration that
was ritualized by wearing masks and costumes, and by diction divided
between iambic trimeters and sung and danced lyrics that were derived
from the great tradition of melic poetry. The ‘City Dionysia’ represented the
most important cultural celebration (along with the civic and religious
festival of the Panathenaia in midsummer) for the politico-religious
inauguration of the new year in Athens. (For documents on all ritual aspects
of Attic theatre, see Pickard-Cambridge 1968; and for descriptions of
fourth-century BCE Classical theatre, see Hurwit 1999: 47–58; Sourvinou-
Inwood 2003: 160–1.)
At the turn of the century, with the reforms of Kleisthenes, the musical
performance of dithyrambs and tragedies was moved from the choral area at
the north-east of the agora to the south of the Acropolis, in order to be
better integrated into the sanctuary of Dionysos at the foot of the hill
dominated by Athena and Poseidon, the city’s tutelary deities. The insertion
of tragic choruses into a sanctuary of Dionysos may then have followed.

A Cult and Ritual Practices for Dionysos?

The mousikos agon of dithyrambs, tragedies, and comedies was introduced
by a grand procession, corresponding to the cultic procession (pompe). The
day before the first musical contest, the statue of the god was taken from the
sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereos at the foot of the Acropolis. The
sanctuary included a temple dating from the end of Archaic period, with the
xoanon (the old wooden statue) of the god, and a temple of the Classical
period, decorated with paintings depicting various episodes in the divine
biography of Dionysos. This collection of narratives illustrates certain
foundation myths of the cult of Dionysos, as well as the god’s connection to
Athens by means of the founding hero of the democratic city; this
iconographical narration thus contributes to the introduction of the god
Dionysos from the exterior to the centre of the city. His divine biography
lives, henceforth, next to the Acropolis, in the neighbourhood of the
sanctuaries consecrated to the city’s two tutelary deities.
The old statue of the god was then moved to his small temple next to the
Academy, near the deme of Kolonos. Pausanias (1.19.3) mentions this
sanctuary, stating that the statue of Dionysos Eleuthereos was brought there
each year at a fixed date, probably on the evening of 8 or 9 Elaphebolion
(end of March). Late inscriptions from the second century BCE tell us that,
after this first transfer and a sacrifice, Dionysos was brought back ‘from a
low altar’ to the theatre by torchlight and was honoured by the sacrifice of a
bull. Without doubt, this altar must be identified with the one found at the
north-west of the agora, next to the Altar of the Twelve Gods. It is there
that not only the sacrifice of a he-goat but especially the xenismos—the
ritual welcome of Dionysos in the form of a theoxenia, a ritual reception of
a god—would have taken place (Sourvinou-Inwood 2003: 91–8). Then the
pompe described in the law of Euagoras and many epigraphical documents
would have brought the statue of Dionysos back to his sanctuary in the
theatre, so that the god might be present at the musical performances
offered to him. Participants in the procession included metics carrying
vessels for the wine and citizens in charge of goatskins, while the wives of
the metics carried hydriai, water jugs, as instruments for the proper mixing
of the wine. Behind them always came the choregoi (as mentioned) and
kanephoroi (basket bearers). Second in importance after the Panathenaia,
the great procession culminated in the sanctuary of Dionysos with a
sacrifice that, at one time, must have been conducted by the epheboi. The
sacrifice took place in the sanctuary, as stated by an inscription (IG II2
1006.12), which adds that the victim was a bull ‘worthy of the god’, an
expression evoking the anonymous little cultic poem that invokes Dionysos
as an axie taure, ‘worthy bull’, in inviting him to appear in his temple
(Carm. pop. fr. 871 Page; on sacrifice, see, in this volume, Naiden, Chapter
31).
Thus, Attic tragedy partakes of the ritual scenario of every cultic
celebration in the Greek cities generally: a procession punctuated by songs,
involving the participation, with ritual apparatus, of several subgroups of
the community; an elaborate sacrifice followed by a ritual meal for male
and female representatives of these groups; poetic confrontations, with sung
and danced demonstrations addressed as musical offerings to the divinity
being celebrated; and athletic contests demonstrating the physical and moral
qualities of the aristocratic citizen (see Calame 1992, with bibliography). In
the Great Dionysia, this last function seems to have been taken over by a
disproportionate development of the dithyramb competition on the one
hand, and by the comic competition on the other. The dithyramb contest,
with its organization according to the ten Kleisthenic tribes, must surely be
related to the development of democratic structures and the corresponding
growth of corps of citizens and their sons. The contest of comedies is
certainly connected with the cult of Dionysos and the critical debate
brought on by the contested sharing of political power. The ironic derision
of Dionysos himself in a comedy such as the Frogs of Aristophanes would
surely have been impossible except as ritualized and expressed in the forms
of poetry of reproach and blame (in contrast to tragedy, which aligns with
the heroic poetry of praise). In tragedy as much as in comedy, ritual and
individual relations with the gods are brought into question.
In regard to tragic performance as ‘drama’, let us remember that Aristotle
himself compares not only Sophokles but also Aristophanes to Homer (Ar.
Poet. 1148a 24–9; cf. also 1448b 32–8 and 1459a 18). In his view, the three
poets were all mimetai, authors of representations in that they represented
characters who ‘acted and did’ (prattontes kai drontes): hence the
characterization of tragedy and comedy as dramata, and the need for tragic
plots (muthoi) to have a ‘dramatic’ form. In the Republic (392c), in regard
to this topic of poetry and mimesis, Plato defines two modes of narrative,
one in which the narration is undertaken by the poet (the ‘diegetic’ mode),
the other in which it is left to the actions of the protagonists (the ‘dramatic’
mode). Thus Homeric poetry, with its narrative punctuated by dialogue, is
classified as a ‘mixed’ mode, while tragedy is entirely ‘dramatic’.
 Choral poetry is associated with tragedy as a ritual practice and musical
offering dedicated to the god. Xenophon (Hipp. 3.2) makes this clear when
he writes of processions that must please both the gods and the spectators:
‘It is the same at the Dionysia, where the choruses seek to please the gods,
especially the twelve gods.’ From this, we must conclude that the tragic
spectacle is to be considered as a cultic act, or at least as a strongly
ritualized religious practice. While being specially developed and having
contributed to the creation of specific poetic genres, the mousikoi agones
that made up the ritual celebration of the Great Dionysia in fifth-century
BCE Athens were nothing more than the counterpart of the musical and/or
athletic contests that mark a large number of the great Athenian cultic
celebrations. Other examples include the above-mentioned Great
Panathenaia in honour of Athena Polias (a contest of Homeric rhapsodies),
the Thargelia (a contest of dithyrambs) for Apollo, the Anthesteria for the
Dionysos of wine, the Eleusinia for Demeter, the Theseia for the founding
hero of the city, and so on—all festivals that strike us as eminently religious
(Osborne 2003 lists the relevant festivals).
There is no point in trying to establish a relation between the form or
content of each tragedy and the functions and field of activity of Dionysos.
The ritual of comedy and of satyr drama, introduced later, is meant to evoke
explicitly the cult of Dionysos. Tragedy represents probably a poetic
development derived from the narrative and sung form of the rhapsodic
nomos: a kind of choral poem practised especially by the poet Stesichoros,
presenting the most dramatic episodes of the heroic saga transmitted by epic
poetry. As poetic and musical ritualized performance, Attic tragedy is thus
consecrated to the god residing in the frontier outpost that was the
community of Eleutherai. Attic tragedy and comedy allowed the
dramatization of a poetical and critical reflection on the community’s past,
on political and religious life, and on the human condition, in interaction
with the gods.

VERBAL RITES IN TRAGEDY: HYMNIC

FORMS
Having considered tragedy as ritual devoted to the deity, we turn now to rite
and to relations with the gods in tragedy.
It is only recently that the vain poetico-philosophical quest for the
essence of ‘the tragic’ has been abandoned. It was understood as being
rooted in the action of the ‘tragic hero’, often without consideration of great
heroines such as Hekabe, Antigone, or Helen, and without considering the
ritual dramatization of that ‘tragic’ action. Moreover, the lack of a definition
for a working concept of ritual has allowed a certain vagueness to surround
a controversial question. Thus, under the heading ‘ritual in tragedy’ it was
possible to cite at random the solemn imprecation of Oedipus against the
unknown murderer of Laius in the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophokles; the
evocation of the procession and sacrifices of the Great Panathenaia at the
end of the Eumenides of Aeschylus; the appeal to the ‘epiphany’ of Darius
or the funeral lament that ends the Persians; as well as Creusa’s taking
refuge at the altar of Apollo in the Ion of Euripides (see Easterling 1988;
Wiles 2000: 38–45). This is a heterogeneous list of ritual acts, individual
and collective, verbal and non-verbal, enacted onstage or merely reported,
with or without relevance to the gods. The forms of ritual discourse and the
sequences of ritual acts performed on the stage are numerous, and the
effects of staged ritual performances on the dramatic action represented in
the theatre are also diverse.
I would like now to propose two examples of staged ritual practices that,
in hymnic form, introduce authority in communication with the gods and
invite the divine to intervene in the action.

The Pragmatics of a Dramatized Choral Hymn

In regard to the hymnic forms inserted into the dramatic action, Euripides’
tragedy Ion is particularly significant. Let us remember that Ion is the future
founding and eponymous hero of Ionia; in the play, he is in the cultic
service of his father Apollo; Creusa, his mother, is a daughter of Erechtheus
(one of the first legendary kings of Athens) and the wife of the Achaean
Xouthos. The noble Xouthos indicates that he is crossing the threshold of
the sanctuary at Delphi by asserting his wish to consult the oracle of the god
about his wife’s sterility. The choral ode provoked by his intervention (417–
24, then 452–71 for the beginning of the stasimon) assumes the form of a
cultic hymn, with the expected tripartite structure. With the self-referential
and performative (in the linguistic sense of the concept, as speech act) form
of the supplication (se hiketeuo), the chorus indicates the type of act of
utterance with which it invokes Athena: the initial hymnic form of invocatio
(invocation) Then, in a very brief epica laus (epic praise) of a narrative sort,
which recalls the central part of the shortest Homeric Hymns, the chorus
gives the genealogy of the goddess, who was born from the head of Zeus.
Finally, Athena Nike is invited to visit Delphi in order to ally herself with
Artemis, the daughter of Leto.
In regard to the practical relations between mortals and gods, the appeal
for the intervention of the goddess is most interesting. It brings together the
spatio-temporal framework of the dramatized heroic action with the here
and now of the tragic performance. The chorus of heroic times invites both
Athena and Artemis to intervene in the dramatic action. Meanwhile,
watching the drama, in the cultic service of Dionysos Eleuthereos, the
spectators are seated on a hillside, on one side of which stands the temple
consecrated to Athena Polias (venerated every year in the Panathenaia), and
on the other, in the form of a vast portico, rises the now-vanished sanctuary
of Artemis Brauronia.
In the final portion of this choral prayer to the deity, the traditional form
of the cultic and ‘cletic’ hymn is modified (on prayer see also, in this
volume, Versnel, Chapter 30). After the appeal for the presence of the deity,
the young chorus members delegate their supplication to the two maiden
goddesses (parthenoi), both of them sisters of Apollo by their common
father, Zeus:

O maidens (korai), make supplication

That Erechtheus’ ancient
Race may at long last,
By pure prophecies,
Obtain a good posterity. (467–71)

As Athenian servants of Creusa, the young women of the chorus seem not
only to resemble the two maiden goddesses in performing the ritual of
supplication, but also to adopt the point of view of the Athenian spectators
in characterizing the family of the founding king Erechtheus as palaion: this
genos belongs to the heroic past of Athens.
 Unlike the monody sung by Ion at the beginning of the tragedy, the
hymnic supplication delegated to the two maiden goddesses will have the
full cultic effect wished for by Xouthos. At the end of the drama it is Pallas
Athena, the eponymous Athena of Athens, who intervenes as dea ex
machina to resolve the plot; in such a way we attend another coincidence of
the time and space of the heroic action with the time and place of the
dramatic representation (1553–605). Not only will Ion rule over Attica
before colonizing the Cyclades and Ionia (a prefiguration of the
contemporary Athenian ‘empire’), Creusa and Xouthos will have two sons,
the future eponymous heroes of the Dorians and of the Achaeans. (For the
aetiological significance of this founding conclusion, see Calame 2007:
279–82; consult also Zeitlin 1996: 285–338.)
Despite the fact that the pragmatic logic is realized at the end of the
tragedy, the choral ode begun as a hymn continues (472–509). The
following epode consists of an address to the cave of Pan on the flank of the
Athenian Acropolis: a pretext for mentioning not only the place where the
newborn son of Apollo was exposed, but also the dances of the daughters of
Kekrops, to whom Athena entrusted the education of the young
Erichthonios. By means of the ‘choral projection’ common in the odes of
Attic tragedy, the young women of the chorus project their actual song and
dance into the ‘mythical’ dance of the Kekropidai; they again bring about a
coincidence in spatiality and temporality between the dramatic action in
which they are involved and their own ritual and choral action, hic et nunc.
In some sense, the three semantic constituents of any melic poem are
found in this female choral ode: the first-person ritual reference to the
circumstances of the song, the gnomic commentary that evokes the present
situation, and, finally, the reference to the heroic past—to the plot and the
paradigmatic protagonists of a ‘myth’ in relation to the pragmatics of the
action sung in the present. While fulfilling its practical function and effect
on the unfolding of the dramatic action, the initial cultic hymn to Athena
and Artemis is contained in this elegant melic and choral poem, with a
ritual efficacy that also includes the spectators in their individual relations
with the tutelary goddess of the city, here and now.

Prayer and Hymnic Practice

The oracular response at the centre of the tragedy devoted to the young Ion
proves wholly unfavourable to Creusa. Not only is she denied any
descendants, but Ion, who will be revealed as her son, is attributed to
Xouthos. Creusa’s long emotional lament leads first into an address to
Apollo himself (a hymnic song critical of the god) and then into a new
exchange between the heroine and the old pedagogue who served
Erechtheus. This stichomythia elaborates the plan to expunge the affront of
Apollo’s unjust oracular decision denying a son to Creusa: Ion will be
killed, not by the sword, but by the venom of the Gorgon’s serpents. The
chorus addresses its ode to the goddess Einodia, who is often identified with
Hekate, and is the mistress of potions and of magic formulae (for the
identification of Hekate Phosphoros with Einodia, see e.g. Hel. 569–70;
other references in Zeitlin 1996: 310–11). She is not the city divinity
dominating political and economic activity, but a divine power attached to
the routines of everyday life. This third ‘stasimon’ begins with a prayer
(1048–60). Sung chorally, the prayer must take the tripartite form of the
hymn. Thus, it opens as usual with a brief, direct invocation to Einodia,
presented as the daughter of Demeter. By means of a so-called ‘hymnic
relative’, the descriptive part (epica laus) then depicts the goddess in one of
her domains of competence: nocturnal assaults:

Einodia, daughter of Demeter, you

Who rule over nocturnal attacks,
Escort in daylight the contents
Of the deadly vessel
Against those to whom
My mistress sends it
From the drippings of the
Chthonic Gorgon’s cut throat. (1048–55)

Thus, we move quickly to the prayer that enjoins Einodia to escort the cup
of wine poisoned with drops of the Gorgon’s blood to the palace of
Erechtheus’ children (in a new journey from Delphi to Athens). The
metaphor leads into an imprecation: ‘May a foreigner from a foreign house
never reign over the city if he is not a noble descendant of the Erechtheids’
(1058–60) (see Calame 2005: 19–22 with n. 8; Furley and Bremer 2000: I,
329 have seen that the imprecation is comparable to a verbal gesture of
defixio, in Greek katadesmos).
In this way, the brief hymnic prayer ends in the formula of a spell moving
from the request to the divinity for direct intervention, to this other form of
request for divine power, the ritual word that binds: oath, malediction,
‘magical’ formula, or simple imprecation. The utterance of ritual efficacy
may take an individual or collective form, rendering vain the recent debate
between the upholders of the ‘polis-religion’ and those who see individual
practices in the ritual of a polytheistic system. In this particular case, we
witness a new appropriation of the form of the cultic hymn to the deity:
used to insert prayer into the dramatic action, in order to direct the action
through the appearance of a superhuman power. We can imagine the same
dynamics in the current cultic and ritual practices of the average Athenian;
taking part in the different rituals of the Great Dionysia or the Panathenaia,
he or she will shape his or her own cultic practice according to these ritual
forms, privately or at the numerous other public occasions offered by a rich
polytheistic (gods and heroes) calendar. Once again the initial hymnic form,
with its religious pragmatics, is put at the service of choral song, to
comment upon and enrich the dramatic action, while, at the same time,
seeking, through the formulae of ritual speech, to influence its course. We
recognize here the interlacing of the three voices that animate the
polyphony of the tragic chorus: performative, hermeneutic, and affective.
Whether they are monodic or choral, the melic songs of Euripidean
tragedy take up traditional cultic and poetic forms in order to redirect them,
both formally and pragmatically, towards the heroic action represented in
the theatre, and to arouse there the intervention of gods and divine powers.
But occasionally these ritual practices are related, if not to the cultic act that
constitutes the tragic performance itself, at least to the religious practices of
the public participating in the musical contest dedicated to Dionysos, in a
face-to-face critique that is mediated by the wearing of masks. Thus, we
find ourselves brought back from the ritual in tragedy to tragedy as ritual—
we examine this next.
 FROM ‘MYTH’ TO ‘RITUAL’: TRAGIC
AETIOLOGIES

It often happens in drama that the deity directly intervenes in the tragic
action. Whatever the scenic form of his epiphany, this usually occurs at the
end of the tragedy, in order to resolve the plot. This is especially the case in
the concluding scenario of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, which will be examined
briefly before returning to two further examples from the tragedies of
Euripides.

A Religious and Civic Conclusion

In the Eumenides, Athena intervenes at first as the principal protagonist of
the action, responding to the indirect appeal of the Erinyes in the famous
‘binding hymn’ (306) sung by the goddesses of vengeance at the beginning
of the tragedy. In the course of the action, the tutelary goddess Athena
establishes the tribunal of the Areopagos, and installs the Eumenides on the
Acropolis, in the sanctuary that will become the Erechtheion. The tragedy
concludes ritually, with the procession that will take the Eumenides to their
new home; the goddess invites the Athenian ‘sons of Kranaos’ to take their
place in the ritual cortege. Thus, the final song of the exodos is a choral
invitation to the goddesses, henceforth propitious and venerable, to come
‘here’ (deuro, 1041) and to accompany the final procession ‘now’ (nun,
1043, 1047). The ritual cry punctuating the song seals the pact between
Zeus and Fate to the advantage of the inhabitants of Athens:

Peace for all time between the immigrants

And Pallas’ citizens. Thus all-seeing Zeus
And Fate go together.
Cry out now in response to our song.
(1044–7)

By these declarative and semantic means, the time and place of the end of
the dramatic action are made to coincide with the hic et nunc of the musical
performance witnessed by the Athenian spectators. With a reiterated,
inclusive second-person plural, they too are called to respect the justice
administered by the Areopagos under the aegis of Zeus, and to worship the
Eumenides in their new sanctuary. Athena’s intervention in her scenic
epiphany leads the plot to the institution of a tribunal and of a cult. Thus, in
an aetiological game common in Classical Greece, ‘myth’ leads to ‘ritual’:
the past and tragic time of heroes guilty of hubris brings about a present of
cultic veneration of the gods and heroes of the city’s pantheon, aimed at
maintaining civic order.

The Tragic Establishment of Rituals: The Blood

of Men, the Blood of Women
The conclusion of the Iphigenia in Tauris is yet more illustrative in this
respect than the Eumenides. In order to escape the Erinyes, Orestes follows
Apollo’s order to go to the northern country of the Tauri to bring back to
Athens the statue of Artemis venerated in a sanctuary in that barbarian
realm. According to the version in the Cypria, the goddess had installed
Iphigenia as her priestess there. Doomed to be offered as a sacrifice to the
barbarian goddess, Orestes finally makes himself known to Iphigenia, and
the two young Greeks flee to Athens with the statue of the bloodthirsty
deity. It is then the function of Pallas Athena to resolve the conflict between
brother and sister and between the king of Tauris and Artemis, the despoiled
goddess.
Intervening as dea ex machina, Athena begins by revealing to the king of
Tauris that Orestes has done no more than follow the oracular command of
Apollo. Then she orders Orestes himself to construct a temple intended to
welcome to Attica the divine image brought from far-off Tauris in Scythia.
In this sanctuary (also situated in a border region) the indigenous statue will
receive the honours due to an Artemis called Tauropolos: this epiclesis must
hold in the etymological and aetiological memory the sufferings endured by
the young hero pursued by the Erinyes during his wanderings (peripolon,
1455). To the space consecrated to the Artemis of the wanderings in Tauris
and to the hymns that will honour her, the tutelary goddess of Athens adds a
bloodthirsty ritual gesture, a gesture of piety (hosias hekati, 1461). She
invites the young man himself to initiate the ritual of the drops of fresh
blood, made to spout from a man’s throat as a commemorative gesture. The
rite is doubtless intended to recall both Orestes’ murder of his mother and
the risk he has run of a ritual immolation at the hands of his own sister, now
the priestess of the Greco-Scythian goddess.
Finally, Athena tells Iphigenia that she will be attached to the cult of this
same goddess of savage countries in Brauron, another sanctuary on the
borders of Attica. After her death, the memory of the heroine will be
celebrated by offerings of rags left on behalf of women who have died in
childbirth (1462–7). By the mediation of the sacrificed young girl and by
death in childbirth, we have the celebration of the protection given by
Artemis to pregnant women and to young child-bearers at another,
especially delicate, moment of passage—from the male blood of murder to
the female blood of childbirth. Finally, by a route that leads us from the
periphery of Attica to the civic and judicial centre of Athens itself, Athena
concludes her aetiological intervention by mentioning the institution of the
democratic vote in the Areopagos on the occasion of Orestes’ sentencing.
Although the honours given to Iphigenia as a heroic attendant of Artemis
in her famous cult of Brauron seem to have only late attestation, the deme
of Halai Araphenides, also on the northern borders of Attica, was known
since the fourth century BCE for its cult of Artemis Tauropolos (attested by
Strabo 9.1.22; cf. also SEG 34.103, 15). The Areopagos would clearly be
present in the minds of all the spectators of a tragedy produced at the end of
the fifth century BCE, just as it was for the spectators of Aeschylus’
Oresteia. (For the complex question of Iphigenia’s association with Artemis
in the cult of Brauron, see Giuman 1999, 84–8 and 162–79; see also
Sourvinou-Inwood 2003: 418–22, despite Dunn 1996, 45–63.) Furthermore,
in retracing his tragic biography for his recognized sister, Orestes himself
does not fail to mention the absolution received with Athena’s support on
the hill of Ares, as well as the sanctuary (hierón, 969) where the Erinyes
agreed to be honoured, not far from the Areopagos.
Once again, by the dramatized intervention of a deity, tragedy in
performance establishes a complex aetiological relation between the
dramatized heroic narrative and the ritual acts that mark the heroization of
its principal protagonists. Thanks to the divine manifestation and the word
of authority from Athena, the outcome of Iphigenia in Tauris returns us,
after all, to the cultic reality and the religious practices known to the
spectators venerating Dionysos Eleuthereos in his sanctuary-theatre. In her
final intervention, the tutelary goddess establishes both the rule (nomos,
1458) of human blood spouting in the sanctuary of Halai and the
democratic rule (nomisma, 1471) on the Areopagos, as well as the sanctuary
of the goddess whose attendant Iphigenia becomes at Brauron (1463). The
use by Athena of the forms of the close demonstrative hode situates these
institutional words between Deixis am Phantasma (appeal to the spectator’s
imagination) and demonstratio ad oculos (demonstrative reference to the
‘here and now’). So the fictional relation that the dramatic narrative has
constructed between the heroic and tragic action on the one hand, and the
rite founded and legitimized by the deity on the other, makes reference to
real and actual religious and cultic practices in the here and now of the
tragic performance (see Sourvinou-Inwood 2003: 31–40 and 301–8).
Made up of young Greek servants, the chorus can now conclude the
tragedy with these words, sung between a ‘you’ (plural) that includes the
protagonists of the dramatic action, and a ‘we’ that includes the Athenian
spectators:

Go, fortunate in the lucky

Rescue of your fate.
But o Pallas Athena,
Revered of immortals and mortals,
We shall do (drasomen) as you order.
(1490–4)

The Dramatic and Ritual Establishment of

Founding Myths
Among the extant tragedies of Euripides, the ritual conclusion that Athena
gives to the Erechtheus is undoubtedly still more demonstrative for the
establishment of cultic practices that acquire a narrative foundational base
in the heroic action enacted onstage while referring to the spectators’
religious knowledge and ritual praxis. In this political drama, drawn from
the founding history of Athens, the game of tragic aetiology is again left to
Athena intervening as dea ex machina. Eumolpos, son of Poseidon and king
of Thrace, tries to take Attica from its ruler Erechtheus, who succeeds in
defeating the enemy army. Poseidon avenges the death of his royal son
Eumolpos by making Erechtheus vanish.
With the intention of pronouncing (semano) in the manner of the Delphic
oracle and in performative mode, Athena again manifests her divinity and
orders the cultic future fated for all the protagonists who have died in the
unfolding of the tragic plot (fr. 370.64–100 Kannicht). Transformed into a
constellation under the probable name of the Hyades, the daughters of
Erechtheus—as Hyakinthides—will enjoy honours both heroic and divine,
which the inhabitants of the city will pay them every year in the form of
sacrifices of cattle and girls’ choral dances. Moreover, Erechtheus’
daughters will have the first fruits of the sacrifices made before every battle,
with a libation of honey and water. Erechtheus himself will henceforth have
a sanctuary at the centre of the city, bounded by an enclosure of stone; his
memory will be honoured by the sacrifices of citizens under the name of
Poseidon himself, whose heroic attendant he thus becomes. As for his wife
Praxithea, who was able to repair the very foundations of the city, Athena
makes her into her priestess: she will be charged with sacrificing the first
offerings on the altars of the goddess.
To be sure, only three meagre indications allow us to locate the
‘inaccessible precinct’ that Athena reserves for the Hyakinthides in the
place called Sphendonai, to the west of the city of Athens (Phot. Lexicon,
397, 7, Porson, in a gloss that refers to the Atthis of the historian
Phanodemos, FGrH 325 F 4). But the spectators of the fifth century BCE,
like modern readers, had no difficulty in identifying the sanctuary promised
by Athena to the king of Athens with the Erechtheion.
Historically, the first production of the Erechtheus by Euripides, shortly
before the Peace of Nikias, coincides with the end of the first phase of the
Peloponnesian War: it coincides also with the period of renewed
construction of that high birthplace of Athenian autochthony that is the
temple with the Caryatid portico (on the Erechtheion and its date, see
Hurwit: 1999: 200–9). Praxithea takes up the ideology of autochthony in
order to proclaim its political dimension onstage. Putting herself in the
place of King Erechtheus, as it were, the queen declares and affirms: ‘A
better city than this could not be found: its populace has not immigrated
here from elsewhere, but we were born of its soil’ (fr. 360.6–8 Kannicht).
Praxithea represents both the female and the male citizens of Athens in a
collective ‘we’, even before affirming the maternal role proper to her sex,
that is, to give birth to children in order to defend the gods’ altars and the
country. Without a son, and therefore without a soldier to offer up to the
glory of death in combat, Praxithea will consent to the political sacrifice of
one of her daughters, for the triumph of Athena over Poseidon. She will
offer the fruit of her womb to the earth from which the Athenians were
born, for the welfare of the city, to save ‘this city’ (tende polin, 42 and 52),
to save the citizens whom, concluding her speech, she addresses directly: o
politai (50).
Spatially and temporally, the heroic action onstage thus comes to
coincide with the here and now of the production witnessed by the
spectators assembled in the theatre at the height of the Peloponnesian War.
This coincidence is furthered by the declarative movement of Praxithea’s
speech: in her final appeal to the citizens, then to the nation, the queen
addresses herself equally to the members of the chorus and to the spectators
watching the production in the heart of the sanctuary consecrated to
Dionysos Eleuthereos. Like Athena’s intervention in her final epiphany, the
deictic gestures by which the wife of Erechtheus punctuates her discourse to
make the polis ‘this city’ again combine Deixis am Phantasma and
demonstratio ad oculos with a double reference: it refers as much to the
legendary city threatened by Eumolpos of Thrace in the time of Erechtheus
as to the present city weakened by the incursions of the Spartan army and
awaiting with equal fervour the intervention of its tutelary deities to save it.
In temporal terms, the aetiological and ritual ending that Athena gives to
the tragic action, with the installation of Praxithea as her chief priestess,
leads the spectators from the past foundation of the city to the present and
the cult by which they annually worship the tutelary goddess. Spatially, the
establishment of the cult of Erechtheus invites them to the Acropolis, ‘to the
centre of the city’, among the gods and heroes who have created Athens and
continue to protect her.

CONCLUSION

If it is true that the rituals represented between stage and orchestra actualize
the religious relations of the Athenians with their various deities, while
bringing them into question; if it true that the aetiological endings of many
tragedies allow for the deity’s epiphany and relate the heroic action to the
ritual performance here and now, then Attic tragedy is itself a musical
offering to the god of theatre and, indirectly, to the gods that it puts onstage.
Tragedy, like comedy, is, par excellence, the religious act of incipient
democracy; it represents, under a poetic and musical form, a human and
heroic action displayed in its complex relations with the gods and
continually brought under discussion by its various protagonists, especially
the chorus.

SUGGESTED READING
For the realia and commentary on the documents concerning the ritual
organization of the tragic and comic contests at Athens, Pickard-Cambridge
1968 remains the basic manual, not superseded by Csapo and Slater 1994.
On the connections between tragic performance and the religious and
political reality of the Athenian public, see especially Goldhill 1990, 1997,
and Osborne 1993—keeping in mind the warning of Vidal-Naquet 2001.
The contributions of Parker 1997 and Sourvinou-Inwood 1997 clarify the
relations of tragedy with religion, as well as the complexity of the relations
of the protagonists of the dramatic action with the gods. Seaford 1994: 235–
80, 368–405 points out the cultic relations of Athens with Dionysos and the
ambiguities of the rituals represented on the tragic stage. See also Parker
2005: 136–52 on ‘religion in the theatre’. For the morphology of Greek
cultic celebration, I refer the reader to Calame 1992. The ritualist theories
of tragedy developed notably by Gilbert Murray (ap. Jane E. Harrison),
René Girard, and Walter Burkert are examined in Graf 2007. For the poetic,
musical, and ritualized forms taken up by tragedy, see the classic work of
Herrington 1985. But it is, above all, the work of Sourvinou-Inwood 2003
that addresses most directly, and in detail, the question of tragedy as ritual
and of ritual in tragedy. For the problems posed by Attic tragedy in general,
the best introduction is Di Benedetto and Medda 2002 [1977]. Also useful
are the two Companions of Easterling 1997 and Gregory 2005. On the Ion
of Euripides and its aetiological conclusion, consult Calame 2007: 259–85;
see also Zeitlin 1996: 285–338. On hymnic forms, see Furley and Bremmer
2001, especially vol. 1. For the ritual relations established with the gods in
these forms, see Calame 2005: 19–35. For the role of the chorus, see the
numerous references in Calame 2013 and 1994/1995 on the three choral
voices (affective, performative, and hermeneutic); see also the contributions
of Gould 1996, Goldhill 1996, and Dupont, 2007. The question of the
pragmatics of the humnos desmios in the Eumenides of Aeschylus is well
treated in Henrichs 1994/1995, which also discusses the ‘performative’ role
of the songs of the tragic chorus. The problem of the cultic reality of the
aetiological conclusions of Attic tragedies is naturally treated by Sourvinou-
Inwood 2003, passim, in contrast with the study of Dunn 1996, which
considers the aetiologies concluding the tragedies of Euripides as fictions.
On this question, see also Kowalzig 2006. For the aetiological conclusion of
the Iphigenia in particular see Wolff 1992, with a supplemental treatment of
the cults in Giuman 1999. For the Erechtheus, see Calame 2011. For the
different cases of the figure of intra- and extra-discursive deixis in Greek
poetry, see the various contributions published in Arethusa 37, 2004,
devoted to The Poetics of Deixis.

REFERENCES
Calame, C. 1992. ‘La festa’, in Introduzione alle culture antiche III. L’esperienza religiosa antica,
ed. M. Vegetti, 29–54. Torino.
Calame, C. 1994/1995. ‘From Choral Poetry to Tragic Stasimon: The Enactment of Women’s Song’,
Arion 3: 135–54.
Calame, C. 2005. Masks of Authority: Fiction and Pragmatics in Ancient Greek Poetics. Ithaca, NY.
Calame, C. 2007. ‘Greek Myth and Greek Religion’, in The Cambridge Companion to Greek
Mythology, ed. R. D. Woodard, 259–85. Cambridge.
Calame, C. 2011. ‘Myth and Performance on the Athenian Stage: Praxithea, Erechtheus, their
Daughters, and the Etiology of Autochthony’, CPh 106: 1–19.
Calame, C. 2013. ‘Choral Polyphony and the Ritual Functions of Tragic Songs’, in Choral
Mediations in Greek Drama, ed. R. Gagné and M. Hopman, 35–57. Cambridge.
Csapo, E. and Slater, W. J. 1994. The Context of Ancient Drama. Ann Arbor, MI.
Di Benedetto, V. and Medda, E. 2002 [1977]. La tragedia sulla scena. La tragedia greca in quanto
spettacolo teatrale. Torino.
Dunn, F. M. 1996. Tragedy’s End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama. Oxford.
Dupont, F. 2007. Aristote ou le vampire du théâtre occidental. Paris.
Easterling, P. E. 1988. ‘Tragedy and Ritual: “Cry ‘Woe, woe’ but may the good prevail!” ’, Mètis 3:
87–109.
Easterling, P. E. ed. 1997. The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy. Cambridge.
Foley, H. P. 1985. Ritual Irony, Politics and Sacrifice in Euripides. London.
Furley, W. D. and Bremer, J. M. 2001. Greek Hymns: Selected Cult Songs from the Archaic to the
Hellenistic Period. Tübingen.
Giuman, M. 1999. La dea, la vergine, il sangue. Archeologie di un culto femminile. Milan.
Goldhill, S. 1990. ‘The Great Dionysia and Civic Ideology’, in Nothing to Do with Dionysos?
Athenian Drama in Its Social Context, ed. J. J. Winkler and F. I. Zeitlin, 97–129. Princeton, NJ.
Goldhill, S. 1996. ‘Collectivity and Otherness—The Authority of the Tragic Chorus: Response to
Gould’, in Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond, ed. M. Silk, 244–56. Oxford.
Goldhill, S. 1997. ‘The Audience of Athenian Tragedy’, in The Cambridge Companion to Greek
Tragedy, ed. P. Easterling, 54–68. Cambridge.
Gould, J. 1996. ‘Tragedy and Collective Experience’, in Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and
Beyond, ed. M. Silk, 217–43. Oxford.
Graf, F. 2007. ‘Drama and Ritual: Evolution and Convergences’, in Komoidotragoidia. Intersezioni
del tragico e del comico nel teatro del V secolo a. C., ed. E. Medda, M. S. Mirto, and M. P. Pattoni,
103–18. Pisa.
Gregory, J. ed. 2005. A Companion to Greek Tragedy. Oxford.
Henrichs, A. 1994/1995. ‘ “Why Should I Dance?” Choral Self-Referentiality in Greek Tragedy’,
Arion 3: 56–111.
Herington, J. 1985. Poetry into Drama: Early Tragedy and the Greek Poetic Tradition. London.
Hurwit, J. M. 1999. The Athenian Acropolis: History, Mythology, and Archaeology from the Neolithic
Era to the Present. Cambridge.
Kowalzig, B. 2006. ‘The Aetiology of Empire? Hero-Cult and Athenian Tragedy’, in Greek Drama,
vol. 3: Essays in Honour of Kevin Lee, ed. J. Davidson, F. Muecke, and P. Wilson, 79–98. London.
Osborne, R. 1993. ‘Competitive Festivals and the Polis: A Context for Dramatic Festivals at Athens’,
in Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis, ed. A. H. Sommerstein, S. Halliwell, J. Henderson, and B.
Zimmermann, 21–38. Bari.
Parker, R. 1997. ‘Gods Cruel and Kind: Tragic and Civic Theology’, in Greek Tragedy and the
Historian, ed. C. Pelling, 143–60. Oxford.
Parker, R. 2005. Polytheism and Society at Athens. Oxford.
Pelling, C. ed. 1997. Greek Tragedy and the Historian. Oxford.
Pickard-Cambridge, A. W. 1968. The Dramatic Festivals of Athens (2nd edn), rev. J. Gould and D.
M. Lewis. Oxford.
Seaford, R. 1994. Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State. Oxford.
Silk, M. ed. 1996. Tragedy and the Tragic: Greek Theatre and Beyond. Oxford.
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 1997. ‘Tragedy and Religion: Constructs and Readings’, in Greek Tragedy
and the Historian, ed. C. Pelling, 161–86. Oxford.
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 2003. Tragedy and Athenian Religion. Lanham, MD.
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 2011. Athenian Myths and Festivals: Aglauros, Erechtheus, Plynteria,
Panathenaia, Dionysia, ed. Robert Parker. Oxford.
Turner, V. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York.
Vidal-Naquet, P. 2001. Le miroir brisé. Tragédie athénienne et politique. Paris.
Wiles, D. 2000. Greek Theatre Performance: An Introduction. Cambridge.
Wolff, C. 1992. ‘Euripides’ Iphigenia among the Taurians: Aetiology, Ritual, and Myth’, ClAnt 11:
308–34.
Zeitlin, F. I. 1996. Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature. Chicago.
* Translation: Jay Kardan.
 CHAPTER 14

HISTORY

ROBERT FOWLER

INTRODUCTION: MYTH VS. HISTORY

MYTH and history both consist in stories about the past, but their claims to
truth have been in dispute ever since the two were first distinguished in the
discourse of the fifth century BCE. Myth, with its undoubted element of
imagination and frequent concern with the supernatural, is initially on the
defensive in this argument. Its relationship with truth, however understood,
is not straightforward; the truth of myth lies below or beyond the narrative,
something that is encoded or symbolized. History, by contrast, defined its
business already on the first page of Herodotos as getting the record straight
—the record that is ‘out there’ in the sources, waiting to be discovered and
assessed. Within a generation, Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian
War gives such a powerful impression of factual accuracy and impartial
judgement that it was long the gold standard for historians. Once history
had seized the high ground of truth, defenders of myth required new tactics
to reclaim it. Rationalization and allegorization were popular choices in
antiquity; in both cases, something has to be done to myth to make it speak
truth. The argument is conceded before it is begun.
 Indeed, well before Herodotos, in the Ionic enlightenment of the sixth
century BCE, radical thinkers had begun to challenge the authority of poets,
and question the myths that were their stock in trade (see, in this volume,
Benitez and Tarrant, Chapter 15). Mythos, originally a solemn word
denoting authoritative, performative pronouncement, slowly acquired its
meaning of an imaginative, even fictive, tale, with reference especially to
the stories we now call the Greek myths. This development—the ‘invention
of mythology’—had been completed by Plato’s day (Fowler 2011). The
distinction between fabulous myth, peddled by poets, and truthful history
was commonplace throughout the rest of antiquity.
Another Enlightenment, that of the eighteenth century, took matters
considerably further. There was a sense of a decisive break with the past,
and a belief in the possibility of human perfection in a brave new world,
effected by the power of pure reason. A naive point of view, as the endless
carnage of modern war must make one think, yet it was precisely the
naiveté of ancient myth that attracted the derision of writers like Vico,
Fontenelle, and Heyne (Most 1999: 37–40). The notion was born here that
there had once been a mythical age of humanity, characterized by
superstition, ignorance, and fear. Myth, in this scheme, was a childish
misapprehension of reality.
Positivism, denying validity to metaphysics and seeking to derive natural
laws objectively from observable facts, was a powerful offshoot of the
Enlightenment. The founder was Auguste Comte, but to some extent he was
articulating ideas generally in the atmosphere (Gane 2006; Iggers 2011). To
be sure, no great nineteenth-century historian, whether Niebuhr, Macaulay,
Grote, Mommsen, or Wilamowitz, was under any illusion that a personal
point of view was inevitable in the writing of history. Even the prophet of
historical positivism himself, Leopold von Ranke, was aware that his anti-
Hegelianism was a kind of philosophy (Krieger 1977). Nevertheless, these
historians would have argued that their judgements were, within the limits
of human imperfection, objectively true, being derived from the data. To
assemble the data was, therefore, the first duty of the historian, and,
throughout the century, legions of historians in the new universities toiled
like the Nibelungen, collecting and editing manuscripts, inscriptions,
documents, and artefacts.
The industry of these scholars, their countless factual discoveries, and
their advances in method place us all in their debt. The philosophical
underpinnings of positivist historiography were, however, exposed to lethal
criticism in the twentieth century by anti-Enlightenment and postmodern
thinkers such as Walter Benjamin (1973: 245–55; Pensky 2004; de Wilde
2009) and Hayden White (1973, 1978, 1987). History cannot be written
without imposing some kind of order on the original chaos. The patterns
that give meaning are inevitably ideological, because the generation and
apprehension of meaning are social processes. Definitions of ideology are
notoriously slippery, but they all refer to a collection of beliefs and values
which are socially rooted and shared, make sense of the world, and govern
behaviour (Jost, Federico, and Napier 2009). If we place, alongside this, the
definition of myth most commonly cited by classicists, that of Walter
Burkert—‘a traditional tale with secondary, partial reference to something
of collective importance’ (Burkert 1979: 23)—we see that there is a
substantial overlap. The content of any ideology is difficult to express, and
impossible to justify, without a story (usually teleological). Ideology and
myth both work by their hold on the imaginaire of the subscribing
collective (Csapo 2005: 276–315; Barthes 2012 [1957]).
Just as myth addresses large questions about human life and the world we
live in, so does history; and both draw on similar emotional, cognitive, and
narrative resources for their effects. A large body of work in the late
twentieth century, building on the seminal but controversial writings of
White, has explored the narrative tropes deployed by historians to represent
and make sense of the past (Lorenz 2011). White famously said that history
is not so much found as invented (Hayden 1978: 82), a claim that infuriated
professional historians, and proved to casual observers the fundamental
immorality of postmodernism. Whether White’s anti-realism and relativism
are as thoroughgoing as his critics say they are may be questioned, but the
furious reaction certainly revealed deep anxiety about the historical
enterprise.
That history is only story does not seem to do justice to its nature. At a
basic level there are constraints in the record the historian cannot ignore
(Williams 2002: 241–50). Yet it must be granted that narrative and history
interact at very basic levels (Ricoeur 1984–1988); and all narrative contains
fictive elements. Every historian must fill in the gaps in the evidence by
surmise and conjecture. These manoeuvres are often well hidden, but they
are always there, because there are always gaps. After centuries of
methodological refinement, historians, in this respect, work exactly like
Herodotos. The latter’s gaps are bigger and more obvious (to us, at any
rate), and he must work harder to fill them in. Modern historians may have
more facts to work with, and, depending on the questions they put to them,
may succeed in concealing the gaps better. But it is hard to see a difference
in the procedure.
In fundamental ways, then, the twentieth century challenged the
distinction between myth and history. One need not support a totally
deconstructive view of this problem to recognize the difficulty it poses for
those who would interpret the intellectual landscape of fifth- and fourth-
century BCE Greece, when the distinctions between myth and history (and,
more generally, between myth and logos, the faculty of reason) were still
inchoate. To disentangle them, in post-Enlightenment terms, entails a risk of
serious misreading, which has led some scholars to deny the legitimacy of
applying the word ‘myth’ at all to ancient Greece, as being an alien
category (Calame 2003, 2008). This may go too far, since the change in
discourse seems clear in the ancient record, and this discourse was inherited
directly by early modern Europe. The danger of reading the story
teleologically is easily avoided, and the aberrations of the Enlightenment
reading easily identified. It also needs to be remembered that this is a
European tale; to what extent the conceptual framework finds significant
analogies in other traditions raises a host of new questions, all but
intractable.
Nevertheless, there is no use pretending that the matter can be
definitively settled, even in a restricted European context. Since myth and
history were separated, the two have existed in symbiosis, and can only be
understood in mutual relation. The oscillation between them may be so
rapid as to be a blur, and there will be cases where one cannot be sure what
one is dealing with. This is particularly true for one’s own myths; they
always seem like history. The difficult case in the ancient context is heroic
legend. No one in antiquity seems to have doubted the existence of people
like Theseus or Achilles, or events like the Trojan War. Yet the supernatural
trappings of heroic legend caused unease, and some historians, notably
Ephoros, dismissed everything that happened before the return of the
Heraklids as fiction and/or unknowable.
This deep-seated ambivalence makes it very difficult to be confident of
any definition of myth or history one might advance. A different approach
may be suggested. Rather than tracing yet again the history of the terms and
concepts in antiquity, or asking whether there is a spatium mythicum and
spatium historicum in Herodotos and other writers, and if so, where they
drew the line between them, let us look at the way stories of gods and
heroes are used—in what contexts, in what ways, and to what purposes. Our
two case studies will be Herodotos and Phanodemos, which will, of course,
only scratch the surface of this vast topic, but may at least suggest some
avenues for further exploration.
Before getting down to these cases, however, a few more preliminary
remarks may be helpful.

MYTHISTORY

An important distinction is that between historians talking in their own

(narrator’s) voice about myth, and representing others talking about myth.
The point may be illustrated from Xenophon. In his Hellenica, in imitation
of his model Thucydides, Xenophon makes almost no reference to myths
(trivial references at 3.1.8, 3.4.3, 7.1.34). In two places, however, myth
comes to the fore, and in both of them the context is a speech. At 6.3.6
Kallias is attempting to persuade the Lakedaimonians to enter into a treaty
with Athens, and at 6.5.47 Prokles of Phlios is attempting to persuade the
Athenians to render assistance to the Lakedaimonians. Kallias reminds his
audience that Triptolemos had initiated Herakles ‘your archegete’ and the
Dioskouroi into the mysteries of Eleusis, the first foreigners to be initiated,
and that the Lakedaimonians had been the first recipients of Demeter’s corn
from Triptolemos’ hands. This proof of ancient goodwill between the two
peoples should persuade them now to join the alliance. Prokles, for his part,
appeals to the support given by the Athenians to the Argives when the
Thebans refused burial to the Seven, and to the stand taken by the
Athenians against Eurystheus in defence of the children of Herakles. These
mythical incidents were central to the Athenian image of themselves as
benefactors of mankind, a font of civilization, and defenders of right even
in the face of grave danger (Loraux 1986). We know, too, that appeals to
mythical antecedents and ancient kinship were a common tactic in
diplomatic negotiations (see for instance Hdt. 5.80, 7.150, 7.157–62, 7.169–
70, 9.26–7). Such arguments appealed to the recipients’ sense of identity at
its very roots. There was no deeper grounding than these foundation stories,
which provided the truest bearings in times of uncertainty.
This variable enunciation of myth in narrative suggests at least one
important point. A prime function of myth is aetiology, the explanation of
origins, often with reference to cults and festivals, but also, as mentioned, to
other kinds of origin. History, too, is about origins and causes (arche
denotes both in Greek; Hdt. 1.5). In Xenophon’s other works, characters
delight in invoking myths to point a moral, provide an exemplum, or
ornament their remarks. Plato’s dialogues, the essays of Plutarch, and, one
may say, the whole output of the Second Sophistic, display a similar use of
myth in cultivated conversation. So the sharp differentiation in the
Hellenica between the myths Xenophon as narrator uses, and the myths his
characters use, is a matter of choice. There were plenty of ways both he and
Thucydides might have worked myth into their tale, had they been so
minded. We do not expect philosophical justifications from Xenophon, but
Thucydides explicitly appeals to a non-mythological notion of causation
when, in his programmatic preface, he says that the truest reason for the war
was Spartan fear of Athenian power (1.23.6). Herodotos’ ideas of causation
are quite different, and involve the directing hands of gods. This is not,
however, because he was still in the grip of Myth (the upper case may
distinguish the reified concept), from which later thinkers had struggled
free. Abstract, untheological notions of cause were hardly new in his day.
He made his choices for personal reasons as much as did Thucydides or
Xenophon. Like Xenophon too, as we will see below, Herodotos
distinguishes between narrator’s and characters’ myths.
If myths can be differently deployed by historians, this only reflects the
variety of ways in which myth was deployed in ordinary life. Ordinary
Greeks encountered myths in an astounding range of contexts (Buxton
1994). Greek literature being predominantly a public, male affair, we get
only glimpses of story-telling in the private world of family and women, but
these are enough to tell us that, from the earliest age, children heard myths
for entertainment, as part of their education, and as a means to participate in
the public worship of the gods. A famous scene from Euripides’ Ion (184–
218) describes the delight of women visiting Delphi from Athens as they
recognize in the temple sculptures the myths they have told each other over
their spinning—Herakles, Bellerophon, the Battle of the Giants. People
decorated their homes with vases depicting mythological stories. Festivals
and holy places all had myths to explain their origin and character.
Mythology decorated public buildings. Men, of an evening at the
symposium, performed myth through song. Old men gathered socially in
the leschai and swapped tales, often mythological (Buxton 1994: 40–4;
Bremmer 2008: 166). Orators used myths to inspire their audiences. At the
great Panhellenic gatherings, virtuoso epic poets vied for prizes. In Athens,
a feast of mythology was consumed every year in the dramatic festivals.
Contact with mythology was ubiquitous. It was also different in character
according to context. An obvious example is the difference between tragic
and comic myth. Tragedy sets its stories in the remote past, a gap that is
generally sustained but, with occasional powerful touches of realism,
imaginatively bridged (Sourvinou-Inwood 2003); the nobility and grandeur
of the characters, appropriate to the solemn themes, add to the sense of
distance. In comedy, by contrast, heroes and gods keep company on stage
with characters from the streets and countryside of Attica (Buxton 1994:
34–6). The ease and frequency of mythological references exceeds what
other literature suggests was normal in ordinary life, reinforcing the feeling
that all the heroes have come out of seclusion to enliven the carnival,
present in the imagination if not on stage. If the two worlds of myth and
reality are thoroughly commingled in comedy, that is because it is its
business to break down all barriers. But the phenomenon also shows that
the barriers were there to be broken, and that, in other contexts, the two
worlds, though coexisting, could be held apart.
Another important general point is that many myths had an historical
flavour. Myths, of course, are set in the past, but it is often a special,
timeless past beyond normal experience (Mircea Eliade’s ‘illud tempus’,
that time) (Eliade 1959). By contrast, many Greek myths of the gods, and
even more of the heroes, were associated with specific places and times in
the past of the living cities, giving these stories a marked proto-historical
character. The elaborate genealogies of Greek heroic mythology imply a
chronological framework which is already observed by the epic poets.
Nobles regarded themselves as descendants of the heroes. People knew the
basic timeline of public history; in Athens, for instance, Theseus’ bringing
together of the scattered towns into a single polis, his synoikism, happened
before the Trojan War, and, by definition, after the first beginnings of Attic
life with its various kings. The first people to record Greek myth in prose,
writers we now call mythographers, would have regarded themselves as
historians; their large-scale works attempting to bring order to the
genealogies and refine the chronology were a prominent part of the
intellectual landscape of the fifth century BCE (Fowler 1996, 2000, 2013,
and, in this volume, Willey, Chapter 6). If Greek myth was imbricated in
Greek history in challenging ways even after intellectual discourse
distinguished them, Greek history was already imbricated in Greek myth
before this move was made.
If people were in continual contact with the past through mythology, this
did not mean that there was a canonical narrative shared by everyone. On
the contrary, Greek mythology was perpetually shifting, and versions of
stories differed radically. A predominantly oral environment engendered
such variety. Depending on circumstances and the eloquence of the story-
teller, this or that version would be preferred. We can trace the change in
many myths over time, and even if, in principle, people thought there
should only be one aition (which may be doubted), while one myth was
replacing another there would have been a period of transition in which two
aitia were available (like Homeric formulae). As written literary culture
became the norm, the number of variants on record reached amazing
proportions, to provide learned poets like Callimachus (fr. 79a) or Ovid
(e.g. Fast. 1.323–32, 5.3–7, 5.633–62) with riches to exploit not only for
subject matter but for metapoetic effects. But this does not mean that the
tolerance of plurality was any less in earlier times. We shall find further
evidence below, in discussing Phanodemos, that this was the case.
With these preliminary points in mind let us turn to our two case studies.

HERODOTOS

The commonest use of myth in Herodotos is, unsurprisingly, to identify

origins. With respect to nations he is notably consistent about this. Every
Greek and every important barbarian nation has its origins explained,
usually on first appearing in the Histories (the Medes and Persians are
exceptions, but see 7.61–2). Prominent individuals in the History may
receive the same treatment, notably Spartan kings, whose genealogy is
carefully rehearsed (6.52, 7.204, 8.131; cf. Miltiades at 6.35).
This careful charting creates a vast canvas of the known world, a spatial
map to complement the chronological framework Herodotos develops with
equal care on the basis of his discoveries in Egypt. All human history is
here accounted for. Epic grandeur meets the encyclopaedic urge to acquire
total knowledge. The corners of such a map could only be pinned down by
myths from the Urzeit, the primeval time.
An important point about Herodotos emerges here, however: for him,
primeval time begins with the first human being. Another writer would
have taken one more step backwards and told us who the gods were, from
whom these original heroes were descended. But Herodotos is very
sceptical about direct human interaction with gods; when such stories come
into his narrative he carefully marks them as what other people say (Fowler
2010, and, in this volume, Willey, Chapter 6). In explaining the origin of the
Scythians, for instance, he first gives us the Scythian story, that the first
man was Targitaos, son of Zeus and a daughter of the river Borysthenes:
‘this is what they say, but I do not believe it’ (4.5). Next we get the Greek
version, about Herakles and a snake-woman (4.8–10): Herakles was
returning with the cattle of Geryon, fetched from beyond Ocean, which ‘the
Greeks say’ is a stream flowing around the earth, ‘but they cannot
demonstrate the fact’. A third, much more realistic tale is the one Herodotos
emphatically prefers (4.11).
A revealing case is that of Aphetai. In telling us how this place in
Thessaly got its name (the point from which the Argonauts ‘set out’ in the
Argo to fetch the Golden Fleece), Herodotos notes that this is where ‘it is
said’ Herakles was left behind by Jason (7.193). A particular indication of
his scepticism is his use of the word koas to denote the Fleece. This is the
mot juste in the poetic tradition, and instantly brings to mind all the
fantastic elements of the tale as the poets told it. The name of the Argo, well
known for its magical quality, has a similar effect in this passage. Contrast
the realistic motive given at 1.2 (the Greeks who went to Colchis were
merchants—no mention of Jason or the Argo). This is a subtle but telling
indication that a sense of Myth is emerging.
This pattern of signalling incredulity by attributing such tales to others is
consistent enough to be relied on. It is confirmed by the converse: where
Herodotos relates a heroic legend in his own voice it never contains any
fantastical elements, and has sometimes demonstrably been purged of them
(for instance, the Helen logos at 2.113–20, where the gods have been
written out of the narrative). One may include, as examples of myths told
‘in his own voice’, those cases where Herodotos is arguing a thesis that is
clearly his own, but where he cites, at the same time, local authorities to
support his case. An example of this mixture would again be the Helen
logos, where he claims the testimony of Egyptian priests as evidence for
what is, in all essentials, his own argument. It is valid everywhere, so far as
I can see, that no story containing miraculous elements is delivered in the
narrator’s own voice, with the understandable exception of omens and
oracles, in which Herodotos, like most Greeks, believed implicitly.
Thus far we have been discussing myths which, in a broad sense, account
for origins of things. We have noted a pattern of enunciation (whether in the
narrator’s voice or attributed to others), and its link to Herodotos’ attitude to
myth. Both the notion of cause (arche) and the removal of supernatural
elements link directly to the second major use of myth in Herodotos, which
is to illustrate historiographical principles.
The first example comes right at the beginning of the Histories, where
Phoenician and Persian accounts of the cause (arche) of the war are
rehearsed and dismissed. The stories involve characters from Greek myth
(Io, Europe, Medea, Helen). It is sometimes said that they are dismissed
qua mythical, but this is too hasty a conclusion. If Herodotos attributes a
story to somebody else, the grounds of disbelief are often that the story
contains fabulous elements, as we have seen. In the present case, such
elements have been, as usual, expurgated, but this creates a conundrum:
Who could seriously think that Persians and Phoenicians argued thus not
only about Greek myths, but about rationalized Greek myths? To sidestep
that problem for a moment, it is hard to see what purpose Herodotos would
have in cleansing these stories of gods if he was never going to believe
them anyway. Much easier to pass them on in their traditional form, and say
that he did not believe them for that reason. This would be a
straightforwardly comprehensible procedure.
It is important to note that Herodotos takes these arguments seriously
enough to rebut them. These are the kinds of argument that might be
advanced on the basis of traditional myth, once it has been put into a shape
such that it can be discussed rationally at all. About myths in their usual
form there is simply no point arguing; everybody’s opinion has equal
validity (see Hdt. 2.3). Maybe he had some reason for thinking that the
Persians and Phoenicians would subscribe to these arguments; it is also
probable that Herodotos is here responding, as so often, to somebody else’s
theory (Fowler 1996: 83–6). Be that as it may, the crucial thing is the reason
for the rejection: that about these stories there can be no certain knowledge;
for his part, he will begin the discussion with Croesus, who is the first of
those whom he knows to have harmed the Greeks (1.5).
He does not turn his back on Myth, then, at least in the first instance, but
on what is unknowable. But unknowability is a serious disadvantage in a
tale that would claim to be historical. Herodotos’ move is surely significant
from that point of view. If the principle of unknowability were pressed, it
would have the effect of turning the Greek myths into Myth. Before long, it
did. But how does this assessment of the prologue square with the Helen
logos of 2.113–20, where Herodotos clearly accepts her historicity? In Book
1, the Helen story is presented as part of a chain of events which present
numerous difficulties both in themselves and in what they are collectively
meant to prove. It is one thing to say that Io was an ordinary woman, and to
disbelieve her metamorphosis into a cow (Herodotos would not have
believed that either); but the suggestion that she was kidnapped by
Phoenician sailors is pure guesswork, and beyond verification. Also
unverifiable is the suggestion that Paris conceived his desire for a Greek
wife because he thought he would not have to make amends. The principle
of verifiability and, even more important, of falsifiability is explicit in his
rejection of the Ocean theory of the flooding of the Nile (2.21–3: ‘I do not
know’ that Ocean exists; the theory ‘has no refutation’; ‘some poet’ like
Homer must have made it up). There may be no reason to doubt the
existence of Paris and Helen, but one must base what one says about them
on evidence and reason. Herodotos’ analysis of the story in Book 2 fits this
requirement, and furnishes a second example of his use of myth to clarify
historiographical principles. He concludes that Helen could not have been at
Troy; she was in Egypt all along. If she had been at Troy, the Trojans would
have been mad not to give her up. The Greeks did not, however, believe
them when they said she wasn’t there. (The story of the phantom Helen at
Troy is passed over with silent contempt.) The story is first made
susceptible to rational analysis by conversion to realistic form; the gods,
and things like phantoms, are removed. Herodotos then studies its inner
logic and brings external evidence to bear in order to derive an historical
conclusion.
Perhaps the real inconsistency between the two accounts of Helen is that
Herodotos criticizes his unnamed source for surmises of the sort that he so
often provides himself in compiling his history. But, of course, Herodotos
thought his surmises reasonable, and his opponent’s arbitrary. Which of us
does not think the same?

PHANODEMOS

The great, surviving historians and their grand themes tend to claim the
attention of modern readers, but if significance were to be measured by
quantity rather than quality, the many lost ‘local historians’—those who
compiled the histories of individual cities, both their own and others—
would take pride of place. In Felix Jacoby’s standard collection of
historians known to us only by fragments (Jacoby 1923–58), over 700
writers are edited in Part III, histories of cities and peoples. Pride in local
tradition is as old as the Hellenic world; the vast mosaic that is the epic
tradition springs ultimately from such traditions, and was perpetually
enriched by them. There were stories about landmarks, institutions, and
cults, the arrival or autochthony of the first inhabitants, subsequent
immigrations, the deeds of the great families at Thebes and Troy, the
exploits of heroes venerated in the city’s shrines, and much else. Poets and
priests were the earliest keepers of this lore who had a public face, but
many members of leading families would have been well informed, and, for
all we know, the curious antiquarian, neither poet nor priest, who went out
of his way to learn the city’s traditions could be older than the beginnings of
prose history. Herodotos’ logioi andres, ‘talkers’ whom he cites several
times as authorities (Hdt. 1.1, 4.46, cf. 2.3, 2.77; Luraghi 2001, 2006),
might be seen as such people.
Authors who recorded the early history of their city obviously had their
fellow citizens in mind as one readership. At the same time, a foreign
readership was also targeted, for part of the point was to make a wider
audience aware of the city’s impressive achievements. Local heroes would
find a place in Panhellenic myth, and, coming the other way, stories heard
from travelling bards or during visits abroad might put down local roots.
This local–international dialogue is visible throughout antiquity. As the
world became increasingly globalized, first in the wake of Alexander’s
conquests and then the Roman, the cities’ jockeying for position became all
the more energetic. The relationship between local and ‘great’ history was
more complex than a simple dichotomy of parochial antiquarianism versus
universal history would suggest (Clarke 2008).
Myths were a big part of this conversation, but their unreliability was a
recognized problem. They always retained their value as moral exemplars,
but some harder form of truth was needed if myth was to serve historical
purposes. In surviving writers like Dionysios of Halikarnassos or Livy we
can see some of the manoeuvres adopted to make myths usable.
Contradictions are resolved by logical analysis; authoritative writers are
privileged; hidden meanings are extracted by rationalization or
allegorization; prosaic truth may be distilled from a story’s overall
tendency. Above all, the result had to make sense in the light of current
realities. Here, the ancient writers almost seem to know by instinct what
modern students of oral tradition have so amply documented—that such
traditions are perpetually modified in the light of contemporary experience,
and only those that have some purchase on a society’s beliefs and values
survive (Vansina 1965, 1985; Henige 1982; Thomas 1989). If a given
tradition is seen to be powerful, the very fact that so many people believe it
must count for something. This living commitment to tradition may be what
made kinship diplomacy work even if doubts might attend the details of the
genealogies; if a whole people is prepared to say, in all sincerity, ‘we
believe we are your family’, it is a strong argument for making an alliance.
In fragmentary writers we may assume similar manoeuvres, but
quotations are rarely extensive enough for us to witness them. There were
also, no doubt, fundamentalists who straightforwardly believed in the
myths, and others who remained agnostic even while setting down the
traditions. A change in the practice of mythography, as instanced by the
surviving Library of Apollodoros (perhaps second century CE), is, however,
revealing. Whereas the proto-historical mythographers of the Classical
period began their books with the first humans, Apollodoros begins with the
theogony. What was myth is now Myth, and the gods are part of it. Local
historians made more and more room for recherché and marvellous tales,
and new genres sprang up that specialized in them. Words like mytheuousi,
‘people tell the story/myth that . . .’, become frequent in the prehistoric
stretches of both local and universal history (e.g. Agathocles FGrHist 472 F
1; ubiquitous in Diodorus of Sicily). On the other hand, the Parian Marble,
a chronicle composed in 264/3 BCE, calmly assigns dates to divine doings,
such as Demeter’s gift of corn to man in 1409/8 (FGrHist 239 A 12). Taken
at face value, this implies a startlingly literal belief, without a whisper of
doubt: Is this aggressive denial of the problem, or blithe indifference? It
could not be ignorance, since a scholar was required to put the chronicle
together; but however one may answer the question posed about his belief,
whatever he thought he was doing, it was not history in the manner even of
a Herodotos, much less a Polybios.
One problem in myths that could not be ignored was their multiplicity.
Like the early mythographers, writers of local history sought to identify (or
establish) the true variant among many. The attempt may seem futile, and
we might choose to smile at their naiveté (as if the habit has died out among
scholars). Yet by taking a step back and surveying their activity as a whole
we might make a different point about the tolerance of plurality the
situation implies—not among individual writers, but in society at large.
This, in turn, may suggest something about the relationship of myth to
history.
Phanodemos of Athens was not the most distinguished of
Atthidographers (historians of Attica), at least in terms of frequency of
citation by later scholars, but his enthusiasm for mythology and traditional
attitude may have been more in tune with the majority of ordinary readers
than (say) the rationalization of the better known Philochoros. Phanodemos
was politically active in mid- to late fourth-century BCE Athens, and was
known particularly for piety (Harding 2008: 8). Such a reputation accords
very well with the image his Atthis projects. Fragment after fragment dwells
on shrines and monuments, local cults and festivals, setting the record
straight and delighting in obscure facts and aetiologies. It does not seem
accidental that only three of the surviving quotations treat the historical
period (frr. 22–4 Jacoby FGrHist 325 = 127, 123, 120 Harding).
Phanodemos’ contemporary fourth-century BCE world is nowhere to be
seen. Of course, it was there in the background, after all, the Battle of
Chaeronea, the decisive Macedonian victory over the southern Greeks, took
place in his lifetime, 338 BCE. Assuming Phanodemos was writing after this
cataclysmic event, one might be tempted to read his Atthis as escapist; yet,
if one assumes its author hoped for a readership wider than other Athenians
of similar tastes, one might suppose he wished to remind the Macedonian
conquerors of Athens’ immense antiquity, prestige, and contribution to
civilization.
Phanodemos’ chauvinism is certainly clear from the fragments. He insists
that the rape of Persephone took place in Attica, not Sicily or Crete or
anywhere else (fr. 27 Jacoby = 44 and 77 Harding). He uniquely adds
Admetos and Alkestis to the list of those succoured by Athens, like the
children of Herakles or the mothers of the Seven against Thebes (fr. 26
Jacoby = 82 Harding). According to Phanodemos, not only was the city of
Sais in Egypt founded by Athenian emigrants (fr. 25 Jacoby), but the race of
the Hyperboreans was named after an Athenian Hyperboreus (fr. 29
Jacoby). Teucer too, eponym of the Teucrians (Trojans), hailed from Athens
(fr. 13 Jacoby = 3 Harding). The original name of Delos, Ortygia, was
bestowed because of an incident in the life of the Athenian hero
Erysichthon (fr. 2 Jacoby = 28 Harding). Phanodemos probably also
claimed, in defiance of the entire epic tradition, that the Greek fleet sailed to
Troy not from Aulis in Boiotia, but from Brauron in Attica (fr. 14 Jacoby =
278 Harding; see Jacoby ad loc.).
It is hard to think that anyone outside Athens would have believed such
bold claims, but it would be unwise to infer that the audience was therefore
Athenian. In fr. 8 Jacoby = 275 Harding Phanodemos tells us that the
Leokoreion was in the middle of the Kerameikos; as Athenians would not
need to be told this, the fragment shows that the implied, and no doubt the
real, audience included non-Athenians.
Some fragments, to be sure, do seem more clearly of interest to
Athenians alone, such as the aition for the festival of the Choes (fr. 1
Jacoby = 88 Harding), the early history of the Areopagos (fr. 10 Jacoby =
34 Harding), or details of the cult of Artemis Kolainis (fr. 3 Jacoby = 232
Harding). It is in such fragments as these, however, that one gains some
insight into the nature of multiple traditions. One expects Athenians to
contradict non-Athenians. One expects scholars to contradict other scholars.
But some of Phanodemos’ discussions suggest not just learned arguments or
the filling of inconsequential gaps in an otherwise stable record, but
fundamental instability and multiplicity as the norm within the same
community. The Tritopatores are a case in point (fr. 6 Jacoby = 5 Harding).
The same entry in Harpokration cites not only Phanodemos, but the slightly
later Atthidographers, Demon (FGrHist 327 F 2) and Philochoros (328 F
182), each with incompatible or ill-consorting explanations. The cult was
widespread and homely, a worship of ancestors for the prosperity of their
progeny (Harding 2008: 18). One infers, first, that the ancestors in question
were but vaguely defined; second, that ordinary worshippers were free to
supply their own understanding, if they thought about it at all; and, thirdly,
that it was not important that everybody agree.
Another disagreement concerns the Eleusinian goddess Daeira (fr. 15
Jacoby = 279 Harding). Phanodemos said that she was identical with
Aphrodite, and she, in turn, with Demeter. Pausanias the Atticist (second
century CE) rejected this idea, on the grounds that the two goddesses,
Demeter and Daeira, were regarded as inimical to each other, and the
former’s priestess would not attend the latter’s sacrifices. One might have
thought such a basic ritual prescription would have been known to
Phanodemos. Perhaps, then, Pausanias’ information is wrong; but other
Athenian sources exist which display equally stark divergence about this
figure. Aischylos said she was the same as Persephone (fr. 277 Radt); his
contemporary Pherecydes said she was sister of Styx, surely the daughter of
Ocean (fr. 45 Fowler); Aristophanes said she was mother of Semele (fr. 804
Kassel-Austin). Yet more guesses can be found in the ancient
commentators, most of which will depend ultimately on Athenian sources
(Fowler 2013: 16). Perhaps the secrecy of the Eleusinian mysteries was to
blame for some of this confusion, but it is hard to believe that all of it was;
the shared knowledge of the many initiates would have acted as a brake on
this plainly rampant speculation. One more plausibly supposes nonchalance
about aetiological conformity in a ritual context.
Another example is the explanation of the name of the Palladion, the
court to the south-east of the Acropolis at which cases of involuntary
homicide were heard (on the Palladion see also, in this volume, Scheer,
Chapter 12). Two main myths are attested, one from Kleidemos (FGrHist
323 F 20) and the other from Phanodemos (fr. 16 Jacoby = 87 Harding),
who was probably correcting his predecessor’s account. Both stories
involve a fight between Athenians and Argives returning from Troy, as a
result of which the Palladion, the talismanic statue of Athena, fell into
Athenian hands. Kleidemos’ version, in which the Athenian king
Demophon deliberately attacks the Argives in order to gain possession of
the Palladion, is less flattering than Phanodemos’, in which the Athenians
mistook the Argives for enemies. This improvement in the interests of
Athens’ good name seems appropriate for the patriotic Phanodemos.
Sourvinou-Inwood (2011: 225–62) argues that both these stories were
invented in the fourth century BCE. That the myth could change so rapidly
within a few years is remarkable. Once again, it might be easy to dismiss
this as two scholars arguing amongst themselves about a variant that had no
real purchase in the imaginaire of ordinary people. Yet, as Sourvinou-
Inwood documents, there were other, earlier stories about how the Palladion
came to Athens, one of which was quite possibly dramatized in tragedy—
broadcast, that is, to thousands of Athenians, either as a new invention
(Scullion 1999–2000; Seaford 2009) or as a reflection of something already
in public circulation. The aetiology for the other courts was just as messy
(Jacoby on FGrHist 323a F 1; MacDowell 1963, 1978: 113–18; Harrison
1968–1971 2: 36–43; Rhodes 1981 on Ath. Pol. 57.2–3; Harding 2008:
206–7).
The aetiological chaos hinted at by these fragments suggests a world in
which plurality of explanation was the norm (Veyne 1988). When
Herodotos refers, as he frequently does, to variant traditions, sometimes
leaving the choice open, he is unique among historians and mythographers,
who typically pretend that theirs is the only version. Herodotos may more
honestly reflect lay discourse about the past. In this environment mythistory
might, in different contexts and for different purposes, resolve into either
myth or history, but without eliding the other altogether. Authority might
flow from any number of competing sources and from immediate
exigencies. Aetiology would adapt continually without the differences
being noticed. The basic question, is this story myth or history, would not
arise very often at all, and the trigger for asking it might not always be the
same. In intellectual discourse, taking a stand on the issue of myth versus
history was unavoidable, but, then as now, they cannot be separated at the
fundamental level: each needs the other. On the other hand, when myth
becomes Myth it can be treated with a certain distance, however illusory; it
can be studied as a phenomenon, and strategies of interpretation can be
developed that are, if not unique to myth, highly appropriate to it (allegory,
rationalization in antiquity, a plethora of theories in modern times). These,
in turn, develop autonomous discourses with their own history, yielding
other insights into the human imagination and the world it experiences.
 CONCLUSION

Understanding myth as it relates to history needs to be studied not only in

historiography but with regard to the experience of the society which hosts
the historiography. Some aspects of ordinary Greek experience of myth as
history have been noted here, but there is much scope for further study. The
picture is anything but tidy: the mix of mythistory changes from context to
context, individual to individual. Among historians, too, there is a range of
attitudes. Patterns of explanation prevailing in poetry and mythology
continued in different guises in the historians; Herodotos’ cyclical view of
history is inherited from Archaic Greece, and even so sober a historian as
Thucydides can be analysed mythically (Cornford 1907). At the same time,
personal choice plays a large role in the historian’s stance.
In the more overtly scientific Hellenistic age the tenor of discourse
changed, but it is doubtful whether the substance did. History still occupied
the high ground of truth but myth refused to abandon its assault, relying on
the fifth column already inside the enemy camp. Myth played the long
game, until, in our time, it has not so much won, in the sense of ousting
history from the high ground (though some would think it has), as in the
sense of having put paid to the metaphor and redefined the landscape.
History and myth each has their legitimate claim to truth and need to work
together. Future ages may see this stance as ideological, as no doubt it is,
but for the moment it seems like progress.

SUGGESTED READING
Morley 1999 is an excellent overview of issues in the theory of history;
Csapo 2005 for theories of mythology. Fowler 1996, 2000, and 2013
explore the interface of Greek mythography and historiography in the
formative fifth century BCE. Buxton 1994 is indispensable for the contexts
of mythology; Buxton 2009 continues the exploration. Clarke 2008 is a
superb study of Hellenistic local history, and Harding 2008 is an accessible
and authoritative treatment of the Atthidographers. For Herodotos, the two
handbooks Bakker, de Jong, and van Wees 2002 and Dewald and Marincola
2006 provide rich resources for further study. On his prologue, see
Węcowski 2004 and Nicolai 2012, though with somewhat different
emphases.

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 CHAPTER 15

PHILOSOPHY

RICK BENITEZ AND HAROLD TARRANT

INTRODUCTION

THE study of the dialectic between philosophy and religion in antiquity

informs us about how religion was conceived and how philosophers
contributed to the development of religious thinking. We review the
philosophy and religion dialectic from the end of the sixth century BCE to
the second century CE, focusing more on theology, mythology, and personal
religious experience, than on cult practices of polis and oikos. In general,
philosophers accepted that conventional religion had an essential place in
Greek culture. Competition arose rather where concepts and assumptions
underlying religious practice appeared to conflict with reason. Such
competition has been viewed in terms of antagonism between philosophy
and religion. In this chapter, we stress the interrelation of philosophy and
religion, paying special attention to how some philosophers incorporated
religious thought into their own views. In the case of Plato, this inevitably
also includes the incorporation of religious practice and experience.
We begin by reviewing the supposed opposition between philosophy and
religion, in order to put into question the very distinction it presupposes.
This is followed by more detailed case studies that show philosophy and
religion in closer proximity. We focus on Xenophanes, Plato, and later
Platonism, on the grounds that these reveal the most pertinent interactions
between religious culture and philosophical thinking.

WERE PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

OPPOSED IN THEIR ORIGINS?

It is difficult to pinpoint how and when Greek philosophers first diverged

from poets, seers, and other persons of religious significance. Many
contemporary accounts follow Aristotle (Metaph. A, N) in treating the
philosophers from Miletos (Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, all
early to mid-sixth century BCE) as establishing a new conceptual
framework, based on natural processes and substances (e.g. Curd and
Graham 2008: 3–21). According to the Aristotelian perspective, the
Milesians naturalized divine powers and divine beings, and the dialectic
between religion and philosophy began in criticism rather than constructive
engagement. The Aristotelian perspective distorts our view of religion and
philosophy, however, and it does so in three ways: (1) by mistaking what
philosophy was in its origins, (2) by ignoring the religious persons and
practices most appropriate for comparison, and (3) by presenting a picture
more coherent than the evidence allows.
The first distortion results from Aristotle’s selective presentation of
evidence. For example, his decision to place Thales among those he calls
‘physicists’ (because of his belief that water is the spring of all things, Met.
983b20) rather than among the sages (because of his connection with
Delphic injunctions, cf. Pl. Prt. 343a), underscores his concern with natural
substance. Hence, Aristotle gives no information about Thales’ association
with Delphi—an association central to understanding the earliest relations
between philosophy and religion. When Aristotle presents philosophers’
explanations of phenomena such as eclipses, lightning, and earthquakes, he
makes them part of a project distinct from religious attempts to account for
the unknown. Accordingly, even when Aristotle reports that Thales ‘thought
that all things are full of gods’ (De an. 411a8), or that Anaximander
regarded the infinite as ‘divine’ (Ph. 203b11), he takes that as a manner of
speaking. The beliefs of early philosophers were more complicated than
that, however. For example, Aristophanes’ Clouds (247–407) imputes
inconsistency to them, both with regard to belief in traditional gods and to
religious attitudes towards unconventional deities. The Derveni Papyrus,
which perhaps dates to the fifth century BCE, reinterprets Orphic theology in
a rationalizing and naturalistic manner, but in a way that remains ‘religious’
in an important sense, involving souls, daimones (this volume, Sfameni
Gasparro, Chapter 28), Bacchoi, and ritualistic practices (Betegh 2004;
Kouremenos, Parássoglou and Tsantsanoglou 2006).
A common correction of this distortion acknowledges that the Milesian
philosophers, and those who succeeded them, took religious expressions
seriously. It has been suggested (Drozdek 2007) that the early philosophers
did not repudiate core ideas of traditional religion so much as reinterpret
them intellectually. This view is more consistent with our sources than the
sharp division between naturalism and religion. Nevertheless, it still treats
the views of the philosophers as fundamentally critical of the poets and
religious figures who came before them. Moreover, in regarding the earliest
thinkers as self-consciously theological, this view is anachronistic: the term
theologia does not appear before Plato (Resp. 379a5, where it means only
‘speech about gods’), and it is not until Aristotle that we find a technical
word for ‘theology’ (theologike: Metaph. 1026a19, 1064b3).
The second way that the Aristotelian perspective distorts the relation
between religion and philosophy involves that from which philosophy is
supposed to have become distinct. Aristotle fails to contextualize the
Presocratics in terms of their contemporaries. Rather, he distinguishes them
from ‘the ancient poets’ (Metaph. 1091b4). He barely mentions (Metaph.
1091b8–9) figures who mixed philosophy with religion, such as Pherecydes
of Syros (mid-sixth century BCE), and does not mention at all other figures
whom we now know to have been engaged in allegorical interpretation of
myths, like the author of the Derveni Papyrus, or Metrodoros of Lampsakos
(on these ‘hybrid’ philosophers see Granger 2007). In fact, Greek
philosophical speculation adopted and developed hermeneutical practices
that began in religious contexts, with the interpretation of dreams, signs,
and oracles (Grondin 1994: 214–18). These practices, involving allegory,
criticism, gnomic utterance, and exegesis, were broadened in the fifth
century BCE by cults, rhapsodes, sophists, and historians, as well as
philosophers. Once the shared interest in interpretation is recognized, one
cannot sort philosophers and theologians into neat Aristotelian categories.
When Aristotle claims that ‘there is nothing in common between Homer
and Empedokles except the meter’ (Poet. 1447b17–18), he misses the
chronological point: there is much in common between Empedokles—with
his interest in myth, revelation, and purification—and the religious thinkers
of his own day (see Martin and Primavesi 1999).
This leads to the third Aristotelian distortion. By separating those he
regards as philosophers from others among their contemporaries, Aristotle
both ignores the ubiquity of ‘theological’ interest among sixth- and fifth-
century BCE intellectuals, and overstates the uniformity among those he
takes for philosophers. For instance, he has little to say about Xenophanes
as a philosopher, mentioning him only three times in connection with
philosophy (Cael. 294a23; Metaph. 986b21, 986b27). Though he
recognizes Xenophanes as a philosopher (Metaph. 986b21), Aristotle says
that he ‘makes nothing clear’ and is ‘rather crude’ (agroikoteros).
Consequently, Lesher (1992: 191) claimed that Xenophanes ‘does not really
belong in a discussion of the principles of nature’. If we were to view
Xenophanes and a few other early ‘philosophers’ like him as not belonging
squarely within Aristotle’s grouping, we could see a richer beginning to the
dialectic between philosophy and religion, a beginning which better
explains Plato’s intense engagement with religion, as well as some post-
Aristotelian developments.
In what follows, we look at three case studies that help to correct the
distortion introduced by the Aristotelian perspective. Our case study of
Xenophanes shows how difficult it is to pigeonhole some Presocratics as
either philosophers or religious thinkers. Xenophanes raises questions about
the origin and attributes of the gods, and about what is tolerable to believe
they do. Closely connected are his doubts about knowledge of divine things.
Yet his questions and doubts can be seen to fit with religious
circumspection and humility.
Our case study of Plato shows how he builds upon the kind of thinking
found in Xenophanes. With Plato, we see the first clear evidence of positive
theology. Yet even as Plato supplies rational grounds for the religious
speculation that preceded him, religious concepts and practices continue to
provide the framework for many of his philosophical ideas. We show this
through the close association of Plato’s epistemology, metaphysics, and
ethics with concepts inherited from Greek religion. We show, further, how
these three strands of Plato’s thought are fused in conceptions about the
soul and the afterlife to such an extent that personal religious experience
becomes the focus of later Platonic philosophy.
Our third case study, devoted to imperial Platonism and cognate
movements, shows how thinkers after Plato were able to achieve a
remarkable reconciliation of philosophy and religion by means of the
philosophico-religious ideas they found in Plato. Our conclusion is that not
only were philosophy and religion not opposed in their origin, but there was
continuous interaction and integration of religious and philosophical
thinking from Presocratic philosophy to Neoplatonism.

CASE STUDIES

Xenophanes
Xenophanes of Colophon has generally been characterized as an Ionian
physicist, and there is evidence in the fragments and testimonia of his
interest in natural phenomena and the source (arche) of existing things (see
DK 11 B 27–32). Yet this may indicate only that Xenophanes was ‘imbued
with the spirit of Ionian historie’ (Lesher 1992: 4), which suffused late
sixth-century BCE reflection. Xenophanes was also a poet, as extant elegies
show. These are formally and substantially poetic—they offer the sort of
observations on religious, moral, and cultural matters that were squarely
within the poet’s brief (see esp. B1–2).
Xenophanes’ perspective on his subject matter is difficult to place
exclusively in either the poet’s or the philosopher’s territory. His criticism
of contemporaries and predecessors in the so-called silloi, or satirical,
fragments (B10–22), accords with late sixth-century BCE poetic practice.
Yet in Xenophanes we find the earliest traces of sceptical tropes (e.g.
repeated deployment of counterfactual conditionals to provoke doubt: B15,
34, 38). It might be safest, then, to treat Xenophanes as one whose thoughts
about the divine and about human reason challenge philosophers and poets
alike (Hermann 2004: 135–6).
The fragments of Xenophanes that concern divine nature fall into three
overlapping groups: those that criticize poetic accounts about divine
behaviour (10–12), those that criticize anthropomorphism (B14–16), and
those that describe divine nature directly (B23–6). Lesher (1992: 83)
suggests that a conception of divine perfection underlies all three groups.
Thus, God is described as ‘greatest’ (megistos, B23), ‘whole’ (oulos, B24),
‘completely without toil’ (apaneuthe, B25), and ‘ever in the same’ (aei de
en tautoi, B26). From this point of view, it makes sense to reprove Homer
and Hesiod for saying that the gods commit murder, theft, and adultery
(B11–12, cf. B10), and to ridicule mortals for thinking gods wear human
clothing (B14), regardless of whether these criticisms imply that there are
not multiple gods, or that the gods do not interact at all.
Xenophanes’ attack on anthropomorphism presents us with an interesting
alternative, however. The source of his attack may not be a conception of
divine perfection, so much as exposure to diverse cultural representations
(on which see, in this volume, Scheer, Chapter 12). Thus, Xenophanes notes
(B16) that ‘the Ethiopians claim that their gods are flat-nosed and dark; the
Thracians that theirs have grey eyes and light hair’. While these different
attributes are not logically incompatible, they present contrasting
appearances, and Xenophanes may have meant to indicate that gods cannot,
at the same time, look like both Ethiopians and Thracians. If that is so, then
the historical circumstances of Xenophanes’ exile from Colophon (DL
9.18.1) and his subsequent travels as a wandering poet, may have
contributed to his thinking.
If that was how the thought began, however, it was soon extended. What
is implicit in fr. 16—that the Ethiopians and Thracians fashion gods after
their own image—becomes explicit in frr. 14–15. In B15 Xenophanes, at
his imaginative best, states that ‘if horses or oxen or lions had hands to
draw with’ each group would draw the figures of gods so as to be just like
themselves. This fragment takes the thought of B16 further, not just by
making anthropomorphism explicit, but by suggesting that the conceptual
propensities of species are natural rather than cultural. In B14 Xenophanes
takes the idea even further, reporting that people think that gods wear the
same clothing as they do, ‘but’ (alla) this is merely a matter of
‘supposition’ (dokeousi), like the thought that gods are born, or have voices
and bodies.
The rejection of anthropomorphism has consequences for Xenophanes’
view of divine nature. The ‘one God’ of B23, is ‘not in any way like
mortals in body or in thought’. This suggests that the apparent perfections,
‘greatest’, ‘complete’, and ‘aloof’ should be understood negatively, by
contrast with the ordinary, incomplete, mundane existence of mortals.
Indeed, the fragments that deal with divine nature, if taken literally, are
inconsistent with Xenophanes’ anti-anthropomorphism. To suggest that
God literally ‘sees’, ‘hears’, or ‘thinks’ (B24, cf. B25) is to picture God the
way that a sentient species might. A more consistent interpretation treats
these attributions negatively: God does not see, think, or hear at all as we
do. Similarly, in B25, the way that God ‘shakes’ (kradainai) all things is
‘completely without toil’ (apaneuthe ponoio), that is, in no way familiar to
us. All of this suggests that it is not so much a positive conception of divine
perfection that underlies Xenophanes’ ‘theology’ as awareness of the limits
of human understanding.
This way of looking at Xenophanes is supported by the fragments
concerning human reason (B18, 34–6). We noted above that human
thoughts about the divine are merely a matter of supposition (B14). Yet as
poor as our faculties are—and there is ‘no man who sees clearly nor will
there be anyone who knows’—still, ‘supposition is universally available’
(dokos d’ epi pasi tetuktai, B34). Supposition gives men an intellectual
foothold, albeit a tenuous one, for though ‘the gods did not trace out the
pattern (hypedeixan) of all things for mortals from the start, in time and by
searching they find things out better’ (B18). Thus, one might ultimately
reach the point where things can ‘be supposed (dedoxastho) to be like
(eoikota) unto the real things (tois etymoisi)’ (B35), at least for ‘as many
things as [the gods] have made apparent (pephenasin) to mortal sight’
(B36). Yet even if the likeness were perfect, one would not know it (B34).
The overall position here is intellectual modesty in the face of something
beyond our understanding.

Implications.
The character of Xenophanes’ thoughts about divine nature and our
understanding of it is more poetic than philosophical. If there is a concept
of divine perfection underlying Xenophanes’ ‘theology’, it is a negative
one, emphasizing our own temporal, physical, and intellectual
imperfections. Nevertheless, Xenophanes was an impetus for future
thinking about divine perfection, if not by Parmenides and later
Presocratics, then at least by Plato. It is hard to read the arguments of
Republic 377–83 without suspecting Xenophanes’ influence. There, Plato
systematically covers the same ground of divine behaviour (377–80) and
divine nature (380–3): he criticizes Hesiod, Homer, and other poets for
implying that gods do evil things and take on human form. The differences
are that Plato develops a positive conception of divine perfection founded
upon the attributes of goodness (379b) and simplicity (380d), that he argues
deductively from these attributes to conclusions that seem inescapable, and
that he connects the conception of the gods’ moral goodness with the
metaphysical conception of their simplicity through the notion of ‘best
condition’ (aristos echein). Thus, Plato affirms what Xenophanes cannot:
‘God is absolutely simple and true in word and deed’ (382e8), but perhaps
he could not have said that without Xenophanes before him.

Plato
Plato holds a vital position in the reason-and-religion dialectic, because of
the underpinning he gives to ‘theology’ that precedes him (as mentioned)
and in terms of the significance of Platonic religion for those who came
later (as we show in the next section). In this section, we emphasize the
fundamental role of religion in determining the shape of Platonic
philosophy.
Religious themes are found everywhere in Plato’s dialogues. At the
broadest level, this results inevitably from his depiction of a society
‘permeated’ by religion (Morgan 1992: 227). A deliberate emphasis,
however, appears in connection with the trial of Sokrates, which figures
prominently in the dialogues. Sokrates was accused of ‘not recognizing’ the
gods of the polis (Ap. 24c1), and his subsequent conviction shows how far
relations between philosophy and religion had broken down. Platonic
philosophy can be viewed as an elaborate effort to repair them.
 Plato makes no effort to hide Sokrates’ criticism of the content of
traditional myths (Euthyphr. 6a); rather, the repeated defence of it in the
Republic (377–92) and Laws (886) suggests his own commitment. Yet he
does not pursue these criticisms as an attack on religion, or deny outright
the existence of the Olympian gods, titans, demigods, heroes, or other
significant figures of Greek mythology. On the contrary, they are frequently
acknowledged in his writings. In the political programme of the Laws there
are prescriptions for districts, temples, festivals, games, cults, and
priesthoods dedicated to traditional deities, and he refers widely elsewhere
to prayer, sacrifice, divination, and other services to the gods (on which, see
Mikalson 2010). By contrast, some of Plato’s most severe ridicule is
levelled at natural philosophy, at least whenever it does not begin with
something divine, such as a divine mind, a world soul, or a creator God
(Phd. 96–100; Phlb. 27–8; Leg. 886–900; cf. Ti. 27–9). In stark opposition
to materialism, Plato supports the traditional view that the sun, moon, and
other celestial bodies are gods (Leg. 886–9; Ti. 38–40; Resp. 508a), and he
persistently deploys myths that refer to familiar Greek gods and divinities
(Grg. 523–7; Phd. 107–14; Resp. 614–21; Phd. 246–59; Ti. 27–92; Plt.
269–74).
Some have asserted that Plato produced myths for the ‘less
philosophically inclined’ (Partenie 2009: 7–10), or that he regarded polis
religion as the ‘handmaid of philosophy’ (Fraenkel 2013: 58–69), but those
terms suggest a view of religion as adventitious propaganda that we regard
as inconsistent with the tenor of Plato’s life and writings. Rather, Plato was
himself a person of deeply religious temperament, who considered religion,
myth, and even argument as heuristic for all people, philosophically
inclined or otherwise: many of the myths are described as worth believing,
and not just by those who are philosophically inept (Meno 86b; Grg. 526d;
Phdr. 114d; Resp. 621b).
Plato expresses much of his thought in the framework of pre-existing
religious traditions and categories. For instance, the theory of recollection,
that cornerstone of Platonic epistemology, is introduced in the Meno in the
context of a religious view, promulgated by ‘priests and priestesses’
(81a10), that the soul is immortal, yet tainted with guilt that can only be
expiated through a reverent (hosios) life. There is a parallel between guilt
and expiation, on the one hand, and amnesia and recollection on the other.
Thus, it has often been pointed out that the theory of recollection draws on
Orphic or Pythagorean sources (Bluck 1961 274–83; Morgan 1992: 237).
This context is far-reaching, for the reverent life turns out to be a
philosophico-religious one. The Theaetetus describes it as ‘becoming
righteous and holy (hosion) with wisdom (phronesis)’, with ‘likeness unto
god’ as the goal (176b1–2). In such a life, divine inspiration is frequently a
source of vision and understanding (Ap. 33c; Meno 99e; Phd. 84a6–b2;
Phdr. 262d; Phlb. 20b; Cra. 425d), and prayer is efficacious, either in
inducing an appropriately devout cognitive attitude, or in actually obtaining
the help of the gods to make discoveries (Phdr. 278b; Phlb. 25b–c; Ti. 27c;
Cri. 106b).
Similarly, in metaphysics Plato’s distinction between the Forms and
sensible objects occupies the same conceptual niche as the distinction
between gods and mortals. Thus, it is not surprising to find that the same
terms used to describe the gods are also used to describe Forms (cf. Resp.
381c8–9 and Symp. 208a8, with Phd. 78c6, d2, d5, 79d5, e4, and Resp.
500c–d, 585c), or that the ‘separation’ of Forms from sensible mirrors the
separation of gods from humans. Nevertheless, just as humans ‘have a
share’ (metechein) of divine nature (Prt. 322a3), so also sensible things
‘participate’ (metechein) in the Forms (Phd. 100c5; Prm. 129a–c, 130b).
Plato’s ethics are also expressed within a religious framework, one of
introspective personal development leading towards divine perfection.
From the Apology to the Laws, we find the idea that humans are stationed
here as servants of the gods, with the object of living righteously by caring
about the perfection of their souls (Ap. 28–30; Phd. 62–7; Leg. 644–5).
Indeed, in the Republic the virtues are defined in terms of conditions of the
soul: temperance is the good condition of the appetitive part, bravery the
good condition of the spirited part, and wisdom the good condition of the
rational part, while justice is the joint good condition of all three (Resp.
428–35, esp. 434d–435c). The process by which such conditions are
produced is sometimes described as ‘purification’ (Soph. 227–9; Phd. 67–
9), and the persons who attain purification are said to be loved by the gods
(Ap. 41c; Grg. 508a; Symp. 212b; Resp. 352b; Phlb. 39e; cf. Prt. 345c).
Those who live in such a way are rewarded after death, while those who do
not, suffer punishment (Ap. 41c; Cri. 54d; Grg. 492–3, 523–7; Meno 81c;
Phd. 63b–c, 81–2, 113–14; Cra. 398b; Phdr. 248–9; Resp. 614–21; Leg.
870d–e, 881a, 904–5, 959–60).
 Plato’s psychology is the node where all these strands meet, but it is
difficult, given his beliefs about the immortal soul, to say whether the focus
is philosophical or religious. Arguments for the immortality of the soul are
not uncommon (Phd. 70–2, 73–8, 78–84, 102–6; Meno 81–5; Phdr. 245–6;
Resp. 608–11), while references to the soul as something distinct from and
superior to the body are ubiquitous (Cri. 48; Chrm. 156–7; Cra. 403b; Resp.
498c, 585d; Ti. 34c, 41c–e, 42e, 69c, 90a; Soph. 246e; Leg 726a, 731c,
892a, 904d, 959a, 967b). By the fifth century BCE, belief in a part of us that
survives death, and in an afterlife with rewards for the good and punishment
for the evil, had become widespread in Athens, through the promulgation of
Orphic, Bacchic, and Eleusinian rituals (West 1983; Burkert 1987;
Edmonds 2004; and, in this volume, Edmonds, Chapter 37). Morgan
proposes that Plato’s view emerged from this background, but differed in
replacing emotional ecstasy with the ecstasy of rational inquiry. He claims
that Plato ‘appropriated’ the ecstatic model and adapted it to ‘a conception
of philosophy as a lifelong quest for salvation’ (1992: 232).
Thus, Platonic philosophy is thoroughly welded to the frame of religion,
from epistemology and metaphysics to ethics and psychology. By contrast,
criticism of traditional myths occupies a small part of Plato’s work. Far
from standing in an antagonistic relation to religion, it is clear that Plato
finds many religious beliefs and practices congenial to philosophy.
Platonism does not just offer a ‘philosophical religion’ that can ‘give non-
philosophers a share in the perfection that philosophy affords’ (Fraenkel
2013: x). His is a religious philosophy in which the attainment of
philosophical perfection is a religious goal. While there are passages in
Plato that suggest we are not meant to understand his mythical and religious
talk literally (Meno 86b; Phd. 114d; Grg. 527; Resp. 621b; Phdr. 247c), it
would be a mistake to think that the religious framework is dispensable.
Platonic philosophy is what religion would be like if it were purified in the
fire of reason.

Early Imperial Platonism and Pythagoreanism

Under the Roman Empire, philosophy and religion came directly into
competition, appealing to the same needs and sometimes appropriating the
same texts. Ultimately, Christianity became the principal representative of
religion, while philosophers gave new meaning to pre-Christian belief
systems.
Plutarch (c.45–125 CE), the biographer, was also a respected
philosophical writer, much indebted to Plato. His mentor, late in Nero’s
reign (EDelph 385b), was Ammonios, an Egyptian (Eunap. VS 2.1.3), and
his dialogues document an intellectual life that valued both Greek and
Egyptian religious traditions. A Delphic priest, and one of several Platonists
honoured by Delphic inscriptions, Plutarch regarded philosophy and
religion as complementary; his philosophical works examined deep
questions of religion, demonstrating commitment to key local religious
institutions. Apollo became equally a philosopher and a prophet (EDelph
385b), not only solving life’s difficulties for those consulting him, but also
‘posing puzzles for those philosophically inclined, implanting in their
minds a desire that leads them to the truth’ (EDelph 384f). Plutarch
understands the best myths and rituals as reflections of an elusive truth,
which elevate the mind by inviting interpretation (cf. De Is. et Os. 358f–
359a). While one cannot treat myth as a rational account, one may ‘adopt
whatever fits each thing according to resemblance’ (De Is. et Os. 374e).
In the De Iside et Osiride Plutarch allows that Egyptian myths of
divinities suffering violence must be rejected, while explaining much
seemingly alien material in philosophically appropriate terms. He offered
comparisons with what he interprets as an established Greek tradition,
embracing theologians, lawgivers, poets, and philosophers, and reflected in
Greek ritual and myth, with parallels in Zoroastrianism and Mithraism.
Implicating the Pythagoreans Heraklitos, Empedokles, Anaxagoras,
Euripides, and Aristotle (369b–70e), he promises to ‘draw out the affinities
of Egyptian religion with [Platonic] philosophy above all’ (371a–383a).
Platonism worked naturally with multiple supernatural powers, while
allowing explanation in terms of a single supreme creator. It placed
emphasis on the welfare of one’s inner self, the psyche, some or all of
which allegedly survived death. It postulated Ideas serving as blueprints for
creation and absolute moral standards. And it privileged a truth within
ourselves over the manifest external world. At this time it influenced even
the sciences; the physician Galen admired the works of Plato, especially the
Timaeus, and even commented on its neglected ‘medical’ chapters
(Schröder 1934). Ordinarily, Galen avoided expressing opinions about
supernatural entities, but a rare passage (De usu partium 4.360–2K) talks of
an intelligence in the air, responsible for the intricate design of animal parts,
as witnessed by Galen’s dissections. Dissection becomes a more precise
foundation for theology than any rites of Eleusis or Samothrace. ‘For those
rites are obscure indicators of their serious teachings, whereas the works of
nature regarding all living things are obvious’ (361.6–8K), displaying the
‘wisdom and craft of the creator’ (361.11–12). In an age craving insights
into the divine, medical science announced its own role.
Scientific philosophy also flourished under two contemporaries of Galen,
Claudius Ptolemaeus (philosophically unaligned) and Alexander of
Aphrodisias (an Aristotelian). The former’s Tetrabiblos offers astrology a
more secure astronomical foundation instead of attacking it, while the
latter’s willingness to link active intellect (as functioning in humans) with
the unmoved Aristotelian divinity ensured his high regard among the
‘spiritualistic’ Platonists who followed.
While science proved moderately accommodating, philosophical attacks
on religious movements, particularly Christians and Gnostics, arose out of
competition for the same spiritual ground. Attacks came from the Platonist
Celsus whom Origen rebutted in his Contra Celsum, from Plotinus (Ennead
2.9), and from Porphyry’s fragmentary Contra Christianos. Platonism
argued that many beliefs of these new opponents were irreverent, while
defending more ancient and respectable religions. This tendency peaked
with the fifth-century BCE Platonists Syrianus and Proclus, for whom
Homer, Hesiod, and particularly Orpheus rival the authority of Plato,
Pythagoras, and the Chaldaean Oracles.
A similar rapprochement between philosophy and traditional religion had
arisen in the time of Galen with the Pythagorean Numenius. Though we
usually credit Plotinus, a century later, and his pupil Porphyry, with
establishing ‘Neoplatonism’, which obliquely influenced both Christian and
Arabic thought, Numenius’ importance for Plotinus and Porphyry is clear
(Porph. Plot. 14, 17–21). While Porphyry made Plotinus the real visionary,
he perhaps downplayed Numenius' influence, suspicious of his influence on
a new sub-philosophical revelatory literature, including Gnostic literature.
Besides Pythagoras and Plato, the list of Numenian authorities named in
just sixty fragments (Des Places 1973) includes Homer (frr. 30–5); Orphics,
Hesiod, and Pherecydes (fr. 36); Heraklitos, Genesis 1.2, and the Egyptians
(fr. 30). Indeed, Numenius’ work On the Good endeavoured to examine
Plato and Pythagoras alongside respected rites, rituals, and doctrines of
Brahmans, Jews, Magi, and Egyptians (fr. 1a). Hence, later religious
syncretism would be indebted to Numenius’ ability to synthetize religious
and philosophical traditions.
Numenius is today suspected of being the inspiration behind the
Chaldaean Oracles (Athanassiadi 2005), which influenced both pagan and
Christian philosophy thereafter. Porphyry wrote on both these and other
oracles (Athanassiadi 2005: 138 n. 10), so they became the subject of
exegesis perhaps a century after they were written. Platonists already took
this to be an ancient text, failing to connect their Platonizing tone with their
Platonist origins. Granting them scriptural status, they reinforced the links
between Platonism and theurgic practices.
Numenius’ accommodating attitude to Homer, at the beginning of Greek
literature and of corresponding importance, is obvious. Yet Plato’s
perceived attacks on Homer in the Republic meant that any defence had to
explain away features criticized by Plato, including the mythical depiction
of amoral or irrational gods. Though an allegorical interpretation of Homer
had arisen in Classical times as a rationalizing device, it was given a
spiritual function by Numenius and his friend Cronius, taking to a new
level the reverence for Homer and mythology found in Plutarch. For
Numenius (fr. 32, cf. fr. 35) Homer’s Odyssey (24.12) had called Cancer
and Capricorn ‘Gates of the Sun’, while the poem’s wandering hero (fr. 33)
symbolized ‘the person who passes through successive generations, and . . .
escapes to those beyond every wave and inexperienced of the sea’ (cf. Od.
11.122–3). Numenius (fr. 31) and Cronius inspired Porphyry’s brief,
allegorizing treatise on the Cave of the Nymphs from Odyssey 13. The Cave
was thought relevant to the cosmic wanderings of the soul, and Proclus
holds that Numenius and Porphyry adopted similar cosmic interpretations
of Plato’s Atlantis story. Hermeias’ commentary on Phaedrus 229c (30.10–
31.2) shows how Neoplatonists explained why Plato rejected physicalist
interpretations of myths: it was not because all allegory wastes effort better
devoted to self-knowledge, but rather because myths actually unveil higher,
non-physical things, thus contributing to self-knowledge. This position
agrees with the allegorical practices of Numenius and Porphyry.
The Porphyrian work, On How Embryos are Animated tells of people
who held that life and soul arrive along with the sperm. They included
‘Numenius and those who explain the hidden meanings (hyponoias) of
Pythagoras, and interpret Plato’s “River of Forgetfulness” (Resp. 621a), the
“Styx” in Homer and Orphic [writings], and Pherecydes’ “efflux” (DK 71 B
7) as references to sperm’ (Numenius, fr. 36). Numenius finds cosmic
symbolism in Parmenides (B1.11; fr. 31.27–8), and in Pythagoras, who
allegedly referred to souls collecting at the Milky Way as ‘People of
Dreams’ (Odyssey 24.12; frr. 32, 35). Besides comparative non-Greek
material, Numenius sought a single ancient Hellenic wisdom, lost after
Plato (frr. 24–8). He saw the Orphic idea of soul’s earthly prison (Pl. Phd.
62b) as a symbol of pleasure (fr. 38). He may even owe his name, and the
title of his work Epops, to Orphic considerations (Tarrant 2009: 16–17).
Numenius may be the first philosopher to employ such a variety of
religious texts and authors, both non-Greek and pre-Platonic, as ‘religious’
allies of philosophy. But the underlying supposition that religious literature
required philosophical decoding seems to have produced new
philosophically encoded revelatory discourses. This is one way of
understanding the Chaldaean Oracles and the Platonizing Gnostic texts of
the Nag Hammadi corpus. Work on the Nag Hammadi texts has shown how
four Coptic texts, Allogenes, Zostrianos, Three Steles of Seth, and
Marsanes, display greater affinity with Platonism than with any one
religious system. A principal concern is the ascent of the soul through the
heavens, where, following Numenius (frr. 31, 32, 34, 35) and Plutarch (de
fac. 943a ff.) the region of the disembodied soul is located. There are
several parallels with the work of Plotinus and Porphyry (Turner 2001).
Plotinus and his school actually attacked the work of Gnostics who
promoted the revelations of Allogenes and Zostrianos (Porph. Plot. 16), and
while it is likely that the Coptic texts are translations of the same Greek
treatises known to Plotinus, some think otherwise (Majercik 2005). If they
were, then material hitherto regarded as original to Plotinus, a rigorous if
distinctly other-worldly philosopher, had already been propounded by
Gnostic–Platonist writers.

CONCLUSION

We began by questioning the standard dichotomy between those who follow

reason and those who follow religion, the former being ‘philosophers’ and
the latter being poets, religious writers, and others whom Aristotle called
‘lovers of myth’ (philomythoi, Metaph. 982b17). The distinction does not
suit the majority of Presocratics, including Xenophanes, and is misleading
in the case of Plato. It is utterly false in the intellectual world of the second
century CE. In general, outside Aristotelian and Epicurean traditions,
philosophers seldom saw themselves as making any comprehensive attack
on Greek religious heritage. Since that would amount to an attack on the
culture they inherited, few viewed their projects in this way, even though
comic writers and political opponents did so. Rather, they saw themselves
as commending a modified understanding of that religious heritage, or as
showing which elements of it were to be embraced and which rejected.
Believing that there is some truth behind a collection of beliefs or myths
does not necessarily involve believing in its literal truth throughout, nor
does culturally induced acceptance entail intellectual commitment. When
we posit a clash between reason and religion in ancient Greece we often
assume that non-philosophers were committed to the literal truth of what
would, to us, be literally unbelievable. Yet intellectual commitment implies
reasoned conclusions, and the evidence from Greek literature points to a
widespread acknowledgement that many subjects involving the divine
defied human knowledge. The barrier could, at best, be overcome by those
with divine inspiration, be they poets, seers, or cult practitioners. Hence, an
attack on anthropomorphism or on a Homeric depiction of warring gods
constituted an attack on excessive literalism rather than on religion in
general. Disbelief of the literal meaning would take some Presocratics in a
physicalist direction, sophists in an agnostic direction, and Plato towards an
inner, soul-based religion, towards providential governance of the universe,
and, ultimately, towards astral theology. In time, Plato’s dialogues became
scriptural texts, likewise admitting various interpretations. Platonism
eventually became the backbone of pagan religious philosophy under the
Roman Empire.
In the light of these considerations we suggest that the philosophy–
religion dichotomy has acquired some of its plausibility from scholars who
first misunderstand the nature of religion, and, second, draw their concept
of ancient philosophy too narrowly, magnifying the historical importance of
the ‘approved’ philosopher Aristotle, and neglecting the philosophy of late
antiquity. Similarly, such scholars assume that Platonic dialectic is the real
Plato, while dismissing the religious trimmings, including inspired passages
and original ‘myths’, as religious embellishment, ignoring the evidence of
ancient interpreters (Tarrant 2005). In fact, the Platonic ‘myths’ are written
in a different register (Tarrant et al. 2011), which ancient readers recognized
as ‘special’ and important.
Evidence discovered in recent decades has highlighted the willingness of
philosophy to appropriate and nurture religious ways of looking at the
world. The Strasbourg Papyrus of Empedokles and the Derveni Papyrus
make one acutely aware that some early writers did not recognize any such
dichotomy, and that religious ideas and practices could sit comfortably
alongside naturalistic cosmology. Similarly, the anonymous Commentary on
Plato’s Parmenides and the Nag Hammadi Platonizing treatises show, first,
how inseparable philosophy and religion had become, and, second, how the
seemingly bare dialectic of Plato’s Parmenides could be transformed into
transcendent theology as relevant to human aspirations as Being, Life, and
Mind (anon. Prm. 14.15–26; Turner 2010: 146–53).
Some new evidence has yet to be fully comprehended, and the Derveni
Papyrus and Nag Hammadi scrolls will long continue to occupy scholars.
There will also be new work that takes more seriously evidence for a
spiritual dimension in early Pythagoreanism, deriving from a much greater
facility for assessing late sources such as Porphyry and Iamblichus, who are
only now receiving the required attention. We ourselves will be publishing
further on the concept of the inspired voice, and on the language and
importance of the philosophical myth throughout antiquity, while others
will take the linguistic dimension of this work in new directions. We cannot
predict the outcome of such research, however, for there will be new papyri
and new inscriptions that further illustrate the fascinating ancient interplay
between reason and religion.

SUGGESTED READING
On philosophical theology Gerson 1990, Drozdek 2007, and Fraenkel 2013
will give a wider picture, while Brisson 2004 remains an important book on
ancient philosophical approaches to myth. For the Presocratics, see Curd
and Graham 2008, and for Xenophanes in particular, see Lesher 1992 and
Schäfer 1996. For the Derveni Papyrus, see Betegh 2004, while Edmonds
2004 brings in the important evidence of the Orphic Gold Tablets. For Plato
and Greek religion, see Morgan 1990, 1992 and Mikalson 2010. For Plato’s
theology, see Solmsen 1942, Menn 1995, and Dombrowski 2007. For
Hellenistic theology, see Mansfeld 1999; for Numenius there is now an
English translation of the fragments (Petty 2012); an overview of issues
concerning the Nag Hammadi texts is given by Turner 2010.

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Philosopher in Society in late Antiquity, ed. Andrew Smith, 117–43. Swansea.
Betegh, G. 2004. The Derveni Papyrus. Cambridge.
Bluck, R. S. 1961. Plato: Meno. Cambridge.
Brisson, L. 2004. How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical
Mythology. Chicago.
Burkert, W. 1987. Ancient Mystery Cults. Cambridge.
Curd, P. and Graham, D. eds. 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy. Oxford.
Des Places, E. 1973. Numenius: Fragments. Paris.
Dombrowski, D. 2007. A Platonic Philosophy of Religion. Albany, NY.
Drozdek, A. 2007. Greek Philosophers as Theologians: The Divine Arche. Aldershot.
Edmonds, R. 2004. Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the ‘Orphic’ Gold
Tablets. Cambridge.
Fraenkel, C. 2013. Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: Reason, Religion and Autonomy.
Cambridge.
Gerson, L. 1990. God and Greek Philosophy: Studies in the Early History of Natural Theology.
London.
Granger, H. 2007. ‘The Theologian Pherecydes of Syros and the Early Days of Natural Philosophy’,
HSPh 103: 135–63.
Grondin, J. 1994. ‘The Task of Hermeneutics in Ancient Philosophy’, Proceedings of the Boston
Area Colloquium for Ancient Philosophy 8: 211–40 [reprinted: 1995, in J. Grondin, Sources of
Hermeneutics, 19–33. Albany, NY].
Hermann, A. 2004. To Think Like God. Las Vegas, NV.
Kouremenos, T., Parássoglou, G. M., and Tsantsanoglou, K. eds. 2006. The Derveni Papyrus.
Florence.
Lesher, J. H. 1992. Xenophanes of Colophon. Toronto.
Majercik, R. 2005. ‘Porphyry and Gnosticism’, CQ 55: 277–92.
Mansfeld, J. 1999. ‘Theology’, in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy, ed. K. Algra, J.
Barnes, J. Mansfeld, and M. Schofield, 452–78. Cambridge.
Martin, A. and Primavesi, O. 1999. L’Empédocle de Strasbourg. Berlin.
Menn, S. 1995. Plato on God as Nous. Carbondale, IL.
Mikalson, J. D. 2010. Greek Popular Religion in Greek Philosophy. Oxford.
Morgan, M. L. 1990. Platonic Piety: Philosophy and Ritual in Fourth Century Athens. Baltimore,
MD.
Morgan, M. L. 1992. ‘Plato and Greek Religion’, in The Cambridge Companion to Plato, ed. R.
Kraut, 227–47. Cambridge.
Partenie, C. 2009. Plato’s Myths. Cambridge.
Petty, R. 2012. Fragments of Numenius of Apamea. Westbury.
Schäfer, C. 1996. Xenophanes von Kolophon: Ein Vorsokratiker zwischen Mythos und Philosophie.
Leipzig.
Schröder, H. O. 1934. Galeni in Platonis Timaeum Commentarii Fragmenta. Leipzig.
Solmsen, F. 1942. Plato’s Theology. Ithaca, NY.
Tarrant, H. 2005. Recollecting Plato’s Meno. London.
Tarrant, H. 2009. ‘Living by the Cratylus: Hermeneutics and Philosophic Names in the Roman
Empire’, International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 3: 3–25.
Tarrant, H., Benitez, E., and Roberts, T. 2011. ‘The Mythical Voice in the Timaeus-Critias:
Stylometric Indicators’, AncPhil 31: 95–120.
Turner, J. D. 2001. Sethian Gnosticism and the Platonic Tradition, Bibliotèque Copte de Nag
Hammadi, Section Études 6. Louvain and Paris.
Turner, J. D. 2010. ‘The Platonising Sethian Treatises, Marius Victorinus’ Philosophical Sources, and
Pre-Plotinian Parmenides Commentaries’, in Plato’s Parmenides and its Heritage, ed. J. D. Turner
and K. Corrigan, 131–72. Atlanta, GA.
West, M. L. 1983. The Orphic Poems. Oxford.
PART IV

WHERE?
 CHAPTER 16

TEMPLES AND SANCTUARIES

MICHAEL SCOTT

INTRODUCTION

THE many temples and sanctuaries of the Mediterranean Greek world have
traditionally been seen not only as the most obvious (and impressive)
physical incarnations of Greek religious practice and belief, but also as one
of the clearest indicators of the continuity and unity of Greek religion and,
more widely, of Greek society. In Herodotos (8.144), Athenian ambassadors
to Sparta provide the famous definition of to hellenikon (‘the Greek thing’)
as ‘common blood, common language, common temples and religious
customs . . .’. A resulting irony, however, is that although the Athenians
argued that temples and sanctuaries and customs were connected, the way
in which temples and sanctuaries have been studied in modern scholarship
has been anything but continuous with the study of religious rituals and
beliefs.
Temples and sanctuaries, and, to a great extent, the art they contained,
have traditionally been the preserve of scholars of architecture, art, and
archaeology, while the study of Greek religious ritual has principally been
conducted through a study of the literary and epigraphic texts (cf. most
recently Wescoat and Ousterhout 2012: xxi–xxii). As a result, temples and
sanctuaries (across Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods) have, in
general, been studied either as part of architectural treatises; sanctuary
excavation reports (e.g. Fouilles de Delphes series on Delphi, Olympia,
Olympia Bericht and Olympia Forschungen on Olympia); and typological
handbooks (cf. most recently Emerson 2007), rather than alongside the
religious practices which they framed and with which they were intimately
involved.
Such investigations, of course, continue to provide crucial insights not
only into the physical development of these sites, but also into how to read
and understand the constantly changing meanings of their art and
architecture within these sacred spaces. Yet, over the last thirty years in
particular, there have also been substantial efforts to reconnect this material
with its surrounding contexts. Temples and sanctuaries are being pulled
from their typological categories and inserted into wider histories (e.g.
Whitley 2001), and contextualizing landscapes (e.g. Pedley 2005); while
sacred spaces and structures are beginning to be integrated with the literary
and epigraphic evidence for religious ritual and belief (e.g. Mylonopoulos
and Roeder 2006). This process can be seen clearly in four (interconnected)
areas of scholarly debate over sanctuaries and the structures and objects
they contained over the Archaic to Hellenistic periods: i) what a sanctuary
is; ii) why sanctuaries are where they are; iii) the roles sanctuaries played
within the wider landscape; and iv) the experience of being within sacred
space.

CURRENT DEBATES

What is a Sanctuary?
The earliest architectural surveys labelled sacred spaces with visible
monumental architecture as spaces of ‘public’, ‘official’ religious practice,
and those without as ‘private’, ‘unofficial’. This division contributed, in
turn, to the unhelpful distinction in ritual practice between ‘religious’ and
‘magical’ acts, a distinction which, as the Introduction to this volume
suggests, studies of Greek religion are still having to work to erase. Yet, in
recent decades in particular, there has been a much wider recognition of the
flexible, and indeed indeterminate, nature of sacred space and what is
necessary for a sanctuary to be a sanctuary—that is to say, almost nothing
(cf. Whitley 2001: 134).
In relation to temple architecture, there has been increasingly lively
debate over what a temple represented in terms of both economic
investment and social cohesion in the wider community (e.g. Davies 2001).
At the same time, thanks in part to developments in theoretical approaches
to architecture (e.g. Jones 2000), emphasis has also been put on the varying
layout and resultant functionality of temple architecture (e.g. the
implications of barriers within temples between viewer and cult statue:
Mylonopoulos 2011).

Why Are Sanctuaries Where They Are?

Vincent Scully explained the layout of the sacred landscape in terms of the
natural suitability of particular spaces for particular gods (Scully 1969). In
the 1980s, however, his explanations were superseded by ones which
connected sanctuaries to the developing political landscape (de Polignac
1995, original French version published 1984). De Polignac argued for the
development of sacred spaces in conjunction with the articulation of polis
communities and territories, with sacred spaces often acting as political
boundary markers. His approach has been taken up, explored, and nuanced
(by himself and others) in subsequent scholarship that has argued for a
wider variety of factors affecting the placement of sanctuaries in the
landscape (e.g. Schachter and Bingen 1992; Marinatos and Hägg 1993;
Alcock and Osborne 1994; Burkert 1996; Cole 2004).

What Roles Did Sanctuaries Have?

In tandem with discussions about placement within the landscape, debate
over the roles sanctuaries had in Greek society has moved on from the
overtly political (in particular, ‘peer polity interaction’: Snodgrass 1986). It
has also developed beyond the attempt to apply neat categorizations for
‘types’ (and thus roles) of sanctuaries (e.g. inter-urban, extra-urban, urban,
rural). Instead, more recent characterizations of sanctuaries tend to highlight
not only the vast number of activities that took place within them (e.g. Sinn
2000), but also the way in which sanctuaries could simultaneously act as
more than one ‘type’ of sanctuary: Delphi, for example, was the local
sanctuary at the heart of the city of Delphi and, simultaneously, an inter-
urban ‘Panhellenic’ sanctuary.

The Experience of Sanctuary Space

Scholarship has also tried to move away from positivist approaches to the
experience of particular sacred spaces, which emphasized objective,
scientific interpretation based on the archaeological data (and which were
often encouraged by the a-chronological, Pausanias-era, ‘frozen in time’
descriptions of temples and sanctuaries in the typological handbooks). Such
a move has sought to highlight not only the changing spatial development
of particular sanctuaries over time (e.g. Scott 2010), but also to link
fundamentally with the ritual activities and non-permanent elements of the
sanctuary experience (e.g. ritual dance: Connelly 2011). In addition, it has
drawn attention to the question of how visitors engaged within sacred space
with structures, dedications, and inscriptions (e.g., most recently, Burrell
2009; Papalexandrou 2011).
In all four of the (interrelated) areas of debate reviewed, the tendency has
been for scholarship to move away from a conception of the sanctuary and
its contents as a static uniform place, as collections of structures performing
single functions, with a fixed role within the wider landscape. Instead, it has
moved towards the conception of a much more flexible, multidimensional,
and polyvalent sacred space, with architectural spaces undertaking multiple
simultaneous roles, and being perceived and experienced in many different
ways by different users at different times.
The challenge now is to understand better how, in any particular
chronological period and geographical place, this new conception of the
multidimensionality of the physical spaces and places of Greek religion
reflected, articulated, and contributed to Greek ritual practice, through a
more integrated and interdisciplinary approach to all the evidence available
by scholars on both sides of the old material/ritual divide. Recent initiatives
in the study of Greek religion (e.g. Kernos edited volumes and the
Thesaurus cultus et rituum antiquorum), as well as in relation to a variety of
ancient cultures (e.g. De Grummond and Edlund-Berry 2011), demonstrate
the importance (and difficulty) of this challenge.
The following short case studies, which between them cover the Archaic,
Classical and Hellenistic periods, are intended not only to reiterate the
multidimensionality of sacred spaces, but also the advantages that can come
from an integrated and interdisciplinary approach to the evidence available.
In particular, they are intended to show the way in which such an approach
can contribute to our understanding of the way in which temples,
sanctuaries, and their contents articulated the complex nature of Greek
religious rituals and beliefs within the physical landscape at a particular
place and time and, in turn, influenced their development.

CASE STUDY 1: THE SAMIAN HERAION

The surviving literary sources provide very little insight into the sanctuary
of Hera on Samos. Pausanias, for example, gives us no in-depth account of
its sacred space, Herodotos records it primarily as a marker of Samian
prowess in the wider Greek world, and Athenaeus records a few chance
references about its cult practices (cf. Kyrieleis 1993: 125). Inversely,
thanks to its careful excavation and the excellent preservation conditions, its
archaeological, architectural, and sculptural remains testify to its unique
monumental sculpture, the awe-inspiring architecture of its sixth-century
temples, copied and competed with around the Greek world, and the
extraordinarily diverse and exotic range of small dedications (cf. Freyer-
Schauenburg 1974; Kienast 1992: 193–8; Karakasi 2003: 29; Mazarakis
Ainian 2009: 229–31; Osborne 2009: 93, 274–6). This discussion will focus
on how the archaeological evidence opens up a unique window onto the
changing place of the sanctuary in the landscape during the eighth to sixth
centuries BCE, as well as onto the vitality, variety, and specificity of ritual
within this sanctuary during that period.
 The sanctuary is located some six kilometres away from the ancient town
in a marshy river basin on the coast of the island, in a place often associated
in myth with Hera’s birth. It had a temple and altar from 800 BCE—one of
the earliest examples of temple architecture in the Greek world (Osborne
2009: 89). Their construction marks the beginning of a period during which
temples and sanctuaries, as part of wider changes in the perception of the
sacred in ancient society, were coming to play a more visible role in the
Greek landscape (cf. De Polignac 2009: 427–9). Yet, in the case of Samos,
what is crucial is that the sanctuary was not linked to the polis in any
official way before the late seventh/early sixth centuries BCE (indeed, a
branch of the nearby river cut it off from the town settlement). Instead, in
this early period, the archaeology reveals that the sanctuary’s earliest
orientation was towards the nearby coast: its users and worshippers came to
it from the sea (Duplouy 2006), and what we know of its ritual ceremonies
centred around contact with the sea (cf. Ath. 12.525f, and see, in this
volume, Constantakopoulou, Chapter 19). It has been argued that the
earliest orientation of the Hera sanctuary underlined the sanctuary’s
independence from the nearby town, pointing towards its own ‘sacred
centrality’ as the reason for its early and rich development. This highlights
the hugely important role sanctuaries could have in their own right as
central focus points for a wider community, rather than, as often argued in
polis-centric scholarship, simply acting as reflections of the development of
civic centres to which they were linked (cf. Morgan 2003; de Polignac
2009: 435).
In the late seventh century BCE, however, the situation changed: the
sanctuary was reoriented towards the city, following construction of a
processional route linking the two (necessitating a diversion of the river that
had hitherto divided them); a variety of new or replacement cult buildings
were constructed within the sanctuary. Over the course of the sixth century,
the temple to Hera was rebuilt twice on an increasingly elaborate scale. The
first version, undertaken by the architect Rhoikos, c.570 BCE, was the first
Ionic monumental temple in the Greek world. The second, part of the
building programme initiated by the island’s tyrant ruler, Polykrates, in the
530s, was described by Herodotos (3.39–60) as one of the greatest buildings
in all of Greece. The number of cult buildings surrounding these temples
proliferated as did the number of monumental free-standing sculptures, all
of which were turned to face the processional route towards the city (cf.
Duplouy 2006: 190–203; Mazarakis Ainian 2009: 229).
The Heraion on Samos clearly received remarkable investment and
attention during this period. Yet what the archaeology also underlines is the
vital, varied, and specific nature of cult practice at this sanctuary. Three
wells have been discovered between the sanctuary and the ancient
shoreline, constructed at the time of the sanctuary’s reorientation in the late
seventh century and progressively filled with debris (much of which has
survived because of the marshy conditions) until they were closed off in the
late sixth century BCE (cf. Kyrieleis 1993: 135). In analysing the contents of
the wells, several aspects of how Hera was worshipped at this sanctuary
came to light: there was an unusually low number of goat bones left over
from sacrifices and sacrificial meals in comparison to most Greek
sanctuaries; the number of wild fallow deer that had been sacrificed was
striking, in contrast to the widespread belief that wild animals were not used
in Greek sacrificial ritual; there was a marked absence of thigh bones,
indicating that the thigh bones (normally a particular delicacy to eat) were
most likely, as part of the ritual in this particular sanctuary, burnt as an
offering to the gods (Kyrieleis 1993: 137–8).
At the same time, the nature of the small votive offerings in the sanctuary
indicates not only how particular aspects of the goddess were emphasized
by different social groups on Samos, but also how her worship on Samos
was both different from, and linked to, forms of worship she received
elsewhere in the Greek world. For a goddess whose ritual worship included
engagement with the sea, it is perhaps not surprising that a collection of
wooden boat carvings have been found. These, rather than being
representations of worshippers’ modes of transport, seem to have had a
ritual and symbolic value in the worship of Hera that was unknown
elsewhere in the Greek world (Kyrieleis 1988: 217). At the same time, in no
other Greek sanctuary has such a large collection of horse trappings (bronze
bridles and harnesses) been found. This suggests a particular emphasis on
the worship of Hera here as a protector of horses and riders, potentially by
those most likely to have owned horses, the higher (and land-based) social
ranks of Samian society (Kyrieleis 1993: 145). At the same time,
dedications of small wooden stools (too small to be of practical use) with
carved sides have survived. Their best parallel is in Near Eastern art
(Kyrieleis 1993: 141–5), which suggests an Eastern aspect to the cult of
Hera on Samos, perhaps not surprising given the island’s position just off
the coast of Asia Minor. This Eastern influence is also indicated by the
dedication of both real and terracotta and ivory representations of
pomegranates, pine cones, and poppy pods and their seeds. The abundance
of these ritual dedications, thought to be associated with fertility aspects of
the goddess, is best mirrored in the ritual practices of the ancient Near East
in the seventh century BCE, and particularly in Assyria (Bürchner 1892: 29,
92; Kyrieleis 1988: 219–20). Even more indicative of this link with the East
is the way in which some foreign visitors to the sanctuary seem to have
equated Hera to deities in their own pantheon, as a bronze statuette of man
and dog from Babylonia, normally reserved for the local mother goddess
Gula, seems to show (Kyrieleis 1993: 146, and, on links with the East, see,
in this volume, Bremmer, Chapter 40).
At the same time, it seems that Samians took their practices for the
worship of Hera with them as they travelled and settled around the
Mediterranean world. Special dining pottery with the name Hera painted on
the side was found discarded in the wells on Samos, a practice best
paralleled in the sanctuary of Hera at Naukratis in Egypt, also originally set
up by Samian traders (Kyrieleis 1993: 139–40; Mazarakis Ainian 2009:
231). Alongside this particularity of ritual worship of Hera on Samos and
by Samians around the Mediterranean, there are similarities with the ritual
practices at other Hera sanctuaries. For example, the discovery of small
dedicated house models in terracotta at the sanctuary on Samos have
parallels exclusively at the other major Greek sanctuaries of Hera at Argos
and Perachora on the Greek mainland (Kyrieleis 1988: 217), linking the cult
at the Samian Heraion to other communities of Hera worshippers around
Greece.
The picture provided by the archaeology of ritual at the Samian Heraion
underlines the complexity and variety of cult practice within a single
sanctuary, and, by extension, across the Greek world. Ritual practice may
have been a strong cohesive agent between Greeks, but it was not uniform:
it could link together sanctuaries and places within the Greek world; it
could link Greek sacred space to practices of very different cultures; it
could also underline the uniqueness of cult practice in one particular place
and the variety of ways in which different members of the same community
could engage in worship of the same goddess. This picture of the
complexity of ritual practice offers an important insight into the role and
nature of a sanctuary even after it had been officially attached to a polis.
Although the monumental dedications were all made by the rich Samians of
the local polis, the widespread origins of the sanctuary’s smaller dedications
suggest a far wider network, and this is also indicated by the ritual at the
Samian Heraion, which continued to link the sanctuary to a much wider
Greek and non-Greek world.

CASE STUDY 2: THE TEMPLE OF

ARTEMIS ARISTOBOULE, ATHENS

Athens was, according to Pausanias, a city more devoted to the gods than
most (1.24.3). Its complex system of myths, rituals, and festivals have often
been studied with a view to stressing the integral place of religion in
Athens, the special intensity of Athens’ relationship with the divine, and the
complex ways in which Athenian religious practices oscillated between
tradition and change. More rarely investigated is the question of how the
physical space of the sacred fits into this picture, and in particular, how the
less well-known Athenian sacred spaces complement our understanding of
Athens’ more famous temples and sanctuaries (cf. Parker 2005: 52–60).
The Temple of Artemis Aristoboule (‘of best council’) was constructed in
480–72 BCE to the west of Kolonos Agoraios in the deme of Melite (near
the modern Thissio metro station) (cf. Travlos 1971: 121–3; Wycherley
1978: 189–90; Garland 1992: 76–8; Camp 2001: 61). Plutarch, in his
account of the life of Themistokles, states that the Temple, along with
several other religious structures (e.g. the telesterion at Phyle, the Temple of
Aphrodite at Eetioneia), were built by Themistokles himself, in honour of
his own advice and council during the Persian Wars (Plut. Them. 1.3–4,
22.1–2; Mor. 869C–D). Plutarch adds that the temple was built near
Themistokles’ house, and that Themistokles set a portrait statue (eikonion)
of himself in the temple, which survived into Plutarch’s time, and which
suggested ‘that he had not only a heroic spirit, but also heroic presence as
well’ (Plut. Them. 22.2).
 The physical remains of the temple, excavated 1958–64, show that it was
a modest structure: 3.6 m2, with a porch 1.85 m in depth, but that it was
located in a highly visible site at the junction of two roads (Travlos 1971:
121), one coming from the agora to the Peiraic gate, and the other leading
to the Demian gate (through which those condemned to death were led on
the way to the Barathron). The presence of numerous examples of
krateriskoi (miniature mixing bowls exclusive to the cult of Artemis) dating
from the early fifth century BCE not only reinforce the speed at which the
shrine was constructed following Themistokles’ role in defeating the
Persian invasion, but also suggests a strong continuity of cult practice with
that of other Artemis sanctuaries like Artemis Mounychia (Garland 1992:
76). There was also a connection between the Artemis Aristoboule and
Artemis Mounychia regarding the reason for their worship: the festivals of
Artemis Mounychia were said to commemorate the bright moonshine
before the battle of Salamis (see Parker 2005: 400).
Despite the fact that traditional accounts of temple building characterize
them as the preserve of civic bodies within the polis system, Parker has
emphasized how the founding of a temple to a new god (or at least a god
with a new epithet) by an individual was not an unusual occurrence in
ancient Athens (Parker 1996: 3, 215–6, 238). Telemachus, for example,
built a place of worship for Asklepios on the Acropolis, and Konon, in 394
BCE, built a temple to Aphrodite Euploia in honour of his victory. Indeed,
given that, with the exception of the Tyrannicides statue in the agora,
Athens did not award honorific statues to individuals during the fifth
century BCE (the first known honorary statue was awarded to the same
Konon who built himself a temple in 394 BCE), the building of a temple by
an individual within the polis of Athens seems to have been one of the more
acceptable ways of celebrating an individual’s contribution to the city
(although Plutarch relates that, in Themistokles’ case, he was also chastised
for his excessive dedications: Plut. Them. 22.1).
Themistokles’ modest temple, dedicated to Artemis ‘of best council’, and
thus, by extension, a testament to Themistokles’ own excellent advice to the
people of Athens, formed part of a wider religious landscape. This provided
the context for how the people of Athens interpreted not only different parts
of their city, but also their more prestigious temples and sanctuaries. Many
scholars have argued that, during the fifth century, the central city, the astu,
of Athens was more open to the worship of new gods and gods with new
epithets than ever before (Parker 1996: 196). In contrast, it has been argued
that, in Athens’ port, the Piraeus, the entry and worship of new gods was
monitored very closely by the demos (Garland 1987: 107, on new gods, see,
in this volume, Anderson, Chapter 21). As such, Themistokles’ temple, I
would argue, would have played a role in making visually apparent the
distinction between the astu and Piraeus of Athens. At the same time, this
monument would also have been a reminder to Athenians of the central, and
perhaps unnervingly important, role played by individuals in Athenian
society (cf. Wycherley 1978: 200).
Yet this temple’s place in the Athenian landscape did not remain
constant. Following Themistokles’ fall from grace, the archaeological
evidence indicates that the shrine also fell on hard times (although insets
carved into the anta block of the temple for votive stelai indicate that the
shrine was never completely abandoned: Travlos 1971: 121.) The
epigraphical evidence then reveals how, over the course of the fifth and
fourth centuries BCE, as Themistokles’ reputation revived, the sanctuary was
refurbished and adopted as the central deme shrine for the deme of Melite.
By 330 BCE, the demesmen of Melite set up a decree (SEG 22.116.5)
praising Neoptolemos, son of Antike, for his services to Artemis, most
probably in connection with the refurbishment of the temple, including the
installation of a threshold in Hymettian marble (Travlos 1971: 121). The
temple henceforth seems to have been administered by the deme (perhaps
serving as Themistokles’ hero shrine: Wycherley 1978: 192).
Nor was Themistokles’ temple the only sacred space dedicated by an
individual to be taken over by the wider community in the same period: for
example, Telemachus’ Asklepios sanctuary on the Acropolis was taken over
by the Kerykes, a genos of Athens (Parker 1996: 215–6); while the altar to
Pythian Apollo by the Illisos river, set up by Peisistratos to celebrate his
own archonship (IG I3 948), was taken over by the boule and demos (IG I3
84). Pressures on the city, like the Peloponnesian War, seem to have caused
the polis to become much more concerned with controlling sacred spaces
over the course of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE (for example, IG I3 78,
422 BCE, records how the archon basileus (‘royal archon’) was given power
to fix the boundary of the hiera (‘sacred area’) in the Pelargikon (area
around the base of the Acropolis), while the boule and demos take control
of what happens within those spaces).
 It is questionable whether Themistokles would have been allowed to
build his temple at such a time. As it was, although its associations with
him as an individual rose and fell depending on how the city regarded him,
the temple and sanctuary seem slowly to have been absorbed into the
concerns and purview of the local civic administration (ironically enough,
during a time in which honouring individuals with statues, an option which
had been out of bounds in the fifth century, was becoming more and more
commonplace).
The shrine of Artemis Aristoboule thus seems to have performed a
number of roles within the deme of Melite and within the wider religious
landscape of Athens. It was the highly visible marker of the role and
importance of an individual to the city. But it was also, through its
associations with other Artemis cult spaces and rituals, part of a wider
network of worship for an important god within the Athenian pantheon,
and, as such, worked to integrate Athens as a community and maintain its
stability. Its links with an individual may have contextualized Athenians’
understandings of their more famous civic constructions, around which the
city of Athens and Attica were focused. But such links also helped to clarify
differences in styles of management of ritual practice between the astu of
the city and the Piraeus. Increasingly, over time, it acted as a religious focus
for the deme of Melite. But it was also Melite’s trump card, stressing that
deme’s ascendancy over, and difference from, others. It demonstrated the
importance of one of their own demesmen—a claim they may have needed
if we are to believe Plutarch (Them. 22.2) that the deme was also the
dumping ground for the bodies of those who had been sentenced to death by
the city (cf. Garland 1992: 77; Parker 2005: 54 n.13).

CASE STUDY 3: WORSHIPPING FOREIGN

DEITIES ON DELOS

In the Hellenistic period, within the vibrant religious community on Delos

(see, in this volume, Constantakopoulou, Chapter 19), one of the most
distinctive features was the number and variety of ‘foreign’ deities
worshipped (cf. Baslez 1982). Following excavation during the nineteenth
century, their initial discovery provoked disbelief: no literary sources had
survived attesting to the presence of Egyptian divinities on the island and so
excavators at the time were unwilling to attribute the extensive remains of
(what we now know were three different) sanctuaries to Egyptian deities
(on Greco-Egyptian cult in general, and the introduction of the cult of
Sarapis, see, in this volume, Kleibl, Chapter 41, and Anderson, Chapter 21).
Unlike most foreign cults that seem to have been introduced to the island
by worshippers during their time and activity on Delos as traders (cf. Baslez
1977: 312), the introduction of the worship of the Egyptian god Sarapis was
undertaken by the priest of the cult himself in the third to early second
century BCE. The inscription relating the story of the establishment of the
first Egyptian sanctuary of Sarapis (Sarapeion ‘A’; IG XI, 4 1299), which
was subsequently set up in the sanctuary, reveals how, for over two
generations of the priestly family in charge of the cult, its worship had been
mobile on the island, without any permanent built sanctuary (Roussel 1915–
1916: 29, 248–9). Moreover, even when the application was made for a
permanent sanctuary (according to the inscription at the behest of the god
himself to his priest), there seems to have been some reserve amongst the
Delian authorities: permission for a private cult was temporarily withheld
before being eventually granted (Bruneau 1970: 658).
This first sanctuary of Sarapis was not constructed near the central
Apollo and Artemis sanctuary on the shore (where the vast majority of
buildings and dedications by Hellenistic rulers were concentrated), but in a
cleft of the hills leading up to Mount Kynthos. Such a position has been, in
part, explained by the needs of this Egyptian cult (a flowing stream—the
Inopus—was able to ‘resemble’ the Nile and provide water for cult
activity). But such a position also chimes with the hesitancy registered in
the sanctuary’s founding inscription: nestled into the cleft of the hillside as
it was, Sarapis’ first sanctuary on Delos was almost invisible from the
Apollo and Artemis sanctuary and from the shoreline. Its succeeding
counterpart, Sarapeion ‘B’—also a private cult establishment—was given a
similarly invisible position within the same hillside cleft. At the same time,
however, the architecture of these sanctuaries for the Egyptian god, while
clearly catering for a different set of rituals than those for Hellenic deities,
does not conform to any strict cannon of Egyptian worship. Their
architecture is a mix of Greek style and responses to the needs of the
Egyptian cult, coupled with a response to the pressures of space and the
hill’s incline within this cramped part of the island (for example, the
entrance to Sarapeion ‘B’ is a long staircase squeezed in between two
shops).
In contrast, however, the initial construction of Sarapeion ‘C’, the third
Egyptian sanctuary on Delos, sometime in the first half of the second
century BCE, reveals the continually changing relationship between the
priests and worshippers of Sarapis and the island authorities. Sarapeion ‘C’
was made a public, official, rather than private, cult, and, in turn, it was
placed next to (and indeed enveloped) the Temple of Hera. This was on a
visible platform above the cleft where Sarapeion ‘A’ and ‘B’ had been
located, marking ‘C’ out as a more public entity in the island’s sacred
landscape—and therefore, presumably, more acceptable. Its finished form is
the result of several enlargements during the second and first centuries BCE
and its architecture can seem much more ‘Egyptian’ than its predecessors:
its dromos (‘entrance passage’) with sphinxes has basic similarities in
layout and attributes with other Egyptian temples, particularly the
Sarapeion in Memphis (Roussel 1915–1916: 68–9; Bruneau and Ducat
2005: 279; Bruneau 2006). Yet, at a more detailed level, neither its
architecture nor surviving sculpture is in any way Egyptian in style.
Moreover, at least one of its temples, that of Isis, was, according to its
accompanying inscription, actually dedicated by the Athenians after their
reassumption of control of the island in 166 BCE (ID 2041), along with the
cult statue of Isis placed inside it (ID 2044), which represents the Egyptian
deity in Hellenized form, resembling closely that of the Greek figure Tyche
(Marcadé 1969: no. 30).
A picture is thus emerging of the fluidity and complexity surrounding the
place and perception of foreign, particularly Egyptian, deities on Delos in
the third to first centuries BCE. The layout and feel of these cult spaces, as
may be expected, bore witness to the combined pressures of necessity, cult
activity, and Hellenic influence. And yet that balance was continually in
flux: later, cult spaces became more visible and official, looked more and
more Egyptian, and yet were often constructed by Hellenic communities
keen to invest in the worship of these foreign deities in an increasingly
cosmopolitan world. At the same time, however, this fluidity obscures a
much stricter set of parameters pertaining to how these sanctuaries were
perceived by the different communities who used them. Right next to the
Sarapeion ‘C’, a sanctuary to the Syrian divinities Atargatis and Hadad
(both of whom had been assimilated to Hellenic divinities elsewhere on the
island and within the Syrian sanctuary itself, e.g. Zeus Hadad and Hagne
Aphrodite), was constructed sometime after the middle of the second
century BCE. It became a prosperous and popular cult location on the island
(Will and Schmidt 1985). This sanctuary, while once again responding
architecturally to the needs of the particular cult (Roussel 1916: 260), was
also physically joined to the Sarapeion ‘C’ through a shared wall (although
there was no access between the two: Roussel 1915–1916: 13). These
sanctuaries thus seem to have been perceived, in the minds of those
responsible for allocating space for these sanctuaries, as linked.
Moreover, Greek worshippers on the island seem to have considered
them equally worth engaging with: Greek dedications are found in both
sanctuaries, offered to traditionally Greek gods like Apollo, as well as to
Hellenized versions of the foreign deities, and to the foreign deities
themselves (Laidlaw 1933: 225; Bruneau 1970: 466–73). During the period
of Athenian rule after 166 BCE, Athenian involvement in both ‘official’ cults
is clear: three of the attested officials in the sanctuary of the Syrian gods,
for example, had to be Athenians, and, as previously mentioned, the
construction in Sarapeion ‘C’ was Athenian led. At the same time, however,
while dedications to Egyptian deities were being made within cult spaces
across the island, the worship of Syrian deities (rather than their Hellenic
‘counterparts’) outside the sanctuary of Syrian gods was very rare (Bruneau
1970: 473). Despite the physical proximity of their sanctuaries and the
willingness of Greeks to dedicate in both, there are no attested cases of
Syrian divinities being associated with Egyptian divinities in any single
dedication (Roussel 1916: 255).
This architectural, archaeological, and epigraphical evidence reveals the
complex, multiple, and conflicting ways in which the different communities
and authorities on Delos perceived and worshipped these particular
divinities, and how this changed over time. The Egyptian sanctuaries on
Delos were initially located out of sight, before gradually becoming an
official cult with a visible cult location. At the same time, their architecture
and art underlined a complex interplay between Egyptian ritual and Greek
styles of architecture and art. Meanwhile, despite the evidence that those
allocating sanctuary space on Delos perceived there to be similarities in
religion for Egyptian and Syrian divinities, and despite equal engagement
with these divinities by Greek worshippers, there was no linking of these
divinities in individual dedications.

CONCLUSION

These brief case studies of three different sanctuaries have ranged in time
and across place. They have focused on the evidence of small cult offerings
and practices to grand art and architecture. In some examples, the material
evidence has opened up a world almost unknown through the literary
sources, while others have revealed a complex interplay between the
surviving literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence. In each case,
using an interdisciplinary approach, we can see how the physical spaces and
structures of Greek religion performed multiple simultaneous and changing
roles in the wider landscape, and were engaged with and perceived by their
different users in multiple, sometimes conflicting, ways. Sanctuaries were
flexible, multidimensional, and polyvalent institutions which, thanks in turn
to the structures and objects they contained, reflected, articulated, and
facilitated the extraordinary number of ways in which religious practice was
interwoven and embedded into Greek society, many of which we are still
only beginning to understand (cf. Elsner 2012: 18). Herodotos was right to
claim temples and sanctuaries as a key part of to hellenikon, not because
they were all the same, nor because they were understood in the same way,
nor because they demonstrated that Greek ritual was all the same, but
because they were all equally good at showing the unique and complex
nature of Greek religious life.

SUGGESTED READING
In addition to the titles mentioned in the main text: Chaniotis 2011 is
particularly useful for thinking about how religious practice influenced and
reflected interaction amongst different Mediterranean communities. Hägg
1998 is an important volume which tackles insightfully the difficult
relationship between ritual and material object. Haysom and Wallensten
2011 offers a range of recent approaches to accessing religious practice
through not only the full range of evidence, but also the full range of senses.
Prêtre 2009 looks at the variety of ways in which ritual belief, practice, and
material culture can be tied together. Spawforth 2006 is an up-to-date and
thoughtful analysis of the variations inherent in both the construction and
purpose of temples across the wider Greek world. Finally, Wescoat, and
Ousterhout 2012 offer a series of innovative approaches to the analysis of
sacred space.

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 CHAPTER 17

HOUSEHOLDS, FAMILIES, AND

WOMEN

MATTHEW DILLON

INTRODUCTION

IN the Classical period, an oikos, the family unit, including its members,
slaves, and property, came together in a very real sense when its own
immediate concerns took it outside the home to sanctuaries of the gods.
Iconography in the fourth century BCE captures the Athenian family at
worship, before not just one god but several: Asklepios, Artemis, and
Athena. In the Archaeological Museum at Athens there is a large collection
of marble votive reliefs, each of which portrays a scene of an individual
family worshipping before Asklepios and his daughter Hygeia. Along the
length of any one of these reliefs there straggles a line of figures, Asklepios,
Hygeia, and a family: an adult couple (presumably man and wife), followed
by children. There is also a maid slave at the end of the line with a basket
balanced on her head, which basket carries the implements for a sacrifice
about to be performed. Most of the reliefs show a small slave male figure
standing immediately before a small altar with an animal: the sacrificial
victim, in whose meat the whole family and the slaves will share. Sickness
and the desire for health would have led the Athenian family to either the
Asklepieion at the foot of the acropolis or the one at the Piraeus. To
commemorate the visit and remind the god of the family’s piety, the head of
the household commissioned a relief immortalizing the event (see Athens
National Archaeological Museum 1333; LIMC s.v. Asclepius no. 66;
Hausmann 1948: 177, fig. 6; see also LIMC s.v. Asclepius nos 63–70, 248).
Family outings were also common to Artemis’ sanctuary at Brauron, and
while there are fewer reliefs representing these, they are very similar in
nature to the Asklepiad family scenes: Artemis is before an altar, there is a
family group, an animal to sacrifice, and a slave girl with a basket (LIMC
s.v. Artemis no. 461, c.450 BCE, 673 (Kaltsas and Shapiro 2008: 80, fig. 2),
674, 974, 1127, 1151). There was clearly a well-established iconography of
family visits to sanctuaries. Much earlier, a well-known single
representation (dating to 490–80 BCE), a shallow relief from the Athenian
Acropolis, depicts a family before a divine female figure: presumably
Athena given its find spot, Athens (National Museum Acropolis 581; see
LIMC s.v. Athena no. 587; Dillon 2002: 32–3, fig. 1.4; Neils 2003: 144, fig.
5; Kaltsas and Shapiro 2008: 81, 226–31). A man, a woman, and two
children venerate the goddess; a large sow is present, to be sacrificed. These
‘family outings’ involving a sacrifice in which all the family will share
brought the family as a socio-religious unit to a god whose assistance it
needed. But it is the husbands who come first in the ragged processional
lines of the reliefs.
Families in the Classical period practised their religion outside their
home by visiting a variety of sanctuaries and worshipping the gods most
beneficial for their concerns. It is for the Classical era that there is, as often,
the firmest evidence, and consequently the focus of this discussion will be
on this period. In these family-specific activities, men had a more
prominent role than women. Similarly—and perhaps surprisingly—men
dominated the rites that took place within the household itself, in which
women were generally spectators rather than participants. Yet women
celebrated their own religious activities without the assistance of men.
These could occur in shrines within the house, yet most women-only
religious activity took place outside of the home in the company of other
women—or, in fact, on the rooftops of their houses. By examining these
differently spatially orientated activities of the family and its women—
outside the house, within it, and even on it—the religiosity of women and
the family’s religious practices are indicated, as is the extent to which
women’s religion was largely divorced from the immediate concerns of the
oikos.

WOMEN AND SACRIFICE

Sacrifices were the very essence of Greek religion, and women were
present at many of these and ate of the butchered meat. Reliefs prove that
women were present at family sacrifices made to Asklepios, Artemis, and
Athena, and obviously consumed the meat from these. While Detienne
(1989: esp. 131) argued that women were not present at sacrifices, this
position is not tenable because the literary and iconographic evidence is
overwhelming. Terracotta figurines show women holding piglets,
presumably for the Thesmophoria festival, at which women and sacrifice
are linked by literary sources (Isae. 8.19–20; Ar. Thesm. 750–61; Schol. Ar.
Ran. 388; Paus. 4.17.1). Priestesses were given shares of the sacrificial
meat, while specifically banning women from sacrifices was a special
punishment for adultery at Athens (Aeschin. 1.183).
Women let out a ritual cry—first attested in Homer (Hom. Od. 3.450)—at
sacrifices. Literature and iconography constitute unarguable,
incontrovertible evidence: women were present at sacrifices, ate sacrificial
meat, and could even perform their own sacrifices (Ar. Lys. 177–9; Paus.
2.35.4–8, 4.17.1; for Athens Archaeological Museum 16464, see discussion
below). Detienne’s views illustrate how the imposition of fixed
preconceptions without reference to evidence distorts the history of
women’s activities in Greek religion. (Osborne 1993 correctly critiques
Detienne’s view, dealing with epigraphic evidence to the contrary; Dillon
2002: 236–46 corrects it with a focus on the literary evidence.)
Ubiquitous on Athenian pottery are (literally hundreds of) scenes of
women pouring libations onto altars, in preparation for the sacrifice, and
they are also shown in scenes of divination: they stand with a libation bowl
while their soldier-husband examines the entrails of a beast that has just
been sacrificed (such as on ARV 181.1). Women in these scenes represent
the married couple at worship, and the intrinsic necessity of the woman to
assist her husband in these rites. Women, however, could also organize their
own sacrifices. Iconographic scenes show women in sacrificial contexts,
without adult males present. A large marble relief from Echinos shows three
women before an altar in a temple, as is indicated by the two columns
flanking the scene (Archaeological Museum of Lamia 1041; see Dillon
2002: 232, fig. 7.4, 355 n.105; Neils 2003: 145, fig. 6; Kaltsas and Shapiro
2008: 86, fig. 8). A larger-than-life goddess stands behind the altar, with a
large torch in her right hand. She is doubling as a representation of a cult
statue in the temple, and as a divine epiphany to her women worshippers. A
baby is being presented to her by a slave woman (as indicated by her dress),
and clothes dedicated to the goddess are shown hanging along the wall:
hence the deity must be Artemis. No adult males are present. At the far left
of the scene, a well-dressed woman, who is presumably the mother of the
baby, holds an offering to the goddess in her hand, while another woman
slave carries a tray of offerings on her head. A diminutive slave boy
controls a beast for sacrifice right before the altar; it will be slaughtered as a
thanksgiving offering for the birth of the child. Not only is the woman
making the sacrifice without any of her menfolk in attendance, but the
marble relief, at about 120mm long, will have been a very expensive
offering, which presumably her husband had a role in setting up in the
temple (and, incidentally, Artemis leans against a plinth on which it is to be
imagined the relief will be set up).
On a similar theme, a wooden polychromatic plaque from a cave of the
nymphs in Pitsa depicts a heavily pregnant woman, accompanied by three
other women. A slave boy holds a sheep before a low altar onto which one
of the women, who has a tray on her head, pours a libation. Two other boys
are present, one with an aulos and the other a harp: music will accompany
the sacrifice; no other males are present (Athens Archaeological Museum
16464; see Dillon 2002: 229, fig. 7.3, 355 n. 122; Kaltsas and Shapiro
2008: 225, no. 101). These two representations show one woman with a
newborn child thanking Artemis for a safe delivery, and another woman,
pregnant, sacrificing for a safe delivery. Sacrifices will occur and the
women will eat of the meat in a ritual context without the presence of men.
Women and childbirth were fitting contexts for sacrifice, and the child in
the Lamia scene attends its first sacrifice. These two women, one from Pitsa
and one from Echinos, are depicted on wood and stone respectively,
commemorating their sacrifice and so having it immortalized.
Athenian families as societal units pursued a number of religious rites,
and those rites that families celebrated together were organized and
dominated by the men of the household. Women in any particular family in
ancient Athens, and Greece generally, took part in numerous religious
festivals of the city-state, which they attended and participated in alongside
(or to one side of) their fathers and husbands. Various religious activities
had, at their centre, the family as an entity, for example, visits to temples
and shrines in which they prayed and sacrificed together.

WITHIN THE HOUSEHOLD

Within the household, women did not take the lead in pious activity, as
might be expected, but were, rather, secondary players in the religious life
of the home/oikos. Yet, in addition to the festivals and rites, which were
organized and legitimated by the male inhabitants of the polis and in which
women participated, women also had considerable religious independence,
and some of their sacred activities strike at the core of the concept of ‘polis
religion’, precisely because they operated outside of the religious
institutions and practices that had evolved within a city.
From a methodological perspective, while there is a variety of evidence
from cities in the Greek world other than Athens, it is only from that city
that there is anything resembling coherent literary and iconographic
‘narratives’ of the family’s experiences of religion. Based on this, and
focusing on the relationship between a woman’s religion and her house and
family, it can be established that women were surprisingly independent of
their family in some religious matters; they often worshipped in the
company of other women without their family and without male
supervision or involvement. Involved in rites sanctioned by and part of the
official religious fabric of the polis, but also organizing their own rites and
acts of worship, women pursued their own independent personal and
religious needs separately from their families.
 Women, the family, and the house were inextricably interwoven in Greek
society, and it might be expected that women pursued some degree of
religious activity within their home in conjunction with their family. Any
supposition that they might have performed a number of religious activities
within the house either independently or as the female ‘head’ of the house
could also be based on an assumption that women were ‘secluded’ within
the household (for women’s religiosity and the issue of seclusion, see Goff
2004: 2–3). However, some points intrude to negate these presuppositions.
Detailed studies and analysis point not merely to a large number of religious
rites for women in ancient Athens, and other Greek cities, but also focus on
the wide degree of women’s participation in these, especially at the citizen
level (Dillon 2002; Goff 2004). In particular, attention is drawn here to
Goff’s important treatment of women in Greek religion, in which she not
only establishes the nature of Greek women’s ritual activities, but seeks to
understand what meaning these activities had for them (Goff 2004; for
women in Greek religion, see also: Kron 1996; Blundell and Williamson
1998; Dillon 2002, 2003, 2006b; Connelly 2007; and Kaltsas and Shapiro
2008). That women did not turn inward within the house to find expression
for their religious requirements is indicated not only by this wide degree of
religious activity in the private and public cults celebrated in the polis, but
also by the indisputable fact that most of women’s religious concerns were
not satisfied within the house, while—almost perversely—men dominated
organized various household rites, especially concerning the recognition of
their children as legitimate.
Archaeology for this topic is ungendered, and reveals that some houses
had permanent hearths and a very few had altars, but this does not indicate
anything beyond the existence of religious activity there, given what is
known about religious rites at these two points. Many hearths, of course,
within cramped houses of urban centres in particular would have been
portable metal devices (Ar. Ach. 888; Robinson and Graham 1938: 322–3;
Jameson 1990: 192–3; Nevett 1999: 66, 124, 195 n. 4). Evidence for
women and household religion is very limited, and Plato’s criticism of
women’s penchant for founding altars and shrines in houses is the mainstay
of what is known (Pl. Leg. 909e–910b).
Such limited source material partly explains why this topic is neglected
by scholars, such as Pomeroy (see Pomeroy 1975, who might have been
expected to discuss it on pp. 75–8). It apparently did not occur to Festugière
(1954) that Greeks experienced a more intimate, ‘personal’ religion in the
rites of the house, precisely because little apart from Plato suggests they
did. Sourvinou-Inwood, in fact, argued that there was no ‘private religion’
of the house, even when rites were performed in it, because these rites were
subsumed within polis religion (Sourvinou-Inwood 2000a: 28–9). Until the
last decade, little effort has been made to examine the cultic reality of
women’s rites and their experiences, and yet it is through women’s
participation in and experience of religious activities that their lives and
voices can be partly ‘recovered’ for the historical record.
For women’s religious role within the house, the most detailed authority
is Plato, who, in setting out the practices of worship in his ideal city,
contrasts them with current Greek, but presumably especially Athenian,
custom (Pl. Leg. 909e–910b):
It is the practice of all women in particular, and ill individuals in all places, and also those who
are in danger or at a loss . . . to dedicate whatever is available, and to vow that they will make
sacrifices and establish shrines to gods, daimones, and the children of gods. Because of fears
aroused by omens and dreams, and as they recollect many visions and try to provide an
extirpation for each of them, they establish altars and shrines throughout houses and villages
and the open countryside, indeed everywhere which was the place of these experiences.

Plato would ban all such private religious demonstrations, and have cult in
its entirety centred in public spaces, and none in houses. While criticizing
women’s capacity for founding shrines, Plato indicates to modern readers
the reality of their doing so, and draws attention to their spontaneous
religious activity. Especially, he complains, it is women who fill houses,
villages, and the countryside with shrines (suggesting a vision of small
religious places dotted across the landscape). While he complains that it is
the sick, those in danger, or ‘at a loss’ who are responsible for the founding
of these shrines, it is women in particular who do so, pointing to their
particular religious sensitivities and sensibilities. He mentions house
interiors as one of three locations where women establish shrines. These
household shrines will have offered women an accessible place wherein
they could worship, presumably tending to these shrines in the course of
their daily experiences inside. This interiorization of their religious
experience would have been (not to seem too utilitarian) extremely
convenient in times when there were no festivals or cult activities taking
place.
 But if these women’s houses were filled with altars and shrines, then
these have left no archaeological, iconographical, or literary trace. They
will presumably have been modest affairs, to be imagined as throughout the
house, particularly in the gynaikonitis (women’s quarters, for those families
which could afford these). Greek houses had no separate and special altar or
shrine (Jameson 1990). Yet the house and its locale were an important place
for the commemoration of individual religious experiences—whether iatric
(healing) or epiphanic. Yet as a locale and a context for women’s religious
activity the house was almost an irrelevance.
Despite the domestic setting, in which women might be thought to be
prominent, men performed the majority of the rites associated with the
house, even including those surrounding the birth of a child and its naming.
Central to domesticity is the act of cooking, for which the hearth
(personified as Hestia) was crucial. But this was not a woman’s religious
place. Particular offerings do not seem to be made to Hestia by women:
there were small offerings of food made by those eating, but this is rather
unspecific (Hymn Hom. Hestia 29; Porph. Abst. 2.20.1). As a setting for
women’s ritual, the hearth was surprisingly unfrequented. For the most
important religious rite performed at the hearth was that of the
Amphidromia (‘going around’), in which a newborn child at the age of five
days was carried around the hearth—by the father—thus indicating his
acceptance of the child as his own. This was the first step towards the
recognition (eventually) of that child, if a son, into the body of Athenian
citizenry. While the women’s role is ancillary at the most, this was very
much a family ritual, an essential one for the recognition of the child’s
legitimacy. Women who had attended the birth were present too, possibly as
part of a recognition that this indeed was the infant who had been born
(Amphidromia: Pl. Tht. 160e with schol.; Apostol. 2.56 (CPG ii.278); Ath.
9.370d; s.v. amphidromia in Harp., Hesych., and Suda; and see Jameson
1990: 193; Parker 2005: 13–14; Beaumont 2012: 67–8).
Similarly, family cults of Zeus Phratrios (‘Of the Brotherhood’) and Zeus
Herkeios (‘Of the Courtyard’) were so important that they could be used as
evidence of genuine Athenian citizenship. These were family, household
rituals in which men were the principal participants, that of Phratrios
concerning the legitimacy of offspring, and Ktesios as a protective deity of
household property—both crucial concerns for Athenian males. Women
played little role in these: when Kiron made a sacrifice to Zeus Ktesios it
was he who organized all the details and preparations (Antiph. 1.15–19;
Zeus Ktesios: Parker 2005: 15–16; Faraone 2008: 216–17). When sacrifices
were made within a household courtyard, such as for this rite, the women
may well have been present and have let out their ritual ululation, but they
did not preside over the sacrifice and were not active participants in it.
Women were, in a sense, ‘crucial’ bystanders as part of the family group,
ululating to make their contribution.
Yet, on the other hand, the symbol of Zeus Ktesios—the kadiskos, a small
terracotta vessel—which was set up in the house, had its handles wreathed
with wool, was decorated with saffron-coloured thread, and filled with
ambrosia. Such domestic touches seem very appropriate for women, but the
main source, Antiklides’ Exegetikon, seems to be instructing a male to see
to these details, in a similar manner in which it was the male head of the
household in Theophrastos’ ‘Superstitious Man’ (Deisidaimon, Char. 16)
who decorated the house’s Hermaphrodite statues, and not his wife
(Antiklides FGrH 140 F22 (Autoklides 353 F *1), Ath. 11.473b–c). On the
shape: Ath. 11.473b (from Philemon On Attic Words or Glosses); see
Harrison 1927: 297–301; Cook 1940: 1054–7; Rose 1957: 100; Faraone
2008: 216–17).
Theophrastos’ Deisidaimon, and these rites of the Amphidromia and
Zeus, indicate that religious rites in the oikos were actually male-initiated,
organized, and controlled, contrasting with Plato’s complaint, which makes
it seem as if the household was dominated by women’s religious practices.
If the ‘Superstitious Man’ sees a snake in the house he will invoke Sabazios
or found a shrine in the house. He purifies his house regularly, alleging that
Hekate has put a spell on it; on the fourth and seventh days of the month it
is he who makes sacrifices to and wreaths the Hermaphrodite statues in the
house. Although Theophrastos’ intention is to ridicule this man, what he
does is provide a small sketch of what could be considered fairly routine
household rites, and it is the man who is responsible for these, not the wife.
Despite Theophrastos’ attempt to raise a laugh from the reader, he
nevertheless presents a very credible narrative of the religious discourse
within the family of the house: it was the male head of the oikos who was
responsible for its chief religious concerns. Moreover, many centuries later,
Porphyry describes in very similar terms the religious life of an Arkadian
man, Klearchos, who attended to his Hermes and Hekate once a month
(Abst. 2.16.4; Faraone 2008: 210–11). As Rose long ago recognized, the
essential religious acts and beliefs of all Greek households were similar: it
is simply that they are exaggerated in the case of the ‘Superstitious Man’
(Rose 1957: 107).
Returning to the wife of the house, she was, in fact, somewhat
dispensable in religious matters. The husband takes her to the Orpheus rites
to be initiated each month: but if she is too busy, he substitutes the wet
nurse instead, who can look after the children who also attend the rites.
Snakes, Hekate, and Hermaphrodites—all religious matters that could affect
the well-being and prosperity of the household—he makes his
responsibility. This is especially striking in the case of Hekate, primarily a
goddess with women attendants who sacrifice dead puppies into chasms
and clefts (Theophr. Char. 16, ll. 4, 7, 10, 11).
The ‘Superstitious Man’ and his concerns about Hekate direct attention
to a form of religion which one might think women would readily practise,
and one which Faraone has discussed: the use of ‘magic’ by women in the
household (2008: 218–22). But the evidence for this is, unfortunately, very
slim. At Kyrene, when it was thought that a ‘demon’ had been sent against
a household, it was not women who were involved in its removal, but rather
the ‘man of the house’ (the ‘Kyrene Purification Law’: LSCG, suppl. 115,
A29–39; Parker 1993: 332–51; Faraone 2009: 219–20). Despite women’s
especial affinity with Hekate, they were not empowered to exorcise her
presence. Alternatively, it could suggest that women were not trusted to
practise these rites within their homes, and that, in fact, it would have been
very dangerous for them to do so. Women who were involved in magic at
Athens tended to be sentenced to death by the courts, especially if they
were foreigners (cf. Eidinow 2010).

WOMEN IN THE HOUSE: AMULETS,

SHRINES, HERMS

One of the difficulties in finding evidence for women’s involvement in

religious activity within the house is highlighted by Faraone who, in
specifically discussing ‘women and magic in the oikos’ (2008: 218–22),
finds only one category of evidence relating to women’s magical practices:
amulets. These provided a socially acceptable method by which a woman
could invoke supernatural forces to protect her child, employing magic for
her family’s benefit. Amulets in Athens are particularly known from red-
figure chous vases, showing children wearing a string of amulets, passed
from one shoulder to under the opposite arm, which mothers will have been
responsible for attaching.
These apotropaic devices came in a variety of shapes: circles, crescents,
and double axes (esp. Beaumont 2012: 62–3, fig. 3.14; shapes: 62; cf.
Hamilton 1991: 105, pls. 4, 5, 9, 14; and Parker 2005: 298–300, figs 17–
18). Women’s partiality for the use of amulets is made clear in a charming
anecdote: Plutarch, in a passage drawn from Theophrastos’ Ethika (written
in the late fourth century BCE), describes how Perikles, lying in bed dying of
the plague, showed one of his friends who was visiting an amulet which the
women (presumably of the family) had hung around his neck, as if Perikles
is saying (notes Plutarch) that he really was in a bad way, having to tolerate
such nonsense (Plut. Per. 38.2).
Religion for women within the household was, therefore, largely a matter
of having their own shrines and altars, which they set up themselves in an
exercise of independent religious initiative; these were not necessarily
erected with the concerns of the family in mind. Men ran the ‘religious
show’ at home. So when Euripides describes Dionysos sending the women
of Thebes mad with bacchism, leaving their looms and children, and being
driven from their houses outside to worship the god, this is more than a
cultic reality (Eur. Bacch. 32–6, 216–20, 664–5, 699–703). They
worshipped Dionysos in the fringe locations of the extra-polis territory in
the country because he was a liminal god, but also because the house was
not somewhere where women routinely held group religious rites (Eur.
Bacch. 32–6). Yet women at Athens did not practise such liminal outdoor
rites of Dionysos, but worshipped him within interior spaces. Athenian
scenes of women worshipping a mask of Dionysos and drawing wine from
large pottery vessels occurred somewhere inside. These women,
worshipping Dionysos, do so without their families: it was not the function
of the family to worship this god, nor to experience enthousiasmos.
Turning from the indoor rites of women to their outdoor activities, there
could be shrines just outside the door of the house. The ‘Superstitious Man’
was worried about the influence of Hekate, and apparently at least some
houses had shrines to her outside the door (FGrH 140 F22), obviously to
counter her malevolent influence. At the door there were also herms, blocks
of wood or stone with ithyphalloi and the head of the god Hermes, to avert
evil from the house. Women had a role in the setting up of a new herm
image, and carried pots of pulses to the place where it was to be, which
were then offered to the image (Ar. Pax 923–4, with Parker 2005: 19–20).
Both men and women are shown in scenes on Athenian vases
worshipping herms. On one vase a woman is shown decorating a herm with
a ribbon (LIMC s.v. Hermes no. 125), while it is only a woman, of course,
who could be shown actually grasping the sides of a herm in physical
entreaty (Figure 17.1; LIMC s.v. Hermes no. 154; ARV2 931.4). This
gendered nature of gesture and worship, with men not touching statues of
the gods, is indicated by one vase depicting two herms: on the left a woman
reaches out to touch the face of the herm on the left, while on the right an
older man touches the beard of the herm, which he is supplicating. Men do
not grasp herms (or statues generally): they always reach for a herm’s beard
in a gesture of supplication (LIMC s.v. Hermes nos 130, 153 155).
FIGURE 17.1 A woman importunes a herm. Athenian red-figure cup, tondo (interior), 470–460
BCE, Berlin Staatliches Museum 2525. (Courtesy of, and ©, the Berlin Staatliches Museum.)

WOMEN ON THE HOUSE: THE ADONIA

Again, just outside the house—or more specifically on top of the house—
the annual Adonia festival was celebrated. Adonis and his rites at Athens
indicate that it was obviously not the case that the ‘polis anchored,
legitimated, and mediated all religious activity’ (Sourvinou-Inwood 2000a:
15). Women’s rites (Thesmophoric or Dionysiac) were generally within
polis parameters, but women’s involvement with the Adonia and their
independent religious activities run counter to this paradigm of polis
monopoly on religion. (For bibliography on the Adonia, see Dillon 2002:
339 n. 143; also: Dillon 2003, 2006a; Goff 2004: 139–43; Parker 2005:
283–8.)
While the choice of the roof as the location for the Adonia may have
been influenced by Canaanite religious practices (see, in this volume,
Bremmer, Chapter 40), it is also interesting to note that venues for women’s
rites that were not specific festivals sanctioned and organized by the state
would have required the women themselves to find their own venue for
worship. Within the house itself would have been one possible location, but
flat roofs were an ideal alternative, accommodating a number of women. In
a culture in which major temple and sanctuary foundations were, of
necessity, the financial responsibility of the state, except in a handful of
cases, this avenue of religious expression—establishing places of worship
—was an important display of piety for women.
Nowhere is the contrast between women’s formal polis religious activity
more clearly contrasted with an informal religious activity than at the
Adonia. Formal religious activity was sanctioned, organized, and financed
by the state because this centred on its concerns. Yet women could also
participate in religious acts separate from this polis framework, organizing
all the various details themselves, for rites reflecting their own (non-polis)
concerns. As a contrast, there are women’s roles at two polis festivals: the
Panathenaia and the Thesmophoria.
Young adult, virgin women had a particular and spectacular role to play
in the Panathenaia. Captured in marble on the east Parthenon frieze they are
sculptured carrying bowls, libation jugs, and incense burners; surprisingly,
they are not shown in one of their main roles, as basket bearers
(kanephoroi). Dressed in heavy robes with immaculately arranged hair, they
were fitting and crucial members of the Panathenaic procession and the
succeeding sacrifices in honour of the virgin goddess, Athena. Their moral
probity as unmarried virgins was a reflection on their family’s honour
(Thuc. 6.56.1–2 and Arist. Ath. Pol. 18.2: Harmodios’ sister rejected as a
basket bearer).
 In this, the most spectacular and important of Athenian festivals, the
young women engaged in a formal, structured rite organized by the state.
Similarly, the Thesmophoria was a state-sponsored festival, which only
married women who had borne children attended, worshipping Demeter for
the fertility of the soil of the countryside, and for themselves and other
women (Dillon 2002: 110–19). Both the Panathenaia and Thesmophoria
were celebrated on behalf of the state and organized by it, whereas the
Adonia was a private celebration unconnected with the concerns of the
polis.
Moreover, the Adonia involved a much more personal relationship with
the deity being venerated than those worshipped at state festivals. No other
festival was more epiphanic and closely related to mimicking the behaviour
of a deity, in this case Aphrodite. It was women by themselves, rather than
as family members, who came closest to the gods’ own lived experiences
and emotions. Women’s ecstatic rites, such as those of the women of
Thebes for Dionysos, the empathetically epiphanic rites of the Adonia at
Athens, and those for Sabazios, existed at the margins of Greek polis
religion. For the Classical period, only the Adonia rite as celebrated in
Athens is known in any sort of detail (as Photion noted, s.v. Adonia), but
Adonis was clearly worshipped elsewhere (Sappho FF 140, 168; Paus.
1.22.3, 2.20.6; PMG 747).
Myth explained the festival: Adonis, a mortal, beloved by Aphrodite, was
killed by a boar, having incurred Artemis’ wrath (Apollodoros 3.14.4 (183,
185); LIMC s.v. Adonis nos 32, 36, 38, 38a, 39a–d, 39e, 40). Within a
mythological paradigm, an oppositional dichotomy is constructed between
the two goddesses: Artemis the virgin, disinterested in her sexuality, and
Aphrodite, goddess of sensuality. Adonis, beloved of Aphrodite, should not
have intruded into the realm of the virgin huntress. Women worshipping
Adonis and Aphrodite will have known this myth—commemorating the
death of Adonis was crucial to the celebration—and articulated in their own
fashion, not a rejection of Artemis, whom they relied upon for assistance in
childbirth, but their embracing of the concept of true love, mourning the
death of Aphrodite’s lover and thereby celebrating their own erotically
charged sexuality.
To settle the dispute between Aphrodite and Persephone for ‘possession’
of the child Adonis, Zeus decided that Adonis’ time would be divided into
three: four months to himself, four with Persephone, and four with
Aphrodite. This diachronic splintering of Adonis was reflected in the timing
of his festival: at the very beginning of spring, Athenian women celebrated
the rite at precisely the time when Adonis would have returned to Aphrodite
after a winter in Hades. Women mourned for Adonis by filling broken
terracotta pots with soil, and sowing them with lettuce seed; they took these
pots, referred to as ‘Gardens of Adonis’, onto rooftops. Women gathered
together in groups, as friends and neighbours. When Adonis was dying,
Aphrodite laid him in a bed of plants: the rite commemorated and recalled
his death. Athenian vases represent the cultic activity: Aphrodite is shown
with her feet on the bottom of the ladder while a wingèd Eros hands her half
an amphora from which vegetation is shown growing; women witness the
scene, experiencing an epiphany of the goddess (LIMC s.v. Adonis no. 47;
other scenes: nos 48–9). Ascending the ladder onto a rooftop, she will
celebrate the death of her beloved Adonis.
In Menander’s play Samia, a hetaira living in a house with her Athenian
citizen lover celebrates the Adonia with an Athenian citizen wife next door
(Men. Sam. 35–46). She is not a ‘prostitute’ (porne) in the sense of the
word at Athens, and it is not to be imagined that citizen wives and
prostitutes celebrated the festival together—these two groups of women did
not mix in religious contexts at Athens. What allowed these two particular
women to come together was the hetaira’s very mimicry of Athenian
domesticity. Women prostitutes did, of course, have their own religious
practices, and there is good evidence for these at Athens (Dillon 2002: 190–
8), but they were debarred from festivals of the polis reserved for citizen
women, such as the Thesmophoria. That a hetaira could participate in
company with a citizen woman at the Adonia shows the degree to which the
Adonia was not part of polis religion. As a rite it controverted a basic polis
dichotomy—autochthonic citizen Athenians as opposed to outsiders, female
outsiders at that. Other religious rites enforced this dichotomy: for example,
the basket bearers (kanephoroi) at festivals such as the Panathenaia could
only be young Athenian women.
Nor is it incidental that Aristophanes in the Lysistrata emphasizes the
disjunction between state and Adonia by having a magistrate complain that
he had once heard the women mourning for Adonis during a meeting of the
assembly concerning the sailing of the Sicilian Expedition (415 BCE; Ar.
Lys. 387–98). There was a clear separation between the days when the polis
celebrated festivals and when it held civic meetings (whether of the ekklesia
or the jury courts). But the magistrate reports that while the ekklesia
debated and passed motions, the women mourned and cried out, ‘Beat your
breasts for Adonis’ (Ar. Lys. 396). They were not being deliberately
subversive, it was simply that the political concerns of the state were
irrelevant to the women’s Aphroditean religiosity, and their festival was not
part of the civic religious calendar.
Plutarch also describes the women celebrating the Adonia when the
proposals for the Sicilian expedition were passed (Plut. Nic. 13.11; Alc.
18.5). His interest was in the inauspicious omen this represented in the
context of the expedition; the women’s complete disassociation from the
political and military events of the time, and their focus on their emotional
ritual, is clear. Yet this does not mean that Adonis and the Adonia
represented the opposite of the martial virtues of the polis. Adonis is not to
be considered as being ‘held up’ by the state as the opposite of the hoplite
who represents the polis values of virility and citizenship, and who fights
for the state (cf. Segel 1991). Rather, this rite is foremost concerned with
sexuality and women’s emotions.
Neither a state cult nor a citizen male cult, the Adonia was transformed in
the Hellenistic period, at least at Alexandria. This makes this women’s
religious activity fairly unique, for women’s role in other religious rites—
such as the Panathenaia, Thesmophoria, and Dionysia, to name just a few
festivals, did not evolve over time—indeed the Adonia at Athens itself
remained a private celebration. Theokritos, in his Fifteenth Idyll, describes
an official celebration of the Adonia at the court of Queen Arsinoe II, sister
and wife of King Ptolemy II Philadelphos, at Alexandria. While the
principle protagonists in the Idyll are two Alexandrian women, the Adonia
has moved from its humble rooftop celebration in Athens to a structured
one in the Hellenistic period, organized by the state and incorporated into
the formal religious calendar. The contrast could not be clearer—the ‘non-
polis’ nature of the Athenian Adonia was transformed in Alexandria into a
court ritual lacking the spontaneity of the Athenian rite, disempowering the
women who became mere spectators, hurrying to the royal court as
spectators rather than climbing a ladder onto a friend’s rooftop as
participants.
 CONCLUSION

Athenian families worshipped together in various rites, mainly at home and

when they visited shrines together; state-cult did not invest the family as an
entity with any particular religious status. Family religion was centred
within the house or at shrines and temples. Deliberate and specific
preparations were made by a family before setting out for a sacrifice at, for
example, shrines of Asklepios.
As members of a family, women attended numerous public and private
sacrifices and ate meat at them alongside their male relatives; they went
with the family to worship gods who could be of particular assistance to
that unit. But they worshipped some deities, such as Artemis, by
themselves, and when celebrating the birth of their children at her
sanctuaries, as in the Echinos relief, they did so with their women servants
and friends, rather than with their family. They took part in rites such as the
Adonia, which somehow women had established for themselves,
presumably with the permission of their husbands, and which they
celebrated without official sanction.
Meanwhile, in contrast to what might be expected, men had charge of
what might be called the ‘official religion’ of the house, in rites such as that
of Zeus Herkeios. The women of a family spent the greater part of their
religious lives outside of the family structure: when a woman in a
fragmentary play claims that women have a larger share in the worship of
the gods than men do and lists women’s religious roles, it should not be
surprising that none of the rites mentioned are family oriented (Eur.
Melanippe Desmotis F13; similarly with the list given in Ar. Lys. 641–7).

SUGGESTED READING
Various scholars have written about ‘domestic religion’ or ‘household
religion’ in ancient Greece; these terms can be more fully defined as
religious rites celebrated by a family and or its members within the physical
space of the house or immediately proximate to it (for Greek household
religion, see Nilsson 1954 and 1961; Rose 1957; Jameson 1990: 192–4;
Faraone 2008).
Over half a century ago, Rose (1957) penned the first detailed English
language treatment of religious activity within a Greek household. His was
unashamedly a descriptive approach, his aim being to recover the evidence,
not to pursue it for wider meanings. However, it has become the foundation
work for later studies, outlining the evidence that recent studies interpret in
detail (such as Faraone 2008; cf. Nilsson’s general treatments: 1954 and
1961). Rose’s description of the cult of Zeus Ktesios is still better than any
today, especially as he took the opportunity to quote obscure ancient
sources.
Most recently, Faraone (2008) discusses various aspects of household
religion, focusing on the definition of oikos and genos and their relationship
to Athenian religious rituals. In particular, he discusses the male-oriented
household cults of Zeus Ktesios and Zeus Phratrios, and, in dealing with
women’s rites within the oikos, focuses on their use of magic. Women’s
cults, festivals, and general religious practices are exhaustively treated by
Dillon 2002 and Goff 2004, who argue that women were involved in
numerous state and personal religious activities.

REFERENCES
Beaumont, L. 2012. Childhood in Ancient Athens: Iconography and Social History. Oxford.
Blundell, S. and Williamson, M. eds. 1998. The Sacred and the Feminine in Ancient Greece. London.
Connelly, J. B. 2007. Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece. Princeton, NJ.
Cook, A. B. 1914–1940. Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion. 3 vols. Cambridge.
Detienne, M. 1989. ‘The Violence of Well-Born Ladies: Women at the Thesmophoria’, in The
Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks, ed. M. Detienne and J.-P. Vernant, 129–47. Chicago.
Dillon, M. P. J. 2002. Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion. London and New York.
Dillon, M. P. J. 2003. ‘Pass the Drums and the Wine, Let Down Your Hair and Dance: Ancient Greek
Women and the Gods’, Women—Church 33: 19–24.
Dillon, M. P. J. 2006a. ‘Woe for Adonis—But in Spring, Not Summer’, Hermes 131: 1–16.
Dillon, M. P. J. 2006b. ‘The Construction of Women’s Gender Identity through Religious Activity in
Classical Greece’, Australian Religion Studies Review 19: 226–45.
Eidinow, E. 2010. ‘Patterns of Persecution: “Witchcraft” Trials in Classical Athens’, P&P 208: 10–
35.
Faraone, C. A. 2008. ‘Household Religion in Ancient Greece’, in Household and Family Religion in
Antiquity, ed. J. Bodel and S. M. Olyan, 210–28. Hoboken, NJ.
Festugière, A. J. 1954. Personal Religion Should be Among the Greeks. Berkeley, CA.
Goff, B. 2004. Citizen Bacchae: Women’s Ritual Practice in Ancient Greece. Berkeley, CA.
Hamilton, R. 1991. Choes and Anthesteria: Athenian Iconography and Ritual. Ann Arbor, MI.
Harrison, J. 1927. Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion. London.
Hausmann, U. 1948. Kunst und Heiligtum. Untersuchungen zu den griechischen Asklepiosreliefs.
Potsdam.
Jameson, M. 1990. ‘Private Space and the Greek City’, in The Greek City from Homer to Alexander,
ed. O. Murray and S. Price, 171–95. Oxford.
Kaltsas, N. and Shapiro, A. eds. 2008. Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens.
Athens.
Kron, U. 1996. ‘Priesthoods, Dedications, and Euergetism. What Part did Religion Play in the
Political and Social Status of Greek Women?’, in Religion and Power in the Ancient Greek World,
ed. P. Hellström and B. Alroth, 39–82. Uppsala.
Neils, J. 2003. ‘Children and Greek Religion’, in Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images of
Childhood from the Classical Past, ed. J. Neils and J. H. Oakley, 139–60. New Haven, CT.
Nevett, L. C. 1999. House and Society in the Ancient Greek World. Cambridge.
Nilsson, M. P. 1954. ‘Roman and Greek Domestic Cult’, ORom 1: 77–85.
Nilsson, M. P. 1961. Greek Folk Religion. New York.
Osborne, R. 1993. ‘Women and Sacrifice in Classical Greece’, CQ 43: 392–405.
Parker, R. 1983. Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion. Oxford.
Parker, R. 2005. Polytheism and Society at Athens. Oxford.
Pomeroy, S. B. 1975. Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. New
York.
Robinson, D. M. and Graham, J. W. 1938. Olynthus VIII: The Hellenic House. Baltimore, MD.
Rose, H. J. 1957. ‘The Religion of a Greek Household’, Euphrosyne 1: 95–116.
Segel, R. 1991. ‘Adonis: A Greek Eternal Child’, in Myth and the Polis, ed. D. C. Pozzi and J. M.
Wickersham, 64–85. Ithaca, NY.
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 2000a. ‘What is Polis Religion?’, in Oxford Readings in Greek Religion, ed.
R. Buxton, 13–37. Oxford.
 CHAPTER 18

RELIGION IN COMMUNITIES

KOSTAS VLASSOPOULOS

INTRODUCTION

RELIGION and community were deeply intertwined in ancient Greece. This

can be expressed from two opposite perspectives. On the one hand, Greek
religion was, to a very significant extent, communal; there were, of course,
many cultic and ritual acts that involved only individuals or families, but
the clear majority took place in various communal contexts. On the other
hand, almost all forms of Greek community had a religious basis, in
addition to any other political, economic, social, or cultural features
(Hansen and Nielsen 2004: 130–3). Communal discourses, concerns, and
disputes fundamentally shaped how Greek communities organized their
cultic life and negotiated religious innovation, while religion provided
communities with a language that could serve communal purposes.
Modern scholarship has long realized the significance of the communal
aspects of Greek religion (Burkert 1995). An influential current of
scholarship, as exemplified by the approaches of the Paris School (e.g.
Bruit Zaidman and Schmitt Pantel 1992) and the ground-breaking
contributions of Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood (2000a, 2000b), has argued
that Greek religion is so fundamentally communal, that it is effectively the
religion of the polis. While this approach undoubtedly has value, as we
shall see, it has tended to create a misleading polarity between the religion
of the polis, which serves communal cohesion, and religious aspects and
practices which cannot be easily accommodated within this scheme (magic,
curses) and are seen as marginal. Equally problematic is the related
approach that distinguishes sharply between the public cults of the polis and
private religious associations, and constructs a narrative in which the crisis
of the polis and its communal religion from the Hellenistic period onwards
gave greater prominence to private cults and the needs they served (e.g.
Bremmer 1994: 91–4). More recent contributions have challenged the
functionalist premises of this traditional approach (Gabrielsen 2007;
Eidinow 2011; Kindt 2012). Greek polities included a diverse range of
communities, both public and private, whose membership often overlapped.
Religious communities were not static entities, but continuously reformed,
divided, dissolved, and interacted in tandem with a variety of religious and
other processes. Religion provided both a means of communal cohesion, as
well as an arena for division and conflict.
This chapter starts by identifying the range of forms of communities that
existed in the Greek world from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period; it
goes on to describe the range of religious activities that took place within
them; finally, it examines the significance of religion in the articulation of
communities and their identities, its role within communal life, and its
problems.

THE RANGE OF COMMUNITIES

Greek polities, whether poleis (city-states) or ethne (regional/federal states),

were organized as communities of citizens that incorporated, in various
ways, a wide range of other communities (Jones 1987). We are best
informed about the case of Athens. Athenian territory was divided into 139
demes, settlements that ranged from small hamlets and villages to towns
and neighbourhoods of the large conurbation of Athens. Groups of demes
constituted the ten tribes into which Athenian citizens were distributed after
the reforms of Kleisthenes. To be an Athenian citizen one needed to become
a member of a deme, as well as one of the phratries, groups based on fictive
kinship with their own structures and rituals (Lambert 1993). The citizen
community of Athens therefore comprised three other forms of
communities (demes, tribes, and phratries); alongside the political,
administrative, military, and social roles that these communities performed,
they were all constituted as religious communities and they formed the
building blocks of Athenian religious life. In addition, the Athenian polis
also included communities which fulfilled certain religious functions: the
gene were communities in charge of certain cults and sanctuaries and also
provided their priests (Parker 1996: 56–66), while the orgeones performed
sacrifices to various gods and heroes of Attica (Ferguson and Nock 1944;
Ferguson 1949; Arnaoutoglou 2003: 31–60).
Athens was exceptional in the fact that the whole region of Attica
comprised only a single polis; in other areas of the Greek world, poleis and
other smaller communities within a region formed federal polities, which
were known as ethne (Mackil 2013). In the same way that Athens
comprised both the local communities of the demes and the overarching
community of the polis, ethne consisted of both a wide range of local
communities as well as a federal community. Alongside their political,
social, and economic functions, ethne were religious communities with their
own sanctuaries, festivals, and other religious activities (Morgan 2003:
107–63).
While the above communities were part of the public infrastructure of
Greek polities, others were created and maintained as private initiatives
(Arnaoutoglou 2003; Ismard 2010). These private associations took a
variety of forms. Many were associations of individuals practising the same
trade, such as traders, sailors, smiths, actors, or mercenaries (van Nijf
1997). The creation and maintenance of trust, a crucial aspect of many
professional activities, was facilitated by common cult activity (Rauh
1993). Others were associations of people with the same origin, who lived
as immigrants far away from home. Many associations combined shared
ethnicity and profession with the worship of an ancestral deity, which
allowed immigrants to create a cohesive community that could provide
them with support and solidarity in the difficult circumstances of living
abroad: in Hellenistic Delos the association of the merchants and ship-
owners from Phoenician Tyre worshipped Herakles, the Greek
interpretation of their native deity Melqart, and the association of the
merchants, ship-owners, and agents from Berytos worshipped Poseidon.
Each celebrated their own festivals and banquets, possessed their own
communal buildings and sanctuaries, had their own priests, and instituted
their own regulations that governed various aspects of communal life
(Baslez 1977: 206–12). While many private associations were communities
formed on the basis of profession or ethnicity, in which religion played an
important role, most of them were communities specifically created by
individuals joining together for the worship of a deity. Some of these
exclusively religious associations worshipped deities that were also part of
the public pantheon, but not always; and sometimes the gods were
newcomers (Poland 1909; see, in this volume, Anderson, Chapter 21).
Private religious associations start to appear clearly in the epigraphic
record from the later fourth century onwards (Gabrielsen 2007); it was
accordingly long thought that this was evidence of the crisis of the Classical
polis and of the substitution of public communities by private associations
as the most important context of religious activity from the Hellenistic
period onwards (Davies 1984: 315–20). This view is no longer tenable, as
the importance of both public and private communities for Greek religion in
the Hellenistic and Roman periods is now widely accepted (Mikalson
1998), but there is as yet no consensus on the importance of private
associations in Archaic and Classical Greece (cf. Parker 1996: 333–42;
Jones 1999). Public and private religious communities existed in conditions
of constant osmosis, interaction, and interdependence (Gabrielsen 2007).
On the one hand, public communities provided the structure adopted by
most private associations once the latter appear as formally constituted
bodies. Public communities were organized as assemblies that elected
magistrates, took decisions on common affairs, and voted honours for
members and benefactors. Private associations largely adopted the same
format with significant consequences for the conduct of their religious
affairs. On the other hand, public communities often co-opted cults initially
established by private associations, and this was one of the major means
through which new cults entered the official pantheon of Greek
communities. The cult of Bendis probably started informally within the
Thracian community at Athens; but by the later fifth century Bendis had
been adopted into the official Athenian pantheon and the Thracians were
formally constituted as orgeones in charge of the cult (Parker 1996: 170–5).
 The last example shows that we should not consider these diverse public
and private religious communities as static and self-enclosed entities.
Religious communities were involved in a continuous process of formation,
transformation, and dissolution. Membership in different communities
could overlap; the boundaries of communities could vary according to
circumstance, or change over the course of time. Participation in cult
activities was not always tantamount to participation in the communities
that organized and celebrated these activities; communities could restrict or
expand the circle of participation in particular sacrifices or processions (see
e.g. the sacrificial calendar from Hellenistic Mykonos: LSCG 96). In the
city of Bargylia in Karia two Hellenistic decrees regulate the festival of
Artemis Kindyas (SEG 45.1508A–B): the first decree establishes a
procession and sacrifice of cattle and provides for the distribution of the
sacrificial meats to the citizens divided by tribes; the second provides the
sum of 100 drachmae to the metics (resident foreigners) to buy and raise
sacrificial animals, so they can participate as well in the procession,
sacrifice, and division of the meat (Zimmermann 2000).
Such practices could also create new communities with mixed
memberships, like the religious associations of soldiers. Communal cults
gave soldiers a means of expressing and solidifying the links created by
campaigning together, sharing the same tent and mess, serving in the same
unit or garrison. Religion also enabled the creation of new communities out
of disparate elements: citizens serving together for a single campaign,
citizen and mercenary soldiers fighting together, mercenaries from the most
disparate origins found, in religious associations, a potent means of creating
a cohesive community (Launey 1950: 1001–36).
Joining religious associations could also allow those who had been
oppressed by or excluded from a community to find fellowship. A fourth-
century Athenian inscription records a dedication by a mixed group, which
included four males who were probably citizens or metics, six males who
were probably slaves or freedmen, and two females (IG II² 2934). What
brought these individuals together was their common profession as washers;
the ex-voto is, appropriately, to the nymphs, the deities of water on which
their livelihood depended. Another fourth-century inscription from the
mining area of Laureion records a dedication by an association whose
members’ names indicate that they were slaves or freedmen and point out
their diverse ethnic origins; forming an association and making a joint
dedication to a deity was a means of creating a new community (IG II²
2940). In the opposite direction, communities could split and dissolve; a
particularly well-known example concerns the Athenian genos of the
Salaminioi. A fourth-century inscription records an arbitration that tried to
resolve disputes between two divisions of the genos, the Salaminioi of
Sounion and the Salaminioi of the seven tribes, by deciding that priesthoods
would be held jointly and both groups would contribute to sacrifices, while
common property would be divided between them; a century later, when
another arbitration is recorded, the two groups of Salaminioi have become
separate gene (Lambert 1997).
The diversity of communities, their overlapping memberships, and their
continuous adaptation and reformulation reflected the fact that religion
enabled individuals and groups to create communities that could be
employed for a range of purposes. Religion provided a field within which
individuals and groups could negotiate their position within the community.
Serving as a priest, organizing a festival, or paying for its expenses were
powerful means of making and maintaining social capital in Greek
communities (Schmitt Pantel 1992: 255–420; Dignas and Trampedach
2008). Rituals and cults provided ambitious individuals with the means of
transforming their personal networks into communities under their
leadership. The phenomenon is particularly prominent in the great
commercial centre of Hellenistic Rhodes; the association of the Asklapiastai
Nikasioneioi Olympiastai created by Nikasion, a metic from Kyzikos, in
which he enrolled his relatives and many of his associates, and which
owned property and celebrated games, shows how a personal network could
be transformed into a religious community with a corporate existence (IG
XII, 1 127). Soldiers and sailors in Rhodes joined together to form religious
groups under the leadership of their commanders: these religious
associations gave to these commanders an opportunity to employ the
goodwill of their members for their own political, economic, and social
aims (Gabrielsen 2001).

THE RANGE OF RELIGIOUS ACTIVITIES

Similar religious activities took place across a range of different contexts.
The consecration and dedication of objects in various forms to divinities
was a ritual readily undertaken by individuals or on behalf of families and
households, but communities engaged in this practice as well (Kindt 2012:
123–54). Curses and divination were ritual practices used by both
individuals and communities in order to deal with risk and uncertainty
(Parker 2000; Eidinow 2013). Sacrifice was undertaken by both individuals
and communities as a means of honouring the gods (Parker 2005a: 37–49,
2011: 124–70). There were, of course, certain religious activities that prima
facie seem to take place only within communities: for example, festivals.
Many festivals took the form of rituals involving the mass and collective
participation of the community; but there were also important festivals that
lacked mass rituals and collective participation and took the form of
celebrations held within each individual household, such as the Athenian
Pyanopsia or Kronia. Finally, the aims for which communities
communicated with gods often overlapped with the aims of individuals and
households: the aversion of evil, safety at land and sea, success in
agriculture and other wealth-getting activities, or the protection of marriage
and reproduction were aims wished for by individuals, households, and
communities both separately and collectively (Parker 2005a: 395–451).
There is no single and no simple dividing line between religion within
communities and religion in other contexts; it is rather a matter of
circumstance and degree (Kindt 2012: 12–35).
Accordingly, religious activity in Greek communities can be located
within a spectrum between the two extremes of the obscure and the
spectacular (Jameson 1999). In terms of the more ‘obscure’ were ritual
activities undertaken by priests, magistrates, or specified individuals on
behalf of the community, but with minimal or no participation and
attendance by the community. The sacrifice of a small animal every other
year to a relatively obscure deity included in the fourth-century Athenian
calendar of sacrifices (SEG 21.540) is unlikely to have attracted large
crowds, and was probably only attended by the magistrate or priest who
performed the sacrifice along with a few other attendees. The rites of the
Athenian Arrhephoria were secretly performed by two maidens, who lived
on the Acropolis and were entrusted with the carrying of certain sacred
objects, by night, into a natural underground passage (Parker 2005a: 219–
23). These were rituals whose correct and punctual performance was
considered important for community welfare and its proper relationship
with the gods; but they only involved a few individuals performing those
rituals on behalf of the community.
At the other extreme, the ‘spectacular’ is the mass participation and
attendance of the members of a community in the fundamental ritual of
sacrifice and its closely attached activities: the procession bringing
sacrificial animals and sacred objects to the altar and the temple, the songs,
dances, and prayers accompanying the sacrifice, the distribution of the
sacrificial meat, the communal feast, and the athletic, musical, and dramatic
competitions that accompanied important religious activities. In a world
without weeks and weekends, the great communal festivals marked those
periods in the year when everyday activities could be set aside in order to
celebrate, to enjoy impressive visual displays, special food and plenty of
wine, to mingle with relatives, friends, and fellow citizens, to see, flirt, and
form liaisons with members of the opposite sex (Parker 2005a: 155–91).
Numerous Hellenistic decrees for big festivals provide a free day from
study for schoolchildren and from work for slaves (LSAM 33), and require
the wearing of special garments and crowns (Syll.³ 398).
Between the ‘obscure’ rituals undertaken on behalf of the community and
the ‘spectacular’ great festivals, we have to locate the immense range of
practices in which religion was deeply intertwined with all the different
aspects and constituencies of the political, social, and cultural life of Greek
communities. Most communal activities included religious rituals. Political
meetings were preceded by purifications, sacrifices, prayers for the welfare
of the community, and curses against its various enemies; public documents
were stored in temples, like the Temple of the Mother in Athens, and were
often displayed under the protection of the gods in sanctuaries, even carved
on the walls of temples, as in the case of the Archaic laws of Crete (e.g. ML
2); the participation of citizens in warfare was preceded by sacrifices and
omen-taking to establish favourable terms. Another example of these rituals
was the swearing of oaths (Cole 1996). The ritual involved the sacrifice of
one or more animals and the invocation of one or several divinities ‘over’
the victims or by touching the sacrificial altar. In Athens, being appointed to
most offices required the swearing of oaths binding the citizen to the
community: magistrates, members of the council, and jurors had to swear
oaths. In the fourth century, Athenian ephebes annually swore by a range of
Athenian deities to defend their country and uphold its laws (Siewert 1977).
 The range and frequency of religious activities within these various
communities varied significantly. Let us focus on Athens again, where the
depth of the existing material allows us to see the picture most clearly.
Some communities appear to have had a limited range of activities,
restricted to a single festival, sacrifice, or feast held infrequently, or once a
year. Tribes provided the organizational groupings through which citizens
participated in many of the religious activities of the polis community; but
the religious activities of the tribes themselves seem to be restricted to the
cult of their eponymous hero. Orgeones largely met once a year, to sacrifice
and feast on behalf of their hero; a fourth-century lease of the sanctuary of
the hero Ergetes shows that his sanctuary was used only once a year for the
sacrifice and feast of the orgeones, and was otherwise used by the lessee for
secular purposes (IG II² 2499). The case of phratries is more complicated,
but it seems that their religious activities primarily took place at their
annual meeting when they celebrated the important three-day festival of the
Apatouria (Parker 1996: 102–8).
It is, accordingly, the community of the demes and the community of the
polis that formed the two major contexts of Athenian religious life (Parker
2005a: 50–78). We can distinguish three levels of religious activities within
these communities. There were activities that only took place within the
demes; there were activities that took place exclusively at the polis level;
and there were activities that lay in-between. Some festivals and rituals,
such as the rural Dionysia and the pre-ploughing rituals of the Proerosia,
were celebrated only at the level of the demes; there were also festivals like
the Pyanopsia, Anthesteria, and Thesmophoria, which were celebrated both
in the demes and the city; finally, there were city festivals that were
celebrated only centrally by the polis and in which deme members
participated and/or sent their sacrificial offerings; we shall examine the
festival of the Panathenaia under the section ‘The Role of Religion in the
Articulation of Communities and their Identities’. The demes formed the
local communities in which Athenians lived (Whitehead 1986: 176–222). In
the fourth century, the deme of Erchia devoted twenty-five days annually to
the sacrifice of fifty-nine animals, mostly sheep and goats (LSCG 18). Even
more impressive was the frequency of ritual activities at the level of the
polis: the Old Oligarch complained that it was impossible to get any
business done in Athens due to the large number of festivals that constituted
public holidays (Ath. Pol. 3.1–2). Even if the standard charge that the
Athenians celebrated twice as many festivals as the other Greeks is
mistaken, undoubtedly the polis level constituted the most frequent locus of
ritual activity (Parker 2005a: 161–2).
The range and frequency of religious activities within private
associations also varied. Because communities like demes and phratries
served public functions, they were formally constituted and had a
permanent nature; private associations were voluntary and, accordingly,
ranged widely in form and intensity. At the temporary and informal
extreme, one could mention bands of people assembled for a particular
celebration or to make a specific dedication, such as the bands (thiasoi)
allegedly assembled by Aeschines’ mother (Dem. De cor. 259–60); at the
other extreme, were private associations which were formally organized,
with their own statutes, magistrates, and assemblies, and which possessed
their own communal buildings, sanctuaries, and cemeteries (Poland 1909:
330–498). Some associations, like many orgeones, largely assembled once
a year to sacrifice and feast on behalf of their deity; others had monthly
sacrifices, feasted on the occasion of birthdays of members and benefactors,
and attended to the burial and cult of their dead members; finally, some
associations organized their own processions on the festivals of their deities
(Poland 1909: 246–70). Accordingly, many private associations exhibited a
wider range and frequency of religious activities than many public
communities.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN RELIGION

AND COMMUNITIES

Religion presented a potent means for creating social cohesion in Greek

communities, and played a fundamental role in the articulation of
communal identities; it also provided a range of discourses for negotiating
communal problems. But the employment of cults and rituals within
communities did not lead to monolithic and clear-cut perceptions and
solutions; on the contrary, religion constituted an arena in which conflicting
visions of relationships among humans, and between humans and gods,
were continuously expressed and contested.

The Role of Religion in the Articulation

of Communities and their Identities
Religion was a fundamental cohesive link for all Greek communities; the
appeal to shared religious experience in sacrifices, rites, and festivals as a
means of overcoming the ravages of the Athenian civil war of 403 BCE is a
telling example (Xen. Hell. 2.4.20). Religion played a crucial role in
forming the identity of Greek communities. Many communities took the
name of the divinities they worshipped; the Athenian tribes were named
after ten Athenian heroes, chosen by the Delphic oracle (Kron 1976). In
some cases, there could also develop a close identification between
communities and their patron deities (Cole 1995). The depiction of Athena,
the patron deity of Athens, on Athenian coins is one such example; another
is an Athenian fifth-century decree honouring Samos for her loyalty,
accompanied by a relief depicting Athena and Hera clasping hands: the two
chief deities of Athens and Samos are here used as symbols of the
respective communities (IG II² 1).
Particular festivals were closely associated with the identity of the
communities that celebrated them; according to Herodotos, the celebration
of the festival of the Apatouria, alongside Athenian origins, was the
essential feature of Ionian identity (1.147). The strong connection between
the performance of ritual and communal identity can also be seen in the
case of the Athenian demes. Rituals at caves, mountaintops, and other
sacred locations linked the deme community to its landscape and to the
divinities that occupied that landscape. Sacrifices to local heroes, often
anonymous or parochial, but sometimes with a Panhellenic relevance as
well, played a significant role in the cultic activities of demes. The fourth-
century calendar of Thorikos includes sacrifices to Kephalos, Procris,
Helen, and Thorikos, all heroes whose myths connected them with the
deme’s history. Other anonymous heroes seem to have guarded areas of the
deme’s territory (SEG 33.147).
 Religious activities played a crucial role in the creation, maintenance,
and reproduction of the cultural memory of Greek communities (Chaniotis
1991). Sacrifices commemorated important historical events. The Athenians
continued for centuries to celebrate annually the great victories of the
Persian Wars: Marathon on the sixth of Boedromion, Salamis on the
sixteenth of Mounichion, and Plataea on the third of Boedromion. Other
Greek communities created festivals and processions in order to celebrate
important historical events, such as the restoration of democracy in fourth-
century Eretria (LSS 46). The Athenian public funerals for the war dead, in
which appointed speakers addressed a funeral oration to the audience, were
important for conveying a sense of history and communal cohesion (Loraux
1986).
The existence and survival of all these diverse communities depended on
divine favour, and thus on honouring the gods through various ritual
activities. The construction of elaborate temples, the lavish sacrifices and
splendid processions, the maintenance (or invention) of traditional rituals
played an important role in the coherence and identity of the community.
The crucial elements of Greek cultic activity (procession, choral
performances and hymns, sacrifice, and banquet) were ideally suited for
creating strong communal bonds (Chaniotis 1995).
Processions, strictly speaking, aimed to accompany the sacrificial
animals and other sacred objects and offerings to the altar or temple of the
deity. But they also provided an excellent opportunity for visualizing and
displaying the power and wealth of the community, its membership, and
internal hierarchy, as well as linking the community to its territory.
Centripetal processions moved from the periphery of the city, often the city
gates, to the ritual centre, often a sanctuary on the acropolis, while
centrifugal processions moved from the city centre into a sanctuary situated
in the periphery of the community’s territory (Graf 1996); we shall examine
the centripetal procession of the Panathenaia under the section ‘The Role of
Religion in the Articulation of Communities and their Identities’.
A typical centrifugal procession is the one that took place in Miletos in
the course of Apollo’s festival: leaving from the city of Miletos, following
the elaborate Sacred Way, and making sacrifices to various other deities,
before finally reaching Apollo’s extra-urban sanctuary at Didyma (LSAM
50). By traversing the territory of the community and linking the centre to
the periphery, processions were a powerful statement of communal identity
and communal possession of territory.
The order and form of participation in processions was a means of
visualizing the membership and stratification of the community and its
groups. The participation of magistrates, the procession of ephebes and
citizens in arms, the organization of processions and sacrifices on the basis
of civic subdivisions are widely attested (Chankowski 2005). This is
already seen in Homer’s description of the Pylians’ sacrifice to Poseidon:
they are divided in nine groups (hedrai) of 500 citizens, each sacrificing
nine bulls, and sharing the roasted meat in a communal feast on the beach
(Od. 3.4–33). The right to partake of the sacrificial meat was an excellent
opportunity for defining who was a member of the community and who was
excluded (Krauter 2004; see further, in this volume, Naiden, Chapter 31). A
third-century group of Athenian orgeones stipulated that full shares of meat
at its annual sacrifice would be distributed to male members and their
wives, half shares to their children, as well as to a single female servant per
family (LSS 20.17–23). Equally, activities like communal feasting after
sacrifice provided an excellent opportunity for strengthening bonds
(Schmitt Pantel 1992). But their significance meant that communal rituals
could equally well generate conflict: Harmodios decided to murder the
Athenian tyrant Hipparchos when the latter dishonoured his sister by
excluding her from the prominent procession of the Panathenaia (Arist. Ath.
Pol. 18.2).
Finally, religion enabled communities to negotiate their relationship with
the outside world. Communities engaged in imperial expansion could use
rituals to express and enforce it. The most famous example concerns the
obligations of members of the Delian League to participate in the festivals
of their Athenian suzerain by sending a cow and a panoply for the
procession of the Panathenaia; the participation of the allies turned an
Athenian ritual into an imperial festival (Parker 1996: 142–3). Religion also
provided a means through which communities could conceptualize and
negotiate their relationship with the new overlords that emerged in the
Hellenistic and Roman periods; the creation of cults for Hellenistic kings,
for Rome and Roman magistrates during the Republic, and for emperors
under the empire are different manifestations of this phenomenon (Price
1984).
 The Panathenaic festival provides an excellent illustration of these
various themes (Parker 2005a: 253–69). Aetiological myths concerning the
festival celebrate its importance for communal identity; one attributed the
original festival celebration to Erichthonios, the autochthonous ancestor of
the Athenians, while another interpreted it as a commemoration of the
unification of Attica by Theseus. The festival was thus associated with both
the mythical ancestor of the community as well as with a dominant event in
its history. It included athletic and musical competitions, in some of which
the Athenians competed as groups divided by tribes; a pannychis (all-night
celebration); a majestic procession bringing the new peplos (robe) to
Athena; four sacrifices of large numbers of animals; and feasting in various
public and private gatherings. The procession started at the Dipylon gate
and crossed the civic centre of the agora, where stands were erected for
spectators, before finally reaching Athena’s altar on the Acropolis, where
the sacrifice would take place. The procession provided an opportunity for
displaying a particular image of the community and its various hierarchies.
It included Athenian girls and women carrying various sacrificial and
sacred objects (kanephoroi, ergastinai, arrhephoroi); metic girls and men in
a subordinate but honorary role as parasol, stool, tray, and water bearers;
Athenian boys and men as branch bearers; Athenian magistrates and
representatives of other cities; the military forces of the community
(ephebes, hoplites, cavalry); members of the demes; and, finally, foreigners
and freedmen carrying oak branches.
Thus, the procession provided roles for all inhabitants of the community,
even those excluded from citizenship, although with different prominence:
exalted roles for the daughters and wives of the Athenian elite, subordinate
roles for metics and freedmen. The distribution of the immense quantity of
sacrificial meat by deme according to the number of participants in the
procession stressed the democratic and communal aspect of the festival. But
while all groups of citizens participated in some capacity, the military
parade did not include the lower-class rowers, who only appeared as
undifferentiated deme members. Characteristically, the version of the
Panathenaic procession depicted in the Parthenon frieze excludes
demesmen and middle-class hoplites and gives prominence to upper-class
cavalry and charioteers. Equally, the participation of metics in subordinate
roles could be seen as either honorary inclusivity, or as ritual demarcation
of their inferior position in the community (Maurizio 1998). Accordingly,
the use of rituals to strengthen community cohesion was always
accompanied by ambiguities and contradictions.

The Role—and Problems—of Religion

within Communal Life
Because religion and communities were so closely intertwined, religion
provided a discourse within which contradictions, disputes, and aspirations
within communities could be expressed, negotiated, and contested. This
was due to the fundamental fact that the distinction between Church and
State, so essential to the religious history of the Christian West, is deeply
misleading for the Greek case (Sourvinou-Inwood 2000a: 19–20). Priests
did not form a separate caste and were not members of a unified
organization; instead, they were citizens who were appointed or inherited
the right to serve in ritual capacities in particular sanctuaries, and who
largely lacked any separate religious authority of their own.
There are occasions when priests representing the interests of their
sanctuaries are seen to clash with political authorities, as seen in a long-
term conflict during the Hellenistic period between the priest of the
sanctuary of Zeus at Labraunda and the community of Mylasa regarding
control over sacred land and priestly perquisites (Dignas 2002: 59–66). But
this relative independence of priests and their sanctuaries from the
community could only emerge in circumstances where there existed
external authorities to which priests could appeal: such was the case with
Hellenistic kings and Rome, but this was rarely possible in Archaic and
Classical Greece (Parker 2011: 52–3). Priests were not the sole mediators
between the community and the divine (Parker 2005a: 89–99). Sacrifices
and prayers on behalf of the community could be offered by both priests
and magistrates, while magistrates were often in charge of religious
activities: in Athens the eponymous archon organized the processions of the
Asklepeia, the Great Dionysia, and the Thargelia, while the basileus was in
charge of the Eleusinian mysteries and the Lenaia (Arist. Ath. Pol. 56–7).
Decisions concerning religious matters were taken by the citizen
assembly and the other community institutions. Out of the forty annual
scheduled meetings of the Athenian assembly, twenty compulsorily devoted
the first three items of the agenda to the discussion of sacred matters (Arist.
Ath. Pol. 43.6). The religious matters legislated by Greek communities
ranged widely (Lupu 2009: 9–102). They included the upkeep and
protection of sanctuaries (LSCG 37); the provisioning and conduct of
festivals (LSCG 65); the establishment of new rituals and festivals (LSAM
32); the perquisites and roles of priests (LSCG 156A); and, finally, rules for
funerals and mourning (LSAM 16). Although the community could legislate
on practically every aspect of religious life, it would be misleading to think
that there existed no other sources of religious authority: these included
influential oracles, like Delphi, as well as itinerant and local seers and
exegetes, religious specialists who provided guidance on issues like
pollution and the performance of rituals (see, in this volume, Flower,
Chapter 20, and Iles Johnston, Chapter 32). But all these alternative sources
of religious authority had no power to impose their views on individuals or
communities; they were only there to advise. Accordingly, it was only when
the community opted to ask for and implement such advice that external
sources of religious authority affected a community’s religious practices
(Parker 2004).
Communal discourses, concerns, and disputes fundamentally shaped how
Greek communities organized their cultic life and negotiated religious
innovation; on the other hand, religion provided communities with a
language that could serve communal purposes. Public oaths and public
cursing enlisted religion in maintaining loyalty to the community and its
priorities, and in taking pre-emptive actions against threats to communal
stability. The community of Teos in the fifth century BCE proclaimed
annually public curses against individuals who made spells against the
community, obstructed the import of corn, tried to overthrow the
constitution, betray the city’s territory, engage in piracy, or plot against Teos
(SEG 4.616). The community invoked divine authority in order to strike
pre-emptively against individuals acting against communal welfare and
used the ritual of public cursing in order to make a powerful statement of
communal values (Parker 2005b: 76–7). ‘Scapegoat’ rituals provided a
means of averting danger and evil from falling on the community (see
further, in this volume, Bremmer, Chapter 40).
At the same time, the problems and crises of communal life led members
of the community to use religion in other ways. We have seen how
communal institutions like the courts employed rituals such as oath-taking
for jurors; the other side of the coin is how community members engaged in
the processes of these institutions employed religion within their range of
strategies to cope with danger, risk, and uncertainty. An illuminating
example is the writing of binding spells against opponents in trials, their
witnesses, and the jurors, a practice widely attested across the Greek world
(Eidinow 2013: 165–90). As with all the religious practices described, these
were another way in which ritual practice offered individuals and groups a
range of possible ways to relate to other members of their communities and
to the divine world, generating networks of relationships and different
personal identities in different contexts (Eidinow 2011).
Pollution and impiety offered a discursive field for negotiating disputes
and contradictions within the community. Because the welfare of the
community depended on maintaining divine goodwill, any act that
threatened to destabilize the relationship between communities and gods
could potentially be perceived as a dangerous form of impiety (see, in this
volume, Bowden, Chapter 22). Accordingly, impiety was understood
broadly to cover both issues relating specifically to the deities, as well as
those issues crucial for the order of society and the favour of gods (Connor
1988). The prosecution of impiety provided an avenue through which
communities could identify the source of their problems and find a means
of dealing with them. Several prosecutions for impiety are known from
Classical Athens, the most famous of which is the trial of Sokrates for not
acknowledging the gods of the polis and for corrupting the young (Parker
1996: 199–217). Debates within the community about what constituted
impiety and magic and how they related to the phenomenon of religious
innovation, and the construction of narratives in order to address these
issues, show that religion constituted an arena of both negotiation and
division within the community (Eidinow 2010).
Greek religion and communities were intertwined in various ways. Greek
religious communities came in a wide range of forms, which continuously
transformed and interacted with each other. The absence of a Church as a
separate religious institution meant that Greek communities had direct
control over their religious affairs; it also meant that religion suffused all
aspects of communal life. As a result, religion both reflected the tensions
and challenges of communal life and provided discourses for expressing
and negotiating them; it constituted both a means of creating solidarity and
articulating communal identities, as well as an arena of contest and conflict.
SUGGESTED READING
The best introduction to public religious communities in Greek history
remains Sourvinou-Inwood 2000a and 2000b, supplemented by the critical
remarks in Eidinow 2011 and Kindt 2012. Important studies of public
religious communities include Ferguson and Nock 1944 and Lambert 1993,
while Ismard 2010 provides a stimulating network approach. Poland 1909 is
still the fundamental work for private religious associations; Gabrielsen
2007 provides a thought-provoking survey of the ways in which more
recent work has built on and challenged the approaches of Poland’s time
and later, while the diversity of private religious associations is fruitfully
explored in Arnaoutoglou 2003, Rauh 1993, and van Nijf 1997. Long-term
histories of public and private religious communities are rarely possible for
any place except Athens; Parker 1996, 2005a, and Mikalson 1998 provide a
long-term narrative of communities in Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic
Athens. For the diversity of religious activities within communities,
Jameson 1999 is fundamental. The role of religion in communities for
identity formation and communal cohesion is well explored in Chaniotis
1995 and Schmitt-Pantel 1992, while Eidinow 2010 focuses on contestation
and challenge; Maurizio 1998 provides a comprehensive account of how
one particular festival could provide cohesion and identity alongside dispute
and challenge.

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 CHAPTER 19

REGIONAL RELIGIOUS GROUPS,

AMPHICTIONIES, AND OTHER
LEAGUES

CHRISTY CONSTANTAKOPOULOU

INTRODUCTION: LOCALITY,
REGIONALITY, AND GREEK RELIGION

LOCALITY is an extremely important concept for our understanding of Greek

religion. Even within the territory of a polis, heroes and gods (through their
cult epithets) were linked with specific locales (Parker 2003). Religious
practice, however, existed beyond the boundaries of the polis, both in a
geographic sense and the sense of the currently dominant model of
interpretation, that is, the model ‘polis religion’ (Sourvinou-Inwood 2000a,
2000b). Religious activity in the Greek world took place on many levels,
which, for the moment, we can classify as ‘local’, ‘regional’, and
‘Panhellenic’, although these categories are far from being unproblematic
themselves (cf. Versnel 2011: 110). The focus of this chapter is religious
activity on the level of ‘regional’ and ‘Panhellenic’. But although ‘region’
is a useful hermeneutical category, allowing us to move beyond the
constraints of the polis, at the same time it needs to be explained (Davies
2001a). While, in modern scholarship, a ‘regional’ approach has enhanced
debates on the economy (e.g. Reger 1994), this has not occurred in the
study of political institutions (Vlassopoulos 2007: 166–8).
Religion is one area where a regional approach can prove fruitful. If we
understand ‘region’ as a geographic space characterized by increased
connections that may provide the background for the emergence of a
common sense of identity, then religious activity is a context in which we
can witness such connections. Sanctuaries, for example, had ‘catchment
areas’ of worshippers, which varied from the local, to the regional (Kilian-
Dirlmeier 1985). An example of a local case would be an ‘extra-urban’
sanctuary (de Polignac 1995), such as the sanctuary of Artemis in Brauron
in rural Attica. This can be described as a ‘local’ sanctuary for north-eastern
Attica, since it attracted worshippers from not just the immediate area, but
all over the territory of Athens (Parker 2005: esp. 228–30).
The boundaries, however, between what can be considered ‘local’ and
‘regional’ are by no means straightforward. Which classification, for
example, fits best the cult centred at the Heraion at Samos? Investment in
the cult was considerable from an early time (Kyrieleis 1981; and, in this
volume, Scott, Chapter 16). The history of the monumentalization of the
sanctuary reveals the history of the polis of Samos, with its fluctuations of
power and wealth; the Heraion has been described as a ‘local island
sanctuary’ (Kyrieleis 1993: 129). However, the finds from the sanctuary,
including a number and variety of imports almost without parallel for the
Greek world, imply that the cult centred on the Heraion appealed to a much
larger catchment area.
Categories such as ‘local’ and ‘regional’ are historically embedded, and,
consequently, the typology of any given cult may change over a period of
time. I offer the following definition: ‘regional’ are those cults whose
appeal transcended the borders of their immediate geographical
surroundings, normally those of the city-state where the centre of the cult
was located. However, even this definition includes considerable variations
of scale. The sanctuary of Apollo Ptoios, close to Boiotian Akraiphia,
attracted dedications from both Boiotia and Thessaly, from the very start
(the eighth century). In the late seventh and sixth centuries it became an
impressive centre for the dedication of kouroi/korai statues (Ducat 1971;
Schachter 1981: 52–73). It was clearly not a ‘local’ sanctuary for the region
of Akraiphia, but its regional appeal did not expand beyond its Archaic
catchment area (de Polignac 2009). In comparison, the Panionion at Mykale
is an example of a more extensive ‘regional’ religious group. The Ionians,
Herodotos tells us (1.148), dedicated the Panionion in Mykale to Poseidon
of Helikon; there, Ionians used to meet to celebrate a festival to which they
gave the name Panionia. Diodorus (15.49.1) adds that, at some point before
373, the Panionian festival and the common Panionion meeting had moved
to Ephesos (Hornblower 2011b). This indicates a large catchment area, with
political and ethnic overtones, especially in the period of the Ionian revolt;
participation in the Panionion during the sixth and fifth centuries may even
have marked a process of ethnic definition of ‘Ionianism’ (Kowalzig 2007:
102–10). In terms of religious activity, we can classify both the Panionion
and the cult of Apollo Ptoios as ‘regional’ religious groups, but they are
clearly operating at different registers.
Where does ‘regional’ appeal end and ‘Panhellenic’ appeal begin? The
concepts of ‘Panhellenism’ or ‘Panhellenic’ appeal are hotly debated (Scott
2010: 16–21; Kindt 2012: ch. 5; Skinner 2012: 211–9). If one looks at the
Classical period, it becomes clear that the Greek world understood as
‘Panhellenic’ those sanctuaries which formed the four-year agonistic cycle
of the crown games, the periodos: Olympia, Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea.
But it is important to note that the category ‘Panhellenic’ was not a fixed
one: Delos and the cult of the twin gods can also be understood as a
sanctuary with a ‘Panhellenic appeal’ (Rolley 1983; Schachter 2000: 11).
No cult centre was ‘Panhellenic’ from its inception. Indeed, the
archaeological evidence from these sanctuaries seems to point to an initial
regional appeal, which expanded considerably over the Archaic period
(Morgan 1990, 1993). By the end of the Archaic period, these sanctuaries,
and the games associated with their festivals, attracted worshippers from all
over the extensive Greek world. It can also be said that participation in the
games and cult of, primarily, Olympia and Delphi, contributed to
constructions of Hellenic identity (Hall 2002: 134–71; Skinner 2012: 211–
31). But can even this clearly widespread appeal be termed ‘Panhellenic’,
when these sanctuaries and their festivals still did not encompass, in the
same way, the entirety of the Greek world?
 AMPHICTIONIES

A formal expression of interaction between worshippers from a wider

geographical area can be found in the institution of amphictyonies, also
spelled amphictionies (Sanchez 2001: 32–7). The alternative spellings
reveal some confusion about the origins of the word, which is also reflected
in Pausanias’ account of the origins of the Delphic amphictiony (Paus.
10.8.1, quoting Androtion FGrH 324 F58; see also Etym. Magn. s.v.
amphictyones). The spelling amphi-ctiones may be understood as loosely
equated with peri-ctiones, ‘dwellers around, neighbours’ (amphictiones,
Hdt. 8.104, Pind. Pyth. 4.66 and 10.8, Nem. 6.39; periktiones, Hom. Il.
18.212, 19.104, Pind. Nem. 11.19, and Thuc. 3.104. See Chankowski 2008:
21–4). Indeed, the amphictionies that are explicitly attested as such in our
ancient sources can be understood as regional networks of those who are
‘dwellers around’, even if such an interpretation refers to a network of
maritime neighbours. The spelling amphictyones, however, does not easily
fit this linguistic interpretation. Instead, it was linked in antiquity with an
eponymous hero Amphictyon, who, according to some traditions, founded
the Delphic amphictiony (Hdt. 7.200.2; Paus. 10.8.1, quoting Androtion
FGrH 324 F58; and Marm. Par. FGrH 239 A5). Whatever the origins of the
word, both spellings were used to denote the Delphic amphictiony in
epigraphic records (CID 4.1; Rusch 1914: 35–8).
Formal political collaborations for the running of the affairs of a
sanctuary were not restricted to amphictionies; some of the regional
sanctuaries discussed may have been managed by representatives of more
than one city-state. Yet the Greeks used the term amphictiony not as a
generic term for a religious association, but to denote a specific religious
network, managing the cult normally situated on a sanctuary (Ehrenberg
1969: 108–11; Tausend 1992; Forrest 2000). The following religious
networks are specifically attested as amphictionies (in sources dating
mostly from the Classical and Hellenistic periods though, undoubtedly, such
institutions were rooted earlier in the Archaic period): of Kalauria (modern
Poros in the Saronic Gulf; Strabo 8.6.14, quoting Ephoros FGrH 70 F 150.
See Wells, Penttinen, and Billot 2003; Mylonopoulos 2006;
Constantakopoulou 2007: 29–37; Pakkanen 2007, 2008, 2011); of Boiotian
Onchestos (Strabo 9.2.33; see Tausend 1992: 27–34; Kowalzig 2007: 365–
7); and, of course, of Delphi. Modern scholarship occasionally adds Delos
to this short list, but, in this context, the term seems to have been
appropriated by fifth-century imperial Athens (see further below in ‘Case
Study 1: Delos’).
The best-known amphictiony was that of Delphi. Archaeological
evidence, such as dedications, along with processes of monumentalization
at the sanctuary, indicate that Delphi acquired a regional and then
Panhellenic appeal during the ninth to seventh centuries (Morgan 1990;
Bommelaer 1991: 183–4). This can be partly (but not wholly) attributed to
the fame of the Delphic oracle, but this is not the only reason. Dedications,
such as the new Temple of Apollo, probably finished by c.510 (Bommelaer
1991: 181–2; Scott 2010: 56–60), the treasuries of Corinth, Sikyon, and
Siphnos, or free-standing monuments, such as the Naxian sphinx (Partida
2000), can be viewed as contributing to the development of the self-
awareness of the relevant communities (Giangiulio 2010). Whatever the
‘regional’ appeal of Delphi in the early Archaic period, by the sixth century
it had grown to encompass large sections of the Greek world, and, in that
sense, can be viewed as ‘Panhellenic’. The institution of the Pythian
Games, probably at 586 (or alternatively 582 BCE; see Paus. 10.7.2–5 and
Marm. Par. FGrH 239 A37 respectively), enhanced the considerable fame
of the sanctuary and its cult, and became one of the four games that
constituted the periodos.
If we can trace relatively well the development of the sanctuary in the
Archaic period, the same cannot be said for the Delphic amphictiony
(Lefèvre 1998; Sanchez 2001). To reconstruct its history, we depend on
mythical narratives, which may or may not be reflected in the
archaeological record, and whose historicity has been debated in modern
scholarship. The origins of both the cult of Apollo at Delphi and the
Delphic amphictiony are linked with an obscure episode in Archaic Greek
history, the so-called First Sacred War, traditionally placed in the early
decades of the sixth century (see Robertson 1978 challenging the war’s
historicity, and Davies 1994 and 2007 for a reconsideration). While it is true
that such traditions about the war were shaped by later struggles for control
of the amphictiony and sanctuary, most notably during the fourth century,
literary evidence, such as the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (540–4) and the
Hesiodic Aspis (478–80), seem to imply some major disruption in the
Delphic sanctuary and Apolline cult in the Archaic period. Recent
archaeological excavations also support this (Rolley 2002; full publication
of the excavation in Luce 2008). As the name implies, the First Sacred War
was not the only one fought for control of Delphi. The fifth and fourth
centuries saw three more sacred wars (the second in the middle of the fifth
century, Thuc. 1.112.5, see Hornblower 2011a; the third between 356 and
346, see Buckler 1989; Sanchez 2001: 173–99; and Hornblower 2009; the
fourth in 340, see Sanchez 2001: 227–43). These involved the major powers
of each period and had far-reaching political and military repercussions.
The wars suggest that a prominent feature of the history of the Delphic
amphictiony was the struggle for control of the religious network of Delphi.
We know the amphictiony had twelve members, but, with origins probably
in the early seventh century and changes over time, the list in our ancient
sources varies (Sanchez 2001: 37–44, 518). One of the main responsibilities
of the amphictiony was the management of the sanctuary and its games, the
Pythian Games, which, as we have seen, were one of the four crown games
of ancient Greece and an extremely prestigious event (Lefèvre 1998: 237–
9). The amphictiony also had to monitor the proper use of the sacred land
that belonged to the sanctuary, including the sacred plain of Kirrha (e.g. the
amphictionic law of 380 BCE, IG II2 1126 = CID 1.10, with Sanchez 2001,
153–63). The struggle between pasturage and land cultivation is at the heart
of the sacred wars, and the cultivation of the plain of Kirrha by the
Phokians was one of the main events that started the Third Sacred War
(Aeschin. 3.108; Rousset 2002: 183–205; McInerney 2010)
The amphictiony was not, strictly speaking, a political body: participation
in the amphictiony meant managing affairs at Delphi. But, at the same time,
there is no denying that the amphictiony occasionally played an important
role in non-religious (in the wider sense of ‘political’) conflicts. Access,
influence, and even control of Delphi and its regional appeal acquired
increasing importance during its history. What role the amphictiony played
in the realm of political affairs has recently been debated (Bowden 2003;
Hornblower 2009). We should not expect the role of the amphictiony to
have remained unchanged over its long history, nor for ‘political’ affairs to
have had the same impact on this institution in different periods of time.
 REGIONAL RELIGIOUS NETWORKS

Amphictionies were a formal expression of the networking required for the

management of cult centres with a wide appeal. Such regional networks
varied in scale: from a limited catchment area, perhaps only just surpassing
the limits of a cult’s local community, to the great ‘Panhellenic’ sanctuaries.
Religion contributed to the creation of a regional identity through shared
religious action, but when we talk about ‘religious’ activities at such sites,
we need to consider social networking, consumption and production of
goods (Morgan 2003: 149–55, for the early Archaic period; Davies 2001b,
for the Classical period), markets (Davies 2007: 63–5), and high ‘political’
events, such as the declaration of freedom for the Greeks by the Roman
herald in the Isthmian Games of 196 BCE (Polyb. 18.46; Livy 33.32).
Delos and Samothrace provide examples of cult centres with regional
religious networks, which demonstrate interesting similarities and
differences. Both cult centres were located on islands with relatively small
populations: for both, their development depended from the start on
worshippers from beyond the local community. Access to these sanctuaries
also depended on maritime connections. However, whereas Delos was
central to the maritime routes of the south Aegean (Strabo 10.5.1; Plin. HN
4.12.65; for Callimachus, the islands ‘danced around Delos’, Hymn 4.16–
22), the sea around Samothrace was considered ‘rough’ (Dion. Hal. Ant.
Rom. 1.61.4), making access to the island difficult—although this may have
enhanced the appeal of the sanctuary and its mysteries.

Case Study 1: Delos

According to myth, Delos was the birthplace of the twin gods, Apollo and
Artemis. Considering its importance in the mythical narratives of the Greek
pantheon, it is not surprising that Delos became the centre of an extensive
regional religious network from an early date. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo
praises Delos and sings of the festival celebrated on the island, emphasizing
the role of the Ionians (l. 144–55) who played a key role in the network
around Delos. Thucydides (3.104) quotes this passage when describing the
Athenian reorganization of the festival during the 420s and constructions of
Ionianism (Hornblower 2011a). The Homeric Hymn to Apollo, as well as
Odysseus’ comparison of Nausikaa to the young palm tree of Delos (Od.
6.162–3), shows that Delos had acquired considerable fame during the early
Archaic period.
The archaeological evidence from the sanctuary can help explain how
this happened (see Figure 19.1; Bruneau and Ducat 2005; and the series
Exploration Archéologique de Délos). After a marked gap of material
dating from the Dark Ages, the second half of the eighth century shows a
variety of imports, including the tell-tale sign for cult activity: tripod
dedications. Investment in monumentalization takes place around c.700,
with the construction of a building called Temple Γ, and, soon afterwards
(early seventh century), the Archaic Heraion and Artemision (Mazarakis-
Ainian 1997: 179, 182; Bruneau and Ducat 2005: 176, 209, 280). While
tripod dedications seem to point to elite individuals actively displaying
status, power, and piety, constructions of buildings in the sanctuary
presuppose the pooling of resources, suggesting community investment.
This may have been done by the Delians themselves, or at the
encouragement/instigation of outsider island communities (e.g. the
Athenian Alkmeonids funded the second Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Hdt.
5.62). If it was the Delians, then the construction of three early buildings
suggests considerable resources, which must have originated from wealth
brought into Delos, either as dedications, or as direct funding for a building
programme.
The seventh century saw the erection of yet more buildings, most notably
the construction of the oikos of the Naxians, whose first phase dates from
the second half of the seventh century (Lambrinoudakis 2005). The name of
the building, attested in the Classical inventories, shows its direct links with
Naxos—and the Naxians have a spectacular presence in the sanctuary of
Delos during the seventh and early sixth centuries (Prost 2014). In the early
sixth century, they dedicated a colossal Apollo (ID 49); in the mid-sixth
century, they erected a stoa at the western side of their oikos. They were
also behind the erection of the remarkable Terrace of the Lions, which lined
the west side of the road to the sanctuary from the north (Barlou 2014).
However, rather than projecting onto the Archaic period notions of
imperialistic control (as the island experienced during the fifth-century
Athenian imperial domination), and seeing this as evidence of Naxian
political/economic control, I would argue that Archaic Delos was a place
where communities and elite individuals conspicuously displayed their
wealth, importance, and claim for power. Naxian investment was a display
of glory and wealth in the competitive arena of regional sanctuaries.

FIGURE 19.1 Plan of the sanctuary of Delian Apollo at Delos, from Bruneau and Ducat 2005, plan
1. © EfA.
(6) oikos of the Naxians; (7) Temple Γ; (9) base for Apollo; (11) Porinos Naos; (36) Naxian Stoa;
(44) Parian oikos (?); (46) Artemision

The construction of oikoi for specific communities in the sanctuary of

Delos may be our most solid indication for the active participation of
communities in the cult of Delian Apollo. These ‘houses’ marked an
occasion of appropriation of previous elite dedications, placing them firmly
within a new communal, or political (in the sense of the polis as a political
community) framework (Neer 2001, 2004). There was an oikos from Paros
(Bruneau and Ducat 2005: 203–4), Andros, Karystos, and (probably)
Mykonos—and possibly others (Bruneau and Ducat 2005: 171), and a
Keian hestiatorion (Hdt. 4.35.4). This monumentalization of the sanctuary
shows that while the literary sources stress the Ionian character of the
Delian network, the cult seems to have appealed to Ionian and Dorian
islanders (Chankowski 2008: 16–20, 30–1; Kowalzig 2007: 56–83)—a
network of island participants, rather than an Ionian network
(Constantakopoulou 2007: 38–58). This continues: in the Classical and
Hellenistic period, the nomenclature of dedications, recorded in the
extensive inventories of the sanctuary, reveals a strong island constituency
(Tréheux 1992).
The Delian cult network in the Archaic period, therefore, had a
predominantly southern Aegean island catchment area. I have argued that
the archaeological record cannot be used to show political or economic
domination over the sanctuary and, consequently, its cult network. But one
power in this region showed substantial interest in Delos, and her history
became intrinsically linked with it: Athens. The Athenian tyrant Peisistratos
purified the part of Delos visible from the sanctuary by removing all burials
to the neighbouring island of Rheneia (Hdt. 1.64.2; Thuc. 3.104.1–2; Parker
1996: 87–8; Constantakopoulou 2007: 63–6; Chankowski 2008: 10–14). He
may also have been behind the erection of a monumental temple, the so-
called porinos naos, dated to the second half of the sixth century (Bruneau
and Ducat 2005: 182). These actions can be seen as statements of power,
targeting the audience of the network of cult participants, and creating a
context in which a version of Ionianism was constructed and displayed; and
in which Athens had a dominant role. But it was the emergence of the
Athenian empire in the fifth century, which had a more lasting impact on
the cult network of Delos.
Athens, as the leader of the so-called Delian League (the modern name is
indicative of the strong ‘Delian’ connotations of the Athenian imperial
network), took meddling in the affairs of the sanctuary to a whole new
level. The Athenians managed the sanctuary through a board of officials
called ‘amphictyons’, who were all Athenians. Furthermore, when they
purified Delos in 426/5, moving all tombs to the neighbouring island of
Rheneia, they prohibited anyone from dying or giving birth on the island
(Thuc. 1.8.1 and 3.104), turning the Delians into ‘polis-less’ citizens (Plut.
Mor. 230c–d; Constantakopoulou 2007: 71–3; Chankowski 2008: 57–61).
These acts of aggression must have caused considerable distress to the
Delians, who took advantage of the Athenian collapse at the end of the
Peloponnesian War to become (with Spartan help) independent (between
402–393 BCE, following Chankowski 2008: 169–74). Delian independence
was short-lived: Athenian control of the sanctuary quickly resumed, lasting
until 314, when the Delians finally gained their independence (314–166
BCE, see Vial 1984). As these events demonstrate, one of the prominent
features of the history of Delos was the almost continuous struggle for
control of its most valuable asset, the sanctuary. Control of the sanctuary
meant control over the considerable Delian finances it generated, privileged
access to a large network of cult participants, and, of course, increased piety
in the eyes of the gods.
Some scholars believe that the Archaic religious network around Delos
was an amphictiony, similar to the one around Delphi (Tausend 1992: 47–
55): the Athenians managed the Delian sanctuary through a board of
amphictyons, while Thucydides refers to ‘islanders and perictiones’ as the
main participants in the early festival on Delos (3.104.3). But this evidence
does not prove that there was an Archaic amphictiony centred on Delos.
Chankowski has argued convincingly that we should be looking at a
regional cult network that was not an ‘amphictiony’: the Athenian use of
‘amphictyons’ was a conscious emulation of the Delphic parallel, which
may be linked to the Athenian construction of a Pythion on Delos and the
promotion of a cult of Apollo in its Pythian persona (Chankowski 2008:
20–28, 258–62).
The cult network of Delos was a regional network of the southern
Aegean, with a strong island character. Delian cult may have been linked in
myth and literature with an Ionian dimension, but it appealed to Ionian and
Dorian islanders alike. These participants not only went to Delos to
worship, attend the festival, and dedicate to the gods, they also imported the
cult of Apollo Delios, Artemis Delia, and Eileithyia (another deity with
strong Delian connections, Bruneau 1970: 212–9) to their own communities
(Constantakopoulou 2007: 53–8; Kowalzig 2007: 72–9; Chankowski 2008:
30–1). This cult network had a long history, from the early Archaic period
until Roman times, and it had an impact on the political sphere, especially
during the period of the Athenian empire. In the Hellenistic period, Delos
was one of the many locations where piety towards the gods became a
showcase for control and power over the Aegean region by the Hellenistic
kings (Bruneau 1970). But it was Samothrace that saw a greater degree of
investment in monumentalization during the Hellenistic period.
Samothrace
Samothrace, an island located in the north Aegean Sea, was famous for the
sanctuary of the Great Gods and its mystery cult. Samothrace was settled by
the Greeks in the early sixth century (Graham 2002), but evidence of
sacrificial remains from the area of the temenos in the sanctuary indicates
cult activity before the arrival of the Greeks (Lehmann and Spittle 1982,
part 1: 267–9, 317; Lehmann 1998: 73). The cult of the Great Gods of
Samothrace is an excellent example of the fusion of cult practices: those of
the pre-Greek population of the island (called ‘Pelasgians’ Hdt. 2.51) were
adapted and transformed by the Greeks. The language used in the mysteries
of Samothrace included non-Greek words, and their incomprehensibility
was an essential element of the cult’s initiation processes (Diod. Sic. 5.47.3;
Bowden 2010: 49–67).
As the main attraction of the Samothracian cult was its mysteries, it is
inevitable that the literary traditions about the mystery cult and its
mythological origins are obscure. The mythical stories about Samothrace
seem to belong to a non-Greek world (Burkert 1993). Herodotos (2.51),
describing the mysteries (and showing how they had wide appeal even in
the relatively early historical context of the third quarter of the fifth
century), refers to a ‘sacred tale . . . set forth in the Samothracian
mysteries’. This may have included the story of local hero Dardanos, who
was born on the island, and who moved to Ilion and founded the royal
family of Troy (FGrH 4 F23, see Lawall 2003). This story was celebrated
in a lost play by Dymas of Iasos, who was consequently honoured by the
Samothracians (I.Iasos 153; Rutherford 2007). Dardanos’ and Aetion or
Iason’s sister, Harmonia, and her wedding to Kadmos were also part of
these mythical stories (Diod. Sic. 5.48.4–50.1). The search for Harmonia,
possibly in combination with a celebration of her marriage to Kadmos, was
an important part of the mythical background to the Samothracian festivals
(FGrH 70 F120; Marconi 2010: 125–8).
The traditions about the identity of the gods were particularly obscure
and contradictory (Cole 1984; Burkert 1993: 186–7; Clinton 2003: 68–9).
In epigraphic evidence, the gods appear always as the ‘Great Gods’ or the
‘Samothracian gods’ (outside Samothrace), but literary evidence provides a
range of identifications: Kabeiroi (Hdt. 2.51 and Stesimbrotos of Thasos
FGrH 107 F 20), Korybantes (Diod. Sic. 5.49.3–4), Axieros, Axiokersa,
Axiokersos, and Kasmilos—sometimes identified with Demeter,
Persephone, Hades, and Hermes respectively (Mnaseas Scholia to Ap.
Rhod. 1.917 = FGrH 548 F1; see Lewis 1958, nos 150 and 150a). It is
likely that this confusion of identities played a central role in the initiation
process (Bowden 2010). In other words, we do not know who the Great
Gods were, because the initiates themselves did not necessarily know. We
can also understand this confusion as a necessary aspect of a cult based on
secrecy (Blakely 2011).
The archaeological evidence from the sanctuary of Samothrace can
enhance our understanding of this cult and its changing regional network
(see Figure 19.2; Lehmann 1998). There is evidence for the construction of
monumental buildings in the late Archaic/early Classical period, and
Herodotos implies that the mysteries and cult were widely known in the
fifth century. But it was during the fourth century and early Hellenistic
period that an impressive building programme most changed the sanctuary.
Some of these structures may have been funded by the Macedonian king
Philip II (Lehmann and Spittle 1982; Lehmann 1998: 77–8), who may have
met his wife Olympias while they were both initiated in the mysteries (Plut.
Alex. 2.2). Hellenistic royalty continued to make monumental dedications
(Cole 1984: 17–20; Mari 2002: 198–202). It seems that the sanctuary of
Samothrace functioned as a key stage for a display of piety and power for
the Hellenistic kings in their struggle for control of the Aegean after
Alexander’s death and throughout the third century.
In turn, the small finds from the sanctuary reveal the piety and
participation of everyday individuals in the cult of the Great Gods.
Thousands of sherds of Samothracian conical bowls have been left behind
on the Eastern Hill (Wescoat 2012: 94–5). The shape of these bowls
suggests they were used for libation; their large number that they were
discarded by worshippers leaving the sanctuary, possibly because they were
understood to belong to the gods. Two further categories of objects seem to
have played an important part in the cult: the purple belt and iron ring (Cole
1984: 29–30). The purple belt (presumably coloured by murex, harvested
from the sea) was given to initiates during their initiation and was linked
with salvation from dangers at sea (Scholia to Ap. Rhod. 1.917–8 = Lewis
1960, no. 229g, and 1.918a = Lewis 1960, no. 229h). Iron rings were also
part of the initiation ceremony; thirty-two have been found (Lehmann and
Spittle 1982: 403–4). Their most important feature seems to have been their
magnetization, which obviously had an important ritual role (Blakely 2011:
61–4).

FIGURE 19.2 Plan of the sanctuary of the Great Gods at Samothrace, from Lehmann 1998, plan 4.
© James R. McCredie.
(1-3) unidentified Late Hellenistic buildings; (4) unfinished Early Hellenistic building (6) Milesian
dedication; (7) dining rooms; (8, 10) unidentified niche; (9) Archaistic niche; (11) stoa; (12) Nike
monument; (13) theatre; (14) altar court; (15) Hieron; (16) Hall of Votive Gifts; (17) Hall of Choral
Dancers; (20) Rotunda of Arsinoe; (22) Sacristy; (23) Anaktoron; (24) Dedication of Philip III and
Alexander IV; (25) theatral area; (26) Propylon of Ptolemy II; (27) Southern Necropolis; (28) Doric
Rotunda; (29) Neorion.
 These objects give some indication of the role and purpose of initiation
into the mysteries: one of the primary reasons offered by our literary
evidence was protection at sea (e.g. Ar. Pax, 277–8 with scholia; Ap. Rhod.
1.915–8 with scholia; Diod. Sic. 4.43.1–2, 4.48.5–7, 5.49.5–6). The
Samothracian sanctuary, like the Delian one, had a special connection to the
sea: not only were both these sanctuaries located on islands, along with
Samos, they were also places where ships were dedicated to the gods
(Blackman 2001; Wescoat 2005). At Samothrace, the dedication of bronze
fish hooks and shells in large numbers also reveals close connections
between the cult and the sea (Lehmann 1998: 36–7 with fig. 14). Sea-faring
may have been widespread in Greek culture, but cults offering protection at
sea were not particularly numerous. Samothracian initiation shared this role
with the cult of deities such as the Dioskouroi and Aphrodite Euploia.
This was not the only benefit: Diodorus Siculus (4.49.6) also lists
individual improvement; this combination is almost unique among mystery
cults. At the same time, initiation in a mystery cult (any mystery cult)
created a community of participation and shared experience (if not exactly
of shared understanding), irrespective of the specific mystery (Clinton
2003; Bowden 2010). To this, we should add Samothrace’s unique location
and historical background, which made it an ideal meeting space between
Greeks and non-Greeks (Blakely 2010)—as we have seen, elements of the
cult practice maintained a pre-Greek, northern Aegean aspect.
We can trace Samothrace’s initial appeal to its marginality and difficulty
of access, especially when travelling from the southern Aegean world.
However, as the focus of political power shifted from southern to northern
Greece at the end of the fourth century, Samothrace acquired a certain
centrality in the networks of northern Aegean, becoming one of the key
locations where Macedonian royalty, in Macedonia and in Egypt, competed
for conspicuous demonstrations of piety and power. Samothrace is not best
understood as one of the great ‘Panhellenic’ cult centres of the Greek world,
as it lacked a grand festival comparable to that at Olympia or Delphi. Yet its
regional appeal during the early Hellenistic period covered the entire
Aegean world. This is revealed by the nomenclature and ethnic names
preserved in the Hellenistic (mostly second and first century BCE) lists of
initiates and theoroi preserved in epigraphic texts (Cole 1984: 38–56;
Dimitrova 2008). These reveal different, if significantly overlapping,
networks of appeal (Rutherford 2009). Theoroi, or official representatives
of communities sent to Samothrace, normally to take part in a festival or
make a dedication, came mostly from cities in Asia Minor, the north and
southern Aegean, and were almost exclusively Greek. Initiates came from
not only these same areas, but also Italy and Rome, as well as inland Thrace
and Alexandria. In addition, the export of Samothracian cult through the
presence of a large number of dedications to the Great Gods, or the
Samothracian gods, in other sanctuaries of the Greek world indicates the
spread of the cult network (Cole 1984: 57–86).

CONCLUSION

We have seen how regional religious networks operated at different scales:

from the relatively restricted cult network of, say, Apollo Akraiphnios, to
the almost Panhellenic appeal of Delos. Despite the difference in scale,
however, religious cults and participation in a cult network played a key
role in creating communities of worship, which, in turn, contributed to the
creation and consolidation of regional and/or even ethnic identity (as in the
case of the Panionion in Mykale).
In some ways, the attempt to answer the question of whether religious
activity gave expression to an already established network of
communications or vice versa is as futile as the answer to the question
‘which came first, the chicken or the egg’. Such networks were historically
contingent. Indeed, the early Archaic history of the great ‘Panhellenic’
centres of the Greek world does not suggest a ‘Panhellenic’ appeal. The
religious network around Delos, for example, was transformed by its
control, over the course of the fifth century, by imperial Athens. In contrast,
Samothrace’s appeal expanded considerably during the late fourth and early
third centuries, perhaps linked to the changing political alliances of the
early Hellenistic world, as well as the obvious Macedonian investment in
the sanctuary.

SUGGESTED READING
On the tension between locality and Greek religion, see the critique on
current models in Polinskaya 2006, Eidinow 2011, and Kindt 2012. An
overview of ancient amphictionies can be found in Ehrenberg 1969,
Tausend 1992, and Forrest 2000.
Bommelaer 1991 is the guide to Delphi. The excavations of Delphi are
published in the series Fouilles de Delphes. The history of the Delphic
amphictiony is presented in Lefèvre 1998 and Sanchez 2001. Other useful
studies on the history of Delphi include Morgan 1990, Bowden 2005, and
Scott 2010.
The guide to Delian antiquities is Bruneau and Ducat 2005, while the
results of Delian excavations are published in the series Exploration
Archéologique de Délos. The most important works for the history of Delos
and its religious cult are Chankowski 2008, for the Classical period, and
Bruneau 1970, for the Hellenistic and Roman periods. See also
Constantakopoulou 2007, esp. Chapter 2 for a discussion of the Archaic
Delian religious network. The guide to Samothrace is Lehmann 1998. The
results of the excavations are published in the series Samothrace:
Excavations Conducted by the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University.
For the sanctuary, its network, and mystery cult see also Cole 1984, Burkert
1993, Dimitrova 2008, and Bowden 2010. A summary of recent discoveries
is provided in Wescoat 2012.

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Bommelaer, J.-F. 1991. Guide de Delphes. Le site. Athens.
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PART V

HOW?
 CHAPTER 20

RELIGIOUS EXPERTISE

MICHAEL A. FLOWER

INTRODUCTION

IN 344 BCE an extraordinary set of portents surrounded the mission of

Timoleon to unseat the tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysios II, in Sicily (Plut. Tim.
8 and Diod. Sic. 16.66.3–5). When the expedition was ready, Plutarch tells
us, ‘the priestesses of Persephone at Corinth had a dream in which they saw
the goddesses getting ready for a journey and heard them say that they were
intending to sail with Timoleon to Sicily. Consequently, the Corinthians
equipped a sacred trireme and named it after the two goddesses.’ When
Timoleon had set sail and had reached the open sea during the night,
the heavens seemed to break open over his ship and to pour forth a great and conspicuous fire.
Then a torch, like those used in the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, rose up and,
running along beside his ship, descended upon the very part of Italy that the helmsmen were
aiming for. The seers declared that the apparition confirmed the dreams of the priestesses, that
the goddesses were taking part in the expedition and were displaying the light from heaven.
For, they said, Sicily was sacred to Persephone, since her seizure [by Hades] is said to have
taken place there, and the island was given to her as a wedding gift.
 I have begun with this story because it serves as a good introduction to
some of the main issues at stake in any discussion of religious expertise.
Can the evidence from one city be used to generalize about practices and
institutions elsewhere? What was the relationship between the various ritual
experts that appear in our sources? What types of expertise did they
possess? In this case, the Corinthians unquestionably accepted the truth of
the claim of the priestesses (hiereiai) that the same dream had appeared to
each of them (whether on the same night or sequentially is unclear); but
then later the seers (manteis) who actually accompanied the expedition
validated their claims by reference to a portent that appeared on the journey
itself.

PROBLEMS OF TERMINOLOGY AND

EVIDENCE

The two most common designations for religious experts that appear in
ancient texts are the ones mentioned in the passage just quoted. They are
commonly translated as priest/priestess and seer; but for the rest of this
chapter I will privilege native terms (as is the practice in modern
ethnographic studies). English equivalents, although convenient, carry a
great deal of cultural baggage and can never adequately convey the cultural
meaning of indigenous terms. What we mean by ‘priest’, for instance,
overlaps only minimally at best with the Greek conception of a hiereus.
Likewise, ‘seer’ is a culturally loaded term, as are the other words
commonly used to translate mantis, such as ‘prophet’, ‘diviner’, or
‘soothsayer’.
Before discussing ‘priestly’ expertise in the Greek world, it is necessary
to offer a disclaimer. I am about to indulge in a type of generalization that is
invariably misleading, and yet all too common in discussions of Greek
‘religion’. First of all, there was a variety of types of sanctuaries, cults, and
ritual performances in the Greek world. A large city such as Athens may
have employed hundreds of hiereis and hiereiai serving many different
sanctuaries (some in the city and some in the demes), each of which
sponsored particular festivals and cult activities. Although many Greek
festivals followed the pattern of procession, sacrifice, public banquet, and
competition, the particular forms and prayers would have varied; and some
ritual enactments did not follow this pattern at all. What took place in the
healing sanctuaries of Asklepios at Epidauros or of Amphiaraos at Oropos
was very different from the rites of initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries.
On the other hand, mystery cults and healing sanctuaries had routines that
were categorically different from the activities involved in civic festivals
such as the City Dionysia and the Panathenaia at Athens. Therefore, in
trying to determine what a hiereus or hiereia does and knows, one size does
not fit all.
A second problem is a tendency, in even the best modern scholarship, to
combine evidence from different places (South Italy and Sicily, mainland
Greece, the Aegean islands, Asia Minor) and time periods (the seventh
century BCE through the third century CE) in order to compile a composite
picture of ritual activity. This methodology levels the differences that must
have existed in various times and places; since the forms of religious
activity, whether in polytheistic or monotheistic systems, are never static.
They are constantly evolving. The proper procedure would be to divide the
evidence for hiereis and hiereiai by time, place, and type of sanctuary, and
then to look for continuities and differences, as well as for innovations, both
spatially and temporally. It would be a huge undertaking, but the results
would be truer to reality than a composite picture subject to a vast number
of exceptions and qualifications.

THE NATURE OF PRIESTHOOD

A hiereus, whether male or female, was an appointed public official who

obtained office by birth, election, lot, or from sale (this last method became
common during the Hellenistic period in Asia Minor and in islands off its
coast: Dignas 2002). There were no ‘priests’ of all the gods of a city nor
even of a deity in general; rather, one was always a hiereus or hiereia in a
particular cult in a particular sanctuary (of Athena Polias or Athena Nike or
Athena Parthenos, for instance), and one’s authority and duties were
restricted accordingly (Parker 2011: 53). The oldest priesthoods in Athens
were hereditary and were held for life. These were the prerogative of
aristocratic clans or descent groups (called gene: sing. genos). For instance,
the Eumolpidai provided the hierophant (chief ‘priest’) and the Kerykes the
dadouchos (torch bearer) for the Eleusinian mysteries. From the
Eteoboutadai came the hereditary hiereia of Athena Polias and the hiereus
of Poseidon-Erechtheus. The gene never lost their control over the old
traditional cults, not surprisingly, since ancient priesthoods could confer
tremendous prestige on the holder (see especially Xen. Symp. 8.40 on
Kallias the dadouchos).
From the middle of the fifth century BCE, however, the hiereus or hiereia
of newly established civic cults were chosen by lot or by election from all
Athenian citizens and tenure was normally annual. The earliest known
example is the hiereia of the cult of Athena Nike (established in the 440s or
420s), who ‘was selected by lot from all Athenian women’ (ML 44). The
decree authorizing this, however, does not indicate how the sortition was to
be conducted (from pre-selected candidates, for example?) or whether the
tenure was to be for life or only for one year. In most cases, the hiereus or
hiereia had no special religious training or knowledge to bring to their
office. What expertise they had was acquired on the job. Yet individuals
who held a lifetime priesthood might acquire a good deal of ritual and
technical knowledge over the course of a career. A famous example is
Lysimache, who, in the fifth-century BCE, was the hiereia of Athena Polias
for sixty-four years (IG II2 3453; Plin. HN 34.76).
But what exactly did a hiereus or hiereia need to know in order to
discharge their duties? That question is not very easy to answer and the
details will have varied from case to case. Defining what it meant to be a
‘priest’ or ‘priestess’ has been a major, and mostly futile, obsession of
modern scholarship. In the most basic terms, the chief responsibility of the
hiereus was to manage the hiera: the offerings, sacrifices, and the sanctuary
itself and its property, all of which were hiera or ‘sacred’ (Mikalson 2004:
11). But even these tasks were not the exclusive duties and privileges of a
hiereus. Some public sacrifices were assigned to magistrates, and any
citizen could perform an animal sacrifice without being a ‘priest’, either in
his own home or even (with some restrictions) in a public sanctuary.
Though the authority to sacrifice is one function of being a hiereus, it is not
the defining one. From the fact that any citizen can sacrifice it is logical to
deduce that the hiereus cannot be considered the ‘mediator’ (as is often
claimed) between gods and men or between the gods and the polis. If there
was a ‘mediator’ in Greek religion, then that role was performed by the
mantis.
Yet even if the most conspicuous duty of a hiereus was to preside over a
sacrifice of animal victims, he did not need to do any of the messy work
that animal sacrifice entailed, since he was supported by various officials
and attendants. A mageiros (or ‘butcher cook’) did the actual killing and
cooking, while the distribution of the sacrificial meat was handled by a
kreonomos. The hiereus, for his part, was expected to say the appropriate
prayers and to undertake some ritual actions (such as placing the god’s
portion of the sacrificed animal on the altar).
There were, to be sure, other activities apart from sacrifice that fell
within the purview of the job description. These included managing the
physical condition and finances of the sanctuary, making sure that the
traditional rituals were performed at the right time in the right way,
conducting rites of purification (in case of pollution) and issuing curses (at
the direction of civic authorities), opening the temple in the morning, and
overseeing the actions of individuals visiting the sanctuary. But, as with the
act of killing the animal offered for sacrifice, it is very unclear to what
extent the hiereis and hiereiai did these things themselves. In two passages
of his Laws (759a and 953a), Plato seems to imply that officials called
neokoroi (a type of ‘warden’) were a common feature of sanctuaries,
although literary references to them are sparse. A detailed inscription from
the Amphiareion at Oropos specifies that the hiereus must be present not
less than ten days in each month and that in his absence the neokoros is to
be in charge of the sanctuary (LSCG 69: dated between 386 and 377 BCE).
In an underappreciated passage of his Politics (1322b18–29), Aristotle
reveals that many duties, as well as some sacrifices, might be the specific
responsibility of various civic officials:
Another kind of supervision is that concerning the gods; for example, hiereis and supervisors
of matters concerned with the temples (such as the preservation of existing buildings and the
restoration of those that are in disrepair) and with all of the other things that have been set aside
for the gods. It happens that in some places there is only one supervisory office of this sort, for
instance in small cities, but in others there are many offices that are separate from the
priesthood (hierosyne); for example hieropoioi (performers of sacred rites) and naophylakes
(temple-guardians) and tamiai (treasurers of sacred funds). Next to this is the supervision
devoted to the management of all the public sacrifices that the law does not assign to the
 hiereis, but to the officials who derive their honour from the common hearth. These officials
are sometimes called archons, sometimes kings, and sometimes prytaneis (presidents).

So one way to imagine a hiereus or hiereia would be as a type of ‘master

of ceremonies’ in a public display of ritual performance, who (depending
on the size and resources of the sanctuary) acted in concert with civic
officials and was supported by a staff of variously skilled attendants.
Nonetheless, a famous story recorded by Thucydides (4.133.2–3) reveals
that daily manual tasks, even in a large and wealthy sanctuary, could not
necessarily be passed on to others:
During the same summer [of 423 BCE] the temple of Hera near Argos was burnt down;
Chrysis the hiereia had put a moveable lamp too near the wollen fillets and had then gone to
sleep, so that they all caught fire and were in a blaze before she noticed. In her fear of the
Argives she fled that very night to Phlius; and the Argives, in accordance with the established
law, appointed another hiereia named Phaeinis. Chrysis had served for eight years of this war
and half of the ninth when she went into exile.

We know that this Chrysis had been the hiereia of Hera at Argos for a
total of fifty-six and a half years, since Thucydides (2.2.1) had used the
forty-eighth year of her priesthood as one means of dating the first year of
the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE). Pausanias, a travel writer of the late
second century CE, adds some intriguing details (2.17.7): ‘Chrysis went to
Tegea and supplicated Athena Alea. Although so great a disaster had
befallen them, the Argives did not take down the statue of Chrysis, and
even to this day it stands in front of the burnt temple.’ It is noteworthy that
Chrysis herself, and not some attendant or functionary, was living in the
temple (or at least sleeping there), arranged lamps and fillets (made of
highly flammable strips of wool), and was held personally responsible for
the accident that ensued. She was important enough to have a statue erected
of her (apparently in her lifetime) and for it to remain standing even after
her disgrace, and for the officials of another famous temple in a different
polis to give her permanent asylum. Here we have someone who, for more
than half a century, held a very prestigious priesthood in a major sanctuary,
yet was evidently responsible for fairly mundane tasks. Apart from their
role in civic cults, women also acted as the hiereiai of private religious
associations, and, for a fee, offered purification and initiation into esoteric
cults. The Athenian orator Aeschines, according to his archenemy
Demosthenes (De cor. 259–60), as a young man had assisted his mother
with the induction of initiates into such a private cult.
Unlicensed Religious Specialists
The mention of private cults brings us to the vexed topic of the role,
function, and status of unlicensed religious specialists, the most common
name for whom was mantis.
Even if, as Isokrates asserts (Ad Nic. 6), any citizen was thought
competent to discharge the duties of being a hiereus, that was not true of
being a mantis. Unlike the typical civic hiereus, a mantis was a purveyor of
services that depended on technical knowledge, and, to a not negligible
extent, on personal charisma (the ability to inspire confidence in oneself as
someone possessing special skills, knowledge, and talents). We might
describe manteis as ‘migrant charismatic specialists’ (Burkert 1992: 42),
who travelled from city to city offering supernatural services for a fee to
anyone who was willing and able to pay. As is so often the case in the study
of Greek religion, however, one can find exceptions to the general rule.
Some manteis settled in a particular city or served the same general on
military campaigns for many years. At the sanctuary of Olympia two
manteis (one from the family of the Iamidai and another from the Klytiadai)
not only practised divination atop Zeus’ altar, but were responsible for the
care of the altar and for certain monthly sacrifices, which were duties of a
kind that elsewhere normally belonged to hiereis (Paus. 5.13.11, 5.15.10;
Weniger 1915).
In the Greek historians a mantis is principally an expert in the art of
divination, which is not surprising given that divination played an essential
role in Greek warfare. But their range of ritual expertise was far broader.
The archetypal seer was the legendary Melampos, who acted as diviner,
healer, and purifier. In Aischylos’ Eumenides (458 BCE) the Pythia refers
(lines 61–3) to Apollo as ‘healer-seer (iatromantis), interpreter of omens
(teratoskopos), and purifier (kathartes)’, mirroring the services that mortal
manteis could provide. Whether they were additionally the purveyors of
mageia (‘sorcery’) will be discussed in the section ‘Names, Attitudes, and
Specialization’.
In terms of divination the mantis had to be ready to interpret all sorts of
signs sent by the gods in the form of natural phenomena or the behaviour of
animals (especially birds) or dreams. While on military campaign two types
of sacrificial divination were of particular importance: one was the camp-
ground sacrifice (called hiera), and the other was the battle-line sacrifice
(called sphagia). Performing hiera entailed examining the victim’s entrails,
especially the liver (the ‘victim’ was usually a sheep), whereas performing
sphagia consisted of slitting the victim’s throat (a goat or ram) while
observing its movements and the flow of blood. Doubtless individuals from
various social strata found themselves thus employed, but, at the high end
of the pay scale, a mantis’ authority and credibility in the eyes of his clients
often depended on him belonging to an established clan (genos) of seers
(the four most distinguished were the Melampodidai, Iamidai, Klytiadai,
and Telliadai). This was because mantic knowledge was inherently different
from other types of technical know-how, such as medical knowledge. Like
medical knowledge it was technical and teachable; but, in addition, it was
imagined as being an innate and inheritable gift. Since manuals of
divination did not appear until the fourth century, and even then must have
been schematic at best, it seems that a mantis might represent himself as
having inherited an innate capacity for divination. It has been argued that
these clan groupings were merely guilds in which members did not actually
claim to be biologically descended from a common eponymous ancestor
(Johnston 2008: 110–11). Herodotos, at least, did not view these kinship ties
as obviously fictive. As he unambiguously reveals in a famous story about
the seer Euenios and his alleged son Deiphonos (9.92–5), employment
might depend on convincing others that the mantis was what he claimed to
be, literally the blood descendant of another mantis (Flower 2008a).
Female manteis are best known as the transmitters of divine
communication at fixed oracular sites such as Delphi and Dodona. The
Pythia at Delphi, who served as the mouthpiece for Apollo, is variously
called mantis, prophetis, and promantis. Nothing in the study of Greek
religion is more controversial than the question of the expertise of the
inspired female mantis. Modern scholars are sharply divided whether any of
them, and especially the Pythia, had the ability to prophesy in hexameter
verse without male assistance. That debate is too large to enter into here (for
diametrically opposed views, see Bowden 2005 and Flower 2008b: 211–
39). However that may be, it would be erroneous to suppose that female
manteis only played a passive role in divinatory rituals. An
iconographically unique fifth-century BCE grave stele from Mantinea
depicts a woman holding a liver in her left hand (Möbius 1967). She
probably did not go on campaign with armies, but battle was not the only
venue in which a mantis might perform sacrificial divination. We can easily
imagine a context in which a woman might interpret the entrails of a
sacrificial animal within a private domestic setting—for instance, on the
occasion of her client leaving home for war or travel or seeking to know
whether a particular business venture or marriage was advantageous. It is
also possible that she served the polis of Mantinea in a public capacity,
since a mantis could be officially employed by the state.
There is one other group of specialists with whom manteis shared an
expertise in matters relating to the practice of divination. These individuals
were called chresmologoi, and they were the professional collectors,
chanters, and interpreters of oracles. For a fee, chresmologoi might offer to
interpret oracles from their own personal collections (often attributed to
legendary poets such as Musaios: Hdt. 7.6), often to private clients. Or, as at
Athens in 481 (Hdt. 7.142–3), they could presume, in a public assembly, to
explain the meaning of oracles that had come from Delphi.
A whole range of sources gives the impression that manteis and
chresmologoi were perceived as practising related, but not identical, skill
sets, at least in regard to public divination (contrasting views in Eidinow
2007: 26–30 and Dillery 2005: 169–70). When Thucydides says (8.1.1) that
the Athenians in 413 BCE ‘were angry both with the chresmologoi and the
manteis, and with as many others who, through the practice of divination, in
some way at that time had caused them to hope that they would capture
Sicily’, he seems to be referring to two different categories of specialists.
Yet there was nothing to prohibit an individual from mastering the expertise
of both and calling himself by both designations, apart from the desire to
specialize as a personal preference or marketing strategy.

NAMES, ATTITUDES, AND

SPECIALIZATION

This brings us to a highly controversial and important problem, one that

simultaneously forces us to evaluate both our own conceptual biases and
those of our sources. Our elite literary sources generally treat the mantis as
a figure worthy of respect, someone who performs a useful and indeed
indispensable social function (even if individual manteis are sometimes
accused of fraud, especially in Greek tragedy). By contrast, other names for
freelance ritual experts are invariably derogatory. These include magos
(usually, but misleadingly, translated as magician), goes/goetis
(sorcerer/sorceress) and agyrtes (begging priest). The goes may originally
have been a specialist in raising the souls of the dead (Johnston 1999;
contra Dickie 2001: 13–14), but, like magos, the word mostly denotes an
all-purpose ‘sorcerer’. There is also the pharmakeus (male) and pharmakis
(female), a provider of potions and spells. Only one text from the Classical
period uses magos in a positive sense when referring to Greek specialists.
And matters are made even more complex by the fact that only one source
(Plato) explicitly attributes the ritual expertise of the magos to the mantis.
We are faced with two interrelated but distinct questions. First, was
mantis a catch-all term for a freelance religious specialist who could offer
clients ‘a grab-bag of supernatural skills and services’ (Eidinow 2007: 27)?
In other words, did anyone ever admit to being a goes or a magos, or was
‘the profession entered in the passport’ always mantis (Parker 2005: 134).
Secondly, did these self-styled ‘manteis’ usually offer a smorgasbord of
different supernatural services, or did they tend to specialize in a particular
skill? These questions are frustratingly difficult to answer and they are
implicated in a larger debate over whether it is ever useful to think in terms
of ‘ideal types’ of religious specialists, in the manner pioneered by Max
Weber.
On the surface, it may seem unlikely that no one, not even in private
consultation, ever advertised himself or herself as a goes, pharmakeus, or
magos. The Derveni Papyrus, dating to the late fourth century BCE, refers to
the magoi and initiates in what seems to be an Orphic or Dionysiac cult.
Some scholars consider these magoi to be Persian priests (since that was the
original meaning of the word). But a very convincing case has been made
that these particular magoi are the Greek leaders of a private religious group
(see Betegh 2004: 78–83; and columns 5–6 of the papyrus). If that
interpretation is correct, then we have evidence that, in private settings,
magos could be a positive self-ascription.
Yet one notorious case does seem to suggest that names were fluid, even
if mantis generally was the self-description of choice. Theoris of Lemnos,
who was active in mid-fourth century Athens BCE, is called a pharmakis in a
Demosthenic speech (Aristogeit. 79–80), a hiereia by Plutarch (Dem.14.4),
and apparently a mantis by Philochoros (FGrH 328 F 60), the Athenian
polymath of the late fourth/early third century BCE. The second-century CE
lexicographer, Harpokration, cites Philochoros as follows: ‘Theoris:
Demosthenes in his speech against Aristogeiton, if it is genuine. Theoris
was a mantis, and she was condemned on a charge of impiety and put to
death, as also Philochoros writes in book 6.’ It is striking that Philochoros,
who was himself a mantis practising divination, and who wrote a book
called On Divination, was willing to share that designation with Theoris,
who was publically attacked for her allegedly harmful activities as a
pharmakis. This would strongly suggest that, whatever her precise
expertise, Theoris advertised herself as a mantis (and, perhaps concurrently,
a hiereia, as in Plutarch). There may indeed have been a strong legal
incentive for calling oneself a mantis, since in cities other than Athens, if
we can trust an unverifiable statement in Plato’s Meno (80a–b), anyone
acting as a goes was subject to arrest.
What makes any reconstruction of freelance ritual expertise so
problematic is the fact that, by the late fifth century BCE, those who
attempted to heal with purifications and incantations were harshly attacked
by the practitioners of rational medicine. The author of the Hippokratic
treatise On The Sacred Disease asserts (2), ‘Those who first attributed a
sacred character to this disease [epilepsy] seem to me to be like the magoi
(sorcerers), kathartai (purifiers), agyrtai (beggar-priests), and alazones
(charlatans) of our own day, men who pretend to be exceedingly pious and
to have superior knowledge.’ The author claims that, because they had no
treatment, ‘they deemed this illness to be sacred in order that their
ignorance might not be manifest’. Although the practitioners of Hippokratic
medicine were also in competition with manteis in the treatment of disease,
the latter, very strikingly, are missing from his list of quacks. Plato, writing
a generation later, did not spare them. In a famous passage, he ridicules
ritual specialists who wander from city to city offering supernatural services
for a fee (Resp. 364b–e):
Agyrtai and manteis frequent the doors of the rich and persuade them that they have obtained
from the gods, through sacrifices and incantations, the power to heal them through pleasant
rituals if some wrong was committed either by them or their ancestors. And if someone wishes
to bring ruin upon an enemy, with small expense he will be able to harm the just and unjust
alike, since they have the ability through certain enchantments and binding spells to persuade
the gods, as they say, to serve them . . . . And they produce a noisy din of books of Musaios and
Orpheus, the offspring of the Moon and of the Muses, as they claim, and using these books in
their sacrifices, they manage to persuade not only private individuals but even whole cities that
 there really are releases and purifications from unjust deeds by means of sacrifices and pleasant
sport, some for the living and others for the dead. These releases and purifications they call
initiations (teletai), which deliver us from evils there [in the underworld], while terrible things
await those who have not sacrificed.

Plato is here combining three different ritual activities that could be

performed independently: causing harm through spells, expiation of crime
through purification, and initiation into private mystery cults. He is not
necessarily saying, however, that one and the same person could or did
offer all of these services—only that whoever provided any one of them
was called a mantis (or an agyrtes). His purpose is obviously to disparage
manteis in general, no matter their specific expertise, by associating them
with the peddling of what he considered to be socially disreputable services.
He takes an even more strident stand in the Laws (c.347 BCE), proposing life
imprisonment as the punishment for those manteis ‘who claim to raise the
souls (psychagogein) of the dead and who promise to persuade the gods by
bewitching (goeteuontes) them through sacrifices, prayers, and
incantations’ (909a8–b6). Later, he refers to the fear aroused in those who
see wax figurines (what we would call ‘voodoo dolls’) at doorways, or at
points where three roads meet, or on the tombs of their ancestors (933a–b),
and the implication is that these have been made by manteis.
In Plato’s view those manteis who attempt to bind or coerce the gods are
guilty of impiety (Leg. 908–9). He even specifies the death penalty as the
punishment for any doctor who attempts harm through drugs or for any
mantis or teratoskopos (‘interpreter of portents’) who attempts to harm
someone through ‘binding curses, or incantations, or spells’ (Leg. 933d–e).
Now, Plato’s testimony that the purveyors of curse tablets and of related
supernatural weapons called themselves manteis cannot be accepted
uncritically as a reflection of social reality, because it was part of his
utopian programme to outlaw all private, unlicensed, and unsanctioned
religious rituals, as well as their providers, from his ideal polis. Since
mantis was the term of highest social value, it served his purposes very well
to use manteis and teratoskopoi as umbrella terms to cover the whole range
of freelance specialists. Yet, would Plato have made these claims in the
Republic and Laws if none of his readers had ever met a purveyor of wax
dolls, curse tablets, in-house purifications from blood guilt, and potions of
various sorts, who went by the self-styled title of mantis? Despite qualms
about his motives, we should probably accept his evidence that the job
description in the passport was usually, if perhaps not invariably, mantis.
The contrast between Plato’s description of the activities of manteis and
that in other sources should not lead us to posit a distinction between ‘the
professional class of seer’ who were attached to temples (such as the Pythia
at Delphi) or to armies and the ‘itinerate mantis who wandered from city to
city offering their services for hire’ (as does Collins 2008a: 50–1). Such a
distinction cannot hold, since the term ‘professional’ is anachronistic in a
world where certification did not exist and, apart from the manteis at
oracular sanctuaries, all were, or could be, itinerate. Some manteis struck up
long-term relationships with particular generals. Nikias is said to have
relied upon Stilbides (Plut. Nic. 23.5) and Aristander of Telmessos served
both Philip II and then Alexander the Great. Some even established their
families in a particular city, such as Teisamenos of Elis, who, in 479 BCE,
demanded Spartan citizenship as payment for his services and whose
descendants served as manteis at Sparta for generations to come (Hdt. 9.33–
5; Flower 2008a). But, in general, the occupation of military mantis was
characterized by serving the highest bidder, whoever that might be.
A particularly noteworthy example of the itinerate mantis who sold his
services is Silanos from Ambrakia. He was the personal mantis to the
Persian prince, Cyrus the Younger, during Cyrus’ unsuccessful attempt to
overthrow his brother, King Artaxerxes II, in 401 BCE, with the aid of an
army of some ten thousand Greek mercenaries. Xenophon, in the Anabasis,
gives a vivid account of his own less than satisfactory dealings with
Silanos. We first encounter this mantis in the context of the king’s failure to
offer battle (1.7.18):
Cyrus summoned the Ambrakiot mantis Silanos and gave him three thousand gold darics,
because when sacrificing eleven days previously, he had said to him that the king would not
fight within ten days. Cyrus had said, “Then he shall not fight at all if he shall not fight within
these days. If you should prove to be speaking the truth, I promise you ten talents.” At that time
he gave him the gold, since the ten days had passed.

Silanos’ prediction that ten days would pass without a battle is not the
kind of information that was normally obtained by inspecting the liver and
entrails of a sacrificial victim, since usually the signs were either favourable
or unfavourable for a particular course of action, or, more rarely, revealed
impending danger. Xenophon has temporally displaced this incident in
order to create dramatic suspense before the Battle of Cunaxa, but it is easy
to infer that the original context was the campground sacrifice. If so, then
Silanos need have said no more than that the sacrifices were propitious for
marching out, or, more boldly, that the king would not fight on that
particular day. Obviously, he took a gamble of sorts, whether consciously or
not, and made a much more elaborate prediction than was expected from
this particular ritual. This gamble paid off extremely handsomely, since ten
talents was a huge fortune. Cyrus, for his part, wrongly inferred that the
king was not planning to fight at all, and that inference was one of the
contributing factors that caused him to be caught completely unprepared on
the day of the battle.
When, during the subsequent retreat of the Greek mercenaries, Xenophon
conceived the idea of founding a colony on the coast of the Black Sea, he
decided to make a preliminary divinatory sacrifice before mentioning this
idea to the soldiers (5.6.15–19, 28–30). He apparently did not feel
competent to do this himself, and so he summoned Silanos to conduct the
sacrifice for him. Silanos, however, did not want Xenophon’s plan to
succeed, because he desperately wanted to get back to Greece with the
money that he had been given by Cyrus. So he leaked Xenophon’s scheme
to the army, and that got Xenophon into considerable trouble.
If manteis were as unscrupulous as Plato claims, why did Silanos not
simply tell Xenophon that the omens were unfavourable for discussing a
colony? The reason is provided by Xenophon himself when he defends his
actions before the army (5.6.29):
Silanos the mantis responded with respect to the most important point that the omens from
sacrifice were favourable. For he knew that I too was not inexperienced on account of my
always being present at sacrifices. But he said that treachery and a plot against me appeared in
the omens, since he indeed knew that he himself was plotting to slander me to you.

Since no two livers look exactly alike, there was a subjective element in
the mantis’ evaluation of a particular liver’s size, shape, texture, and colour,
as well as of its ‘gate’ and portal vein (Collins 2008b). There were some
features that were always bad (for instance, if a liver was missing a caudate
lobe) and others that were probably evaluated on a sliding scale. Yet
Xenophon apparently knew how to read livers and entrails and therefore
Silanos could not claim that the signs were negative. Perhaps Silanos
consciously invented the plot against Xenophon in order to discourage him;
but, even so, it was not a fabricated interpretation in the sense that Silanos
accurately predicted his own actions in slandering Xenophon.
 Silanos’ authority, interestingly enough, only extended to divination.
When he attempted to oppose a vote to punish runaways (5.6.34), the
assembled troops shouted him down and threatened him with punishment if
he tried to run away himself. Nonetheless, we later learn that a different
mantis is conducting the sacrifice for the generals, because ‘Silanos the
mantis had already run away, having hired a boat out of Herakleia’ (6.4.13).
Throughout the Anabasis Silanos is depicted as being simultaneously a
highly unscrupulous self-serving character and an extremely competent
mantis. Even so, if we are to believe Plato, one thing, surprisingly, is
missing from this very full account. There is never any suggestion that
Silanos employed any sort of supernatural weapon in order to bind the
tongue of his eloquent opponent when Xenophon denounced him before the
army. Is that because the historical Silanos did not have the appropriate
expertise? Or is it because Xenophon, as the author of the Anabasis, did not
deign to include references to what he probably considered ‘bad religion’ in
his narrative? The gap between Plato’s philosophical treatment of manteis
and Xenophon’s literary–historical treatment is difficult, but perhaps not
impossible, to bridge.
There are two passages from Xenophon that are suggestive. According to
Plato, purification from wrongdoing was one of the services offered by
itinerant manteis. In the Anabasis, we find the manteis recommending a
purification of the army after a period of internal dissension during which
some foreign ambassadors had been impiously slain (5.7.35). Hippokrates
says that magoi asserted the ability to control the weather (Morb. sacr.
1.29–30). And Empedokles of Akragas (c.492–432 BCE) apparently claims
in his poem Purifications (F 111) that he can teach how ‘to stay the force of
unwearied winds’ and, more spectacularly, ‘to bring from Hades the life
force of a dead man’. Xenophon relates (An. 4.5.3–4) that when a harsh
north wind was blasting the soldiers in their faces as they were marching
through Armenia, ‘one of the manteis told them to make a slaughter
sacrifice (sphagiasasthai) to the wind, and the sacrifice was made, and it
seemed completely clear to everyone that the harshness of the wind abated’.
It seems obvious that freelance ritual experts, no matter what they called
themselves, were prepared to offer a wide range of services. Some
undoubtedly specialized in particular activities and advertised themselves
accordingly. A mantis who sought employment with armies would have
emphasized his ability to ‘win’ battles (Flower 2008b: 94–6); but, as
depicted in the Anabasis, he might also have been called upon to act as a
kathartes (purifier) or to offer various types of propitiatory sacrifices (to
abate bad weather, for instance). Other manteis might have marketed
themselves as particularly adept at healing sickness or cursing enemies. It
was up to potential clients to locate the specialist who could offer the range
of services for which they were looking.

CONCLUSION

Due to the scattered and partial nature of the evidence, it is very difficult to
talk of change over time, whether in terms of evolution of priestly and
mantic functions from simple to more complex forms, or of devolution
from a number of different specialists (with separate designations) to all-
purpose providers. The situation in Sparta, where the two kings also held
important priesthoods (Hdt. 6.56), has the look of a survival from a much
earlier time (Dark Age Greece) when priestly and royal power was vested
in the same individual. Later, during the Archaic Age, such power was
divested into various elected magistrates (such as the nine archons at
Athens). But all such schematic reconstructions must remain hypothetical,
since our knowledge of early Greek society is so thin. It is tempting, but
methodologically flawed, to employ evidence from imperial era writers,
such as Diogenes Laertius (third century CE) or Plutarch (first century CE),
to reconstruct the position of supernatural specialists (such as Epimenides
or Empedokles) in Archaic and early Classical Greece. The problem is that
the legends about these early figures were elaborated and expanded over
time. It should give us considerable pause that Aristotle (Ath. Pol. 1) and
Plato (Leg. 642d) place the purificatory sacrifices of Epimenides at Athens
a hundred years apart. Nonetheless, a few observations can be advanced
about developments in the Classical and Hellenistic periods.
The purchase of priesthoods became increasingly common in Asia Minor
during the Hellenistic period, but it would be a large undertaking to
compare and contrast Classical and Hellenistic evidence for the role,
expertise, and functions of the hiereus and hiereia. On the other hand,
chresmologoi largely disappear from the historical record after 413 BCE.
Although they appear fairly frequently in fifth-century sources, by the early
fourth century it is hard to find a trace of them. Xenophon makes numerous
references to manteis, but only once mentions a chresmologos (Diopeithes,
probably an Athenian, who became involved in the struggle over the royal
succession at Sparta in 400 BCE: Hell. 3.3.3). ‘Local’ Boiotian chresmologoi
are said to have consulted with the Theban general Epaminondas before the
Battle of Leuktra in 371 BCE (Diod. Sic. 15.54.2, probably drawing on the
fourth-century historian Ephoros of Kyme). Had chresmologoi as a group
discredited themselves during the Peloponnesian War because their
predictions had mostly proved false, or had the greater circulation of written
texts made their particular expertise obsolete?
The mantis, however, never seems to have lost her or his authority, even
as new forms of political power, as well as of divination (such as astrology),
developed in the Hellenistic Age. Curse tablets begin in the sixth century
BCE and continue to the eighth century CE (in Attica they first appear in the
mid-fifth century BCE and are most prevalent in the fourth, just when Plato
was writing). Although the tablets themselves do not indicate whether they
are the handiwork of a specialist provider, it is a fair assumption that self-
styled manteis/magoi at all times enjoyed a brisk business in making and
activating them. It is certain that manteis skilled in the art of divination still
found plentiful employment throughout the Hellenistic period, since kings
and commoners alike relied on their advice and guidance as much as they
had in earlier periods of Greek history.

SUGGESTED READING
Henrichs (2008) lists thirty different attempts at defining a Greek ‘priest’
and shows that they are all problematic in one way or another, whereas
Chaniotis (2008) surveys a great deal of inscriptional evidence for ritual
expertise across time and place. A detailed exposition of the evidence for
cult personnel is in ThesCRA 5.1–65. Connelly 2007 is devoted to Greek
priestesses. For priests specifically at Athens, see Clinton 1974, Garland
1984, 1990, Lambert 2010, and Horster and Klöckne 2011. Manteis and
Chresmologoi are treated in detail by Pritchett 1979: 47–90, Dillery 2005,
and Flower 2008b; note also Bowden 2003 and Bremmer 1993, 1996. Kett
1966 is a prosopography of named manteis. For pre-battle sacrifices, see
especially Jameson 1991 and Parker 2000. Magic and divination are
usefully surveyed by Collins 2008a and Johnston 2008, respectively. Dickie
2001 is a very thorough exploration of ‘magicians’ in both Greece and
Rome. For the role of oracles and cursing in Greek society one should
consult Eidinow 2007. For Theoris, see Eidinow 2010, and for divination in
Xenophon’s Anabasis, Parker 2004 and Flower 2012. Judicious accounts of
all issues relating to religious expertise are in Parker 2005, 2011.

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 CHAPTER 21

NEW GODS

RALPH ANDERSON

INTRODUCTION

THE apparent ease and frequency with which the Greek poleis added new
deities to their pantheons is an intriguing feature of Greek religion. New
deities could be imported from outside the city or a familiar god might be
offered cult under a new title. The introduction of new gods raises
important questions for our understanding of both Greek religion and its
relationship with other areas of Greek culture, practice, and experience:
what it was the Greeks sought from their gods; how religious innovation
was authorized; the relationship between politics and religion; and how
religion reflected community history and identity as they changed over
time.
The readiness of the Greeks to adopt new gods may also challenge
modern, Western conceptions of the nature of religion. From a perspective
informed by Christianity, in which a long-lasting and exclusive
commitment to a single deity is central, the Greeks’ willingness to adopt
new deities appears incongruous. At the very least, one might expect some
indications of spiritual dissatisfaction prior to the adoption of a new god.
However, such expectations would misconstrue not only what happens
when a new god is welcomed into a community, but also the nature of
Greek religion more generally.

HOW TO INTRODUCE A NEW GOD:

PRAGMATISM AND AUTHORITY

The acquisition of a new god by a community in no way represented a

religious conversion, or a spiritual or theological revolution. As far as the
Greeks were concerned, they shared the world with a vast range of divine
and semi-divine beings. Any or all of them could impinge on human life,
and all, in principle, deserved cult: there was no necessary incompatibility
between the community’s familiar gods and any potential newcomer. The
introduction of a new god amounted to a decision by the community to
establish a cult to one more deity in addition to the extensive pantheon
already receiving worship (see, in this volume, Deacy, Chapter 24, and
Ekroth, Chapter 26).
This decision rested mainly on pragmatic grounds that reflected what the
Greeks hoped for from their gods. A central consideration was the value of
cultivating a relationship with a deity that had shown itself willing to help
the city or which might help in future. Just as with new alliances with other
cities, potential benefits, costs, and obligations had to be carefully
examined. A new god would require a cult in his or her honour and a
sanctuary. A simple sanctuary might entail only the purchase or donation
and dedication of a small plot of land and the erection of an altar. However,
this was a minimum, and further features, such as a temple and cult statue,
and possibly ancillary buildings, such as dining rooms, were desirable if not
absolutely necessary.
A large cult would need an endowment, usually in the form of more land,
to cover the cost of sacrifices, maintenance, and sanctuary officials
(Garland 1992: 21). Costs could accumulate rapidly and would have to be
borne either by the sponsor(s) of the new cult or by the polis itself, that is,
by the community collectively. Either way, the city would need to be
convinced that the new god would earn his or her keep. Herodotos 5.80–1
offers an illuminating, if negative, example, albeit one relating to hero-cult:
when Thebes asked Aigina for military assistance against Athens, the
Aiginetans sent them their heroes, the sons of Aiakos. When they proved
useless, the Thebans returned them and asked for men instead (Garland
1992: 1).
Such pragmatism is entirely consistent with the quasi-contractual aspect
of Greek religion, in which a trade in favours, based around ideas of gift
exchange and charis, loomed large (Parker 1998). However, any
community had only finite resources—both material and cognitive—to
devote to cult and this meant that new gods could not be adopted lightly. A
new god would compete with existing cults for offerings and attention, and
this could diminish the honours paid to established deities. Vested interests,
such as powerful families that held prestigious priesthoods of other gods,
would need to be won over (Garland 1992: 19–20). Moreover, the impact of
the new cult on relations with other human communities needed
consideration. The sharing of cults was a common element in the
construction of alliances between cities. The decision to adopt a new god
was, therefore, a complex and multifaceted one, but pragmatic rather than
theological or doctrinal concerns predominated.
In Greece, authority in religious matters was highly dispersed, with each
polis the master of its own religious life. For a complex decision that could
potentially affect the fortunes of the whole community, the only appropriate
venues were those presented by the polis’ political systems (Sourvinou-
Inwood 2000a). In democratic Athens, from 460 BCE onwards, the council
and the assembly authorized the introduction of new cults—the decision
belonged to the Athenian people (Garland 1992: 19; Parker 1996: 124, 129–
31, 2005b: 61–2). Priests had relatively little formal influence on the
process and no general religious power: if they could speak with authority
in the assembly at all, it was only on matters pertaining to their own
sanctuaries. Seers and oracle-interpreters, by contrast, could and did
contribute, but only as expert advisers, able to guide the demos, not
command it (Garland 1990; Sourvinou-Inwood 2000b: 38; Parker 2005a:
91–5; and, in this volume, Flower, Chapter 20). Evidence is scarcer for
Sparta, but the close association of the kings with religious matters suggests
that religious innovation was regulated by the normal sources of authority
in the polis there, too (Hdt. 6.56; on Spartan religion, see Parker 1989 and
Richer 2010). Indeed, this appears to have been the general rule in poleis
(Parker 2005b: 61).
Two important qualifications must be noted. First, poleis did not operate
in isolation. Panhellenic sources of religious authority existed in the form of
major oracles such as Delphi and Dodona, which were routinely consulted
by poleis considering cultic innovations (see, in this volume, Iles Johnston,
Chapter 32). The initiative rested with a polis to consult the oracle, framing
the question and acting on the response as it thought best. Direct
instructions from the oracle would usually be followed, but often the details
were left to the discretion of the enquiring polis. Only rarely did the oracles
instigate a new cult unasked (Parker 1985; Sourvinou-Inwood 2000a: 20–
1).
Second, while a polis claimed the right to regulate religion within its
territory, enforcement was another matter, especially in large poleis such as
Athens. In general, poleis lacked extensive state means of enforcement: the
onus was on individual citizens to police their peers, albeit using the
institutions of the city to do so (Parker 2005b: 63–8). However, it is not
obvious that poleis attempted, even in this limited way, to regulate the
ability of citizens (including women) to establish new sanctuaries on private
land to gods already acknowledged by the community. Inscriptions from the
shrine established around 400 BCE by one Xenokratia at Phaleron in Attica
to the local river god, Kephisos, give no sign that permission was either
sought or required (Garland 1992: 20; Purvis 2003: 14–30). Earlier in the
century, Themistokles had established a shrine to Artemis under the novel
title Aristoboule (‘the best adviser’), in gratitude for his own inspired
strategies during the Second Persian War. Themistokles’ self-congratulation
offended many, but the foundation of the cult was not in itself impious
(Garland 1992: 73–8). Woe betide, however, the citizen who introduced an
altogether unfamiliar deity without permission. This could be regarded as
impiety, especially in troubled times, and dealt with severely, as in the case
of Sokrates (Garland 1992: 136–51; Parker 2005b: 65–8; Eidinow 2010).
Such instances may have been rare, and, in the case of Sokrates, political
factors almost certainly lay behind the religious charges, but the use of the
institutional mechanisms of the polis—its citizen jury-courts—again asserts
the primacy of the polis in deciding which gods would receive cult within
its territory.
 The primacy of the polis also dictated which gods would be regarded as
foreign or new: not only those of barbaroi, non-Greeks, but also those of all
other Greeks. Pan and Asklepios, from Arkadia and Epidauros respectively,
were just as much ‘foreign gods’ (xenikoi theoi) in fifth-century Athens as
Thracian Bendis, and, like Bendis, needed formal introduction. Even
common, Panhellenic deities, such as Zeus or Athena, could be ‘foreign’ if
they were introduced into a city in new form or under a new cult title. Thus,
Zeus Kenaios of Euboia, Poseidon Kalaureiates of Kalaureia, and Athena
Itonia of Thessaly and Boiotia were all newcomers to Athens in the Archaic
period, even though Zeus, Athena, and Poseidon were already well known
there (Parker 1996: 157–8). As Sourvinou-Inwood (2000a: 18) noted, each
polis determined not only which deities were particularly important to it and
which aspect of each deity it would emphasize, but also ‘the precise
articulation of the cult . . . its particular modalities’ (see further, in this
volume, Vlassopoulos, Chapter 18). Local differences in the representation
of different gods and the configuration of relations between them mattered,
and these differences were governed by the polis.

WHY BRING IN A GOD? PAN IN ATHENS

We know little about the people who advocated cults of new gods and
championed them through the city’s institutional processes. Individuals are
rarely recorded, though groups are more often named. Even when
individuals are named, the sources show little interest in their character.
There is little suggestion that individual advocates of new gods were
particularly holy or pious, even when they had received an epiphany of the
god whose cult they proposed (Garland 1992: 18). Where the debate is
visible to us, the focus is on the credibility of the claims made for the
benefits the god had brought or might bring. For instance, early in the fifth
century, the Athenians established a shrine of Pan beneath their acropolis
and instituted an annual festival featuring a torch race and sacrifices.
Herodotos (6.105) explains that this was done following the Battle of
Marathon in response to an epiphany of the god experienced by the runner,
Philippides, who had carried the Athenians’ unsuccessful request for help to
Sparta. The god met Philippides as he crossed Mount Parthenion in Arkadia
and, addressing him by name, asked him why the Athenians paid him no
attention despite his friendliness towards them and the help he had given
them and would give them in the future. After the battle, Herodotos says,
the Athenians accepted Philippides’ story as true and established the cult.
The Athenian tradition which Herodotos reported based the cult on the
individual testimony of Philippides, reinforced by the victory at Marathon,
a victory so great and unexpected that divine assistance was a reasonable,
perhaps even a necessary, inference. However, while Philippides’ story
provides an aition (origin story) for the cult, it is unlikely that Philippides
established a new state cult single-handedly. A dedication made by
Miltiades, the architect of the victory at Marathon, to ‘goat-footed Pan of
Arkadia, the one who fought against the Medes and with the Athenians’
suggests that senior Athenian commanders were prepared to accept
Philippides’ story and support the cult (Garland 1992: 50–1, 59–60).
Miltiades’ motives are opaque but, as with Themistokles and his cult of
Artemis Aristoboule, probably included a mixture of piety, gratitude, and a
desire to commemorate both the victory itself and his own part in it.
Garland also detects hints of possible Athenian economic connections with
the communities of Arkadia in the early fifth century, in which Attic silver
paid for Arkadian timber, vital for the Athenian fleet (1992: 60 n.7). More
recently, however, Jim Roy (1999: 334–5) has cast doubt on the existence
of this Arkadian timber-export trade. Nevertheless, some form of contact
between Athenians and Arkadians before the Persian Wars is probable,
though the current state of the evidence makes it impossible to prove any
particular arrangement (I am grateful to Jim Roy for this point). Behind the
introduction of Pan, then, may lie not only Philippides’ experience in the
mountains of Arkadia and the dramatic events of Marathon, but also the
piety and ambitions of senior Athenian military and political leaders, and
perhaps even some Athenian interests among the communities of Arkadia.
The story of Philippides provides an appealing aition, but it potentially
conceals as much as it reveals, masking both the identity of the individuals
and factions involved and their motivations.
 RELIGION AND POLITICS: ASKLEPIOS IN
ATHENS

A similarly complex mix of motivations surrounds the arrival of Asklepios

in Athens from Epidauros in 420/19 BCE. Since Asklepios specialized in
healing and Athens had been afflicted by plague between 430 and 426 BCE,
his arrival has been seen as uniquely free of political considerations and
motivated purely by a desire for healing in a disease-ravaged city (e.g.
Edelstein 1945: II.108–25; Garland 1992: 130–1; Parker 1996: 180). By
contrast, other gods introduced into Athens in the fifth century are taken to
reflect the military and political ambitions of the city. As noted in the
section ‘Why Bring in a God? Pan in Athens’, Pan reflected the shock of
Marathon. Likewise, the arrival of the Thracian goddess Bendis around 430
BCE reflected long-standing Athenian ambitions in the region and may have
been intended to consolidate a military partnership with Thrace (Garland
1992: 112; Parker 1996: 170–5; Wickkiser 2008: 96; see Planeaux 2000 on
the date of her arrival). Against this background, Asklepios’ arrival is
unique in being credited with no political dimension at all. Wickkiser,
however, argues that Asklepios’ arrival was connected not only with
healing, but also with Athenian imperial ambitions in the north-east
Peloponnese, particularly the area around Epidauros (2008: 90–105). The
arrival of his cult, therefore, raises questions about the relationship of the
religious and the political in Greece. Since we have unusually detailed and
secure information about Asklepios’ arrival, it is possible to explore these
questions in depth.
Our principal source is the so-called Telemachus Monument, a double-
sided relief-sculpted marble slab sitting atop a marble column on which was
inscribed an account of the early years of the sanctuary. The inscription is
fragmentary, but dates to c.400 BCE and no earlier than 412/11, so it is at
least contemporary (Parker 1996: 177; Wickkiser 2008: 67). A second
tradition gives the tragedian, Sophokles, as ‘Dexion’ (‘Receiver’), a role in
the initial reception of Asklepios. However, this rests on later sources and is
hard to substantiate (Aleshire 1989: 9–11; Wickkiser 2008: 66–7).
According to the inscription, Asklepios came up from Zea harbour in the
Piraeus at the time of the Greater Eleusinian mysteries, and lodged
temporarily in the City Eleusinion. Telemachus transferred him by chariot
(or wagon) from there to his new sanctuary on the south side of the
Acropolis. There the problems begin. Asklepios may either have been
accompanied by an attendant from Epidauros, or have arrived in the form of
a sacred snake—either diakonon (attendant) or drakonta (snake) may be
restored in the inscription (Parker 1996: 178–9; Wickkiser 2008: 67–72).
Worse, there is even some possibility that Telemachus himself, usually
assumed to have been an Athenian sponsor of the cult, may not have been
Athenian at all, but rather an Epidaurian who moved to Athens to oversee
the cult’s installation there (Parker 1996: 178–9).
Despite the difficulties of the inscription, it is clear that the cult of
Asklepios did not arrive in Athens without the involvement of powerful
groups in the city. Temporary accommodation in the City Eleusinion
suggests support from the priesthood of the Eleusinian cult, including the
great genos of the Kerykes (even if, as the inscription says, the Kerykes
contested some or all of the land the sanctuary was founded on the very
next year; see Aleshire 1989: 8–9 and Garland 1992: 126; though Wickkiser
2008: 74–5 suggests the Kerykes may have disputed on Asklepios’ behalf
against a third party). Moreover, the festival of the Epidauria, which
commemorated the arrival of Asklepios, was integrated into the programme
of the Eleusinian mysteries, further suggesting close cooperation between
the cults (Parker 1996: 179–80; Wickkiser 2008: 74–5). It has been
suggested that Asklepios’ cult in Athens began as a private cult, founded by
an individual (Telemachus) but open to all (Aleshire 1989: 7–9, 72–85).
However, it is unlikely that a lone individual, even with powerful friends,
could gain such a prestigious location for his cult, or have its festival
integrated into the programme of a major polis festival, without at least
some measure of state approval (Parker 1996: 180–1; Wickkiser 2008: 71–
2). Moreover, similarities between the architectural décor of the earliest
building in Asklepios’ sanctuary, the Ionic stoa, and the Erechtheion on the
Acropolis above, suggest the Athenian state directly invested in the new
cult (Melfi 2007: 327–31). Asklepios clearly had extensive help, both
public and private, in establishing a home in Athens.
Athenian interest in Asklepios has conventionally been explained as a
response to the trauma of the plague, which fed desire for a new and more
effective source of divine protection from disease. Asklepios was the best
candidate, so it is claimed, but could not be imported from the Peloponnese
until after the Peace of Nikias temporarily halted the Peloponnesian War in
421 (Aleshire 1989: 7; Garland 1992: 131–2; Parker 1996: 180). In this
view, Asklepios was imported solely for his healing powers, and was
installed at the first practical opportunity.
Wickkiser, however, argues that the introduction of Asklepios was
closely implicated in Athenian foreign policy. Epidauros was strategically
important for Athens because of its location on the Saronic Gulf coast in the
north-eastern Peloponnese, and the Athenians attacked the city repeatedly
during the 420s in an attempt to bring it under their control. Against this
background, a political element to the introduction of Asklepios to Athens
is not implausible. The Peace of Nikias prevented the Athenians from
attacking Epidauros, which was allied to Sparta, but this did not mean that
Athenian designs on the city ceased. Wickkiser detects signs of a short-
lived attempt, led by a faction that included prominent members of the
Kerykes, to build a consensual alliance between the two poleis. The export
of Asklepios to Athens played a key role in establishing the alliance. She
interprets the naming by the Athenians of one of their two festivals of
Asklepios as the Epidauria as a deliberate effort to emphasize links between
the cities. Inscriptional evidence also suggests that Epidaurian personnel
participated in both the transfer of Asklepios to Athens and its later
commemoration. She concludes that Athens did not ‘abduct’ Asklepios but
‘negotiated his importation’ and the Epidaurians, for their part, willingly
cooperated (Wickkiser 2008: 97–8). However, if the Epidaurians hoped that
this would secure them relief from Athenian aggression and potentially
recruit Athens as an ally against their hostile neighbour, Argos, they were
quickly disappointed. Athenian policy shifted as a more aggressive faction,
opposed to the Peace of Nikias, prevailed. Athens allied itself with Argos,
and Argos, not bound by the Peace, was free to attack Epidauros (Wickkiser
2008: 99–100). The alliance lasted long enough to establish Asklepios in
Athens, but fell victim to Athenian factional politics, leaving Asklepios’
cult behind as the relic of a failed diplomatic venture.
Does this connection between Athenian strategic interest and the
introduction of Asklepios provide us with the ‘real reason’ for the transfer
of the cult? To pose the question more polemically, should we assume that
military and political objectives provide a more genuine explanation of cult
transfers than what are, to us, less tangible religious factors? Nilsson, after
all, regarded the adoption of new gods as a ‘well-known expedient to unite
an incorporated district with the ruling city’ (1951: 33, cf. 45; Wickkiser
2008: 96; cf. Garland 1992: 115).
There is some merit in this view: cult transfers clearly do occur between
cities that are linked by military, political, economic, or social ties.
However, to view them as a ‘mere disguise for socio-political power’
(Kindt 2012: 89) is to underestimate the value of the new cult as a benefit to
the receiving city in its own right. Athenian interest in a new god of healing
and Athenian interest in a strategically important city are not incompatible,
nor should the former be regarded as a mere reflection or token of the latter.
We may not believe that Asklepios could heal anything, or that Pan could
help in battle, but we should not automatically assume either that the
Greeks shared our scepticism, or that they approached the adoption of new
gods as a cynical cloak for political objectives (Kindt 2012: 89, cf. 56–7).

EXPLAINING CHANGE OVER TIME

The historical ‘biography’ of a city as it unfolded over time became

embedded in its cultic life. The introduction of new cults can be linked with
crises and upheavals. For example, the cults of Pan and Boreas and the
heroic honours paid annually to the dead of Marathon embedded the shock,
loss, and triumph of the Persian Wars in Athenian cult; earlier, Kleisthenes’
reorganization of Attica had given new prominence to the Eponymous
Heroes of his ten new tribes (Kearns 1985). New cults can reflect interstate
and inter-regional connections and alliances: for example, the presence in
Athens of Zeus Kenaios, Poseidon Kalaureiates, and Athena Itonia perhaps
reflects earlier Athenian involvement in vanished Archaic amphictyonies
stretching into Euboia, Thessaly, and Boiotia (Parker 1996: 28). Similarly,
the presence of cults of Athena Mistress of Athens (Athena Athenon
medeousa) in many cities of the Delian League manifests those cities’
entanglement with imperial Athens (Garland 1992: 106–9). As Kearns (this
volume, Chapter 3) notes, change was normal—though not always
uncontroversial—in Greek religion.
Some potential for understanding the traffic of gods and their cults within
and between communities is offered by network theory (Collar 2009;
Eidinow 2011). Collar, for example, employs it to explore the spread of the
monotheistic cult of Theos Hypsistos through the Roman Empire.
Significantly, network analysis offers explanations for the spread of
religious innovations that do not depend upon the inherent merit of the
innovations themselves.
Rather than asserting that migrating cults spread because they are
‘superior’ to others or that they answer some ‘deficiency’ in the religious
systems of the communities which adopt them, network theory explains the
spread of cults in terms of the structure of networks of communication
between individuals and communities (or ‘nodes’). Cults that spread do so
because they originate in areas of the network that are conducive to
accepting or disseminating change. Conversely, a perfectly good innovation
may fail to spread simply because the configuration of the area of the
network in which it arises hinders the acceptance or dissemination of a new
idea or practice (Collar 2009: 153).
Thus, we might infer that Pan, Asklepios, Bendis, Sabazios, and the other
deities that entered Athens during the fifth century did so not solely because
of any particular need they may have fulfilled for the Athenians but because
the nature, frequency, and strength of connections between Athens and their
home regions favoured their transfer. There may have been many other
deities, Greek or barbarian, that could have flourished in Athens, but which
either never reached the city or failed to gain acceptance there because of
the position at which they entered Athens’ network of extraterritorial
connections. Counterfactual claims like this are hard to substantiate.
However, one may speculate that those deities, cults, and rituals that gained
only marginal acceptance in the official discourse of the polis, such as the
cult of Sabazios, Orphic ritual, and that loose constellation of practices now
grouped under the heading of magic, are indications of such narrowly failed
transfers. Analysis of the network routes by which these cults and practices
entered Athens can potentially contribute to a broad explanation of their
failure to gain full acceptance by the institutions of the polis (on this point,
see Eidinow 2011).
The insight of network theory is to highlight the importance of social
connectivity in determining the susceptibility of an individual or
community to change. However, in stressing network connectivity as the
determining factor in cultural change, network analysis can neglect cultural,
cognitive, and psychological factors (Breiger 2004: 518–19). Eidinow
(2011) attempts to bridge this gap by combining network theory with a
study of social narratives about identity. The receptivity of a node is not,
therefore, determined solely by its network position but also by factors such
as culture and identity.
Another possible approach is offered by various strands of postcolonial
analysis, particularly that associated with the work of Homi Bhabha, which
emphasizes the ambiguity and instability of identity in the colonial
encounter. Bhabha has been criticized for underplaying the violence and
brutality of the colonial enterprise (Azim 2001: 239), but his presentation of
cultural interaction as a two-way process of mutual modification and his
emphasis on the production of novel hybrid or creole forms in the
interstices created by colonial contact suggest a useful line of enquiry into
the traffic in new gods in the ancient Mediterranean. Religion is an area in
which the impact of neighbouring cultures on the Greek world has long
been acknowledged (e.g. Burkert 1992; Noegel 2007; Morris 2012: 397).
The spread of the cult of Meter to Greece in the late seventh and sixth
centuries is one example that illustrates the process of hybridization well.
Meter (‘Mother’) originated in Anatolia, where she was known in
Phrygian inscriptions as Matar or Matar kubileya (‘the Mother of the
Mountain’), from which her alternative Greek name, Kybele, derives.
Phrygian reliefs depict her in the form of a robed, standing woman framed
by the walls and gable-end of a building. Greek representations from
Miletos in the second quarter of the sixth century likewise present Meter as
a standing figure framed by a naiskos. However, by the middle of the
century, the Ionian Greeks began to depict her as seated within her naiskos,
often holding a lion in her lap, probably because the enthroned posture
better captured for Greek viewers the power of the goddess (Roller 1999:
125–32).
Meter’s Phrygian iconography was thus adapted by Greek sculptors to
conform to Greek notions of divinity, and it was this image that spread to
the rest of the Greek world, including Magna Graecia. Ironically, it was
only as her cult was adopted by Greeks that Meter acquired her
characteristic attribute, the tympanon or tambourine, in both visual and
literary representations. Although the instrument originated in the Near
East, it is not attested in Phrygia and was not part of Phrygian Matar’s cult.
The Greeks may have added it because they associated it with wild,
emotionally arousing music and ecstatic dancing, hallmarks, for them, of
Meter’s cult. However, there is no evidence for such emotionalism in
Phrygian Matar’s cult, and this also may be a Greek innovation, inspired by
Greek perceptions of the exotic East (Roller 1999: 136–7). When Meter
reached her new homes in Greece, she became part of pantheons radically
different from her original setting, which further modified her persona and
meaning for her worshippers (Parker 1996: 189; Roller 1999: 2, 119). The
Meter who settled in mainland Greece and the western colonies was not,
therefore, a transparently transplanted element of Phrygian religion, but a
re-imagined, hybrid form, neither fully Greek nor fully Phrygian, that
blended together both Greek and Anatolian elements (Roller 1999: 121–2).
The scope for hybrid forms to emerge from cross-cultural contact is
obvious. Less obvious is the degree to which gods might be re-imagined as
they travelled within the Greek world. Dougherty and Kurke (2003: 6)
argue that, because of the internal variegation and plurality of Greek
culture, the models of cultural interaction, hybridization, and reinvention
that postcolonial theory offers can be applied to interactions between
Greeks and Greeks as well as between Greeks and non-Greeks. (On this
principle, see also Antonaccio 2003: 58–61, and, ultimately, Bhabha 1993:
299–300.) Thus, we might regard, for example, Pan in Athens as a re-
imagined hybrid, rather than a simple recreation of an Arkadian deity. After
all, the use of caves in his worship and his close association with the
nymphs were features of his Athenian, not his Arkadian, cult (Jost 1985:
459–60; Parker 1996: 164–5).

NEW GODS FOR NEW EMPIRES: SARAPIS

IN HELLENISTIC EGYPT

The major cities of the Hellenistic kingdoms, such as Alexandria, presented

a vast array of deities and religious practices (Potter 2003: 407–8; Mikalson
2007: 208), which can illustrate the use of these two theories. The religious
life of the period is highly diverse, to the extent that the notion of a uniform
‘Hellenistic religion’ is untenable. Conservatism in some areas contrasts
with innovation in others. Many of these innovations may be approached
through network or postcolonial perspectives.
The political reorganization of the eastern Mediterranean which
Alexander and his successors achieved reconfigured networks across the
whole region. Locations that this reconfiguration transformed into regional
and international hubs were particularly likely to receive new cults of
foreign deities. Tiny Delos, which achieved new prominence as an
international trade port, received cults of Egyptian Sarapis and Isis, of
Atargatis and Hadad from Syria, and eventually Ba’al and Astarte.
Alongside them, the cults of the traditional gods of the polis, such as Apollo
and Artemis, Zeus Polieus and Athena Polias, continued (Mikalson 2007:
209). Even relatively conservative Athens permitted cult associations to be
formed by foreign residents for the worship of their own gods, such as Isis
and Ba’al, without abandoning its traditional religious repertoire (Parker
1996: 256–81; Mikalson 2007: 210–13).
In Hellenistic Egypt, the country’s complex ethnic and cultural mix was
fertile ground for religious innovations and the emergence of hybrid forms.
Under Ptolemaic rule, Egypt received a new influx of settlers from diverse
ethnic and cultural backgrounds, including Greeks, Macedonians, Jews, and
others, joining earlier communities of immigrants (Thompson 1988: 17;
Dunand 2004: 240–1). Royal and priestly power had long been closely
intertwined: royal power was legitimized through sacralization, in return for
royal support for the priesthood and major sanctuaries (Dunand 2004: 198–
202, 238; see further, in this volume, Kleibl, Chapter 41). The Ptolemies
continued this relationship. However, despite close interactions between the
Egyptians and the Greco-Macedonian population, the cultures coexisted
rather than merging into one seamless whole (Bingen 2007: 246).
Out of the interstices between Egyptian and Greco-Macedonian culture
emerged a new god, Sarapis, seemingly an indigenous deity, but in reality
one whose iconography, divine personality, and powers reflect extensive
Hellenic traits. His origin story, preserved by Plutarch (De Is. et Os. 361f–
362e), is impeccably Greek in form. Ptolemy I Soter (‘Saviour’) was
commanded in a dream to fetch the cult statue of an unfamiliar god from
the Greek colony of Sinope on the Black Sea. When the statue arrived in
Alexandria, two advisers—one Greek, one Egyptian—identified it as Pluto,
Greek god of the underworld. The god was thus named Sarapis, since this,
Plutarch claims, was the Egyptian name for Pluto (Dunand 2004: 214).
 Plutarch’s account presents a conventional narrative of the arrival of a
new god, brought from outside by divine command and royal action, and
located within the Greek and Egyptian pantheons by relevant experts. The
narrative ties the cult closely to the royal dynasty that promoted it.
However, this neat story conceals a complex cultural operation that
culminates in the emergence of a novel, hybrid god, neither fully Egyptian,
nor fully Greek. Despite Plutarch’s claims, Sarapis emerged from within
Egypt, and was not an import from the Black Sea. Nor did his cult begin
under the Ptolemies. The name ‘Sarapis’ appears to be a Hellenization of
the Egyptian deity Oser-Apis, who was worshipped at Memphis by both
Egyptians and Greeks (who called him Oserapis) long before Alexander’s
conquest of Egypt (Dunand 2004: 215). Oser-Apis was associated with
death and the afterlife, which contributes to Sarapis’ identification with
Pluto, but the resemblance is otherwise slight. The resemblance between
Sarapis and Pluto, on the one hand, and Oser-Apis, on the other, becomes
more tenuous when Oser-Apis’ iconography is considered: he was typically
depicted as a mummified man with the head of a bull, bearing a solar disk
between its horns. By contrast, representations of both Pluto and Sarapis
adhere to Greek anthropomorphic tradition (see, in this volume, Kleibl,
Chapter 41). Apart from his distinctive headgear, Sarapis resembled Zeus or
Asklepios. In function, he combined Osiris’ responsibilities for the dead
and for agricultural fertility with Asklepios’ miraculous healing powers.
This specialism in healing represented a new departure for an Egyptian god
(Dunand 2004: 215–18). Sarapis represents a complex hybridization of
Egyptian and Greek religious elements. His name and connection with the
underworld reflect his origins in the cult of Oser-Apis, while his healing
powers and, above all, his appearance, spring from the Greek world. He is
neither one thing nor the other, neither fully Greek nor fully Egyptian.
This in-between status allowed the cult of Sarapis to play a range of
different roles in different contexts. Within Egypt, his worshippers seem to
have been predominantly Greek, apart from at his original shrine at
Memphis, where worship continued, probably largely in Egyptian style
(Dunand 2004: 218–21; Bingen 2007: 249–50). For his Greek worshippers,
Sarapis offered not only health and agricultural fertility, but also, by virtue
of his ostensibly Egyptian origins, a figure who mediated the tensions of
their position in Egypt, allowing them to worship what appeared to be a
deity native to the land, who nevertheless lay safely within the familiar,
Greek anthropomorphic tradition. By the same token, the association
between the Ptolemies and the cult of Sarapis reinforced their claim to
Egypt by demonstrating that a native god supported their rule, while his
Hellenized image reflected Ptolemaic participation in the wider Greek
world. Ironically, when the cult of Sarapis spread beyond Egypt and into the
wider Hellenistic Greek world, the novelty of the god was forgotten and he
was seen as a representative of the antiquity and strangeness of Egyptian
religion (Dunand 2004: 221).

CONCLUSION

As has been shown, new gods may spring from many sources. They may be
imported from other communities, like Asklepios and Meter, undergoing a
varying degree of reinvention in the process; or they may be invented, like
Sarapis, by transformation and recombination of existing elements,
sometimes drawn from widely divergent contexts. The idea that a god may
simply be introduced to a community by agreement and with no
requirement that other gods be abandoned is challenging from a
monotheistic perspective, but lies at the very heart of Greek polytheism.
From any perspective in which ‘faith’ is central, the traffic in new gods may
arouse suspicions of fickleness or cynical manipulation. Likewise, a secular
or excessively rationalist perspective may struggle to accept that an
exchange of cults conducted in the context of political negotiations is
anything other than a mere symbol of political structures and relationships.
Yet, as the arrival of Asklepios in Athens shows, the gift of a god to another
city carries weight as a political gambit precisely because of the conviction
that the god could bring genuine benefits to the host city. Asklepios was no
trivial gift to give or prize to win.
However, since there was no theological bar to the introduction of a new
deity to a community already replete with gods, questions arise of how such
transfers were agreed, and what political mechanisms governed them. The
prominence of the political systems of the polis in authorizing new gods
recalls Sourvinou-Inwood’s model of ‘polis religion’. However, the role of
politics in regulating religion does not reduce religion to a mere reflection
or symbol of political realities. Instead, it suggests the importance of
religion in the establishment of those realities, as the case of Asklepios in
Athens shows. Moreover, the traffic in new gods reminds us that ‘polis
religion’ was far from a static entity, but was instead a field of activity and
experience characterized by tension between conservatism and innovation,
in which obligations to maintain established cults competed with the
demand for new gods for new circumstances. The introduction of new gods
thus sits at the heart of a complex nexus of political power, cultural
transmission, and social identity, all of them set in the context of a
worldview very different from our own.

SUGGESTED READING
Garland 1992 remains the fundamental study of the interplay of religion and
politics surrounding the introduction of new gods. On new gods in Athens,
Parker 1996 and 2005a are indispensable. For Asklepios, Wickkiser 2008
summarizes recent developments and advances new interpretations, but
does not render Aleshire 1989 and 1991 or Edelstein and Edelstein 1945
obsolete—the latter in particular offers far more copious information,
although its coverage of archaeology is weaker. On Meter, Roller 1999
supplants Vermaseren 1977 as the fundamental study. For Sarapis and
religion in Egypt, Dunand and Zivie-Coche 2004 is comprehensive and
accessible, while Thompson 1988 offers a wealth of detail and analysis
closely focused on Hellenistic Memphis, including the Sarapeion. Mikalson
2007 and Potter 2003 are accessible and rigorous starting points. Collar
2009 and Eidinow 2011 offer clear discussions of different approaches to
network theory; Breiger 2004 is a highly technical summary, which devotes
some space (518–26) to cultural networks. Bhabha 1993 and 1994 remain
seminal texts of postcolonial theory but are notoriously dense; Azim 2001
usefully surveys postcolonial theory in general; Hall 2012 and Morris 2012
summarize key themes and apply them to Greek evidence.

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 CHAPTER 22

IMPIETY

HUGH BOWDEN

INTRODUCTION

THERE is a Classical Greek word that corresponds broadly to the English

term ‘impiety’: asebeia. In the Hellenistic period the word is used
frequently in the Septuagint and by Jewish writers like Josephus and Philo,
when discussing biblical passages. In the Classical period it occurs
frequently in tragedy and comedy, and in the works of historians (especially
Xenophon), orators, and philosophers. Most of the surviving texts where
asebeia and its cognates are used were written by Athenians, and there was,
in Athens, a specific legal procedure relating to it, the graphe asebeias,
which was used most famously to bring Sokrates to trial in 399 BCE.
Inevitably, therefore, discussions of impiety in ancient Greece have tended
to focus overwhelmingly on Athens, and on a number of trials supposed to
have taken place in periods around the Peloponnesian War in the later fifth
century BCE, and the Lamian War in the later fourth century BCE. Evidence
from inscriptions from places beyond Athens can help to cast a different
light on the meaning and scope of asebeia, but such evidence is limited.
 One particular aspect of impiety, atheism, has received a lot of attention,
both in Classical Athens and in modern scholarship. Ancient atheism is not
easy to pin down (Bremmer 2006). The word atheos, in its earliest uses, had
the meaning of ‘godless’, and it retained its pejorative tone when it was
used to describe an intellectual position, from the fourth century onwards.
Imputations of atheism were always made as a way of attacking individuals,
and most of the texts labelling individuals as atheists were written long after
the event (Winiarczyk 1984, 1992). It has been argued that concern about
atheism and its potential dangers lay behind a number of legal cases,
including the trial of Sokrates, which are sometimes used as evidence for a
‘religious crisis’ in Athens in the late fifth century (Parker 1996: 199–214).
The evidence for some of these legal cases is of questionable reliability.
This chapter will follow the pattern set by previous discussions, and by
the evidence, in focusing on Athens, where civic procedures in response to
accusations of impiety were most developed, but it will also suggest that
what applied there probably also applied in other Greek cities. Impiety is a
negative term, in the sense that it is something that people are accused of,
rather than being a neutral way of describing actions or thoughts. The word
asebeia and its cognates are found most often in legal contexts, whether
real, as in the Athenian law courts, or imagined, as in the works of Plato. It
might therefore seem very much a phenomenon of ‘polis religion’, but, as
will become clear, it can be understood as operating at a number of different
levels, and different models of how religion operated in Greece can offer
more fruitful ways of exploring the idea (Eidinow 2015).
Because our evidence for concern about impiety concerns a short period
(the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE), and a limited geographical
area, Athens, the choice of case studies has been made on different
principles from those in other chapters. One, the trial of Andokides, makes
use of contemporary evidence, in the form of speeches from the trial, to
explore how accusations of impiety are bound up with the network of social
relations in which all Athenian citizens were entangled; the second, on the
accusations of atheism made against Anaxagoras of Klazomenai and
Diagoras of Melos, demonstrates how difficult it is to pin down the
implications of that term in Classical Greece.
 PAST AND CURRENT DEBATES

Discussions of asebeia, and in particular of the scope of asebeia as it was

understood in Classical Athens, have revolved around a number of
questions, about which no consensus has been reached, and perhaps none
will ever be (Pecorella Longo 2011). The issues begin with the nature of the
evidence. There is only one trial that is recognized beyond doubt as
resulting from a graphe asebeias, that of Sokrates. The trial of Andokides
the following year, which is clearly concerned with impiety, is considered to
have been the outcome of endeixis, that is, denunciation before a magistrate
(Hansen 1976: 128–32). In speeches from a number of other trials where
the case was not a graphe asebeias, but, for example a graphe hybreos (e.g.
Dem. 21), accusations of asebeia were also made (Sancho Rocher 2011). In
other cases the contemporary evidence does not mention asebeia, and it is
only authors writing much later who give this as the reason for them. A
further set of trials for asebeia are known only from much later sources, and
their very existence has been challenged by some (Dover 1976: 39–40;
Wallace 1994: 137–8; Gagné 2009: 215–7), while vigorously defended by
others (e.g. Baumann 1990: 37–49; Donnay 2002: 156–7).
This lack of agreement over the nature of the evidence makes other
questions more difficult to answer. There is debate about the scope of the
term asebeia in Athenian law. Did it refer to a narrowly defined set of
actions, for example improper activity within a sanctuary (Rudhardt 1960),
or was it left largely undefined, and open to the interpretation of
prosecution, defence, and jury in a trial (Cohen 1991: 203–10)? Answers to
this question are determined in part by more general consideration of the
‘open texture’ of Athenian law: How closely were those involved expected
to stick to the issues raised in the formal charge?
A distinct, but related, question concerns what activities might be
classified as asebeia. Was the notion limited to actions, or could it refer to
beliefs as well (Cohen 1991: 210–12)? Could it be applied to the
promulgation of certain ideas through teaching or publication? These
questions are particularly significant for any discussion of atheism as a form
of asebeia. A further issue, not always directly addressed, but very
significant for the way in which ‘impiety trials’ have been approached, is
the question of whether charges of asebeia were brought for genuinely
‘religious’ reasons, or whether they were a pretext for what were
fundamentally ‘political’ attacks (e.g. Baumann 1990). Here, the very
attempt to make a distinction is problematic, since it requires importing a
distinctly modern conception of what counts as ‘religious’ (and, indeed,
what counts as ‘political’) to the study of a culture in which such
distinctions cannot be made—or at least not on the same terms as in any
modern discussion.
Some more recent discussions have recognized the limitations of the
‘religious’/‘political’ dichotomy, and have looked instead at the way in
which accusations of impiety might have been used to mark out the
boundaries of acceptable behaviour in Classical Athens. By focusing, in
particular, on trials of women in the fourth century, scholars have
considered how concerns about a range of ‘deviant’ behaviours, including
the use of magic, might be expressed through accusations, or at least
suggestions, of asebeia (Trampedach 2001; Eidinow 2010). Here, rather
than being treated as being specifically about ‘religion’, or as ‘political’
devices in disguise, accusations of asebeia are seen as one aspect of the
maintenance of social order, and this is in keeping with the definitions of
asebeia we find in ancient authors. It is worth considering this before
turning to other ways of addressing the nature of asebeia.

ANCIENT DEFINITIONS

In the pseudo-Aristotelean On Virtues and Vices we find an explicit

definition of asebeia as ‘error (plemmeleia) concerning gods and daimons
or concerning the departed, and parents and homeland’ (1251a). Polybios
provides a very similar definition: ‘Asebema is to do harm in matters
concerning the gods, parents and the dead’ (36.9.15). By including parents
and the dead, these definitions go beyond an exclusive concern with the
divine, but extending the notion to include ancestors and homeland is not a
very big step. Indeed, the Latin word pietas, from which the English word
‘piety’ comes, has the same range of meaning (Cic. Inv. Rhet. 2.66). Plato,
at one point, refers to ‘asebeia and eusebeia to the gods and to parents’
(Resp. 615c; cf. Symp. 188c), but in other fourth-century texts and in
inscriptions a distinction is often made between what is owed to the gods
and what is owed to mortals. Thus, for example, Xenophon, referring to
contemporary Persians, regrets ‘their asebeia towards the gods and their
adikia towards men’ (Cyr. 8.8.7). A regular formula in Athenian honorific
decrees from the fourth century onwards uses the positive form of the word
and indicates that rewards are being bestowed on the recipients ‘on account
of their philotimia towards the Council and their eusebeia towards the gods’
(e.g. IG II3 416.20–1). This coupling of eusebeia and philotimia is
something to which we will return.
The fullest ancient discussion of asebeia comes in Plato’s Laws. This
dialogue is presented as a conversation about establishing a law code for the
imagined city of Magnesia on Crete, and the ‘theology’ of the dialogue is
clearly in conflict with the ‘traditional theism’ of Greek cities (Mayhew
2008, 2010). Nonetheless, the laws discussed are traditional in form, and
correspond to laws known from inscriptions and other sources. Book 10 of
the work is concerned with legislation in matters concerning the gods, and it
is there that a law about asebeia is formally set down (907d–e). But asebeia
is mentioned several times in the later part of Book 9, which deals with
crimes of violence. It is proposed there that if, in a fit of rage, a person kill
their child, or their spouse, or their brother or sister, they must serve a
period of exile, and be purified, but after that they may never share the
house of their family: if they do so, a charge of asebeia may be brought
against them (868d–869a). If they kill their parent, they are liable to a series
of serious charges, including aikia (violence), asebeia, and hierosylia
(literally temple robbery, or stealing sacred things: the implication being
that they have stolen the life of their parent). In this case it is impossible for
them to avoid being liable for punishment, and so the penalty is death
(869a–c). Here we see asebeia as applying to actions concerning members
of the family rather than the gods, fitting with the definition offered by
Pseudo-Aristotle and Polybios. Another aspect of the legislation is worth
stressing. It is not the action of killing a relative that leads directly to a dike
asebeias; rather it is the action of the killer in moving back in with the
family of the victim. A similar situation is referred to in a speech in the
Demosthenic corpus when the speaker has been accused of being a
parricide, but a graphe asebeias is brought against his uncle for associating
with him (Dem. 22.2). This is best explained by seeing asebeia here as
being a condition rather than a category of action: subsequent acts
committed by, or in association with, an asebes, are open to a graphe (or
dike) asebeias. We will return to this notion.
There are two other cases where liability to charges of asebeia are
mentioned in passing (799b, 941a), but the main treatment of the term is the
discussion of the law concerning asebeia that takes up the whole of Book
10 (Mayhew 2008; Schöpsdau 2011: 364–459). This starts by identifying as
particularly problematic the acts of licentiousness and outrages of the young
(884a), in particular those committed against sacred things, public and
private, or against magistrates, or the civic rights of individuals. This would
correspond to the definition of asebeia just mentioned that includes
offences against the patris (‘homeland’) as well as the gods, but, in fact, the
discussion that follows focuses only on the gods. The Athenian in the
dialogue here proposes that no one will commit an impious act (ergon
asebes) if they hold a correct understanding of the gods. An incorrect
understanding of the gods can take three forms: not believing that the gods
exist, believing that they exist, but do not care for men, or believing that
they can be swayed by prayer and sacrifice (885b). These three positions
can be called atheism, deism, and traditional theism (Mayhew 2008: 76–
192), and most of the Book is spent arguing against each position. It is not
suggested that holding any of these views is itself asebes (‘impious’),
although it is assumed that even otherwise law-abiding atheists will speak
freely against other views of the gods, and therefore win over others to their
point of view, and that would be an impious act (908b–c). Obviously,
‘traditional theism’ was not seen as threatening in real Greek cities; how far
atheism was seen as a danger will be the subject of the second case study.
The graphe asebeias brought against Sokrates lies in the background of
another of Plato’s works, Euthyphro. The dialogue contrasts Sokrates, who
has just been indicted, with Euthyphro, who is trying to bring a charge of
murder against his own father, an example of asebeia on the definition
provided by Pseudo-Aristotle and Polybios. Here, however, while ‘piety’
and ‘impiety’ remain an important theme (Bruit Zaidman 2003), the
discussion focuses on the terms hosion and anosion (usually translated as
‘holiness’ and ‘unholiness’, respectively), and develops more into a debate
about the nature of the gods than about human action.
 AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH

A different perspective on impiety can be found through a study of

inscriptions where asebeia is mentioned (Delli Pizzi 2011; and, on sacred
laws, see, in this volume, Petrovic, Chapter 23). In a late fifth-century
‘sacred law’ from Kos (LSCG 150 = IG XII, 4 283) it is stated that if
anyone cuts down cypresses within the temenos (sanctuary area), or takes
cypress wood away from the temenos, ‘to hiaron asebeito’ (literally ‘let him
be impious to the sanctuary’, ‘he will be considered to be in a state of
impiety with respect to the sanctuary’). In an inscription from Lindos (LSS
90, from 22 CE) in response to various actions, it is said of the offender
asebes esto poti tan theon (‘let him be’ or, as mentioned, ‘he will be
considered to be in a state of impiety towards the goddess’) or enochoi
eonto asebeiai (‘let them be’ or, as mentioned, ‘they will be liable for
[prosecution for] impiety’). Another inscription, from Gambreion in Mysia
(LSAG 16), states that, for women who fail to observe funerary regulations,
me hosion autais einai hos asebousais, thuein metheni theon epi deka ete
(‘it is not holy for them, since they are in a state of asebeia’,—or, ‘since
they have committed asebeia’—‘to sacrifice to any of the gods for ten
years’).
It is not immediately clear what the implications of asebeia are in these
cases. ‘Sacred laws’ are notoriously uninformative about procedures when
they are broken (Parker 2004; Naiden 2008). In the last example it has been
suggested that the inscription identifies an offence, asebeia, and a penalty,
exclusion from sacrifices (Delli Pizzi 2011: 66–7). However, it is also
possible to see asebeia as a condition into which the women have come,
and their exclusion from the sacrifices as intended to protect the sacrifices
from the dangers they pose in this condition. In this case, the asebeia
applies to the women’s relationship with the gods of Gambreion, and lasts
for a defined period, but it does not extend, it would appear, to other aspects
of their lives. On the same interpretation, the person cutting cypresses on
Kos should be excluded from the sanctuary, and those in Lindos who go
against the regulations laid down in the inscription should be excluded from
any activities involving the goddess Athena. This interpretation fits closely
with cases of kin-killers discussed by Plato in Laws Book 9. There, it is
clear, the killer’s condition is complex: as far as the city goes his condition
of asebeia is time-limited and can be purged, as he is exiled for three years
and required to be purified. But his asebeia with regard to the family of his
victim (which is his own family), is indelible and lasts for all time. As long
as he keeps away from their house, he may live a normal life, but if he
enters it, his condition of asebeia applies, and he is therefore liable for
prosecution through a dike asebeias, for which the penalty will be death.
As well as these ‘sacred laws’, inscriptions also provide evidence for
penalties imposed upon those charged with asebeia (Delli Pizzi 2011: 69–
72). For example, in 374/3 BCE a number of Delians were condemned for
impiety (ophlon asebeias) and exiled for life, because they had driven the
Amphictions out of the sanctuary of Apollo on Delos, and had beaten them
(IG II2 1635). Here it might seem that there is a much simpler situation with
an offence of asebeia (attacking sacred ambassadors) and a penalty of exile.
However, it could also be suggested that the offence was so serious that it
put the offenders into a state of permanent and complete asebeia with
regard to Delos, and therefore it was necessary to try, convict, and expel
them immediately. In the Laws, parricides are to be punished with death,
and this can be understood on the same basis: that is, as a crime which puts
the perpetrator in a condition of asebeia in relation to the whole of mankind
and all the gods—as Plato’s Athenian says, ‘no law will permit it’ (869c)—
so their death is the only possible way of resolving the situation.
A parallel for understanding asebeia as a condition rather than an offence
can be found with the case of atimia, the loss of civic rights (Hansen 1976:
55–90). As we have seen, eusebeia and philotimia are linked in honorific
decrees from the fourth century onwards as representing the ideal
relationship between the individual and the gods on the one hand, and
mortals on the other. Their opposites, asebeia and atimia, would also be
parallel. In Athens, there were a number of ways in which a citizen might
become atimos, including cowardice, false testimony, and being in debt to
the city (Hansen 1976: 72–4). Becoming atimos was not itself a penalty
imposed by a court; rather, it was a condition that arose through the actions
of the individual himself. It might also be limited in its scope (Andoc. 1.73–
6). And although a person who was atimos was certainly in a vulnerable
position, he would not face prosecution unless he entered situations where
his atimia was relevant—most obviously by taking an active role in
Athenian politics. In a court case, the prosecutor’s approach might be to
establish that the defendant had done something which was not permitted
for someone who was atimos, and then also demonstrate that the defendant
had, at that time, been atimos, even though no one had previously suggested
this. Such was the basis of the prosecution of Timarchos (Aeschin. 1). As
we will see (Case Study 1: The Trial of Andokides), the same technique
could be used in the prosecution of a supposed asebes.
The traditional approach to the study of impiety has been to see
legislation and litigation about it as the way in which the polis controlled
the religious activities (or even beliefs) of its citizens. The approach
outlined here is significantly different. It looks at asebeia not in terms of
acceptable and unacceptable acts, but as a range of conditions that
determined the nature of relationships—between individuals and the gods,
but also between individuals and the various social groups in which they
operated, including family, larger kinship groups, the polis, and the wider
world. This approach does not fit well into the model of ‘polis religion’ as it
is currently conceived (see Kindt 2012: 12–35), although it might be said
that what is now referred to as the ‘polis religion’ model is not what was
intended by the person now most associated with the term (Sourvinou-
Inwood 2000a, 2000b; see Kindt 2012: 5). On the other hand, social
network theory might well offer a way of exploring further the range of
contexts in which asebeia is found in ancient Greek life (Eidinow 2015; cf.
Eidinow 2011). In the first case study, a model based on social relations will
be applied to one reasonably well-documented instance of a prosecution for
asebeia, the trial of Andokides.

CASE STUDY 1: THE TRIAL OF

ANDOKIDES

Andokides was brought to trial in 400 BCE, and although the immediate
issue concerned his activities in that year, the roots of the matter went back
to 415 BCE, when he was somehow involved in two serious affairs
concerning the Athenians’ relationship with the gods: the mutilation of the
Herms, and the profanation of the mysteries (Furley 1996). The general
scholarly consensus is that he took part in the mutilation, and that he
admitted this when he informed on others who had taken part, but did not
take part in the profanation; nonetheless, the two affairs came to be seen as
part of a single conspiracy, and so Andokides was considered asebes on
both counts. He went into exile, and tried twice to return to Athens, but only
succeeded after the amnesty that marked the end of the civil war in 403 BCE.
From that time he played his part in Athenian public life until he was
prosecuted in 400 BCE. The prosecution failed, and Andokides carried on as
a public figure until he was again prosecuted, this time successfully, on a
different matter in 392/1 BCE, and went into exile again.
We have more evidence relating to the trial of 400 BCE than we do for
most: as well as Andokides’ speech in his own defence (Andoc. 1 with
commentaries: MacDowell 1962; Edwards 1995), we have what is probably
one of the prosecution speeches ([Lys.] 6, with commentary in Todd 2007:
399–488), as well as Thucydides’ narrative of the events of 415 BCE (Thuc.
6.27–8, 53, 60), and Plutarch’s (Plut. Alc. 19–22). It is impossible to
establish with certainty what Andokides actually did, given the conflicting
statements in the sources, but it is clear that he was accused of entering
sanctuaries of the gods in Athens, which he was not permitted to do because
of his involvement in the events of 415. A further charge, that he left an
olive branch on the altar in the city Eleusinion during the mysteries, which
no one was permitted to do, is dealt with briefly in his defence speech and
dismissed (Andoc. 1.110–16). In Andokides’ speech, he discusses several
decisions taken by the Athenian assembly, in particular the decree
(psephisma) of Isotimides, passed in 415, which excluded anyone who had
confessed to impiety (71: tous asebesantas kai homologesantas) from
Athenian sanctuaries, and the legislation relating to the amnesty of 403 BCE,
which prevented people from being charged with offences committed
before that year (88). What the various pieces of legislation involved is not
entirely clear (Carawan 2004). Modern debate has focused on the issue of
whether the terms of the decree of Isotimides were made null and void by
the amnesty (MacDowell 1962: 200–3; Edwards 1995: 174–5). The trial has
also been understood as ‘unfinished business’ left over from the events of
415 (Furley 1996: 104–5), which, according to Thucydides, had at the time
been seen as a threat to the democracy (6.28.2); they were also connected
with the trial of Sokrates, which took place a few months later (Baumann
1990: 106–16; Todd 2007: 408–11).
 On the specific question of Andokides’ situation with regard to the
mysteries, the understanding of asebeia outlined above (‘An Alternative
Approach’) can help make things clearer. The claim of the prosecution is
that he admitted that he had been involved in impious acts ([Lys.] 6.14), and
thus was acknowledged to be in a condition of asebeia. The decree of
Isotimides determined how such asebeis should be treated, but it did not
determine who was or was not asebes, so, in fact, the question of whether
the decree was covered by the terms of the amnesty was irrelevant. The
prosecution is also concerned with the scope of the asebeia, suggesting that
Greek cities might exclude from their own sanctuaries individuals who have
committed asebemata (‘impious acts’) in Athens ([Lys.] 6.14). Andokides’
claim is that he never committed an offence, and therefore has never been
asebes (Andoc. 1.10, 29, 71), while his unchallenged presence in
sanctuaries, and his political activities in the years between his return from
exile and the trial, suggest that no one else recognized him as an asebes
until it suited the man behind the prosecution, Kallias, to stir up old
allegations.
But there is more to the issue of asebeia here than the narrow question of
whether Andokides was permitted to enter Athenian sanctuaries: ‘The case
involved a clash of thought and authority in determining what is impiety
and what is not . . . It was not a space where action met law, but where the
city renegotiated the meaning and the application of its laws’ (Gagné 2009:
232). The speeches on both sides address wider definitions of impiety. In
particular, there is the question of whether Andokides informed against his
own father, which, as we have seen, would count as asebeia (Strauss 1993:
261–8). Andokides justifies his informing on others as the only way he
could protect his family (Andoc. 1.48–53), and he also launches an attack
on the family life of Kallias (112–31), an aspect of the case that cannot be
dismissed as a ‘banal dispute . . . about a girl’ (Baumann 1990: 115). The
surviving part of the prosecution speech begins with a story told by an
hierophant, and ends with advice from the son of a dadouchos, and
Andokides in his defence questions Kallias’ fitness to be dadouchos himself
(1.124). It has been argued that Andokides, like Kallias, was a member of
the genos of the Kerykes, from which the Eleusinian dadouchos was
appointed (and it is clear that the speaker of the prosecution speech was also
connected to the genos) so that the trial was, above all, a family feud
(Furley 1996: 49–52). It is therefore impossible, in this case, to distinguish
between family matters and concern for the mysteries, for which the
Kerykes had responsibility.

CASE STUDY 2: ACCUSATIONS OF

ATHEISM AGAINST ANAXAGORAS AND
DIAGORAS

According to Plutarch, an Athenian ‘religious specialist’, Diopeithes,

introduced a decree that allowed prosecutions to be brought against those
who did not believe in (or respect) the gods, or who taught doctrines about
the heavens (tous ta theia ou nomizontas e logous peri ton metarsion
didaskontas), a measure aimed at the philosopher Anaxagoras of
Klazomenai, in order to weaken the position of Perikles, who was
Anaxagoras’ friend (Plut. Per. 32). It is suggested that a reference to a
graphe asebeias against Anaxagoras in Diodorus (12.39.2) in connection
with this is taken from the fourth-century historian Ephoros (Parker 1996:
209 n. 41), but this is not proof that a trial ever took place. However, it is
clear that Anaxagoras’ ideas could be the subject of public concern. In his
Apology, Plato has Sokrates’ accuser Meletos claim that Sokrates believed
that the sun and moon were not gods, but that the sun was stone (lithos) and
the moon earth (ge), to which Sokrates asks whether Meletos thinks he is
prosecuting Anaxagoras (26c–d). In Clouds, Aristophanes attributes such
views to the character Sokrates (225, 367), and this probably explains why
the exchange is included in the dialogue. The representation of Anaxagoras’
ideas on the comic stage suggests that they would have been recognizable
to an Athenian audience, and this receives support from a remark of
Sokrates in the Apology that his pamphlet could be bought for no more than
a drachma in the orchestra (26e): this is taken to be a reference to an area of
the agora where books were sold, and the implication is that Anaxagoras’
work was available to literate Athenians—although, by the time of
Sokrates’ trial, the pamphlets would have been on sale for forty years or
more.
 Were Anaxagoras’ ideas perceived as dangerous? It has been suggested
that opposition to the perceived atheism of Anaxagoras and others came
from a fear that it might undermine traditional religion (Ostwald 1986: 274–
90). Such a view might seem to reflect concerns of the late twentieth
century CE more than the late fifth BCE, but when associated with the
difficulties of the Peloponnesian War and, even more, the plague of the
430s, which Thucydides suggested led to a change in religious attitudes
(2.47.4, 53.4) it has been considered to have some force. Thucydides
suggests that the plague led to a loss of fear of the gods (theon phobos),
with a consequent rise in lawlessness, and also the abandonment of some
religious practices. Atheism could be seen to threaten the same, although
this is not explicitly suggested in the ancient texts.
The case of Diagoras of Melos is somewhat different. Explicit evidence
for him as the writer of a treatise on the divine comes only from late and
unreliable testimony (Suda s.v. Diagoras). The earliest references to him as
atheos come from the first century BCE. Cicero attributes to him sceptical
aphorisms: for example, when shown the dedications made by those saved
from shipwreck by the Great Gods of Samothrace, he asks where the
dedications of those who were not saved are (Nat. D. 3.89). Cicero’s near
contemporary, Diodorus Siculus, reports that, in 415 BCE, ‘Diagoras, who
was called “the Atheist”, came to be accused of impiety and, fearing the
people, fled from Attica’ (13.6.7). This accusation is referred to in two
roughly contemporary texts, Aristophanes’ Birds (1073) and the
prosecution speech against Andokides previously discussed ([Lys.] 6.17). In
the latter, Diagoras is said to have committed impiety ‘in word, concerning
the sacred things and celebrations of another place (i.e. Athens)’. The most
straightforward interpretation of this, given the context of the speech, is that
he spoke about the Eleusinian mysteries, as ancient commentaries on
Aristophanes also suggest (Woodbury 1965). Aristophanes indicates that a
reward of one talent was offered for his arrest, and, although this is a large
sum, it is perhaps understandable since the accusation was made at the time
of heightened concern about impiety associated with the mutilation of the
Herms and the profanation of the mysteries (on which see ‘Case Study 1:
The Trial of Andokides’).
It is pointed out by Andokides’ prosecutor that Diagoras’ asebeia was
one of word rather than deed, but this rhetorical claim does not remove the
point that this was not a case of unacceptable beliefs, but an unacceptable
action, in revealing secrets of the mysteries. However, although our
understanding of these accusations of atheism is limited by the paucity of
the contemporary evidence, what seems clear in both cases is that the
Athenians did not attempt to draw a clear line between belief and behaviour.
As we have seen, Plato, in his Laws, assumed that atheists could not avoid
advertising their views to others, and, as a result, winning converts. It could
be argued by the prosecution that Andokides could be assumed to be an
atheist because he was prepared to go to sea while under threat of divine
punishment. Atheism led to danger, both for the atheists themselves and
those who came in contact with them, and this was why it was
unacceptable.

ATHEISM AND ASEBEIA IN ATHENIAN

POLITICS

No discussion of asebeia and atheism should avoid discussion of the trial of

Sokrates, although it is too large a topic to be discussed fully in a brief
chapter. A number of recent discussions are cited later in this section, and
there have been others (e.g. Stone 1988; Burnyeat 1997). There have also
been a number of studies of ‘Sokratic religion’ more generally (e.g.
McPherran 1996, 2011). If we consider Sokrates’ trial alongside the case
studies we have already examined, we can see that it raises essentially the
same issues. As we have seen, suggestions of Sokrates’ atheism figure in
the contemporary evidence, leading to the view that ‘no argument . . . can
remove the charge of atheism from the formal indictment against Sokrates’
(Parker 1996: 209). That formal indictment, as presented by Xenophon, is
as follows: ‘Sokrates does wrong in not nomizon the gods whom the city
nomizei, but introducing other new divinities; he also does wrong by
corrupting the young’ (Mem. 1.1.1). How to translate the Greek verb
nomizein has been a matter of ongoing dispute (e.g. Giordano-Zecharya
2005; Versnel 2011: 539–59). The question is, in part, about whether it
refers more to mental states (‘believe in’) or actions (‘respect’ or ‘honour’).
On the basis of the former interpretation, some scholars have argued that
Sokrates was indeed prosecuted and convicted for holding a particular view,
that is, the belief that there are no gods (Brickhouse and Smith 1989),
although it is important to note that the indictment also included the charge
of corrupting the young, so that it is persuading others to adopt the same
view that is a large part of the problem—and it is clear that Plato’s
discussion in Laws is influenced by the events of Sokrates’ trial (see
‘Ancient Definitions’). On the other hand, Xenophon begins his
Memorabilia with a defence of Sokrates against this charge, by pointing out
that he sacrificed regularly and made use of divination (1.1.2), implying
that nomizon tous theous involved actions.
One way to look at the range of meaning of the phrase is to focus on one
of the accusations made against Andokides in the prosecution speech. As
we have seen, the speaker points out that ‘they say that many of the Greeks
exclude people from their own temples because of asebemata done in
Athens’; he then compares Andokides to Diagoras, and notes that because
the Athenians sent out heralds to announce the bounty on the latter, an
absent foreigner, while ignoring the impious citizen in their midst, they will
seem to the Greeks to be more concerned with making threats than exacting
punishment ([Lys.] 6.16–18). He then says that Andokides ‘has
demonstrated to the Greeks that he does not nomizei the gods’ (19). The
proof of this statement is that he has become a shipowner and travelled by
sea, activities which put those who pursue them into the hands of the gods.
The speaker goes on to show how the gods have now brought him back to
Athens to face trial, having, in the intervening period, made his life
miserable (19–32). Here, nomizein simultaneously carries both meanings:
‘to believe in’ and ‘to respect’ the gods. (It is not quite right to say it is
‘poised between’ the meanings, as suggested by Todd 2007: 454, quoting
Parker 1996: 201 n. 8.) For the speaker, Andokides’ atheism and his
asebeia are inextricable. As we have seen, the trial should not be reduced to
a debate about whether Andokides did or did not do something in relation to
the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, as it covered wider matters.
We do not have any prosecution speech from the trial of Sokrates (or
indeed a genuine defence speech), although it has been suggested that the
author of the prosecution speech against Andokides might be Meletos, the
main prosecutor of Sokrates (Todd 2007: 408–11). However, in summing
up his defence of Sokrates in Memorabilia, Xenophon expresses
amazement that the Athenians could be persuaded that Sokrates did not
‘show self-control or moderation’ (sophronizein) concerning the gods
(1.1.20). This is a rather different term from nomizein, and may better
reflect the tone of the prosecution, and suggest that there was more to the
accusations than discussion of Sokrates’ intellectual and political views.
Athenian legal processes did not deal in narrow definitions. Sokrates was
involved in relationships with his fellow citizens in a variety of ways:
beyond his actions there was his teaching, which was specifically
mentioned in the charges against him, and, if we are to believe the image
presented by his disciples Xenophon and Plato, there was his frequent
challenging of the views of other Athenians in conversation, and his
association with other intellectuals, including, in particular, sophists (cf. Pl.
Prt. 314b–316a, Ar. Nub.). Sokrates’ attitude to the gods, whatever it was,
would have played some part in all of these relationships, and therefore to
try to come up with a narrow view of what would have made the Athenians
consider him impious is impossible.
Impiety in ancient Athens, and in Greece more generally, has therefore to
be understood in its social context. Maintaining good relationships with the
gods, with members of one’s family, and with one’s neighbours, was an
important aspect of life in any Greek community, and it was of concern to
individuals and groups alike. Anything that was perceived as likely to
disturb these relationships, whether it was what someone said, or did, or
perhaps even thought, was a threat that had to be dealt with, and asebeia
was the term used to describe that threat.

SUGGESTED READING
Impiety is mentioned surprisingly little in recent overviews of Greek
religion. In Jon D. Mikalson’s Ancient Greek Religion (2005, second edition
2010) there is a discussion of ‘piety’, although, between the first and second
editions, the word itself has been replaced by ‘respect for the gods and
religious correctness’ or similar phrases. Robert Parker’s Athenian
Religion: A History (1996) has a chapter on ‘The Trial of Sokrates: And a
Religious Crisis?’ which covers several of the episodes discussed here, with
reference to all the evidence. David Cohen’s Law, Sexuality and Society:
The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens (1991) also considers
impiety trials, but has a somewhat different approach to that taken here.
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Martin, 11–26. Cambridge.
Brickhouse, T. C. and Smith, N. D. 1989. Socrates on Trial. Princeton, NJ.
Bruit Zaidmann, L. 2003. ‘Impies et impiété de l’Euthyphron aux Lois’, in Les dieux de Platon, ed. J.
Laurent, 153–68. Caen.
Burnyeat, M. F. 1997. ‘The Impiety of Socrates’, AncPhil 17: 1–11.
Carawan, E. 2004. ‘Andocides’ Defence and MacDowell’s Solution’, in Law, Rhetoric, and Comedy
in Classical Athens: Essays in Honour of Douglas M. MacDowell, ed. D. L. Cairns and R. A.
Knox, 103–12. Swansea.
Cohen, D. 1991. Law, Sexuality and Society: The Enforcement of Morals in Classical Athens.
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Delli Pizzi, A. 2011. ‘Impiety in Epigraphic Evidence’, Kernos 24: 59–76.
Donnay, G. 2002. ‘L’impiété de Socrate’, Ktema 27: 155–60.
Dover, K. J. 1976. ‘The Freedom of the Intellectual in Greek Society’, Talanta 7: 24–54.
Edwards, M. J. 1995. Greek Orators IV: Andocides. Warminster.
Eidinow, E. 2010. ‘Witchcraft on Trial: Patterns of Persecution in Classical Athens’, P&P 208: 9–35.
Eidinow, E. 2011. ‘Networks and Narratives: A Model for Ancient Greek Religion’, Kernos 24: 9–
38.
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 CHAPTER 23

‘SACRED LAW’

ANDREJ PETROVIC

INTRODUCTION: THERE IS NO ‘SACRED

LAW’

AT the entrance to St John the Baptist Church in Heaton Mersey, Stockport,

visitors encounter a typical no-smoking sign, depicting a black lit-up
cigarette in a red circle, crossed out diagonally with a thick red line.
Underneath, there is a stern warning: ‘NO SMOKING. It is against the law
to smoke in these premises.’ Directly next to it, however, on the same sheet
of paper carefully wrapped in plastic, the church officials have placed a
much more interesting text: ‘We know you don’t smoke in church. Not
smoking in church has been the self-policing custom for generations. But
the Government is very afraid that you might anyway. So we have to put up
this sign. We apologize, and assure you that we don’t really think you are
impolite, inconsiderate or sacrilegious. Sorry.’
I raise this example because, in a number of ways, it encapsulates many
of the problems pertaining to the traditional understanding of the term
‘sacred law’ in the scholarship on ancient Greek religion. While Greek
religion was never codified in anything resembling a book of scriptures, one
of the most valuable sources of information about Greek cults comes from a
body of evidence we have come to label as ‘sacred laws’. These are
inscriptional texts, which were often set up in sanctuaries they relate to,
detailing and prescribing various aspects of organization and of worship in
Greek cults, and hence representing invaluable first-hand testimony for the
historical realities of Greek religious practices.
However, many of the texts which scholars have traditionally referred to
as Greek ‘sacred laws’ are prescriptive texts concerning religious rituals
and matters of cult that were not conceptualized as laws in antiquity. Some
Greek ‘sacred laws’ were texts that relied on existing laws and were
products of rule of law, but were themselves not laws, rather, for example,
contracts or decrees. Some of them started off as memoranda of ancestral
customs, tacitly understood by everyone as norms of behaviour in certain
cultic matters, and only later formulated as laws or official rules. Quite a
few, however, remained memoranda of customs, self-policed (or commonly
ignored), and never acquired legal status. Accordingly, some were official
in character, adopting formal vocabulary and an appropriate narrative
stance; some were laconically prescriptive one-liners; while others provide
rich exegetical detail in dozens of lines, relating reasons for their
introduction and/or making clear references to their place within the
religious tradition that produced them.
Throughout the Greek world, as in Stockport, some ‘sacred laws’ were
issued by civic authorities (government) and some by various cult
magistrates; others by private individuals who formulated rules for the cults
they founded with their own resources. Correspondingly, the authority of
the law need not be legislative. Rather, it could be rooted in the power of a
city-state institution, sourced from the sacral sphere through cult officials
and divine agency, or based on the power of property possession in the case
of private individuals; or, indeed, any combination of some or all of the
three. Furthermore, many Greek ‘sacred laws’ simply relied on general
awareness of religious traditions: the knowledge of ta patria or ‘the
ancestral customs’ that was passed down through generations often
provided the framework that both enabled and limited the normative
authority.
This framework could also determine punitive powers: hence, Greek
‘sacred laws’ issued by a city-state could threaten financial penalties and
develop a fairly elaborate system of charging fines (cf. e.g. LSAM 45).
Those issued by sacred authorities often make their potential transgressor
aware of divine wrath (‘God hates and punishes the offender’ is a well-
attested motif) or utilize arai (‘curses’): ‘May the person who [disrespects
sacred fish or damages sacred property] be considered evil and may he
perish through an evil destruction, having become food for fish’ is one of
the more imaginative examples (LSAM 17, Smyrna first century BCE; cf.
also LSAM 20.41–5, Philadelphia first century BCE for a threat of kakai arai
or ‘horrible curses’). However, the spheres of civic and sacred authority and
corresponding domains of punishment were seldom kept so distinct, since
many ‘sacred laws’, irrespective of the underlying authority, threaten the
wrongdoer with both divine powers and human jurisdiction. In contrast,
others do not make reference to fines or punishment at all.
Should we understand the term ‘law’ in its traditional definition—that is,
as the set of rules of a community that imposes penalties if they are not
followed—a number of difficulties with the term ‘sacred law’ arise. The
major problem is that many of the texts so described in our corpora, while
being prescriptive in nature, were not ‘laws’ qua laws in antiquity. In
addition, they are often generically heterogeneous texts, ‘sacred’ only in a
rather general sense, in as much as they determined how to perform a cult-
related matter—but even this they did in a variety of ways, from suggesting,
to telling and requesting (see Parker 2004: 57, on decrees and ‘exegetical
laws’; Lupu 2009:3–11; and Chaniotis 2009, 2012, on the variability of
these types of texts). Therefore, one could consult these texts and perform
relevant rituals for a variety of reasons: for example, because it was what
the members of a particular group traditionally did; because it was law-
abiding behaviour, or because it was considered pious; or, as is often the
case, for all of these reasons. To return to the example from Heaton Mersey:
one does not smoke in church because no civil person would do so; or
because it could result in a hefty fine; or, perhaps, because God may not be
best pleased if one did.
Hence, like the church notices in Heaton Mersey, Greek ‘sacred laws’
differ greatly concerning their powers of persuasion. They stem from
different authorities, and vary greatly in the types of mediation, enactment
procedures, and the range of the sanctions envisaged (on sanctions in these
texts, see Naiden 2009; on mediation Lupu 2009: 3–11). These texts are
cultural products resulting from the religious, legal, economic, and ethical
concerns of dozens of ancient Greek city-states and sanctuaries. They
survive captured on stones (and some lead tablets) in a wide variety of
textual forms and material contexts, and, in addition, exhibit a marked
diversity of formulation over time (on factors which induce change in
rituals, the so-called ‘ritual dynamics’, see Chaniotis 2009). For these
reasons, and others that have to do with history of scholarship, the term
‘sacred law’ is today almost universally understood to be ill-defined and
largely misleading scholarly jargon, a term in need of re-evaluation and re-
conceptualization (an excellent overview of this problem is given in Carbon
and Pirenne-Delforge 2012).

WHERE ARE WE NOW AND HOW DID WE

GET HERE? ‘SACRED LAW’ AND THE
HISTORY OF CORPORA

The extant corpora of ‘sacred laws’ contain around 500 epigraphically

preserved texts: Carbon and Pirenne-Delforge (2012: 173–5) count in Leges
Graecorum sacrae (= LGS I), Leges Graeciae et Insularum (= LGS II), Lois
sacrées de l’Asie mineure (= LSAM), Lois sacrées des cités grecques:
Supplément (= LSS), Lois sacrées des cités grecques (= LSCG), Lois
sacrées et règlements religieuses (= CID I), and Greek Sacred Law (=
NGSL), a total of 448 ‘sacred laws’ (passages concerning texts from literary
sources are found in Tresp 1914, but this is in need of updating). To these
448 texts Carbon and Pirenne-Delforge add 80 texts from Asia Minor and
Kos, which Eran Lupu gathered in a checklist included in his edition of
‘sacred laws’ (NGSL Appendix B), bringing the grand total to 528 texts.
This number is constantly increasing through new finds; regular reports on
new texts, and updates concerning editorial work on already published texts
are available in EBGR and SEG (both now also online).
In terms of their geographical distribution, these texts are found across
the entire Greek world: from Tomi, on the Black Sea, in the north, via
Macedonia, central Greece and the islands, with Crete, to the Upper Egypt
in the south; and from the Adıyaman Province in south-east Turkey, over
central Anatolia to the western tip of Sicily in the west. Greater numbers of
finds are associated with sites of greater ritual activity (and developed
epigraphic habit): Athens, Delphi, Delos, Kos, and the cities of Karia are
particularly rich suppliers of these types of text. In terms of historical
distribution, the earliest inscribed ‘sacred laws’ date to the sixth century BCE
(maybe late seventh century; cf. NGSL no. 6), their number increases
throughout the Hellenistic period and first two centuries of the Imperial
period, and declines after the third century CE.
These texts range in content from instructions about particular private or
public rituals (such as prayers, sacrifices, and dedications), to regulations
concerning the organization and execution of festivals and mysteries. Many
are concerned with more mundane practical issues such as the management
of priesthoods and duties of sacred officials (e.g. the allotment and sale of
priesthoods), and handling or maintenance of temple finances and property.
By way of a generalization, one can say that these texts have three basic
foci: ritual activities, ritual agents, and ritual spaces (see Lupu 2009:9–110,
for a discussion of the contents of ‘sacred laws’ pertaining to sanctuaries
and sacred spaces, cult officials and cult performance).
Like their content, the form of these texts also shows great variation:
among the more commonly encountered types of documents are decrees
(psephismata, diagrammata, sungraphai, diagraphai, etc.), sacrificial
calendars, boundary stones (horoi), contracts, dedications, proper laws
(nomoi), building inscriptions, oracular and pseudo-oracular texts, and
statutes. The shortest texts, such as inscriptions from boundary stones,
consist of a few words only. A good example of this type is LSCG 109,
from the precinct of Zeus on Paros, dating to the fifth century BCE, which
contains the following entry regulations: ‘Hypatos’ precinct. No uninitiated
and women allowed’. In contrast, decrees, laws, and contracts can consist of
several dozens to more than a hundred lines: one of the longest ones, the
regulation concerning Andanian mysteries (LSCG 65), consists of close to
200 lines (see further, in this volume, Kearns, Chapter 3).
Similarly, the authority on which such texts are grounded can vary
greatly. ‘Sacred laws’ could be issued by private individuals, professional
and religious associations, religious experts, and, more generally, personnel
at sanctuaries, or by any political body. For example, ‘sacred laws’ were
issued by civic magistrates, demes, institutions of a polis, regional
federations, (divine) kings, and gods themselves (on authority and sacred
regulations, see Parker 2004; Petrovic and Petrovic 2006; Chaniotis 2009;
Lupu 2009:4–5; on religious authority in Greece, more generally, see Parker
2011: 40–63; on the construction of authority in epigraphic contexts, Ma
2012).
Returning to the term itself, ‘sacred law’ is an ancient, but relatively rare,
collocation, a direct translation of the ancient Greek phrase, hieros nomos.
The first secure epigraphic references to hieroi nomoi are found in decrees
and a hymn from the Hellenistic period (cf. LSCG 154, A 6–9 and 15, Kos,
third century BCE; and LSS 45, 69, Actium after 217 BCE; LSCG 150, A 11,
Kos, fourth(?) century BCE is uncertain; hymn of Isyllos of Epidauros, IG
IV2, 1 128.10). This term was just one of a dozen (or so) that the Greeks
themselves used to denote prescriptive texts regulating their rituals and
other dealings with the sacred. When they spoke of these texts as ‘laws’,
much more common were references to just nomoi (‘laws’), or patrioi
nomoi (‘ancestral laws’), rather than hieroi nomoi.
However, in the course of the development of scholarship on Greek
religion, it was hieros nomos (rendered in Latin as a lex sacra) that became
commonly used as a scholarly category for all prescriptive texts dealing
with the sacred—in spite of the fact that modern collections of leges sacrae
include more decrees than nomoi. Over time, in fact, the practice of
grouping decrees together with nomoi caused methodological problems:
first, it blurred the lines between various, otherwise distinct, types of
primary evidence; and, secondly, it gave a misleading impression of generic
consistency and homogeneity among these texts.
First uses of the term ‘sacred law’ as a scholarly category in the study of
Greek religion (and a generic misnomer in epigraphy) go back to early
attempts at systematization of the relevant material (see Gawlinski 2012: 3–
4). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the term lex sacra
started being used for almost any text (or even, at one stage, for relevant
excerpts from unrelated texts) which laid out, announced, regulated,
prescribed, changed, or proscribed aspects of Greek religious life. Thus, the
category subsumed texts of a heterogeneous nature: as I have outlined,
these texts varied greatly in terms of their content and form, and, perhaps
most crucially, in terms of the authority that issued them. In truth, there is
not much that holds these texts together. What provides a notion of
conceptual unity among the ‘sacred laws’ is that all of them concern the
religious life of Greek communities and are typically prescriptive in nature
—and that they are printed on adjacent pages between the same hard covers
of a modern corpus.
Modern scholarship received the category of ‘sacred law’ from late
nineteenth- century CE systematizations and employed it for a long time in
spite of its shortcomings, not because these went unrecognized (they were,
from early on), but because of the chronic lack of alternatives. For these
reasons, the first two decades of the twenty-first century have witnessed
several extensive research projects aimed principally at providing notional
and definitional clarity to the material gathered in these corpora, and
rethinking the criteria for inclusion or exclusion of texts, as well as
establishing a critical language which would enable scholars to
conceptualize and describe the ways in which Greeks regulated their cultic
activities. Large-scale projects such as Collection of Greek Ritual Norms (=
CGRN) conducted by Carbon and Pirenne-Delforge in Liège have already
provided very helpful suggestions in this respect, especially as far as
terminology is concerned. Instead of using the term ‘sacred law’, Carbon
and Pirenne-Delforge recommend the term ‘[Greek] ritual norm’, which
might significantly reduce the number of ambiguities in the scholarly use of
labels for religious prescriptive texts of the Greeks. In their view, a new
corpus should include, exclusively, texts that deal with rituals in the strict
sense of the word, and texts that have a clear normative character (also at
the level of language, ideally those texts whose prescriptive character is
evident in the use of imperatives, futures, infinitives, or other linguistic
markers of normativity; on terminology and on the project in Liège, see
Carbon and Pirenne-Delforge 2012).
Difficulties with the category of ‘sacred law’ are a product of a series of
historical contingencies. So, before we come to more recent attempts at
systematizations, we should look first at the origins of the corpora and
outline how collections have developed up to the twenty-first century. The
most important modern corpora of ‘sacred laws’ are, in chronological order,
Johannes von Prott and Ludwig Ziehen’s Leges Graecorum sacrae (= LGS
I, 1896); Ludwig Ziehen’s Leges Graeciae et Insularum (= LGS II, 1906);
Franciszek Sokolowski’s Lois sacrées de l’ Asie mineure (= LSAM, 1955),
Lois sacrées des cités grecques: Supplément (LSS, 1962), and Lois sacrées
des cités grecques (LSCG, 1969); followed, more recently, by Georges
Rougemont’s Lois sacrées et règlements religieuses (= CID I, 1977) and
Eran Lupu’s Greek Sacred Law (= NGSL, 2005, 2009).
This process of systematization starts with the work of Johannes ((Hans)
Theodor Anton) von Prott, a scholar of extraordinary acumen, and
obsessive personal devotion to Greek religion, who met a tragic fate. Von
Prott was a close collaborator of Wilhelm Dörpfeld at Athens and a
prodigious epigraphist whose PhD dissertation, supervised in Bonn by
Hermann Usener, was concerned exclusively with Greek sacrificial
calendars (‘Fasti Graecorum sacri. Pars prior’ (‘Greek sacred laws. Part
one’); this thin volume was published by Teubner in Leipzig in 1893, and is
now available online at archive.org). A significantly expanded version of
this dissertation was published in 1896 as Leges Graecorum sacrae e titulis
collectae: Fasti sacri. Pars prior (‘Greek sacred laws collected from
inscriptions: Sacred calendars. Part one’, published as a joint edition with
Ludwig Ziehen, by Teubner, Leipzig); von Prott was 27 at the time. Over
the next seven years, he grew increasingly consumed by his work on
Peloponnesian mystery cults. In 1903, and following some sort of a deeply
unsettling vision experienced at the Eleusinion at Sparta—a sanctuary
whose foundations he discovered himself—he committed suicide in his
room at the DAI (German Archaeological Institute) in Athens. Work
continued under Ziehen as editor, and, three years later, the second part of
the edition was published, also in Leipzig by Teubner: Leges Graeciae et
Insularum (‘Laws of Greece and the islands’; both parts are readily
available as affordable reprints nowadays).
As a criterion for inclusion in the corpus, von Prott concentrated on the
contents, rather than the genre, of the documents he collected. For the 1893
dissertation, he put together four inscriptions, all of which were concerned
with the types and dates of public sacrifices at Athens (three texts) and
Mykonos (one). However, along with the remnants of the Athenian
sacrificial calendars, he also included a Mykonian psephisma (literally
‘voting’, hence ‘decree’; (SEG 25.845 = LSCG 96)) about instituting
sacrifices and determining sacrificial times. The first three texts, proper
‘sacrificial calendars’, dryly list the divine recipient of the sacrifice, along
with the date and type of the offering. Typically, calendars are organized by
local months, with an entry for each month including a list of names of the
relevant gods and heroes, and specifying the offering or ritual a
worshipping community is to provide or perform at a certain time (on
calendars, see Lupu 2009: 65–8). The Mykonian psephisma, on the other
hand, while listing the times and types of sacrifices for a number of
divinities, is also concerned with: a) the introduction of several types of
sacrifice and the organization of a procession; b) the place of the kill and
the handling and distribution of sacrificial meat; c) priestly privileges; d)
restrictions concerning participation in sacrificial ritual; and e) financial
issues, to name just some of the additional aspects of this text.
Like von Prott’s dissertation, LGS I dealt predominantly with sacred
calendars and affiliated texts, that is, inscriptions that laid out which rituals
(mainly sacrifices) should be performed for which divinity on a certain
date. The volume contains twenty-eight texts arranged geographically, with
every entry conservatively and reliably edited with an erudite line-by-line
commentary on epigraphic and religious matters. In terms of the genre of
the documents, it includes sacred calendars, psephismata relating to or
augmenting existing sacred calendars, as well as texts referring to
themselves as ancestral laws (patrioi nomoi). While the volume is largely
outdated, due to lack of alternatives, for the time being it remains the first
port of call for any investigation of sacred calendars.
For the second volume (LGS II), the editors had planned to collect
documents relating to royal cult: von Prott’s task was to gather material
pertaining to the cults of Alexander the Great and Hellenistic rulers, while
Ziehen should have collected the rest. After von Prott’s death, Ziehen
continued his task. He collected material belonging to various epigraphic
genres, with some inscriptions relating more to religious matters than
others, and planned a further edition to follow. (This was to contain texts
from Asia Minor, but it never came to be published.) The positive reviews
he received encouraged him to collect even more—and more heterogeneous
—material: one reviewer (see Rouse 1909: 23) explicitly mentioned the
need to collect also votive inscriptions, catalogues, administrative
enactments, and documents dealing with temple finances. In this context,
the criteria for the inclusion of documents under the rubric ‘lex sacra’ grew
increasingly lax.
LGS II also saw changes in editorial methodology and the principles of
organization of the material. Ziehen arranged material not by the content of
a text, nor by the genre of a document, but, rather, according to the
geographical region. LGS II contains 153 texts, and the introduction bears
testimony to Ziehen’s quandaries concerning criteria for inclusion of the
material in his corpus. It states that he decided not to include financial
documents (by which he meant temple treasuries and funds; various
financial documents of other types are included in LGS II), and to disregard
excerpts concerning religious life in texts that primarily dealt with other
issues. However, documents concerning subsidiary activities pertaining to
cults were included in the corpus: along with documents regulating ritual
practices, Ziehen also collected texts dealing with cultic infrastructure, such
as documents concerning the administration and organization of cults
(elections and sales of priesthoods, appointments, duties and privileges of
religious magistrates), as well as texts and dossiers concerning temples and
the protection of their property (dedications, euergetism, sacred funds,
sacred land). In terms of ritual proper, the collection included all texts
known at the time that dealt with any ritual actions, from sacrifices and
dedications, to the organization of processions and festivals, and purity
requirements. Thus, the distinction between texts prescribing ritual activity
in its strictest sense, and texts dealing with the practical context in which a
ritual activity was embedded became blurred. However, a great merit of
Ziehen’s collection is that he also made an attempt to arrange the material
according to the issuing authority (for example, in the case of Attic
material, he organized three sections: texts issued by states, texts issued by
associations, and, finally, texts that had been issued privately). Thus, he
highlighted crucial issues of agency and authority, which were to be taken
up again in relevant scholarship only towards the end of the twentieth
century.
The current standard editions of Greek ‘sacred laws’ (LSAM, LSS, LSCG)
are associated with the name of Franciszek Sokolowski, a Polish Catholic
priest, survivor of Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, and an
American professor, whose monumental editions were published in French.
Some fifty years after the publication of LGS II, at the suggestion of Louis
Robert, Sokolowski picked up where Ziehen broke off. He first collected
texts from Asia Minor, creating Lois sacrées de l’Asie mineure (LSAM): this
collection contains eighty-eight texts, edited with a critical apparatus,
bibliographical information, and a line-by-line commentary on religious,
linguistic, epigraphic, and historical issues. It concluded with still-useful
indices comprising a list of prices of priesthoods and sacrificial animals,
important Greek words, and subjects. The arrangement of the regulations
followed geographical principles, and within each region, the texts were
arranged chronologically. Again, all texts dealing with Greek cults were
included except for funerary legislation, and Hellenistic royal cult material.
Lois sacrées des cités grecques: Supplément (LSS), published seven years
after LSAM, was organized in the same way. It furnished a further 133 texts
that had been found throughout the Greek world since the publication of
LGS I–II and LSAM, but excluding the rich finds from Kos gathered by
Mario Segre (Iscr.Cos). This material from Kos was partly included in Lois
sacrées des cités grecques (LSCG), Sokolowski’s final volume (an excellent
edition of Koan material is now available in IG XII, 4). LSCG was
conceptualized as an update to LGS II, containing 181 documents,
organized according to the same principles as the first two volumes, and
accompanied by learned commentaries and indices that are still very helpful
today.
Sokolowski’s volumes significantly widened scholarly horizons, and still
offer an indispensable tool for the study of Greek religion. Some reviews
have pointed out occasional weaknesses in the handling of the texts (e.g.
Forrest 1964), in particular with regard to some of Sokolowski’s textual
interventions. Although this is undoubtedly correct, it is, perhaps, too harsh:
for LSAM, at least, Sokolowski had inspected the relevant stones himself,
and made notes, but all of this material was destroyed during the war. This
led him to propose restorations from memory, some fifteen years after
conducting his autopsy (a brief mention of this is made in LSAM: 5).
Two corpora, smaller in terms of the number of texts, but both of
exceptional importance, were produced after Sokolowski: Rougemont’s
Lois sacrées et règlements religieuses (= CID I) and Lupu’s New Greek
Sacred Laws (NGSL). CID I is a critical edition of thirteen texts found at
Delphi. Rougemont, who shifts in his title and his terminology between
‘religious regulation’ and ‘sacred law’, does not go into much detail
concerning criteria for inclusion or exclusion of material in his corpus
(some thoughts on this are found in CID: 1–4), although he does explicitly
criticize the category of ‘sacred law’. Lupu’s NGSL, on the other hand,
updates Sokolowski’s corpora by providing a modern critical edition with
translation and an exhaustive commentary of twenty-seven texts not
included in Sokolowski’s volumes. The introductory section of this volume
(NGSL: 3–110) is one of the most detailed and fullest analyses of the
relevant texts to date, and the first large-scale systematic attempt to tackle
‘sacred laws’ as a scholarly category. The volume is written with great
rigour and attention to detail, even if with some admittedly conservative
tendencies: Lupu’s approach to material and criteria for its selection are
rooted firmly in the traditions of Ziehen and Sokolowski (his criteria are
laid down in NGSL: 4–9). However, this volume is, for the time being, the
first place to turn for an introduction and access to the material.

WHERE ARE WE GOING? CURRENT

DEBATES

This brings us to current scholarship, and the tautological impasse,

pointedly criticized by Robert Parker (2004: 57–8): ‘texts assembled in
Sokolowski are sacred laws and sacred laws are the texts assembled in
Sokolowski’. Given the current state of the corpora, and increasingly vocal
recognition of difficulties with the term ‘sacred law’, scholars are gradually
turning their attention to issues of typology, taxonomy, and the notion of
authority in these texts. In order to dispense with the ‘scare quotes with
which “sacred laws” regularly continue to be invoked’ (Carbon and
Pirenne-Delforge 2012: 164), a number of alternatives have come to be
used. Recent studies will typically employ any combination of adjectives
‘sacred’, ‘cult(ic)’, ‘religious’, or ‘ritual’ with nouns ‘regulations’,
‘ordinances’, and ‘norms’, while sacred law (without inverted commas) is
used with either a subversive or a reactionary tone, or by the less well
informed. Underpinning this tendency is research conducted over the past
decade that has been decisively influenced by methodological concerns in
legal history on the one hand, and ritual studies on the other.
Starting with the former, in 2004 Robert Parker drew attention to the
distinction in our corpora between decrees issued by civic bodies on the one
hand, and the texts he labelled ‘exegetical laws’ on the other. In his
parlance, ‘exegetical laws’ were texts which, while not being formally
decrees, were mostly concerned with prescribing rituals in the strict sense
of the word (sacrifices, prayers, purifications). This important distinction
presents a milestone in our thinking about these texts, not simply because of
the emphasis on formal or generic features of the texts, but especially
because the distinction highlights the various levels of authority involved—
a point which was developed further and most clearly articulated by
Angelos Chaniotis in 2009, in his analysis of ‘stratigraphy’ of ritual norms,
to which I will return shortly.
A second force driving current debates comes from ritual studies. In
2005, building on concepts of praxis by Pierre Bourdieu (e.g. 1972, 1990,
1998), and notions of agency and power developed by Anthony Giddens
(esp. 1979), Krüger, Nijhawan, and Stavrianopoulou (2005) made a
significant contribution to the debate on the role of ritual agency. In
particular, they emphasized the distinction between emic and etic
perceptions of the role of agency in ritual: what modern scholars call a
‘sacred law’ is, in emic context, a set of stratified heterogeneous agencies
with distinct appellation. They argue that scholars should instead identify
and engage with each of these separately. Various contributions in Eftychia
Stavrianopoulou’s 2006 edited volume consequentially also drew attention
to the question of agency in these texts, and tackled the issue of the
typological features of these texts, and how this relates to the issuing
authority.
In a seminal article published in 2009, Angelos Chaniotis argued that
many of the texts labelled as leges sacrae can be assessed in terms of their
issuing authority. He posited a ‘stratigraphy’ (2009: 98–102) that starts with
ta patria ethe ‘ancestral customs’, that is, those texts without a recognizable
mortal author (and often without a fixed written form), which determine the
‘core of the ritual practices’. Following ta patria are ‘nomoi’ or ‘laws’,
specific instructions with a recognizable human authority behind them, and
typically with a fixed form. These determine the execution of ancestral
customs of a polis. Finally, there are ‘psephismata’, the decrees of a polis
assembly, deriving from human agents and concerning variable elements in
the execution of ritual, perhaps ensuring or increasing ritual efficacy.
One of the most recent (and most ambitious) contributions to the debate
on taxonomy is in line with these developments: Matthew Carbon and
Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge have published, in 2012, a programmatic
overview of their planned edition of ritual norms (Collection of Greek
Ritual Norms = CGRN), which aims at resolving terminological difficulties
and replacing Sokolowski’s volumes. In order to do away with the
ambiguity of ‘sacred law’, they introduce a new and clearly defined term
‘ritual norm’, and present criteria for the inclusion of material in their
corpus. The term ‘ritual norm’ subsumes ‘inscriptions [that], in a wide
sense, have a normative character’ and whose main subject matter is ‘ritual
practice and performance’. Accordingly, their collection will include texts
dealing with purificatory and sacrificial rituals strictly defined, that is, in
their terms, ‘norms’ exclusively prescribing ritual practices and
performance (Carbon and Pirenne-Delforge 2012: 173–81).
Hence, there is a tendency in most recent scholarship to stress the
importance of the epigraphic genre of a ritual text, and, directly related to
this, to emphasize the significance of the authority issuing a norm. This is
no coincidence: both issues have long been recognized as vital for
engagement with these texts, but previous work prioritized the production
of collections, sidelining other aspects.
This shift in emphasis in the study of ritual texts is of great importance,
since it will prompt a re-examination not just of the terminology we use, or
the organization of the corpora, but also the way we think about the practice
and organization of Greek religion in the context of the Greek polis. The
need for terminological clarity and a more sophisticated approach to the
material is not simply prompted by philological concerns: greater
understanding of the significance of terminological distinctions for the
Greeks themselves, combined with analysis of the types of assertions of
authority by different agents will allow us to raise crisper questions about
the ritual competence and religious purview of individuals, religious and
political institutions, or, in effect, of gods themselves.

AUTHORITY, AGENCY, GENRE: SOME

OPEN QUESTIONS AND POSSIBLE FUTURE
DIRECTIONS

Current debates focus on the issues of authority, agency, and genre, and
have started focusing on formulations of ritual competence: How does the
authority issuing a sacred regulation affect both the content and the textual
form of a regulation? When it comes to both formulations and
modifications of ritual actions, who is allowed to introduce what kind of a
change and by which means? Do civic institutions have a set of realms of
influence differing from that of divine agents? If so, do private ritual
activities such as, say, cult foundations, rely on the civic or divine mode, or
both?
These questions require analysis of the roles of both human and divine
agents, as well as more attention to the role of genre (or textual form). In
this sense, one could build on Chaniotis’ 2009 model of a stratified
hierarchy of norms, and posit that all texts codifying Greek ritual activities
rely on three basic sources of authority. These are: (i) divine agents who are
typically ascribed an active role in the founding of rituals; (ii) tradition,
which serves the function of preserving them; and (iii) human agents (in
various guises) who may be authorized to conduct modifications. In this
chapter, it is possible only to scratch the surface of these issues and briefly
sketch some of the more promising avenues of research; I will focus on the
issue of divine agency.
The idea of divine agency in the formulation of ritual activities (on which
see Busine 2005; Petrovic and Petrovic 2006; for later material, Brulé 2009)
finds one of its clearest formulations in Plato’s Republic (427b–c), in which
the institution of some of the most important rituals is ascribed to Apollo at
Delphi. In the ideal state, Plato’s Sokrates posits, Apollo should authorize
cult foundations, sacrifices (thusiai), and funerary rituals, as well as other
services (therapeiai) of divinities (by which he means gods, daimons, and
heroes alike):
For of such matters we ourselves know nothing, and in founding our city, if we are wise, we
shall take no advice and ask for no guidance save from our national guide . . . as he gives his
guidance from his seat on the Omphalos in the centre of the earth, [he] is the national guide of
all men.

Echoes of this idea are found throughout ritual texts, as well: divine
agency is associated with foundations, sacrifices, and other rituals in the
strict sense of the word, such as prayers and processions, among others.
Often these texts are formulated as instructions received through oracles
requesting the introduction or reform of a particular cult (typical formulae
include ho Apollon echresen (‘Apollo prophesied’), etc.; see Petrovic and
Petrovic 2006 for examples of norms in which divinities institute rituals).
One such case is LSCG 46 (third century BCE), an amendment to a decree
regarding the cult of Bendis at Athens, where the incentive for the
foundation of a temple is clearly associated with an oracle (albeit of
Dodona, rather than Delphi): ‘. . . the people of Athens have given the right
of possession of land of all the peoples to the Thracians solely and the right
of foundation of the sanctuary in accordance with the Dodona manteia and
the right to organize the procession . . .’ In this case, the Athenians act on
divine instructions, obliged by Zeus’ mandate to allow the Thracians to
found a sanctuary and organize a procession (see also LSCG 55 for the
foundation of a sanctuary upon divine revelation).
In other cases, the establishment of a ritual or a sanctuary can be
represented generally as a consequence of divine agency, with or without
explicit reference to an oracle. An intriguing passage is found in a
regulation from the sanctuary of Men of Attica, second century CE (LSCG
55), which states that ‘Xanthos Lykios, [slave] of Gaius Olbius, consecrated
the sanctuary of Men Tyrannos, having been chosen by god, with good
luck’. How did the god choose Xanthos—was Xanthos instructed by an
oracle to found the sanctuary, or did a god appear to him in a dream? Both
options could find proponents (see Lane 1976: 8–9, 24–9), but this is less
important for present purposes than that the source of the initiative was
divine agency. Similarly, in his well-known hymn inscribed in the sanctuary
of Asklepios at Epidauros towards the end of the fourth century BCE (or
towards the end of the third), Isyllos of Epidauros describes the hieros
nomos, ‘sacred law’ that establishes a procession in honour of Asklepios
and Apollo, as deriving directly from the two gods, by saying: ‘I promised
to have [the text] inscribed, if this proposition which I moved, was to
become our law (nomos). For it did not come about without gods. Isyllos
has found this sacred law (hieros nomos) by divine allotment (theia moira)
never-wilting, ever-flowing gift for immortal gods’ (IG IV2, 1 128.8–9 (for
text and commentary see Kolde 2003: 60–74), late fourth or early third
century BCE). In another example, divine king Antiochos of Commagene
points out the divine origin of a law, presumably on sacrifices, saying: ‘On
divine advice I had the sacred law (hieros nomos) inscribed onto sacrosanct
stelai’ and ‘this law was pronounced by my voice, but the mind of the gods
determined it’ (before 31 BCE, OGI 383 with Crowther and Facella 2003, ll.
109–11 and 121–2 respectively). Alongside foundations of sanctuaries,
processions, and sacrifices, we find also prayers as the content of divine
legislature. A text from Maionia (LSAM 19) contains a divinely sanctioned
instruction on ritual prayer along with a threat of divine punishment in case
of transgression: ‘In accordance with the command (epitage) of the gods,
the sacred house has issued the command that one should observe the
prayer of nine days to Zeus Masfalatenos, Men Tiamos and Men Tyrannos.
If someone disobeys one of these things, he will learn the powers of Zeus.’
These aspects—divinities construed as enforcers of their norms, policing
the rituals and ensuring that they are observed or conducted properly, and
threatening punishment if not—are well attested. Several examples of
curses have already been mentioned. To these one can add some of the more
explicit passages where gods threaten humans if they fail to observe the
rules of a ritual. LSAM 20, a famous text from first century BCE
Philadelphia, details a cult foundation for which Zeus has given
instructions. Zeus has given one Dionysios revelations in a dream on how to
perform cleansing and purifying rituals, and has requested that he found
mysteries in his home, for which the god has also provided rules of conduct,
including stern warnings: ‘Man and woman who would do one of the
proscribed things are not to enter this house here because great gods are
established here and they look over these things, and they do not accept
those who disobey revelations.’ What does it mean that gods ‘look over’,
literally ‘observe’, (episkopeuo) the rituals? What did the enforcement of
these regulations look like in the cult’s historical reality? These lines are,
perhaps, indicative of the more significant role that the conscience of the
worshipper started playing in cult in the Hellenistic period. Awareness of
divine attention must have had a strong effect on the internal disposition of
the worshipper, and made him question and re-evaluate his moral stance
towards the gods, or, to put it in the language of Greek religious ethics, his
syneidesis (a term which we encounter in increasing numbers from the
Hellenistic period onwards, and which is rendered in Latin as conscientia).
What of the role of tradition, ta patria, and civic institutions? How do
they formulate ritual norms? These questions, and many more, still await
answers. But a first step in this direction might be to establish a clear
taxonomy of the norms, by conducting an analysis of the attested types of
authorities setting out cultic regulations. (This could be based on the
corpora mentioned in this chapter, and updated on the basis of EBGR and
SEG.) If we gained a statistical overview of the extant ‘sacred laws’ by
(epigraphic) genre, issuing authority, and content, we could start paving the
way towards a fuller and more systematic understanding of the intricacies
of Greek ritual life.
SUGGESTED READING
On issues of terminology and current and planned projects concerned with
the material, see the excellent overview in Carbon and Pirenne-Delforge
2012. See there also an overview of minor corpora not discussed here, and
monographs on some of the more important texts. For a detailed overview
and discussion of the genres, typology, and content of traditional ‘sacred
laws’, see NGSL 3–110, with further literature. For information on ‘sacred
laws’ found after the publication of NGSL in 2004, see relevant volumes of
Kernos with the Epigraphic Bulletin for Greek Religion (EBGR). On issues
of normative authority, see Parker 2004, Petrovic and Petrovic 2006,
Chaniotis 2009, and Bruit Zaidman 2009, and other authors in Brulé.

REFERENCES
Bourdieu, P. 1972. Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural
Anthropology. Cambridge.
Bourdieu, P. 1990. The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA.
Bourdieu, P. 1998. Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action. Stanford, CA.
Bruit Zaidman, L. 2009. ‘Lois et normes religieuses dans les Lois de Platon’, in La norme en matière
religieuse en Grèce ancienne, ed. P. Brulé, 29–47. Liège.
Brulé, P. 2009. La norme en matière religieuse en Grèce ancienne. Liège.
Busine, A. 2005. Paroles d’Apollon. Pratiques et traditions oraculaires dans l’Antiquité tardive (IIe
—VIe siècles). Leiden and Boston, MA.
Carbon, M. and Pirenne-Delforge, V. 2012. ‘Beyond Greek “Sacred Laws” ’, Kernos 25: 163–82.
Chaniotis, A. 2009. ‘The Dynamics of Ritual Norms in Greek Cult’, in La norme en matière
religieuse en Grèce ancienne, ed. P. Brulé, 91–105. Liège.
Chaniotis, A. 2012. ‘Greek Ritual Purity: From Automatisms to Moral Distinctions’, in How Purity
is Made, ed. P. Rösch and U. Simon, 123–39. Wiesbaden.
Crowther, C. and Facella, M. 2003. ‘New Evidence for the Ruler Cult of Antiochus of Commagene
from Zeugma’, in Neue Forschungen zur Religionsgeschichte Kleinasiens. Elmar Schwertheim
zum 60. Geburtstag gewidmet, Asia Minor Studien 49, ed. G. Heedeman and E. Winter, 41–80.
Bonn.
Forrest, W. G. 1964. ‘Review of Franciszek Sokolowski: Lois sacrées des cités grecques.
Supplément’, CR 14.3 (N.S.): 319–20.
Gawlinski, L. 2012. The Sacred Law of Andania. Berlin and Boston, MA.
Giddens, A. 1979. Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social
Analysis. London.
Kolde, A. 2003. Politique et religion chez Isyllos d’ Épidaure. Basel.
Krüger, O. Nijhawan, M. and Stavrianopoulou, E. 2005. ‘Ritual’ und ‘Agency’. Legitimation und
Reflexivität ritueller Handlungsmacht. Heidelberg.
Lane, E. 1976. Corpus Monumentorum Religionis Dei Menis III. Leiden.
Lupu, E. 2009. Greek Sacred Law (2nd edn). Leiden and Boston, MA.
Ma, J. 2012. ‘Epigraphy and Display of Authority’, in Epigraphy and the Historical Sciences, ed. J.
Davies and J. Wilkes, 133–58. Oxford.
Naiden, F. S. 2009. ‘Sanctions in Sacred Laws’, in Symposium 2007, ed. E. Harris and G. Thür, 125–
38. Vienna.
Parker, R. 2004. ‘What are Sacred Laws?’, in The Law and the Courts in Ancient Greece, ed. E.
Harris and L. Rubinstein, 57–70. London.
Parker, R. 2011. On Greek Religion. Ithaca, NY, and London.
Petrovic, I. and Petrovic A. 2006. ‘Look Who is Talking Now: Speaker and Communication in
Metrical Sacred Regulations’, in Ritual and Communication in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. E.
Stavrianopoulou, 151–79. Liège.
Rouse, W. H. D. R. 1909. ‘Review of Leges Graecorum sacrae e titulis collectae; Leges Graeciae et
Insularum’, CR 23.1: 23.
Stavrianopoulou, E. 2006. Ritual and Communication in the Graeco-Roman World. Liège.
Tresp, A. 1914. Die Fragmente der griechischen Kultschriftsteller. Giessen.
PART VI

WHO?
 CHAPTER 24

GODS—OLYMPIAN OR
CHTHONIAN?

SUSAN DEACY

INTRODUCTION

THIS chapter’s concern is with a debate that has been running in scholarship
on ancient Greek religion for as almost long as there has been a conception
of ‘Greek religion’ as a subject of scholarly endeavour. Where
commentators have stood on the debate has borne on how they have
interpreted the array of divine beings venerated by the Greeks, with
implications for understanding how gods, heroes, and other categories of
powers were conceptualized, and how mortals would position themselves in
relation to these powers. The paradigm, first formulated in the late
eighteenth century, has been adapted, critiqued, dismissed, and restated in
various ways ever since. The terms I shall introduce it in initially are crude
ones, but ones that have guided—and at times oversimplified and
Christianized—how the divine world has been envisaged. On the one hand,
there are thought to be the sky- or mountain-dwelling Olympians. These are
the ‘major’ gods, distant from, but overall well disposed towards, mortals.
Their counterparts are the chthonians, thought of as lesser, literally and
metaphorically darker, and older (see, in this volume, Kearns, Chapter 3).
Such figures—the word ‘god’ is sometimes considered too grand for them
—are linked with the well-being or otherwise of the land and with the
Underworld. These dangerous, infernal, shadowy figures were, it has been
held, propitiated not because the Greeks wanted to do so—unless the Greek
in question was a particular kind of individual (a witch perhaps, or a
sorcerer, or an inhabitant of an unenlightened pre-Classical age)—but out of
fear of what would happen were they not appropriately venerated.
There is more. As summarized by Scott Scullion, ‘in the flux of scholarly
fashion Olympian and chthonian have been seen as coinciding with a rich
variety of cosmic oppositions: rich/poor, aristocratic/democratic, Indo-
European/indigenous, masculine/feminine, patriarchal/matriarchal,
advanced/primitive, rational/mystical, and so on’ (Scullion 1994: 76; see
also, in this volume, Delforge and Pironti, Chapter 4). On the Olympian
side fall the first sets of pairings in Scullion’s list, with the advanced,
rational, male-dominated Olympian gods constructed as exemplars of how
the Greeks idealized their social order. On the chthonian side fall those
beings that are variously interpreted as primitive, indigenous, local, and
feminine. To this, one can add other binaries that have pervaded thinking
about Greek religion, and which have been enabled by an
Olympian/superior versus chthonian/inferior division. These include
Panhellenic/local, religion/magic, community/individual, and polis/margins.
(For an appraisal and critique of such oppositional thinking, see Kindt
2012: esp. 123–54.)
I shall begin by examining how the Olympian/chthonian model came to
be devised. Then I shall consider various doubts that have been expressed
concerning its usefulness, including by some of those who helped embed it
into the study of Greek religion in the first place. Next I shall assess how
the late twentieth century saw discoveries that challenged the prevailing
way of understanding Greek worship as centring round an
Olympian/chthonian binary, and how the debate came to be given fresh
energy in the wake of the diverging stances taken by Scullion and Renate
Schlesier. This section will also discuss the sources that have been used to
support—or indeed challenge—the paradigm. Which evidence, I shall ask,
has been taken as key? Does how it has been used tell us as much, if not
more, about the positions of particular interpreters than about those of the
ancient authors whose work is being mined? Then I will move to this
chapter’s case studies, which will focus upon deities who have been
branded as ‘chthonian’: Hekate and Dionysos. These sections will not be
about these particular gods per se but will be using them as vehicles for
exploring the scholarly concept of a polarized divine world, and for asking
whether the ancients themselves could, under any circumstances, conceive
of their gods in antipodal terms. Like other contributions to this book, the
case studies will draw on sources from two broad periods, Archaic/Classical
and Hellenistic. I shall consider how far aspects of the gods in question
remain a theme throughout the evidence, and how different periods
produced varying readings of each.

POLARIZING THE DIVINE

The notion of a divide between Olympian and chthonian originates with

Georg Friedrich Creuzer (1771–1858) and Karl Otfried Müller (1797–
1840). The latter regarded the Olympians as beings who, ‘in their serene
sublimity, demand for themselves only the sweet vapors of the sacrificial
bones and fat’, and the chthonians as those, ‘who wish to take part in life by
feeding on flesh and blood and demanding the whole sacrificial animal for
themselves’ (Müller 1833: 180; trans. Schlesier 1991/92: 48). The
distinction came to be formally anatomized by Erwin Rohde (1845–1898),
according to whom the Greeks conceived of two different forms of deities
because this is what they had inherited from their prehistoric ancestors.
These supposedly simpler, agrarian-based people venerated gods who,
similarly uncomplicated and agrarian-based, were localized beings
associated with the earth and the Underworld. According to Rohde, with the
advent of the ‘Homeric Age’ there emerged a class of deities who were the
polar opposite of these indigenous, place-confined beings. The conceptual
differences were supposedly complemented by different ways of venerating
each type of being. The Olympians were held to be worshipped by day, the
chthonians at night. Olympians supposedly received white animal victims,
the chthonians black ones. Sacrifices to the Olympians were thought to take
place on high altars, while chthonian sacrifices were conducted on low
hearths or in pits. The sacrificial victim of the Olympian gods, it was
thought, had its throat turned up to the sky, while the chthonian sacrifice
was directed downwards. The bones and thigh fat from Olympian sacrifices
were said to be offered to the god and the worshippers would eat the meat,
while everything would be consumed to please the chthonian deity. In
Olympian worship, libations were supposedly performed for both god and
worshipper, while libations for the chthonians would be poured into the
earth. Olympians were considered to have been worshipped accompanied
with music, whereas their chthonian counterparts would be venerated in
silence.
Thus was set in place a way to think about Greek deities based around
binary and hierarchical thinking in the wake of a supposed prehistoric clash
between two opposing conceptions of what a deity was. The most extreme
of the twentieth-century proponents of the concept was Paul Stengel (1845–
1935), so much so that the adjective ‘Stengelian’ has come to be applied to
his conviction of the rectitude of the concept (see Bergquist 2005: 63).
Among the most inventive adaptation was that of Jane Ellen Harrison
(1850–1928) who aligned the concept of a dualized divine world with the
theory, proposed by Johann Jakob Bachofen in 1861, of an original
matriarchal, goddess- and earth-venerating religion eventually supplanted
by the gods of the usurping patriarchs (Harrison 1903: esp. 1–31; Bachofen
1967). As a proto-feminist-matriarchalist, Harrison regarded this transition
as something to be regretted rather than as the progress towards the ‘higher’
religion that Bachofen or Rohde and others had envisaged (see Robinson
2002: 164–9) but, by reversing the privileged pole, her work was still being
guided by the polarized thinking of her predecessors.
Although, as I have set out, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars
devised a way of thinking that divided deities into two differentiated camps,
some of those who did most to embed this polarized thinking into
scholarship also expressed a concern that it might not invariably do justice
to Greek religion. Creuzer noted that it was not only the chthonians that
were both ‘mild’ and ‘awful’ as the Olympian gods could also be thus
(Creuzer 1810–1812: 170–2). Rohde was concerned that Olympian and
chthonian gods could not always be easily distinguished (Rohde 1898: 273
n. 1). Comparable doubts have continued to surface in the work of those
who are, in certain other respects, guided by the paradigm. For example,
Fairbanks argued that ‘we are not justified in describing any one type of
worship as distinctively chthonic’ (Fairbanks 1900: 259). Wilamowitz-
Moellendorff observed (1931: 244 n.3) that the term chthonic had become
‘das beliebte Schlagwort’ (‘the popular catchphrase’). According to Walter
Burkert, ‘cultic reality … remained a rich conglomerate of Olympian and
chthonic elements in which many more subtle gradations were possible’.
Burkert expresses reservations as to the applicability of a self-perpetuating
opposition ‘in which one pole cannot exist without the other’ (Burkert
1985: 202; for more on these, and other, assessments down to the late
twentieth century, see Schlesier 1991/92: 43–4).
The state of play, as described by Scullion in a paper delivered in a 1997
conference on Olympian and chthonian sacrifice (subsequently published in
the proceedings in 2005), was that ‘we are far nearer the opening of debate
on this issue than we are to any kind of closure’ (Scullion 2005: 23).
Scullion maintains that what may look like sources that challenge the
classification are in fact ‘difficult and mixed cases’ (ibid.: 35; cf. Scullion
1994, which argues for the ‘fundamental soundness of the distinction
between Olympian and chthonian gods and rituals’ (117)). On the other side
of the debate stands Schlesier, who has argued that ‘the terms “chthonic
cult” or “chthonian religion” should be discarded because they are
misleading’ (Schlesier 1991/92: 50). The extent of Schlesier’s disagreement
with Scullion may be exemplified by this quotation from her contribution to
the discussion after the latter’s 1997 paper: ‘I got the impression that you
were trying to save the concepts’ and ‘[were arguing that] all the terms you
introduced, like modification and mingling and mixture, had the effect of
justifying the distinction. But in my opinion they did just the opposite—
they show that the distinction cannot help us to understand ancient Greek
religion’ (Scullion 2005: 35).
Other scholars, including Scullion and Schlesier’s fellow participants at
the 1997 conference, have argued that the categories need to be redefined
rather than either retained or discarded, and that it is how scholars have
divided up the categories that has been misleading rather than the categories
themselves (see e.g. Henrichs 2005; and also Bremmer 1994: 43; Ekroth
2002). Rather, it is now held, the category that matters is ‘chthonian’
because it is the Greeks’ own. Thus, Parker has identified four kinds of
powers which were classified as chthonian by the Greeks: the ordinary
dead, the exceptional dead (heroes), powers of the well-being of the earth,
and the powers thought to inhabit the Underworld (Parker 2011: 80–1).
 There are, in fact, only two passages that identify an absolute dualism
between chthonian and Olympian, and the later author is likely to be
drawing on the earlier (see here Schlesier 1991/92: 44–5). Moreover, the
motivation for simplifying Greek religion by the earlier author needs
contextualizing in relation to his particular political and rhetorical agenda.
In c.400 CE, Porphyry wrote that Olympian deities receive temples and high
altars (bomoi) while chthonians are worshipped on hearths and low altars
(De antr. nymph. 6). Around 800 years earlier, in c.400 BCE, Isokrates
painted a schematized picture of the Greek gods for Philip by, in Parker’s
words, ‘exaggerat[ing] to make a particular rhetorical point that has nothing
to do with religion’ (Parker 2011: 80). Isokrates set out the precepts of
Greek deities and their worship as follows: ‘those who are responsible for
bringing us blessings we address as Olympians, but to those who cause
calamities and punishments we apply less pleasant names; private persons
and poleis found temples and altars to the former group, whereas we honour
the latter neither in prayers nor sacrifices, but perform rites of aversion
against them’ (5.117, tr. Deacy).
Beyond these two sources, there is limited evidence for such an extreme
either/or division. For example, the Oresteia, ‘that treasure house of
chthonian concepts’ (Scullion 1994: 111), categorizes gods in ways that do
not match the rigid terms of the foundational scholarship on Olympian
versus chthonian deities. For example, Agam. 88–91 lists four kinds of gods
that are granted bomoi. For two of these, the ‘high ones’ (hypatoi) and the
‘Ouranians’, a high altar might seem suitable. However, the localized and
earthly nature of the other two, the ‘chthonians’ and the ‘market place
gods’, would—in the terms of the scholarly division of Olympian and
chthonian—merit low altars. (On this and other passages that categorize
gods in a more nuanced manner than the reductive Olympian–chthonian
binary allows, see Schlesier 1991/92: 46–7; on the creation and
destabilization of dualistic concepts of deity in the Oresteia, see Scullion
2005.)
In the late twentieth century, fuelled by the discovery of new evidence,
notably the fifth-century BCE lex sacra of Selinous (Jameson, Jordan, and
Kortansky 1993; see also Clinton 1996), the concept of a distinctively
chthonian way of worshipping a god came to be finally rejected (see e.g.
Ekroth 2002; Henrichs 2005). In a paper at the 1997 conference already
mentioned, Parker wrote that ‘Greek sacrifices did not divide neatly into
two classes, the Olympian and chthonian’ (Parker 2005: 39). By 2011,
Parker could state more prescriptively that ‘chthonian sacrifice as a single
type has vanished’ (Parker 2011: 84).
Can we make a notion of Olympian and chthonian deities as
irreconcilably ‘single types’ disappear as well? When Hera—one of the
‘major’ deities who might be seen to suit an Olympian characterization—
smites the earth in the Iliad (14.271–9, 15.34–8) to invoke chthonian
powers, she performs what O’Brien considers ‘hardly the gestures
appropriate to a wife of Zeus’ (1993: 96). However, if we consider at these
actions from a different angle, they look appropriate to the wife of a god
who, as Olympios and Basileus, is quintessentially Olympian, but whose
other epithets include such palpably chthonian aspects as Chthonios (Hes.
Op. 456; LSCG 96.25) and Katachthonios (Hom. Il. 9.457). Moreover, Zeus
Polias ‘crosses the Olympian/chthonian boundary’, according to Scullion
(1994: 90), as does Zeus Soter, ‘a partly chthonian household god’
(Scullion 2005: 24). To these guises, one might add the serpentine Zeuses
which include Philios, Agathodaimon, Ktesios, and the ‘decidedly
chthonian character’ (Versnel 2011: 27) of Zeus Meilichios. (On the
chthonian traits of Zeus, see further Boedeker 1983a; Parker 2011: 67–9,
with notes 9–12.) As for Hera, in addition to evoking the powers of the
earth, she is herself a chthonian deity, comparable to—or even a double of
—Gaea, the goddess who is literally ‘Earth’. For example, it is sometimes
Hera (Hymn. Hom. 30.305–9, Stesich. fr. 239), rather than Gaea (e.g. Hes.
Theog. 820–2, Stesich. fr. 239), who mothers Typhon, the most horrible of
the Greek mythological monsters. If one avoids thinking in terms of
Olympians as a distinctive class, or chthonians as another class, seemingly
odd or marginalized features of ‘major’ gods stop being such. The next
section of this chapter will turn to Hekate, the first of my case studies, to
consider how this goddess has been simplified through being understood as
a prototypically chthonian deity.

HEKATE: ‘GODDESS OF NOCTURNAL

SORCERY’?
A question that has been asked in recent scholarship on ancient Greek
religion (see esp. Kindt 2012), and which is also a key concern of the
present book, is whether the ‘religious’ can be confined within a construct
that lets certain activities be marginalized. Certain deities have similarly
been marginalized, including ones that, like Hekate, fall into a supposedly
‘magical’ characterization.
One of the ways of envisaging the divine world Burkert’s concept of
‘subtle gradations’ (Burkert 1985: 202), is applicable to Hekate, a deity that
many scholars, including Burkert himself, have simplified by asserting that,
at her core, she is a deity of the Underworld, conjuring, and necromancy. In
part, she is this, and Burkert’s assessment of Hekate as ‘the goddess of
nocturnal sorcery who is able to enter the underworld’ (1985: 200) can be
supported by a range of evidence. For example, while Kreousa is offstage
seeking to poison Ion with gorgon blood, the chorus of Euripides’ Ion
evoke Enodia, a deity often equated with Hekate, as ‘ruler of night-
wandering occurrences’ (1048–9). At Eur. Alex. fr. 62h Collard-Cropp,
Cassandra prophesizes that Hekabe will become one of Hekate’s barking
dogs (the similarity between the names Hekate/Hekabe might be more than
coincidental: see Lyons 1997: 154–5). Hekate is ‘pleased with dark ghosts’
according to her Orphic Hymn (1). A second-century AD epiphany of the
goddess represents her with snaky feet and hair and a terrible glare. The
manifestation is preceded by howling dogs and ends when she disappears
into a chasm (Lucian Philops. 17.22–4; for commentary and further
references, see Ogden 2002: 273).
Using sources from two broad periods, I will show that these aspects of
the goddess could be augmented. However, I shall also show that, as early
as the Archaic period, a more nuanced and variegated image of the goddess
was formed, which does not fit the standard interpretation of the goddess
(despite the attempts of several scholars). Between these sources, a change
takes place inversely to the traditional evolutionary model: she starts out as
multifaceted then, later, becomes narrowly chthonic.
The divine world of the Apollonios Rhodios’s Argonautica is ‘split’ into
the ‘two halves’ that Parker emphasizes it never was in actuality (Parker
2011: 80). The gods of Olympos, anthropomorphized to the point of
absurdity, are turned into ‘pieces of Alexandrian sculpture’ (Żybert 2012:
374), while other deities, prominent among whom are Hekate and Rhea, are
archaized and marginalized. Hekate is the ‘Roarer’ (Brimo: e.g. 3.861, 2),
the ‘Night-Wanderer’ (e.g. 3.148, 4.829, 4.1020), the ‘Queen of the Dead’
(3.862), and—simply ‘Earthly’ (chthonien: 3.862, 4.148). She is connected
with ‘drugs of all kinds, some healing, some destructive’ (3.803), which can
put out fire (3.531) and halt rivers, the stars, and the moon (3.532–3). When
the goddess is invoked, by Jason (3.1191–224), Jason comes to the place of
worship alone, secretly and by night, and performs rites that match the
image of the chthonian sacrifice portrayed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century scholarship . The sacrifice takes place over ‘a pit in the ground a
cubit deep’ over which Jason ‘slit the throat of the sheep, and duly placed
the carcass on top’. Then, he kindled the logs by placing fire beneath it, and
poured mixed libations over them, calling on Hekate Brimo (1207–11).
When the ‘dread goddess’ hears the invocation ‘from the utmost depths’
(1213) she appears with snakes around her head and accompanied by
barking hellhounds.
While the depiction of Hekate by Apollonios represents the goddess as a
nightmarish leftover from an earlier divine stratum, in one of the earliest
and, indeed, foundational works of Archaic Greek literature, Hesiod’s
Theogony, the goddess is depicted in similar ways to the ‘major’ deities,
and indeed merits inclusion among this class of deities. I explore how the
goddess is depicted in this source to illustrate a recent, normalizing, trend in
the interpretation of Hekate (the pioneering study is Zografou 2010), which
finds Hekate to be as much a part of the divine network as the likes of
Apollo, Hermes, Zeus, and Athena.
Like the much later Apollonian Hekate, the Theogony’s goddess is an
anomalous hangover from an older stratum. Whereas her fellow Titans are
variously defeated by Zeus—for example, by imprisonment, swallowing, or
smiting—she is the one ‘whom Zeus the son of Kronos honoured above all
others’ (411–12) through ‘splendid gifts, to have a share of the earth and the
unfruitful sea’ (413) and ‘to receive a share of honour also from the starry
heaven’ (414), where she is ‘honoured exceedingly by the deathless gods’
(415; all translations in this chapter are my own). This representation of
Hekate as a deity honoured excessively by Zeus and others has been seen as
a problem in need of a solution, and—as is typical of problems identified in
Greek religious scholarship—a solution has been forthcoming. Hesiod has,
it has been argued, taken a break from his narrative of the rise of Zeus to
celebrate a goddess of special significance to his family or community, for
example as the principal goddess of the local peasantry, or as the localized
Boiotian version of the Mistress of Animals, or as the favourite deity of
Hesiod’s family (on these and other such assessments, see Johnston 1990:
22 n. 4).
What such evaluations cannot allow for is how typical Hesiod’s Hekate is
of goddesses and of deities more broadly. Like several of the goddesses of
the Homeric Hymns, she is at once integrated into the divine world
overseen by Zeus, and never wholly subordinated to this god. (On the
‘operational’ power of goddesses in the hymns, see Clay 1989.) Moreover,
as a deity with a range of fields of operation, she is typical of the major
deities. Those she favours include assemblymen, warriors, athletes,
horsemen, seafarers, fishermen, and herdsmen (Hes. Theog. 432–47).
Fishermen, ‘whose business is in the dazzling, tempestuous sea’, call upon
the goddess along with Poseidon (439–42). As a herdsmen’s deity, she is
partnered with Hermes, with whom ‘she is good in the byres at increasing
the stock . . . and in the droves of cattle and herds of goats and flocks of
woolly sheep’ (444–6). This depiction of Hekate co-presiding over
particular fields of competence exemplifies the tendency of the Greeks to
envisage gods working in pairs. For example, Hestia and Hermes are
complementary powers of space (see esp. Vernant 1983: 127–75).
Meanwhile, Athena—an especially busy networker—is paired with a series
of deities including Hephaistos (skilled craft), Demeter (agriculture), and
Ares (war), and, like Hesiod’s Hekate, shares jurisdiction for the sea with
Poseidon and herdsmanship with Hermes (see Burkert 1985: 141; Deacy
2008: 47–58). There is just one aspect that conforms to traits standardly
connected with chthonian powers and even this one falls outside the
standard depiction of the goddess as power of sorcery, the night. This is the
role of kourotrophos, granted by Zeus on his acquisition to power, that
made her ‘a nurse of the young who after that day saw with their eyes the
light of all-seeing Dawn’ (450–52; on kourotrophic deities, see Price 1978;
Boedeker 1983a).
As far as the interpretation of Hekate is concerned, then, the Olympian–
chthonian prism has some mileage. The goddess is depicted in a range of
sources as a power of the Underworld and sorcery, who, in the
simplistically dualistic divine world of Apollonios, is counterpoised to the
courtly and modernized Olympians. However, such a depiction cannot
cover all aspects of Hekate, who is represented comparably to other major
deities as early as Hesiod.
 DIONYSOS: ‘PRINCIPLE THAT DESTROYS
DIFFERENCES’?

Since Nietzsche (1872) made Dionysos the dissolver of boundaries and

purveyor of unity of opposites (see Baeumer 2006: 337–49), and Rohde
‘provided a much more scholarly version’ (Seaford 2006: 7) of Nietzsche’s
god, Dionysos has been understood in relation to various paired opposites,
including polis/margins, Greek/barbarian, god/hero, god/mortal, life/death,
and communality/individuality. This section will consider some of the ways
in which Dionysos was constructed in ancient Greece in relation to a
polarity of Olympian/chthonian and related poles of life/death and
mortal/immortal. It will then examine how, as a Mystery god, Dionysos
variously unifies, mixes, and transcends and transgresses these boundaries
as, in Charles Segal’s words, the ‘principle that destroys differences’ (Segal
1982: 234). The section will illustrate how the concept of an
Olympian/chthonian binary can apply to Dionysos but not in the rigid terms
of the scholarly paradigm.
Dionysos features among the Olympian Twelve, as on the Parthenon
frieze, where a figure generally held to be this god (no better candidate has
come forth with the possible exception of his fellow boundary-crosser,
Herakles) is seated companionably between Hermes, on whose shoulder he
rests his arm, and Demeter, whose left foot crosses his right leg (E24–26;
on the identification of these deities, see Neils 2001: 161–4). As well as
having a home among the great Twelve, Dionysos has some of the
hallmarks of a hero as one born from a divine–mortal (Zeus–Semele) union,
who dies. However, he gets dying out of the way before he is actually born
as he is at once killed and blasted to godhead by the thunderbolt of Zeus.
Then, after being rescued by Zeus and sewn into the god’s body, Dionysos
emerges for a second time as (though) his father’s monogenetic child.
(Ancient accounts of the conception, death, and birth of Dionysos include
Phld. De piet. 60 Gomperz = Hes. fr. 346 MW; P. Oxy 30.2509; Hes. Theog.
942; Pind. Ol. 2.24–6, Pyth. 11.1; Eur. Bacch. 6–12; Apollod. Bibl. 3.4.3–
4.; Nonnus, Dion. 8.413–14). Alternatively, before ever reaching the womb
of Semele, let alone the thigh of Zeus, Dionysos was considered to have
already entered a cycle of death and rebirth. First, he was killed and
dismembered by the Titans. Then his body parts were collected by the gods
and formed into a meal and fed to Semele. Duly impregnated (by her future
son), Semele gave birth to the reborn god. (The various, often esoteric,
sources and their place within the ‘Orphic’ myth of Dionysos are pieced
together in Graf and Johnston 2007: 66–93.)
A concept of Dionysos as a god moving around a cycle of death and life
can be traced at least as far back as one of Heraklitos’s riddles of coinciding
opposites: ‘Were it not for Dionysos for whom they march in procession
and chant the hymn of the phallus, their action would be outstandingly
shameless, but Hades and Dionysos are one, him for whom they rave and
celebrate Lenaia’, B 15 DK). The fragment has been read as a triumph of
reason over an earlier, coarser religious stratum (see Wildberg 2011: esp.
209–11). However, by setting up a polarity of Dionysos/Hades which
intersects with those of life/death, sex/death, and obscenity/piety, the
fragment is not only differentiating the two gods, but depicting them as
coinciding duplicates (see, further, Adomėnas 1999: 92–4; Wildberg 2011:
232).
I am now going to build on what Richard Seaford cautions (2006: esp.
11), namely that there has been a good deal written about Dionysiac
dualities that is overly sweeping and abstract. According to Seaford, the
way to make sense of this aspect of the god is to contextualize it in relation
to Greek concepts of death, afterlife, and the Mystery cult. A comparable
set of Dionysian oppositions and unities to that expressed by Heraklitos is
represented on three fifth-century BCE bone tablets from Olbia (OFB 463–
5), a major location of Dionysiac mysteries. Here, the god is construed as
the outcome or culmination of paired opposites rather than, as in Heraklitos,
being himself presented as one of a pair. One of the tablets is inscribed as
follows: ‘Life death life | peace war | truth falsehood | Dion’ (OFB 465). I
have deliberately kept the name of the god as ‘Dion’ rather than, like Graf
and Johnston (2007: 186), supplying the remaining letters of ‘Dionysos’.
The name ‘Dion’ might be inferring a deity who is ‘god’ or even ‘God’.
(Cf. the ancient conception of Dionysos as the ‘one’ god, on which, see
Versnel 2011.)
I shall now turn to how such a unity of life/death and attendant polarities,
including earth/heaven, thirst/satisfaction, and thirst/drunkenness, is
expressed in a set of tablets dealing with the release from death to a blessed
afterlife by Dionysos Bacchios. These have generated increasing interest
over recent years (see Cole 2003; Graf and Johnston 2007; Edmonds 2011;
and, in this volume, Edmonds, Chapter 37). Inscribed on gold leaves, they
were originally hung around the body of the deceased initiates. The tablets
set out what the deceased person has been advised as an initiate, and inform
—or remind—the initiate how he or she can affect what happens after
death. They date from the fourth century BCE to the mid-second, or even
third, century CE, and have been found in a variety of locations across the
Greek mainland, islands, Italy, Sicily, and Magna Graecia. Thus, they attest
a commonality of Dionysiac worship over several centuries and across the
Greek-speaking world.
Among the tablets’ concern is the relationship between two of the
categories of chthonians that Parker classifies (2011: 80–1; see ‘Polarizing
the Divine’, above)—the ordinary dead and heroes—as well as a possible
third category, the Underworld gods. At 2.11 according to Graf and
Johnston 2007, the deceased is instructed to drink from the waters of
Memory so as, ‘from then on rule among the other heroes’. According to
3.4, the initiate will become ‘a god instead of mortal’. The motif of
transformation into gods is also found at 5.9 and 9.4, and the initiate is
qualified for inclusion among the race of gods at 5.3, 6.3, and 7.3. The kind
of god in question could be a chthonian, akin to the various chthonic deities
evoked in the tablets. These include ‘the queen of the chthonians’ (5.1, 6.1,
7.1, 9.1), chthonian Kore (4.8), Eukles (‘Good Name’ also attested as an
epithet of Hades), and Euboleos (‘Good Counsellor’, a specialized guise of
Dionysos, and of Zeus, and the name of an Eleusinian Mystery deity). (For
Eukles and Euboleos, see 5.2, 6.2, 7.2, 9.2; for discussion, see Graf and
Johnston 2007: 123.) However, this kind of god could be a sky deity rather
than a chthonian. The initiate of tablet 5 has ‘sunk beneath of the breast of
the chthonian Queen’ (5.7), but has also ‘flown out of the heavy, difficult
circle (5.5). At 25.9, the initiate will acquire a new name, Starry, that suits
one who has ascended rather than descended. Alternatively, to make a
choice between which type of journey is being undertaken would be to miss
the point about the coincidence of Dionysos opposites that the tablets
construct.

CONCLUSION
This closing example concerning the liberation of the soul of the deceased
from an ordinary afterlife shows that an Olympian/chthonian—or, at least,
astral/chthonian—binary could have meaning for the Greeks in the
particular context of Dionysiac mysteries. The example also shows that,
rather than being expressed in rigid terms, the relation between the two
poles was a fluid one that interrelated with other oppositions. Thus, it lacks
the abstracted, stand-alone significance that modern scholarship has
accorded it.
An inflexible division of gods into Olympian and chthonian reduces the
divine world to a misleading level of simplicity which says more about the
scholarly environment and Christianized assumptions of the pioneers of the
study of Greek religion than it does about how the ancient Greeks
themselves perceived their gods outside certain deliberately simplified
representations: for example, Isokrates’ to aid his mission to persuade
Philip towards leniency; Aischylos’ to hang together various themes of the
Oresteia; or Apollonios Rhodios’ to present a schematized Hellenistic
literary concept of the divine. The divine world cannot be reduced to a
conception that even some of its adherents have found too ordered, rule-
bound, and consistent to be true. Gods could be ‘Olympian’ and ‘chthonian’
and much more besides. A notion of a strictly polarized divine world is a
skewed one.

SUGGESTED READING
The applicability or otherwise of the categories Olympian and chthonian is
explored in Schlesier 1991/92, which argues for their rejection, and Scullion
1994, which makes a case for their retention. Parker gives an overview of
the state of the debate at 2011: 80–4. On the issue of whether the Greeks
differentiated between Olympian and chthonian sacrifice, or indeed had a
concept thereof, see Hägg and Alroth 1997, Ekroth 2002, and now Parker
2011: 283–6. On the range of traits of Hekate including those typically
understood as chthonian, see Boedeker 1983b and Johnston 1990.
Johnston’s principal interest is the Neoplatonist adaption of the goddess
beyond the time frame of this book, but she also traces the prehistory of this
concept. The interpretation of Hekate as a deity with typical polytheistic
traits has been spearheaded by Zografou 2010. On Hekate and other deities
in the Argonautika, see Lye 2012 and Żybert 2012. The wealth of recent
scholarship on Dionysos includes Seaford 2006 and Schlesier 2011, both of
which evaluate previous debates. Studies in English on the Bacchic gold
leaves include works by Cole 2003, Graf and Johnston 2007, and Edmonds
2011, all of which demonstrate the significance of this body of evidence for
an understanding of Greek religion.

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 CHAPTER 25

GODS—ORIGINS

CAROLINA LÓPEZ-RUIZ

INTRODUCTION: DO ORIGINS MATTER?

IN our need to organize the world around us within graspable categories,

pinning down the ‘origins’ (real or invented) of any particular thing serves
the purpose of both classification and explanation. Scholars of Greek
religion in the last decades, however, have consciously resisted this
impulse, after realizing that the enquiry into ‘origins’ is often a dead end. It
is, unfortunately, the case that, when it comes to the ancient world, ultimate
origins of specific cultural phenomena are usually impossible to retrieve.
Moreover, even when we know them, there is not necessarily an obvious
correlation between the ‘origin’ of the cultural item and its perceived origin,
which usually plays a greater role in its reception and history. More
importantly, it is often not clear how ascertaining origins explains the
function of the specific object of enquiry within its culture. The Greek gods
are no exception and stubbornly elude this type of analysis, since their
origins lie long before the first narrative testimonies about them. Before
Homer and Hesiod (mid to late eighth century BCE), the names of Greek
gods only appear listed in the Mycenaean documentary texts, which provide
little information beyond proving that a god, with his later historical name,
existed in Greece at least by the late thirteenth century BCE. Moreover,
linguistic, literary, archaeological, and iconographic evidence contribute in
different ways to the understanding of the gods’ composite personalities and
trajectories, but not one of these elements in isolation offers a straight
answer to the ‘origins’ question.
The preoccupation with origins has receded since the 1960s and 1970s,
as the study of ancient myth and religion has moved ‘from evolutionism to
functionalism and from an interest in individuals and their thoughts to an
interest in groups and their needs’ (Graf 2009: 130). This shift was
propelled by the structuralist school, led by Jean-Pierre Vernant (1914–
2007), which emphasized the analysis of the pantheon as a whole and the
structures of meaning that governed its internal dynamics, as opposed to
focusing on individual gods. At the same time, Walter Burkert (1931–2015)
revived the previous interests in origins, especially of rituals, while also
attending to the importance of ideological systems and mythical structures
(e.g. the dynamics of the gods as a family system). Burkert also introduced
the study of the gods to the fields of biology and anthropology and
promoted the exploration of Near Eastern comparative evidence.
Comparativism has come to the fore also in the studies by Martin West,
looking into both the Indo-European heritage of (West 2009) and Near
Eastern influences on the ancient Greek gods (West 1997; see, in this
volume, Bremmer, Chapter 40).
Each of these approaches offers valuable insights, but not necessarily into
the gods’ origins proper. More importantly, modern scholarly analyses
might not necessarily represent what Greek worshippers thought at the time
about their gods. To some degree, that will always elude us, but it is,
nonetheless, necessary to begin any discussion by considering cosmogonic
accounts and other mythical texts, as well as non-mythical accounts by
historians and ethnographers. Second, we should contrast ancient views to
modern approaches through which scholars have attempted to reconstruct
the early history of the gods out of pieces of evidence and references not
available in antiquity. These modern tools fall, in turn, into three types:
linguistic (origins of the names, namely, Indo-European, pre-Greek, or
other, such as Near Eastern); comparative (e.g. similarities with other gods
in other cultures); and archaeological (iconography, cultic activities, etc.).
 After surveying these approaches, three case studies (Zeus, Herakles, and
Aphrodite), will exemplify the types of problems and debates surrounding
the enquiry into the gods’ origins, and the need to combine different types
of sources and disciplines.

GREEK PERCEPTIONS

The Greeks told stories about their gods’ births, geographical origins, and
travels. The trajectory of the gods (as well as of sacred objects and statues
representing them) was inseparable from their personality and status, as we
see most explicitly in the Homeric Hymns. Gods, like heroes, were often
imagined to have been born or raised in some remote place at the fringes of
the Greek world, or even outside of it (for instance, Zeus’ birth in Crete,
Apollo’s in Delos, or Dionysos’ wanderings through Asia), only then
establishing their places of worship. The gods were not perceived as static
entities, or as belonging to one place, and the way in which they ‘owned’ a
place and a cult had little to do with their ‘real origins’ (from a modern
scholarly standpoint) and more with the narratives that the Greeks preferred
to tell about the god and the way in which his identity and authority was
constructed through those narratives. For example, in the Homeric Hymn to
Apollo, the god is born on Delos to a wandering Leto, thus connecting his
birth story to the island on which one of his most famous sanctuaries later
thrived; his early wanderings throughout the Greek world then led him to
establishing his oracle at Delphi (Hymn. Hom. Ap. 216–339). Hesiod’s
Theogony showcases how Zeus attained his ruling position after facing
multiple threats since his birth, overcoming them through violent struggles
and wise negotiations. Similar stories of birth, ‘early life’, and wandering
fill other myths about gods, which we cannot discuss here, but, in general,
these mythical narratives have little to do with the historical,
anthropological, origins of the gods.
Furthermore, not all ancient sources (in fact very few) are interested in
explaining the origins of the gods. For instance, although Homer’s epics are
earlier and are a literary model for the Homeric Hymns, they portray, as it
were, a ‘later’ stage in divine politics, one in which a stable order of
Olympian gods is already in place. The poet behind either the Iliad or the
Odyssey is not interested in divine genealogies, which are assumed and tied
to the established family bonds, while his focus is on the heroes on earth
and how they relate and interact with the gods. Still, some interesting
traditions about the gods’ mythological origins occasionally surface in the
Homeric poems: for instance, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione
in the Iliad (5.170–1), unlike in Hesiod, where she is the daughter of
Ouanos (Sky) (Theog. 185–206). Hephaistos also has a different genealogy
in Homer, as the son of Hera and Zeus. In Hesiod, Hera begets him alone, in
response to Athena’s birth from Zeus’ head (Theog. 924–9). Finally, the sea
gods Tethys and Okeanos are, in Homer, the primordial parents of the world
(Il. 14.201, 246, 302), signalling a different cosmogony than the one Hesiod
followed, where Earth and Sky become the primordial couple, sharing the
first stages of creation with other entities (Chaos, Eros, Tartaros, etc.)
(Theog. 116–27).
Hesiod’s Theogony, a poem dedicated specifically to the birth of the
gods, illustrates the point that the Greeks elaborated stories about the gods’
origins to make sense of the gods as they knew them: anthropomorphic
entities mostly born from other gods in an undefined time, forming a
complicated and growing family group. Tracing their origins meant
glimpsing the world’s beginnings. In Hesiod, the earliest components of the
cosmos were (in order of appearance): Chaos, Earth (Gaia), the Underworld
(Tartaros), and Love (Eros); then Darkness (Erebos) and Night (born from
Chaos), and Aither and Day (born from Night) (Theog. 116–33). In the idea
of the ‘first elements’, the tradition of theogonic myth is inseparable from
cosmogony and from the type of enquiry that also produced the beginnings
of natural philosophy (see López-Ruiz 2010: 105–9).
The issue of divine origins became a central matter of philosophical and
theological speculation among the authors of the so-called Orphic
cosmogonies. This corpus is extremely complicated (see West 1983 for an
overview), but it is worth noting that the Orphic poets and thinkers paid
much attention to the etymologies of divine names, whether real or
imagined. They also crafted alternative cosmogonies and theogonies,
including new divine entities (e.g. Protogonos and Phanes), while they
positioned Zeus at the centre of a re-creation of the universe (see López-
Ruiz 2010: 130–70. On old versus new divinities, see also, in this volume,
Kearns, Chapter 3).
 In the Classical period, when the genre of historical writing begins, we
find some interest in the origins of the gods, but not as much as expected.
The best Classical source for this type of discussion is Herodotos,
especially in Book 2.43–64 of his Histories, in which the historian
postulates the non-Greek origins of various Greek beliefs and practices. The
most categorical and famous of his statements is that ‘the names of almost
all the Greek gods came to Greece from Egypt’—albeit not directly but
through the Pelasgians (a name used by Greeks to denote the indigenous
peoples of prehistoric Greece) (2.50.2). Exceptions to this rule are,
according to him, Poseidon (whom he traces to Libya, 2.50.2–3), the
Dioskouroi, Hera, Hestia, Themis, the Graces, and the Nereids (2.50.1).
One can only wish that he had explained what he meant by ‘the names’ (ta
ounomata), an issue outside our scope here (see commentary in Asheri,
Lloyd, and Corcella 2007).
Herodotos elaborates this idea in connection with the oracle of Dodona,
allegedly introduced by priestesses from Egyptian Thebes (2.51–4). Besides
that, he considers Herakles to be, originally, an Egyptian god (2.43–4), the
same worshipped by Phoenicians in Tyre and Thasos (2.44) (meaning
Tyrian Melqart, to whom Herakles was assimilated), and believes that the
seer Melampous learned the worship of Dionysos from the Phoenicians
who came with Kadmos to Boiotia (2.49.3). Similarly, Herodotos traces
Aphrodite to the ‘Heavenly Aphrodite’ of the Phoenicians from Askalon
(i.e. Ashtart/Astarte) (1.105.3), from where she was brought to Greece via
Cythera (on which see ‘Aphrodite: A Cypro-Phoenician Goddess and her
Names’, below). The historian, finally, attributed the ‘stabilization’ of the
Greek pantheon to the poetry of Hesiod and Homer (2.53).
Herodotos’ enquiries are the best example of how the Greeks, not unlike
modern scholars, reached their own conclusions, informed by available
sources and through a collage of synchronic perceptions and deductions,
whether these contained ‘scientific’ truths or not. Herodotos also shows
that, whenever the Greeks were in contact with other peoples, the process of
interpretatio was bound to take place, whereby the Greeks drew
comparisons between their own gods and those of others: Demeter and Isis,
Dionysos and Osiris, Aphrodite and Astarte, Zeus and Amon, Zeus and
Baal, Herakles and Melqart, and so on. Herodotos also views the rites he
observed in Egypt as equivalent to Greek rituals. This does not mean he
overlooked cultural differences, since his observations often dwell on stark
contrasts of conduct and customs. Nonetheless, when it came to the gods
and their rituals he noted that there was a tendency to draw common
denominators, whether Egyptian or Greek names were used. Hence, the
gods and their perceived origins served as loci that facilitated the ongoing
processes of cultural exchange.
There are also cases in which the introduction of new gods falls within
historical times (see, in this volume, Anderson, Chapter 21). The cult to the
Anatolian ‘Great Mother’, the goddess Kybele, was adopted in the Greek
world in the sixth century BCE, and she maintained an ‘Asiatic’ exotic
identity even when she was partly assimilated into Greek mother-goddess
figures such as Gaia and Demeter. The god Asklepios was introduced in
Athens in 420/19 BCE from his famous cult in Epidaurus. The tragedian
Sophokles, apparently, temporarily hosted the live snake that represented
the newcomer (Parker 1996: 175). The inauguration of a cult to the
Thracian goddess Bendis in the Piraeus is alluded to at the beginning of
Plato’s Republic (328a), and attested in other sources. Adonis, Aphrodite
Ourania, and the thiasos (drinking association) of Sabazios were other cults
introduced by Cypro-Phoenician settlers in Athens and slowly taken up by
the Greek population (Parker 1996: 160–1).
In Hellenistic times, when Greek culture spread throughout the Near
East, the process of interpretatio was part and parcel of the cultural
encounters between Greeks and others, with whom they shared a
polytheistic system with a daunting capacity for expansion. In some areas
of Hellenistic Egypt, Demeter was worshipped as Isis; but Isis herself, in
her Egyptian form, was also accepted in the Greek and Roman worlds
during this period (Johnston 2004: 104–5; Stephens 2005). We even have
cases of the introduction of new, composite, gods in the Greek pantheon,
such as Serapis in Alexandria, usually attributed to the deliberate agency of
the first Macedonian king in Egypt, Ptolemy I Soter, in order to facilitate
Greek–Egyptian cultural integration. The reality behind this event, however,
is more complex, as the Osiris-Apis composite god in his Egyptian version
was already worshipped by the Hellenomemphites (Greeks settled at
Memphis) before the Ptolemies, where it coexisted with the Hellenized
Serapis (Moyer 2011: 147–8; see also, in this volume, Kleibl, Chapter 41).
Regarding the origins of the Olympian gods and the host of gods of the
‘older generations’ (primeval and nature gods, nymphs, etc.), it is a small
consolation that the Greeks themselves were as ignorant as we are, if not
more. They too projected into the remote past deductions from the present
configuration of things, constructing continuities that were, more often than
not, fantastic or inaccurate.

MODERN ENQUIRIES

Two developments in the history of scholarship have changed the field of

classics and greatly expanded the horizons of early Greek civilization,
offering new insights into the Greek pantheon: first, the development of
comparative linguistics since the late eighteenth century situated Greek in
the family of the Indo-European languages. Second, the decipherment of
the Linear B script in the 1950s demonstrated that the late Bronze Age
Aegean was Greek-speaking, pushing back by over four centuries the first
testimonies of the Greek language, to about the thirteenth century BCE if not
before. The earliest testimonies of Greek were, until then, the poems of
Homer and Hesiod and the roughly contemporary, early alphabetic
inscriptions from the mid-eighth century BCE onwards. So what do these
sources tell us about the gods’ origins?
Beginning with this second development, Mycenaean Greek texts
provide the oldest attestation of the Greek gods. These documents, however,
are not literary but exclusively administrative: they are the records of the
Mycenaean palaces, with lists of properties, offerings, labour forces, taxes,
and so on. This means we have only bare names, listed in relation to
offerings, but no information about their functions or qualities (see Ventris
and Chadwick 1956). Moreover, only about one third of the Greek gods of
the Archaic and Classical period appear in these documents. The gods listed
in the Linear B tablets whose names survived into historical times are: Ares
(and a goddess Areja), Artemis, Dionysos, Eileithya, Enyalios, Erinys,
Hephaistos, Hera, Hermes, the Mother of the Gods, Poseidon (with a
feminine counterpart Posidaeja), the Winds, and Zeus (with a feminine
counterpart Diwija). There are also names of independent gods that become
epithets in later religion (e.g. Enyalios, Potnia, Paion). Hera, also, might
have been originally a title for one or multiple goddesses, from the same
word as ‘hero’ (heros, itself of unclear origin) (Dowden 2007: 48). She
might not have always been the consort of Zeus, and alternatives
occasionally appear: in Homer’s Iliad (5.170–1) Dione is his wife, a consort
attested in a cult at Dodona (this or another Dione is mentioned in Hesiod’s
Theogony 17). Her name is, strictly speaking, an equivalent of that of Zeus:
literally, she is ‘Ms Zeus’ (like the Mycenaean Diwija). In the Homeric
Hymn to Apollo 1–13, to give another variant, Leto is the official consort of
Zeus on Olympos.
More striking than the continuities are the absences from these texts,
specifically of the principal ‘Pan-Hellenic’ gods Aphrodite, Apollo, Athena,
and Demeter. This does not exclude the possibility that they were already
part of the pantheon of some Greek community not represented in these
texts. However, as we shall see, Aphrodite may well be a goddess imported
from the Levant or Cyprus in the Iron Age. Apollo is often also considered
a relatively ‘young’ god, whose name resists analysis. One hypothesis
connects it with the apella, a warrior gathering in some Greek states
(Dowden 2007: 49). Once idealized as the living image of the young Greek
athlete (Graf 2009: 172–7), Apollo’s character is complex and his multiple
spheres of jurisdiction (music, plague, prophecy, purification, healing, the
sun) make him akin to both Indo-European and Near Eastern deities,
especially to the West Semitic pestilence-god Resheph and to Egyptian
solar divinities (Burkert 1985: 143–9; West 1997: 55; Dowden 2007: 48–
51; Graf 2009: 130–42). As for Athena, she is, in all likelihood, a pre-Greek
goddess, probably attached from her very beginning to the name of the city
of Athens (Athena), as she already appears in Mycenaean as atana potinija,
‘Lady of Athana (i.e., Athens)’ (Burkert 1985: 139; Deacy 2008: 33–44).
Demeter’s origins might be quite old, if her name can be analysed as da-
meter/mater, ‘Mother Goddess’, understanding the da as some form for
‘earth’, although its equivalence with Gaia and Ge is not as straightforward
linguistically as it might appear. Poseidon may have originally been the
consort of Demeter, if his name is analysed as containing the same element,
Potei-da-on (Dowden 2007: 48).
Despite its limitations, the Mycenaean evidence has shaken some
previous assumptions about the formation of the Greek pantheon: Apollo,
traditionally perceived as the ‘quintessential’ Greek god, is absent, while
Dionysos, already considered an imported and exotic god by the Greeks,
turns out to be among the old Mycenaean gods. The ambivalent god of wine
was ‘structurally’ foreign, as required by his qualities as an outsider who
brought a necessary degree of relief and disorder to the communities by
means of wine, drama, and initiation rites (Seaford 2006; Dowden 2007: 48;
cf. Burkert 1985: 161–7). Otherness was a function of his identity in
Classical times, not of his historical origins. Finally, little can be said about
other principal gods, including Artemis, Hermes, and Hephaistos. Their
names are obscure and there is no ancient lore about their origins beyond
their mythical birth stories. Scholarship, therefore, tends to set aside the
question of their ‘ultimate origins’ and focus instead on their
characterizations and cults (Dowden 2007: 48; for Artemis, Dowden 2007:
51–2 and Burkert 1985: 149–52; for Hermes, Burkert 1985: 156–7).
The Greek pantheon as we know it, therefore, was neither ‘set’ in the late
Bronze Age nor completely unfamiliar, as quite a degree of continuity is
evident. In fact, the pantheon was never completely ‘set’, as local
constellations of gods varied in configuration, and even in historical times
the pantheon continued to expand. The idea of the ‘Twelve Gods’ or
Dodekatheon was itself unstable (it does not ‘work’ unless main deities are
excluded) and seemingly a relatively late construction, possibly based on
Anatolian models (Dowden 2007: 43–4; Bremmer 2010a: 6).
To the epigraphical testimony provided by the late Bronze Age and
Archaic texts, we can add a different type of ‘linguistic archaeology’
provided by the field of historical linguistics. This discipline has the unique
potential to reach independent conclusions about the gods’ origins. To
simplify the working principle, if the name of a god can be traced to a pre-
Greek Indo-European formation (by comparison with other Indo-European
languages), it can be argued that the divinity, along with that name, came to
the Hellenic peninsula with the Greek speakers sometime in the early
second millennium BCE (as opposed to having been independently formed
in Greece or imported later). The case of Zeus provides a good example: his
name is clearly Indo-European, from the root *djew-/diw- that also lies
behind our word ‘day’. However, Zeus is really unique in his straight-
forward ‘Indo-Europeanness’, and his clear-cut linguistic genealogy does
not completely match his historical personality (see ‘Zeus: More than an
Indo-European Sky-God’, below). It is also interesting that the Greeks did
not use the common word for ‘god’ in the Indo-European languages, that is,
the one used in Latin (deus) and derived from the same root as ‘day’. While
Greek maintains an adjective dios for ‘brilliant, divine’, their word for ‘god’
(theos) is related to the word for ‘sacred’, and has cognates only with Indo-
European languages attested in Western Asia and Anatolia (Armenian,
Lykian, Lydian, and Luwian; Bremmer 2010a: 1).
Other, more obscure deities, have Indo-European names; examples
include Zeus’ consort in Boiotia, called Plataia, ‘Broad’, with parallels in
the Vedas, and Helen, who was worshipped in Sparta since the Bronze Age
and, some think, may be traced to a ‘sun-maiden’ divinity, from the same
root as helios (Bremmer 2010a: 1–2). To these we can tentatively add the
name of Demeter and the Mycenaean goddess Potnia, ‘mistress’, from a
root *pot- (cf. Greek posis, ‘master’, Latin potis, ‘able’, ‘empowered’) also
present in the name of Poseidon. As an epithet, the title is, in historical
times, attached to Athena, Hera, Demeter, and other goddesses. In turn, a
subset of Greek gods classified as Indo-European have, as names, Greek
words proper, usually divinizations and personifications of natural
phenomena, such as Helios (Sun), Eos (Dawn), Nyx (Night), Hypnos
(Sleep), Thanatos (Death), to mention but a few (see Stafford and Herrin
2005). Still, from the plethora of personified divinized elements attested in
Hesiod and Homer, only Helios (Sun) and Eos (Dawn) have a traceable
Indo-European lineage beyond Greek culture (West 2009: 194–227).
To sum up, our scholarly traditions have strongly attributed to Greek
culture an Indo-European inheritance, but we have to acknowledge the fact
that only a small part of the Greek pantheon can be traced to a pre-Greek,
Indo-European milieu. This is a problem only if we insist on equating
linguistic kinship or genealogy with cultural trajectories and even ethnic
identities. The Greek language might be essentially Indo-European, but
Greek culture or rather cultures took form in an eastern Mediterranean
context, in contact with both a pre-Greek Aegean substratum and with Near
Eastern civilizations (Arvidsson 2006: 1–62; López-Ruiz 2010: 8–16). The
closest Indo-European peoples they interacted with were Anatolian
(Hittites, Luwians, Lykians, and others), who were themselves culturally
integrated within the Mesopotamian and Levantine realms. Both Greek and
Anatolian cultures defy the rigid classifications of historical linguistics that
are sometimes used to delimit and separate cultural entities. The Greek gods
indicate the contrary, that the borders of religious identities are porous and
malleable and change over time, and they do not necessarily follow our
modern discipline-oriented categories.
 ZEUS: MORE THAN AN INDO-EUROPEAN
SKY-GOD

As already mentioned, Zeus is the standard-bearer of the Indo-European

component of the Greek pantheon. It is indeed significant that the head of
the pantheon and ‘king of the gods’, bears a clearly pre-Greek name of
Indo-European stock. The ‘day-god’ or ‘sky-god’ has left traces in many
Indo-European cultures: examples are Dyaus pitar (Indic sky-god), Jupiter
or Diespiter (Roman sky-god), the Germanic *Tiwaz (which lies behind our
Tues-day), as well as the word for ‘day’ in Latin (dies) and the Greek word
eudia (‘good weather’) (Burkert 1985: 125–6; Dowden 2006: 9–10, 2007:
48).
However, Zeus’ ‘true origin’ as an Indo-European sky-god does not
faithfully capture his character’s development in historical times, when his
assimilation into the contemporary storm-god figures of adjacent
Mediterranean cultures is most salient. Zeus indeed shared with the Near
Eastern storm-gods a similar place in what was a dominant mythical and
theological structure: a ‘succession of gods’, in which the youngest
generation of weather-gods overcomes the older gods and monstrous
enemies and establishes a new order (López-Ruiz 2010: 84–129).
Allegedly, Zeus’ image as a storm-god who rides the clouds and wields
lightning is more dominant than his image as a deity of the ‘Day’ or Sky’.
He is the ‘lightener’ (asteropetês), and thunderbolts are the ‘missiles/shafts
of great Zeus’ (Hes. Theog. 707–8). Zeus shares attributes, rank,
iconographic and literary images with his counterparts, namely Hurro-
Hittite Teshub and Tarhun (Luwian Tarhunt), Mesopotamian Marduk, but
perhaps especially with Canaanite Baal: in the Ugaritic texts Baal dwells on
the summit of a mountain to the north, Mt Saphon (Mt Kasios for the
Greeks), like Zeus on Olympos (Brown 2001: 47–9; Lane Fox 2008: 242–
58), and his voice and weapons are thunder; Baal’s sister Anat holds a
prominent place in the pantheon (though not as his partner, like Hera); and
he himself is the son of El/Ilu, a supreme older god, equated in antiquity
with Cronus. One of Zeus’ most common epithets is ‘cloud-gatherer’
(nephelegereta), which mirrors the epithet of Baal as the ‘cloud-rider’ (rkb
‘rpt). In turn, similar epithets are used for the North-West Semitic storm-
god Adad (Haddad), a variant of Baal, such as ‘lord of lighting’ or
‘establisher of clouds’ (West 1997: 115, 295, 400, n.55; Brown 2001: 145–
7). The fact that Zeus was born and reared on Crete, according to the main
tradition (Hes. Theog. 453–91), also situates him on an off-centre
crossroads between the Near East and Greece. (For discussion of other non-
Greek epithets of Zeus, see, in this volume, Bremmer, Chapter 40.)
In Greek literature and mythology, therefore, the personality and
attributes of Zeus are far less determined by the Indo-European vertical
(diachronic or genealogical) connection to a ‘Bright Sky’ or ‘Day’ deity
than by the horizontal (synchronic or historical) line that connects him to
the other Near Eastern heads of pantheons. Those were his true peers, in a
network not unlike that of the city-state kings who partook in the eastern
Mediterranean cultural and economic koine in the late Bronze Age, and
who called each other ‘brother’.

HERAKLES: A PAN-MEDITERRANEAN
FIGURE

Even more than his father Zeus, Herakles is a character that resists clear
classification as Indo-European. While the Greeks analysed his name as
Hera-kle(o)s, having something to do with Hera and her ‘glory’ or ‘fame’
(kleos), this is probably an artificial etymology for what is most likely an
originally non-Greek name (Burkert 1985: 210). Born in Thebes from the
union of Zeus with a mortal woman, his wanderings and colourful exploits
made him a truly pan-Mediterranean hero, accepted on Olympos as a god
after his death. Herakles absorbed the attributes and stories of many other
local heroes and gods throughout the Mediterranean, and he might have
originated from a non-Greek figure to begin with. It has been suggested, for
instance, that Herakles stemmed from the chief Mesopotamian god of the
Underworld, Nergal, who was also called Erakal and ‘Lord of Erkalla (the
Great City)’. Not only is Herakles quite at home in the Underworld in his
several incursions there, but Nergal is often represented with a lion, bow,
and club, like the Greek superhero. It is also evident that some motifs in
Herakles’ myths have precedents in the Near East, such as that of a hero
fighting a seven-headed snaky monster (similar to the Hydra), which
appears in Mesopotamian and Ugaritic iconography. The Babylonian god
Marduk, in turn, fights and kills twelve enemies in the Enuma Elish, the
same number as Herakles’ labours (though this number also has
independent astrological connotations). His similarities with Babylonian
hero-king Gilgamesh are also remarkable. They were both partly
assimilated to Nergal, they both killed monsters, and they both travelled to
the edges of the known world and entered the Underworld. As with other
figures discussed here, the Near Eastern features of the hero-god are not
necessarily incompatible with his roots in Indo-European lore: for instance,
the Vedic figure Indra or Trita fought a three-headed monster and carried
away cattle that were hidden in a cave, a striking parallel to Herakles’
capture of the cattle of the three-headed Geryon (for the comparative
evidence, see Burkert 1979: 78–88; West 1997: 458–72). Herakles,
therefore, is a good example of a pre-historic figure of ‘agglutinating’
characteristics, all contributing to his ‘mythical DNA’, as it were, rendering
our linguistic and cultural demarcations obsolete.

APHRODITE: A CYPRO-PHOENICIAN
GODDESS AND HER NAMES

The earliest extant account of the birth of Aphrodite is in Hesiod’s

Theogony 185–206, where she emerges from the foam produced by
Ouranos’ severed genitalia thrown into the sea after Cronus castrated him.
Her birth by parthenogenesis from Ouranos (Sky), however, does not agree
with the version in the Homeric poems, in which she is assumed to be the
daughter of Zeus (she is called dios thygater), and in which her mother,
mentioned in only one passage, is Dione (see section ‘Greek Perceptions’;
Il. 5.170–1; cf. also Apollod. Bibl. 1.3.1). Some scholars rely on
Aphrodite’s relationship to Zeus in Homer, and on comparative evidence,
such as the Ushas of the Sanskrit hymns of the Rig Veda, to argue for her
origin in an Indo-European Dawn-Goddess, who is known for her celestial
connotations and her sensual beauty. A goddess such as this could have
later bifurcated in Greek religion into two goddesses, Eos (Dawn) and
Aphrodite (Cyrino 2010: 23–5). Following in Hesiod’s footsteps, others
have accepted the alleged link between Aphrodite’s name and the Greek
aphros, ‘foam’, and to an older Indo-European root for ‘foam’ or ‘cloud’
(cf. Indic *abrha), to which the suffix dj- (same as in Greek dios/dia) would
have been added, either related to ‘brightness’ or directly to the name of
Zeus (Cyrino 2010: 26).
On the other hand, close connections were drawn already in antiquity
between Aphrodite and the Phoenician Love-Goddess Ashtart (Gr. Astarte).
This has led scholars to attempt to explain her name from the Semitic
standpoint. It is possible, some postulate, that the name ‘Aphrodite’ was
simply ‘the way Greeks got their mouths around some form of the
Phoenician goddess Astarte’ (Dowden 2007: 48; cf. Cyrino 2010: 26).
Relying on the goddess’ association with Cyprus and the Phoenicians,
Martin West (2000) has proposed connecting the name with a hypothetical
Cypro-Phoenician cult title prazit (or the like), from a Canaanite word prazi
‘country-town’ (‘Lady of the Villages’?). Be that as it may, the name is
originally not Greek, and all other evidence points to Aphrodite’s genesis in
the Levant or Cyprus.
A constant in the figure of Aphrodite is the geographical connection with
the islands of Cyprus and Cythera. This is reflected in her epithets Cypris
and Cythereia, and the derived Cyprogeneia, ‘born on Cyprus’. Hesiod,
Homer, and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite assume these connections, as
do later authors (e.g. Hdt. 1.105.2–3). But it is Herodotos who introduces
another important referent for Aphrodite’s early history, namely, her
identification with the Phoenician Love- and Sex-Goddess Ashtart (cf. also
Paus. 1.14.7). Thus, when the historian and ethnographer talks about the
great antiquity of the temple of ‘Heavenly Aphrodite’ in Askalon, he
remarks that it is ‘the oldest of all the temples of the goddess, for even the
temple in Cyprus originated from there’. Herodotos is referring to the
temple of Phoenician Ashtart, which he then specifically ties with the Greek
cult, adding, ‘as for the one on Cythera, it was Phoenicians who founded it,
who came from this same land of Syria’ (Hdt. 1.105.3, my translation).
The two goddesses were identified early on, and, indeed, Phoenician
Ashtart was exported to Cyprus, as attested epigraphically and
archaeologically at Kition since the end of the ninth century BCE and later at
Paphos (Lipinski 1992, s.v. Astarté). Her sanctuary and cult in that city
achieved widespread fame well into Roman times (see e.g. Hom. Od.
8.362–3; Hom. Hymn Aph. 58–67; Paus.1.14.7; Diod. Sic. 5.75.5). The link
between the goddess and Paphos is also reflected in the story of King
Pygmalion (same as Phoenician Pumayyaton), who fell in love with a
statue, which the goddess brought to life, and with whom he begot a
daughter called Paphos (Ov. Met. 10.243–97).
The goddess’ connection with Cythera, however, is more elusive. In his
Theogony (192–6), Hesiod made the goddess stop first at Cythera and then
arrive at her main religious centre on Cyprus. A temple dedicated to her and
mentioned in later sources (Paus. 3.23.1) has been ‘located tentatively’ near
the acropolis of the city of Cythera (Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella 2007: 55),
but a Phoenician foundation (as per Herodotos’ testimony) cannot be
ascertained, and it is not likely that her cult there predates the epithet.
Again, a Levantine connection might be at play. Sometime before Hesiod,
the Greeks may have adopted the name or title of a Phoenician goddess,
formed after the Semitic Craftsman-God Kothar or Kuthar (cf. Ugaritic
Kothar-wa-Hasis). This god was identified with Hephaistos in antiquity,
which would explain the rare myth in which Aphrodite is Hephaistos’ wife
(Od. 8.266–366). This feminine divine title (Kuthariya or the like), in time,
would have been re-analysed as Cythereia and reinterpreted as related to the
island of Cythera (West 1997: 56–7).
Moreover, Aphrodite’s association with Ouranos also points to a
Phoenician connection. The goddess is commonly referred to and
worshipped as ‘Heavenly Aphrodite’ (Ourania) in Greek epigraphical and
literary sources (e.g. Herodotos, Plato, Pausanias), an aspect that squarely
matches the enthronement of Semitic Ashtart as ‘Queen of Heaven’ in the
Levant. This characterization invited philosophical speculation about the
existence of two different types of Aphrodite: a ‘heavenly’ one,
representing sublime love, and a more earthly one, representing ‘lower’
sexual needs, including prostitution. The first one was Aphrodite Ourania
and the second was called Pandemos, ‘of all the people’ (e.g. Pl. Symp.
180d) (see Rosenzweig 2004: chs 2 and 5). The Levantine ‘vein’ of
Aphrodite also partly clarifies her connection with Adonis (e.g. Apollod.
Bibl. 3.14.4; Ov. Met. 10.503–739). The ‘dying and rising’ youth and
beloved of the goddess shares essential features with Babylonian
Dumuzi/Tammuz (Burkert 1985: 177), and his cult flourished in Byblos and
Cyprus (both within the Phoenician orbit), from where it was later adopted
in Athens and Alexandria (Parker 1996: 160; cf. also Brown 1995: 245;
West 1997: 57).
The ancient identification of Aphrodite with Semitic Ashtart explains
some of the accents of the Love-Goddess, such as her occasional portrayal
as ‘Mistress of Beasts’, as when she strides across Mount Ida with wild
beasts in the Hymn to Aphrodite (68–74), and as a potential Warrior-
Goddess (e.g. in Hom. Il. 5.352–430, where she is, however, scorned as
unfit for battle). The Semitic goddess, indeed, encompassed these features,
as did her counterparts, Mesopotamian Ishtar and Egyptian Isis. But the
realms of the wild and weapons were, in Greece, usually allocated to the
figures of Artemis and Athena. Furthermore, the ancient belief that there
existed institutionalized sacred prostitution at Aphrodite’s sanctuaries in
Corinth (mentioned only by Strabo 8.6.21 (C 379)) may also derive from
her general identification with Near Eastern sex-goddesses, whose temples
included prostitutes, as noted by ancient sources (e.g. Shamhat in the Epic
of Gilgamesh, Tablets I–II; Hdt. 1.199; Euseb. Vit. Const. 3.55, 3.58). Once
more, Cyprus might provide the missing link, since the cult of the Greek
and Semitic goddess overlaps there. Finally, Aphrodite shares with Ashtart
the protection of seafarers (Aphrodite is called Limenia, Euploia, Pontia,
etc.) and with doves, among other things (see West 1997: 56–7 and Budin
2003).
We may close the discussion on Aphrodite by revisiting Hesiod’s ‘birth
story’ (Theog. 189–200) in light of the above factors. The main components
of his account, namely, her descent from Ouranos, her emergence from the
foam around his genitals, and her connections with the two islands, seem to
be deliberate explanations of her already obscure or misunderstood name
and epithets, and how they relate to her birth, the geography of her cult, and
her personality. The epithet Cythereia, whatever its origins, was, by
Hesiod’s time, understood as pertaining to the island of Cythera, while
Aphrodite’s connection with Cyprus was prominent and historically
accurate. The name ‘Aphrodite’ was obscure to the Greek speakers, so its
resemblance to ‘foam’ (aphros) was creatively mythologized by Hesiod (or
others before him). Her birth from Ouranos was probably a way of
integrating her title Ourania, ‘Heavenly’, within the theogonic scheme,
while the explanation of her parthenogenesis through the severed genitals in
the sea allowed for an ingenious integration of the ‘foam’ etymology and
her connections with the sea, and even for a pun on genitals and flirtatious
smiles (Theog. 200). In other words, Hesiod tries to resolve poetically the
thorny questions about origins that the modern scholar tries to resolve
scientifically; all the while both theories remain quite removed from
historical (or prehistorical) origins.

CONCLUSION

It is apparent that, even when a hypothesis is advanced about the origins of

a god’s name, myth, or cult, we should avoid taking up an essentialist or
reductionist position. Such a position would, for instance, ascribe for Zeus
either an exclusively Indo-European cachet, or an exclusively Near Eastern
one, or would see Aphrodite as a Phoenician goddess above all. Even
knowing the layers of both Indo-European and Near Eastern aspects that
formed the gods’ characters, both figures were ultimately as Greek as Greek
could be, because being ‘Greek’ encompassed precisely the kind of cross-
cultural contact that produced such complex figures. The Greeks not only
appropriated foreign elements and integrated them in their own discourse of
cultural identity, but also hyper-characterized elements of their culture as
‘foreign’ even when they were strictly not, or when they had been well
integrated into their religious landscape. Gods such as Dionysos and
Aphrodite are good examples of the productive ambivalence of this self-
conscious exoticism.
All in all, there are multiple ways in which modern scholars might
hypothesize a god’s origins. The Greeks’ own perception of their gods can
be scrutinized through historiographical and literary testimonies, while
independent, modern conclusions might be reached through historical
linguistics, archaeological evidence, inscriptions, iconography, comparative
mythology and literature, and anthropology. Our knowledge of the early
history of the Greek gods will advance only through the collaboration and
debate among different disciplines and methodologies. And even so, as the
cases discussed in this chapter show, we can reach only partial and
composite views about the Greek gods, which do not necessarily do justice
to the local and synchronic perception of a god or goddess.
SUGGESTED READING
For general topics and authors, consult entries in OCD and NP. For early
iconography of the gods, consult LIMC and Gantz 1993. For Linear B and
origins, see Rougemont 2005, Bremmer 2010a: 2–6. For a compendium of
Indo-European mythological and poetic motifs, see West 2009. A basic
source for Greek religion is still Burkert 1985, but Parker 2011 offers new
perspectives. Parker 1996 is a thorough study of Athenian religion, with
chapter 9 focusing on the introduction of new gods. On the gods, see also
essays in Bremmer and Erskine 2010. For divine personifications in the
Greek world, consult Stafford and Herrin 2005. Recent studies of several
gods have appeared in the Routledge series ‘Gods and Heroes of the
Ancient World’, bringing up to date the scholarly discussion about Zeus
(Dowden 2006), Dionysos (Seaford 2006), Athena (Deacy 2008), Apollo
(Graf 2009), Aphrodite (Cyrino 2010), and Herakles (Stafford 2012).

REFERENCES
Arvidsson, S. 2006. Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science. Chicago.
Asheri, D., Lloyd, A., and Corcella, A. 2007. A Commentary on Herodotus Books I–IV, ed. O.
Murray and A. Moreno. Oxford.
Bremmer, J. 2010a. ‘Introduction: The Greek Gods in the Twentieth Century’, in The Gods of
Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations, ed. J. Bremmer and A. Erskine, 1–18. Edinburgh.
Bremmer, J. 2010b. ‘Hephaestus Sweats or How to Construct an Ambivalent God’, in The Gods of
Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations, ed. J. Bremmer and A. Erskine, 193–208.
Edinburgh.
Bremmer, J. and Erskine, A. eds. 2010. The Gods of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations.
Edinburgh.
Brown, J. P. 1995, 2000, 2001. Israel and Hellas (3 vols) (BZAW 231, 276, 299). Berlin and New
York.
Budin, S. 2003. The Origin of Aphrodite. Bethesda.
Burkert, W. 1979. Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual. Berkeley, CA.
Burkert, W. 1985 [1977]. Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, trans. J. Raffan. Oxford.
Cyrino, M. S. 2010. Aphrodite. London.
Deacy, S. 2008. Athena. London.
Dowden, K. 2006. Zeus. London.
Dowden, K. 2007. ‘Olympian Gods, Olympian Pantheon’, in A Companion to Greek Religion, ed. D.
Ogden, 41–55. Malden, MA.
Gantz, T. 1993. Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. 2 vols. Baltimore, MD.
Graf, F. 2009. Apollo. London.
Johnston, S. I. 2004. ‘Mysteries’, in Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide, ed. S. I. Johnston, 98–
111. Cambridge.
Lane Fox, R. 2008. Traveling Heroes: Greeks and their Myths in the Epic Age of Homer. London.
Lipinski, E. ed. 1992. Dictionnaire de la Civilisation Phénicienne et Punique. Paris.
López-Ruiz, C. 2010. When the Gods Were Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East.
Cambridge.
Moyer, I. 2011. Egypt and the Limits of Hellenism. Cambridge.
Parker, R. 1996. Athenian Religion: A History. Oxford.
Parker, R. 2011. On Greek Religion. Ithaca, NY.
Rosenzweig, R. 2004. Worshipping Aphrodite: Art and Cult in Classical Athens. Ann Arbor, MI.
Rougemont, F. 2005. ‘Les noms des dieux dans les tablettes inscrites en linéaire B’, in Nommer les
dieux. Théonymes, épithètes, épiclèses dans l’Antiquité, ed. N. Belayche, 325–88. Turnhout.
Seaford, R. 2006. Dionysos. London.
Stafford, E. and Herrin, J. eds. 2005. Personification in the Greek World: from Antiquity to
Byzantium. London.
Stafford, S. 2012. Herakles. London.
Stephens, S. 2005. ‘Lessons of the Crocodile’, in Imperial Trauma: The Powerlessness of the
Powerful: Symposium on Imperial Trauma, part I, Common Knowledge 11, 215–39.
Ventris, M. and Chadwick, J. 1956. Documents in Mycenaean Greek: Three Hundred Selected
Tablets from Knossos, Pylos and Mycenae with Commentary and Vocabulary. Cambridge.
West, M. L. 1983. The Orphic Poems. Oxford.
West, M. L. 1997. East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford.
West, M. L. 2000. ‘The Name of Aphrodite’, Glotta 76: 133–8.
West, M. L. 2009. Indo-European Poetry and Myth. Oxford.
 CHAPTER 26

HEROES—LIVING OR DEAD?

GUNNEL EKROTH

INTRODUCTION: DEAD BUT DIVINE

A Greek hero had been a living character, either in myth or reality, but only
once dead did his career as a cult recipient begin. After death the hero could
interact with the living, help and grant requests, or become angry and
dangerous and be in need of appeasement. Heroes could even manifest
physically among the living and, in this sense, a hero had a life after death.
Such circumstances affect the relation of heroes to gods, the ordinary dead,
and their worshippers, but also our perception of these beings. For an
ancient Greek, this issue would probably have been irrelevant, but modern
scholarship has to grapple with the fact that heroes encompass aspects of
both immortality and mortality, and are connected to both gods and men.
The ancient evidence for hero-cults consists of literary sources,
inscriptions, archaeological evidence, and iconography (Ekroth 2007). To
begin with, modern scholarship was indiscriminate in its use of sources for
the study of hero cult. Information derived from Greek, Roman, and
Byzantine authors, as well as scholia, lexicographers, and grammarians
were mixed up, with little consideration of differences in time and character
of the sources, or of the changes that may have taken place, producing a
skewed image of heroes and their cults. The increasing incorporation of
epigraphical and archaeological evidence has led to a re-evaluation of the
often static and standardized image presented in modern handbooks, and
recognition of the rich diversity and continuous developments of heroes and
their cults.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF DEATH

The overriding concerns in the study of Greek heroes have been the role of
death in the perception of these figures, and how to orient heroes between
gods and ordinary mortals. Traditionally, hero-cults have been assumed to
have developed from the cult of the dead, an origin affecting both cult
practices and the nature of the heroes. If being dead was the only criterion
for understanding and defining heroes the issue would be simple, as heroes
are dead while gods are not. However, the mode of burial, the ritual
attention heroes got, and the fact that they were regarded as being able to
interact with the living show that heroes have as much in common with the
gods as with the regular dead.
The modern understanding of heroes as linked to the deceased and the
Underworld ties in with another major discussion within the study of Greek
religion, the Olympian–chthonian paradigm (see this, in volume, Deacy,
Chapter 24). The location of heroes in the chthonian category has
dominated the interpretation of hero-cults (Stengel 1920: 105–55; Farnell
1921; Burkert 1985 [1977]: 205; Scullion 1994; Scullion 2000). The
questioning of this model and its value for hero-cults (and for Greek
religion in general) lies at the centre of the modern debate surrounding
Greek heroes, while the chthonian character of heroes and their cults has
been shown to be a result of an uncritical application of the literary sources
(Schlesier 1991–1992; Ekroth 2002).
The nature of heroes, the questions of who became one and how, as well
as the use and meaning of the term heros have been debated. A hero can be
defined as a person who has lived and died, either in myth or in real life.
This constitutes the difference between a hero and a god, who is immortal
(although there are traditions of certain gods having tombs, such as Zeus
and Dionysos). A hero usually had a tomb, which could be the focus of a
cult, though some heroes were thought simply to have disappeared from the
surface of the earth. The distinction between a hero and an ordinary dead
person lay in the notice paid to heroes after death; they attracted attention
on a more public level. The worshippers usually did not have a personal
connection to heroes, unlike in the case of the ordinary deceased who were
looked after by their immediate family. The hero was also a local
phenomenon worshipped at one particular location, while gods were
Panhellenic, though certain heroes had a geographical spread recalling that
of gods. The fluidity of the hero concept is illustrated by Herakles
(Verbanck-Piérard 1989; Lévêque and Verbanck-Piérard 1992). Born a
mortal, living the spectacular life of a mythical hero with immortal
qualities, he finally burnt himself to death on Mount Oite and joined the
gods on Olympos. There is no tradition of a tomb and his worship was
spread all over Greek territory, still his cult had traits clearly linked to the
cult of the dead. This complexity was certainly recognized in antiquity (cf.
Hdt. 2.44) and Pindar even calls him a heros theos, a ‘hero god’ (Nem.
3.22).
There is no watertight distinction between the use of the terms heros and
theos. Certain figures with a Classical heroic background were called theos,
such as the athlete Theogenes from Thasos (Paus. 6.11.2–9), while the
Athenian healing hero Heros Iatros is designated theos in an inscription
listing his property (IG II2 839). The reasons behind the denomination are
difficult to grasp and may have depended on the perception of a figure’s
stature in the eyes of the worshippers (cf. IG II2 2499 and 2501, decrees of
two Athenian cult associations for the heros Egretes and the theos
Hypodektes, respectively). A distinction between gods, heroes, and the
ordinary dead is evident in Greek mentality, as these three categories are
often referred to when presenting the beings that are to receive ritual
attention and honours (e.g. Pl. Resp. 427b and Leg. 717a–b).
Heroes are, as a rule, grown males, usually kings, warriors, or individuals
with a leading position in society, but the presence and function of female
heroes or heroines or even child and baby heroes have recently been noted
(Larson 1995; Lyons 1997; Pache 2004: 95–134). Some heroes may
originally have been gods who had diminished in importance, though most
heroes originated in myth or epic and were also historical characters, such
as founders of cities, athletes, like Theagenes from Thasos, soldiers killed
in war, like the Spartan general Brasidas, while poets, for example Homer,
could be heroized. To these figures with a documented history can be added
heroes only known from cultic contexts with little or no biographical
information. Early twentieth-century scholarship tried to categorize heroes
to create some order, an attempt largely abandoned today (Pfister 1909–
1912; Farnell 1921). Even the more recent distinction between heroes of
myth or epic and heroes of cult has been questioned (Currie 2005: 67–70).

ORIGINS: WHEN AND WHY?

The origin of hero-cults can be explained differently whether texts,

inscriptions, or archaeology are used. Heroes as cultic figures seem to post-
date the Bronze Age, but when and why during the Iron Age they arose
remains debated. The term Tiriseroe is found in the Linear B tablets
(Rougemont 2005: 338 and 374), but it is unclear if it has any cultic
connotations. Heros occurs in Homer for major kings, warriors, and
ordinary persons, though never for figures receiving cult. Homer’s usage
suggests that hero-cults are later than the epics, or that Homer may have
been aware of hero-cults but consciously suppressed them (Hadzisteliou-
Price 1973). A cultic use of heros is found in Hesiod’s Works and Days
(157–68), where the heroes are one of the four races and are also called
demi-gods, while the earliest epigraphic use of heros as a figure receiving
cult dates from the early sixth century BCE (Dubois 1989: 25–7, no. 20).
The matching of the written sources with the archaeological evidence is
complex. A group of shrines archaeologically attested in the eighth century
BCE is identified from later inscribed dedications as belonging to heroes:
Helen and Menelaos at Sparta, Odysseus in the Polis cave on Ithaka, and
Agamemnon at Mycenae. As the epigraphical evidence post-dates the
earliest cult activity by at least a hundred years we are faced with a
methodological dilemma: Was the cult recipient always the same or was
identification with an epic or mythic hero made later? The rise of hero-cults
has also been linked to eighth-century BCE dedications of pottery, figurines,
and metals in Mycenaean tombs. These deposits include both offerings and
new burials and have been interpreted as hero-cults, tomb cults, or cults of
ancestors (Coldstream 1976; Antonaccio 1995; Boehringer 2001). Some of
the richer and more long-lived deposits may be hero-cults, such as Menidi
in Attica and Berbati in the Argolid, while offerings of a few pots are likely
to represent tomb cults (Antonaccio 1995; Ekroth 1996).
The distinction between a hero and a regular dead person is tricky, as
some burials and funerary cults are both rich and long-lived. The
monumental mid-eleventh-century BCE apsidal building at Toumba,
Lefkandi, housing a cremated man, an inhumed woman, two horses, and
rich burial gifts has been called a heröon, but there is no evidence for a
continuous cult although new burials were made around the mound,
covering the building at a later stage (Popham 1993: 98–9). Some burials
received attention that clearly surpassed that given to the tombs of the
ordinary departed. At the West gate at Eretria, for example, a group of rich
late eighth-century BCE cremation burials were marked by a triangular
enclosure around 680 BCE, followed by a series of buildings used for cult
(Bérard 1970). The origins of hero-cults seem impossible to pinpoint, and it
is more fruitful to see heroes as a gradually developing category that came
to encompass beings of different origins corresponding to various needs and
contexts (Parker 1996: 39).
The rise of hero-cults has been explained by the spread of Homer and
Hesiod, triggering the identification of Bronze Age tombs with the burials
of the epic and mythic heroes (Coldstream 1976). The dedications of
Geometric material in Mycenaean tombs coincide with the rise of the polis
state and have been explained as a way for aristocratic families, individual
farmers, or smaller communities to stake claims to the land (Antonaccio
1995; Boehringer 2001). In the Classical period and later, many cults were
instituted by the oracle at Delphi. A community would consult Delphi due
to a crisis, such as disease or crop failure, and the oracle would identify an
unjustly killed and revengeful figure who had to be placated by a cult in
order to make the problems disappear (Bohringer 1979; Visser 1982).

THE HEROIZATION OF THE RECENTLY

DEAD
Historical figures could become heroes. The question remains for us
modern scholars is if a cult recipient has explicitly to be called heros for the
identification to be made. The Marathonomachoi, the men who fell at
Marathon, were buried on the battlefield and the city of Athens annually
performed games in their honour, treatment clearly exceeding that of the
ordinary dead. Still, they are not called heroes in the Classical sources, only
by later authors (Paus. 1.32.4), and the first clear-cut evidence for a cult
dates to the end of the second century BCE (IG II2 1006.69). In scholarship
there is a certain reluctance to recognize the war dead as actual heroes
(Loraux 1986: 39–41; Parker 1996: 132–7; Currie 2005: 89–119).
On Hellenistic and Roman gravestones, the term heros becomes more
widely used, while tombs are labelled heroa (Kubinska 1968: 26–31). New
phenomena of the Hellenistic period are the private cult foundations and
monumental burial monuments, pointing to the presence of hero-cults for
the ordinary dead with a certain economic standing (Laum 1914; Fedak
1990; Kader 1995). Such practices have been dismissed by scholars as a
result of the decline of Greek religion in the Hellenistic period, when the
hero concept had become trivialized, but recent work has shown the
complexity of these developments (Hughes 1999; Jones 2010; Wypustek
2013). The designation of someone as heros, and the recognition of this
status through cultic acts, are not to be regarded as the same thing. Used for
the ordinary dead, the term heros usually only suggested hopes and beliefs
for the departed, a kind of blessing, and was often applied to those who died
young (Wypustek 2013: 65–95). The actual honours accorded to the
ordinary dead also varied from a public funeral, and might include a public
burial, a tomb within the city (on the agora or in the gymnasium), the
performance of sacrifices, as well as the establishment of an actual cult
(Fröhlich 2013). The diversity in use with regard to terminology and actions
suggests that the concept of hero-cults had become more multifaceted,
probably reflecting altered circumstances and needs within contemporary
society. The fluidity of the system is shown by the fact that some living
individuals were already called heros or even theos in the Classical period,
while, in the Hellenistic period, living kings could be proclaimed gods by
the polis or by themselves (Habicht 1970; in this volume, Petrovic, Chapter
29). The extension of the hero concept to encompass the ordinary and
recently dead finds its final development in the modern (and disputed)
suggestion that living individuals had already received heroic honours in
their lifetime (Currie 2005).

CULTIC EXPRESSIONS

The sacrificial rituals of hero-cults have traditionally been defined as

consisting of a complete destruction of the animal victim by fire
(holocaust), libations of blood, and the offering of prepared meals, rituals
distinct from the sacrifices to the gods, which were centred on the
consumption of the victim’s meat (Stengel 1920: 105–55; Farnell 1921;
Burkert 1985 [1977]: 205; Scullion 1994, 2000). By considering a wider
range of evidence (epigraphical, iconographic, and archaeological, as well
as textual) and adopting a more critical awareness of the date of the sources
and changes over time, scholars have instead shown that the main ritual of
hero-cults was a thysia sacrifice ending with a meal, just as in the cult of the
gods (Nock 1944 [1972]; Verbank-Piérard 2000; Ekroth 2002).
Ancient Greek communities seem to have manifested their local identity
through the physical appearances of hero-cults, while the cult places of the
gods, especially the peripteral temples, shared a similar, more generally
recognizable appearance. The remarkable variation among hero-cult places
is probably one reason why there have been few attempts to collect the
archaeological evidence (Abramson 1978; Pariente 1992). Smaller precincts
with little architecture are often labelled hero-cults because they are
considered too small to be cult places for gods (Kearns 1992). Epigraphical
or literary evidence provides a more certain means of identification, though
the mention of a hero or a cult in fictional works does not necessarily have
to correspond to an actual cult (Ekroth 2003). The presence of tombs is a
less certain marker, since it has to be ascertained that the worshippers were
aware of these burials at the institution of the cult. The power of the hero
resided in his bones, and examples of this circumstance are the transferal of
the bones of Theseus to Athens from Syros by Kimon in 476/5 BCE (Plut.
Thes. 36 and Cim. 8) and the bones of Orestes to Sparta (Hdt. 1.66–8),
which assured the support of these heroes for these communities. Such
‘traffic in bones’ has been interpreted by scholars as politically motivated
propaganda rather than expressions of religious belief, perhaps a too
rational assessment (McCauley 1999).

CASE STUDIES

Pelops at Olympia
The cult of Pelops at Olympia was one of the most famous hero-cults of
Greek antiquity, due to the cult’s location at one of the largest, oldest, and
most visited sanctuaries, and to the recipient’s prominence in Panhellenic
myth. Studies of Pelops have largely focused on him being the opposite of
Zeus, underlining the distinctions hero-god as well as mortality–
immortality, making a classic case for an Olympian–chthonian reading of
the situation (Farnell 1921: 357e; Burkert 1983 [1972]). Pelops has been
seen as gloomy and uncanny, qualities prominent in his mythical biography
and perhaps due to him being chopped up, boiled, and served to the gods by
his father Tantalos and partly eaten by Demeter, before being brought back
to life equipped with an ivory shoulder (Burkert 1983 [1972]).
Due to his prominent mythical pedigree, Pelops’ cult has been considered
to be very old, antedating that of Zeus at Olympia (Dörpfeld 1935: 26–8
and 119–22; Herrmann 1980). It has been argued that the Olympic Games
originated in the funeral games for this dead hero or were instituted in his
honour, a hypothesis backed up by the great number of tripods found at the
site, thought to have been prizes in the early competitions (Burkert 1983
[1972]; Nagy 1986: 79–80).
The late nineteen-century archaeological investigations at Olympia
revealed, in the northern part of the Altis, an extensive layer of ash,
charcoal, animal bones, and broken votives (the Black Layer or schwarze
Schicht), marking the earliest cult activity (Furtwängler 1890: 2–4;
Mallwitz 1988; Kyrieleis 2006). The oldest components date to c.1050 BCE,
while the latest suggest a levelling of the layer around c.600 BCE. The new
excavations in the 1980s and 1990s have demonstrated that Pelops’
sanctuary was centred on a prehistoric mound, dating from the Early
Helladic period (c.2500 BCE) (Kyrieleis 2002, 2006; Rambach 2002). There
are no Mycenaean layers and no cult continuity can be demonstrated from
the Bronze Age into the Iron Age. The Early Helladic mound may have
attracted the first worshippers to Olympia in the mid-eleventh century BCE,
but there is no indication that the original recipient of the cult was anyone
else but Zeus. The cult of Pelops was introduced at the end of the Archaic
period, perhaps as late as around 500 BCE (Kyrieleis 2006: 55–61). This
date concurs with the earliest written evidence for a cult of Pelops, Pindar’s
first Olympian Ode (476 BCE), where the poet’s description of the worship
of the hero is initiated by the word ‘now’, perhaps suggesting a recent
establishment.
When the cult of Pelops was added to the cult of Zeus, always the main
deity of the sanctuary and the festival, the Early Helladic tumulus may have
been identified as the tomb of Pelops (Pindar speaks of his ancient tomb,
Ol. 10.24–5; Ekroth 2012). The institution of the cult can be seen as part of
a wider trend where all prestigious sanctuaries, and especially those with
Panhellenic games, were to have a particular hero in their midst. The cult of
Pelops may have been inspired by the situation at Nemea, where the child
hero Opheltes/Archemoros was worshipped from the early sixth century
BCE (Bravo 2006: 216–27). A further reason for the promotion of Pelops
could have been the political agenda of Elis, the city-state in whose territory
Olympia lies, trying to strengthen its manifestation in the sanctuary. The
new Temple of Zeus (495–450 BCE) depicted on its eastern pediment Pelops
about to race Oinomaos, an iconography that launched Pelops as the
national founding hero of the Elean polis, similar to Theseus at Athens
(Kyrieleis 1997, 2006: 79–83).
The identification of the Pelopion is based on Pausanias’ description
(5.31.1) and confirmed by a sherd inscribed [P]ELOPS found next to the
precinct wall (Kyrieleis 2006: 15). Pelops’ bones were of great interest in
antiquity, in particular his ivory shoulder blade, which was sent to help the
Greeks at Troy, but lost at sea and finally recovered by a fisherman (Paus.
5.13.4–7). The Classical propylon and wall around the precinct were
perhaps constructed to prevent the bones from being stolen, in particular if
Pelops, during that period, was the national hero of Elis (Ekroth 2012).
When Pausanias visited Olympia in the second century CE, the bones were
no longer kept in the Pelopion and the shoulder blade had been lost (5.13.6,
6.22.1).
 The cult of Pelops has been seen as the prime example of the chthonian
character of hero worship, distinct from the cult of gods (Herrmann 1980:
62–3; Burkert 1983 [1972]; Nagy 1986: 77–81). In an influential discussion
of Pelops, Walter Burkert has argued for a distinction between the dark,
uncanny Pelops, connected to the impure dead and the Underworld, and the
bright, friendly Zeus, god of the sky (Burkert 1983 [1972]). This
interpretation of the cult rests on a mixture of our two main written sources,
Pindar and Pausanias. It does not take into account possible changes over
time or that the image provided by Pausanias is difficult to reconcile with
the role of Pelops within the festival of Zeus at Olympia in the Classical
period.
Pindar’s account in the first Olympian Ode (90–3) has been interpreted as
evoking a cult where the hero is given blood from animal victims who are
subsequently burnt, a ritual with no communal meal for the worshippers.
However, a closer reading and analysis of the vocabulary results in a
sacrifice where the hero reclines as at a banquet, being offered blood as a
means to attract and invigorate him, and honoured with theoxenia, a ritual
in which a deity was invited as the guest of honour and presented with a
couch on which to recline on and a table with food and drink (Gerber 1982:
141–5; Ekroth 2002: 171–2, 178, 190–2). The passage further presents
Pelops as an attentive and magnanimous host presiding over the distribution
and communal consumption of the meat from the sacrifices to himself and
to Zeus, a ritual that formed the centrepiece of the festival (Ekroth 2012:
107–11). This interpretation is supported by the location of the Pelopion. It
is situated in the area of the Altis where sacrificial meat was distributed,
and it faces the grounds outside the temenos where the visitors put up their
tents and prepared and ate their meals (cf. Pind. Ol. 10.45–6).
The view of Pelops as a sinister hero not inviting his worshippers to any
communal meat consumption derives from second-century CE Pausanias
(5.13.1–7). According to this source, the sacrificial victim was a black ram,
from which the woodcutter providing the fuel for the sacrifices was given
the neck, while the mantis (‘seer’) received no share at all. The most
important feature of Pelops’ cult was that consumption of the meat rendered
those eating it impure and banned them from the Temple of Zeus and the
cult of the god. This is a very different Pelops from Pindar’s friendly host.
Pausanias’ statement has frequently been drawn upon for reconstructing
the cult of Pelops during earlier periods, and has also been merged with the
account of Pindar (cf. Burkert 1983 [1972]). Moreover, the polluting
capacities of Pelops’ sacrificial meat have become the cornerstone of the
notion that participation in heroic cults instigated pollution, and that
therefore the victims were burnt in holocausts. But the evidence for hero-
cults causing pollution is confined to this particular passage in Pausanias.
However, in the Roman period there was a tendency to perceive heroes as
more linked to the dead and the Underworld than previously, a perception
reflected also in cult practices (Ekroth 1999, 2002: 121–8). There is a
stronger emphasis on the burning of offerings. The only archaeologically
attested holocaust in a hero-cult is, in fact, Roman, the cult of Palaimon at
Isthmia (Gebhard 1993).
The differences between the accounts of Pindar and Pausanias suggest
that the cult of Pelops did not remain the same from the Classical to the
Roman Imperial period. One important difference concerns the handling of
the meat and, in particular, the fact that, according to Pausanias,
consumption rendered those eating it impure and banned them from any
contact with Zeus. The sacrifice to Pelops took place in the middle of the
five-day Olympic festival before the major sacrifice to Zeus, and the impure
qualities of the meat from Pelops’ victim would have barred all athletes
from participating in the religious highlight of the festival the following
day. Such a scenario seems highly unlikely. The cult of Pelops must rather
have undergone substantial changes between the fifth century BCE and the
second century CE, and perhaps in the Roman period, Pelops had become
less linked to the actual festival and the games.
This changed role of Pelops also affects the traditions surrounding the
founding of the Olympian Games, usually seen as originating in the
funerary games for the hero, adding another chthonian dimension to the
cult. The antiquity of the games has been supported by the presence of
tripods and cauldrons in the Black Layer, assumed by modern scholars to be
the prizes in the contests and therefore constituting links to Pelops’ mythic
history (Burkert 1983 [1972]; Krummen 1990: 168–83). New excavations
have demonstrated that the cult of Pelops post-dates the distribution of the
Black Layer, which took place around 600 BCE. Therefore, the tripods and
cauldrons cannot connect Pelops’ cult to the origins of the games nor
indicate that he is the recipient of the games. The earliest ancient traditions
name both Herakles and Pelops as founders of the games, while the
recipient always is Zeus (Pind. Ol. 10.24–5; Paus. 5.7.6–8.5). It is not until
the second century CE that the games are seen as originating in the funerary
games for the dead hero, a development which is in line with the general
trends of hero-cults in the Roman period.

Aleximachos on Amorgos
The young hero Aleximachos, from the Aegean island of Amorgos,
constitutes a very different case from Pelops. He was not a mythical figure
but a contemporary deceased person elevated to the status of a hero by his
family and community. If the case of Pelops allows us to examine the
possible Bronze Age origins of hero-cults, and the relation between heroes
and gods, the cult of Aleximachos throws light on the heroization of the
recently dead and how their hero status was expressed in cult in the
Hellenistic period. Our knowledge of Aleximachos comes from one
extensive inscription dated to the late second century BCE (IG XII, 7 515;
Laum 1914: no. 50; Gauthier 1980; Helmis 2003). The document finds
parallels in the corpus of Hellenistic cult foundations (Laum 1914: no. 43,
cf. nos 45, 117) and can be related to the elaborate funerary monuments of
this period, which bridge the divide between hero-cults and grave cults
(Fedak 1990; Kader 1995).
Aleximachos was a young man from a prominent local family who, after
his death, became ‘heroized’ (apheroismos, IG XII, 7 515.6), a terminology
suggesting an elevation to the status of heros, marking him as distinct from
the ordinary dead. The inscription does not explicitly mention that he is
dead or his tomb. There is a strong link between the living and the dead
Aleximachos, and many of the participants in the cult must have known him
when he was alive. This fluidity between the mortal and immortal
Aleximachos is evident from the fact that, at the games, he was to be
awarded the first prize in the pankration without any competition (lines 83–
4). This may have been the sport in which he excelled or perhaps it caused
his demise, as casualties were not unheard of in this event.
The initiative for Aleximachos’ elevation to a hero came from his father
Kritolaos, who bequeathed 2000 drachmas, 10 per cent of the interest of
which was to pay for the cult. The foundation was a gift to the city of
Aigale, which passed a new law establishing and regulating the cult and its
finances. The reason for the institution of Aleximachos’ cult is not stated
but it may have been a result of a father’s grief over a son who died young.
The inscription also lays down the practical execution of the rituals: a
procession, animal sacrifice, a public meal, and athletic games (lines 39–
86). The officials elected to be in charge of the cult were to lead the
procession, which included members of the city council, the gymnasiarch
(the director of the gymnasium), the ephebes, as well as all of the other
young men of the city; the gymnasiarch was even allowed to force people
to participate. The sacrificial victim was an ox, which was led from the
prytaneion (lines 42–6). Its meat was cooked ‘whole’ (holomele),
suggesting that no share was given to a priest. This meant that all of it was
available for consumption, and was served at a meal (demothoinia or
deipnon). Each ephebe was given a portion of pork, either instead of meat
from the ox or in addition to it. Wood, water, oil, a sweet honey drink,
dessert, and flowers were to be provided by the officials, and the
participants were also given an allotment of grain the day before the
sacrifice. A second sacrifice, this time of a ram, was performed at
Aleximachos’ statue at a later stage, and the terminology implies that the
animal’s blood was poured out as a libation (74–81). The ram was boiled
whole, and the meat, along with a dish made of grain, were deposited in
front of the statue, suggesting a theoxenia ritual for the hero. At the games
that followed the next day, all of the ram’s meat and half of the grain dish
were used as prizes for the athletes, the rest was kept by the officials.
The sacrificial meal took place in the gymnasium, and presumably this
was also where Aleximachos’ statue was raised, although there is no
mention of a particular precinct for him or a grave. The inscription only
concerns the public part of the cult, that is, the law passed by the demos, so
the family must have constructed a funerary monument elsewhere which
housed the burial. Other cult foundation decrees mention funerary
monuments as well as cult buildings and statues, for example, the explicit
late third- early second-century testament of Epikteta from the island of
Thera, which speaks about heroa (Laum 1914: vol. 2, no. 43). Elaborate
funerary complexes with installations for sacrifices, libations, and dining
were part of the Hellenistic landscape of hero-cults. For example, the
Charmyleion on Kos (early third century BCE) was a two-storey building
with libation tubes into the burial chamber (Schazmann 1934; Sherwin-
White 1977: 207–17), while the second-century BCE heröon at Kalydon
consisted of a walled courtyard with dining rooms and a central hall for
worship located above the founder’s tomb (Dyggve, Poulsen, and Rhomaios
1934).
The games were a central part of the cult of Aleximachos but there is no
indication of them being seen as his funeral games. Rather, the decree
emphasizes Aleximachos’ hero-cult persona as an athlete, one of a category
of individuals who, quite frequently, were raised to heroic status (Bohringer
1979; Currie 2005). Aleximachos was proclaimed the winner in the
pankration, the ram slaughtered at his statue was used as prizes for the
contests and the officials, the ephebes and the youths crowned him (i.e. his
statue) at the games due to his virtue and discipline (100–3).
The cult of Aleximachos bridges private and public spheres in a complex
manner. It commemorates a family member by integrating him into the
official cultic sphere and awarding him a hero-cult as for a mythic hero.
That he was an ordinary dead person is irrelevant: he is honoured at his
statue, and not at his grave, not only by the community at large, but also by
his family. The importance of establishing the cult in the communal arena is
evident from the fact that citizens of Aigale, resident immigrants, passing
foreigners, and even Romans could take part in the public meal. In the
procession, the games, and the torch race, state officials, adult men, youths,
and boys were not only expected to participate, they could even be forced to
do so.

CONCLUSION

The perception of Greek heroes changed over time, to a much higher degree
than did the perception of the gods. The term heros underwent a shift from
a figure of epic, though not necessarily an exceptional one, to a specific
type of cult recipient, finally becoming a denomination signalling honour
and prestige for public accomplishments. To the figures of myth and cult
prominent among the heroes of the Archaic and Classical periods were
added contemporary individuals of exceptional achievements. In Hellenistic
times, ordinary private persons could be proclaimed as heroes by the
community or their family in connection with their burial. The importance
of ‘death’ for the definition of a hero also varied over time. At all periods it
was essential for the cult of mythic heroes that there was a grave and bones,
but this was less so for the recently heroized of the Hellenistic period. This
changed again in the Roman period, when the emphasis on heroes, even
mythic figures, as being dead, became more pronounced. The rituals of
hero-cults are more consistent through time, focusing on animal sacrifice
and communal consumption of meat, and underlining the importance of
heroes for the cohesion of a group, be it a family, an association, a local
community, or a city.
The two case studies show similarities and it is possible that the ritual
practices of the cult of Aleximachos were modelled on the cult of Pelops. If
Pelops is seen as the athletic victor par excellence, this could have inspired
the construction of the hero-cult of Aleximachos. A libation of blood to the
hero was part of both cults, as was the sacrifice of a ram (at least in
Pausanias’ time for Pelops). Both also included a theoxenia ceremony in the
ritual: Pelops is invited as an honoured guest, while the food to be used as
prizes in the games at Aigale are placed in front of Aleximachos’ statue.
Moreover, Aleximachos, just as Pelops, watched over the distribution of
meat to the participants in the procession and the games as well as over
their joint meal, in a sense acting as the host.
But the differences between the two cults are just as important, especially
the extent to which each cult brings out the dead or living qualities of each
hero. Pelops has a tomb and his bones are important elements of his story
and cult, while in Aleximachos’ case there is no mention of a grave, only a
statue, and the proclamation of him as the victor of the pankration ascribes
him living capacities or evokes his activities while still alive. The cult of
Pelops may not always have been open for all to participate in, contrary to
that of Aleximachos, whose cult strove to embrace the community as a
whole, even foreigners. The worship of Pelops was truly long-lived, from
the late sixth or early fifth century BCE to the second century CE. For
Aleximachos we do not know, as the evidence is one inscription alone. The
fact that the cult was given to the city even though it was a private initiative
by his father shows the intent to assure the memory of Aleximachos for the
future, in a manner never needed for Pelops.

SUGGESTED READING
An outline of hero-cult topics is found in Hägg 1999; see also the recent
overview article by Ekroth 2007. For the question of heroes as dead or
alive, the issue of sacrificial rituals is central; see Ekroth 2002 and
Verbanck-Piérard 2000. The recent proposal that hero-cults were also for
the living is expounded by Currie 2005. The debate on the origins of hero-
cults in the Iron Age is found principally in Antonaccio 1995 and
Boehringer 2001. Selective collections of cult places have been made by
Abramson 1978 and Pariente 1992; for the plethora of heroes of Attica, see
Kearns 1989. For the heroization of the recently dead, see Jones 2010,
Wypustek 2013, and Fröhlich 2013, see also Wörrle and Zanker 1995,
revealing the complexity of such practices in the Hellenistic period.

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 CHAPTER 27

DEAD OR ALIVE?

EMMANUEL VOUTIRAS

INTRODUCTION

HUMAN beings individually, and human societies collectively, have always

had considerable difficulty in dealing with the phenomenon of death, the
inescapable end of every living being, which is as inexplicable as it is
irreversible. The feeling of being powerless in the face of the certain yet
unforeseeable end of life is a source of anxiety and fear. Death is perceived
as the instantaneous end of a process—short or long, depending on the
cause—leading to a sudden collapse of all vital functions that make life
possible (Donnadieu and Villatte 1996: 55–6). As a consequence, the
human body ceases to move and to react, it becomes inert, cold, and rigid,
and after a while it begins to decompose. It is as though an invisible power
which kept a person alive and helped him (or her) to interact with the
environment suddenly left the body and disappeared into the air. This power
has been called the ‘free soul’, which ‘is the individual’s nonphysical mode
of existence’ and ‘is always active outside the body’, in contrast with the
body souls that ‘are active during the waking life of the living individual’
(Bremmer 1983: 17–18).
 The idea of a life-giving power residing inside the human body for as
long as it is alive and abandoning it at the moment of death is found in
many cultures and can therefore be considered universal. This vital power,
which, though constantly present, does not manifest itself during one’s
lifetime, is what we call ‘the soul’, and it is perceived as taking a concrete
form only at the moment of death, when it leaves the body. It may, for
example, be envisaged as a bird or a butterfly flying away from the dying
person. In the Greek language the notion of ‘soul’ appears very early in the
simple form we have just outlined; it is expressed by the word psyche
(deriving from the verb psychein, ‘to breathe’), which is present already in
the Homeric poems. In Greek thought this primitive idea of the soul
remained central (Luck-Huyse 1997: 157–71), but it was eventually taken
up and developed into a more elaborate one by the Orphic–Pythagorean
sects (Turcan 1959). In any case, it is important to keep in mind that this
view was gradually transformed into a philosophical concept—thanks to the
contribution of important thinkers, who, to a large extent, influenced the
formation of our modern complex concept of the soul with its psychological
and eschatological attributes (Bremmer 1983: 3).

VIEWS OF THE AFTERLIFE AND

COMMUNICATION WITH THE DEAD

We must bear in mind, however, that the meaning of psyche underwent

considerable change in the course of antiquity and, furthermore, that it does
not coincide with that of the word ‘soul’ as we use it today, but is in fact
narrower (Bremmer 1983, ch. 1; see also Jaeger 1960: 288f.). For the
Greeks of the Homeric age, psyche represents, first of all, the individual
personality; it is the element that distinguishes the living person from the
dead corpse (soma) and continues to exist after a person has died. In the
beginning of the Iliad (1.3) the poet states that the wrath of Achilles sent
many strong psychai of heroes to Hades (the realm of the dead), whereas
they themselves (autoi), in other words their corpses, were left to the dogs
and the vultures to devour. It is therefore not surprising that psyche is often
used with the meaning of ‘life’ (see Snell 1931: 77–8). It has been argued
that this is the principal meaning of the word psyche in Homer (Otto 1958:
25–31). Thus, in the Odyssey (22.245) the suitors fight for their lives (peri
psycheon). But one should be careful to distinguish psyche from other vital
powers that are also believed to reside in the human body, enabling it to
perform various activities, such as thymos, noos, menos (Bremmer 2002: 1;
Miller 2009: 29–50, 40–3, with further references). The main difference is
that psyche being the identity, or the ‘self’, remains inactive for as long as a
person lives.
Greek visions of the afterlife and their significance are discussed at
length elsewhere (see, in this volume, Edmonds, Chapter 37). The
descriptions of the underworld found in literature, especially in the
Odyssey, appear to reflect widely held beliefs (on ‘belief’ see, in this
volume, Harrison, Chapter 2). After its separation from the dead body, the
psyche (which we shall translate as ‘soul’ for the sake of simplicity) of a
deceased person migrates to another world, which, according to popular
belief, is located below the earth, and begins an afterlife. In order to reach
the realm of the dead the souls have to cross a body of water, be it a river
(Acheron, into which flow Pyriphlegethon and Kokytos, which is a break-
off from the water of the Styx: Hom. Od. 10.513–15) or a lake (Acherusian
Lake). A more detailed topography of the underworld is provided by Plato
(Phd. 111e–114c). Alternatively, one may travel to the underworld along the
Okeanos, the large river that flows around the earth, as Odysseus does
(Hom. Od. 10.509–12, 11.21–2), since it is traditionally located at the
western end of the world. The Greeks believed that the dead residing in the
underworld kept their identity and the distinctive features they had when
they were alive. This is why the deceased person could be designated as an
image (eidolon). In the narrative of Odysseus’ journey to the realm of the
dead (the Nekyia) the poet makes it clear that the dead retain their original
appearance, for they are described once again as ‘images of deceased
mortals’ (nekroi . . . broton eidola kamonton) (Hom. Od. 11.475–6). We are
even told that the dead still have the wounds that led to their death (11.36–
41). In the Iliad too, when the ghost of Patroklos appears to Achilles
(23.65–7), it has the appearance and the clothes of the living person; even
its voice is recognizable.
The idea that the souls of the dead retain the features of their former
existence is also found in Aeschylus (Eum. 103) and in Plato (Grg. 524f)
(Bremer 1994: 100). Such beliefs result from the desire of the living to
perpetuate the memory of the dead, which is essential for maintaining the
cohesion of a family or community. Grave markers serve the function of
perpetuating the memory of the deceased. The offerings found in rich
graves suggest that the dead were believed to continue, in some way, their
earthly existence, while the rites performed regularly at the burial site
(mainly libations poured to the ground) or during commemoration
ceremonies were a means of establishing communication with them (Kurtz
and Boardman 1971: 200–17). Thus, the links between the living and the
dead were never completely severed. The right to be buried was supported
by powerful social and divine sanctions. It was also essential that the dead
receive the customary rites of burial in the proper way (Kurtz and
Boardman 1971: 142–9). Yet while the living have the duty of honouring
the dead, they must equally avoid the pollution of death. Some of the rites
performed at the burial site are clearly purificatory (Kurtz and Boardman
1971: 149–61; Parker 1983: 34–42). A consequence of the belief that it is
possible to communicate with the souls of the dead is the existence of
special oracles where they could be consulted (see the section
‘Necromancy’) and rituals for summoning them to provide advice or
assistance in exceptional situations (see section ‘Summoning of Souls’).
The funeral is, above all, a rite of passage which is marked by rituals of
separation from the world of the living and rituals of integration within the
world of the dead (Felton 1999: 11, see also, in this volume, Hitch, Chapter
35). The time between death and burial is an intermediate or liminal period.
The transition of the dying person between one state and another produces
intense fear and anguish among the living, who perceive their contact with
death as an exposure to pollution, calling for purification (Parker 1983: 34–
48). As for the dead, it is important to ensure that they will be able to access
‘the beyond’ and begin their new existence in the underworld. For this to
happen, the proper disposal of the body (burial or cremation) is considered
a prerequisite (Johnston 1999b: 9–10, 83–4). This is why unburied or
improperly disposed corpses are seen as a source of pollution that may
cause plague and disaster (Johnston 1999b: 127–8). Another fear is that, in
the case of deaths viewed as untimely or unjustified (because of the young
age of the deceased or of the circumstances under which they occurred), the
dead may be reluctant to accept their new status because of a desire to
rejoin the world of the living in order to obtain their due, often revenge
(Johnston 1999b: 128–9). It is important to point out that violent death was
commonly considered a source of pollution (Parker 1983: 104–43; Johnston
1999b: 129–33). Such dead become hostile and resentful and turn into
restless souls or ghosts, spirits who interfere in the world of the living and
who cannot—or do not wish to—be part of the underworld, to which they
should normally belong.
To sum up, there are three categories of dead that are commonly
presumed to be restless and potentially dangerous: the unburied (ataphoi),
the prematurely dead (aoroi), and those who have died violently
(biaiothanatoi) (Johnston 1999b: 127–9; Stramaglia 1999: 8–16; Alfayé
2009: 184–7). The three classes of special dead are presented in detail in
Virgil’s description of the visit of Aeneas to the underworld (Verg. Aen.
6.315–36, 426–547) (Norden 1957: 10–13; ataphoi: 315–36; aoroi: 426–9;
biaiothanatoi: 430–547). All of these could become ghosts or revenants and
haunt or harm men. There is not only literary, but also archaeological,
evidence for the treatment of the bodies of such ‘special dead’ in ways that
were clearly meant to restrain them and render them harmless (Alfayé
2009). The curse tablets, most of which were found in graves, occasionally
attest to the involvement of the dead in the performance of magic (Eidinow
2007: 148–53; see, in this chapter, the section ‘The Role of “Restless Dead”
in Magic’). The magical papyri of the Roman Imperial period often contain
elaborate invocations to the ‘special dead’ (Delgado 2001, s.v. nekros,
nekydaimon, nekys).

THE PRIVILEGED DEAD: IDEAS ABOUT A

BLISSFUL AFTERLIFE

In Homeric poetry, the realm of Hades in the underworld is generally

envisaged as an unpleasant and gloomy place below earth, where even the
most prominent dead lead a miserable existence. When Odysseus meets the
soul of Achilles in the underworld he greets him with the flattering remark
that his position is as dominant among the dead as it was among the living,
to which Achilles answers sternly that he would rather be the servant of a
poor man on earth than reign among the dead (Odyssey 11.488–91). The
only means by which men could hope to overcome the doom and gloom of
death was the immortal fame (kleos aphthiton, Iliad 9.413) that might be
linked to their name: the memory of the deeds of the noble chiefs and
valiant warriors lived on in the songs of the singers (aoidoi) (Jaeger 1960:
289). In later times it was the community of the polis that kept the memory
of its bravest and most prominent citizens alive. This kind of immortality is
invoked by the Athenian orators of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE in the
funeral speeches they delivered for the soldiers who had died fighting for
their fatherland (Jaeger 1960: 289–91).
Nevertheless, some mortals could aspire to a better afterlife than the rest,
provided that they were sufficiently close to the gods. This is the case of
Menelaos, who learns from Proteus that he will not die, but the gods will
send him instead ‘to the Elysian fields at the end of the earth’, the pleasant
and constantly temperate realm of Rhadamanthys (who eventually became
one of the judges of the dead), because he is the husband of Helen and
therefore son-in-law of Zeus (Hom. Od. 4.563–7). According to a tradition
differing from that of the Odyssey, Achilles too obtained the gift of a
blissful afterlife. In the Aithiopis it was told that Thetis, after having
mourned Achilles, removed him to the White Island (Leuke Nesos) in the
Pontus Euxinus (Proclus, Chrestomathia 2), where a cult of Achilles is, in
fact, attested since the sixth century BCE (Hooker 1988; cf. García Teijeiro
and Molinos Tejada 2000: 114). Another account of the afterlife of earlier
men is found in Hesiod’s tale of the five human generations (Op. 106–201),
which are linked to the origin of various types of spirits (Rosenmeyer 1957:
272–5). The most notable is the first (golden) generation, whose members
died painlessly, as though they had fallen asleep, and became pure, wealth-
giving spirits (daimones hagnoi ploutodotai) who stay on the surface of the
earth as protectors of men (h. Op. 122–6) (Bremer 1994: 114). None of the
other generations have any influence on earth after their disappearance. It is
noteworthy, however, that the fourth generation, that of the heroes who
fought at Thebes and at Troy, is transferred to the Isles of the Blessed
(makaron nesoi) close to the shore of Okeanos, where earth brings forth
three harvests (Op. 166–73), a wonderful abode strongly reminiscent of the
Elysian fields described in the Odyssey. At the other end of the spectrum
are those who are relegated to the Tartaros, the deepest place in the
underworld, where they suffer endless torture for crimes they committed
against the gods. Odysseus, in his journey to the realm of the dead, met
three such wrongdoers: Tityos, Tantalos, and Sisyphos (Hom. Od. 11.576–
600).
In the course of the sixth century BCE a new conception of man’s true
nature and internal life emerges, mainly among the religious groups of the
Orphics and the Pythagoreans. In these circles we find the belief that man
is, in reality, much closer to the gods than was commonly thought before,
and that a part of him, the soul, which is different and separable from the
body, is of divine origin and is liberated at the moment of death. This vision
of the soul is very different from the Homeric psyche, for it is not a mere
shadow in Hades, but the real subject of man’s inner life, capable of living
both in this world and beyond, in a state of eternal bliss in the vicinity of the
gods (Jaeger 1960: 290–3; Bremmer 2002: 11–26). Pindar, who
encountered the Orphic religion in Sicily, gives us an interesting description
of the nature of the soul in a fragmentarily preserved threnos (lament) (fr.
131b Maehler): ‘The body of all men is subject to all powerful death, but
there still remains alive an image of man’s life, for this alone comes from
the gods. It sleeps when the limbs are active, but to those that sleep, it
presages in many a dream the decision of things delightful or doleful’
(Jaeger 1960: 292). The idea of the divine origin of the soul is the key for
understanding some well-attested beliefs. According to one such view,
which is attested among other sources in funerary epigrams (Lattimore
1942: 31–43), the soul rises to heaven and turns into a star (Cumont 1949:
142–88, according to whom its origins are Indo-Iranian). A more
widespread doctrine, mainly ascribed to Pythagoras, is that the soul enters
into successive mortal bodies in a process of reincarnation (see, recently,
Bremmer 2002: 12–15). This concept was adopted and further developed by
Plato (see, recently, Bernabé 2011), who took the step of declaring the soul
itself immortal (Phd. 69e–85b; cf. Men. 81b–d) (Jaeger 1960: 295–7). But
such ideas remained within the religious and philosophic groups that
created them and never became dominant. The initiates of the Eleusinian
mysteries also believed they would be able to enjoy a blissful afterlife,
probably not very different from the one described in Orphic poetry (Graf
1974: 79–150).
 HEROES AND REVENANTS

Notwithstanding the widespread perception of the underworld as a gloomy

place of no return, there was, as we have seen, a deeply rooted popular
belief, according to which the dead could interact with the living in various
ways, both beneficial and harmful. Indeed, in the perception of the ancients
the most notable characteristic of the dead (and of the powers of the
underworld in general) is their ambivalence (Henrichs 1991; Voutiras
1999). The most explicit formulation of this idea is found in a fragment of
Aristophanes’ lost comedy Heroes (Ar. fr. 322 K–A), where the chorus of
the nameless heroes gives the following advice: ‘That said, men, be on your
guard and honor the heroes, for we are the guardians of good things and ill;
we watch for the unjust, for robbers and footpads, and send them diseases . .
.’ (Parker 1983: 243–4; Henrichs 1991: 192–3; García Teijeiro and Molinos
Tejada 2000: 121). These heroes are manifestly revenants or spirits of the
dead (cf. Ath. 3.125d (Asios of Samos), 461c (Chamaeleon of Heraclea)),
an aspect that has been noted and studied (Brelich 1958: 226–32; García
Teijeiro and Molinos Tejada 2000). Parker remarks pertinently that this
fragment ‘provides welcome support for the idea that the heroes in Greece
play the part assigned in other religions to the ancestors’ (Parker 1983:
244). A modern parallel is reported from Singapore (Johnston 1999b: 36).
Heroes as a class are mentioned in an inscription on a lead tablet of the mid-
fifth century BCE from Selinous, concerning sacrifices and ritual
purifications (Jameson, Jordan, and Kotansky 1993; see, recently,
Robertson 2010: 15–30). It is said that one should sacrifice to spirits called
the polluted (miaroi) Tritopatreis ‘just as to the heroes, after pouring down
wine through the roof’ (A10), whereas to the pure (katharoi) Tritopatreis
one should sacrifice ‘just as to the gods the ancestral victims’ (A17). It
appears that heroes as well as the Tritopatreis are thought of here as spirits
dwelling in the underworld.
Heroes were generally considered benign and helpful to mortals, but
under certain circumstances they could become evil and avenging spirits,
not unlike ghosts (Stramaglia 1999: 16–21). Artemidoros (Oneirokritika
4.78) mentions heroes who are expressly identified as restless dead
(atelestoi and biaiothanatoi) (see Stramaglia 1999: 121 n. 1). The stories,
involving two famous athletes of the early fifth century BCE, are revealing in
this respect. Theogenes, son of Timoxenos from Thasos, was an all-round
athlete who had won countless victories mainly in boxing and the
pancration (Fontenrose 1968: 75–6; Pouilloux 1994). Another case in point
is the story of the Hero of Temesa, which Callimachus (frr. 98–9 Pf., with a
full list of testimonies) judged important enough to include in his Aitia. The
main surviving source for this story is Pausanias (6.6.7–11) (Fontenrose
1968: 79–81; Costabile 1991; Visintin 1992; Felton 1999: 26–7; Currie
2002; Redfield 2003: 245–51).
A sailor from the crew of Odysseus, who had been forced ashore by a
storm at Temesa, in southern Italy, got drunk and raped a local girl. The
inhabitants of Temesa stoned the sinner to death, but his ghost came back
and began killing them, until they were advised by the Pythia of Delphi to
propitiate the ‘hero’ by dedicating a sanctuary to him and giving him, once
a year, the most beautiful maiden in town. It was the famous boxer
Euthymos of Locri who put an end to this tribute in the first half of the fifth
century BCE. He fell in love with the girl that was destined for the ‘hero’,
fought with him and won. The ghost disappeared into the sea and Euthymos
married the girl. Euthymos had won three victories at Olympia and had
been honoured by two statues, one in his home town and one in Olympia, of
which the base has survived (IVO no. 144; LSAG 342 no. 19; Costabile
1991: 212–13).
According to Callimachus (fr. 99 Pf.; Plin. HN 7.152), both statues were
struck by lightning on the same day: a revenge of the ‘hero’ he had
defeated? The question whether the fight between Euthymos and the ‘hero’
of Temesa was imagined as a fictional narrative or as a physical encounter
has no easy answer (cf. Currie 2002: 39). It is worth recording, in any case,
that Euthymos received cult as a river-god in his native Locri, which is
documented by a series of clay pinakes found in a cave dedicated to the
nymphs (Costabile 1991; for the transformation into a river-god, see
Costabile 1991: 211–12, Currie 2002: 41–3). Such stories suggest that it is
not always possible to distinguish clearly between hero-cult and
superstitious beliefs concerning the restless dead and their interaction with
humans.
JOURNEYS TO THE WORLD OF THE DEAD:
KATABASEIS AND ANODOI

The descent from the world of the living to the underworld is a journey
without return. There are, of course, exceptions in myth. The Greeks
believed, for example, that the shrewd Sisyphus had been able to persuade
Persephone to let him go back (Thgn. 699–718; the distinct possibility that
this is a late addition to the collection of Theognidea does not affect the
argument), but the price he eventually paid for this trick was eternal
punishment. However, the fact remains that it is impossible for mortal
humans to obtain direct information about the fate of the souls of the dead
after their separation from the bodies to which they had belonged. This
explains why beliefs about the underworld were presented as accounts of
journeys by legendary persons who had been able to return to the world of
the living. We know that the Greeks considered mythical heroes to be real
persons who had lived in a distant past, and attributed to them feats beyond
the capacity of common mortals, usually accomplished with the assistance
of the gods, from whom they frequently descended.
The descriptions of what such visitors of the underworld had seen and
experienced during their journey, handed down through oral tradition, were
eventually fixed in writing, mainly as poetic texts, and became part of
ancient literature (see Cumont 1949: 63–5, 395–6), which gave them the
appearance of reliable testimonies. There were several descriptions of the
underworld contained in tales about the descent (katabasis) of heroes to the
realm of Hades and their return (anodos) to the world of the living (see
Calvo Martínez 2000).
The oldest and most influential such tale appears to have been that of
Herakles, whose most dangerous exploit was to bring up Kerberos, the
hound of Hades (Hom. Od. 11.601–27). It has been plausibly suggested that
this story had provided the subject of an independent epic poem (von der
Mühll 1938: 8–9). Whether or not this is true, it is tempting to think that the
tale of the descent (katabasis) of Herakles to the underworld was a source
of inspiration for Odysseus’ journey to the limits of the world in order to
meet with the souls of the dead, and for other similar stories (Erbse 1972:
31–3). Poetic accounts of descents to the underworld (katabaseis) appear to
have been composed also within the religious context of mystery cults,
especially the Eleusinian mysteries, whose initiates aspired to an
undisturbed and blissful existence after death. We shall not consider these
apparently influential works here since very little is known with certainty
on their subject (Graf 1974: 126–50). One feature that is worth mentioning
is the prominent role played by Orpheus in these texts. Directions for the
journey to the underworld, probably meant for followers of mystic sects, are
also found in the ‘Orphic’ gold leaves discovered in graves of Classical date
in Greece and southern Italy, which have been extensively discussed by
modern scholars (see, recently, Edmonds 2004: 1–110).
It is difficult to estimate to what extent literary accounts and works of art
are accurate reflections of widespread popular beliefs, deeply rooted in
mythological tradition and religious practice though they are. Yet the fact
that these works were addressed to a broad public (comedies like the Frogs
of Aristophanes were performed before a large audience that was probably
a cross section of Athenian society) indicates that we can take these
descriptions of the world of the dead as reflections of more or less widely
accepted views. There is no doubt that the advent of philosophy and the
gradual development of a scientific approach to nature presented a
challenge to traditional views about life and death. Nevertheless, we have
ample evidence that the old vision of the world, consisting of the sky (or
Olympos) as residence of the gods, the earth populated by humans and
other living beings, and the underworld as the abode of the dead, remained
predominant (Bérard 1974: 21).
The main Greek gods resided on Mount Olympos and had no contact
with the realm of Hades. Few of them made the journey to the underworld
and back. First and foremost among these divinities is Hermes
Psychopompos, whose function was to accompany the souls of the dead in
their final journey to the realm of Hades. There was also Persephone, who
had been seized by Hades himself and brought to the underworld in order to
become his wife, but was allowed to return to earth for part of the year.
Finally, we should mention Hekate, the goddess most often associated with
the fearsome irregularity of the return of the dead to the world of the living,
mainly in the form of ghosts (Johnston 1999b: 203–11).
 CASE STUDIES

Necromancy
Necromancy, or divination with the help of the dead, is an attested practice
in ancient Greece (Broadhead 1960: 302–3; Donnadieu and Villatte 1996:
81–91; Johnston 1999b: 83–5, 88; Ogden 2001; Bremmer 2002: 71–83).
The most extensive treatment of the subject (Ogden 2001) covers more
forms of communication with the dead than ‘necromancy’ in the narrow
sense. There were, in fact, oracles of the dead, where the souls of the dead
could be evoked and consulted (nekyomanteia). The best known among
these were at Ephyra by the river Acheron in Epiros, at Heraclea Pontica,
and at Cape Tainaron, the southernmost tip of the Peloponnese. Little is
known about the consulting procedure in these oracles, but it is clear that,
according to mythological tradition, their sites were entrances to the
underworld. A detailed description of a necromantic ritual performed by the
Thessalian witch Erichtho with the use of a corpse is described by Lucan
(6.425–506; Graf 1997: 190–200).
The earliest and most detailed description of necromancy in Greek
literature is the Nekyia (eleventh book) of the Odyssey (see Heubeck and
Hoekstra 1989: 75–7, with a short account of the widely diverging
interpretations proposed for the Nekyia). There has been disagreement on
whether the Nekyia describes a descent to Hades (katabasis) or not (Steiner
1971: 265–6 nn. 2 and 3). In fact, Odysseus does not cross the boundary
into the underworld, but reaches the limits of Ocean (peirata Okeanoio; we
might say ‘the end of the world’), where the Cimmerians live in eternal
darkness; there he offers a sacrifice and the souls of the dead appear to him
in order to drink the blood of the victims or he sees them from a distance
(Od. 11.9–50):
We then went ourselves along Ocean’s stream until we came to the place which Kirke had
described. There Perimedes and Eyrylochos held the sacrificial victims, and I drew my sharp
sword from my thigh and dug a ditch about a cubit this way and that, and round it I poured a
liquid offering to all the dead, first with a honey mixture and thereafter with sweet wine, and
again the third time with water; and I sprinkled white flour on top. . . . When I had had made
my prayers and entreaties to them, the races of the dead, I took the sheep and cut their throats
over the ditch, and the dark cloudy blood poured in, and the ghosts of the departed dead
 assembled together from out of Erebos. . . . Then I urged and ordered my comrades to flay and
burn the sheep which lay there slaughtered by the pitiless bronze, and to offer prayers to the
gods, mighty Hades and fearful Persephone. As for myself, I drew my sharp sword from my
thigh and sat there, not allowing the strengthless heads of the dead to come near the blood until
I had enquired of Teiresias. (Dawe 1993)

Odysseus’ main purpose, which he achieves, is to summon the soul of the

famous seer Teiresias in order to consult him about his return to Ithaka. It
has rightly been pointed out (Norden 1957: 200 n. 2) that the Nekyia is a
consultation of an oracle of the dead (nekyomanteia), not a descent into
Hades. According to an attractive hypothesis, the Nekyia of the Odyssey is
an account of necromancy as practised at a sanctuary with an oracle of the
dead (nekyomanteion) that has been transposed to a setting at the border of
the realm of the dead (Steiner 1971: 269; Heubeck 1989: 75–6). This is all
the more appealing in view of the fact that the nekyomanteia were supposed
to be gates to Hades.
An account of a consultation of an oracle of the dead that was probably
the best known of its kind in ancient Greece, the nekyomanteion of Ephyra
in Epiros, by the tyrant of Corinth, Periander, who lived in the sixth century
BCE, is transmitted by Herodotos (5.92.7):

And on one day, he [Periander] had all the Corinthian women stripped of their clothing, for the
sake of his own wife, Melissa. He had sent messengers to the Thesprotians on the Acheron
River to consult the oracle of the dead there on a deposit of treasure belonging to a guest-
friend. When Melissa appeared, she refused to tell him about it and said that she would not
disclose where it was buried because she was cold and naked and she could not make use of the
clothes that had been buried with her since they had not been consumed by the fire. She said
that the evidence for the truth of her claim was that Periander had placed his loaves in a cold
oven. When her response was reported to Periander, he found the token of its truth credible, for
he had engaged in intercourse with Melissa’s corpse. As soon as he heard the message, he
made a proclamation announcing that all Corinthian women were to go to the sanctuary of
Hera; and so they went there dressed in their finest clothes as though to attend a festival.
Periander had posted his bodyguards in ambush, and now he had the women stripped, both the
free women and the servants alike. Then he gathered their clothes together and, taking them to
a pit in the ground, said a prayer to Melissa and burned all the clothes completely. After doing
that, he sent to consult Melissa a second time, and the ghost now told him the place where his
guest-friend had deposited the treasure. (Strassler 2007)

It should be pointed out that this story follows a similar pattern to that of
Eukrates and Demainete told by Lucian (Philops. 27–8) (see Ogden 2004).

Summoning of Souls
The souls of the dead could be consulted not only in oracles; they were also
believed to be able to assist the living—especially if the dead had been an
important and powerful person in their lifetime. It was therefore possible to
summon a soul by means of a special religious ritual. Such an evocation is
found in the Persae of Aischylos, where Atossa, assisted by the Chorus,
induces her dead husband Dareios to appear as a ghost and advise her about
the future of her son Xerxes after his defeat at Salamis. The ritual consists
of a hymn which is sung by the Chorus (623–80) while the queen offers
libations (Broadhead 1960: 305–8; Jouan 1981). The ritual does not differ
significantly from that of necromancy, except that it is not performed at an
oracle of the dead, which means at an entrance to the underworld, but in
front of the Persian royal palace (Aesch. Pers. 604–32):
[Atossa]: I am already full of every kind of fear; hostile images from the gods appear before
my eyes, and a din—no victory-song—rings in my ears. Such is the terror caused by the
disaster which is driving me out of my mind. I have therefore made my way back from the
palace without the chariot and finery I had before, carrying material for a libation to propitiate
my son’s father, of the sort that appease the dead: delicious white milk from a pure heifer,
glistening honey distilled from flowers, lustral water from a virgin spring, and pure liquid taken
from its wild mother, this delightful product of an ancient vine. Here also are the fragrant fruit
from a pale olive-tree, which flourishes in leaf perpetually, and garlands of flowers, the
children of fruitful Earth. But you, friends, sing hymns to accompany these libations to the
dead, and summon up the spirit of Dareios. I will send forth to the earth to drink these gifts in
honor of the gods below.

[Chorus]: My lady Queen, revered by the Persians,

You send the libations to the subterranean chambers,
and we with hymns will ask
the escorts of the dead
to be benevolent beneath the earth.
You, pure gods of the underworld,
Earth and Hermes and king of those below,
send up the soul from below into the light.
For if he knows any further cure to our problems,
he alone of men could tell how to bring it to pass. (Hall
1996)

Significantly, Dareios cannot rise from the underworld unless the gods who
control it let him pass. It has been maintained that the evocation of Dareios
reflects magical practice, but closer examination shows that none of the
ritual acts described here goes beyond what is known of Greek religious
practice and veneration of the dead (Broadhead 1960: 305–8). Nevertheless,
it can be argued that rituals involving the evocation of the dead, with the
terrifying apparitions of ghosts they implied, shared common elements with
magical practices (Jouan 1981: 419–21).

The Role of ‘Restless Dead’ in Magic

Direct evidence for magic in ancient Greece has survived mainly in the
form of curses or binding spells (katadesmoi) written on lead tablets that
were deposited in graves or wells (Graf 1997: 118–51, with bibliographical
references; and, in this volume, Versnel, Chapter 30). These ‘curse tablets’
mostly contain short formulaic texts that provide little information on the
performance of the magic and the involvement of the dead in the process
(Johnston 1999b: 85–6)—unlike the later magical papyri from Egypt, which
contain exact directions. In a few ‘curse tablets’ of Classical and Hellenistic
date, however, the dead persons in whose graves they were buried are
invoked as witnesses or accessories to the enactment of the spell (Eidinow
2007: 148–53). There are also occasional invocations of obscure powers
collectively called daimones. These potentially harmful dwellers of the
underworld presumably include the souls of the deceased (see Voutiras
1998: 93–8, with bibliographical references; and, in this volume, Sfameni
Gasparro, Chapter 28).
A very rare example of a magic spell in which the main divinities of the
underworld are named is an Attic tablet beginning with the words: ‘I am
sending this letter to Hermes and Persephone’ (see Graf 1997: 130–1 with
n. 40: ‘just about unique’). An unusually long binding spell from Pella,
dating to the second quarter of the fourth century BCE, is particularly
interesting in this respect, because it describes the situation out of which it
arose, and provides information on the role of the dead man in whose grave
the lead tablet had been buried and that of the daimones of the underworld
in making the spell effective (Voutiras 1998: 15–16).
Of Thetima and Dionysophon the ritual wedding and the marriage I bind by a written spell, as
well as that of all other women, both widows and maidens, but above all of Thetima; and I
entrust (this spell) to Macron and to the daimones. And were I ever to unfold (the tablet) and
read these words again after digging it up, only then should Dionysophon marry, not before;
may he indeed not take another wife than myself, but let me alone grow old by the side of
Dionysophon and no one else. I implore you: have pity for [Phil]a, dear daimones, for I am
 bereft (?) of all my dear ones and abandoned. But please keep this (piece of writing) for my
sake so that these events do not happen and wretched Thetima perishes miserably. [. . .] but let
me become happy and blessed.

The tablet was found in the grave of an adult man—a simple pit
containing no grave goods—close to the right hand of the skeleton. Makron
is, therefore, almost certainly the name of the dead man, who is supposed to
‘keep’ the tablet with the binding spell together with the daimones, who are
probably the souls of restless dead, aoroi and biaiothanatoi (see ‘Views of
the Afterlife and Communication with the Dead’, above). The spell is
supposed to be effective for as long as it remains buried in the grave, which
places it in the underworld, the realm of the dead. The supplication of the
daimones of the underworld by the woman making the curse indicates that
she considers them instrumental in enacting the magical power of the spell.
It is reasonable to assume that the woman is following the instructions of an
expert magician. This, and other similar evidence, point to the conclusion
that the inhabitants of the underworld were perceived, at least from the end
of the Archaic period onwards, as agents enabling the enactment of curses,
spells, and other magical acts (Johnston 1999a: 85–92). It was also
commonly believed that the ‘restless dead’ (that is to say people who had
died prematurely or in a violent manner), who, in other contexts, appear as
ghosts, played a role, active or passive (as keepers or witnesses of a spell;
Eidinow 2007: 148–50) in the performance of magic.

Ghosts and Haunted Houses

Stories about haunted houses appear to have been common in ancient
Greece (Felton 1999: 38–49; Stramaglia 1999: 121–31). A good indication
of how widespread the belief in ghosts infesting old houses was, is the
existence of Attic comedies from the period of New Comedy (late fourth–
third century BCE) based on this theme. Our knowledge of these comedies is
unfortunately incomplete: Menander’s Phasma is only partially known and
we have very little direct information about Philemon’s play by the same
name, although it is probable that Mostellaria of Plautus was an adaptation
of it (Stramaglia 1999: 123 n. 8, with a list of other comedies with ghosts;
Felton 1999: 50–61).
 These plays may have been inspired by a collection of stories about
phantoms that circulated in fourth-century Athens. According to L.
Radermacher, the author of this collection could have been Heracleides
Ponticus (see Stramaglia 1999: 125–6 n. 17). A story about a house haunted
by the ghost of a dead man, whose body was lying under the floor—the
ghost was eventually driven away by a Pythagorean philosopher—is told by
Lucian (Philops. 30–1):
‘Well’, he (Arignotos) said, ‘if you ever go to Corinth ask for the house of Eubatides, and when
it is shown to you by the cherry grove, go in and tell the doorman Tibius that you’d like to see
the place where Arignotos the Pythagorean dug up the spirit and drove it away, making the
house habitable after that.’
‘What’s that all about, Arignotos?’ asked Eucrates.
‘It was uninhabitable for ages’, he said, ‘because of terrifying occurrences. If anyone went to
live there he immediately fled in panic, pursued by a fearful and stupefying phantom. So the
house was collapsing and the roof was falling in, and absolutely no one was brave enough to go
there.’
When I heard this I took my books—I have a great many Egyptian works on such topics—
and went to the house around bedtime, though my host tried to stop me, almost grabbing hold
of me, when he heard where I was going—into manifest disaster, as he thought. But I took a
lamp and went in alone. I put the light down in the biggest room and began to read, sitting
quietly on the floor, when the spirit appeared, thinking that he was approaching an ordinary sort
of man and expecting to scare me like the others. He was squalid-looking, with long hair, and
blacker than the darkness, and he stood over me and had a go at me, assailing me from all sides
to see if he could get the better of me, now in the form of a dog, now of a bull or a lion. But I
produced my most horrific spell, speaking it in Egyptian, forced him into a corner of a dark
room and charmed him away. Then I noted the spot where he went down and then I went to
sleep.
At dawn, when everyone had given up hope and was expecting to find me dead like the
others, I emerged to everyone’s surprise, and went to Eubatides to tell him the good news that
he could now live in his house, which was free from pollution and horrors. So, taking him with
me, and a lot of others who came along attracted by the extraordinary event, I led him to the
spot where I had seen the spirit go down, and told them to get forks and spades and dig. When
they had done so a body was found buried about six feet deep: it had decomposed and only the
bones were lying in order. We dug it up and buried it, and from then on the house was no
longer troubled with phantoms. (Costa 2005)

A very similar story about a haunted house in Athens is transmitted by

Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 7.27.5–11. Pliny and Lucian could
conceivably have adapted their stories from a common source, all the more
so as, in both cases, the person who intervenes in order to free the house
from the ghost haunting it is a philosopher (Stramaglia 1999: 125–7).
 CONCLUSION

The initial Greek perception of the soul as the spirit of life leaving the body
at the moment of death allowed for little communication between the dead
and the living apart from commemoration. From the late Archaic period
onwards there is a shift in the concept of the soul, which becomes more
versatile. Consequently, the boundary separating the living from the dead
becomes less clear, for at least certain dead appear to be able to transgress it
and interact with mortals. But the overall picture is blurred by the fact that
seemingly contradictory eschatological beliefs can coexist.

SUGGESTED READING
For ancient Greek conceptions of immortality, death, and the afterlife, see
Sourvinou-Inwood 1995; Johnston 1999a; Jaeger 2001; Bremmer 2002; as
well as, this volume, Radcliffe Edmonds, chapter 37. On the topic of heroes
and heroization, see García Teijeiro and Molinos Tejada 2000; Currie 2002.
The Greek concept of the soul is discussed in Bremmer 1983. For
divinatory practices relating to the dead, see in particular Ogden 2001. On
Orphism, see Turcan 1959; and, more recently, Edmonds 2004, which also
discusses ancient Greek myths pertaining to Hades and the underworld. On
ancient magic more generally, see Graf 1997; Voutiras 1998; Delgado 2001.

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Bérard, C. 1974. Anodoi. Essai sur l’imagerie des passages chthoniens. Rome.
Bernabé, A. 2011. ‘Platone e l’Orfismo’, in Destino e salvezza tra culti pagani e gnosi Cristiana.
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 CHAPTER 28

DAIMONIC POWER

GIULIA SFAMENI GASPARRO

THE PROBLEM

A Long-Lasting System
In dealing with ‘daimonic power’ in the Greek religious tradition, we need
to make a premise: we cannot, in fact, presume that we can reconstruct a
‘daimonology’, in the sense of a clearly defined doctrine or a coherent and
final system of ideas. Rather, ‘daimonology’ is a more or less homogeneous
and articulated set of ideas and beliefs, sometimes associated with ritual
practice, relating to the category of the divine which the Greeks, from the
time of Homer, denoted by the term daimon/daimones. This set of ideas is
to be assessed in the context of the Greek religious tradition as it originated
and developed over time, without dogmas and institutions or official
religious authorities with the power to impose rigid regulatory uniformity
on beliefs and ritual practices. There is, also, the difficulty of applying clear
steps within this long historical process, establishing, as it were, the precise
‘phases’ and isolating compact, autonomous blocks within the mobile flow
of ethnic–national religious beliefs. Avoiding anachronisms by interpreting
the sources of the Archaic and Classical age in the light of subsequent
developments, according to ideological schemes of a different historical–
cultural situation, seems to be key. The more or less complex formulations
of the Hellenistic and Roman Imperial periods must, therefore, be placed in
relation to earlier traditions, to measure any continuity, mutations, or
innovations.

The Sources
There are numerous problems stemming from the nature of the source
material available for the study of daimonic power. Literary texts
outnumber ‘direct’ documents, such as inscriptions. It is difficult, indeed
sometimes impossible, to differentiate, within the literary tradition, between
material derived from a writer’s own interpretations and ideological views,
and that which might reflect the more widespread beliefs and practices of
the common people. However, the gap between learned speculations of
individuals and the broader mentalities and religious experiences of Greek
communities and numerous Hellenized peoples within the Mediterranean
world is not unbridgeable if we consider the stability of religious traditions
in ancient cultures, and of Greek religion in particular. In the absence of an
official normative authority, there was a deeply conservative attitude with
regard to the beliefs and cult practices of the civic communities. None of
those who deal with religious themes, be they poets, historians,
philosophers, or writers, innovates in a radical fashion, even when adopting
a critical position. Rather, to a greater or lesser degree, they draw on the
common tradition, which also nourished their own ideological and cultural
roots.

Different Notions of Daimon

There are three basic meanings that make up the flexible and varied content
of Greek ‘daimonology’ in the long course of its historical development.
One meaning, which we may term theological, uses daimones to refer to a
category of superhuman beings within a graduated hierarchy, often
including heroes, whose extremes are occupied by gods and men. Within
this continuum, the daimones constitute a group wielding specific powers
and tasks, as intermediaries between gods and men. According to a second,
anthropological meaning, the daimon is conceived of as equivalent to the
soul of a person, living or dead. This view correlates with the protective
function often ascribed to the daimon, which is probably the oldest
conception, the one most deeply rooted in the Greek ethical and religious
tradition, and is linked to that of the individual’s destiny (moira) and his lot
or fortune (tyche). In its third meaning, ‘daimonology’ also assumes a
cosmological function, since the daimones are located in either of the
cosmic levels that form the graduated structure of ‘the All’.

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL OVERVIEW

Although the scholarly debate on the subject has generated numerous,

authoritative works, recent studies taking a broad documentary and
methodological look at the whole chronological span of Greek daimonology
are still extant. Useful and praiseworthy early studies in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries (Hild 1892; Andres 1918; Heinze 1965
[1892]) aimed at providing a broad overview of the theme for the Archaic
and Classical ages, and, in part, for the early Hellenistic period. Later
research, however, focused merely on specific contexts. This research often
provided a philosophical reflection aimed at ‘systematizing’ the complex,
shifting horizon of Greek religious traditions rather than looking at the
specifically religious aspects of the topic. In this field we should mention
the many, varied studies on the Pythagorean environment, including, of
particular interest, that by Detienne (1963), which also reflects on the
Platonic context. The latter, in fact, throughout its long history, is deeply
interested in the daimonological theme, often adopted as an interpretative
key to bridge the gap between popular belief and worship on the one hand,
and rational speculation of philosophers on the other. After Jensen (1966)
and the contribution of Marx-Wolf (2009), the documented essay by
Timotin (2012) is of interest. From an eminently philosophical perspective,
this work examines the ‘history of the notion of daimon from Plato to the
last Platonists’. From Porphyry to Iamblichos, up to Proklos and
Damaskios, these ‘last Hellenes’ opposed the increasingly pervasive and
ultimately victorious affirmation of Christianity. They tried, with all the
tools of philosophical reflection, to propose a new interpretation of the
traditional Greek religious heritage. Daimonological exegesis, variously
articulated according to context, often offered them an interpretative key to
include aspects of this heritage deemed incompatible with the canons of the
‘philosophical religion’ they desired.

THE VARIOUS FACES OF THE PRISM: THE

DAIMON BETWEEN THEOLOGY AND
ANTHROPOLOGY

Daimones as a Category of Superhuman

Beings in the ‘Theology’ of the Greeks
In Plutarch’s (c.47–127 CE) dialogue On the Disappearance of Oracles,
Kleombrotos focuses on the somewhat thorny issue of Providence. In his
view: ‘those persons have resolved more and greater perplexities who have
set the race of demigods (ton daimonon genos) midway between gods and
men, and have discovered a force to draw together, in a way, and to unite
our common fellowship’ (De def. or. 10 414e–415a; trans. Babbitt 1962
[1936], with changes).
A history of the problem is proposed:
Among the Greeks, Homer, moreover, appears to use both names in common and sometimes to
speak of the gods (theoi) as daimones; but Hesiod was the first to set forth clearly and distinctly
four classes of rational beings: gods, daimones, heroes, in this order, and, last of all, men; and
as a sequence to this, apparently, he postulates his transmutation, the golden race into
daimones. (415a–b)

In On Isis and Osiris Plutarch also appeals to the authority of Plato,

Pythagoras, Xenokrates, and Krysippos, who,
 following the lead of early writers on sacred subjects (theologoi), allege (the daimones) to have
been stronger than men, yet not possessing the divine quality unmixed and uncontaminated, but
with a share also in the nature of the soul and in the perceptive faculties of the body, and with
susceptibility to pleasure and pain and to whatsoever other experience is incident to these
mutations, and is the source of much disquiet in some and of less in others. For in daimones, as
in men, there are diverse degrees of virtue and of vice. (De Is. et Os. 25.360d–e)

Some modern scholars have questioned whether the men of the golden
race (Hes. Op. 121–6), who became daimones after death, could have been
a distinct category for Hesiod. Instead, it has been argued that he
understands daimones in the Homeric sense of ‘gods’, beings of divine
status without special connotations. Such a view contradicts the entire
ancient tradition, which always understood Hesiod’s daimones as beings of
special status within the general theological scheme, different from the
great gods.
Plato provides the earliest attestation of this interpretation. In the
Kratylos (397e–398a) and Leg. (713c–d) there is talk of a ‘race of
daimons’, defined as ‘superior’, a particular category of superhuman beings
that acts as ‘guardians’ of men at the time of Kronos. This notion can also
be found in the Pythagoreans, whose interest in Hesiod, whom they
considered almost a ‘sacred’ writer, is well known. At the same time, this
interpretation makes nonsense of the deeper import of the myth of the four
races and certainly reflects its author’s attempt to construct a coherent
framework for the disorderly religious inheritance that he was trying to
rethink in terms of his own ethical view.
Among the various meanings of the myth, we may insist here upon its
vocation, in terms of nature and functions, as a classification of beings
which operates on different levels of reality that are notionally distinct, but
does not imply any break within a homogeneous, continuous chain of being.
The history of man is linked to that of the gods by virtue of the
metamorphosis into daimones of ‘the golden race of mortal men’ (Hes. Op.
109).
The word daimon retains, throughout Greek tradition from the Homeric
poems to the very end, its meaning as a synonym of theos. It has its own
specific nuances—already evident in Homer—which embody a
supernatural presence and power, difficult for humans to identify, and that
often intervenes unexpectedly, bringing with it risks for people. Among the
many examples analysed by François (1957), we need merely to recall
Menelaus’ reflection on the outcome of his fight with Hector (Hom. Il.
17.89–104). Within the terms used to define the divine power that protects
the Trojan hero, daimon alternates with theos, but takes on the meaning of
an indefinite supernatural force that directs the course of events according
to its own design, which humans cannot oppose.
In Hesiod’s text, the variables of meaning of the words used to identify
superhuman powers, such as theos and daimon, are emphasized to indicate
a particular status. The poet’s moralizing perspective represents the
daimones as guardians ‘of mortal men’, acting justly, but also as plutodotoi,
‘bestowers of wealth’. This is their geras basileion or ‘royal privilege’,
which characterizes their position as divine beings (Hes. Th. 122–6).
In Hesiod’s scheme we can see a whole series of ideas, familiar from
different levels of Greek religious tradition, neatly imbricated into a
consistent framework. The daimones, as an ancient race of men ‘hidden
beneath the earth’, are related to the souls of the dead. The role of watchers
(phylakes) suggests a notion familiar from Homeric poems, and recurrent in
later Greek tradition. In lyric (Pind. Ol. 13.105; Pind. Pyth. 5.122–3) and
gnomic (Thgn. 149–50, 161–6, 402–6, 637–8) poetry, tragedy (Aesch. Pers.
158, 825 and passim; Soph. OC 76; Eur. Med. 1347; Eur. Alc. 499, 561;
Eur. Andr. 98, 974; Eur. Phoen. 1653), history (Xen. An. 5.2.25.), and
oratory (Lys. 2. 78f), the daimon appears as a divine agent intervening at
will in human affairs, positively or negatively, for good or ill, often to
revenge crimes, as the Daimon Alastor in works of tragedy (Aesch. Per.
355–554), and invariably exercising a decisive influence upon human fate.
From Euripides (Bacch. 894)—who provides the first testimony—
onwards, in the semantic sphere of theos/oi and daimon/es, along with the
neuter to theion attested for the first time in Aesch. Cho. 957, we see the
neuter to daimonion. Both forms of neuter substantivized adjective,
according to the contexts, have an abstract (‘the divine’, ‘the daimonic’) or
collective sense, that is, corresponding to theoi and daimones. These two
new semantic formations were to have an important role in influencing the
evolution of the meaning of Greek ‘theology’ and ‘daimonology’. These
terms are often used as alternative and converging designations of the
power that stands over and directs cosmic and human life. In the many
peculiar articulations of a polytheistic scenario (on which see, in this
volume, Pirenne-Delforge and Pironti, Chapter 4), they also assume a
differentiated significance and make it possible to circumscribe, in the
various historical contexts, the two distinct spheres of the ‘divine’ and the
‘daimonic’.

Daimones between Folklore and Learned

Speculations: Presocratics and Pythagoreans
In Hesiod’s scheme the ‘daimones-guardians’ appear as a well-defined
category of beings, midway between gods and men, and acting as
intermediaries between them. There are many elements that lead us to
conclude that this notion is not the poet’s invention, but reflects popular
belief that the daimones were superhuman beings related to, but distinct
from, the gods, who acted as intermediaries between gods and men.
According to a doxographic tradition, Thales of Miletos (c.624–546 BCE)
was the first to establish a systematic classification of theos, daimones, and
heroes: God was the intelligence (nous) of the world, daimones were
psychic essences, and heroes were human souls separated from the body,
good or bad, according to the moral quality of the relevant soul
(Athenagoras Leg. pro Christ. 23).
According to Thales, souls are intermingled in the universe, in such a
way that ‘all things are full of gods’ (De anima 411a7, DK 11A22. Cf.
Plato, Leg. 899b). Plato’s scholiast affirms that, according to Thales, ‘the
world is besouled and full of daimones’ (Schol. In Remp. 600 A: apud
Hesychios DK 11[1]A3. Cf. Aët., Plac. 1.7.11, Dox. 301, 20–2 = DK
11A23). Daimones correspond to Aristotle’s theoi. This represents an
attempt to express in philosophical terms the conceptual categories of
religious tradition. It is uncertain whether the two terms carried different
connotations in Thales’ cultural and religious contexts.
As Detienne (1963) shows, such a distinction between theoi and
daimones seems to be relatively clear within the Pythagorean tradition. It is
significant that, among the numerous senses of daimon in Pythagorean
sources, there is a category of beings with a particular function in the life of
men, to whom they are linked, inasmuch as they are souls detached from
their bodies. The Pythagorean Commentaries cited by Alexander Polyhistor
(first century BCE: Diog. Laert. 8.24–33) reveal that
 The whole air is full of souls. We call them daimones and heroes, and it is they who send
dreams, signs and illnesses to men—and not only to men, but also to sheep and other domestic
animals. It is toward these daimones that we direct purifications and apotropaic rituals, all
kinds of scryings, kledonomancy and other things of a similar kind.

The date of the Pythagorean Commentaries is uncertain (an early

Pythagorean work or an expression of second or first century BCE
Neopythagorism). The text contains different senses of daimon because it
draws upon sources of diverse age and origins: the idea that the daimones
and heroes are equivalent to the souls that swarm in the air, analogous to the
doctrine of Thales, may hark back to an Archaic idea, such as daimonic
influence upon animals. The oracular function of these daimonic beings,
and, in particular, the ascription of purifying and apotropaic rituals, as well
as scrying and kledonomancy, to the daimonic world, probably derives from
intellectual speculations in a Pythagorean milieu, similar to that represented
by commentary on the Derveni Papyrus, in Plato’s Symposium, and
continued in the Platonic tradition from Xenokrates to Plutarch and
Porphyry.
Before examining these authors, the position of Empedokles (c.490–430
BCE) should be mentioned. He was a complex, original figure of great
philosophical and religious interest. In his poems (On Nature and
Purifications), which have reached us through an indirect fragmentary
tradition, we see the notion of the daimon as a psychic entity involved in the
cosmic drama of the struggle between Neikos (Strike) and Philia (Love),
and caught in a cycle of painful transmigrations into different bodies
(humans, animals, plants). Empedokles’ daimones are entities closely
linked to the anthropological sphere. In fact, the poet-philosopher, having
evoked the cycle of metensomatosis (reincarnation) to which the murderer
and perjurer must be subjected, ‘far from the blessed, who like long-lived
daimons have attained life’, can claim to be one of them, ‘exiled by divine
decree and wandering’ (fr. 115; cf. Plut. De def. or. 418e, 420d).

Plato
The intermediate and ‘intermediary’ nature of daimones reformulates the
polyvalent meaning represented by the popular notion of daimon, and
appears formalized for the first time in the well-known Platonic myth of
Eros.
In the myth, Diotima of Mantinea tells Sokrates (Pl. Symp. 203a–204c),
in support of the revelation that Eros is a daimon: ‘he is a big daimon, and
the entire daimonion is half-way (metaxu) between god and mortal’. The
power (dynamis) of the daimones is ‘to play between heaven and earth,
flying upwards with our worship and our prayers, and descending with the
heavenly answer and commandments . . . They form the medium of the
prophetic arts, of the priestly rites of sacrifice, initiation, and incantation, of
divination and sorcery’ (202d–203a). The theological aim of the discourse
is clear in the conclusion, ‘The god will not mingle with the human, and it
is only through this (to daimonion) that the gods have intercourse and
conversation with men, whether waking or sleeping.’ The wise woman
concludes, ‘The daimones are many and of many kinds’ (203a).
This is probably a collective representation shared both by ordinary
people and by the learned, as the same idea is found in an increasing
number of texts from the fourth century BCE onwards. In several dialogues,
Plato develops the notion of a personal daimon who protects the individual
during this life and guides him in the life to come (Phd. 107d–108b, 113d;
Resp. 620d–e), and maybe is actually the superior, divine part of the soul
(Ti. 90a–c). Plato also makes use of the traditional tripartite scheme of
gods/daimones/heroes to define the categories of superhuman beings.

The Platonic Tradition—Epinomis

The author of Epinomis, probably Philippus of Opus (c.350 BCE), set out a
cosmological scheme with a hierarchy of beings closely linked with the five
physical elements. First comes ‘the divine host of the stars’ (981e), visible,
immortal, and composed of fire. Last is the creature ‘made of earth, entirely
mortal’ (984b). The author distinguishes two kinds of daimones: ethereal
and of the air. Without specifying the precise relationship between the
Olympian gods and the three elements, ether, air, and water, which fall
between the poles (984d), the author puts the daimones in second and third
place after the stars (984d–e). Both are invisible and
of a kind that is quick to learn and of a retentive memory: they read all our thoughts and regard
the good and noble with signal favour, but the very evil man with deep aversion. For they are
 not exempt from feeling pain whereas a god who enjoys the fullness of deity is clear above
both pain and pleasure, though possessed of all-embracing knowledge and wisdom. (984e–
985a)

The intermediate beings, who are subject to pain, form the link between
the poles of the universe, acting ‘as interpreters, and interpreters of all
things, to one another and to the highest gods’. Their agency is at work in
dreams and oracles, and forms the basis of various city cults (984e–985a).
The Epinomis bears witness to the process of systematization of the
Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine, with regard to the intermediate and
intermediary status of the daimones. It also foreshadows a theme developed
later by Xenokrates and Plutarch by expressing the notion of daimon as a
tool for reinterpreting Greek myths and cults. Whereas the god is perfect
and impassible, the daimones are capable of experiencing suffering. In this
intellectual context, it follows that mutability and vicissitude must also be
characteristic of the lower orders of divine being. This notion allows writers
such as Xenokrates and Plutarch to reinterpret the adventures of the gods of
traditional mythology, as well as the ecstatic and orgiastic cults, with
reference not to the higher gods but to daimones, who belong to a level
close to human beings, and who are susceptible to suffering and, on
occasion, ambiguous or downright wicked.

The Platonic Tradition—Xenokrates

According to Plutarch, Xenokrates (396/5–314/3 BCE) accepted the
compound nature of daimones and distinguished between daimones that
were good and those that were evil, those who were beneficent and those
harmful to mankind (De Is. et Os. 26, 361b = fr. 25 Heinze 1965 [1892]:
168; cf. De def. or. 17, 419a = fr. 24 Heinze 1965 [1892]: 167). Plutarch
accepts this distinction, and sometimes also attributes it to the Stoic
Krysippos (De Is. et Os. 25, 360e; De def. or. 17, 419a). The role of
Xenokrates in the history of Greek daimonology must be reconsidered in
the light of Pythagoras, who should be attributed both with identifying
daimon-tyche and with the distinction between good and bad daimones,
which, in turn, is rooted in ancient folk beliefs. It is important to note that,
in the age of Xenokrates, on the basis of popular notions probably filtered
down from and elaborated by the Pythagoreans, there was already a clear
distinction between two aspects in the intermediate level of the daimones,
one positive and beneficial, the other negative and malevolent in its
intervention in human life.
Peculiar to Xenokrates’ daimonology, as expounded in the De defectu
oraculorum (13, 416c–d), is the Platonic notion of the characteristically
intermediate nature of daimons, which is defined according to the
contemporaneous presence of the ‘power of the god’ (theou dynamis), and
of ‘human emotions’ (pathos thnetou). The notion of daimon has already
been seen in the sense of a mutability typical of everything that pertains to
the pathetic, passionate, and compatible element, peculiar to the mortal
world, and therefore capable of turning to good or bad (De Is. et Os. 25,
360e).
Although Xenokrates did not identify daimones with the gods of
traditional polytheism as Heinze would have him do, he did take a decisive
step in this direction. According to Plutarch, this occurred once he related
important Greek mythical–ritual religious systems associated with figures
such as Demeter and Dionysos, to those pathetic, mutable entities that are
daimons. The result is a clear daimonization of the ritual sphere, highly
typical of ancient Greek religion, in which are involved pathetic gods,
subject to a ‘vicissitude’ far from the detached and unchangeable stability
of the Olympian gods. Under the gaze of the philosopher, the pathetic gods
reveal themselves to be incompatible with the impassable image of the
divine, being better suited to exemplifying an intermediate category such as
the daimonic and, indeed, the most disturbing and dangerous side of it.
In conclusion, Plato’s second successor expounds a keen interest in
ancestral religious traditions, reinterpreted in the light of his own
philosophical postulates, together with an organically structured and
functioning daimonology in which several contributions converge, not only
Platonic, naturally, but also Pythagorean.
Many voices contributed to the formulation of the daimonological
theories that were particularly in favour in Platonic environments and were
more or less influenced by Pythagorism. The major exponents of this
tradition included Antiochus of Ascalon (late second, early first century
BCE) and Maximus of Tyre (second century CE), who affected other
philosophical traditions in various ways, from Aristotelianism to Stoicism.
The Platonic Tradition and the Stoics
It is worth noting the views of certain Stoics, to whom Diogenes Laertios
(7.151) attributes a doctrine of guardian daimones. Aëtius (first or second
century CE) records that daimones are equated with the ousiai psychikai
(Plac. 1.8.2; Dox. 307a 9–14 = SVF 2, 1101). The Stoics, like the
Pythagoreans and the Platonists, attributed the working of oracles to
daimones (Stob. Ecl. 2.6.5b.12). Later, Poseidonios (c.136–51 BCE)
accepted the idea that the spirits of the dead became daimones (Sext. Emp.
Math. 9, 71–4 Mutschmann 231 = fr. 400b, Theiler 317). This view comes
nearest to the Greek popular belief that persisted from the Hesiodic myth of
the races through the centuries to the Mediterranean world of the Hellenistic
period, and beyond, throughout the Roman imperial period. Since various
traditions shared the assumption that the dead profoundly interfered in the
existence of the living, it was one of the many themes on which the
complex cultural amalgam of late antique civilization could converge.

The Platonic Tradition—Plutarch

The positions of Plutarch and Celsus are of particular importance in the
Greek Platonic tradition while, in the field of Latin culture strongly
influenced by Greek philosophical traditions, we should mention Apuleius.
In Plutarch’s elaborate, complex daimonology (Soury 1942), the two most
significant aspects are those indicated by Plutarch himself as peculiar to
Xenokrates; these assume a fundamental role and a precise theoretical
systematization in Plutarch's religious vision. This vision makes the
distinction between good daimons and bad daimons—and the systematic
formulation of the ‘intermediate nature’ of the daimon category between the
divine and human levels, in both its components (positive and negative)—
by virtue of the typical instability and pathetic nature that intrinsically
defines the daimon category.
The two crucial aspects of Plutarch’s daimonology, proposed with
reasoned arguments in De defectu oraculorum (10–22, 414e–422c), act, in
De Iside et Osiride, as an interpretive module for the mythical–ritual cycle
associated with the Egyptian couple Isis–Osiris and similar Greek religious
systems, such as those related to Demeter and Dionysos. As it is
understood, these religious systems do not represent the whole
daimonological framework of Plutarch, who contemplates a dynamic
communication between different levels: the notion of daimones-souls,
sometimes capable of purification that enables their transfer to the divine
rank, or degradation with subsequent imprisonment in human bodies (De
def. or. 10, 415b–c).
Plutarch was also familiar with the idea, developed in numerous forms in
the Moralia and the Vitae, of a personal daimon—the individual’s guardian
(cf. De genio Socratis), and/or the superior, divine element of the soul—a
notion of clear Platonic origin (Tim. 90a–c). The personal daimon survives
the death of the body and undergoes an often dramatic eschatological
experience, as seen in the three great myths, respectively of Sylla (De fac.
940f–945d), of Timarchus (De gen. 589f– 592e), and of Tespesios (De sera
563b–568f).

The Platonic Tradition—Celsus

A substantially similar vision characterizes the author of the ‘True
Doctrine’; Origen passed on long excerpts of this work in his detailed
confutation. Celsus repeatedly rebukes Christians for refusing to pay the
necessary homage to the daimones, to whom the custody of the world is
entrusted (Origen, C. Cels. 8.55). The daimones must be worshipped in
accordance with the traditional laws of each city (8.57). Christians are thus
in a contradictory position because, while enjoying all the sustenance
offered by the world, they do not worship its guardians and guarantors
(8.33). Celsus mentions that these beings, if deprived of their rightful
honours, may cause serious harm to humanity (8.35), but will bring
numerous benefits through oracles and apparitions when they are properly
venerated (8.45).
Origen states that ‘Celsus had said nothing about daimons being evil’
(8.39). Unlike Xenokrates and Plutarch, and like Apuleius, he outlines a
unitary framework where ‘the true recipients of worship were the daimones,
intermediate and “pathetic” ’. This worship was commonly addressed to the
gods of the various traditional polytheistic religions, but here is attributed to
both daimones and gods without distinction, given their power over cosmic
events and human life. There is, therefore, no inherent negativity of
daimones but rather a common passionate nature, since they are the source
of benefits and of harm to humans, as a result of the respectively benevolent
or disapproving attitude of these ‘guardians’ of worldly existence.
The observance of traditional cults is thus seen as an essential tool for the
maintenance of cosmic equilibria and the correct relationship between men
and daimones. The foundation for harmonious functioning of cosmic and
human life is perceived as being based on the religious vision of a
polytheistic structure characterized by the functional breakdown of tasks
and attributes among the various divine figures, and the celebration of
ancestral rites by the city community. Celsus’ restraint regarding man’s
relationship with the lords of cosmic life, leads him to firmly distance
himself from blood sacrifice. This reveals the changed spiritual climate as
well as Celsus’ attitude; the latter seems similar to the positions of
contemporary Platonism. He warns readers not to be absorbed by the
worship rendered to the daimones, which leads away from the higher god.
He evokes the opinion of the ‘wise men’, according to whom
most of the earthly daimones are absorbed with created things, and are riveted to blood and
burnt offerings and magical enchantments, and are bound to other things of this sort, and can
do nothing better than healing the body and predicting the coming fortune of men and cities,
and that all their knowledge and power concerns merely mortal activities. (8.60; trans.
Chadwick 1965)

The two key themes of Porphyry’s discourse are evoked: first, there is the
close connection between daimonic power and the practice of blood
sacrifice. These terrestrial beings nourish themselves with the vapours
emanating from the victim, and, in particular, with its blood, causing that
thickening of the pneumatic vehicle that binds them firmly to the
corruptible and passionate world. The second key notion is that the power
of daimons is concerned solely with bodily and worldly goods, whose
possession nevertheless risks, as Celsus stresses, distancing man from those
‘higher goods’ in which can be found his true spiritual and religious
dimension. A daimonic presence was considered necessary for the
maintenance of cosmic order, although such a presence possessed
disturbing and even dangerous aspects due to its ability to distract man from
the real spiritual good. The uninterrupted tension of the soul must be
directed towards the supreme, transcendent deity.
The Platonic Tradition—Daimones and Blood
Sacrifice in Porphyry
Porphyry’s extensive and complex argument is aimed at demonstrating the
obsolete and improper nature of blood sacrifice, with the consequent
consumption of meat, the central act of worship in the polis. In it, he states
that he ‘shall not attempt to dissolve the legal institutes which the several
nations have established . . . But as the laws . . . permit us to venerate
divinity by things of the most simple, and of an inanimate nature, hence . . .
let us sacrifice according to the law of the city’ (Abst. 2.33; trans. Taylor
1965). Porphyry continues: ‘Let us therefore also sacrifice, but let us
sacrifice in such a manner as is fit, offering different sacrifices to different
powers’ (2.34).
Having proposed the notion of diverse dynameis (powers) to which the
thysia (sacrifice) of man is addressed, he outlines an initial theological
framework that seems to have been borrowed partially from the treatise On
Sacrifices by Apollonios of Tyana (see quotation in Euseb. Praep. evang.
4.12, 1, 142).
After the highest god there is a second level of ‘the intelligible Gods’
who are derived from him. Addressed to these gods are ‘hymns orally
enunciated’ (2.34.4). The third divine level is that of the stars, in whose
honour, according to Pythagorean teaching, there must be lit a fire of a
similar nature to them. This means that no animate being must be
sacrificed, but only vegetable elements (2.36.3–4): ‘For he who is studious
of piety knows, indeed, that to the Gods no animal is to be sacrificed, but
that a sacrifice of this kind pertains to daimons, and other powers, whether
they are beneficent, or depraved’ (2.36.5).
To illustrate the practice of animal sacrifice, with all the related miasma
(‘contamination’) that springs from it and from relative dietary practices,
Porphyry appeals to a second theological scheme, attributed to the
‘Platonists’, which partly coincides with that of Apollonios of Tyana
already mentioned, to offer the basis for an articulated and solidly
constructed daimonological doctrine.
At the top of a ladder of divine beings is the protos theos (‘First God’),
‘incorporeal, immoveable, and impartible’, completely self-sustaining. This
First God is followed by the Soul of the world, ‘incorporeal, and liberated
from the participation of any passion’. The other gods are the heavens
(kosmos) ‘and the fixed and wandering stars who are visible Gods’. While
the First God and the Soul of the world do not require anything outside
themselves, meaning that no material homage need be made to them, thanks
are given to the visible gods for the benefits received through offerings of
inanimate objects (2.37.1). Porphyry speaks of ‘the multitude . . . of those
invisible beings . . . who Plato indiscriminately calls daimones’ (2.37.4).
Using this wide and varied categorization Porphyry situates traditional
polytheistic structures within the theological vision of contemporary
Platonism. The result is the establishment of a clear dichotomy between the
planes of belief and worship, at least in relation to the central act of the
latter, consisting in offering the gods an animal victim.
Porphyry, in fact, distinguishes between two classes of daimones, good
and bad respectively, and identifies the first with the gods of polytheism:
The remaining multitude is called in common by the name of daimones. The general
persuasion, however, respecting all these invisible beings, is this, that if they become angry
through being neglected, and deprived of the religious reverence which is due to them, they are
noxious to those by whom they are thus neglected, and that they again become beneficent, if
they are appeased by prayers, supplications, and sacrifices, and other similarities. (2.37.5)

In the opinion of Porphyry, the information related to daimones is

confusing, and leads to incorrect judgements about them.
Porphyry illustrates a doctrine that, by being linked to the theological
schema set forth earlier in this section, places the daimones in direct
relation to the Universal Soul (Psyche). They are, in fact, none other than
psychai (souls) derived from the Universal Soul and destined to govern the
sublunary regions. The souls, with pneumatic support, that is, a sort of
material garment, are distinguished from each other with regard to the
relationship established with this inferior component, later defined as
‘corporeal, passive and corruptible’ (2.39.2). Those souls that manage to
dominate the pneuma by directing it ‘in agreement with reason’ become
good daimones and exert a beneficial power on the various cosmic regions
and on human activity (2.38.2). They are thus identified with the gods, as
functioning typically in the polytheistic tradition. Porphyry adds a category
of ‘intermediary’ daimons. He explicitly appeals to the Platonic doctrine of
the Symposium (202e) to define these beings as those ‘who announce the
affairs of men to the gods, and the will of the gods to men; carrying our
prayers, indeed, to the gods as judges, but oracularly unfolding to us the
exhortations and admonitions of the gods’ (2.38.3).
To these beings, man mistakenly attributes feelings of revenge and the
ability to cause injury if they are not worshipped. This malevolent capacity
is instead characteristic of those souls who, overwhelmed by the passionate
support of the pneuma, are themselves prey to sensitive appetites. Although
belonging to the common category of daimones, these souls can rightly be
termed malevolent (2.38.4). Porphyry then expounds a complex
daimonology that uses various elements already present in an extensive and
well-established tradition that, in Greece, flowing from a diverse and
mobile substrate of Archaic folk beliefs, seems to have found, in ancient
Pythagorism, a fruitful soil where it could take root to assume more or less
elaborate shapes and move towards new solutions.
Having defined the unique character of the daimons as being invisible
and imperceptible to the senses, Porphyry affirms their ability to assume
various guises so that they can manifest themselves visibly. The evil
daimons occupy the regions near to the earth and attempt to commit all
sorts of evil and violent acts against men. Instead, the intervention of the
good daimons, even when aimed at correcting human behaviour, is
distinguished by its regularity and moderation (2.39.1–4).
Porphyry concludes that: ‘On this account a wise and temperate man will
be afraid, in a religious sense, to use sacrifices of this kind, through which
he will attract to himself such-like daimones; but he will endeavor in all
possible ways to purify his soul’ (2.43.1). Porphyry’s perspective, with its
firm condemnation of blood sacrifice, reveals the specific originality of
some of its aspects, primarily the fundamental anthropological motivation
of the entire context, oriented to the salvation of the soul. This perspective
nevertheless presents itself as a last, radical result of attitudes and trends
variously present in the Greek tradition, where sometimes the criticism of
sacrifice is found within a theological framework with a structure that, by
degrees, links ritual practice, or other aspects of worship considered
somewhat at odds with divine dignity, with the daimonic rank, seen as
intermediate between gods and men.

DAIMONES AND CULT

Some documents, particularly epigraphic, reveal more clearly traditional
popular beliefs and rituals and show the process by which Greek religious
thinking came to distinguish between the words theoi and daimones so as to
define two categories of divine beings. In the inscriptions from the oracular
sanctuary of Zeus at Dodona, a couple ‘ask Zeus Naios and Dione by
praying to which of the gods or heroes or daimones and sacrificing will they
and their household do better both now and for all time’ (SGDI 1582A:
fourth century BCE; cf. 1585B, 1566A). Daimones are often evoked in the
curses and defixiones, or curse formulae, usually placed in tombs against
adversaries by whom one feels threatened or for purposes of love magic
(Sfameni Gasparro 2001).
A text of one of the gold tablets from two tomb mounds at Thurii in
Magna Graecia, also from the fourth century BCE, relates to the Orphic
tradition that extensively permeates the whole of Greek religious history,
from the Archaic Age to its last expressions in late antiquity. The dead
person declares: ‘I come from among the pure, pure, Queen of the
subterranean beings, Eukles, Eubouleus, and the other gods and daimons’
(Thurioi 5 Graf and Johnston 2013). An Orphic ritual environment, which
involves the daimones, is referred to in the Papyrus recovered from a
funeral pyre at Derveni (Macedonia), dated to the fourth century BCE (see,
in this volume, Edmonds, Chapter 37). The text is the oldest by nearly a
century and is an allegorical commentary on an Orphic theogony, although
it opens with the exegesis of a rite relating to the same environment. This
text assumes extraordinary importance in terms of the religious significance
of daimones, and is the subject of extensive literature and different
interpretations due to its extremely fragmentary nature. In addition to some
occurrences in excessively fragmentary contexts, the mention of these
beings as the object of apotropaic propitiatory rites is clear in Col. VI of the
Papyrus. It accompanies the exegesis of the commentator, who identifies
‘daimones hindering’ with the ‘vengeful souls’. Between the fifth and
fourth centuries BCE there was a well-established tradition, with religious
implications, that distinguished a class of superhuman beings—the
daimones—which could be identified with the souls of the dead.
Plutarch tells us that, at Opuntian Locris, there were two priests, ‘one of
them in charge of the worship of the gods, the other of daimones’ (Quaest.
graec. 6.293b–c). At the very beginning of the Hellenistic period several
texts addressed to a broad public make it clear that the distinction between
gods and daimones had, by then, become traditional. We need do no more
than recall an exclamation by a character in Menander’s Arbitrator, ‘by the
gods and daimones’ (Epitr. 1083; ed. Sandbach 1972: 128, fr. 8) or the
orator Aeschines’ invocation of ‘the earth, the gods, the daimones and men’
as witnesses (In Ctes. 137). It is the funerary inscriptions, however, which
provide the clearest proof of the lively presence of daimones within the
popular religious consciousness (Nowak 1960). There is a series of texts
from Asia Minor, and Karia in particular, which may well have ritual
implications, despite being expressly funerary. There is plenty of epigraphic
evidence, from Karian Olymos, of a public cult and priests of the Daimones
Agathoi from the first century BCE. These Karian documents, both funerary
and cultic, suggest a local form of belief and public worship directed
towards a specific category of superhuman beings distinct from the gods.
The association between the Daimones Agathoi of the Karian chthonic
funerary beliefs and practices does not mean that these beings cannot have
enjoyed a specific status within the sacred sphere. Moreover, the same
conception is present, albeit with lesser frequency and intensity, in other
parts of the Greek and Hellenized world, from Athens and several Aegean
Islands, to Macedonia, Lykia, Egypt, Arabia, and Rome (Sfameni Gasparro
1997).

SUGGESTED READING
After Detienne (1963) and Jensen (1966), who emphasize the importance of
the Pythagoreans in the history of Greek daimonology, few monographs
have been devoted to the theme in recent years. Marx-Wolf (2009, 2011)
investigates the way in which third-century BCE Platonists used
daimonology as a medium to establish a hierarchy in the realm of spirits and
to organize a complex ritual praxis (theurgia). Timotin (2011) tracks
changes in the notion of daimon in the Platonic tradition, from the Old
Academy to the last Neoplatonists. He analyses the relationship between
daimonology, cosmology, and theories of the soul.
REFERENCES
Andres, F. 1918. ‘Daimon’, RE, suppl. 3: 267–322.
Babbitt, F. C. 1962 [1936]. Plutarchus’ Moralia V. London.
Chadwick, H. 1965. Origen. Contra Celsum. Cambridge.
Detienne, M. 1963. De la pensée religieuse à la pensée philosophique. La notion de daïmôn dans le
pythagorisme ancient. Paris.
François, G. 1959. Le polythéisme et l’emploi au singulier des mots θεός, δαίμων dans la littérature
grecque d’Homère à Platon. Paris.
Graf, F. and Johnston, S. I. 2013. Ritual Texts for the Afterlife (2nd edn). London.
Heinze, R. 1965 [1892]. Xenokrates. Darstellung der Lehre und Sammlung der Fragmente. Leipzig.
Hild, J. A. 1892. ‘Daemon’, in Dictionnaire des Antiquités grecques et romaines, ed. Ch. Daremberg
and E. Saglio, 9–19. Paris.
Jensen, S. S. 1966. Dualism and Demonology: The Function of Demonology in Pythagorean and
Platonic Thought. Munksgaard.
Marx-Wolf, H. 2009. ‘Platonists and High Priests: Daemonology, Ritual and Social Order in the
Third Century CE’. Diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Nowak, N. 1960. ‘Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Begriffes Daimon. Eine Untersuchung
epigraphischer Zeugnisse von 5 Jh. v. Chr. bis zum 5.Jh. n. Chr.’. Diss., Bonn.
Sandbach, F. H. 1972. Menandri Reliquiae Selectae. Oxford.
Sfameni Gasparro, G. 1997. ‘Daimôn and Tuchê in the Hellenistic Religious Experience’, in
Conventional Values in the Hellenistic World. International Conference Rungstedgaard 25–28
January 1995, ed. B. Bilde, P. Engberg-Pedesen, and L. Hannestad, 67–109. Aarhus.
Sfameni Gasparro, G. 2001. ‘Magie et démonologie dans les Papyrus Graecae Magicae’, in Res
Orientales, vol. 13: Démons et merveilles d’Orient, ed. R. Gyselen, 157–74. Bures-sur-Yvette.
Soury, G. 1942. La demonologie de Plutarque. Paris.
Taylor, T. 1965. Porphyry. [De Abstinentia] On Abstinence from Animal Food, trans., ed., and intro.
Thomas Taylor London.
Timotin, A. 2011. La démonologie platonicienne. Histoire de la notion de daimon de Platon aux
derniers néoplatoniciens. Leiden.
 CHAPTER 29

DEIFICATION—GODS OR MEN?

IVANA PETROVIC

INTRODUCTION: ON HOW KING

PTOLEMY BECAME A GOD

IN Lindos, a city on the island of Rhodes in the eastern Mediterranean, there

was an important cult of Athena. Among many inscriptions in Athena’s
sanctuary, one was conspicuous for its length and importance. This text is
known as the Lindian Chronicle (Syll.3 725 = FGrH 532), since it contains a
list of dedications of prominent mythical and historical figures to Lindian
Athena, starting with the dawn of (Rhodian) time, extending through Greek
history—the last legible dedications being those of Hellenistic monarchs.
The second part of the inscription records the epiphanies of the goddess
Athena, who appeared to the Rhodians in order to aid them in times of great
crises. The decree preceding the lists states that the compilers of the
Chronicle used various sources from different periods, such as letters and
public records. The inscription itself is dated to 99 BCE.
The first in the sequence of recorded epiphanies of Athena is set in the
early fifth century BCE, when the island was threatened by Persian invasion.
The inscription states:
When Darius, king of the Persians, sent out great forces for the enslavement of Greece, his
naval expedition landed on this first of the islands. When throughout the land people became
terrified at the onset of the Persians, some fled together to the most fortified places, but the
majority were gathered at Lindos. The enemy established a siege and besieged them, until, on
account of the lack of water, the Lindians, being worn down, were of a mind to surrender the
city to the enemy. During this time, the goddess, standing over one of the rulers in his sleep,
called upon him to be bold, since she was about to ask her father for the much-needed water for
them. (Higbie 2003)

The Rhodians asked the Persians for a truce, announcing the imminent
miracle of Athena and promising to surrender if it did not occur within five
days. Datis, the Persian admiral, laughed, assuming an easy victory, but, the
next day, ‘a great dark storm cloud settled over the acropolis and a big
storm rained down across the middle and then, beyond belief, the ones
besieged had enough water, but the Persian force was in need’. The enemy
was astounded at the epiphany of the goddess. Datis immediately dedicated
his own ornaments to the goddess and left, but not before declaring that the
gods protected and loved the Rhodian people.
The next recorded epiphany takes us to the fourth century BCE, when
Athena again intervened and helped the Rhodians cleanse her own cult
statue. Athena appeared again in a dream: she stood over a priest in his
sleep and commanded him to set the polluted statue out from under the
roof, so that her father Zeus could cleanse it with his rain.
The report about the third epiphany of Athena on Rhodes is only
fragmentarily preserved. The year is 305 BCE and Rhodes has been besieged
by the great general Demetrios I Poliorketes (‘besieger of cities’) for a full
year: the Rhodians are getting desperate. Fortunately, their ancestral
goddess did not desert them in this hour of need, but appeared to an old
priest in a dream. What we now expect, based on the pattern of her previous
epiphanies, is an intervention by her father Zeus on behalf of the Rhodians.
However, this time Athena did not promise to obtain the help of Zeus.
Instead, she advised the Rhodians to ask King Ptolemy to save the city.
Athena insisted that Anaxipolis, one of the senior magistrates, ‘writes to
King Ptolemy and should invite him to come to the aid of the city, since she
would lead and she would secure both victory and dominance’. Initially, the
man was reluctant, but when the same vision appeared to him for six nights
in a row, he informed the council members, who decided to contact
Ptolemy. Here our text breaks off, but, thanks to literary sources, we know
what happened next: according to Diodorus of Sicily (20.96–100) Ptolemy
sent both provisions and soldiers to the Rhodians several times, so that
Demetrios finally had to give up the siege and a peace settlement was
reached. In this situation, Ptolemy assumed the role of Zeus. The sudden
appearance of his ships bearing provisions and soldiers must have had a
profound effect on the besieged Rhodians—not very different from Zeus’
rain in the previous centuries. This, too, was an epiphany in the Greek sense
of the word: a sudden manifestation of power, which far surpasses that of an
ordinary human, and has a profound effect on the welfare and security of
entire communities (see, in this volume, Platt, Chapter 33).
Both Diodorus of Sicily and Pausanias testify that King Ptolemy received
divine honours from the Rhodians as a gift of gratitude for helping them
defend themselves from Demetrios. Diodorus (20.100.1–5) writes:
The Rhodians, after they had been besieged for a year, brought the war to an end. Those who
had proved themselves brave men in the battles they honoured with the prizes that were their
due, and they granted freedom and citizenship to such slaves as had shown themselves
courageous. They also set up statues of King Cassander and King Lysimachos, who, though
they held second place in general opinion, yet had made great contributions to the salvation of
the city. In the case of Ptolemy, since they wanted to surpass his record by repaying his
kindness with a greater one, they sent a sacred mission into Libya to ask the oracle at Ammon
if it advised the Rhodians to honour Ptolemy as a god. Since the oracle approved, they
dedicated in the city a square precinct, building on each of its sides a portico a stade long, and
this they called the Ptolemaion. (Geer 1954: 407–9)

Pausanias (1.8.6) testifies that the Rhodians bestowed the title Soter
(‘saviour’) on Ptolemy. This cult title is widely attested for divinities which
tend to appear to humans in the hour of their need, such as Dioskouroi,
Herakles, or Asklepios.
This chapter will discuss the emergence of the ruler cult in the Hellenistic
period, the way the cult of rulers was instituted and modelled upon that of
divinities, the agency, origins, and early manifestations of deification, and
its implications on the way the Roman emperors were deified. What was the
reason for elevating mere humans to the status of divinities? Was this a sign
of decline of traditional Greek religion? What was the procedure for
introducing such cults and whose was the initiative?
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP AND
CURRENT TENDENCIES

The view of deification had changed significantly in the second half of the
twentieth century. Up until the studies of Habicht (1970) and Price (1984),
the prevailing view of scholars was that the cult of rulers was a symptom of
the religious bankruptcy of the Hellenistic world. Its goal was simply
flattery: it indicated the subordination of those who had set it up, and its
rituals were empty of real feeling and genuine religious sentiment. Habicht
conducted an analysis of the process of bestowing divine honours on
Hellenistic rulers by Greek cities and proposed a new view of deification.
He placed it in the context of the existing Greek system of honouring
outstanding members of a community. Since the power of the Hellenistic
kings placed them in a position far superior to any mortals thus far, enabling
them to provide considerable benefits to communities, the honours they
were due had to surpass any former markers of prestige. In order to express
their gratitude for services rendered, the Greeks awarded the kings the
highest possible honours, hitherto reserved for and restricted to divinities.
Price (1984) offered an astute analysis of the Christian biases that tend to
blur our view of ancient deification, and posited that the process of
deification was merely one of the ways in which the conception of the new
Roman emperor was ‘constructed’ in the East. Building on Habicht’s
discussion of the place of the ruler in the traditional Greek hierarchy of
honours, Price argued that a deification of a ruler was a way to
accommodate him within the indigenous traditional honorific system, which
classified and provided outward signals of the power of an individual.
Both Habicht and Price set new parameters for the analysis of the ruler
cult as an honorific practice and as a phenomenon residing between religion
and politics. This approach also advanced the debate, because it took into
consideration an important difference between Judeo-Christian dogma, in
which the dichotomy between humanity and deity is very stark, and the
Greco-Roman concept of a god, which is much more ambiguous and
flexible. Anthropomorphic divinities are, by definition, much closer to the
human sphere. Greek gods were conceptualized as more powerful than
humans (but not all-powerful!), and, though usually perceived as immortal,
there are significant exceptions to this rule. In the Greek pantheon there
existed a whole range of divinities. This system also had a hierarchy, which
classified the gods according to their power and significance. Accordingly,
the Greek concept of deification was also flexible and could encompass
varying degrees of closeness to the divine.
If the crucial difference between humans and gods is simply the amount
of power they possess, then a way exists for humans to breach the
boundaries of divinity and ascend towards the divine sphere. In the case of
King Ptolemy, this happened in a specific moment, due to particular
circumstances. The king’s demonstration of power was acknowledged by
the community, which expressed its gratitude for salvation and restored
safety by equating Ptolemy’s demonstration of power to a divine epiphany.
This opened the path towards treating Ptolemy just like other divinities with
the power to resolve a critical situation, bringing salvation and protecting
the community. A cult epithet was bestowed and the usual honours and
commemorations of divine intervention took place.
Current scholarship tends to perceive the question of belief in the divinity
of rulers as irrelevant (see e.g. Walbank 1987; Koenen 1993; Melaerts
1998; Chaniotis 2003, 2011; Burrell 2004; Dreyer 2009; Caneva 2012).
Instead, scholars tend to focus on aspects such as the agency, the
performance of rituals, and their commemoration, as recorded in the
literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence. Since, in Greek
polytheism, the communication with divinities was based on a system of
gift exchange (according to the principle of reciprocity, ‘do ut des’), modern
approaches to the cult of rulers tend to focus on the system of exchange,
and to analyse the honorific activities centred on the cult. The ‘divine’
rulers are perceived to occupy the position between humans and the gods,
and attempt to negotiate the boundaries between the human and divine
spheres.

TIMAI: THE GREEK HIERARCHY OF

HONOURS
Ancient Greek communities had a highly developed, sophisticated system
of honouring individuals. An often-quoted passage illustrating this
hierarchy of honours is from Aristotle’s Rhetoric 1.5.9 (1361a):
Honour is a token of a reputation for doing good; and those who have already done good are
justly and above all honoured (. . .) Doing good relates either to personal security and all the
causes of existence; or to wealth; or to any other good things which are not easy to acquire,
either in any conditions, or at such a place, or at such a time; for many obtain honour for things
that appear trifling, but this depends upon place and time. The components of honour are
sacrifices, memorials in verse and prose, privileges, grants of land, front seats, public burial,
state maintenance, and among the barbarians, prostration and giving place, and all gifts which
are highly prized in each country. (Freese 1926: 53)

This principle applies well to the Rhodian situation: since King Ptolemy
played a decisive role in the preservation of the city, saving it from
Demetrios, he demonstrated power of a sort that the Greeks could only
equate with divine power. The gratitude for such an act demanded honours
which surpass those reserved for humans. In the passage of Diodorus
quoted in the Introduction, we can also see that everyone was elevated in
status: slaves received freedom and citizenship, Kings Cassander and
Lysimachus, who had also helped the Rhodians with provisions during the
siege, were honoured with statues, but a special, greater reward is reserved
for the one who helped the Rhodians—divine honours.

GREEK CITIES AS AGENTS OF

DEIFICATION

In the early Hellenistic period, the cult of rulers was established at the
initiative of the cities. Greek cities introduced the worship of living rulers.
However, as Habicht (1970: 160–71) pointed out, the honours which cities
used to bestow on Hellenistic kings were not divine, but ‘equal to divine’
(isotheoi timai). The ambiguity of this expression signals that there was a
perceived difference between being a god and being honoured like a god.
Hellenistic rulers were honoured like the gods in many cities, but that does
not mean that the cities perceived them as ontologically identical to
divinities.
 Nevertheless, they seem to have been perceived as very close to the gods.
Some of the honours they received were directly adopted from the cult of
the gods: just like in the introduction of new cults, the first step in
introducing a ruler cult was often the consultation of an oracle. Upon
gaining the oracle’s consent, the city would issue a decree specifying the
honours (timai) for the deified ruler: a priest of the cult, an enclosure
(temenos) to be set up, a shrine with an altar as a focal point of the
sacrificial ritual, a festival in honour of the king. This process corresponds
to the procedure of introducing new gods, and the associated rituals, such as
sacrifice, processions, and festivals, correspond to those for divinities.
However, there was an important difference between divine and ruler cult:
almost no temples were erected for the rulers. Instead of building a separate
temple for the new ruler-god, it was usual to place a statue in an existing
sanctuary. Kings were worshipped as sunnaoi (‘temple-sharing divinities’).
The language of Greek religious ritual was perfectly suitable for
expressing the superhuman influence and power that kings possessed in the
eyes of the cities that worshipped them. Soter is the most common epithet
of Hellenistic divinized kings, and reflects the reasons for introducing their
cult. It was attributed to the following kings: Antigonos Monophthalmos
and Demetrios Poliorketes in Athens; Dion in Syracuse; Seleukos I on
Lemnos; Antiochos I in Ilion, Bargylia, Smyrna; Ptolemy I on Rhodes,
Naxos, League of Islanders, Miletos.
In state cult, the same epithet was attributed to Ptolemy I, Antigonos
Gonatas, Attalos I, Achaios, Philip V, Eumenes I, Seleukos III, Ptolemy IX,
and Cleopatra.
Considering the importance of the agency of the polis for the introduction
of the cult of a living ruler, it is hardly a coincidence that the protection of
cities is represented as the main task of the gods and the kings in Hellenistic
poetry. The passage from Callimachus’ Hymn to Zeus (1.79–83), which
offers a very good parallel to the Lindian Chronicle, is typical:
Kings come from Zeus, for nothing is more divine than Zeus’ kings. Zeus, this is why you
chose kings for your own lot, and gave them cities to guard, while you yourself sit at the high
places of cities, and observe those who rule the people with crooked judgements, and also those
who rule justly.

Another prominent motif in Hellenistic art and literature is the closeness

of the ruler to the gods. The divinized kings are often represented as an
incarnation and manifestation of the divine powers: their actions reflect the
will of the gods, so the deeds of the kings are depicted as equivalent to
epiphanies of gods. The Lindian Chronicle demonstrates that the kings were
very close to the gods in two ways: the gods summoned kings as their
helpers, so that we can say that, in the case of Rhodes, King Ptolemy and
goddess Athena worked together, side by side. Secondly, compared with the
first two epiphanic narratives in the Chronicle, in the third story Ptolemy
assumes the role of Zeus (and gains Zeus’ cult title, Soter, as a reward for
this act). There is a significant number of passages in Hellenistic poetry in
which the close collaboration of the king and the god is stressed. For
instance, in his Hymn to Delos, Callimachus famously depicts god Apollo
and King Ptolemy II as victorious in the joint war against the Celts (4.160–
88), and in his Hymn to Apollo, the poet announces (2.25–7): ‘It is a bad
thing to fight with the blessed gods—he who fights the blessed ones would
fight with my king; he who fights my king would fight Apollo himself!’
These passages represent Ptolemaic propaganda, but the propaganda was
based on the common perception that the king’s deeds can be seen as a
manifestation of divine will. Rather than undermining traditional religious
belief, the cult of kings therefore fits well into the already existing divine
order. This was also reflected by the positioning of royal statues as sunnaoi
of the gods. In some cases, the proximity to the divine sphere was also
reflected in the ontological status of the living ruler. Some Hellenistic kings,
such as Alexander the Great, Seleukos I, or Ptolemy I, even spread the idea
that they were direct offspring of the gods. King Seleukos I was praised as a
son of Apollo in a hymn preserved at Erythrai, dated to 281 bce (I.Erythrai
205.74–6): ‘Praise with hymns during the libations Seleukos, pais (‘servant’
or ‘child’) of the

dark-haired Apollo, whom the player of the golden lyre himself begot.’

The most prominent mythological example of apotheosis (change of status

from human to divine) in the ancient Greek world was Herakles. He was
one of the most popular Greek heroes, son of Zeus and a mortal queen, who
accomplished many heroic tasks with the help of the goddess Athena, and
received divine status after his death. His elevation amongst the immortals
as a reward for heroic deeds made Herakles an ideal model for Alexander
the Great and the Hellenistic rulers. Herakles plays a prominent role in
Hellenistic poetry, cropping up everywhere—in Callimachus, Theokritos,
Apollonios, and many lost Hellenistic poems we know by name only. A
typical passage which demonstrates the way the myth of Herakles was
linked to the worship of the deified ruler is from Theokritos, Idyll 17, an
encomion (‘praise poem’) of Ptolemy II Philadelphos. In the following
passage, the honours Zeus bestowed on Herakles are paralleled to the status
of Alexander and Ptolemy (16–27):
Him the father made equal in honour even to the blessed immortals, and a golden throne is
built for him in the house of Zeus; beside him, kindly disposed, sits Alexander, the god of the
dancing diadem, who brought destruction to the Persians. Facing them is established the seat of
centaur-slaying Herakles, fashioned from solid adamant. There he joins in feasting with the
heavenly ones and rejoices exceedingly in the grandsons of his grandsons, for the son of
Kronos has removed old age from their limbs, and his very own descendants are called
immortal. Both (Alexander and Ptolemy I) have as ancestor the mighty son of Herakles, and
both trace their family back in the end to Herakles. (Hunter 2003: 79)

Herakles is represented as a direct model for both Alexander and Ptolemy

I. All three boasted divine parentage, all enjoy immortality as a reward for
their heroic deeds, all feast together, and Alexander and Ptolemy are even
represented as Herakles’ scions.
The closeness of the king to the gods could also be expressed
metaphorically, such as in the following example. One of the important and
often discussed sources for the ruler cult is a hymn composed for the
Hellenistic king Demetrios Poliorketes. It was performed by the Athenians
in 291 or 290 BCE to celebrate the king’s return to the city, and is an
excellent illustration of the ‘do ut des’ principle upon which the cult of
rulers was based (Ath. 6.63 = Douris FrGH F13):
How the greatest and dearest of the gods are present in our city! For the circumstances have
brought together Demeter and Demetrius; she comes to celebrate the solemn mysteries of the
Kore, while he is here full of joy, as befits the god, fair and laughing. His appearance is solemn,
his friends all around him and he in their midst, as though they were stars and he the sun. Hail
boy of the most powerful god Poseidon and Aphrodite! For other gods are either far away, or
they do not have ears, or they do not exist, or do not take any notice of us, but you we can see
present here, not made of wood or stone, but real. So we pray to you: first make peace, dearest;
for you have the power. And then, the Sphinx that rules not only over Thebes but over the
whole of Greece, the Aitolian sphinx sitting on a rock like the ancient one, who seizes and
carries away all our people, and I cannot fight against her—for it is an Aitolian custom to seize
the property of neighbors and now even what is afar; most of all punish her yourself; if not,
find an Oedipus who will either hurl down that sphinx from the rocks or reduce her to ashes.
(Chaniotis 2011: 160)

When King Demetrios returned to Athens, the citizens welcomed him

with incense, garlands, and libations. Processional and ithyphallic choruses
met him, dancing and singing. Demetrios was treated just like a god, and
this way of marking the adventus (‘arrival’) of the king later became a
model not only for Roman rulers, but was also influential for Christian
liturgy. This text provides important evidence about the type of
communication Greeks attempted to establish with their divinized kings. Of
course, all religious rituals are based on an attempt to establish a
communication with the divine, but, in the case of divinized rulers, the
worshippers were in a unique situation, since they could be certain that the
divinity addressed really was in attendance and could hear their prayers.
This is very probably the reason why the Athenians so remarkably single
out Demetrios as the one god who is truly present: ‘For other gods are
either far away, or they do not have ears, or they do not exist, or do not take
any notice of us, but you we can see present here, not made of wood or
stone, but real.’ Does this statement mean that the Athenians ceased to
believe in their ancestral gods? If we analyse the poem in the context of the
genre of Greek hymns, it becomes clear that hymns tend to single out and
praise as unique whatever god they happen to be focused on. Demetrios is
praised not as the only god, but as the only god the Athenians can see, not
represented by a statue, or enacted by a priest, but present. Accordingly, the
communication with a divinized king is more direct than with other
divinities. Having greeted Demetrios, the Athenians immediately proceed to
present themselves as weak and destitute, and Demetrios as immensely
powerful and the only one who can help them, as they request a military
intervention on their behalf at the end of the hymn: ‘So we pray to you: first
make peace, dearest; for you have the power. And then, the Sphinx that
rules not only over Thebes but over the whole of Greece, the Aitolian
sphinx (. . .) I cannot fight against her (. . .) punish her.’
The motif of a weak city in need of royal protection is a recurring theme
in the communication between cities and their divinized kings. Be it a letter,
or a public decree, the cities honour royal benefactors in order to elicit
future benefactions, and in order to set an example for other monarchs. The
passive-aggressive tone of this communication is hard to miss. After all,
compared with the Greek gods, the divinized rulers were in an inferior
position, since they were present and tangible and could not pretend they
had not heard the mortal requests. Since their divinity was based on visible
demonstrations of their power, lack of demonstration of power on their part
would endanger and diminish their position.
 Another recurring theme in the deification discourse is the closeness of
the ruler to the Olympian gods. Some kings, like Ptolemy Soter or
Alexander the Great, disseminated stories about their divine parentage.
Some kings were associated with the divinities more loosely. Demetrios
carefully timed his return to Athens to coincide with the Eleusinian
mysteries. The hymn celebrates him as the son of Poseidon and Aphrodite,
probably allegorically, alluding to his formidable fleet and his famous good
looks. The hymn also stresses his closeness to Demeter, not only because of
the etymology of his name, but also because Demetrios had previously
made gifts of corn to Athenians (Chaniotis 2011).

ROYAL ADMINISTRATION AS AN AGENT

OF DEIFICATION

The paradox of mortal divinity becomes even more puzzling when we

consider that King Ptolemy I was honoured like a god at Rhodes, Delos,
Naxos, Kalymnos, and Miletos during his lifetime, but at home, in Egypt,
he was worshipped only after he had died. While Greek cities introduced
cults of living rulers, the royal administration at first only assigned divine
honours to deceased family members of the rulers. Later on, living
monarchs become deified as well. This process is best attested for the
Ptolemaic dynasty.
Ptolemy I famously seized the body of Alexander the Great and built a
shrine for the king in the newly founded metropolis, Alexandria. Alexander
was venerated as the official state god, and Menelaus, Ptolemy’s brother,
became his eponymous priest (the priest who gives the name to the year).
The priesthood of Alexander was attested already in 285/4 BCE (P.Eleph. 2).
Divine Alexander played a prominent role in Ptolemaic propaganda: he
appears on coins; his image was carried in processions; court poets such as
Theokritos (Id. 17) mention him alongside the Ptolemies. Propagation of
Alexander’s cult helped to create an impression of continuity for Ptolemaic
royals, but it also prepared a path for their own cultic veneration.
 When Ptolemy I died in 283 BCE, his son and heir, Ptolemy II
Philadelphos (309–246 BCE) proclaimed him as a god. Ptolemy I was
worshipped under the title Soter, and penteteric isolympic games (repeated
every four years, equal in status to the Olympic Games) called Ptolemaia
were instituted in his honour. The magnificent procession Ptolemy II
organized as part of this festival was described in detail by Callixeinos of
Rhodes a century after the event, and is transmitted as an excerpt in
Athenaeus’ Deiphnosophistai (FGrH 627 F 2 = Ath. 5.197c–203b). To this
cult was attached that of Soter’s deceased wife Berenice in 279 BCE. The
couple was worshipped as Theoi Soteres (‘the saviour gods’).
In the fourteenth year of his reign, in 272/1 BCE, Ptolemy II introduced
the cult of living rulers by announcing himself and his sister-wife Arsinoe II
to be divine, under the name Theoi Adelphoi (‘brother–sister gods’). Their
cult was appended to that of Alexander the Great and became a part of the
state dynastic cult. From that time on, the eponymous priest was called:
‘The priest of Alexander and the Brother-Sister gods’. Every subsequent
royal couple was divinized in the same way: Ptolemy III and his spouse
became Theoi Euergetai (‘benefactor gods’); Ptolemy IV and his wife were
venerated as Theoi Philopatores (‘father-loving gods’). During the reign of
Ptolemy IV, the cult of Theoi Soteres was also attached to the cult of
Alexander, and became a part of the official dynastic cult. After this, the
full title of the eponymous priest also contained the full royal succession
list: ‘Priest of Alexander and the Saviour gods, and the Brother-Sister gods,
and the Benefactor Gods, and the Father-Loving gods’. The cult of the royal
couple and their predecessors was adopted by the local population, and cult
statues of divine kings were placed in the Egyptian temples, where they
received the usual sacrificial offerings.
The divine self-proclamation, the establishment of a cult of a living
monarch across an entire kingdom by the ruler himself, was a Seleukid
speciality, first attested in the case of Antiochos III the Great (who ruled
from 222–187 BCE).
The Antigonids, who ruled over traditional Greek areas, did not introduce
the cult of monarch themselves, but they did accept divine honours offered
by the Greek cities.
The acquisition of divine status manifested itself in the daily life of
Hellenistic kings, in their habitat, presentation, and accessibility. Evidence
for the Ptolemaic royal cult is particularly rich, but we have good grounds
to assume that the self-presentation of other Hellenistic monarchs was
organized along the same principles. The Ptolemaic capital, Alexandria,
was devised with presentation in mind: the vast and lavish palace complex
served as a stage for presenting the royal couple as divinities. The Ptolemies
lived in a complex palace which was physically connected to several
shrines—that of Alexander and the Muses, for example. The vicinity of the
famous library also conveyed the impression of a sacred space, since, in
Ancient Greece, libraries were traditionally attached to great temples. As
we know from Theokritos (15), the royal palace was occasionally open to
the general public on special, festive days. Admitting the citizens to the
palace on the occasion of festivals was probably a conscious strategy on the
part of the kings, with the aim of demonstrating the similarity of their
palaces to the temples of Greek gods, which were also opened on festive
days. The result of this strategy was an association of royal appearance with
divine epiphany.
Seeing the god, in the form of a statue or a priest, was a pinnacle of
Greek religious festivals. Such epiphanies were carefully staged. Hellenistic
kings adopted this mode of self-presentation: they celebrated festivals in
which their own statues were carried in processions together with divine
images. Parallels between divine epiphanies and the staged appearances of
kings were also noted by Diotogenes, the author of the treatise Peri
Basileias (‘On the Kingship’). Diotogenes characterized ideal kingship as
‘an imitation of the gods’ and recommended that the monarch set himself
apart from human failings and ‘astonish the onlookers by his staged
appearances and studied pose’ (quoted in Stob. 4.7.62, my translation).
However, royal cults were not only a matter of political propaganda.
Some became widely popular. A case in point is the cult of Arsinoe II,
daughter of Ptolemy I and wife of her own brother, Ptolemy II. During her
lifetime, Arsinoe was identified with the Egyptian goddess Isis, and the
Greek Aphrodite Euploia (‘of good sailing’) and Zephyritis (‘of the west
wind’). High-ranking court officials, such as General Kallikrates, dedicated
temples in her honour; court poets Posidippos and Callimachus celebrated
her as a goddess. After her death, Arstinoe’s cult was attached to that of
Alexander the Great. On coins, she is represented with the horns of
Ammon. By royal decree, Arsinoe II became the temple-sharing divinity of
all Egyptian gods; port Fayum and numerous other ports in the Aegean
were renamed Arsinoites in her honour; games called Arsinoeia and
Philadelpheia were instituted and performed in her memory; and her cult
spread throughout the Aegean, where it remained popular long after her
death. Private altars of Arsinoe were attested as far as Eretria and Miletos.
(On the cults of Arsinoe II, see Caneva 2012.)

RULER CULT AS A COHESIVE FORCE

Hellenistic kingdoms were vast and multinational. In the Ptolemaic and

Seleucid kingdoms, the ruling class of Macedonians and Greeks was a
minority. Different nations united under their rule had varying ideas about
kingship and diverse religious backgrounds. Amongst many different gods
these nations venerated, the cult of kings was a common element they could
share. The worship of the living king, or the deceased members of the royal
dynasty, must have had a cohesive power, providing a common object of
veneration for all nations of the kingdom, irrespective of their native origin.
This also applies to the ruling class consisting of Greeks and
Macedonians. They were displaced, having left their cities of origin, and
had to form new communities in new territories. In the Archaic and
Classical periods, common worship of the gods and the celebration of
regional festivals were important duties of every citizen. Polis cults were an
important element of cohesion, serving as a basis of a polis identity. A good
illustration of this idea is found in Plato’s Laws (738b–e), in which he
remarks that an important benefit of joint participation in rituals is that it
promotes fraternization among citizens in their communities. In the same
way, royal cults, such as that of Arsinoe II, contributed to the cohesion of
the Ptolemaic empire, and were popular amongst Greek and native
populations alike. This wide appeal was facilitated by the innate
polyvalence and polysemy of the religious symbols of monarchic
propaganda. Divine attributes and representations were often adapted to
local sensibilities. For instance, the cult titles of Ptolemaic kings were clear
and understandable to the Greek population, but they also had distinctive
connotations for the Egyptians, as they alluded to or directly adopted the
ancient pharaonic titulature (Koenen 1993). For instance, ‘Soter’ and
‘Euergetes’ were names recalling the Greek honours for men who had
served their city in an extraordinary way, but they also evoked Egyptian
ideas of kingship. The Egyptian pharaoh was also a divine protector of the
country. Soter (saviour) is also the meaning of the Egyptian pharaonic title
nb.tj. Another Egyptian word for the same idea appears in the titulary extant
in the Temple of Philae: Shed, ‘saviour’. Similarly, the transcription for
‘Euergetes’ is derived from mn , an epithet of King Snofru (fourth
dynasty). (On the Ptolemaic royal titulature and its hieroglyphic
equivalents, see Koenen 1993.)
Likewise, Apollo the archer, one of the prominent symbols of the
Seleucid dynasty, and the alleged father of the first king, Seleukos, was seen
as a typically Greek divinity by the Greeks, but he also had affinities to the
Mesopotamian and Iranian sun gods, and even tapped into the ancient
Eastern traditions of the royal archer as a symbol of divine kingship (Iossif
2011).
As a medium of communication between the rulers and their subjects,
and as a way to enforce and legitimize dynastic power, the Hellenistic royal
cult was an extremely successful strategy. The Roman ruler cult was, in
many ways, based on Hellenistic royal propaganda, especially in the Greek
East (Price 1984).

DEIFICATION BEFORE THE HELLENISTIC

PERIOD

To appreciate the remarkable nature of the ruler cult, we have to recognize

that, before the Hellenistic period, deification of living or deceased humans
was very rare (see in detail, in this volume, Ekroth, Chapter 26). A hero-cult
was a common way for a community to acknowledge that an individual had
reached such a prominent status, that he or she continued to exert an
influence even after death. However, Currie (2005) has challenged the view
that death was a necessary precondition for a hero-cult. He argued that, as
early as in the fifth century BCE, some communities treated exceptional
living persons with honours similar to hero-cult, and that those individuals
went on to receive worship after death (e.g., Dion, the Syracusan tyrant
(408–354 BCE) or the Athenian general Hagnon, who was venerated at
Amphipolis, a city he founded in 437/6 BCE). Euthymos, a fifth-century BCE
boxer from Locri, reportedly received heroic cult during his lifetime (see
Currie 2005: 120–9, 136–7, 166–7).
In some cases, it is difficult to ascertain whether the honours in questions
were heroic or divine, but it is significant to note that, in the Classical age,
we already encounter precedents for the phenomenon of ruler cult: the
concept of the saviour and benefactor, imitation by living persons of gods
and heroes, and the sharing of humans in a god’s festival and sanctuary.
Gelon and other Sicilian rulers in the first half of the fifth century BCE
(Theron, Hieron) received posthumous hero-cults, but, according to Currie
(2005: 170–2), popular attitudes to these rulers while they were alive
already anticipated Hellenistic ruler cults: Gelon was lauded as a benefactor
and saviour; Dionysios I assumed Dionysiac iconography in his statues;
Dion received heroic honours during his lifetime. The Samians also
bestowed divine honours on the Spartan general Lysandros, as a gift of
gratitude for his military assistance in 404 BCE. In the Macedonian dynasty,
divine honours were allotted to King Amyntas III, his son Philip II, and his
grandson Alexander the Great during their lifetime. However, the divinity
attributed to Alexander was a path-breaking phenomenon, since he not only
demonstrated exceptional power and agility, imitating—and occasionally
surpassing!—Herakles and Dionysos, but had also claimed a divine father.
Alexander both received divine honours from Greek cities and was
proclaimed divine by the royal administration shortly before his death in
Babylon. The cult of Alexander was very popular and persisted long after
his death, both in Greek cities and in Hellenistic kingdoms, thanks to the
support of the royal administration. Hellenistic cities upheld the rituals and
kept repairing his shrines until well into the Roman period. Even Roman
emperors supported Alexander’s cult, especially the Severan dynasty.
Apart from the kings, examples of the apotheosis of living or deceased
humans are rare in the Classical and early Hellenistic period. The early
fifth-century BCE athlete Theagenes was honoured as a healing god on
Thasos after his death, but it is unclear when exactly this cult originated.
Homer was an object of a widespread hero-cult; in Alexandria, he received
a temple and divine honours during the reign of Ptolemy IV Philopator. In
the late Hellenistic period, divine honours were also allotted to members of
the polis elite who had distinguished themselves as benefactors.
 The idea of mortal divinity was already a topic of discussion in Greek
philosophy in the Classical age. Sophist Prodikos (465–395 BCE) was
among the first Greek philosophers to propose that the origin of some cults
should be sought in the extraordinary honours primitive societies had
allotted to some remarkable humans, such as the first inventors of useful
skills and cultural achievements (DK 84 B 5). The Sicilian philosopher
Empedokles (490–430 BCE) even claimed that he himself was divine:
My friends, who dwell in the great city sloping down to yellow Akragas, hard by the citadel,
busied with goodly works, all hail! I go about among you an immortal god, no more a mortal,
so honored of all, as is meet, crowned with fillets and flowery garlands. Straightway as soon as
I enter with these, men and women, into flourishing towns, I am reverenced and tens of
thousands follow, to learn where is the path which leads to welfare, some desirous of oracles,
others suffering from all kinds of diseases, desiring to hear a message of healing. (DK 31 B
112.42 = VS 31 F 112, Diog. Laert. 8.62; trans. Hicks 1925)

Empedokles maintained that healers, prophets, poets, and rulers can

become gods due to their benefactions to mankind (DK 31 B 146 = VS 31 F
146 = Clem. Al. Strom. 4.150.1). During his lifetime, Empedokles was
received and honoured like a god by the people in some communities he
visited (though we do not have sources for instituting an official cult).
Aristotle’s ideas about the remarkable position a king has in a community
were probably influential in the formation of the cults of kings in Greek
cities (Pol. 1284a 3–14):
But if there is any one man so greatly distinguished in outstanding virtue (. . .) so that the virtue
of all the rest and their political ability is not comparable with that of the men mentioned (. . .)
it is no longer proper to count these exceptional men a part of the state; for they will be treated
unjustly if deemed worthy of equal status, being so widely unequal in virtue and in their
political ability: since such a man will naturally be as a god among men. (Rackham 1932: 241)

Hekataios of Abdera and Euhemeros of Messene espoused the most

notorious and influential early Hellenistic thoughts about the origins of
divine cults. They advanced the idea that there were original gods (theoi
ouranioi, ‘celestial gods’) and humans who were divinized due to their
services to mankind (theoi epigeioi, ‘earthly divinities’).

CONCLUSION
We can see that, both in Greek philosophy and cult practice, a special role
was reserved for outstanding sovereigns. The worship they received was not
perceived as rivalling the traditional gods, nor was it a threat to what we
refer to as ‘traditional religion’. The cults for living or deceased rulers were
integrated in the religious life of a community and become more frequent in
the Hellenistic period, as a reflex of the changed historical circumstances,
which elevate singular rulers or entire families to a position of almost
unrestricted power and influence. Whereas previous scholarship saw the
boundary between the human and the divine as impenetrable, and the cult of
rulers in the Hellenistic period as a manifestation of the decline of
traditional Greek religion, modern scholars see the barrier between two
areas as fluid and negotiable, and interpret the popularity of the ruler cult in
the Hellenistic period as a product of a time in which the powers of an
individual could be manifested in a way similar to divine intervention.
Hellenistic kings had the power to affect whole communities in a hitherto
unattested ways. Their acts can be compared to divine interventions, and the
honours allotted to them reflected their status and power in the eyes of the
community that bestowed them.

SUGGESTED READING
For an accessible and exhaustive historical overview with lists of sources,
see Buraselis 2004. For an excellent introduction, see Chaniotis 2003. On
the hero-cult and early forms of deification, see Currie 2005 and Walbank
1987. On the cult of Alexander the Great, see Dreyer 2009. On the cult of
Ptolemaic kings, Koenen 1993, Melaerts 1998, and Huss 2001. On the
Ptolemeic royal ideology as reflected in the procession of Ptolemy II
Philadelphus, see Rice 1983. On the cult of Seleucid rulers, see Van
Nuffelen 2004.

REFERENCES
Buraselis, K. and Aneziri, S. 2004. ‘Die griechische und hellenistische Apotheose’, ThesCRA 2: 158–
86.
Burrell, B. 2004. Neokoroi: Greek Cities and Roman Emperors. Leiden.
Caneva, S. 2012. ‘Queens and Ruler Cults in Early Hellenism: Observations on Festivals, and on the
Administration and Ideological Meaning of Cults’, Kernos 25: 75–102.
Chaniotis, A. 2003. ‘The Divinity of Hellenistic Rulers’, in A Companion to the Hellenistic World,
ed. A. Erskine, 431–46. Malden, MA.
Chaniotis, A. 2011. ‘The Ithyphallic Hymn for Demetrios Poliorketes and Hellenistic Religious
Mentality’, in More than Men, Less than Gods: Studies on Royal Cult and Imperial Worship, ed. P.
Iossif, A. S. Chankowski, and C. C. Lorber, 157–96. Leuven.
Currie, B. 2005. Pindar and the Cult of Heroes. Oxford.
Dreyer, B. 2009. ‘Heroes, Cults and Divinity’, in Alexander the Great: A New History, ed. W. Heckel
and L. A. Tritle, 218–34. Malden, MA.
Freese, J. H. 1926. Aristotle in 23 Volumes, vol. 22. Cambridge, MA.
Geer, R. M. 1954. Diodorus Siculus: The Library of History. Translation. Cambridge, MA.
Habicht, C. 1970. Gottmenschentum und griechische Städte (2nd edn). Munich.
Hicks, R. D. 1925. Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Translation. Cambridge, MA.
Higbie, C. 2003. The Lindian Chronicle and the Greek Creation of their Past. Oxford.
Hunter, R. L. 2003. Theocritus, Encomium of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Text and Translation with
Introduction and Commentary. Berkeley, CA.
Huss, W. 2001. Ägypten in hellenistischer Zeit. Munich.
Iossif, P. 2011. ‘Apollo Toxotes and the Seleucids. Comme un air de famille’, in More than Men, Less
than Gods: Studies on Royal Cult and Imperial Worship, ed. P. Iossif, A. S. Chankowski, and C. C.
Lorber, 229–92. Leuven.
Koenen, L. 1993. ‘The Ptolemaic King as a Religious Figure’, in Images and Ideologies: Self-
Definition in the Hellenistic World, ed. A. Bulloch, E. S. Gruen, A. A. Long, and A. Steward, 25–
111. Berkeley, CA.
Melaerts, H. ed. 1998. Le culte du souverain dans l’Égypte ptolémaïque au IIIe siècle avant notre
ère. Louvain.
Price, S. R. F. 1984. Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor. Cambridge.
Rackham, H. 1932. Aristotle: Politics. Translation. Cambridge, MA.
Rice, E. E. 1983. The Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus. Oxford.
Van Nuffelen, P. 2004. ‘Le culte royal de l’empire des Séleucides. Une reinterpretation’, Historia 52:
278–301.
Walbank, F. W. 1987. ‘Könige als Götter. Überlegungen zum Herrscherkult von Alexander bis
Augustus’, Chiron 17: 365–82.
PART VII

WHAT?
 CHAPTER 30

PRAYER AND CURSE

HENDRIK S. VERSNEL

INTRODUCTION

THIS chapter, as the title indicates, addresses two different but related issues.
One of our tasks will be to give a summarizing ‘encyclopaedic’ description
of each. However, this cannot be done before we have explored the question
of whether and to what extent the modern concepts ‘prayer’ and ‘curse’
have corresponding terms in the Greek language. This will turn out to
provoke another question, namely, in what respects these two Greek notions
mutually concurred or differed. Apart from these two major issues, a third
one invites attention: the question of continuity. Can we observe shifts in
forms, contents, or uses over time, and, if so, can we explain them?

PRAYER
Terms
The Greek terms that we generally translate as ‘pray/prayer’ are
euchomai/euche. Being addresses to—and, as such, immediate forms of
communication with—god or gods, these notions represent the most
common type of religious expression. As so often, however, it soon appears
that Greek and English terms do not always cover precisely the same set of
senses or uses. Differences can be traced in both origins and developments
of the semantics of the terms. The English ‘pray’ stems from late Latin
precare ‘entreat’, and has inherited its basic sense of (solemn) request. The
earliest senses of Greek euchomai, as we meet them in Homer, are twofold.
In a generic, non-religious discourse the term occurs in the sense of ‘profess
loudly, boast, vaunt’, more specifically, ‘boast of something one has right to
be proud of’ (Pulleyn 1997: 59–64). In a religious context it means ‘pray
(loudly)’, mostly in the sense of ‘addressing a god with a request’. The
original sense of euchomai that may have given rise to the two, in our eyes
so diverse, uses of the term is the subject of scholarly discussion. Perhaps it
is ‘solemn speech’ or, more specifically, ‘solemnly expressed claim’ (find a
good discussion of the history of the term in Depew 1997: 230–4).
It is the ‘entreating’ sense of the word that rose to monopoly in Greek
religion. And it is this use of euchomai that also, in Homer, already
engendered another meaning, which was to enjoy a great future. This is
‘vow, promise’, and refers to the reward the god might expect after
fulfilling the wish (Van Straten 1981; Boardman 2004; Bodel and Kajava
2009). This is one of the most characteristic instances of reciprocity in the
relationship between humans and gods in Greek religious practice. In this
context, the word euche even came to denote the concrete gift offered to the
gods by way of redemption of the vow itself. It occurs in hundreds of votive
inscriptions of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Euchen anetheka does
not mean ‘I dedicated my prayer’, nor even ‘I dedicated my vow’, but ‘I
dedicated the gift that I promised/vowed’ (just as Latin votum dedi).
While other Greek words for ‘entreat/implore/beseech’, such as lissomai
(Aubriot-Sévin 1992: 405–92) and, more strongly, hiketeuo (Canciani and
Pellizer 2005), differ from euchomai in that they are not restricted to the
domain of religion, there is a second word group which is generally used in
a religious context. This is ara/araomai, one of whose meanings concurs
with our concept of ‘pray/prayer’ (Aubriot-Sévin 1992: 295–404). Here too,
however, its semantic history betrays a gradual shift. In Homer, araomai
seems to be semantically identical to euchomai in the sense of ‘loudly
express a wish, either positive or negative, whose fulfilment does not lie in
the hands of man’ (LfgrE 1168 ff.). Over the course of time, however, for
malevolent wishes, which we tend to associate with the notion ‘curse’,
preference was given to the words ara/araomai (Corlu 1966: 283ff.,
Pulleyn 1997: 71–7). Nonetheless, araomai and euchomai, the latter
especially in its compositions kateuchomai and epeuchomai (Graf 2005a:
248), continue sharing both positive and negative aspects. In Aischylos’
Choephoroi 142–6, in a prayer (first called euchai) to her deceased father,
Electra expressly includes both a wish for blessing for herself and a request
to do evil to her enemies, specifying the first as arai kalai (good arai), the
second as are kake (bad ara). We shall return to this in the section ‘Curse’.

Forms
By way of introduction let us single out the earliest instance of an
independent formal prayer, namely the oft-quoted prayer (the Greek term
used here is a form of araomai) of Apollo’s priest Chryses (called both
hiereus and areter in the immediate context)—who has been wronged by
Agamemnon, lord of the Achaeans—to his god in Homer Ilias 1.37–43:

Hear me you of the silverbow, who have under your

protection Chryse
and sacred Cilla, and who rule mightily over Tenedos,
Smintheus, if ever I roofed over a pleasing shrine for
you,
or if ever I burned to you thigh pieces
of bulls and goats, fulfill for me this wish:
let the Danaans pay for my tears by your arrows.
(Murray 1924)

This brief prayer presents a complete set of elements often deemed to be

constitutive of (formal) ancient prayer, whose classic threefold division into
invocatio, pars epica, and precatio, introduced by Ausfeld in 1903, is still
widely used. The invocatio evokes the attention of the god. In it, the god is
addressed by name, often with his cult name(s), patronymica, habitual
residence, functions, and qualities. This part serves both identification and,
ever more emphatically over the course of time, also the honorification of
the deity in question (Versnel 2011: 53–7). The second part, called pars
epica by Ausfeld, contains the ‘argument’—a term now often preferred over
the old Latin one—consisting of considerations that might persuade a god
to help, for example, by a reminder of the praying person’s acts of piety, or
a reference to the god’s earlier benefactions or his natural inclination to help
people. The third part is the precatio proper, the petition. As noted, the great
majority of both public and private prayers contain a wish.
However, a few notes of warning are in order. First, the scheme is not
obligatory: we do not know of any official/liturgical prescription
concerning this prayer structure: ‘Greek religion had no Book of Common
Prayer’ (Pulleyn 1997: 149). The few ‘complete’ schemes that we do
possess, as the one just cited, are restricted to formal prayer in literary texts,
especially in Homer (Aubriot 1991). As a matter of fact, to find more
examples we must resort to the hymn (for a basic collection: Furley and
Bremer 2001; see also, in this volume, Calame, Chapter 13), a category
sometimes, and to a certain extent correctly, called ‘sung prayer’, that in
this respect is far more informative. Hymns in religious contexts were
mainly intended as praises of the god. Conventional features were lists of
the god’s powers and qualities as well as cult places. Increasingly extended
strings of epithets mark the hymnody of imperial times. In the earliest so-
called ‘Homeric’ hymns (seventh and sixth centuries bce) ‘invocation’ and
‘argument’ already tended to amalgamate into independent extended
narrations about the god’s birth and acquisition of his timai (‘honours’)
(Furley 1995). Next to this, a special type of prayer formularies, intended
for public recitation and concomitant requirements concerning the qualities
of the praying persons, emerges in the Hellenistic and Roman periods
(Klinghardt 1999). Finally, the few extant prayers that explicitly belong to a
cultic context all betray a much simpler form (Aubriot-Sévin 1992: 36f.;
Pulleyn 1997: 149f.). Most famous is the two-word prayer hue kue, ‘rain,
conceive’, a formula spoken by the initiates at the mysteries (Proclus In Ti.
3.176, 26ff.; Hippol. Haer. 5.7.34.87 Wendland). There were also
linguistically meaningless—though not senseless—sounds which
accompanied certain dances and processions and which could be interpreted
as invocations of the god, such as ololuge, thriambe, euhoi, paian. They
could even develop into the name of a god: the cry iakche became the
divine name Iakchos. All this proves Origen’s Peri euches (Koetschau
1899, I.II.1) to be right when it says: ‘One thing, I am convinced, belongs to
the impossibilities, namely to make clear the whole of prayer in a precise
manner, meet for god.’

Contexts, Motives, and Motifs

Greek prayers, like modern ones, could be formal (official) or informal (as
often in private contexts). Generally, official prayer was connected with
other acts of worship, most prominently sacrifice. With few exceptions
animal sacrifices were offered in honour of god(s) or hero(es), hence were
hardly conceivable without a formal prayer in which at least the first and
third elements played a part. Ancient prayer used to be spoken aloud in
accordance with the early meaning of euchomai. Silent or whispered prayer
was reserved for offensive, indecent, erotic, or magical uses, but was later
adopted as the normal rule in Christian practice. Kneeling down (often
associated with the notions of hiketeuo/hiketeia) though not unknown (Van
Straten 1974) was unusual, the gesture of entreaty being outstretched arms
with the hands directed to the god invoked or to his religious cult image
(Jakov and Voutiras 2005: 120–3).
If we now turn to the contents and contexts of ancient Greek prayer we
will focus on the following central questions—‘Who was addressed, how,
and for what’—in other words, invocatio and preces.
Who? The question of choice in a polytheistic religion might seem
insurmountable (the following exposé is based on Versnel 2011: ch. 1). To
which of the thrice countless gods (tris murioi, Hesiod Op. 252f. on ‘the
assistants of Zeus’) did ancient man choose to pray for the special request
he had in mind? At first sight, divine specialization might present a viable
way out. After all, according to Herodotos 2.53, Homer and Hesiod had
bestowed upon the gods their appropriate epithets (tas eponumias),
distributing their honours/powers and crafts (timas te kai technas), while
also shaping (literally ‘signalizing’) their appearances (eidea). Hence,
Greeks may have been knowledgeable about each god’s specialism and
have made their choice accordingly. The truth is that things tend to be less
simple than we (and the Greeks) might like to believe to think they are.
 Surely there are examples of an easy, natural choice for a special god
based on her/his specific qualities. The seriously sick would pray for health
to a healing god, most specifically Asklepios, either in his famous far away
sanctuary at Epidauros or in a local satellite one. The person who wants to
make some profit might turn to Hermes—in case of indecent profit, such as
theft, to Hermes Psithuros (‘to whom you speak in whisper’). A young
woman in love might specifically pray to Aphrodite (also Psithyros in this
case). Here, the timai and technai well known from mythology may indeed
determine the choice for a specific deity. Yet, this one-to-one functional
relationship is the exception rather than the rule, and often does not occur
even where one might have expected it. In a perilous situation at sea people
did not pray for salvation to the god of the sea Poseidon but rather to the
Dioskouroi (or, in later times, to Isis Pelagia). In (local) cultic contexts
gods, well known from mythology, but specified by functional or
topographical epithets, might be ascribed qualities that differed
substantially from the central mythological ‘offices’ known from myth.
Moreover, the Apollo, Hera, or Artemis of one sanctuary, city, or region
might boast a radically different identity from those of other places. More
generally, any god—as well as any of the innumerable local heroes—might
be invoked for any of the needs of the praying person. Small wonder, then,
that oracle centres specialized in guiding the client on precisely this
question: ‘to which of the gods must I pray’ (in order to fulfil my wish). But
even here, the answers that have come to us were often far from clear.
Delphi, for instance, seemed to prefer lists of—in our eyes not very
coherent—groups of gods (e.g. Parke–Wormell 1956: nos 102, 282, 283).
How? Once the divine name was satisfactorily determined, and prior to
the request proper, the god was invoked and his attention attracted,
frequently by calling on him with a double vocative. Very often he is asked
‘to hear’ (klue, kluthi, akoue, akouson) or (less often) ‘to come’ (elthe).
Significantly, Zeus—apparently taken as more typically omnipresent than
other gods—is never addressed with the request to come. Nor does the use
of this term necessarily imply that the god concerned is consciously
believed to sojourn on Olympus or at any other distant place.
What? What were ancient Greeks concerned about, what did they wish
for in their prayers? The answer is: generally very much the same as the
issues with which modern people are concerned. The
philosopher/doctor/miracle worker Empedokles boasts that, on his tours
around ‘flourishing cities’, numerous people follow him, ‘asking where lies
the path to profit (kerdos), some seeking prophecies, while others, for many
a day stabbed by grievous pains, beg to hear the word that heals all manner
of illness’ (DK 31 B 157). Wealth and health in an infinite variety of detail
are indeed the two prevalent topics of prayer, as they are still today.
Unfortunately, the prayers of humble men, being pronounced but rarely
written, and, if written, mostly on perishable material, have only rarely
come to us. Prayers inscribed on stone are usually of an official nature
serving public commemoration just as dedicatory inscriptions (Depew
1997). To find the issues central to the prayers of common people we may
take either one of two strategies.
One strategy looks at the questions put to the oracle, for example, the
ones that were inscribed on lead tablets that were found in great numbers at
the oracle centre of Zeus and Dione at Dodona (Lhôte 2006, whose
numeration is adopted here; Eidinow 2007: ch. 5; see also, in this volume,
Johnston, Chapter 32). They are not prayers themselves but questions about
the most profitable course of action in order to reach one’s goal, including
the question to which god a prayer must be directed. As such, they betray
needs with which ancient man was concerned, and for which he needed
divine information or help. Many are of the type: ‘will it be better and more
profitable (loion kai ameinon and variants) if I . . . (buy the plot, will go on
a journey, change of profession)’. Another fixed type is the formulaic
question: ‘To which god or hero must I pray (or sacrifice)’ or ‘pray and
sacrifice’ (sometimes also ‘which god must I appease’) in order to . . . Often
the final goals are formulated in a general fashion, such as ‘in order to fare
better’ (loion again) or ‘to achieve what I have in mind’ (no. 67). Others,
however, detail a wish, as, for instance: ‘in order that my illness comes to
an end’ (no. 46); ‘for a male (!) descendant from my wife Philista’ (no. 47;
cf. no. 50); ‘concerning my eyes’ (nos 71, 72). How close the wish for
knowledge about the future and the wish to know how to act in prayer
cohere is illustrated by a discussion in Xenophon Anab. 3.1.5f. When
Xenophon chose to ask Delphic Apollo ‘to whom of the gods he should
sacrifice and pray in order to have a prosperous journey and a safe return’,
he followed, as we have just seen, a traditional course of action. As did
Sokrates (ibid.), who censured him for not having asked the other
conventional question, also common at Delphi: ‘whether it would be better
(loion) for him to go or to stay’.
 The second, more profitable, strategy looks at thousands of votive
inscriptions, in which the god is thanked and rewarded for having answered
the prayer: ‘Votive reliefs typically represent successful prayers’ (Depew
1997: 231). As a rule they open with euxamenos (having prayed and
vowed) or forms of the related word euche, followed by the object of the
prayer. In these texts too there is no limit to the variety of wishes. A man
can pray for the life of a child; for his wife, children and relatives; for the
salvation of all his idioi (‘his own people’: members of his family and
household); for a good crop; for his donkey; for good fortune, for profit; for
the conception of children over the course of time; for his master; for
lifestock and dogs; or give thanks for having escaped from a mad dog.
Frequent too are prayers/votives for euploia (safe (sea) journey) (for
references to all these wishes, see Versnel 1981: 8–10).
Nothing revolutionary new, then, and nothing shocking, but, perhaps for
that very reason, a welcome antidote against the modish mantra that the
Greeks were ‘desperately alien’, ‘desperately or fundamentally foreign’
(e.g. N. D. Fustel de Coulanges, P. Veyne, J.-P. Vernant, M. Finley, P.
Cartledge, for which see Versnel 2011: 11–13). If they were different—and
no doubt in some important respects they were—it is not in the domain of
the personal wishes in their prayers. In an aside we should note that, in one
respect, there is a difference. That is, in the way Greeks formulated their
feelings of gratitude (besides the material offering of votive gifts). It has
often been observed that, contrary to the prayer of supplication, prayers of
gratitude are extremely rare in Greek antiquity. Instead of words of
gratitude we find expressions of praise and honorification. In this, as so
often, religious expression imitates the customary manners in the secular
world (Versnel 1981: 42–62).
From the list just mentioned it appears—and it will not raise much
surprise—that prayer has an egocentric character, not only when one prays
for one’s own well-being, but also when wife, child, dog, or occasionally a
friend is involved. Even the prayer for fellow humans outside the private
circle of the ego (e.g. master or emperor)—often referred to with the
German term fürbitte—rarely lacks a self-centred touch. In sum, prayers for
‘health and wealth’ are of a natural and innocent type of ‘Gebetsegoismus’
(Weinreich 1968). They are not necessarily offensive towards other persons.
Other types, however, may unintentionally or consciously attract more
negative aspects. Drought, epidemics, or hail, for instance, can be prayed
away (apopempein, Schlesier 1990). We find the following, near proverbial,
geographic instructions to the gods: send them into the sea or overseas; to
the mountains where the cock does not crow and the dog does not bark; as
far as the heavens are removed from the earth. Eis oros e eis kuma (to the
mountain or into the sea) is a fixed expression. In Oedipus Tyrannus 190f.
the chorus prays that the horrible Ares will be sent ‘far from the fatherland,
to the great nuptial room of Amphitrite (= the sea) or to the inhospitable
Thracian gulf’. Here, the Thracians are selected on the ground that they
were one of the most distant peoples known in early times. But one step
further—a step both vicious and profitable—is the formulaic prayer in case
of evil circumstances to send these: ‘onto the heads of our enemies’ (eis
echthron kephalas), which, incidentally, safely landed in the Roman
Catholic missal as averte mala inimicis (drive away disaster to the
enemies). The mechanisms described here are not confined to ancient Greek
culture. Nor is the following, final, step in wishing evil to an adversary,
which we will introduce with the aid of a brief text inscribed by a woman
by the name of Artemis on a lead tablet in a Demeter sanctuary at Knidos in
south-west Asia Minor (second century bce?) (DT no. 8–9; IKnidos I. no.
148). It is one of some dozen tablet texts very similar in both form and
purpose:
Artemis dedicates to Demeter, Kore and all the gods together with Demeter, the person who
refuses to return to me the articles of clothing that I left with him, although I asked for them.
May he himself bring them back to Demeter, also if someone else now has my possessions,
may he, consumed by fire, confess it publicly. But let me not infringe any divine law in this and
may I be free (. . .) to drink and eat and consort under the same roof (with the accursed). For I
have suffered wrong, Oh Mistress Demeter (adikemai gar Despoina Damater).

We started the present section with the earliest Greek prayer known to us;
we now conclude it with a prayer from the Hellenistic period. Apart from
chronology the two also differ in their cultural setting: the first is taken
from a literary work—and the most hallowed example of that genre—the
second was scratched on lead and dedicated in a sanctuary; it betrays a
humble ambience and concerns a relatively futile affair. The most
remarkable (and relevant and disquieting) difference, however, is that the
first is commonly cited as a (the) paradigmatic form of Greek prayer,
whereas about the second (and its cognates) a scholarly discussion is raging
concerning the question whether it may be ranged at all among the category
‘prayer’ or should rather be assigned to the class of (magical) curse. Two
elements play a role in that discussion, first, the fact that, just as the magical
defixiones that we shall introduce shortly, the Knidian text was written on
lead, and, secondly, that it contains an offensive and even destructive form
of wishing formula. That both ‘prayers’ are appeals to a god to repair an
injury suffered by the praying person, and that the offensive aspects are
corollary to this, threatens to be pushed to the background in the discussion.
This and related issues will have our attention in our next section, ‘Curse’.

CURSE

A curse is a wish that some form of adversity or misfortune may befall a

person or persons. This is the minimum definition that we find in
dictionaries or encyclopaedic works. Others may be more inclusive, as, for
instance, the following: a curse is a solemn utterance intended to invoke a
supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on someone or something
(Oxford English Dictionary). One question that will be broached in our
discussion is whether the additional elements—especially invocation of
supernatural power and punishment (‘Der Fluch ist Reaktion auf Unrecht’,
thus Graf 2005a: 247)—indeed belong to the fixed or at least prevalent
characteristics of ancient curse formula in general.
Within these broad definitions various types of curses can be
distinguished, according to setting, motive, and conditions. By way of
introduction let us first have a glance at a variety of maledictory
expressions to be found in ancient Greek curses.

Forms
In the section on prayer (‘Forms’; ‘Contexts’) two malevolent prayers have
been quoted, one phrased in general, the other in specific, terms. The prayer
of the priest Chryses is of the general type: ‘let the Danaans pay for my
tears’. The nature of the penalty is not stipulated. Unspecified curse
formulas of this type are rife throughout Greek history. An early specimen
can be found in the famous list of public imprecations from Teos (the so-
called Dirae Teae c.470 BCE, Syll.3 37–8; ML 1988, no. 30; Herrmann
1981) which the magistrates used to pronounce annually against those who
endangered the peace and prosperity of the city. Each of these curses ends
with the formula: ‘that the offender and his posterity (genos) will perish
(apollusthai)’. Much later, grave inscriptions of Roman Asia Minor display
a variety of formulaic general imprecations against grave desecrators (and
their progeny): ‘that the gods may be enraged/wrathful’ (or: ‘not
propitious/clement’), or the offender ‘will be impious (asebes) to the gods’,
or ‘will have to reckon with the god’ (estai pros ton theon) (Strubbe 1991,
1997). In this stereotyped form they are ubiquitous, but, of course, may
allow for all sorts of juicy specifications. A particularly sophisticated
elaboration of this type is the double-edged curse that the culprit may not be
able to sacrifice successfully (Versnel 1985). A curse from Mopsuestia in
the third century ce (Versnel 1985: 248) combines these general and
specific wishes:
I invoke the gods of heaven and underworld and all Ara and Lussa (personified ‘Curse’ and
‘Rage’) to show their rage at the culprits for the rest of their life. And may it be impossible for
them to perform sacred acts/sacrifice (ta hiera) in any way . . .

The prayer/curse of the lead tablet from Knidos, also quoted in the prayer
section of ‘Contexts, Motives, and Motifs’, presents an illustration of the
variety of specific curses: ‘may he (the perpetrator), consumed by fire,
confess it publicly’. This stipulation belongs to the fixed formulas of these
thirteen to fifteen Knidian lead tablet texts. ‘Consumed by fire’ here means
‘vexed by burning fever’ (Versnel 1995), an affliction to be sent by the
invoked goddess (here Demeter) with the explicit goal to redress the crime
and make the culprit return the expropriated object—and lose face by
his/her public confession (Versnel 1999). Personal emotional involvement
(on which see Chaniotis 2009, particularly on the Knidian curses, and 2013)
often provokes a detailed description of the torments called down upon the
targets. Formulaic ‘apopemptic’ prayers for sending disaster of any kind
(epidemic, illness, war, famine) to places far away, that we discussed in the
section on prayer (‘Contexts, Motives, and Motifs’), are corn to the mill for
private imprecations. Variants on these wishes prevail in maledictions
against personal opponents and enemies who have wronged the authors. A
particularly extended, oft-quoted curse/prayer from Amorgos (IG XII, 7 1;
Versnel 1991, 1999; Gager 1992: no. 75, dated from second century bce to
second century ce), related to the Knidian texts and, like them, addressed to
Demeter, splendidly illustrates the luxuriant multiplicity of these formulaic
maledictions:
Side A) Lady Demeter, O Queen, as your supplicant, your slave, I fall at your feet (. . . . . . .)
Lady Demeter, this is what I have been through. Being bereft I seek refuge in you: be merciful
to me and grant me my rights. (Follows a detailed accusation against the offender.) Grant that
the man who has treated me thus shall have satisfaction neither in rest nor in motion, neither in
body nor in soul; that he may not be served by slave or by handmaid, by the great or the small.
If he undertakes something, may he be unable to complete it. May his house be stricken by the
curse for ever. May no child cry (to him), may he never lay a joyful table; may no dog bark and
no cock crow; may he sow but not reap; (. . . . . .); may neither earth nor sea bear him any fruit;
may he know no blessed joy; may he come to an evil end together with all that belongs to him.
Side B) Lady Demeter, I supplicate you because I have suffered injustice: hear me, goddess,
and pass a just sentence. For those who have cherished such thoughts against us and who have
joyfully prepared sorrows for my wife Epiktesis and me, and who hate us prepare the worst and
most painful horrors. O Queen, hear us who suffer and punish those who rejoice in our misery.

We are confronted here with a genuine prayer for divine assistance

(including the elements invocation and punishment of the inclusive
definition already mentioned), in which the creative author, by way of
helpful suggestion to the goddess, manages to insert a cumulation of pure
curses, which we find elsewhere as independent expressions lacking any
reference to divine intervention.
Predictably, bodily torture of the target is rife in curses against personal
opponents. Hardly any body part or mental ability of the target escapes the
danger of being cursed, resulting in long series of targeted body parts from
‘top to toe’ in so-called ‘anatomical curses’ (Versnel 1998). A lead tablet
from Megara (DT 42, first–second century ce) curses ‘breast, lungs, heart,
liver, . . . hips, lower back, intestines . . . sex, thighs, arse-hole, . . . shins,
heels. . . . toes, fingers . . . and any other part of the entire body there may
be. . . .’ Equally predictable are lists of afflictions called down upon the
target. An inscription from Chalkis of a disciple of the famous Herodes
Atticus (Gager 1992, no. 86, second century ce) curses pre-emptively the
one who damages his private property inter alia as follows: ‘May God
strike him with trouble and fever and chills and itch and drought and
insanity and blindness and mental fits’ (for which the Judaizing author has
ransacked Deuteronomy 28.22, 28.28).

Contexts and Categories

What motives induced persons to have recourse to a curse? The most
common is the wish to punish or (by threat with punishment) prevent acts
of injustice against or infringement of private or communal interests. Thus,
a first classification is grounded on the distinction between future and past
offences, entailing a distinction between conditional and non-conditional
(unqualified) imprecations. A second type of classification concerns the
distinction between public and private curses. The survey of curse types just
mentioned presented samples of various combinations of these four
categories.
Conditional curses (imprecations) are future oriented and are aimed at the
unknown persons who dare to trespass certain stipulated sacred or secular
laws, prescriptions, treaties. They prevail in the public domain and are
pronounced by the community through its representatives (magistrates,
priests), as in the Dirae Teiae mentioned in the section ‘Forms’, above. A
special subdivision in this category is the conditional self-curse typical of
solemn oaths (Graf 2005b; Faraone 2012). They are ubiquitous as sanctions
at the end of interstate treaties, as, for instance, in the formula ‘evil things
befall the perjurer, good things happen to him who keeps his oath’. On the
other hand, the majority of later conditional imprecations against violators
of graves, as mentioned in the section ‘Forms’, above, rather belong to the
private domain.
Non-conditional curses are concerned with past or present occurrences.
Though not lacking in the public domain, the majority of them relate to
private concerns. And, with this, we touch on two types of curses whose
classificatory interrelationship is subject to current scholarly debate. The
one solid and conspicuous feature they have in common is the material
form in which they have come to us: lead tablets. And it is precisely this
common trait that has become a source of scholarly miscommunication.

Defixio
We have mentioned several times the existence of lead tablets as the bearers
of curse texts. In scholarly literature this type of curses is referred to with
the Latin term defixio (from defigo: to ‘pin down’, although the word
defixio itself does not occur before the sixth century ce). In ancient Greek
they are called katadesmos or katadesis (from the verb katadeo = ‘binding
down’), and hence are often ranged under the name ‘binding curses’.
Defixiones are thin lead sheets inscribed with maledictions intended to
influence the actions or welfare of persons (or animals). Many of them do
not display an explicit motive but the ones that do, through explicit or
implicit allusions, most often appear to have been inspired by feelings of
envy and competition. The main playing fields of the defixio are: (1) sports
(originally athletics, in Roman times focusing on—and found in great
numbers in—the amphitheatre and circus); (2) litigation; (3) love/erotics;
and (4) commerce (Faraone 1991a; Gager 1992; Ogden 1999). Occasionally
motives beyond those of competition have been deduced, for instance in the
context of commerce where, sometimes, long lists of persons are being
cursed (Eidinow 2007: ch. 10, 2012, which introduces the notion ‘risk’ as
the paramount niche of the defixio). Generally, these defixiones are
anonymous and lack self-justifying arguments or references to any deserved
punishment of the cursed person(s). If gods are involved they belong to the
sphere of death, underworld, witchcraft (Gaia, Hermes, Persephone,
Hekate). In later times, magical names of exotic demons and gods abound.
Spirits of the dead may also be addressed as carriers of the defixio, which is
sometimes called epistole (epistle/letter), with the task to deliver it to the
powers of the netherworld. Hence, the tablets were often buried in graves of
persons who had experienced an untimely death, as well as in chthonic
sanctuaries and wells. The tablets (now exceeding a total number of 1600;
collected in DTA; DT; SGD; SGD II; Eidinow 2007) first appear in the late
sixth century bce in Sicilia and Olbia, and somewhat later in Attica, while
they reach their acme in Athens in the fourth and third centuries BCE. The
earliest specimens are also the simplest, often containing only the names of
the cursed people or adding ‘I bind’ and the god to whom they are
‘assigned’ (for which the expressions katagrapho pros or engrapho pros are
used: ‘to register with’). The tablets might be rolled up and transfixed with
a nail and sometimes poppets/voodoo dolls were added (Faraone 1991b).
These defixiones display a number of, quite idiosyncratic, characteristics.
The first is the element of binding. The focus is not on torment or
destruction—in particular, not in the texts of the Classical period—but on
laming and putting out of action. The often professed objective is that the
target will not be able to outdo or injure the author in the daily struggle for
survival. Hence, the emphasis is put on selected parts of the body whose
functions must be obstructed (= bound): the mind, soul, and voice for the
rhetor, the hand and feet for the athlete. Litigative cases before court, in
particular, provide a fertile soil for binding formulas and their goals. The
earliest defixiones (from Sicily) presented formulas in the following terms:
‘I “register” NN and the tongue of NN, so that it will be twisted and devoid
of success’, while, eight centuries later, curses from Carthago and elsewhere
have: ‘I have bound their tongues so that they cannot speak or act against
me.’ All this implies that these defixiones were pre-emptive and future
oriented. Further features include the idea that gods may play a role as the
ones ‘with whom the target is bound or registered’, but, at least in the
Classical defixiones, submissive prayer-like formulas are hard to find. The
tablets are secretly placed in graves or wells and there are clear indications
that, if not rejected by law, they were at least disapproved of socially.
Altogether, the defixio can be, and usually is, ranged among the category
that we have baptized ‘curse’. But in Greek perception it was a category on
its own. Whereas all other types of curses could be and often were referred
to as arai, the defixio never—neither in its own texts nor in references to it
—seems to have been included into this category. In contrast to what the
inclusive definition of curse (at the beginning of the section ‘Curse’, above)
would suggest, these curses are not ‘punitive’. And even if gods often
played a role they were not ‘invoked’ for help, but rather functioned as the
authoritative centre where the curse is being delivered for final
implementation. This means that the majority of Greek defixiones is
performative by nature. More generally, all curses that lack requests for
divine intervention and solely consist of the wish that evil, specified or not,
may befall the target are performative speech acts. By utterances such as ‘I
bind’, ‘I curse’, and so on the curse is supposed to start independently
performing its task. Word and act coincide. This is what lends these curses a
certain coercive appearance.
This, then, distinguishes this type of curse from the prayer, where
invocation and request form the gist of the latter’s definition. While in
performative/coercive defixiones it is man and (his) words (including spells)
that control the working of the curse, request formulas in prayer, such as ‘I
pray/beseech, god, that . . .’, ‘please god do . . .’ explicitly put the fulfilment
in the hands of the divine addressee. And, with this, we have arrived at the
other type of lead tablet texts.
The Prayer for Justice
We concluded the section on prayer with one of the Knidian prayers, two of
whose features—the material on which it was written (lead) and the
offensive nature of its request—had given rise to a discussion about its
‘true’ nature: ‘prayer’ or ‘(magical) curse’. Such was also the fate of the
related ‘curse’ from Amorgos, quoted earlier in the section ‘Forms’. In past
scholarship, both, as well as many others, were simply accommodated
under the common denominator ‘defixio’. And yet in different contexts
submissive pleas to a god to redress a wrong and revenge an offence are just
as self-evidently ranged among the category ‘prayer’, as we saw in the case
of the prayer of priest Chryse in the Iliad.
A few hoards of curse texts of the type of the Knidos texts have been
found elsewhere, some recently—such as those in a Demeter sanctuary at
Acrocorinth (Stroud 2013) and in the Isis and Magna Mater temple at
Mainz (Latin texts: Blänsdorf 2012)—some known for a long time, such as
the Latin curses in the hot spring of Dea Sulis at Bath (Tomlin 1988). The
Knidos and Corinth ones, as well as some stray finds elsewhere, are written
by women, for whom this may have been a welcome—most likely the sole
—avenue to get justice. Demeter festivals may have served as an opportune
platform for these curse rituals (Faraone 2011). Generally inscribed on lead
tablets as well, they differ from the genuine defixiones in that they display a
choice of the following features (Versnel 1991, 2009b): the author may
disclose her name; the tablets are deposited or put up (sometimes publicly)
in sanctuaries; the action suggests an indictment intended to open a lawsuit
and is justified by a reference to some injustice committed by the cursed
person (theft, slander), hence refers to the past; the gods are supplicated in a
submissive way to punish the culprit and redress the injustice; the tone is
often markedly emotional and vindictive; and the lists of cursed body parts
may extend to long anatomical enumerations exposing the whole body to
torture and punishment (Versnel 1998).
‘Prayer for justice’ is presently widely accepted as the appropriate term
for the pure (and oldest known) texts from Knidos and related tablet texts.
While the cradle of the defixio must be sought in sixth-century Greek-
speaking areas, there are strong indications (e.g. a remarkable relationship
with the so-called confession texts of Lydia and Phrygia) that the prayers
for justice originated in the pre-Greek cultures of Asia Minor. They betray
obvious links with Near Eastern conceptions of gods in the role of supreme
justice, keeping a watchful eye on human behaviour and punishing the
offender (Versnel 2009a: 25–45). In later times, we observe an increasing
tendency to amalgamate elements of the prayer for justice and the defixio,
thus creating a ‘borderline’ category. It is here that the two main notions of
the present entry on prayer and curse have found a common niche.

CONCLUSION

Using our own terminology is unavoidable. So this contribution has

‘prayer’ and ‘curse’ in its title. However, what the ancient testimonies have
taught us is that here, as in so many other cases, the notions covered by our
terms do not always precisely correspond with the notions covered by the
Greek words that, in our dictionaries, are rendered by the terms ‘prayer’ and
‘curse’. Nor do the distinctions that we make between prayer and curse
always match the way in which ancient Greeks understood distinctions
between their ‘corresponding’ terms. This certainly does nothing to make
our study (very much including the task of the translator) easier. But the
profit of our exercises may consist of a modest contribution to a growing
insight into the questions in what respects, to which degree, under which
circumstances, and how distinctively Greeks, and, above all, which Greeks,
conceived their world in ways different from or similar to those of us
moderns.

SUGGESTED READING
For the most informative recent treatments of ancient Greek prayer and
curse ThesCRA should be consulted. For comprehensive but concise
monographs on prayer in English, which are accessible to the general
reader, Versnel 1981: 1–64 and Pulleyn 1997 may be considered. On curse,
defixio in particular, very useful collections of curse tablet texts are
presented by Gager 1992 (in English) and Eidinow 2007 (Greek and
English). The latter also provides a new discussion of the psycho-
sociological embedment of these curses from the perspective of risk.
Watson 1991 expounds the role of curses in literature. The ‘prayer for
justice’ was, after some initiatives in the early twentieth century, put on the
map again in a comprehensive study by Versnel 1991, which may be
consulted for a first orientation.

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 CHAPTER 31

SACRIFICE

FRED NAIDEN

‘SACRIFICE’ derives from the Latin sacra facere, which, in turn, resembles
the Greek phrase hiera rezein. All three mean ‘to do sacred things’, and so
any treatment of Greek sacrifice may begin with the observation that this
practice is a composite. Oracles follow sacrifices; prayers and hymns often
accompany them, and sometimes oaths do; a healing visitation or a
dedication may occur afterwards. Epiphanies rarely occur during sacrifices,
but a divine presence of some sort, to answer prayers, listen to music, smell
smoke, and manipulate the animal’s vitals, is indispensable for the rite.
So much is true of sacrifices involving animal victims, but sacrifices
made with vegetal offerings extend the field of this practice. Vegetal
offerings occurred every morning and every evening, at home and in
shrines, before voyages and other journeys. Libations and incense-burning
were far more common than animal sacrifice, if only because they
accompanied most animal sacrifices yet also occurred without them.
Sacrifices with human victims form a part of Greek thinking about the rite,
even if, as will shortly emerge, these sacrifices were mostly imaginary.
The recipients varied, too. As Scott Scullion (1994) implied when
defending the contrast between ‘Olympian’ and ‘chthonian’, Greek terms
for sacrifice reflect this contrast. Thysia, which smoked, went up, to
Olympians; sphagia, or bloodletting, went down, to chthonians, as did
enagismos, which often went down to heroes through tubes. Yet heroes
received thysiai, too, showing that the distinction drawn among recipients
was not absolute. Sacrifice was heterogeneous. (On the distinction between
Olympians and chthonians see also, in this volume, Deacy, Chapter 24.)
Just as offerings and recipients varied, so did context. Sometimes a meal
of meat followed, but very often some sort of divination followed, with or
without examination of the liver through hepatoscopy. A festival might
follow, or the propitiation of a ghost. Sometimes the community attended,
sometimes only the priest or magistrate acting on the community’s behalf.
Sometimes the family attended, sometimes only an individual worshipper.
In English (and French), all this is ‘sacrifice’; in German, most of it is
Opfer. In Greek, however, thysia, sphagia, and enagismos are only three of
a dozen relevant terms. There are two kinds of libations, spondai, poured in
the name of the Olympians, and often used to solemnize treaties; and choai,
poured in the name of the chthonian divinities and used for propitiation.
Aparche designates both preliminary offerings and first fruits. Catalogues of
these sundry terms appear in the leading studies on Greek sacrificial
vocabulary (Stengel 1910; Eitrem 1915; Rudhardt 1958; Casabona 1966).
For the sacrifice of human victims, there was no Greek term. Tragedy
aside, reports of such thysiai in the Archaic, Classical, or Hellenistic
sources are rare, especially reports of regular rituals. For regular thysia,
there is only Herodotos 7.197, on a ritual at Alos, and Plato, plus later
sources, for the famed ritual at Mount Lycaon (Resp. 565c–d, with Min.
315c). Empedokles (fr. 137 DK) does not specify regular ritual. Instead, this
passage deals with the putative origins of sacrifice in a golden age
preceding the slaughter of animals by human beings. Other, later sources
report regular but obsolete rituals—Pausanias (7.4.19, 9.8.2), Porphyry
(Abst. 2.55, with four reports), and Apollodoros (1.9.1). Christian sources
like Clement (Protr. 3.42) and Lactantius (Div. inst. 1.21) are tendentious,
and the particulars that they report are unreliable. This unsatisfactory
evidence led Pierre Bonnechère (1994), author of the fullest recent
treatment, to conclude ‘human sacrifice’ was not a Greek historical reality
(on human sacrifice, see also, in this volume, Osborne, Chapter 1).
If sphagia, not thysia, is the term for a ‘human sacrifice’, the same
difficulties appear. Rather than reports of rituals, there are reports of
measures taken during emergencies, such as the slaughter of prisoners by
Themistokles, according to Plutarch (Them. 22.7; see also Pl. Resp. 391b;
and later sources such as Paus. 9.33.4). Porphyry reports the only regular
ritual, one for Cronus that scarcely differs from a public execution as
opposed to a communal sacrifice (Abs. 2.54). Once again there are obsolete
practices (Phylarchos FGrH 81 F 80, an obsolete pre-battle ritual) and
mythic reports (such as Serv. A. 3.121, 11.264 on Idomeneus’ sacrifice of
his child). If, on the other hand, scapegoat rituals with human victims are to
be considered acts of sphagia, as argued by Renée Girard (1972), there is
no philological evidence to be found. Scapegoating is never termed
sacrificial. (On scapegoat rituals see, in this volume, Bremmer, Chapter 40.)
What, then, is the significance of ‘sacrifice’ from the Archaic to the
Hellenistic periods? Recent scholarship that will be cited in ‘Scholarly
Treatment of Sacrificial Decorum’, below, regards sacrifice as the central
ritual of ancient Greek religion. In this chapter, I shall argue that it is an etic
or modern term that has strayed too far from emic or ancient experience. It
tends to ignore or contradict Greek perspectives, and to overemphasize two
aspects—killing and eating—while underemphasizing other aspects of the
rite. Instead of adding to what ancient sources report, it obscures what they
say. The terms ‘offering’ and Opfer are both preferable to ‘sacrifice’.
The remainder of this chapter seeks to support this conclusion though a
critical review of scholarship, especially the work of Walter Burkert (1983
[1972], 1985 [1977], 2001 [1990]) and the Paris School of Jean-Pierre
Vernant and Marcel Detienne (1989 [1979]), followed by two relevant
examples of the rite. As I have argued elsewhere (but not argued strongly
enough), acts of sacrifice are aesthetic as well as social events. The
worshippers performed these acts for a god whose function, partly, was not
only to accept the performance, but also to judge and to enjoy it. The god
framed or completed the act. In this sense, the god of sacrifice was a kind of
reality—an epiphenomenon—and not an illusion.

A REVIEW OF SCHOLARSHIP

Confronted with the multifariousness of sacrifice, the leading scholars of

this rite, Burkert and the French team of Vernant and Detienne, have
emphasized some aspects of sacrifice at the cost of others. Even before
Homo Necans (translated in 1983), Burkert emphasized the slaughter of the
animal. This emphasis was not accidental. Burkert was a follower of
Konrad Lorenz, the sociobiologist who compared human aggression to
aggression among other species in his On Aggression (1966 [1963]). The
slaughter of an animal in an act of sacrifice is the most striking expression
of aggressive impulses in Greek religion, save only for the legendary
sacrifice of human beings, and so Burkert devoted more attention to this
step than to others—more, for example, than he devoted to the prayers
made during acts of sacrifice. By the same token, the slaughter of the
animal makes sacrifice the paradigmatic ritual. As Burkert (2001 [1990]:
12) wrote, ‘Society is built on impulses of aggression controlled by ritual,
as Konrad Lorenz has shown.’
A second element in Burkert’s view of sacrifice was the emphasis on
psychology. Burkert’s accounts of sacrifice centre on what he called (in
Burkert 2001 [1990]: 11), ‘The joy of the festival, the horror of death’, in a
word, on worshippers’ emotions. Since animal sacrifice, with its slaughter
of a living creature, seems mostly likely to elicit emotions, Burkert had
reason to concentrate on this act as opposed to sacrifice in general. But the
primacy of psychology meant more than another reason to focus on the
slaughter of animals. It meant that scholars should look for emotions that
the Greeks felt but did not acknowledge. Since the Greeks, like all human
beings, were unconsciously aggressive, one of these unacknowledged
emotions was guilt arising from acts of violence such as animal sacrifice.
The collective aspect of this guilt derived not so much from Lorenz,
however, as from a tradition of scholarship that was largely French, and
dated back to Émile Durkheim, the French sociologist active around 1900.
In this tradition, religious rites provided solidarity: in agricultural societies,
solidarity founded on kinship, and, in industrial societies, solidarity founded
on the workplace. Burkert linked solidarity to guilt.
A third element in Burkert’s view, more prominent in Homo Necans
(1983 [1972]) than in his other works on sacrifice, was the origin of this
collective guilt in prehistory, or even in the development of primates prior
to the emergence of homo sapiens. In tracing guilt at animal slaughter to
prehistory, Burkert followed his teacher Karl Meuli, who posited that Stone
Age hunters in Siberia felt guilt at killing their prey (for references and
background, see the 2012 essay of Burkert’s pupil, Fritz Graf). This was
tracing the origins of Greek sacrifice broadly, but Lorenz led Burkert to
trace these origins more broadly still, to the behaviour of herds or packs.
The influences of both Meuli and Lorenz led Burkert away from
comparisons between the Greeks and their neighbours. Greek sacrifice was
not to be understood as a regional, historical phenomenon.
The views of Vernant and Detienne, among others, developed in
opposition to Burkert’s, but, like him, they concentrated on a single step.
For them, this step was the distribution and consumption of the meat. In the
words of a 1981 paper of Vernant’s, sacrifice was ‘an operation that jointly
offers an animal’s life to the gods and transforms its body into food for
human consumption’ (English trans. Vernant 1991: 295). Burkert, Vernant
said, erred in emphasizing the slaughter of victims. The slaughter received
little attention in the Greek sources, whereas feasting received more. In
Vernant’s view, it deserved more. Feasting, not slaughter, was the last step
in an act of sacrifice, and it was also the step in which the most persons
participated. It was, further, the most differentiated step, for not all
participants received the same portions and, on many occasions, the
participants were limited in number or other ways. Feasting united yet
divided, establishing both community and hierarchy. For Burkert’s
antisocial impulses Vernant substituted social impulses. Solidarity, not guilt,
was central to sacrifice.
Solidarity, however, was not altogether positive. Vernant found the
negative side of solidarity in Hesiod’s story of Prometheus’ sacrifice to
Zeus. Unlike Burkert’s hunters or primates, Vernant’s Prometheus is
isolated, and is punished. As related in Vernant (1991: ch. 16), isolation and
punishment are both features of a struggle for power between Prometheus
and Zeus—of a politics of sacrifice that caused the act of distribution and
consumption to be (and to remain) contested. The interplay of solidarity and
rivalry drew on Durkheim, as Burkert had done, but to different effect.
This version of sacrifice situated the ritual in Greek political history, and
severed the link Burkert had made between sacrifice and the Stone Age. In
spite of this change, Vernant resembled Burkert in avoiding comparisons
between Greek practice and sacrifice in neighbouring societies. Most
notably, Vernant ignored the Near Eastern sacrificial system we know most
about—that of ancient Israel. As for Mesopotamian sacrifice, in this area,
unlike that of the Western Semites, sacrifice is not an apt term to describe
food offerings to the gods, and so Vernant rejected this comparison, too (in
Vernant 1991). At the same time, Vernant and Burkert said little about
Roman sacrifice. The bloodless Imperial cult was perhaps unattractive to
Burkert, and Rome’s polyglot cities were very different from the Greek
poleis that interested the two French writers.
The emphasis on killing, on the one hand, and on eating, on the other,
leads to difficulties explored in Faraone and Naiden 2012, a volume of
essays, including the aforementioned essay of Graf’s, and also by myself,
when I returned to the subject in a monograph of the same year (Naiden
2012). One difficulty is that the stress of communal meat-eating
overestimates the availability of sacrificial meat in the great cities of the
Classical and Hellenistic periods, even as this same stress neglects the role
of markets and messes in providing non-sacrificial meat. A second is that
Greek offerings resembled those of neighbouring societies, casting doubt on
explanations that refer to idiosyncratic features of Greek society. For traits
of sacrifice such as the combination of libations, vegetal offerings, and
animal slaughter, found from Phoenicia to Rome, by way of Greece and
Carthage, there ought to be explanations of a Mediterranean, rather than
Greek, character.
A third objection, better suited to the confines of this chapter, is that
stress on killing and feasting, and thus on violence and solidarity,
overlooked the standard of decorum required in an act of sacrifice. This
standard is what makes an act of sacrifice an aesthetic as well as social act
—a performance as well as a ritual. The viewer (and judge) of this
performance was the god, and the performers doubled as spectators. As
Burkert showed in his treatment of sacrifice in Greek Religion (1985
[1977]), this ritual was often a great occasion, and so the performers had to
be at their best in every sense of the word.
The leading recent scholars, like those of previous generations, have not
ignored this standard of decorum. The polluted should not participate in
sacrifices, they report, and neither should persons who had done violence
against the gods. In these respects, decorum was negative. Geek usage
supplies a positive counterpart: sacrifices must be kala, meaning both
‘handsome’ and ‘socially and morally acceptable’, or, to use a single
English word, ‘fair’ in two senses. First, the animal or other offering must
be kalon. Second, the worshipper must be kalos. Third, the other
circumstances must be kala. Fourth, the entrails must prove to be kala. In
the common phrase, hiera kala, the word hiera referred not only to victims,
but also to the chief features of the act.
 Most of these requirements are unsurprising. Yet even the well-known
requirements, such as an animal that is kalon, may be underestimated. The
Greeks went well beyond the common epigraphical dictates that the animal
be of some particular age, gender, or colour, or that it be ‘finished’, teleion.
For communal sacrifices, the demos assigned officials to inspect animals
and see that these offerings were satisfactory. In order to select the best
animals, officials sometimes conducted ‘beauty contests’. As for the
requirement that the worshipper be kalos, it extended not only to those
leading or authorizing the sacrifice, but also to all those present. Once
again, the demos put its officials to work, along with vigilant citizens. In
Athens, concerned citizens could drag from a shrine any woman thought to
be an adulteress (Dem. 59.85–6). That would spare the god her noxious
presence.
The demos regulated most aspects of sacrifice. Officials maintained order
during processions by means of clubs and whips as well as by fines, and
later some of them performed the very different task of giving prizes to the
best composer of a song or verse honouring the god receiving the sacrifice.
Officials performing sacrifices were subject to euthynai, or audit (Aeschin.
3.18), priests performing them were subject to contracts, and theoroi
attending them were obliged to make public reports when they returned to
their home cities (IMagn. 44.35–6). There was a right way to attend, as
there was to perform.
The most important aesthetic aspect of sacrifice was often the inspection
of the entrails of the victim. This was true of acts of thysia followed by a
meal, and of some acts of sphagia, as well as of acts of divination followed
by hepatoscopy. The common term, kallierein, referred to both the first and
last of these three categories of sacrifice. Either way, kallierein designated a
sacrifice that the god accepted, and that therefore succeeded. The Greeks,
though, tended to think not of ‘success’ but of a divine judgement that the
sacrifices were kala, or ‘fair’ (again in two senses). Gods were not usually
persuaded. They were pleased, and indicated as much.

CLASSICAL EXAMPLES OF SACRIFICIAL

DECORUM
Because of recent interest in polis religion, the first of the following two
examples of sacrificial decorum is an Athenian lex sacra of the Classical
period. The second example, or body of evidence, consists of general
statements about sacrificial decorum outside of Athens, especially in Sparta.
These examples show worshippers observing decorum in two ways, first,
by meeting a standard of beauty, to kallos, and second, by meeting a
standard of propriety.
The first example, an inscription from the 330s concerning the Little
Panathenaia, presents an act of civic sacrifice from the perspective of
kallos. This quality proves to be a civic burden as well as an artistic
achievement, for kallos involves the mobilization of ample civic resources
—officials, money, and participants. After the usual preliminaries, comes
the first mention of kallos, at line 5: ‘Let the sacrifice for Athena at the
Little Panathenaia be as handsome as possible (hos kallista). For this
reason, let the revenue available to the hieropoioi be as great as possible’
(Agora 16.75.5–7).
Hos kallista is costly. How shall the people of Athens afford it? Income
from ‘new land’: ‘Let [unnamed officials] rent the new land ten days before
. . . in two lots to the man paying the most . . . or the man who would’
(Agora 16.75.7–10). The ‘new land’ is Oropos, to which Athens has a
doubtful title. The income will come from renting it to Athenians, who will
treat the previous inhabitants as tenants or will expel them. These rents will
pay for the victims. As later lines in the inscription explain: ‘Using the 41
mnai from renting the new land, . . . let the hieropoioi . . . buy cattle. After
dispatching the procession to the goddess, let them sacrifice all these cattle
on the altar of Athena’ (Agora 16.75.41–2). Besides requiring revenue,
beauty requires an aggressive foreign policy.
The next section deals with sacrifices and other offerings. It begins by
stating the purpose of the transfer: ‘so that . . . the parade may be organized
as well as possible . . . [every] year on behalf of the people of Athens and so
that the hieropoioi may in time to come manage everything else for the
goddess’s festival handsomely’ (Agora 16.75.28–32). The superlatives may
give the impression that the purpose of the resolution is to make new
sacrifices. No: the sacrifices will be two in number, the same as before. The
chief part of this section begins: ‘Let the hieropoioi make the two sacrifices,
one to Athena Hygiaeia and the other in the old temple, the same as before’
(Agora 16.75.32–5).
 Change comes in the distribution of meat, with officials and priestly
assistants receiving larger portions, and in an increase in the number of
cattle. Forty-one mnai, or about two-thirds of a talent, will have bought
dozens (although not 100) animals. Besides meaning ‘more’ victims, hos
kallista also means ‘the best’ victims: ‘After selecting one of the most
handsome animals, let them sacrifice it at the altar of Nike’ (Agora
16.75.45–6). After the sacrifice of the rest of the cattle, the hieropoioi are to
make more distributions that close the section of the decree dealing with
thysia.
Hos kallista now reworks another part of the sacrifice, the public
gathering, including: ‘the costs of the procession, the cooking, and the
adornment of the great altar, and everything that is fitting. . . . The
hieropoioi who manage the Panathenaia are to make the gathering for the
goddess as handsome as possible’ (Agora 16.75.52–8). Marching orders
follow: ‘Let them send off the procession at sunrise and impose lawful
punishments on any persons who disobey’ (Agora 16.75.58–60). Although
this inscription does not say so, the polis may have regulated the order of
the procession, as on other occasions, such as the Thargelia (LSS 14.35–40).
Hos kallista means choreography, not just war and cattle.
Besides being costly, this standard of performance must have been
exhausting, and so it applied only to the greatest sacrifices—besides the
Panathenaia, to the Attic Dionysia (IG II2 713.9–10, 1186.10) and the
mysteries at Eleusis (IG II2 709), and to a penteric festival at the shrine of
Amphiaraos at Oropos (Petrakos (1997) no. 297.12–13). Perhaps the casual
use of the expression at Demosthenes 24.28 implies that a few other
festivals met the same standard. In this passage the orator refers to the
management of unspecified aspects of the Panathenaia.
Vernant and Detienne do acknowledge the effort involved in sacrifices
such as this—an effort that, for them, expresses and heightens civic
solidarity. They do not attempt to explain (and they do not emphasize) the
ambitiousness of rites on this scale. One reason for this degree of ambition
is theological. A goddess who is a greater version of a human being will
want a greater measure of the beauty and splendour that humans value.
Another reason is economic. Offerings on this scale reflect communal
prosperity. As with the Oropos lands, this prosperity results partly from
aggression; aside from being civic, it is imperialist.
 Seeing only civic solidarity in such a case would imply that all poleis
would mount such sacrifices. Yet few did. In the Hellenistic period, the
standard of sacrifices hos kallista spread, but not widely. It appeared in two
important mainland centres, Eretria (RO, 73.2–3) and Delphi (CID 4.71.4;
IDelph. 3.3.238.3). It also appeared in several places in the Aegean,
Amorgos (IG XII, 7 241.6–7), Kos (Iscr.Cos 25.b.8), and Keos (IG XII, 5
595), and in two places in Asia Minor: Magnesia (LSAM 32.12, 34, 42) and
Antiocheia in Cilicia (LSAM 81.6–9, c.160 BCE, the latest of these
examples).
Our second case study comes mainly from Sparta, which kept sacrifice
cheap. Lykourgos, Plutarch reported, did not want sacrifices to be costly, for
then they would be few. In this spirit, Spartans sacrificed only a cock after a
victory (Plut. Lyc. 19.8; Plut. Ages. 33.6). Sparta’s foe, Epaminondas,
opposed the new standard, too, when he contrasted thuein, moderate eating,
with hybrizein, immoderate eating (Plut. Apophth. Lac. 192d, with Non pos.
suav. 1099c). Delphi settled the matter, or so Theopompos said:
According to the oracle, the best sacrifices given to Apollo came from a farmer in Arkadia, one
Klearchos, who honoured [his household gods] with incense, and with barley cakes and other
sacrificial cakes. He made civic sacrifices every year and never missed a festival. On these
occasions he never served the gods by sacrificing cattle or bludgeoning victims, but by burning
whatever he could find. (FGrH 115 F 344)

Porphyry, the source for this passage in Theopompos, quotes it in order to

disparage animal offerings. Yet Klearchos is no vegetarian. He is an
example of the Spartan virtue of frequency and of Epaminondas’s motto of
moderation—and an example of another kind of decorum. The watchword
has ceased to be beauty, and become propriety. This watchword appealed to
sources as varied as Plutarch, a priest in the provincial town of Chaeronea
in the first century CE, and Theopompos, a rhetorician of four centuries
earlier.
The difference between sacrifice hos kallista and traditional sacrifice, or
sacrifice kata ta patria, appears as much in the sources for these two
versions of the practice as it does in the ceremonial details. Sacrifice hos
kallista was a matter of public record inscribed on stone. In more than one
sense, this kind of sacrifice was monumental. Sacrifice kata ta patria, or
‘according to tradition’, was a matter of oral transmission sometimes
preserved by moralizing or archaizing writers. Both types of source were
ideologically charged, but to different effects. Sacrifice hos kallista justified
the polis. Sacrifice kata ta patria illustrated the merits of a way of life. The
former was notably Athenian; the latter was notably Spartan or
Peloponnesian.

SCHOLARLY TREATMENT OF
SACRIFICIAL DECORUM

For Burkert, Vernant, and Detienne, beauty and propriety are not
noteworthy qualities in an act of sacrifice, so these writers seldom mention
them. Burkert skips the impression that beauty makes in favour of the
impression that killing makes. Vernant has no use for beauty for another
reason: it does not feed worshippers. For all these writers, propriety is
important only at the moments they stress, killing and eating. At the time of
killing, the animal must consent; at the time of eating, the citizens must
share.
A further difficulty is that these three scholars regard ‘sacrifice’ as a
ritual, that is, a form of behaviour repeated according to rule. Using a less
rigid definition, found in Catherine Bell (1997), they might regard it as a
ritualization, or behaviour determined partly by rule and partly by other
factors. The purposes of the ritual or ritualization range from generating
meaning to generating solidarity or social limits. Yet events that should be
‘as beautiful as possible’, and thus resemble works of art, cannot generate
meaning, solidarity, or limits without a viewer or listener. The viewer may
be supposed to be the god, or other worshippers, or, to combine these
alternatives, a god as worshippers conceive him, but whoever the viewer
may be, the act of sacrifice cannot be merely a form of behaviour, any more
than a performance of the last act of Hamlet can be merely an exhibition of
duelling.
On the other hand, an event that should be as convenient as possible, and
thus as frequent as possible, sends a reiterated message to the recipient of
the sacrificial offering. This recipient is less viewer, and more listener, less
an aesthetic respondent than a judge or a patron entertaining a request,
appeal, or thanksgiving. In this case, ‘sacrifice’ is partly a form of
behaviour, but partly a renegotiation of the relation between worshipper and
god. This relation may be lifelong, and so some of the vehicles for
understanding it are long narratives about worshippers—autobiographies,
biographies, histories, novels, and epic poems. Most writers on sacrifice
have made little use of these sources. Long descriptions of sacrifice are
noted, notably sacrifices in Iliad 1 and Odyssey 3, but not the narratives in
which these sacrifices occur. Yet only the narratives can show the
renegotiation process—the reasons for it, the interchange of divine and
human, and the consequences. The sacrifice at the end of Iliad 1, where
Apollo welcomes the offering and lifts the plague affecting the Achaeans, is
part of a chain of events, including Chryses’ prayer that Apollo send the
plague, and Chryses’ previous sacrifices, which he mentioned when asking
the god to avenge him.
The neglect of such narratives is no new oversight in scholarship on
sacrifice. The standard works of Paul Stengel (1910), Samson Eitrem
(1915), Jean Casabona (1966), and Burkert (1983 [1972], 2001 [1990])
make little use of narratives, and neither do the surveys of Simon Price
(1999: ch. 2) and Robert Parker (2005 and 2011: ch. 5). Vernant and
Detienne (1989 [1979]) differ, only because of chapter 1 in their book,
centred on Hesiod. The most important sacrifice for Burkert is the
aetiological Bouphonia, for which no extended account survives, and about
which scholars disagree. Naiden s.v. Bouphonia in the EAH (Naiden 2013a)
takes a narrow view in which this ritual is exceptional, whereas Albert
Henrichs, s.v. idem, OCD4, follows Burkert in taking a broad view in which
the Bouphonia is exemplary.
The neglect of extended literary sources has not prevented an altogether
different fault in contemporary writing, which is putting all written sources
on a par. An illustration of this fault appears in the list of sources cited by
Burkert in support of his view that sacrificial animals assented to being
sacrificed. This evidence appears in two footnotes to his first article on the
subject (1966: 107 nn. 43, 45). The sources listed there are as follows:
Ael. NA 10.50, 11.4, Apollonios Mir. 13, Arist. Mir. 844a, Plut. Pel. 21, Plut. Luc. 24.6–7,
Porph. Abst. 1.25, Philostr. Her. 294, 329, Plin. NH 32.17,

all given in this order in n. 43. More follow in n. 45:

Porph. Abst. 2.9, schol. Ar. Pax 960, Schol. AR 1.425, Plut. De def. or. 435b–c and 37a, Plut.
Quaest. conv. 729f, SIG 1025.20.
Of these fourteen sources, only Aristophanes and an inscription from Kos,
given in SIG, date from BCE. Some of the fourteen sources report mirabilia,
whereas Plutarch reports a practice at one of the great shrines in Greece.
Aristophanes gives the only detailed evidence from the Classical period, but
he describes a farcical scene. The Kos inscription, likewise important, since
it describes an annual occasion, is irrelevant save for a few words that
describe the behaviour of a single animal.
Footnotes of this character are no monopoly of Burkert’s, of course. They
deserve notice because they reflect a tendency throughout the study of
Greek religion, which is to draw sociological conclusions at the expense of
cultural distinctions. Sacrifice touches on law, morality, poetry, and visual
art, but writing about sacrifice avoids these subjects, especially the first
two. The latter two appear more often, but as evidence for ideology, rather
than behaviour.
Thoroughness is the obvious justification for such an agglomeration of
sources. Yet, if scholarly investigation is to be thorough, visual sources bulk
larger than literary ones, the most important compilation being Folkert van
Straten (1995). For the study of sacrifice, concentration on visual sources
has an obvious advantage: thanks to the training of art historians, aesthetic
factors are less likely to be minimized in favour of anthropological or
sociological ones.
The chief weakness in scholarship on Greek sacrifice has not, however,
been any mishandling or neglect of ancient sources, or even any neglect of
the standard of decorum demanded of worshippers. It has been neglecting
to ask why the gods impose this standard, and, above all, why they enforce
this standard by occasionally rejecting sacrifices, as happens to Odysseus,
his crew, and the Phaiakians, not to mention many later worshippers (Od.
9.551–5, 12.356–65, 13.184–7). Scholarship on sacrifice lacks any theology
—any explanation of why gods act as they do. This lack of theology does
not reflect any lack of interest in the gods in general. The problem of divine
misbehaviour, raised by Plato, has interested commentators and scholars
down through Burkert, who, in Greek Religion (1985 [1977]: table of
contents), described the Greek gods as caught ‘between amorality and law’.
The conduct of gods in the course of sacrifice is the neglected question.
Why should Zeus accept some sacrifices by Odysseus, and not others?
Why (to believe Thucydides), should the gods be more particular about
Spartan border sacrifices than those of other Greeks? The answer is
sometimes divine concern for unwritten laws, sometimes divine adherence
to the dictates of moira, sometimes divine endorsement of human laws,
sometimes divine insistence on artistic or physical standards. The legal and
quasi-legal standards involve propriety, and the physical standards involve
aesthetics. All these standards count. The theology of sacrifice is not simply
a moral or dogmatic one. It sometimes involves the interpretive difficulties
characteristic of works of literary or artistic genius. The theology of
sacrifice in Euripides is as demanding as the theology of sacrifice in Milton,
and with good pagan reason: there are more gods to please or displease.

GREEK SACRIFICE VS. CHRISTIAN

SACRIFICE

This comparison between poets is not meant to be a way to smuggle

Christianity into the study of Greek religion. The influence of Christianity
on the study of Greek religion has often been deleterious. Burkert, Vernant,
and Detienne emphasize bloodshed and solidarity in a somewhat Christian
sense, and they share the Christian assumption that sacrifice is a universal
practice.
The emphasis on bloodshed—and on guilt—echoes the sacrifice of Jesus,
in which an offering is likened to a lamb that washes away sins. Jesus’
sacrifice is infallible, voluntary, and unique, three more parallels between
Christianity and Burkert’s view of sacrificial ritual. In Christianity, the
sacrifice is infallible because it is ordained, voluntary because Christ
chooses the cross, and unique thanks to Christ’s divinity. In Burkert, the
sacrifice of an animal is infallible in its positive social effect, voluntary on
the animal’s part, and unique in its power to unify and pacify the
community.
The French emphasis on solidarity suits the Christian Mass, at which the
consumption of a sacrificial offering brings worshippers in communion
with God and with each other. As in Christianity, participation in Greek
meals is communal, and the atmosphere is joyful. Communitas arises
without the guilt found in Burkert’s view.
 If sacrifice expresses guilt, as with Burkert, or solidarity, as with the
French scholars, it expresses universal human attitudes or needs, and so it
ought to exist everywhere. Burkert accepts this conclusion, and so he sets
forth a view of Greek sacrifice in which what is Greek is less important
than what is primeval. Vernant and Detienne accept it, too, but with the
proviso that solidarity, unlike guilt, is a politically conditioned emotion, and
so they set forth a view in which the Greek polis, especially democratic
Athens, established a distinctive form of the rite. The Christianity in these
views is patent: in Burkert, the sacrifice of Christ atones for the guilt felt by
all, and in the French writers, the congregation feels solidarity with all its
members. Burkert latches onto sin, the French onto salvation.
The resemblance between these scholars’ views and the familiar,
Christian understanding of sacrifice is tantalizing: did Christian ritual
influence Burkert and his contemporaries, or did proto-Christian features of
Greek sacrifice influence Christianity first, and scholarship afterwards?
There surely are some proto-Christian features—the altar, the combination
of foods and liquids, the hymns and processions. Even so, the Greek victim
was not voluntary, the expiation of sin was not the chief purpose of the rite,
and no salvation was conferred. Greek sacrifice should not be likened to the
Eucharist.
Continued use of the term ‘sacrifice’ makes it easy to persist in this
mistake, and so this chapter concludes by recommending that scholars
working on Greek offerings, especially animal offerings, use ‘offering’ or
offrande, or the German term, Opfer. If these terms fail to evoke bloodshed,
this failure is a gain rather than a loss. The modern value set on animal life
derives from several sources, including Christianity, but it does not derive
from the ancient Greeks. The practices of Greek vegetarians were marginal;
the ethos of today’s vegetarians is becoming central.

SUGGESTED READING
Although theoretical disputes have dominated the study of sacrifice, the
recent development of osteological research in Greek shrines promises a
new approach that will settle questions about the role of animals and other
offerings. Most important is the synthetic work of Gunnel Ekroth (2007,
2008). Among the studies that Ekroth and others have used, the most
important is Bookidis, Hansen, Snyder, and Goldberg 1999. This article
shows that both sacrificial and other meat might well be eaten on the same
occasions in a sacred place, confirming scenes in Aristophanes (Pax 1191–
7; Ach. 998–1007; Ecc. 1168–78). Still untackled is comparison of these
results with those from the Near East. For links between scholarship on
Greek religion and Near Eastern studies, see Naiden 2013b.

REFERENCES
Bell, C. 1997. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford.
Bonnechère, P. 1994. Le sacrifice humain en Grèce ancienne. Athens.
Bookidis, N., Hansen, H., Snyder, L., and Goldberg, P. 1999 ‘Dining in the Sanctuary of Demeter and
Kore at Corinth’, Hesperia 68: 1–54.
Burkert, W. 1966. ‘Greek Tragedy and Sacrificial Ritual’, GRBS 7: 87–112 [reprinted: 2001. Kleine
Schriften. Göttingen; revised: 2001. Savage Energies: Lessons of Myth and Ritual in Ancient
Greece, trans. P. Bing. Chicago].
Burkert, W. 1983 [1972]. Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and
Myth, trans. P. Bing. Berkeley.
Burkert, W. 1985 [1977]. Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, trans. J. Raffan. Oxford.
Burkert, W. 2001 [1990]. Savage Energies: Lessons of Myth and Ritual in Ancient Greece, trans. P.
Bing. Chicago.
Casabona, J. 1966. Recherches sur le vocabulaire des sacrifices en Grèce des origines à la fin de
l’époque classique. Aix-en-Provence.
Eitrem, S. 1915. Opferritus und Voropfer der Griechen und Römer. Christiana.
Ekroth, G. 1997. ‘Meat in Ancient Greece: Sacrificial, Sacred, or Secular’, Food & History 5 (2007):
249–72.
Ekroth, G. 2008. ‘Meat, Man, and God: On the Division of the Animal Victim at Greek Sacrifices’,
in ΜΙΚΡΩΣ ΗΙΕΡΟΜΝΗΜΩΝ: MELETES EIS MNHMHN Michael H. Jameson, ed. A. Matthaiou
and I. Polinskaya, 259–90. Athens.
Faraone, C. and Naiden, F. eds. 2012. Greek and Roman Animal Sacrifice: Ancient Victims, Modern
Observers. Cambridge.
Girard, R. 1972. La violence et le sacré. Paris.
Graf, F. 2012. ‘One Generation after Burkert and Girard: Where are the Great Theories?’, in Greek
and Roman Animal Sacrifice: Ancient Victims, Modern Observers, ed. C. Faraone and F. Naiden,
84–122. Cambridge.
Henrichs, A. 1996. ‘Bouphonia’, OCD, 3rd edn: 258.
Lorenz, K. 1966 [1963]. On Aggression, trans. M. Wilson. New York and Vienna.
Naiden. F. 2012. Smoke Signals for the Gods: Greek Sacrifice from the Archaic through Roman
Periods. Oxford.
Naiden, F. 2013a. ‘Bouphonia’, EAH 3: 1179.
Naiden, F. 2013b. ‘Recent Study of Greek Religion from the Archaic through Hellenistic Periods’,
Currents in Biblical Research 11: 388–427.
Parker, R. 2005. Athenian Religion: A History. Oxford.
Parker, R. 2011. On Greek Religion. Ithaca, NY.
Petrakos, V. ed. 1997. Hoi Epigraphes tou Oropou. Athens.
Price, S. 1999. Religions of the Ancient Greeks. Cambridge.
Rudhardt, J. 1958. Notions fondamentales de la pensée religieuse et actes constitutifs du culte dans la
Grèce classique. Geneva.
Scullion, S. 1994. ‘Olympian and Chthonian’, ClAnt 13: 75–119.
Stengel, P. 1910. Griechische Opferbräuche. Leipzig.
Van Straten, F. 1995. Hiera Kala. Leiden.
Vernant, J.-P. 1991. Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays, ed. F. Zeitlin. Princeton, NJ.
Vernant, J.-P. and Detienne, M. eds. 1989 [1979]. The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks, trans.
P. Wissing. Chicago.
 CHAPTER 32

ORACLES AND DIVINATION

SARAH ILES JOHNSTON

INTRODUCTION: HUMAN NEEDS, DIVINE

KNOWLEDGE

EARLY on in Prometheus Bound—a play that centres on the question of who

knows which secrets, whether that knowledge will be shared with others,
and at what price—the title character makes a claim to have taught humans
all the skills that enable them to thrive. These skills fall into two groups, the
first including the practical arts of carpentry, animal husbandry, seafaring,
and medicine, for example. But the second group, which Prometheus
describes at far greater length, consists of skills that give humans a very
significant advantage indeed:
I devised the many methods of divination (mantikes), and I first judged what truth there is in
dreams, and I first made known to mortals the meaning of chance utterances, hard to interpret,
and of the omens one encounters while on the road; and I defined the flight of crooked-clawed
birds—I explained which of them were auspicious or inauspicious by nature, and what their
ways of life were and their dislikes and likes of one another and their alliances; and I also
taught mortals about the smoothness of entrails and what colour the gall ought to have in order
to please the gods, and all about the dappled beauty of the lobe of the liver. It was I who burned
thigh-bones wrapped in fat and the long shank bone, thus leading mortals down the path of this
 darkly-signifying art, and it was I who opened their eyes to signs that are fiery and yet dim to
understanding. ((Aesch.) PV 484–99, my translation)

Useful though that first group of skills might be, they required some form
of the physical labour that defined the human condition: wielding a
hammer, driving cattle, compounding herbal remedies. The second group,
however—‘the many methods of divination’—began to erase the difference
between humans and the gods altogether (a difference that Prometheus
further erased during the famous division of sacrificial meat that finally
compelled Zeus to exile him to the lonely mountain crag where the play
unfolds). For the gods of Greece, even if not strictly omniscient (in fact, in
this play it is Zeus himself who pressures Prometheus to divulge
information that only he possesses), knew many things that humans did not
—things that could ease the burdens of mortality far more significantly than
a hammer or an ox-goad could, and that might preclude the need for herbal
remedies, at least temporarily. Indeed, although strictly speaking the
‘divine’ that is encapsulated in the word divination points only to
interaction with the gods, there is, implicit to this interaction, a certain
levelling of the playing field, sometimes even a promise of encountering a
divinity as closely as a mortal ever could. This promise of a divine
encounter was part of what made divination such a hot topic of discussion
among ancient intellectuals: how could something divine interact with
something mortal? Why would it bother to do so? And how could we, with
our puny mortal capacities, best take advantage of it (Johnston 2008: 4–
17)? Prometheus’ panoply of divinatory arts responded to the last of these
questions but left open the first two, appropriately enough in a play that
goes on to suggest that all interactions between human and divine are liable
to bring heartache as well as benefit in their wake.

TECHNICAL AND NATURAL METHODS

But let us return to the passage itself. Logically enough, given his claim, the
methods that Prometheus mentions are all methods that can be taught—
watching the birds and understanding what their behaviour means;
examining the entrails of a sacrificed animal and understanding what they
mean; interpreting the omens that might be conveyed through the dim
shapes of a dream or the words of someone else’s otherwise idle speech, or
the flicker of flames. There is a long habit, stretching back to antiquity and
still in use today among scholars of not only the Classical world but also
other cultures, of dividing methods of divination into two types. Thus, the
first type is often called ‘technical’—that is, it comprises techniques that the
student could apply whenever extra knowledge was needed. Although some
people were understood to be born with a greater capacity to learn these
techniques, they could arguably be acquired by anyone with sufficient
patience (and fees) to sit at the feet of a skilled teacher, just as one might
learn to be a carpenter, a sailor, or a doctor. The second type of method is
often called ‘natural’—implying that those who practise these methods do
so without having been taught (Cic. Div. 1.11–12, 1.34, 1.72, etc.; Bouché-
Leclercq 1879–1882; Manetti 1993 [1987]; Burkert 2005; Johnston 2008: 9,
28). Later in Prometheus Bound, the author of our play alludes to some of
the most important natural methods when he has another character mention
Apollo’s oracle at Delphi and Zeus’ oracle at Dodona—places where the
gods found ways to speak to mortals more directly, through the voices of
specially chosen women whom the gods temporarily ‘possessed’ (the
Delphic Pythia operated like this and perhaps the Dove priestesses of
Dodona did as well), or perhaps through the rustling of leaves on a sacred
tree, the ringing of sacred bronze cauldrons, or the gurgling of a sacred
stream ((Aesch.) PV 829–34; on Dodona, see Lhôte 2006; Eidinow 2007).
Already here, however, the tenuousness of the division between
‘technical’ and ‘natural’ divination begins to show; someone associated
with such an oracle—a priest, a prophet, or another member of the
personnel—usually had to interpret what the words or the rustling or the
ringing or the gurgling meant before those sounds could be used by the
enquirers. In the course of putting such ‘natural’ messages to work in a way
that would benefit humans, then, someone with skills that were usually
learned from another person had to step in. Moreover, some of the great
oracles that privileged natural methods of divination were said to have been
founded by mythic figures who practised what are usually considered
technical methods. Kalchas, for example, who showed his expertise in
technical methods by interpreting the ‘omen at the wayside’ that led to
Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter, was said to have established an
oracle at Daunia that specialized in incubation—a method of divination
usually considered to be natural, whereby one slept in a god or hero’s
sacred precinct and waited to be visited in by him or her while dreaming
(Aesch. Ag. 104–30; Strabo 6.3.9).
Moreover, some oracles that were famous as sites where the gods spoke
to mortals through possessed individuals, the rustling of leaves, or similar
natural methods, offered methods of divination that, while not strictly
‘technical’ in the sense of relying directly on a human’s learned knowledge,
certainly precluded the direct contact between human and divine that was
the hallmark of the most highly valued natural methods. We know that
Dodona regularly offered divination by lot, for example. That is: the
enquirer submitted a question to the oracle on a small slip of lead that had
been folded in such a way as to hide the words. A lot (one of a number of
differently coloured pebbles, lumps of clay, or other small objects) was
drawn randomly from a jar. Some feature of the lot, when interpreted
according to a pre-agreed system (perhaps colour, for example, with white
meaning yes and black meaning no) indicated the god’s answer (Cic. Div.
1.34.76 = Callisthenes FGrH 1224 F22a–b; Johnston 2008: 68–71). It is
possible that such a system operated at Delphi as well—certainly, a story
conveyed by an inscription from Hellenistic Athens makes it clear that
Delphi was open to such operations in principle. Having reached an
impasse as to whether they should lease out a sacred meadow for pasturage,
the Athenians decided to settle the matter by inscribing ‘yes’ and ‘no’ on
each of two identical tin tablets, which were then rolled up and wrapped in
identical clumps of wool. The clumps were shaken up together in a bronze
jar, and then an official pulled them out again, sealing one into a silver urn
and the other into a gold urn. Any Athenian who wished could add his own,
personal seals to the tops of the urns, and then the urns were stored away. A
delegation travelled to Delphi to ask Apollo whether Athens should answer
its question with the word inscribed on the tablet in the silver urn, or that on
the tablet in the gold urn. Returning home, they opened the urn that the god
had stipulated (we never do learn which one it was) and acted accordingly
(IG II2 204).
We know of other occasions on which Delphi may have decided
questions in a similar manner. It is possible that Kleisthenes’ naming of the
ten new Attic tribes in the late sixth century BCE—which was done by
submitting a hundred possible names to the Pythia and asking her to choose
from among them—was handled by lots, for example (Aristotle, Athenian
Constitution 21). One might choose to understand the Pythia as being
guided by Apollo as she made her choices, but she would not have needed
to be in an altered state of consciousness—that is, ‘possessed’ by Apollo—
to carry out such a task. In sum, although the division between technical
and natural means of divination is heuristically useful, and although the
institutional oracles may have accorded the natural methods greater
glamour and authority than the technical, the division was by no means
absolute, at least in practice. There never was, and probably never will be,
an easy way to dichotomize where this topic is concerned.
For that matter, we also know that some independent diviners claimed to
be able to channel Apollo’s voice just as the Pythia did, without any need to
be located at Delphi or another special spot. They called themselves
pythones, which implied a close relationship to the Pythia, although other
people also call them engastrimythoi, or belly-talkers—a term reflecting the
belief that some other force was speaking from within their human frame
without necessarily implying that this force was Apollo himself—or,
indeed, even a god (Pl. Soph. 252c; Ar. Vesp. 1019–20 and the scholia to
both; Plut. De def. or. 414e; Katz and Volk 2000). And we know of several
occasions on which Delphi or Dodona recommended that delegates from an
enquiring city go home and tell their fellow citizens to hire one of the many
independent diviners who dotted the Greek world. The Athenians, for
example, were told by Delphi to hire Epimenides, a Cretan diviner and all-
around holy man, to help solve the problems that the ghosts of some
unavenged murder victims had been causing (Pl. Leg 642d4–643a1; Plu.
Sol. 12.1–4; further sources at Johnston 2008: 119–25). Clearly, even if one
distinguishes heuristically between technical and natural means of
divination, and between the great institutional oracles that were anchored to
famous locales and the locally based independent diviners, these categories
were neither mutually exclusive nor competitive to such an extent that
either rejected the other’s skills and authority.

SOLVING RIDDLES AND KEEPING THINGS

HONEST
To return to the Athenians and their sacred meadow: the elaborate
procedure that they undertook to prepare for the god’s answer—folding the
sheets of tin carefully so as to obscure the writing upon them, wrapping
them in clumps of wool that further obscured any individual markings, and
sealing the urns to prevent surreptitious manipulation—evokes a problem
that one confronted (and still confronts) when practising any form of
divination in any culture: How could one ensure that the results would not
be influenced, purposefully or accidentally, by human intervention? In the
case of ‘natural’ methods that relied on individuals serving as conduits for
divinity, one might try to sequester the individual in question. The Pythia
had little interaction with anyone outside of the Delphic sanctuary once she
took office. Alternatively, if one were a freelance diviner, one might choose
a child to act as a medium, on the assumption (common not only to ancient
Mediterranean cultures but to many other cultures as well) that children
were less likely to lie and—as long as they were kept in sight—were less
likely to fall under someone else’s influence (Johnston 2001). And when it
came to technical means of divination, one would be careful to ensure that
the materials were approximately equal in shape, size, and any other
characteristic that might affect the likelihood that one representative would
select itself out of the mass of others (that is, you would not want one lot to
be less dense than the others in a jar, lest it leap out more easily) and that
those materials could not be tinkered with—thus all those Athenians and
their seals. Not that any of this was foolproof: we know that the Pythia was
occasionally accused of having been paid to give an answer that benefited
one party or another (Hdt. 5.63 and 90–1, 6.66, 75, and 122) though we
have no evidence that she was ever found guilty, and we have descriptions
of methods whereby diviners could cheat in order to make sure the enquirer
got the answer he or she wanted—or the answer that someone else might
wish the enquirer to receive (Lucian Alex.; cf. Euseb. Praep. evang. 209c–
33c, esp. 214a–d). We also know that it was so common for diviners to
stretch the truth that an army commander, such as Xenophon, took care to
know enough about divination to be able to read the entrails of a sacrificed
animal himself (Xen. Cyr. 1.6.2; Xen. An. 5.6.29). And, on top of all of this,
one had to be careful not to skew the results accidentally by introducing
distortions from everyday life as the average person experienced it: if one
got ready to incubate in hopes of receiving helpful dreams, for example,
one had to be careful not to eat the wrong things beforehand (Aristotle, On
Dreams 461a; Struck 2004: 183–7).
But even if you somehow could develop methods ensuring that no mortal
or element of the material world could affect the answer you got, there was
still the problem of the gods themselves. Gods might sometimes send
deceptive dreams, for example. Agamemnon had one that turned out to be
of this type—Zeus was purposefully sending the commander bad military
advice (Il. 2.1–75). What is more, even when the gods responded to an
enquiry truthfully, they did not necessarily do so transparently. To be a good
diviner, one needed a suspicious mind and a talent for looking beyond the
obvious; the surface meaning of a divine message might cleverly obscure
the deeper truth. Croesus, the king of Lydia, asked Delphic Apollo how
long his reign would last; Apollo answered that it would endure until a mule
sat on the throne of the Medes. Croesus took this answer literally and
rejoiced, thinking Apollo meant he would reign forever. But by ‘mule’
Apollo really meant Cyrus, who, like a mule, was of mixed parentage. And
indeed, Cyrus became the king of the Medes and toppled Croesus (Hdt.
1.55.2 and 1.91.5).
This need to penetrate beyond the obvious is reflected not only in real-
life debates about what a divine message ‘meant’ (the most famous
probably being the debate in which the Athenians engaged after the Delphic
Oracle told them to seek protection behind ‘wooden walls’ during the
Persian Wars: Hdt. 7.140–4), but also in the broader Greek portrayal of
heroes—those mortals who most closely challenge the division between
humans and gods—as clever people who often use deception to conquer
opposition. Odysseus hid soldiers inside a wooden horse and later escaped
from danger by hiding under a ram—in each case disguising real identities
behind false appearances, just as Apollo had ‘disguised’ Cyrus behind the
metaphor of a mule. In myths, famous diviners were similar to heroes in
other ways, too. They were usually descended from high-status families,
they fought alongside other noble men in war, they married the daughters of
kings. In other words, myth presented the successful acquisition and
interpretation of information from a god as being just as sure a mark of
divine favour as was any other talent a hero might display (Bremmer 1996;
Johnston 2008: 110–18; see also, in this volume, Ekroth, Chapter 26).
Closer looks at ancient divination encourage us not only to expand our
concept of the heroic, but also to recognize how permeable were the
boundaries between different cultural roles that scholars tend to mark out as
separate.

SPECIAL PLACES AND SPECIAL PEOPLE

But this brings us back to the question of why certain people and certain
places were particularly liable to produce results. According to some myths,
simply having the favour of the gods would work: Cassandra and Branchos
became skilled diviners because they were beloved by Apollo, for example
(Aesch. Ag. 1198–212; Callimachus fr. 229 Pf.). In other cases, one might
acquire the talent by being born into the right family. The Odyssey mentions
the diviner Theoklymenos, who was the son of Thestor, who also sired the
diviner Kalchas; somewhere in their ancestry lurked Melampous, whose
descendants also included Amphiaraos, Polyidos, and other seers (Od.
15.225–54). Such familial affiliations are reflected by the guilds to which
some real diviners belonged during the historical period, which traced their
origins back to eponymous mythic diviners—the Iamids (Iamos) and the
Melampids (Melampous), for instance. Pausanias pauses in his description
of an Iamid named Agias, who gave decisive advice during a great battle, to
trace his lineage back to Tisamenos, another great Iamid seer (Paus. 3.11.6–
10). Members of such guilds were not always believed to have a real
genetic connection to the founder, however; reflected in these professional
lineages is the same guild structure as can be found among those who
practised other ‘intellect’ crafts in ancient Greece, such as medicine and
poetry. In other words, the younger members learned from the older
members, probably after paying a fee—we are back to the passage that
opened this chapter, in which Prometheus makes it clear that many methods
of divination must be taught. This was true not only for mortals, but even
for the greatest of immortal diviners: Hermes describes Apollo as having
learned his prophetic arts from Zeus; Apollo refuses to teach Hermes the
same things (Hom. Hymn Herm. 470–2, 534, 556; on the role of myth in the
exploration of origins see also, in this volume, Fowler, Chapter 14).
But, in any case, how were the purported founders of mortal dynasties of
diviners believed to have acquired their talents? In myths, saliva sometimes
played a role: snakes licked the ears of Melampous, for example, after
which he could understand animals and thus acquire special information.
Or, bees might drop honey upon the lips of a future diviner while he or she
was still an infant—for example, those of Iamos (Apollod. Bibl. 1.9.11–12;
Pind. Ol. 6.44). This is not teaching per se, of course, but it again reflects
the idea that the diviner often receives his skills from an outside agent,
rather than (or in addition to) having acquired them by birth.
The question of how certain places became active sites of divination
again can be answered by looking either at myths or at ancient scientific
ideas—which sometimes converge. The mythic answers took two paths. As
mentioned in ‘Technical and Natural Methods’, sites of oracular divination
sometimes were said to have been founded by famous diviners.
Interestingly, in some of these cases, myths go to the trouble of tracing
those founders back to yet earlier oracular sites: Apollo’s oracle at Klaros
was founded by Mopsos, himself a seer and the son of Manto (whose name
means ‘Prophetess’), who was the daughter of the great Theban seer
Teiresias. How had Manto and her son ended up in Asia Minor? They had
been sent to the Delphic Oracle as spoils after the great war against Thebes,
and there Manto caught the eye of a visiting Asian named Rhakios, who
took her home with him. The story reflects a desire on the part of the
relatively younger oracle (Klaros) to legitimate itself by a link to the older
oracle (Delphi), but it also implies that whatever made Delphi special could
somehow be transmitted across the sea to Klaros as well (Hes. fr. 214 Most;
Epigoni fr. 4 West; Apollod. Bibl. 3.7.4; Paus. 7.3.1–2). Apollo’s oracle at
Didyma was similarly said to have been founded by the son of a refugee
from Delphi (Callim. frr. 229 and Ia. IV fr. 194; Conon, Narr. 33; further
sources and discussion in Fontenrose 1988: 106–8).
Alternatively, myths might claim that the places where great oracles were
located were powerful simply because the gods, or at least something
numinous, was located there. One of the foundational stories for Delphi is
given by Euripides in his Iphigeneia in Tauris. The oracle had originally
been under the control of Gaia (‘Earth’) until Apollo killed the snake that
guarded the shrine and began to prophesy there himself. Gaia had wished to
give the oracle to her daughter Themis, and retaliated by giving birth to a
brood of prophetic dreams that threatened to put Apollo out of business.
Zeus had to step in, silencing the dreams so that Delphi might once again
thrive under Apollo’s direction (Eur. IT 1234–83). According to another,
more peaceable version of this story, Gaia gave the oracle to Themis, who
gave it to the goddess Phoebe, who gave it to her brother Phoebus Apollo
(Aesch. Eum. 1–11).
The stories managed to bring together two ideas that might have
otherwise seemed contradictory, at least to us: (1) the oracle worked
because Apollo, a god who was well known to be prophetic, was in charge
of it (and, more specifically, although unspoken in these stories, because he
periodically took possession of the Pythia, causing her to speak her
prophecies); and (2) the oracle worked because there was something deep
within the earth underneath it that caused prophecy to happen. The latter
concept is reflected in Euripides’ story by Earth giving birth to prophetic
dreams (that is, prophecy emerges from the earth), as well as by other
myths and some ancient scientific explanations (not that it is always easy to
tell the difference). According to one alternative myth, goats discovered a
chasm from which fumes arose—fumes that made them caper about and
otherwise act strangely. Humans who noticed this effect set a woman on a
tripod that straddled the chasm, subsequently building the Delphic Oracle
around it (Diod. Sic. 16.26.1–6). One of the scientific explanations relied on
the idea of terrestrial fumes as well: according to a participant in Plutarch’s
dialogue on the topic, the fumes are one of many ‘potencies’ that the earth
sends forth—indeed, they are among the ‘most divine and holy’ of these
potencies and the Delphic earth has them in abundance. When the Pythia—
a woman who has been seated at just the right place—inhales them, they
enable her soul to receive visions. Other theories assumed that it really was
Apollo who made some sort of contact with the Pythia, but did not
necessarily presume that Apollo literally located himself inside of the
Pythia before she spoke. An interlocutor in one of Plutarch’s dialogues, for
example, suggested that Apollo imparted movement to the Pythia’s soul
from outside of her body, and that this caused her to prophesy. Yet another
interlocutor proposed that Apollo (who, being a god, was too sublime to
interact with humans directly) sent a daimon to enter into her on his behalf
(Plu. De def. or. 404e–f, 432d–437c).
But there was yet one more mythic version of how the Delphic Oracle
came to be where it was: Apollo chose the spot, killed the dragon-like
Python who guarded it, and built his temple near where the Python’s body
had rotted away. Earth lurks distantly in the background of this story, as the
Homeric Hymn to Apollo makes clear, but there is an implication that the
oracle stands where it does simply because the god chose the place—
implying that he would have been able to make it work anywhere else, as
well (Hymn Hom. Ap. 300–74; Sourvinou-Inwood 1987).
Behind all of these explanations—some of which contradict one another,
others of which support one another—lies the very basic fact that, in
Greece, sources of divinatory power, be they individual people or physical
sites—were remarkable enough that their origins demanded thought, even
debate. As much as divination permeated everyday life for the Greeks, it
nonetheless stood apart as something special.

HOW DID IT ALL WORK?

Plutarch’s interlocutors were not the only people to wonder about how
divination worked. But all such intellectual theories responded—positively
or negatively—to the long-held popular belief that what the Pythia and
others like her experienced was a form of mania, or divine madness.
Indeed, the most common Greek word for divination in general, mantike, is
formed on the same root as mania—even the methods that Prometheus
described in the excerpt with which I began this chapter (the so-called
‘technical’ forms of divination) were pulled into this linguistic orbit. The
independent specialist was often called a mantis (see, in this volume,
Flower, Chapter 20), even if what he specialized in was the reading of
animals’ entrails or birds’ motions—signs that are hard to understand as
having anything to do with an altered state of consciousness such as the
man-root implies, strictly speaking.
When it came to actually explaining how a form of divination, such as
reading the entrails or the behaviour of birds, worked, the theory that was
most popular among intellectuals involved cosmic sympatheia—that is, the
idea that everything in the higher (divine) realm of the cosmos was
connected to things in the lower (human) realm. If one knew where to look
for signs of those connections—that is, where the greater movements of the
universe were reflected in the smaller things here on earth—then one could
get all kinds of information that were otherwise unavailable to humans. But
of course, this prompted the further question of how sympatheia worked—
what enabled and sustained the connections?
One answer offered by some Stoic philosophers was that the gods were
behind the whole thing. Perhaps (to take reading entrails as an example) the
gods changed the relevant entrails to look the way that they needed to at the
very moment of slaughter, or perhaps they motivated the enquirer to choose
just the right animal—that is, an animal whose entrails already looked the
way they should. The Neoplatonists went even further with the sympathetic
theory by suggesting that ‘chains’ stretched from the highest realms of the
cosmos to the lowest. These tied together the different parts of the cosmos
and, because of the relationships between creatures or objects on the same
chain, a well-trained diviner could predict greater movements based on the
movements of smaller things here on earth. According to this view, each of
the gods, as well as everything else, was located on one of these chains, but
the gods did not themselves make the sympathetic relationships work (Cic.
Div. 1.118, 2.34–9; Polyaenus, Strat. 4.20; Frontin. Str. 1.11.14–15; Struck
2004: 204–38). Still other theorists took another approach. Demokritos
denied that entrails were truly divinatory and argued that what they really
revealed were the conditions under which the slaughtered animals had
lived. If the entrails indicated that the animal had been healthy, then it had
lived in a healthy environment, and it was likely that people would thrive
there as well (Cic. Div. 1.131 = DK 68 A 138; Hor. Sat. 2.8.6). Many other
technical methods of divination were explained with reference to similar
sympathetic theories. Debates about divination, then, opened onto much
greater debates about the nature of the cosmos and its inhabitants, implicitly
or explicitly (Struck 2004; Johnston 2008).

MAGIC AND DIVINATION

By the Classical period and perhaps earlier, diviners were already linked
with the sort of people whom we tend to call magicians. In Plato’s Republic,
for example, manteis were also credited with the ability to write binding
spells, and in Pindar’s fourth Pythian, Medea, who is famously a magician,
prophesies at length to the Argonauts (Pl. Resp. 364b–365a; Pind. Pyth.
4.11–56). One salient thing that these two types of ritual experts share is a
characteristic that I mentioned at the start of this chapter: both the diviner
and the magician claim to know things that the average person does not,
and to be able to use that knowledge to solve the sorts of problems that
other people confront in daily life. With respect to that term ‘average
person’, it is important to remember that this includes most of the people
who served as priests and priestesses. In Greece, after all, there were very
few ‘professional’ priests or priestesses, who remained in the position for
their whole lives or depended upon it for their livelihood. Rather, most
priesthoods were passed around among members of the elite class (or
members of elite subgroups, such as certain noble families). Almost every
Greek adult knew how to perform basic priestly duties, and very few cults
required their personnel to keep these duties secret. In contrast, diviners and
magicians supported themselves by performing rituals, and kept hidden at
least part of their ritual knowledge, not only because they considered such
techniques to be potentially dangerous in untrained hands, but also because
such techniques constituted trade secrets—why give away profitable
information? We should also include, in the same group as diviners and
magicians, professional initiators such as orpheotelestai, who offered yet
another sort of religious expertise for a price—and, indeed, the person who
called him or herself a diviner or magician also sometimes claimed to be an
‘initiator’ as well (Johnston 1999: 100–23, 2008: 110–25).
Magic and divination, then, were both pursuits in which professional
specialists could make a living, and could do so apart from an official cult
located in a specific place. The ability to operate outside of official cult, of
course, made such experts more available to people at the very moments
when they were needed—in most cases, there was no need to travel to
Delphi or Dodona if a reliable diviner was easily at hand. Moreover, despite
the fact the great institutional oracles had more prestige, even they did not
scorn the independent operators. As mentioned in ‘Technical and Natural
Methods’, above, from an early period Delphi occasionally recommended
that troubled individuals or cities hire agents whom we would probably call
magicians—Epimenides was one of them and, in another case, Delphi
recommended that the Spartans hire psychagogoi (‘invokers of souls’) to
stop problems that an angry ghost was causing at the local Temple of
Athena. The Oracle at Dodona, similarly, had once been asked whether an
enquirer should hire a particular psychagogos named Dorios. Branchos, the
first prophet at Didyma, was reputed to have used what looks like a magical
spell to cleanse the people of Miletos after a plague (on Sparta: Johnston
1999: 108–9; Dodona: Lhôte 2006: no. 144; and Christidis, Dakaris, and
Vokotopoulou 1999; Branchos: Clem. Al. Strom. 5.8.48 674 P). Notably,
however, there is no record of the great oracles encouraging or endorsing
specific practices that can be called ‘magical’. That is, although we
frequently hear about the Delphic Oracle telling cities how to establish cults
to a new god or hero, we never hear about it endorsing improved versions
of spells. Apollo’s oracle at Klaros warned a city that a magician was using
wax figures and magical poisons to send the plague against it, but assured
the city that Artemis would use her own torches to melt the figures and
dissolve the poisons—thus, there was no need for human magic to counter
what the wicked magician was doing (Várhelyi 2001).
What might explain this lack of interest in magic on the part of the
oracles? Remarkably, scholars have paid almost no attention to this
question; here I can only briefly sketch part of the answer. Namely, most of
the demands that magic addresses (in ancient Greece or any other culture)
are pressing in nature (a lover is straying and you want her back; you’ve
placed a bet on the chariot race tomorrow and are not sure your horse will
win) or relatively small in scale (your own child is ill, rather than all of the
children in the city; your own crops are failing, rather than all of the crops).
For problems like these, one needs help quickly and cannot ask one’s
neighbours to help fund a trip to a distant oracle. Convenience, in the guise
of the local practitioner, might trump the prestige that a distant oracle
carried. Notably, on almost every occasion that an oracle did involve itself
with ritual techniques we might categorize as magic, the problem affected
an entire city and had been going on for some time. The one exception, the
enquiry about the psychagogos named Dorios, is found on a lead tablet
from Dodona, a means of oracular divination that, our records suggest, was
more likely than others to be used for personal concerns. Perhaps, if we had
a fuller publication of the Dodonian lead tablets, we might find other
enquiries that involve magic and its practitioners.
Formally, the present volume does not cover the period we call late
antiquity, but given that there happens to remain from this time far more
evidence concerning magical practices than from earlier periods (thanks
largely to the preservation of Greek papyri in Egypt) it is worth taking a
look to see what we might learn. Notably, the practitioners whom we
assume created and used the spells recorded on the papyri focused a lot of
their attention on divination. A large number of the spells offer techniques
for obtaining special information, whether it be about the future or about the
nature of the cosmos and the gods themselves. Frequently, these methods
promised that the magician would have a face-to-face encounter with a god
—something far beyond what someone who travelled to Delphi for a
consultation with Apollo could ever hope to experience (Johnston 2008:
155–61). Interestingly, quite a few spells also teach the reader how to cause
someone else to have a deceptive divinatory dream—that is, to do what
only gods could do according to earlier literary sources such as the Iliad
(Johnston 2010). In these contexts, in other words, humans came closer
than Prometheus could ever have imagined to making themselves the equals
of the gods. Is this to be taken as a sign of the times (Lane Fox 1986)? Or as
a characteristic of the particular people who created these spells or troubled
to record them so carefully? Again, scholarship, up until now, has
responded with virtual silence; future attention to such questions would
surely bring answers that will help us understand both divination and magic
better than we do now.

SUGGESTED READING
The most recent general treatment of divination in ancient Greece, with in-
depth discussion of the issues treated here and others, is Johnston 2008.
Flower 2008 focuses on the figure of the independent diviner and Stoneman
2011 on institutional oracles; Bowden 2005 looks at the Delphic Oracle and
its historical relationship to a powerful city. Johnston and Struck 2005
offers essays on a variety of ancient Greek and Roman divinatory methods
within their cultural, religious, and semiotic contexts; Vernant 1974 is also
still very valuable, especially for comparative work. Manetti 1993 [1987] is
important for understanding what set Greek divinatory methods apart from
others in the ancient Mediterranean, and Struck 2004 for understanding how
the divinatory frame of mind affected the development of other intellectual
practices in antiquity, particularly literary criticism. Beyond these books,
there are a number of monographs and articles treating individual topics;
some are included below. Especially important are Parker 1985, Maurizio
1995, Dillery 2005, and, for late antiquity, Graf 1999.
REFERENCES
Bouché-Leclercq, A. 1879–1882. Histoire de la divination dans l’antiquité. 4 vols. Paris.
Bowden, H. 2005. Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle: Divination and Democracy. Cambridge.
Bremmer, J. 1996. ‘The Status and Symbolic Capital of the Seer’, in The Role of Religion in the
Early Greek Polis, ed. R. Hägg, 97–109. Stockholm.
Burkert, W. 2005. ‘Mantik in Griechenland’, ThesCRA 3: 1–51.
Christidis, A.-P., Dakaris, S., and Vokotopoulou, I. 1999. ‘Magic in the Oracular Tablets from
Dodona’, in The World of Ancient Magic: Papers from the First International Samson Eitrem
Seminar at the Norwegian Institute at Athens: 4–8 May 1997, ed. D. R. Jordan, H. Montgomery,
and E. Thomassen, 67–72. Bergen.
Dillery, J. 2005. ‘Chresmologues and Manteis: Independent Diviners and the Problem of Authority’,
in Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination, ed. S. I. Johnston and P. T. Struck, 167–232. Leiden.
Eidinow, E. 2007. Oracles, Curses, and Risk among the Ancient Greeks. Oxford.
Flower, M. 2008. The Seer in Ancient Greece. Berkeley.
Fontenrose, J. 1978. The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations with a Catalogue of
Responses. Berkeley.
Fontenrose, J. 1988. Didyma: Apollo’s Oracle, Cult and Companions. Berkeley.
Graf, F. 1999. ‘Magic and Divination’, in The World of Ancient Magic: Papers from the First
International Samson Eitrem Seminar at the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 4–8 May 1997, ed. D.
R. Jordan, H. Montgomery, and E. Thomassen, 283–98. Bergen.
Graf, F. 2005. ‘Rolling the Dice for an Answer’, in Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination, ed. S. I.
Johnston and P. T. Struck, 51–98. Leiden.
Johnston, S. I. 1999. Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece.
Berkeley.
Johnston, S. I. 2001. ‘Charming Children: The Use of the Child in Ancient Divination’, Arethusa 34:
97–118.
Johnston, S. I. 2005. ‘Delphi and the Dead’, in Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination, ed. S. I.
Johnston and P. T. Struck, 283–306. Leiden.
Johnston, S. I. 2008. Ancient Greek Divination. London.
Johnston, S. I. 2010. ‘Sending Dreams, Restraining Dreams: Oneiropompeia in Theory and in
Practice’, in Sub Imagine Somni, ed. C. Walde and E. Scioli, 1–18. Pisa.
Johnston, S. I. and Struck, P. T. eds. 2005. Mantikê: Studies in Ancient Divination. Leiden.
Katz, J. and Volk, K. 2000. ‘ “Mere Bellies”? A New Look at Theogony 26–8’, JHS 120: 122–31.
Lane Fox, R. 1986. Pagans and Christians. New York.
Lhôte, Éric. 2006. Les lamelles oraculaires de Dodone. Geneva.
Manetti, G. 1993 [1987]. Theories of the Sign in Classical Antiquity, trans. C. Richardson.
Bloomington, IN.
Maurizio, L. 1995. ‘Anthropology and Spirit Possession: A Reconsideration of the Pythia’s Role at
Delphi’, JHS 115: 69–86.
Parke, H. W. and Wormell, D. E. W. 1956. The Delphic Oracle. 2 vols. Oxford.
Parker, R. 1985. ‘Greek States and Greek Oracles’, in Crux: Essays Presented to G.E.M. de Ste.
Croix on his 75th Birthday, ed. P. A. Cartledge and F. D. Harvey, 298–326. Sidmouth.
Price, S. 1986. ‘The Future of Dreams: From Freud to Artemidorus’, P&P 113: 3–37.
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 1987. ‘Myth as History: The Previous Owners of the Delphic Oracle’, in
Interpretations of Greek Mythology, ed. J. Bremmer, 215–41. London.
Stoneman, R. 2011. The Ancient Oracles: Making the Gods Speak. New Haven, CT.
Struck, P. T. 2003. ‘Viscera and the Divine: Dreams as the Divinatory Bridge between the Corporeal
and the Incorporeal’, in Prayer, Magic and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World, ed. S.
 Noegel, J. Walker, and B. Wheeler 125–36. University Park, PA.
Struck, P. T. 2004. Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of their Texts. Princeton, NJ.
Varhélyi, Z. 2001. ‘Magic, Religion and Syncretism at the Oracle of Claros’, in Between Magic and
Religion, ed. S. Asirvathan, C. Pache, and J. Watrous, 11–29. Lanham, MD.
Vernant, J.-P. ed. 1974. Divination et rationalité. Paris.
Vernant, J.-P. 1991. ‘Speech and Mute Signs’, in Mortals and Immortals, ed. and trans. F. I. Zeitlin,
303–17. Princeton, NJ.
 CHAPTER 33

EPIPHANY

VERITY PLATT

INTRODUCTION

IN Figure 33.1, a votive relief from the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron in

Attica dated to the fourth century BCE, a large family group, led by a
married couple, approaches the goddess, who stands behind an altar,
holding a bow and libation dish, together with her companion deer. The ox
and its handler at the front of the procession indicate that the group is about
to offer a sacrifice, and, indeed, an accompanying inscription tells us that
‘Aristonike, the wife of Antiphates from the deme of Thorai, prayed and
dedicated [this] to Artemis’ (SEG 52.170; Despinis 2002). One of the most
striking features of this relief—and many similar examples from Classical
Attica—is that ritual activity within the sanctuary is commemorated in the
form of an encounter with the deity herself, who acknowledges and
welcomes her worshippers as a visible, anthropomorphic being, her divine
status demonstrated by her superhuman size. In visual terms, we might say
that the family’s visit to Brauron is celebrated as an experience of Artemis’
epiphany.
FIGURE 33.1 Votive relief from the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron, Attica, c.350–330 BCE.
(Inv. 1151, Archaeological Museum, Brauron)

How might we interpret this iconography? The difficulties it raises go to

the heart of many challenging questions about ancient Greek religion, such
as the nature and accessibility of the gods, the significance of ritual, the role
of belief, and the relationship between collective practice and individual
subjectivity. It also illustrates how religious artefacts—whether images or
texts—seldom yield straightforward answers. For example, are we to take
the relief literally? Does the scene suggest that Aristonike and her relatives
actually saw Artemis when they prayed and dedicated their sacrifice to her?
Does the phiale she holds indicate that the goddess has come to join in the
sacrifice performed in her honour? Or does the figure of Artemis instead
correspond to the statue that stood in her sanctuary, suggesting that an
encounter with a cult image was itself a form of epiphany? If so, what
might this imply about the power and significance of religious art? If we
take the relief to be operating on a symbolic level, could it imply that
Artemis was ‘present’ during the ritual in a more abstract sense? If so, her
appearance in the scene might be better understood as an ‘expressive
symbol’ of her special relationship with her worshippers at Brauron,
visualized by the artist according to the iconographic conventions of
anthropomorphism (Tanner 2006: 85–7). But where do these conventions
come from? And how do they gain their authority as authentic
representations of the gods?
The Brauron relief gives no explicit answers, maintaining a careful
ambiguity about the event it commemorates. What it does demonstrate,
however, is that, in Classical Attic religious iconography, ritual
communication with the gods was routinely expressed through the
representation of their visible presence. Artemis’ idealized features and
monumental stature in the Brauron relief echo the ‘beauty and magnitude’
(kallos kai megethos) of deities as they are described when they appear to
mortals within texts such as the Homeric Hymns, drawing upon a long
tradition of epiphanic encounter within Greek literature. Artemis’ visibility
in the context of dedication also literalizes the idea—implicit in myriad
textual and visual sources—that the gods make themselves present to
witness ritual acts performed in their honour. In this sense, Artemis’
epiphany might be understood as an intensification of the contact with the
divine that is sought through religious activity in general, and which is a
characteristic feature of the reciprocity that underlies so many aspects of
Greek religious practice (Parker 1998). Within the logic of the relief,
Artemis’ manifestation before her worshippers demonstrates the efficacy of
Aristonike’s prayer and dedication, the altar positioned between them
emphasizing the power of sacrifice to bring gods and mortals together, at
the same time as it marks their difference in status (Naiden 2012).
Furthermore, the display of the relief itself within the Brauronian sanctuary
commemorates and perpetuates Aristonike’s original offering, guiding the
ritual behaviour and expectations of future visitors: further prayers and
sacrifices, it is implied, will also be rewarded by the beneficent presence of
the goddess (Platt 2011: 31–50; on life-cycle rituals and the Brauronian
sanctuary, see, in this volume, Hitch, Chapter 35).

DEFINING AND CONTEXTUALIZING

EPIPHANY
As a direct, unmediated manifestation of divine presence, epiphany might
be understood as the purest form of contact between mortals and immortals,
whereby the gods reveal themselves ‘face to face’ rather than
communicating through oracles or divinatory signs that must be decoded by
religious personnel. Yet epiphanies are inevitably culturally mediated.
Despite the influence of Greek epiphany on Christian modes of revelation
(Mitchell 2004), we must be wary of applying Christian language, such as
Paul’s notion of a ‘face-to-face’ encounter with God at 1 Corinthians 13.12,
to a phenomenon that is grounded in very different concepts of deity and
forms of religious practice. Most importantly, Greek epiphany emerges
from the manifold complexities of polytheism, whereby the ability to
visualize, identify, and represent divine forms is fundamental to the detailed
taxonomies that comprise the divine pantheon (Versnel 2011: 23–149). In
this sense, epiphanies play a crucial role within Greek ‘theology’ in that
they provide what I have elsewhere defined as ‘cognitive reliability’, both
for the gods’ very existence and the iconographic conventions or
innovations by which they were known to their worshippers (Platt 2011). At
the same time, epiphanies are fluid and extraordinary events that have the
potential to surprise, confuse, and unsettle their recipients, so that attempts
to develop clear taxonomies of epiphany (as we find in the encyclopaedic
works of early twentieth-century scholars such as Friedrich Pfister) tend to
downplay the cognitive dissonance that the phenomenon often generates
(e.g. Pfister 1924; Pax 1962); indeed, one might argue that it is critical to
ancient Greek discourse on epiphany that divine manifestation is itself
resistant to human modes of description and classification.
For a mortal to experience an epiphany may be a sign of special status, a
privilege granted to mythical heroes and those who are particularly pious,
blessed, or desired by the gods. Yet, as Hera comments in the Iliad, ‘The
gods are dangerous when they appear in manifest form (enargeis)’ (Il.
20.131), and Greek myth abounds with examples of humans whose
encounter with a godhead is fatal (such as Semele and Aktaion) or results in
injury or mishap (such as Anchises and Teiresias). Moreover, as
polymorphous beings who shift between multiple forms and identities at
will, the gods have a habit of appearing in disguise, and are seldom easily
identified: even Odysseus remarks to Athena that, ‘It is difficult, goddess,
for a mortal man to know you when he meets you, however wise he may be,
for you take what shape you will’ (Od. 13.312–13; see Buxton 2009 and
Turkeltaub 2003).
Accordingly, epiphanies tend to fall into two main categories, which
Georgia Petridou has defined in terms of ‘Cult’ and ‘Crisis’ in her thorough
study of Greek epiphanic narratives (Petridou 2006: 96–261). On the one
hand, they can be ritually invoked and prepared for, during festivals such as
the Theoxenia, in which the gods were formally invited to banquets in their
honour (Bruit 1989, 2004; Jameson 1994); the Epidemia or Theophania
(celebrations of a god’s birth or first arrival at a cult site); momentous
occasions such as the Epopteia of the god, which formed the climax of
initiation into certain mystery cults (Clinton 2004); or through rites of
incubation practised in healing sanctuaries, in which the god was
encountered in the context of dreams (see also, in this volume, Graf,
Chapter 34). On the other hand, epiphanies can occur unexpectedly in
extreme situations (such as the tumult of battle) and in remote or liminal
spaces (such as mountain tops, woodland glades, and the seashore), often to
dramatic effect. Thus, the Artemis who appears in the Brauron relief,
clothed in a long peplos alongside the accoutrements of sacrifice, is
encountered within the safe and beneficent context of a ritual act performed
within her sanctuary; conversely, when the mythical hero Aktaion
accidentally beholds Artemis bathing naked in a woodland spring, he upsets
the propriety of divine law (or themis), and must suffer her fatal retribution
(e.g. Callim. Hymn 5.107–18). In both cases, the implication is that the
asymmetrical relationship between gods and humans must be carefully
negotiated, with the understanding that epiphany should depend upon
divine agency rather than mortal imposition.
In practice, these categories of epiphany are closely related and often
inform each other: for example, dream epiphanies do not take place only
during incubation, as many cases in Artemidoros’ Oneirokritika
(‘Interpretation of Dreams’) attest, while unanticipated epiphanies often
borrow the features of ritual, such as when deities appear in the form of
their cult statues (Platt 2011: 253–87). Most importantly, epiphanies that
take place outside the context of cult practice are almost always responded
to in ritual terms. We can see this ritual imperative enacted in one of the
most influential poetic explorations of epiphany, the Homeric Hymn to
Aphrodite, which probes the complexities that arise when the goddess of
desire is compelled to fall for a mortal man, and risks compromising her
divine status and harming her beloved in the very manifestation of her
seductive powers (Faulkner 2008). Disguising herself as a young maiden so
as not to frighten Anchises, Aphrodite nevertheless projects such kallos kai
megethos that he hails her as a deity, ‘Artemis or Leto or golden Aphrodite
or Themis of noble birth or bright-eyed Athena . . .’ Hoping to avoid any
impiety by greeting the goddess with multiple names (as in kletic hymns,
which ‘call’ for a divinity’s presence by listing several titles and epithets),
Anchises’ immediate response is to make the epiphany ‘safe’ by honouring
her presence with ritual, promising that, ‘For you . . . I will set up an altar,
and I will perform for you beautiful sacrifices . . . And I wish that you in
turn may have kindly-disposed feelings (thymos) towards me’ (Hom. Hymn.
Aph. 92–106; trans. West 2003). In this sense, the mythical epiphany that is
staged within the context of the hymn echoes the relationship between
divine manifestation and ritual response that characterizes attitudes to
epiphany held by the poem’s audience. (On the Greek concept of impiety
see also, in this volume, Bowden, Chapter 22.)
In both mythological and historical contexts, epiphanies often have an
aetiological function, as events that must be acknowledged, responded to,
and celebrated in appropriately pious acts by their mortal witnesses,
whether through the performance of sacrifices, the foundation of cults and
festivals, or the setting up of temples, images, and inscriptions. Thus, while
the Homeric Hymns often commemorate mythical epiphanies related to the
foundation of cults in honour of their respective deities (such as Demeter at
Eleusis and Apollo at Delphi), encounters with the gods by historical
individuals prompt similar responses. Consider the sanctuary of Pan on the
slopes of the Athenian Acropolis: Herodotos tells us that it was established
together with annual sacrifices and a torch race following the runner
Philippides’ encounter with the god on Mount Parthenion on his way to
seek help from the Spartans at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE (Hdt.
6.105–6; Harrison 2000: 82–92). In this and numerous other examples, the
fleeting and highly subjective experience of epiphany by individuals is
converted through the establishment of cultic honours into a stable and
enduring recognition of the god’s power and potential presence within a
specific location.
The commemoration of epiphanies in the form of physical monuments
and repeated rituals is arguably a necessary response to a phenomenon that
is characteristically elusive: as H. S. Versnel memorably asked in an
influential article of 1987, ‘What did ancient man see when he saw a god?’
(see also Versnel 2011: 37–43, with further bibliography). In many cases,
the suppression of detail in epiphanic texts and images has important
theological implications, whereby the desire for access to the gods is
tempered by a keen awareness of the limits of mortal knowledge. When
Aphrodite unrobes herself before Anchises in the Homeric Hymn, for
example, the text dwells upon the dazzling beauty of her garments and
jewellery but falls silent at the moment of bodily revelation (86–90, 160–5).
Epiphanies in Homeric epic are similarly resistant to interpretation,
characterized by disguise, metamorphosis, and verbal ambiguity. The
encounter between Achilles and Athena at Iliad 1.197–201, in which it is
unclear whether the ‘terrible flashing eyes’ described by the poet apply to
heroic anger or divine radiance, offers an enduringly problematic case
(Stevens 2002; Turkeltaub 2005).
Such economy of expression is typical of epiphanic narrative: we are
given few details about Philippides’ encounter with Pan except for the god’s
declaration of support to the Athenians, for example, and are told merely
that Pan ‘appeared’ (phanenai) and ‘fell around’ or ‘embraced’ him
(peripiptei). Just as with Artemis’ depiction in the Brauron relief, this
passage could be read in literal or metaphorical terms, as a physical
encounter with the overwhelming body of the god himself or an evocation
of the ‘panic’ which could beset hot and weary runners in the Greek
mountains or confused warriors in the thick of battle (Borgeaud 1988: 88–
129; Garland 1992: 51–4). It is important to note that Pan’s manifestation
on Mount Parthenion is predominantly verbal, for, despite the prominence
of terms such as ‘vision’ (opsis) in the language of epiphany, epiphany is a
multi-sensory phenomenon that is also experienced in the form of divine
utterances, sonic effects (e.g. the howling of Hekate’s hounds in
I.Stratonikeia 10, discussed in Belayche 2009), extreme natural phenomena
(e.g. the storm, earthquake, and avalanche that helped local heroes drive
invading Gauls away from Delphi in 279 BCE: Paus. 1.4.4, 10.23.1–2), or
even scent (e.g. Aristid. Or. 43.41). In this sense, the gods’ manifestations
in forms accessible to human sense perception are difficult to distinguish
from demonstrations of their powers (or aretai) in the form of ‘miracles’
(Lührmann 1975; Versnel 1987: 42–3; Graf 2004: 113).
Moreover, when the gods make themselves visible, they do not always
appear anthropomorphically, but can also take the form of animals,
attributes, or symbols related to their cults or domains of authority (Aston
2011). As Michael Flower points out in his discussion of Plutarch’s Life of
Timoleon (this volume, Chapter 20), for example, we are told that divine
support for Timoleon’s campaign against Dionysios II of Syracuse in 344
BCE was indicated not only by a dream vision of Demeter and Persephone,
but also the miraculous appearance over his ship of ‘a torch, like those used
in the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries’ (Plut. Tim. 8). Here,
anthropomorphic epiphany in an oneiric context is supported and confirmed
by the waking vision of an object associated with the goddesses’ cult, in the
form of a metonymic or pars pro toto epiphany, in which an attribute or
symbol of the god is encountered rather than divine body itself (Petridou
2006: 62–76).
This broader conceptualization of epiphany complicates the distinction
previously drawn between ‘direct’ epiphanies and more mediated forms of
communication with the divine, such as oracles and portents. Although
epiphanies may purport to reveal the forms (eidea) or authority (dynamis)
of the gods, their significance is not always self-evident, but requires
careful decoding so that the rupturing effects of divine incursion into mortal
experience can be acknowledged and responded to appropriately (cf.
Burkert 2005, on epiphany and divination). Significantly, Plutarch claims
that Demeter and Persephone first appeared in dreams to Persephone’s
priestesses at Corinth, so that the initial epiphany is channelled through
cultic personnel with privileged access to the deities in question. A similar
device is found in the section on epiphanies of Athena in the well-known
Temple Chronicle from Lindos, in which the goddess’ concern for her
worshippers is demonstrated in repeated visitations to the cult’s priest
(Syll.3 725, section D; see Higbie 2003; Koch Piettre 2005; and Platt 2011:
124–69). Plutarch then tells us that Demeter and Persephone’s role in the
Corinthian expedition is confirmed by seers (manteis), who link the torch
epiphany to the priestesses’ dream visions, and explain Persephone’s
involvement by referring to her abduction from Sicily by Hades. In this
way, the goddesses’ support is demonstrated by a double manifestation, in
both the private realm of dreams and the public context of the ship. This is
confirmed by a doubling of religious personnel, and rationalized through
the application of mythological lore. Likewise, we find that epiphany
narratives are often accompanied by oracles, in which the ‘meaning’ of the
event is rationalized and legitimized by cultic personnel (Platt 2011: 150–2;
Kindt 2012: 49–50).

THE POLITICS OF EPIPHANY

The Brauron relief that introduces this chapter was displayed publicly
within Artemis’ sanctuary, yet employs the visual language of epiphany to
make a statement about the ritual practices and personal hopes of the family
group, or oikos. In this sense, it complements numerous inscriptions from
Greek sanctuaries that commemorate private dedications made kata opsin
(‘according to a vision’) or kat’ onar (‘according to a dream-vision’), many
of which come from sanctuaries that encouraged personal relationships with
their resident deities, such as healing cults (Van Straten 1976; Renberg
2003, 2010). Plutarch’s Life of Timoleon, however, recalls a pair of
epiphanies that have important political and military implications:
experienced individually by official cultic personnel and collectively by the
army, they are afforded an authority that confers sanctity upon, and
therefore legitimizes, the Corinthian invasion of Sicily. This strategic
appropriation of epiphany at the state level is a key feature of the
relationship between religion and politics in ancient Greece. It is often
discussed in cynical terms, most notably Herodotos’ account of Peisistratus’
staged epiphany of ‘Athena’ in the form of a statuesque maiden called Phye
in order to legitimize his return to Athens as tyrant in 556/5 BCE (Hdt 1.60);
numerous ‘false’ epiphanies likewise appear in Polyaenus’ Strategems,
where they form a key weapon in the arena of psychological warfare
(Petridou 2006: 135–44; Platt forthcoming).
However, the efficacy of such ‘simulated’ manifestations was dependent
upon a widespread concept of epiphanic authenticity; Herodotos’
scepticism about Phye notwithstanding, divine appearances are usually
treated as genuine by ancient authors, and are invested with cultic, political,
and military significance across a wide range of historiographical and
epigraphic texts. If we are not simply to dismiss epiphanic testimonies as
either demonstrations of mass delusion or convenient tools of social
manipulation, this poses something of a problem for modern scholars. First,
we must be sensitive to the role of performance in sacred contexts, whereby
humans dressed as gods (such as Phye) could, like statues, be understood in
epiphanic terms, especially when encountered in ritual processions or other
extraordinary conditions that blurred the boundaries between the real and
represented for worshippers (Connor 1987; Sinos 1993; Kavoulaki 1999;
Platt 2011: 13–20). Second, we must take seriously the overwhelming
evidence for the role played by epiphany in political and military decision-
making, especially during the Hellenistic and Imperial periods, when
manifestations of deities offered a powerful means by which Greek states
and sanctuaries could define, protect, and celebrate their Hellenic identity
and autonomy (Pritchett 1979: 11–46; Garbrah 1986; Chaniotis 2005: 143–
65; Platt 2011: 124–69).
That epiphany was treated as a genuine religious phenomenon which had
very real political currency is demonstrated by a fascinating inscription
dated c.300 BCE from the sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidauros (IG IV4 950;
Furley and Bremer 2001: no. 6.4; Kolde 2003). As Fritz Graf discusses (this
volume, Chapter 34), Epidauros provides some of our best epigraphic
evidence for epiphanic testimonies from the late Classical period; indeed,
Strabo tells us that the sanctuary’s fame was due to both the ‘manifest
presence’ (epiphaneia) of Asklepios and ‘the votive tablets on which his
cures have been inscribed’ (8.6.15). Dedicated to Apollo Maleatas and
Asklepios by ‘Isyllos of Epidauros, the son of Sokrates’, the text records a
sacred law setting out the details of an annual procession and sacrifice in
honour of the two gods by elite local citizens, during which the latter are to
reaffirm their commitment to an aristocratic constitution (10–26). The lex
sacra is accompanied by an oracle confirming the benefits of inscribing the
paean (written by Isyllos) which was to be performed during the procession
(32–6). This is followed by the paean itself, which celebrates the conception
and birth of Asklepios and the foundation of his cult at Epidauros (37–61),
together with a final passage in hexameters which, like the iamata (or
‘healing miracles’) set up at Epidauros, reports a salvific epiphany of
Asklepios to a sick young boy, possibly Isyllos’ son (62–84). In this case,
however, Asklepios appears not as a healing deity but ‘shining in golden
armour’ like a god on the Homeric battlefield (68–9), and announces that he
must postpone his medical duties in order to aid the Spartan resistance to
Philip of Macedonia (who invaded the Peloponnese in 338 BCE). Isyllos
tells us that he accordingly hurried ‘to announce the god’s coming to the
Lakedaimonians’, and that, following their subsequent salvation from
Philip, the Spartans founded a theoxenia (a ritual of hospitality) in
Asklepios’ honour (77–82). He has recorded these events, Isyllos
concludes, in honour of Asklepios’ arete—his ‘glorious deeds’ (84).
By juxtaposing such diverse texts (including a sacred law, oracle, paean,
and epiphany narrative), the inscription cuts across many categories of late
Classical religious and political life that are often studied in isolation. It
thus combines a personal testimony of therapeutic epiphany (albeit one with
epic overtones) with political concerns relating both to local civic
government and a broader Panhellenic commitment to oligarchy in the face
of expanding Macedonian kingship. By adopting and adapting epiphanic
discourse to enhance the status of local religion whilst promoting strategic
political alliances both at Epidauros and across the Peloponnese, Isyllos
looks back to Archaic and Classical forms of invoking and celebrating
divine presence, whilst anticipating the increasingly prominent role that
epiphany would play on the political stages of the Hellenistic
Mediterranean. In celebrating the birth of Asklepios at Epidauros (in an
unusual retelling of the myth that suppresses the god’s Thessalian origins in
order to tie the event to local cult), the paean echoes texts such as the
Homeric Hymns which commemorate the birth or first arrival of a deity as a
form of epiphany (Sineux 1999). Indeed, Asklepios’ autochthony is
celebrated as a double narrative of manifestation—first in Apollo’s erotic
epiphany to his mother Aigla, and second in Asklepios’ birth ‘in the sweet-
smelling sanctuary’, with Apollo himself serving alongside the Fates in the
role of midwife.
These aetiological epiphanies serve to enhance the status of both
sanctuary and polis at Epidauros by claiming a divine parentage and local
origin for its patron deity. Like the double epiphany in Plutarch’s Life of
Timoleon, they are also ratified by religious experts, in this case an oracle
which confirms the legitimacy of the hymn’s claims and the appropriate
context for its performance. The mythical epiphanies celebrated in the
paean promote a tradition of divine presence at Epidauros which is
maintained right up to the time of Isyllos himself, as he demonstrates in the
first-person narrative of the final section. Here, the proofs of Asklepios’
healing powers that are found in the more conventional iamata are
combined with a salvific epiphany familiar from military history, whereby
the god’s personal declaration of support for the Spartans echoes Pan’s
epiphany to Philippides before the Battle of Marathon, confirming divine
aid against external aggressors; as with Pan at Athens, so Asklepios’ role as
a saviour god is commemorated by the foundation of a festival in his
honour at Sparta.
The so-called ‘Hymn of Isyllos’ is notable as a record of the initiative
taken by an individual political and religious actor in an attempt to promote
his personal ideologies and alliances. At the same time, it demonstrates the
important role that epiphany played in Greek cultic, civic, and diplomatic
affairs, as a means of claiming divine authority that could supplement or
even circumvent conventional decision-making processes. Through the
communicative channels opened up by incubation in the context of a
healing cult, Isyllos has direct access to Asklepios himself, and a means of
legitimizing the political affiliations of Epidauros during a particularly
critical moment in the history of mainland Greece. However, despite their
potential to justify rupture and change through direct demonstrations of
divine agency, epiphanies nevertheless gain validity through their
incorporation into a network of pre-existing traditions, and ratification by
alternative sources of divine authority. Thus, the personal miracle narrative
of the inscription’s final section is endorsed through its commemoration in
ritual (in Asklepios’ Spartan theoxenia), while its display alongside the
paean and oracle on the stele itself confirms the sanctity of Epidauros as a
site for authentic epiphanies of the god. In this way, the epiphanies
commemorated in the inscription bring the mythical past, historical present,
and ritual future together in celebration of Asklepios’ ongoing presence at
Epidauros, while the text itself stands within the sanctuary as an enduring
material marker (mnema) of his glorious accomplishments (aretai).
The pattern of salvific epiphany, ritual commemoration, and epigraphic
monument employed by Isyllos in response to the Macedonian invasion of
the Peloponnese would become firmly established in the centuries that
followed, as Greek sanctuaries and poleis claimed epiphanic authority for
the establishment of rituals and temples, and even their right to ‘sacred
inviolability’ (asylia) from external aggressors (Rigsby 1996). From the
third century BCE, the publicization of epiphanies became a key tool in
diplomatic relations between Hellenistic states, most famously
demonstrated by the monumental corpus of inscriptions from Magnesia-on-
the-Maeander. This records correspondence with cities and kings across the
Greek world requesting recognition of a festival and games in celebration of
an epiphany of Artemis Leucophryene, the city’s patron goddess, in 221 BCE
(IMagn. 16; Slater and Summa 2006; Platt 2011: 151–60, with further
bibliography). For a small polis overshadowed by mighty royal neighbours,
the right to asylia demonstrated by Artemis’ appearance offered a welcome
strategy for safeguarding Magnesia’s autonomy, which bypassed more
powerful political agents by claiming direct communication with the divine
whilst evoking the authority of past tradition. Likewise, inscriptions
testifying to epiphanic salvation from external threats, including the Roman
Empire, are found across Hellenistic Asia Minor, from the Lindian
Chronicle on Rhodes to Pergamon, Karia, and even Chersonesos, on the
shores of the Black Sea (e.g. OGI 331.51–2; I.Stratonikeia 10; IOSPE I2
344).
Perhaps surprisingly, given the prominence of the term today, it is in the
context of Hellenistic diplomacy that the substantive noun epiphaneia is
first used to refer specifically to divine appearances, as opposed to its more
general meaning of ‘visible surface’ or ‘sudden appearance’. It first appears
in an inscription from Kos commemorating the Delphic festival known as
the Soteria, which celebrated the salvific epiphanies of Apollo and local
heroes at Delphi in 279 BCE, when they drove off invading Gauls from the
venerable Panhellenic sanctuary (Syll.3 398; see Austin 2006: no. 60).
Derived from the verb epiphainein, ‘to show’ or ‘make manifest’,
epiphaneia emphasizes active presence, a ‘coming into appearance’ ‘upon’,
‘near’, or ‘by’ a beholder that, crucially, occurs at the god’s initiative, as
opposed to terms such as ‘vision’ (opsis) and enarges (‘clear’ or ‘visible’)
that focus on the subjective experience of mortal witnesses (Koch Piettre
1996: 396–8; Platt 2011: 149–51). It is surely significant that epiphaneia
came to lexical prominence at a time when Hellenistic kings were
emphasizing their own visible illustriousness and godlike authority by
means of the title Epiphanes, which was adopted by several rulers,
including Ptolemy V (204–180 BCE) and Antiochus IV (175–64 BCE), and
later became a popular epithet for Roman emperors in the Greek East
(Pfister 1924: 308–9; Nock 1972: vol. 1, 152–6; La Rocca 1994; Mittag
2006: 128–39).
Whether applied to deities or kings, the vocabulary of epiphany suggests
a dynamic agency—a means of asserting presence and influencing the
course of events that transcends conventional mortal capabilities whilst
demanding acknowledgement and honours in keeping with traditional
concepts of reciprocity. This verbal shift demonstrates how epiphany could
play a key role in the process of religious change: as a concept that was
central to religious thought throughout antiquity and yet a vital tool for
innovation, it could be evoked or appropriated in myriad contexts by a wide
range of individuals and social groups. Moreover, the subjective character
of epiphanic experience and the abbreviated, often ambiguous nature of
epiphanic language meant that the phenomenon continued to be open to
projection and reinvention; indeed, as the early Christians realized,
epiphanies could also be powerful catalysts for conversion.

CONCLUSION

While Hellenistic inscriptions tell us much about the reception of epiphanic

phenomena, they are frustratingly laconic about the nature of epiphanic
experience itself, echoing literary epiphanies in their economy of
expression. Given epiphany’s crucial role in the conceptual underpinnings
of the Greek religious system, this reticence is perhaps what makes it so
compelling—and frustrating—as an object of study. Because epiphany is
inevitably transformed in the process of its verbal or visual mediation, it is
impossible to recover what ancient worshippers might have ‘actually’
experienced, or indeed to distinguish between ‘real’ and ‘false’ epiphanies,
or strategic mobilization and cynical manipulation of cultural tropes. For
the modern scholar, epiphany can only exist at the level of discourse: the
challenge is thus to identify, contextualize, and elucidate discursive trends
in the cultural treatment of epiphany without losing sight of either the
phenomenon’s validity for Greek worshippers or its propensity to resist
straightforward categorization and interpretation. As we have seen,
epiphanies can be ritually invoked or sudden and unexpected, ‘real’ or
staged, anthropomorphic or symbolic, mythical or historical, individual or
collective, ratifications of the existing order or catalysts for change. They
demonstrate how closely entwined religion and politics could be, but they
do not fit neatly into the polis model of Greek religion, given their
significance as aitia for traditional cult practice and their role both in the
introduction of ‘new gods’ (such as Pan) and the cultivation of more
personal relationships with the divine (as in healing cult). Moreover, to ask
‘What does it mean to see the gods?’ inevitably highlights the limitations of
approaches to Greek religion that prioritize praxis over theological and
cognitive dimensions. In this respect, the scholarship on epiphany is very
much in its infancy, and new voices are sure to be welcomed.

SUGGESTED READING
Pfister 1924 refers to important textual sources, distinguishing between
epic, mythic, cultic, and Christian epiphanies. Koch Piettre 1988 explores
epiphany’s role within the Greek religious imagination, while Platt 2011
covers Greek attitudes to epiphany from the Homeric Hymns to Imperial
prose literature, focusing on the role of visual representation. A
comprehensive study is forthcoming from Georgia Petridou, while Versnel
1987 asks important questions about the theological dilemmas raised by
epiphany. Readers will find also much helpful discussion in Illinois
Classical Studies 2004. Those interested in the relationship between Greco-
Roman and Christian models of epiphany will find much in Pax 1962, Lane
Fox 1986: 102–67, Mitchell 2004, and Miller 2007: 21–39.
While recent scholarship has focused on epiphany’s political and
ideological aspects, many aspects remain understudied. In particular, the
questions epiphany raises about subjective experience of the divine should
make it of interest to those working on religion and individuality, the social
history of emotions, and the thorny issue of ‘belief’ in both religion and
philosophy (on which, see Mackey forthcoming). As cognitive approaches
to religion (such as Boyer 1994; Guthrie 2001; and Tremlin 2006) become
increasingly of interest to those working on Greek religion (e.g. Kindt 2012:
36–54), epiphany offers an interesting test case. Gabriel Herman (2011) has
recently tackled the tricky question of what might have ‘caused’ such
experiences, relating crisis epiphanies to the transhistorical psychological
phenomenon known as the ‘Third Man Factor’ or ‘Sensed Presence’ (see
also Geiger 2009); however, the jury is still out on how findings in
neuroscience might help us better understand such subjective experiences
within their historical contexts.
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 CHAPTER 34

HEALING

FRITZ GRAF

INTRODUCTION

IN their still unsurpassed 1945 book on Asklepios, Emma and Ludwig

Edelstein emphasized what, after them, has slowly become the new
communis opinio, that in ancient thought and society there was no sharp
division between scientific and religious medicine: the dichotomy was
inherited from nineteenth-century rationalists, not from the Greek doctors.
The Edelsteins argued against an earlier consensus that understood the rise
of Asklepios as a sign of Greek decadence (Edelstein and Edelstein 1945,
II: 139); its perhaps most extreme exponent, von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff,
claimed that ‘if I were a physician, I would not want a bust of Asklepios in
my study’ (Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1931/32, II: 229). The main
division in the Greek understanding of healing—and, with it, the
understanding of how humans became sick—was not to be found in the
dichotomy between ‘temple medicine’ (a misleading term, since no
sanctuary had its own medical staff) and scientific medicine, but between an
understanding that saw illness as caused and sent by antagonized or outright
hostile superhuman powers, gods, or demons, who therefore also have the
power to cure, on the one side, and as a more or less natural thing that
happens according to some law of nature on the other side. But in this latter
case, human intelligence and craft might still fall short from finding the
correct cure and the gods could be asked to step in with a more efficient
therapy, whereas, in the former case, healing was the sole result of ritual
actions, prayers, purification, or exorcism. The anonymous doctor who
wrote On the Sacred Disease, after all, did not attack the personnel in the
sanctuaries of Asklepios but the itinerant purifiers and exorcists: it was they
who vied with the doctors for clients.
This dichotomy shapes my approach. In the section ‘Healing in the
Temple’, I will look at a number of cases in which Asklepios is the key
agent, both from the Epidaurian healing inscriptions, the iamata, and from
other sanctuaries of the god. In the section ‘Transgression and Disease’, I
will analyse a few cases where healing is the result of ritual purification and
its emotional equivalent, penitence, based on the surprising corpus of the
Lydian and Phrygian ‘Confession Stelai’. In the section ‘Epidemics and
Purification’, I will look at several cases of epidemics, disease that struck
not individuals but entire communities, in order to see how these cases were
treated in Greek religious thought and practice.

HEALING IN THE TEMPLE: THE

EPIDAURIAN IAMATA AND RELATED
TEXTS

When he described the Asklepios sanctuary of Epidaurus, the traveller

Pausanias dedicated some space to an unusual category of inscriptions:
There were stelai standing within the enclosure, more in former times, but six were left in my
time. On these, the names of men and women are inscribed who were healed by Asklepios,
further the disease from which each suffered, and the way they were healed; they are written in
the Doric dialect. (Paus. 2.27.3)

In the excavations of the Epidaurian sanctuary that started in the late

nineteenth century, a considerable number of fragments of these stelai were
found; they add up to three more or less fragmentary stelai and an
additional fragment. The texts provoked the scorn of von Wilamowitz-
Moellendorff, who saw them as pious fraud, priestly inventions in order to
dupe the faithful crowd with miracle stories. The reality is more complex:
here and in the other Asclepiea that imitated the Epidaurian custom of
erecting such stelai, the texts combine remarkable cases of healing with
altogether implausible ones into a record of the god’s extraordinary healing
powers. Strabo recorded how the Epidaurian sanctuary, remarkable through
the ‘helping presence’ (epiphaneia) of Asklepios, was full of sick people
seeking healing and of the dedications (pinakes . . . anakeimenoi) of the
healed ‘in which the cure is recorded, as in Tricca and Kos’ (two other
famous shrines of the god) (Strabo 8.6.15). This rich presence of individual
dedications must have constituted the core from which the authors of the
healing stelai selected the most impressive cases (as some texts suggest,
such as the very first story that purports to copy a votive epigram) and
blended them with oral stories about the power of the healing god into these
large documents, veritable aretalogies of the hero turned god that give a
better view into the expectations of the patients of Asklepios than on the
exact way the healing was performed. Thus, it seems pointless to try to sort
out the imaginary from the real cures. What counts is the insight into the
almost limitless faith in the power of the god and the, however limited,
glimpse these inscriptions allow into the realities of the Epidaurian and
other ancient incubation shrines.
There were some limitations to these expectations, however; people
thought that even miracles should respect physical impossibilities, as the
following story demonstrates:
Once a man came as a suppliant to the god who was so blind in one eye that, while he still had
the eyelids of that eye, there was nothing within them and they were completely empty. Some
of the people in the sanctuary laughed at his simple-mindedness, to think that he could be made
to see fully without having anything left of the eye except the socket. When he was sleeping, a
dream appeared to him: it appeared to him that he saw the god boiling some drug and then
pulling his eyelids apart and pouring it in. When day came, he departed with the sight of both
eyes. (No. 9 in the counting of Herzog 1931; trans. after LiDonnici 1995)

Even the other patients and their relatives who were spending some time at
the sanctuary could not imagine that the god created a good eye ex nihilo,
but this was what his pharmaceutical intervention did. The story is also
intended to shame those who did not have limitless faith in the god’s
abilities, as were other stories in the collection that functioned as an
aretalogy of the god, a propagandistic account of divine power. As another
story tells, a woman blind in one eye ‘made fun of some healing
inscriptions in the sanctuary because they were unbelievable and
impossible, the lame and the blind being healed only by seeing a dream’
(no. 4): the god healed her under the condition that she would dedicate ‘a
silver pig as a memorial of her ignorance’.
The sanctuaries of Asklepios attracted large crowds of visitors. Patients
came with their families and friends, and if the first night had not brought
the dream they were hoping for, many stayed longer to try it again. This
explains why the healing sanctuary also has an impressive theatre—visitors
needed entertainment—while, from a later sanctuary of Asklepios, the one
in Aegae in Cilicia, we hear even about philosophers meeting and debating.
But not everyone had to wait as long as this; one need not even spend one
night there in order to be healed: 'Nicanor, a lame man. When he was sitting
down, being awake, a boy snatched his crutch from him and run away. But
Nicanor got up, pursued him, and so became well' (no. 16).
Although the text is rather elliptic, the scene must have played itself out
not in the abaton, the most sacred room in the sanctuary where the sick
were lying down to sleep and receive a healing dream, but—as the word
hypar, ‘being awake’, suggests—during the day in the general sanctuary
area. A few other healing events are reported to have happened during the
day outside the abaton, such as the healing of a mute boy who, during the
preliminary sacrifice, spontaneously started to speak in response to a
remark of a slave who helped with the firewood (no. 5). More commonly,
such an unexpected cure happened through the intervention of the sacred
animals of the god, the dogs and snakes that moved freely in the sanctuary.
With the exception of a man with an ulcer on a toe who was healed when a
sacred snake licked it (no. 17), it was especially children whom the sacred
animals of the god took care of during the day—a blind boy who was
healed ‘while awake’ (hypar) when a sanctuary dog licked his eyes (no.
20), a boy with a tumour in his neck who again was cured hypar by a
licking dog (no. 26), or a mute girl whom a sacred snake frightened into
speaking (no. 44).
Ordinarily, however, a patient who had come to the sanctuary during the
day entered the abaton in the evening, after the preliminary sacrifices that
were offered to several divinities, among them to Mnemosyne for
remembering the dream and to Themis for the legitimacy and correctness of
the dreams, according to the most detailed regulations from the Pergamene
Asclepieum (IPerg VIII: 1 161 A 9–11). In the archaeological record of
most Asklepios sanctuaries, the abaton is recognizable as a special stoa-like
building; the healing sanctuary of Amphiaraos in Oropos even had two
sleeping halls, one for each gender. An Epidaurian story, in which, at night,
a curious man climbed a tree to peep into the abaton shows that at least
there it had walls that left some open space or windows higher up (no. 11);
the god punished this transgression by making the man fall from the tree
and impale his eyes on a bush, but healed him after his sincere repentance.
If the first night did not bring a helpful dream, one either went home (nos
25 and 33, both with a happy ending) or stayed for more nights, as was
regularly done much later in Christian incubation sites: the man whose
ulcerous toe a snake licked had previously been carried out of the abaton
after a fruitless night and put into a seat in the sanctuary where the snake
found him (no. 17).
Muteness, blindness, and other ailments of the eyes recur often in these
texts; these are the health problems of which regular doctors despaired. The
same is true for the several cases of lameness or paralysis and of problems
of female fertility; as personal names such as Aesopodoros or Isidoros
(‘Gift of [the local river god] Aesopos, or of Isis’) show, families almost
routinely asked the gods for help with fertility problems and ascribed the
ensuing pregnancy and birth to divine intervention. In the healing sanctuary,
divine intervention happened in a dream, and it took many forms (on divine
intervention, see also, in this volume, Platt, Chapter 33). Sometimes it was a
simple exchange of words in which the god promises healing; in at least one
such case, the patient suffered because she had not asked the right question:
a childless woman asked for a pregnancy but not also for birth, and ended
up with a pregnancy of three years (no. 2). In other cases, the dream is more
graphic, as in another case of a childless woman who dreamt of having
intercourse with a sacred snake (no. 42, see also no. 39), or of a man with a
stone in his penis that he ejaculated when he dreamed of intercourse with a
beautiful boy (no. 14). More often, however, the god intervenes as a doctor.
To a blind man, ‘it appeared that the god came towards him and drew open
his eyes with his fingers, and that he saw the trees in the sanctuary’ (no.
18); to someone suffering from a spear wound below his eye, ‘it appeared
that the god ground up an herb and poured it into his eye, and he became
well’ (no. 40); to a man with leeches in his body, ‘it appeared that the god
cut open his chest with a knife, took out the leeches, gave them into his
hands, and sewed his breast together’.
These two types of intervention by the divine doctor—surgical in a wide
sense, with and without the surgical knife, and pharmaceutical—are rather
common, and they recur in the iamata from other sanctuaries, Lebena on
Crete, Rome, or Pergamum (Guarducci 1978: 143–66; Girone 1998).
Unlike the rather jejune Epidaurian reports, both those from Lebena and
from Rome are much more detailed in their information. In Rome,
to Lucius who suffered from pleurisy and was given up by everybody, the god revealed that he
should go and take ashes from the altar, mix them with wine and apply this to his side. (IG XIV
966, second century CE; trans. after Edelstein and Edelstein 1945, I, 250, no. 438)

In Crete, a man who, for two years, was plagued by a cough tells us:
He gave me rocket (eruca sativa) to eat on an empty stomach, then pepper flavoured Italian
wine to drink, then fine meal (amylon) with hot water, then powder from the sacred ashes and
sacred water, then an egg and pine-resin, then moist pitch, then iris (?) with honey, then a
quince and euphorbia to be cooked together, with the juice to be drunk and the fruit to be eaten,
then a fig with holy ashes from the altar to be eaten. (Inscr. Cret. I xvii, no. 17, first century
BCE; trans. after Edelstein and Edelstein 1945, I, 252, no. 439)

Both reports agree in the high value they ascribe to ashes from the god’s
altar, in Crete together with water presumably from the spring that was
almost omnipresent in sanctuaries of Asklepios—a ritual remedy that has
no equivalent among what the doctors prescribe. The Cretan dreamer,
however, supplements this ritual remedy with a specific diet whose
ingredients were widely used by doctors as well, some of them, such as
wine, eggs, or honey with many medical applications, other specifically in
prescriptions against cough, such as rocket (Pliny, Nat. 20.125), the Italian
wine (ibid. 23), the resin, or the moist pitch that was used against an
inveterate cough dissolved in cooked leek juice (see (Alexander)
Therapeutica 2.18–183). Thus, Asklepios’ dream cures cannot always be
isolated from the cures doctors prescribed to their patients. Some dreamers
must have had some knowledge themselves that fed into their dream
prescriptions: doctors were less common than today, and householders had
their own prescriptions for many ailments—when Pliny rejects the popular
use of amylum, fine meal, for throat problems as useless, he most likely
argues against such household prescriptions. The orator Aelius Aristides of
Smyrna, perhaps the most famous patient of Asklepios in Pergamum,
recalls several helpful dream prescriptions that sometimes surprised his own
doctors; he used to review them in the morning with the priests of
Asklepios. The Cretan dreamer might have done the same, and the local
priests were certainly able to discretely influence the final form the
prescriptions took.
All this shows that the god whose career had started as a healing hero
killed by Zeus when he attempted to resurrect the dead, was the supreme
professional, much better even than his sons, who dramatically botched up a
case (no. 23). But cures by surgery or prescriptions far from dominate the
Epidaurian iamata; the range of narration was not even entirely confined to
healing. The simple belief of a slave boy that the god could make the
broken cup of his master whole again had this very result as soon as he
entered the sanctuary with the sherds of the cup (no. 10); a dream in the
abaton led a father to the place where his son got stuck under a rock during
a swim (no. 24) or helped a widow find the treasure her husband had buried
before his death (no. 46). These stories express the confidence that the god
—called, in later centuries, Soter, ‘Saviour’, to the dismay of Christian
theologians—could help not just in a medical crisis but with other personal
problems as well; in a diachronic perspective, they also reflect the character
of Asklepios as son of Apollo, who was an oracular god as much as he was
an healer and purifier (Graf 2009). It is also worthwhile recalling that
Apollo was as much the lord of the Epidaurian shrine as was his son:
official inscriptions regularly name both, with Apollo always in the first
place (e.g. IG IV2, 1 57 or 121). The shrine of Apollo Maleatas on the side
of the Kynortion hill that overlooks the sanctuary might go back to the
Bronze Age and is much older than the sanctuary of Asklepios, whose
foundation does not antedate the (late) sixth century BCE, but which started
an astonishing series of incubation shrines of Asklepios in the entire
Mediterranean world.

TRANSGRESSION AND DISEASE: THE

PHRYGIAN ‘CONFESSION STELAI’
A very different world opens up in Anatolia, in the mountainous borderland
between Lydia and Phrygia. Again, it is inscribed stelai that document it,
the so-called ‘Confession Stelai’ that attracted the attention of epigraphers
and historians of religion early in the twentieth century, such as Raffaele
Pettazzoni, who was interested in the prehistory of a unique Catholic ritual,
in the wake of other attempts to historicize and re-evaluate the Christian
revelation (Pettazzoni 1936). By now, we know that more than 130 of these
texts are dated (some explicitly so) to the first three centuries CE, with the
largest number in the second century CE (Petzl 1994; Chaniotis 1995;
Belayche 2006). They come from several local sanctuaries, often combine a
text with an image, and are far from uniform in their way of information,
ranging from very short and allusive texts, where neither crime nor
punishment are clearly spelled out, to long and detailed texts. They fall into
two groups, one very large, the other small.
The large main group includes personal reactions to a voluntary or
involuntary transgression, such as perjury, not fulfilling a vow, actions
against ritual purity, theft from a sanctuary, the felling of trees in a grove,
the eating of meat before the sacrifice was performed, or the refusal to
become a priest or an initiate, that is a crime against a personal divinity. In
most cases, this led to punishment such as misfortune, illness, or sudden
death. Or rather, in the victim’s own experience or, in the case of death, the
experience of the surviving close relatives, a sudden crisis such as illness,
loss of fortune, or unexpected death led to the fear or the memory of such a
transgression; often, a dream or an oracle gave the information that the
victim herself did not have, in other cases, the guilty conscience must have
been enough. In order to pacify the divinity, the victim or his/her survivors
paid a fine or performed a sacrifice and documented their case (and, with it,
the power of the divinity) by inscribing and dedicating the stele in the
sanctuary. That is, we deal with an explanation of illness and other
misfortunes that is based on the punishing intervention of a divinity;
healing, where healing is sought, is the result of a redress that realigns
humans and the divine.
In a subgroup of these main texts, the perpetrator, once she was
conscious of the crime, asked the divinity how to atone for the
transgression; the atonement was usually a monetary fine or an animal
sacrifice, together with the obligation to inscribe the stele. In a much
smaller second group, the victim of a crime that was difficult or impossible
to prosecute on a purely human level, such as the theft by persons unknown,
the spreading of rumours, or the embezzlement of money or goods that the
embezzler denied under oath, promised to inscribe a stele to testify to the
god’s power once the perpetrator was punished and, in case a material value
was involved, ceded the stolen or embezzled property to the divinity as an
incentive for the god to recover them; this promise was done in a public
ritual by ‘raising a sceptre’ in the sanctuary and was understood to be a
form of public curse (Gordon 2004).
This small selection corresponds to the widespread group of ritual texts
that were often lumped together with the so-called curse tablets but were
convincingly labelled as prayers for justice—texts inscribed on lead, like
the curse tablets, that addressed a prayer for help to a divinity with
connections to the underworld such as Hermes or Demeter; the praying
person, again, was the victim of a crime such as slander or theft by persons
unknown, and, again, the stolen goods were ceded entirely or in part to the
temple as incentive and reward. In the perspective of the perpetrator, a
sudden death, an illness, or a misfortune was due again to divine anger, only
this time not provoked by a crime directed at the gods themselves but
prosecuted by the gods to help an otherwise a powerless human victim. In
the prayers for justice on lead, the perpetrators remain invisible (Versnel
1991), whereas some confession stelai were set up by repentant perpetrators
of crimes against their fellow humans (e.g. Petzl 1994: nos 68 and 69).
In a typical case, the confessing man, one Diogenes, told how he prayed
to his local Zeus for the health of a sick cow, perhaps the only one he
owned; when the cow got better, he forgot or refused to do for the god what
he had promised. The god punished his daughter ‘in her eyes’, but she was
later healed when her father appeased the god and set up the confession text
(Petzl 1994: no. 45). This is not the only case where a family member
suffers the punishment; family solidarity is a given in this society. In
another case, perjury of the father is punished, first, by the death of his cow,
then of his daughter; in a third, the theft of temple property caused the death
of the son and the granddaughter of the woman who committed the crime
(Petzl 1994: nos 34 and 37).
The diseases that were thought to have been caused by the punishing
deity were few in number. But they were serious ailments that usually
defied professional treatment, and in rural Anatolia doctors must have been
rare if not non-existent, while treatment was based on traditional cures only.
In the texts, blindness and other afflictions of the eye are most common,
together with breast ailments; there is also a somewhat vaguely described
disease of the lower body (most probably intestinal problems comparable to
those that constantly plague Aelius Aristides), death-like paralysis,
madness, and some problems connected with the legs (perhaps gout, that
impaired easy movement). The disease is not always spelled out in the text
but indicated only in the image of a body part that goes with the text.
Among these images, eyes or breasts are most common, others—legs or
lower body and thigh—rather rare. The images look exactly like the ex-
votos from healing shrines, of which there are many extant examples from
the ancient world (Forsén 1996). This is no coincidence: by depicting the
afflicted body part, the image always signals the healing power of the
divinity, whatever the reason for the illness was thought to be. The
aetiology, however, is crucially different: Asklepios and other healing
heroes were never viewed as having caused the disease that they healed,
whereas the gods of the confession stelai sent disease as a punishment and,
like Apollo in the first book of the Iliad, healed, so to speak, almost by
omission, when they decided to end the punishment because they had
received atonement.
The idea that disease is a punishment for a transgression is familiar to us
from the Old Testament, and it was widespread in ancient Near Eastern
societies (Johnston 2004: 452–64, 496–507). In Greece, as Robert Parker
showed, ‘the conceptual framework for a religion of confession’ is present,
but it is rarely actualized (Parker 1983: 254; on the intervention of the angry
dead see Johnston 1998, passim). It is present in mythology, as the
beginning of the Iliad shows, where Agamemnon’s lack of respect for the
priest Chryses is punished by the plague that first kills dogs and donkeys,
then the men, not unlike the perjury in one of the Anatolian confessions that
first killed the donkey and the ox, then the granddaughter of the perjurer
(Petzl 1994: no. 34). Occasionally, historians and orators used the same
conception, but they did so for rhetorical effect, because it resonated with
some readers or jury members, not because it expressed a normative
religious worldview (on religion and rhetoric more generally, see also, in
this volume, Willey, Chapter 6). Herodotos reports how the Athenians
attributed the suicidal madness of the Spartan king Cleomenes to his
violation of the Eleusinian sanctuary, the Argives to that of one of their
sacred groves, others to his bribing of the Pythia, whereas the Spartans
themselves gave a natural cause; the historians himself thinks that it was a
revenge for his intrigues against his colleague Damaratos (Hdt. 6.83–4).
Herodotos also tells that the Lydian king Alyattes fell ill after having
accidentally destroyed a Milesian temple of Athena and was healed only
after rebuilding it, on the advice of Delphi (1.19–22). In his speech against
Kinesias, the orator Lysias ascribes the protracted illness of his opponent to
divine vengeance for his unholy lifestyle that expressed itself in his
membership of the impious dining-club the Kakodaimoniastai (‘Those who
live under an evil divinity’, a mock-satanical association), whose members
all came to a bad end because ‘they scoffed at the gods and your traditions’
(Lys. fr. 5 Gernet).
On the comic stage, Aristophanes could introduce the heroes as claiming
that they punish the criminals (‘robbers and petty thieves’) with a plethora
of illnesses, ‘spleen, coughs, dropsy, catarrh, scab, gout, madness, lichens,
swellings, ague, fever’; the list blends the trivial and the serious and plays
with rather than represents the feelings of a late fifth-century BCE Athenian
audience (Ar. F 58 Austin). Although sometimes prone to ascribe an illness
of one’s neighbour to his transgressive life, no ordinary Greek was willing
to confess publicly that his own illness was due to bad behaviour. The
confession stelai, with their deadly seriousness, thus appear as the
expression of a very different worldview, much closer to the plague prayer
of the Hittite king Mursilis—and the background of Iliad 1—than to the
world mirrored in the iamata from Epidaurus and elsewhere.

EPIDEMICS AND PURIFICATION

Illness is not just an individual crisis; epidemics threaten entire cities and
need to be addressed somehow (Little 2007). In a demonstration of how
much epidemics occupied the Greek imagination, two of the major works of
Greek literature open with the description of such a crisis, its inception,
impact, and final resolution: Homer’s Iliad and Sophokles’ Oedipus
Tyrannus. Sophokles’ play confronts us immediately with the effect of the
plague that ravages Thebes, and the reaction of the city, its rites of
supplication, and the dispatch of an ambassador to Delphi, from where
information comes that one has to find and punish the murderer of the
former king—information that is to drive the entire tragedy until Oedipus
punishes and removes himself—but it abstains from any ritual resolution. In
a very different and much more ritual-focused mood, the beginning of the
Iliad leads us, step by step, from Agamemnon’s arrogant refusal and
Chryses’ cursing prayer through the effects of the plague unleashed by
Apollo and the diagnosis of the seer Kalchas, to the final rituals. They
follow a double trajectory. First, Agamemnon has the entire army purified
(apolymainesthai) and offers ‘perfect hecatombs of bulls and sheep’ to
Apollo (1.312–17). Then, Odysseus sails with a delegation to Chryses, to
return his daughter to her father and to sacrifice yet another hecatomb to
Apollo. The sacrifice allows Chryses to revoke his curse in a prayer that
mirrors his original curse; the Greek envoys fill the rest of the day ‘by
singing the beautiful paean and dancing (melpontes) for the god’ (1.447–
74).
In both cases, a human transgression lies at the root of the epidemic that
punishes not the transgressor but his entire community. But whereas the
Iliad clearly delineates the mechanism that moves from human to divine
action as the true source of the catastrophe, with the result that healing is
effected by a combination of restitution to reverse the human violation, and
purificatory rituals to calm the angry god, the Oedipus Tyrannus is much
hazier on the divine mechanism, to the point that Oedipus can understand
himself as a victim of Apollo (1329f.) and the chorus, juxtaposing their
king’s greatness and mistake, vaguely make ‘time that sees all’ the judge of
Oedipus (1213f.); one can understand why Jean Cocteau translated all this
into ‘une machine infernale’.
When, a few years after the performance of the Sophoklean Oedipus
Tyrannus, a very deadly epidemic hit Athens, such explanations and
attempts at healing are almost absent from our record (Mikalson 1984).
Thucydides, who survived the catastrophe although he fell ill, refused to
talk about the gods, as he refused to present any other aetiology: ‘As to its
probable origin or the causes which might or could have produced such a
disturbance of nature, every man, whether a physician or not, will give his
own opinion.’ His aim is to record ‘its actual course and the symptoms’ so
that future generations would be able to recognize it, if it should appear
again. He curtly acknowledges that people took refuge in making
‘supplications in temples, enquiries of oracles, and the like’, but they
remained as useless as the human endeavours to stop the pandemic’ (Thuc.
2.47–53; translation after Jowett). In his view of things, divine intervention,
either as a cause or as a cure, is unthinkable.
Several centuries later (and almost a millennium after the Iliad), a series
of oracles demonstrate how Greek cities handled similar catastrophes,
whom or what they were blaming, and what rituals they were performing to
end the disease. From several cities in the Greek East—Pergamum,
Hierapolis, Caesarea Trocetta, Kallipolis, and an unknown Lydian city in
the Hermos valley—we have oracles of the Clarian Apollo that he gave in
reaction to a request how to deal with an epidemic and that the grateful city,
after the resolution of the crises, inscribed on a marble slab and exhibited
(Merkelbach and Stauber 1996: nos 2, 4, 8, 9). All these inscriptions are
dated to the second century CE, to judge from the letter forms; however,
these are uncertain guides for a more precise date. As a consequence, it is
not easy to connect them firmly with the major pandemic of the age, the
plague that the troops of Lucius Verus brought from Mesopotamia to the
West in 165/6 CE, with the possible exception of the oracle for Hierapolis
(no. 4) that states that ‘many cities and nations complain about the anger of
the gods’ (Marcone 2002).
The text are comparable insofar as, in all five cases, Apollo in Klaros
prescribes a ritual reaction to the disease, and, in four of the five cases, one
of the ritual measures is the erection of a divine image. The ritual details,
however, vary as much as the reason the god reveals for the disaster, and
they all show that the oracle respected local cults and characteristics. The
oracle for Pergamon (no. 2) refrains from giving any reason and centres on
the prescription of rites for the four main divinities of the city, Zeus,
Athena, Dionysos, and Asklepios: they should be worshiped by four
ephebic choruses, each for one of the gods, and by four sets of sacrifices
with the ensuing banquets, each with a specific animal, that, each time,
should last for seven days and should be performed by the ephebes and their
fathers. The god, thus, is not interested in purification but in healing
through creating a feeling of solidarity among the male elite of the city and
the four paramount city gods. Disease (‘a terrible illness’ that wears out the
people: Thuc. 2.11) is understood as a rupture of harmony and solidarity
between men and gods that the healing rituals have to repair.
Three of the four remaining texts are close both in their structure and in
the way they envision both ritual healing and ritual prophylactics. In the
oracles for Hierapolis (no. 4), Caesarea Trocetta (no. 8), and Kallipolis (no.
9), the reasons for the plague are uncanny forces from the depth of the earth
—Earth (Gaia) and the keres, the unruly dead, in Hierapolis; subterranean
beings whose name is lost in a lacuna in Kallipolis; a graphically described
plague demon in Caesarea. In Hierapolis and Kallipolis, a set of sacrifices
to different divine recipients is the ritual answer, some of them of black
animals that are to be slaughtered and entirely burned in pits in the ground.
The reason for the disease is the unprovoked intervention of hostile
demonic powers, and it is not the communality of the meal that will pacify
them but the wholesale destruction of animal life for their sake. For
Caesarea, the god prescribes an entirely different cure:

Endeavor to prepare a pure drink from seven springs

that you have to treat with sulphur and then to draw in
all haste;
quickly sprinkle the houses with the nymphs that are so
desirable,
so that the not yet diseased men that are left over in the
fields
will be able to perform enough beautiful sacrifices from
the
regrowing harvests. (trans. Fritz Graf)

Although the disease—and presumably a concomitant disease of the fields

—has been caused by malevolent superhuman powers, as in the two other
cities, the reaction is different: the careful ritual ‘washing’ of the buildings
is enough, no additional destruction of animals is required (No. 8 B 7–11).
The disease is seen as a defilement that can be washed off. But it does not
suffice: the aim of the purification is to allow the country to produce
enough so that, in the future, sacrifices can be offered to the gods; we have
to assume that, without them, the problems for the city would not end.
In all three cases, however, the god orders an additional measure—to
erect the statue of an archer Apollo either in front of the city gates
(Hierapolis, Kallipolis) or in the fields (Caesarea). It is prophylactic: the
god whose arrows spread the deadly disease in the Iliad is also able to shoot
the plague demon as soon as he comes close to the city—as the text from
Hierapolis has it:
 At every gate put in a precinct of Clarian Phoebus
the sacred image, excelling with arrows that destroy
disease,
so that he shoots from afar the waterless illness [i.e.
fever]. (No. 4.18–20)

One has to assume that these statues were, from now on, worshipped with
regular sacrifices: the oracular Apollo of Klaros used the occasion to spread
his own cult.
The oracle for the unknown Lydian city is different again. It does not
accuse superhuman agency as the reason for the disease, but the activity of
a (human) sorcerer, and it prescribes bringing a statue of Artemis with two
torches from Ephesos, erecting it in a sanctuary, and instituting nocturnal
festivals in honour of Ephesian Artemis, with the singing and dancing of
wreathed choruses of girls and boys. The statue, or rather the goddess
somehow embodied in it, will destroy the hostile magic:

she will
keep away
the distress and will dissolve the life-killing sorcery of
the plague,
with her fire-bearing torches in nightly flame melting
the figures of wax,
the evil signs of the art of a magos. (No. 11.6–9)

This is a very different cure, following from a very different aetiology. We

have to assume that the god reacted to local rumours that the sudden
epidemic was caused by sorcery, but that he did not want to identify the
sorcerer (as the locals might have expected from him) and thus give rise to
a witch hunt; instead, he ordered the locals to introduce a new festival of
Artemis of Ephesos with a nocturnal celebration, and threatened them at the
end with a new outbreak if they did not do so. The rumours fit a widespread
pattern, in ancient and other cultures, that ascribed unexplained disease and
death to sorcery. Many grave epigrams of young people who died from
slow and intractable diseases express the anger at an unknown male or
female sorcerer to whom the disease was ascribed (Graf 2007), and the
same suspicion haunted the young philosopher Apuleius when his friend
and stepson died from a disease (Apologia 2.1). Neither was the suspicion
of sorcery far away when the young prince Germanicus died of a fever (Tac.
Ann. 2.69), or when the famous orator Libanios suffered from headaches
and other career-threatening problems (Or. 1.24). In both cases,
investigation by friends found magical paraphernalia hidden in the walls
and floors of the respective dwellings: curse tablets and remains of human
sacrifices in Germanicus’ case, a dried-out and mutilated chameleon in
Libanios’, and both times the suspected agents were envious colleagues and
rivals.
Unlike the epidemics in the Iliad and the Oedipus Tyrannus, the plagues
addressed in these oracles are not seen as having human transgression as
their reason; the anger of the gods, the attacks of malevolent superhuman
beings, and even the attack by a human sorcerer were not provoked but hit
an entirely innocent community. This corresponds to the absence of any
confession ritual in individual diseases in Greece, despite the existence of
the relative conceptual framework. It also corresponds to the ambivalence
in the Sophoklean Oedipus, who prefers to accuse Apollo even when
punishing himself, and to the observation that, even in the case of an
unexpected early death, accusations of witchcraft—that is, intentional
human malice—were extremely rare in the Greco-Roman world when
compared to other cultures. It was preferable to ascribe misfortune and
death to the caprice of an unpredictable fortune and of hostile powers, and
to deal with the consequences accordingly.

CONCLUSION

Three different complexes of epigraphical texts, from different epochs and

places, open windows on how differently religious thought and action could
react to illness. Incubation in a sanctuary of Asklepios was not conditioned
on a religious aetiology of illness, it supplemented the cures by doctors and
household medications that did not lead to an improvement or healing; the
community of the suffering, with the double reassurance of the stability of
ritual actions surrounding the night in the abaton and the many and often
miraculous successes attested by the pinakes and collections of iamata in
the sanctuary, must have contributed as much psychological and even
psychosomatic help as the dreams that often ended up prescribing
medications, diets, or even changes of life style. In a sense, these visits were
the closest ancient society came to contemporary holistic medicine. The
Phrygio-Lydian ‘Confession Stelai’, on the other hand, attest to a
cosmology in which powerful gods oversaw human behaviour and were
ready to punish transgression—either because they were angered directly, or
because a victim of another’s misdeed asked them—with misfortune, death,
or illness, but were as ready to make the disease cease once atonement had
been made. Although this cosmology fits ancient Near Eastern paradigms,
Greek society knew it as well, as the Iliad showed, but was not willing to
act it out publicly as a way to cure individual cases of illness. Nor was it
applied to epidemics, despite the mythical antecedents. The Clarian oracles
demonstrate how one could see the action of evil or angry powers at the
root of an epidemic, from gods to angry dead, but they also show how the
reaction took locally defined forms that varied greatly, and, uniquely, how
prophylactic measures again were based on ritual action, this time centred
on a statue of Apollo Apotropaios.

SUGGESTED READING
Besides the books by E. J. and L. Edelstein (1945) and by H. von
Ehrenheim (2011), see, on the expansion of the cult of Asklepios in
Classical Greece, Wickkiser 2008. On the impact of disease and epidemics:
Lloyd 2003. A Near Eastern perspective can be found in Avalos 1995. For a
detailed idea of what a minor healing shrine looked like and how it
functioned, see Vikela 1994. The essays in Hinnels and Porter 1999 offer an
interesting, although selective, transcultural perspective; those in Marino,
Molè, and Prinzone 2006 deal with late antiquity (given the cultural unity of
the late Imperial period, they are often helpful for the Greek East, despite
their main focus on the Roman West).

REFERENCES
Avalos, H. 1995. Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East: The Role of the Temple in
Greece, Mesopotamia, and Israel. Atlanta, GA.
Belayche, N. 2006 ‘Les stèles dites de confession. Une réligiosité originale dans l’Anatolie
impériale?’, in The Impact of Imperial Rome on Religions, Ritual, and Religious Life in the Roman
Empire, ed. L. de Blois, P. Funke, and J. Hahn, 66–81. Leiden.
Chaniotis, A. 1995. ‘Illness and Cures in the Greek Propitiatory Inscriptions and Dedications of
Lydia and Phrygia’, in Ancient Medicine in Its Socio-Cultural Context, ed. Ph. J. van der Eijk, H.
F. J. Horstmanshoff, and P. H. Schrijvers, 323–44. Amsterdam.
Edelstein, E. J. and Edelstein, L. 1945. Asclepius: A Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies.
2 vols. Baltimore, MD.
Ehrenheim, H. von 2011. Greek Incubation Rituals in Classical and Hellenistic Times. Stockholm.
Forsén, B. 1996. Griechische Gliederweihungen. Eine Untersuchung zu ihrer Typologie und
religions- und sozialgeschichtlichen Bedeutung. Helsinki.
Girone, M. 1998. Iamata. Guarigioni miracolose di Asclepio in testi epigrafici. Bari.
Gordon, R. 2004. ‘Raising a Sceptre: Confession-Narratives from Lydia and Phrygia’, JRA 17: 177–
96.
Graf, F. 2007. ‘Untimely Death, Witchcraft, and Divine Vengeance: A Reasoned Epigraphical
Catalog’, ZPE 162: 139–50.
Graf, F. 2009. Apollo. London.
Guarducci, M. 1978. Epigrafia Greca IV. Epigrafi sacre pagane e cristiane. Rome.
Herzog, R. 1931. Die Wunderheilungen von Epidauros. Leipzig.
Hinnels, J. R. and Porter, R. eds. 1999. Religion, Health, and Suffering. London.
Johnston, S. I. ed. 2004. Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide. Cambridge, MA.
LiDonnici, L. R. 1995. The Epidaurian Miracle Inscriptions: Text, Translation and Commentary.
Atlanta, GA.
Little, L. K. ed. 2007. Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750. Cambridge.
Lloyd, G. 2003. In the Grip of Disease: Studies in Greek Imagination. Cambridge.
Marcone, A. 2002. ‘La peste antonina. Testimonianze e interpretazioni’, RSI 114: 803–19.
Marino, R., Molè, C., and Pinzone, A. eds. 2006. Poveri ammalati e ammalati poveri. Dinamiche
socio-economiche, trasformazioni culturad e misure assistenziali nel’Occidente Romano in età
tardoantica. Atti del Convegno di Studi, Palermo 13–15 ottobre 2005. Palermo.
Merkelbach, R. and Stauber, J. 1996. ‘Die Orakel des Apollon von Klaros’, EA 27: 1–54.
Mikalson, J. D. 1984. Religion and the Plague in Athens, 431–423 B.C. Durham, NC.
Parker, R. 1983. Miasma: Pollution and Purity in Early Greek Religion. Oxford.
Petzl, G. 1994. Die Beichtinschriften Westkleinasiens. Bonn.
Petzl, G. 1997. ‘Neue Inschriften aus Lydien II. Addenda und Corrigenda zu “Die Beichtinschriften
Westkleinasiens” ’, EA 28: 69–79.
Pettazzoni, R. 1936. La confessione dei peccati. A cura di Raffaele Pettazzoni. Bologna.
Versnel, H. 1991. ‘Beyond Cursing: The Appeal to Justice in Judicial Prayers’, in Magika Hiera:
Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, ed. C. A. Faraone and D. Obbink, 60–106. Oxford.
Vikela, E. 1994. Die Weihreliefs aus dem Athener Pankrates-Heiligtum am Ilissos.
Religionsgeschichtliche Bedeutung und Typologie. Berlin.
Von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. 1931/32. Der Glaube der Hellenen. 2 vols. Leipzig.
Wickkiser, B. 2008. Asklepios, Medicine, and the Politics of Healing in Fifth-Century Greece:
Between Craft and Cult. Baltimore, MD.
PART VIII

WHEN?
 CHAPTER 35

FROM BIRTH TO DEATH: LIFE-

CHANGE RITUALS

SARAH HITCH

INTRODUCTION

ALL significant aspects of ancient Greek society were marked by rituals, a

term used to describe repetitive actions, thought by the actors to have
meaning beyond practical function. In ancient Greece, most rituals attempt
to communicate between mortals and divinities. Failure to perform the
rituals or to perform them correctly according to local customs was thought
to endanger the group as a whole; conversely, groups found rituals to be
powerful expressions of harmony and prosperity through the divine
beneficence they were thought to symbolize and guarantee. In most
contexts, the rituals were not thought to permanently alter the status of the
participants, but rather to reaffirm their individual or collective identity
through participation (e.g. Burkert 1985: 55; Parker 2011: 218, citing
Radcliffe-Brown 1952: 157).
It is possible to categorize a different sort of ritual as relating to ‘life
change’, because the ritual marks or reflects a change in the status of the
participant. Since the development of the anthropological study of religion
in the late nineteenth century, the most frequently discussed life-change
rituals are those marking a transition from childhood to sexual maturity and,
consequently, availability for the gender roles of male citizen and his wife
that formed the fabric of ancient Greek societies (e.g. Sourvinou-Inwood
1988: 78). As these rituals prepared the individual to assume his or her role
within their community, they varied quite dramatically from city to city in
extent and details. As with many other aspects of Greek religion, we must
piece together information from different sources and be wary of the
convenience of categorizations. Greeks did not group life-change rituals
together, as far as we can tell, since they had no word corresponding to
‘ritual’ or even ‘religion’, much less the concepts drawn from anthropology
that predominate in interpretations today, particularly the concept term
‘initiation’ for rituals marking lifecycle changes (Graf 2003: 9).
Adolescence, in most Greek cities, was the period between the onset of
puberty and the age of marriage, usually 15 for girls and 20 for boys. The
vulnerability of the young person during this time is emphasized in
numerous Greek myths: the ‘girl’s tragedy’ type and its male equivalent of
the hero’s quest (e.g. Dowden 1989). Iphigenia, Persephone, and Theseus
are often taken as paradigmatic of these patterns, which have been
interpreted in twentieth-century scholarship as mapping ‘rites of passage’, a
phrase used universally in the social sciences since the publication of Les
rites de passage (Rites of Passage) by the Belgian ethnologist Arnold van
Gennep.
Originally published in Paris in 1909, Rites of Passage was not widely
recognized until publication in English in 1960, since which time it has
become one of the most influential texts in anthropology. Henri Jeanmaire,
among others in the early twentieth century, picked up this ethnological
thread in his comparison of Spartan rites and the myth of Theseus with
African tribal initiation practices (1939). However, it was not until the
reinterpretation of the work of van Gennep by the Italian scholar Angelo
Brelich in his unfinished Paides e Parthenoi (Children and Unmarried
Girls, 1969) that the phrase ‘rites of passage’ and the concept of initiation
was significantly applied to ancient Greek societies.
Van Gennep found a tripartite structure of rites of separation, liminality,
and reintegration underwriting ritual procedures ‘to ensure a change in
condition or passage from one magico-religious or secular group to another’
(1960: 11). Certain distinctive outward signs, such as special clothing,
language, and diet, match physical deprivation (cold, starvation, physical
and sexual abuse) and social exclusion or segregation as inversions of
normative practice under the close supervision of members of the
community (e.g. Brelich 1969: 31–44).
Around the same time, the British anthropologist Victor Turner expanded
van Gennep’s second transitory stage with a sophisticated interpretation of
‘liminality’ as a time for transgression and inversion that identifies and
affirms the social identity achieved in the final stage of reintegration
(Turner 1967). The period of withdrawal and status of liminality in many
cultures is signified as a type of ‘death’, while the integration is a rebirth
(e.g. Lincoln 1981). All of these interpretations emphasize the affirmation
of the norm through a limited engagement with the opposite: trickery
foreshadows obedience to law; hyper-sexuality, celibacy, or homosexuality
anticipate a lifetime of marriage and procreation; living in the wild prepares
for active participation in an ordered community. The intricacies of
scholarly interpretations of Greek adolescent rituals as ‘initiations’ depend
mostly on the terminology used and its history in anthropology to refer to
compulsory procedures for young men to become full adult members of
their communities, which do not seem to have been the case for any Greek
cities except Sparta and the larger cities in Crete (e.g. Dodd and Faraone
2003).
Within the working typology of life-change rituals, another distinction
can be drawn between rituals performed within family groups and age-
specific rituals, also divisional by gender, in which adolescent boys or girls
are segregated from their families for a period of time, often living together
in groups separated from the community. Rituals marking birth, marriage,
and death belong to the former category and will be discussed first,
focusing mostly on evidence from Classical Athens, the only context for
which we have any significant evidence for all of these stages. An overview
of birth, marriage, and death rituals as a group allows for a consideration of
the role of women as mothers in ancient Greek cities, their primary identity,
which determined both the shape of Athenian marriage ceremonies and the
prominent role of women in death rituals.
Another section of this chapter, ‘Age Group Rituals’, will look at
adolescent group activities, with a particular focus on the evidence for
boys’ activities in Crete and Sparta and girls’ at Brauron. Adolescent rites
have long contributed to the ‘polis religion’ model for the interpretation of
Greek religion, in which the community identity and bonds are considered
to structure the perception and performance of all aspects of Greek religion
(e.g. Vidal-Naquet 1983; revisions suggested by Polinskaya 2003).
However, such interpretations depend on a relatively static political
framework, while different Greek cities cannot reasonably be compared in
such a way.
Alternatively, a ‘thick interpretation’ of the similarities in rituals marking
birth, marriage, and death within households, as opposed to the collective
rites of passage in public spaces at Brauron, Crete, and Sparta, draws a
distinction between those rituals responding to uncontrollable life changes
and those socially constructed according to a community’s self-perception
of its members (e.g. Parker 1983). Some attempts have been made to read
the Greek childbirth, marriage, and death rites as ‘initiation rituals’ in terms
of the tripartite pattern of withdrawal–liminality–return (e.g. Lincoln 1981;
Parker 1983: 59 ff.).
Although Persephone’s part-time marriage to Hades, the god of the dead,
is a configuration of the death/rebirth transformation identified by Victor
Turner and others in tribal initiation procedures all over the world (e.g.
Turner 1967: 96), the status of the groom is not clearly changed by
marriage, while the status of Athenian women is changed by having
children, not marriage, which is explicitly conceived of as the
institutionalized means of begetting citizens (see evidence in Ferrari 2003).
Greek marriage rituals cannot be seen as ‘initiatory’, even if their divine
model in Persephone can, because Greek women can marry more than once,
at any age past puberty, and legally continue to be under the authority of
their fathers even after marriage (Ferrari 2003; contra Lincoln 1981;
Redfield 1982). Childbirth and death rituals effect a permanent transition in
the introduction of new members of the household and the departure of the
dead, but in these cases a perception of ‘liminality’ is not clearly marked
unless the concept of pollution during childbirth and for those in contact
with the corpse is considered; however, the duration of the pollution beyond
the time of the ritual procedures of naming and burial complicates this:
possibly as long as forty days for birth and thirty days for death in some
cities.
 LIFE RITUALS FOR THE FAMILY

Although the naming and introductory rites for infants are routine in many
Greek cities, the process of pregnancy and childbirth was not regularly
marked by rituals in any of our sources, but rather by concepts of pollution
that attend physiological changes, particularly those of women. The
pollution thought to attend female biological processes and the prominence
of women in death rituals may partially reflect high infant mortality and the
impacts of this on communities (e.g. Golden 2004: 157). Like many aspects
of the Greek oikos, lifecycle rituals are predominately performed by, for,
and among women. Their husbands and male relatives were incorporated
into the more public side of these rituals (usually involving movement in
and out of the house) in which the event was commemorated by the
community. In contrast to the public ceremonies that tend to conclude
initiation rituals, birth, marriage, and, to some extent, death rituals take
place within the household. As sources of pollution, birth, marriage, and
death are the activities universally excluded from Greek sanctuaries, spaces
seen to be crucial for rituals marking the transformation of adolescents to
adults in their roles as citizens (Boedeker 2008: 240).

Birth
Pregnant women, in the course of making their transitions to new life stages
are often perceived as vulnerable, an anxiety marked in childbirth through
notions of pollution and the ‘logic of inversion’ in which the momentous
importance of childbirth is reflected in the creation of a sort of artificial
barrenness around the process of natural fertility. Plato reports that only
post-menopausal women can act as midwives, appropriate to the service of
the virgin goddess Artemis thought to watch over young women and
children (Pl. Tht. 149c; Parker 1983: 49; cf. Hymn Hom. Dem. 102–3).
Although pregnant women were encouraged to visit the sanctuaries of
deities presiding over childbirth, they were excluded from places associated
with divine births (Arist. Pol. 1335b12–14; Thuc. 3.104; Callim. Hymn
1.12).
 Eileithyia, a goddess attested from the Mycenaean period, was thought to
bring on labour (e.g. Hymn Hom. Ap. 97). The baby’s first bath is a
significant moment (e.g. Callim. Hymn 1.10–23), the first of a series of
associations of water with growth in Greek practice. Rivers are often
worshipped as kourotrophos, ‘child-nurturing’ deities, and are given
dedications of hair by adolescents (e.g. Hom. Il. 23.146; Hes. Theog. 346–
8). The act of childbirth is often symbolized through the ‘loosening’ of a
woman’s girdle, also a symbol of defloration, an indication of the Greek
equivalence of female sexuality with reproduction. Girls put on girdles at
the onset of puberty: the act of removal can denote the first sexual
experience as well as childbirth (cf. Hom. Od. 11.245; Callim. Hymn. 1.23).
A psychoanalytic interpretation puts the significance on acts of binding and
loosening as symbolic of the desire of a male-dominated society to manage
the uncontrollable aspects of natural reproduction and female physiology
(e.g. King 1983). An anthropological view finds aspects of ‘sympathetic’ or
‘homeopathic’ magic in the ‘loosening’ of the girdle for childbirth, one of
several protective rites performed. Similar are the use of amulets in the
shape of a uterus, often inscribed with spells, and incantations spoken by
the midwife. All of these indicate the perceived vulnerability of women in
childbirth to demons (cf. Pl. Tht.149cd; Ar. Thesm. 502–16; e.g. Ellis-
Hansen 2004).

Adolescence
An overarching theme of all lifecycle rituals is the symbolic significance of
clothing as an outward symbol of the life change. In the case of birth and
marriage, clothing worn by women is often dedicated to the goddesses
thought to protect such transitions. The inscribed inventories of dedications
at the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron during the fourth century BCE record
numerous items of clothing, either in thanks for a successful birth or in
memory of women who died in childbirth (IG II2 1514; Demand 1994: 88–
91). A striking fourth-century plaque shows the presentation of a newborn
baby to the goddess before a backdrop of clothing hanging on the wall
(Lamia, Archaeological Museum inv. AE 1041, Neils 2003: 145). Similar
are changes in hairstyles. While the maturation of girls in most Greek cities
fell under the auspices of Artemis, boys were under the guardianship of
several different gods, including Dionysos, Hermes, Herakles, and Apollo;
the latter is often imagined as the idealized kouros ‘youth’ with unshorn
locks (e.g. Ap. Rhod. 2.707–9). In many cities, the age of boys was
expressed through their hairstyle: they often wore their hair, or a special
lock, long until their successful completion of the passage to adulthood,
when the hair was ritually cut and dedicated to the gods by their parents
(see Leitao 2003).
Death in childbirth was thought to be caused by Artemis; a frequent
topos in myth depicts her as the destroyer of unmarried girls as well, such
as Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon (e.g. Aesch. Ag. 122–247). This
range of positive and negative aspects of Artemis as both protector and
killer of women can be interpreted as a reflection of the ambivalence of
female reproduction in Greek thought. For men, blood is fatal, but women’s
blood is both creative and fatal: women bleed during menstruation,
defloration, and childbirth, but may also bleed, like all human beings, in
death. In the same way, the goddess thought to protect young women is also
the one thought to demand or bring about their premature deaths. The
association of this virgin goddess with wild animals and hunting reflects the
uncontrollable side of women’s physiology, making her an apt guardian or
prosecutor of these processes, while her eternal virginity reflects the social
desire for control over female sexual maturation (e.g. King 1983;
Sourvinou-Inwood 1988).

Marriage and Death

This complex association of life and death in women’s bodies, expressed in
the dual function of Artemis as guardian and destroyer of babies and girls,
can be extended to posit an association between marriage and death rituals.
In Athens, about which we are best informed, the transfer of a woman from
the house of her father to that of her husband bears many procedural
similarities to the funerary rituals. The links between rituals for these two
stages in the lifecycle will be the focus of a short summary of practices in
Classical Athens.
For both weddings and funerals, the person (bride or deceased) was
washed and dressed by women before being taken out of the house in
darkness in a procession with songs and torches: the ekdosis ‘giving out’ for
marriage and ekphora ‘carrying out’ in funerals. In both contexts, locks of
hair were dedicated, a symbolic severance of childhood for the bride, while
in funerals, it was a gift of life to be buried with the deceased. On the night
before the wedding the bride made other dedications, such as toys and
clothes, to Artemis, Hera, or Aphrodite, accompanied by sacrifices
(proteleia) and feasting (e.g. the epigram of Timareta, Anth. Pal. 6.280)
before a ritual bath on the following day (Eur. Phoen. 343–8). The
centrepiece of the marriage seems to have been the unveiling of the bride
(anakalupteria) by her attendant in the presence of her groom, followed by
feasting and the presentation of gifts, although the exact details are unclear
(cf. Pherec. fr. 68; Ferrari 2002: 187–9). The couple was led in a nocturnal
procession by cart to the groom’s house, where they would feast and gifts
would be presented on the third day (epaulia), concluding the ceremony.
When the couple reached the groom’s house, the bride was taken to the
hearth and showered with fruit, one of several rites performed during
weddings meant to endow the couple with fertility (see Redfield 1982). In
Sparta, the marriage ceremony enacted a mock abduction of the bride,
dressed in boy’s clothing and with cropped hair, from her parents’ home;
according to the second-century CE writer Plutarch, for a long period of time
the couple only met at night in a darkened room (Lyc. 15.3–4).
In Athens, both funerals and marriages were overseen by the
gynaikonomoi, the ‘women’s police’ (cf. Men. fr. 272 Kock; Plut. Sol.
21.5). Although some aspects of the Athenian wedding were overseen by
legislation, the funeral procedure was very closely controlled by the local
government in a series of laws attributed to Solon ((Dem.) 43; Plut. Sol. 21;
Humphreys 1993: 85 ff.). The corpse was considered to pollute the house
and those who came into contact with it; like birth, death is a natural
process outside of human control that results in a series of procedures to
alleviate the perceived disruption of these momentous, uncontrollable
events (Parker 1983: 63). Women played special roles relevant to this
notion of pollution: the female family members of the deceased performed
the ritual bath and dressing of the corpse and performed laments during the
procession, an aspect that was closely regulated by the Solonian laws.
Funerary processions took place before sunrise on the day following the
prothesis, ‘setting out’, an indoor display of the bathed and dressed corpse
by family, and context for rituals of mourning. The burial, either cremation
or inhumation depending on the time period and local custom, was
accompanied by sacrifices and deposition of gifts with the remains of the
deceased. Feasting concluded the ceremony on the day of burial, and three
subsequent feasts were held on the third, ninth, and thirtieth days after
burial, the last marking the end of the mourning period (Isae. 2.37, 8.39;
Burkert 1985: 194).
The procedural similarities between weddings and funerals are reinforced
by the frequent mythical association of the death of unmarried girls with
their unfulfilled marriage potential, most powerfully expressed in myths of
the ‘girl’s tragedy’, as, for example, Antigone’s description of her tomb as a
bridal chamber (Soph. Ant. 891). This linking of the maiden’s death with
marriage has been explained as an extension of the patriarchal urge,
expressed in the social convention of marriage, to control the uncontrollable
physical changes of girls’ bodies during adolescence (e.g. Dowden 1989).
‘A transition effected by nature (death) is enclosed by the imagination
within a similar transition effected by culture (marriage)’ (Seaford 1987:
106).
While the social implications for Athenian brides seem restrictive to
modern audiences, the association between marriage and death in the Greek
perspective may be better seen as a meditation on the finality of death and
its untimeliness in the case of young people. Many of the maidens who die
before marriage in myth become ‘heroines’, figures once mortal but who
obtain divine powers through their deaths and are worshipped as gods
protective of the locality in which they are buried. The violation of the
lifecycle in their untimely death transfers their reproductive life-giving
powers to the afterlife (Ferrari 2003: 36). If the funerary echoes on the
occasion of weddings reflect a sense of loss, it is the loss of power to attract
suitors: the portrayal of young men seeking and wooing maidens in poetry
suggests a limited time in which women have the upper hand (Redfield
1982).

AGE GROUP RITUALS

Adolescents participated in many types of rituals, which may be best

discussed in terms of a sliding scale of ritualization. At the least intense end
of the scale, we may put the larger, inclusive ritual activities for groups of
boys and girls in musical and, for boys, athletic contests at festivals, which
reflect different stages in life by grouping participants according to gender
and age (Calame 2001: 27–8). In the middle of the spectrum are more
specialized roles for individuals on these occasions, such as the kanephoros
‘sacrificial basket carrier’ in the Panathenaia. However, such roles are not
usually discussed as life-change rituals since the girl or boy is not seen to
undergo a change in social status as a consequence of such activity; rather,
their role reflects their current social status.
At the more intense end of the spectrum are the attested ‘initiation’
rituals, those thought to reflect or even enable a change in status from
childhood to adulthood. As the scope of this chapter concerns rituals
marking changes in the lifecycle, initiation into mystery cults such as the
Eleusinian mysteries will not be covered (see, in this volume, Edmonds,
Chapter 37). These initiations share many characteristics with the lifecycle
rituals under discussion here, such as the ‘tripartite structure’, but are not
restricted in age or gender. Specific ages and exclusion by gender are,
however, defining criteria of rites of passage, or ‘tribal initiation’ as these
rituals are sometimes called in anthropology, to distinguish them from those
rites marking elective entry into a special group.

Becoming Men: Crete and Sparta

Cretan and Spartan cities were governed by a ruling class of men, hetairoi
‘companions’ in Crete and homoioi ‘same ones’ in Sparta, who dined in
common halls, andreion ‘the men’s place’ in Crete, and sussitia ‘common
dining’ in Sparta. The men were incorporated into the ruling class via their
dining rights through a progressed series of rituals required and regulated
by law. The passage into adulthood for Greek boys in all cities depended on
their readiness to serve as citizens in the military and organized political
groups. In this regard, their transition to adulthood was managed and, in
some cases, required by their local government, in which participation was
the goal of such transitional ritual procedures. The Cretan and Spartan
systems bear many similarities in procedure and terminology, leading to
speculation in antiquity about a shared Cretan origin, transmitted by either
Spartan colonists or the legendary Spartan lawgiver Lykourgos (e.g. Strabo
Geog. 10. 4.17; Plut. Lyc. 4).
In terms of the ritualized transitions (aside from the larger process of
acquisition of full citizen rights and education), in both Crete and Sparta
systematic changes in clothing, diet, habitat, and sexuality signalled the
boy’s progress towards adulthood. According to the account of Cretan
customs summarized by Ephoros, a fourth-century historiographer,
preserved in the Geography of Strabo, the younger boys wore shabby
clothes, ate sitting on the ground, and served the adults in the common
dining halls; older boys were grouped into agelai ‘herds’, led by the father
of the head boy, who supervised hunting, running races, and mock warfare,
punishing those who disobeyed. The agelai boys were fed at public expense
and apparently required to marry at the same time, although not to share a
household until the girl was older (Strabo Geog. 10.4.20). Ephoros
concludes his description of the agelai with details of the ‘peculiar custom’
of mock abductions:
After giving the boy presents, the abductor takes him away to any place in the country he
wishes; and those who were present in the abduction follow after them, and after feasting and
hunting with them for two months (for it is not permitted to detain the boy for a longer time),
they return to the city. Now the boy sacrifices the ox to Zeus and feasts those who returned
with him; and then he makes known the facts about his intimacy with his lover . . . the law
allowing him this privilege in order that, if any force was applied to him at the time of the
abduction, he might be able at this feast to avenge himself and be rid of the lover. But the
parastathentes ‘standing by’ (for thus they call those who have been abducted) receive
honours; for in both the dances and the races they have the positions of highest honour, and are
allowed to dress in better clothes than the rest, that is, in the habit given them by their lovers; . .
. even after they have grown to manhood, they wear a distinctive dress, which is intended to
make known the fact that each wearer has become famous (kleinos). (Strabo Geog. 10.4.21,
trans. Jones)

In this procedure, communal segregation, servitude, and deprivation

preceded tests of physical endurance, before the best boys were selected for
sexual partnership with older men, which was cast as a form of rape. All of
these features are inversions of the normative roles of citizens, husbands,
and protectors—the roles that were, in fact, the end result of such trials. The
enforced period of absence and special clothing that marks the reintegration
of the individual and his consequent elevation in status is a typical feature
of tribal initiation rituals, as observed by anthropologists. However, the
Cretan practice is not well attested, and the fact that Strabo’s source
describes it at such length further points to the unusual nature of such
customs. Institutionalized homosexuality of such a nature can be interpreted
from an ecological perspective, as opposed to a sociological pattern, as a
form of birth control, a point also made by Aristotle, a contemporary of
Ephoros, with reference to Cretan homosexuality (Arist. Pol. 1272a.25;
Percy 1996: 60).

Becoming Men: Sparta

A similar pattern is attested for the educational system of Sparta, although
ancient authors connect parts of the Spartan process explicitly with rituals
in honour of Artemis, a principle deity in life-change rituals for men and
women. According to the fourth-century Athenian historian Xenophon, the
legendary lawgiver Lykourgos instituted a system in which boys, from the
age of about 7, were classed as paides ‘children’ and removed from their
families to live together in groups also known as agelai. They were under
the supervision of a paidonomos ‘children’s guardian’, supported by older
boys armed with whips to encourage ‘modesty (aidos) and obedience
(peitho)’ (Xen. Lac. 2.2–3). They wore only one cloak, no shoes, and slept
in groups on reeds on the ground. He reports that the boys were supplied
with barely enough food to survive so as to encourage theft as a
pedagogical tool in the creation of better adult warriors (cf. Plut. Lyc. 17.4).
Boys caught in the act were whipped, which was intended to make them
more resourceful, a practice Xenophon and Plutarch connect with ritual
whipping in the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia (Xen. Lac. 2.3–9; Plut.
Lyc.18.1).
The ancient accounts of this whipping vary: Xenophon reports that boys
attempting to steal cheeses dedicated to Orthia are beaten by other boys
with whips, while Pausanias describes ritual whipping as a reform by
Lykourgos of original human sacrifices (Paus. 3.17.10). Plutarch credits the
rite to a Lydian attempt to disrupt a sacrifice, which was defended by
Spartans, who commemorate the moment with annual whipping and a
‘Lydian procession’ (Plut. Arist. 17.10). The Lydian procession may refer to
some kind of costume—possibly girls’ clothing (Graf 1985: 88–9). A
further link to the initiation paradigm may be the numerous fragments of
life-size terracotta masks found in the sanctuary, dating from the sixth
century. This type of dedication is almost entirely unique to this sanctuary,
and suggests a ritual disguise of a type attested for other gender-specific
rituals marking changes in the lifecycle.
In all three anecdotes, adolescent boys are encouraged or required to steal
and receive punishment. Similar to the Cretan practice, they break
normative social practice and are treated as if outsiders or representatives of
hostile groups, before becoming adult citizens entrusted to protect the
community. This structure is typical of the ‘initiation’ paradigm. The
variations in testimonia indicate that a core ritual procedure involving
flogging developed over a long period of time. Imperial Greek and Roman
sources emphasize the violence of the beatings, even to the point of death
(e.g. Cic. Tusc. 2.14, 34; Lucian Anach. 38–9; see Hughes 1991: 80). This
increased interest in the violence of the ritual probably reflects
contemporary attitudes towards public violence and spectacle, and such a
bias must be taken into account in our attempts to reconstruct the ritual. All
rituals are dynamic, but this kind of change over time is an aspect of life-
change rituals that is particularly hard to reconstruct due to the overall
paucity of evidence; nonetheless, it should not be underestimated.
The sexual relationship promoted in the Cretan adolescent rituals is not
as prominent in Sparta: older boys were distinguished from younger ones
through a relationship with an adult man, possibly sexual, whom they
served in the men’s mess hall (phiditia) and who oversaw their progress
through the stages of education until completion of the agoge around the
age of 30. The emphasis seems to have been squarely on physical
endurance testing in Sparta, in keeping with the goal of the Spartan system
to produce a ruling warrior class. In one of the final stages, young men
underwent the krupteia (from kruptein ‘to hide’), which Plato describes as a
period of time in which youths were sent to live in the wilderness and
compelled to stay hidden (Pl. Leg. 633b–c). Plutarch adds that a select
group of these men were charged with attacking and killing helots, an
enslaved population (Plut. Lyc. 28.1–2).
The removal of boys from their families, the institutionalized recognition
of their status as ‘in-between’ childhood and adulthood through staged
endurance and obedience testing, the use of distinctive clothing, diet, and
habitat, coupled with some highly stylized forms of concealment before
reintegration, link the Cretan and Spartan adolescent educational systems
with many practices of tribal initiation worldwide. Such patterns may be
ubiquitous because of their affirmative value in the integration of new
members of communities. The sanctioned experience of activities normally
subject to criticism or punishment may provide a release of tension or a
form of adult ‘play’ that enables the normative values of the community to
be seen, and therefore appreciated, more clearly (e.g. Babcock 1978). The
opportunity to view social structure, gender roles, sexuality, and
companionship from an experimental perspective facilitates integration
upon return to it (Turner 1967: 106ff.).

Becoming Men: Athens

One of the most persuasive accounts of such a ‘logic of inversion’ for
Classical Greece was Pierre Vidal-Naquet’s study of the equivalent system
in Athens, the ephebeia, a two-year tour of duty for young men on the
outskirts of Attica, for which they probably wore a special uniform (Arist.
Ath. Pol. 42.3; Lycurg. Leoc. 76; Philostr. VS 2.550). Vidal-Naquet linked
the ephebeia with an aetiology for the Apatouria festival in which boys
were enrolled in their father’s phratry: according to the legend, a certain
Athenian, Melanthos (‘black man’), volunteers to a single combat against
Boiotian King Xanthos (‘fair man’), and tricks him into looking behind,
thereby allowing Melanthos to kill him and then take over the kingship of
Athens (FGrH 323a F23).
The possible significance of such an aetiology for the Apatouria as
paradigmatic for Athenian citizens can be seen in the use of this occasion
for a staged recognition of the maturation of boys. On the third day of the
festival, known as Koureotis (a word derived from kouros ‘young man’),
three different sacrifices signified the three stages of life for men. The
meion was offered by fathers of sons born during the year; the koureion by
those enrolling their sons into the phratry; and the gamelia by men recently
married (Andoc. 1.125–6; Isae. 3.76–9, 8.18–19; IG II2 1237.118; Lambert
1993). Enrolment in the phratry was the first step towards becoming an
ephebe.
For Vidal-Naquet, the inversion of normal hoplite warfare in the single
combat and trickery of Melanthos presented a mythical paradigm for
affirmation through inversion which mirrored the process of enforced
absence and alterity in the ephebeia service, which preceded the
incorporation of these young men into society as citizens (Vidal-Naquet
1986; cf. Brelich 1961: 51–9; contra Lambert 1993: 149). However,
increasingly, the affirmative value of alterity has been questioned, as have
the perspectives which define it: contexts which seem estranged to modern
audiences may not have seemed so alien to participants. For example, rather
than seeing the ephebeia as the deliberate placement of adolescents in a
‘liminal’ no-man’s-land, the ephebes on the borders of Attica were actually
patrolling relatively populous and strategic areas for defence (Polinskaya
2003).

Male Age Group Rituals: Conclusions

Although the studies of tribal initiation by van Gennep and Turner show
some similar structures to the Cretan and Spartan agelai rituals, and a
number of recurrent themes are compelling, scholars have recently pointed
out some key differences, particularly in the Spartan system. Spartan youths
were encouraged, at many levels, to exhibit fierce competition towards each
other, rather than the extreme sense of collective equality observed in tribal
initiates—the specific goal of this system was military superiority (e.g.
Ducat 2006; cf. Turner 1967: 99). The length and commitment required for
such an educational process for young Spartans must have limited full
citizenship to a relatively small group of the sons of wealthy landowners,
and is probably the reason for the expiration of the system sometime in the
third century (e.g. Kennell 1995). The pattern of segregation, alternate
identity, and reintegration could be widespread because of human mental
processes rather than sociology. As Fritz Graf (2003: 19) points out,
the tripartite sequence turns out to be a very basic narrative structure . . . We begin cognition by
separating ourselves from the familiar and known, concentrate on the new and explore it, and
finally come back filled with new insight. This fits the stories, because they all seem to talk
about the gaining of identity, which in itself is an elementary cognitive process.

Becoming Women: The Arkteia

While boys’ ‘rites of passage’ prepared them for lifetime military service
and local governance, girls’ rites prepared them for marriage, although the
manner in which this preparation was carried out is, in some ways, even
more curious than the boys’ rituals.
There is some evidence for a ritualized transition of girls to adulthood in
Athens, the so-called arkteia, probably derived from arktos ‘bear’, and
associated with two sanctuaries of Artemis in the suburbs of Athens:
Artemis Mounichia in the Piraeus and Artemis Brauronia on the east coast
of Attica. The arkteia is very poorly attested in literary sources, but an
important description comes in Lysistrata, the fifth-century comedy of
Aristophanes, in which the chorus of old women defend their usefulness to
the city of Athens on the basis of their history of ritual service,

As soon as I was seven years old, I was an arrephoros;

then I was a Grinder (aletris); when I was ten, at the
Brauronia,
I shed my saffron gown as one of the Foundress’s
Bears;
and I was also once a basket-bearer (kanephoros), a
beautiful girl, wearing
a string of dried figs. (Ar. Lys. 641–7; trans.
Sommerstein 1990: 83)

These ritual positions offer a selection from the variety of female cult
personnel and religious duties performed by girls and women attested for
fifth-century Athens (see, in this volume, Dillon, Chapter 17). This list
particularly highlights those rituals associated with preparation for marriage
—and therefore child-bearing—an appropriate emphasis for the chorus of
old women, who are drawing attention to women’s contributions to the
Peloponnesian war effort.
Drawing on earlier work by Lilly Kahil, Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood
compared this passage with images on krateriskoi, vases dedicated to
Artemis at Brauron and other sites throughout Attica, which feature young
girls running naked or wearing a short garment, chiton (Kahil 1965, 1977;
Sourvinou-Inwood 1988). In these images, the girls appear to be dancing or
running, sometimes around an altar with palm trees, the typical symbol of
Delos, birthplace of Artemis. Some images feature bear imagery, either an
adult wearing a bear mask or a bear chasing girls towards an altar. The
priestess of Artemis is referred to as a ‘bear’ in the Kyrene cathartic law
(LSS 115 B.16; Parker 1983: 346), and the goddess is connected with bears
in several aetiological myths for the Attic sanctuaries. In the entry for
Brauronia in the tenth-century CE Byzantine Greek encyclopaedia Suda, the
following aetiology is given:
For there was a wild bear about in (Brauron) and it was tamed and lived with men. But a girl
poked fun at it, with her lack of restraint upset it, and it scratched her. This angered her brothers
and they shot the bear, as a result of which a plague befell the Athenians. The Athenians
consulted an oracle and it said their ills would end if, as a penalty for killing the bear, they
made their maidens do the bear ritual. And the Athenians voted that no girl should be married
to a man without performing the Bear ritual to the goddess. (trans. Dowden 1989: 21)

A scholiast to Demosthenes 25 describes a ‘sacred hunt’ at Brauron, and

some scholars have drawn this evidence together as indicating that the
festival Brauronia marked the end point of a period of service to Artemis in
which girls were segregated from their families (Kahil 1977: 33; Cole 1984:
241). The aetiology of a young girl’s error triggering divine punishment for
the community, which is then assuaged by the continued service of girls for
the divinity, is a typical pattern in many festival aetiologies, and a frequent
context for the ‘girl’s tragedy’ myth. Brauron not only has the aetiology of
the injured bear, but was also considered one of the burial spots of
Iphigenia, the chief prototype for the ‘girl’s tragedy’ (e.g. Eur. IT 1462–5).
Since, in these stories, it is usually the male warrior community on behalf of
whom the maiden is sacrificed, the arkteia can be interpreted as a symbol of
the opposition of life and death, male and female (Henrichs 1981). The bear
fits the context of preparation for motherhood because of the Greek
perception of its strong maternal instincts, while the comparison of
children, particularly girls, to wild animals is pervasive in Greek sources
(Arist. Hist. an. 579a18–25; Ael. NA 2.19; Cole 1984: 241). A further point
of relevance may be the hibernation of bears before having cubs: like
Persephone they undergo an annual ‘death’ and ‘rebirth’ (Perlman 1989).
If marriage can be said to symbolize male social control over women, the
adolescent girls’ rites of passage reflect the anxiety resulting from the lack
of control over female biology and the approach to menarche, after which
point the girl was considered to be ready for marriage. The passivity
required of women and activity required of men is expressed through its
opposite in the rituals: girls run naked while boys are kidnapped and servile,
and so on. Another way of looking at this is that a girl transitions from the
status of outsider to insider, a rite encapsulated in the marriage procession
from her father to her husband’s house, and so her adolescent rites are
preparation for a life of exclusion and containment, the opposite of boys’
rites (Sourvinou-Inwood 1988).

CONCLUSION

The importance placed on adolescent rituals in Classical scholarship draws

on the seemingly disproportionate importance of these rituals for the
Greeks, illustrated through their emphasis on the adolescent transition in
myth and art (for example, teenage heroic myths, numerous gods connected
with adolescent transitions, and the length and extent of these rituals).
Adolescent group rituals have been interpreted as part of the rise of the
political framework of Greek poleis over smaller, kinship-based groups, but
such an approach has recently been increasingly questioned. Although some
societies may employ ritual procedures to ‘initiate’ a change in social status
among members, the life-change rituals in many Greek cities neither signal
permanent changes in social status nor are obligatory, both of which are
defining characteristics in initiation rituals where they can be said to exist.
The possibility of such an initiation system in Greek cities for adolescents
encouraged scholars to look at other life-change rituals from such a
perspective, but the evidence for birth, marriage, or death rituals does not
generally support this hypothesis. The Spartan and Cretan systems were
something of an anomaly, judging by the ancient testimony, and relatively
short-lived. Costume, endurance tests, trickery, and age or gender
restrictions are not limited to adolescent rituals but occur in a variety of
cultic contexts (see Parker 2011: 214–15).
An ecological approach in which practical factors are considered, rather
than ‘deep’ interpretations influenced by social anthropology, can add some
perspective to our perception of adolescence in Greek culture if life
expectancy for adult males in Classical Athens was in the region of 25 years
(e.g. Hansen 1985: 10–11), this puts the adolescent stage not at the start, but
midway through life. Without a significant elderly population, children and
the importance of their growth becomes less a statement on the perceived
vulnerability of adolescence per se—this category itself being entirely
subjective—and more a meditation on the achievement of survival.

SUGGESTED READING
Calame (2001) and Ferrari (2003) offer detailed overviews of women’s
rituals, while Kennel (1995) and Ducat (2006) cover the boys’ rituals in
Sparta and Crete. The relevant mythical material can be found in Vidal-
Naquet 1986 and Dowden 1989. Padilla (1999) and Dodd and Faraone
(2003) have collected essays challenging the category ‘initiation’. Parker
1983 is a detailed study of pollution in childbirth and death; see also
Garland 1990 and Humphreys 1993.

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 CHAPTER 36

RITUAL CYCLES: CALENDARS

AND FESTIVALS

JAN-MATHIEU CARBON

INTRODUCTION

WHEN dealing with time and Greek religion, we are often concerned with a
phenomenon that appears cyclical: the course of successive years, their
recurring seasons and events, all represented by a constant calendar. One
useful point of entry into the subject may be Hesiod’s Works and Days.
Attempts have even been made to view the second half of the poem as a
form of calendar (Kravaritou 2002; Hannah 2005: 18–27; especially on
Hes. Op. 383–828). Though the verses occasionally mention specific days
or months, the didactic chronology is not strictly sequential and the
calendrical points of reference are primarily astronomical or astrological:
the poem is more of an inspired and manifold almanac, seeking to give
advice about toil (erga) and timing. Agricultural concerns are addressed,
such as when to reap crops and plough fields (namely, the rising and setting
of the Pleiades, ll. 383–4), along with a variety of other activities, such as
seafaring. Nuggets of received wisdom are frequently interjected, which
amount to proverbs of a sort: ‘remember seasonal work (horia erga)’ (l.
422); ‘be mindful of doing each thing in its own time’ (ll. 641–2, a similar
expression).
There is a substantial—but not complete—disconnect between Hesiod’s
work and the calendars which we find in later Greek sources, primarily as
inscriptions or as accounts in other literary sources. Though the year and its
seasonal rhythms were clearly defined by the sun, as Hesiod recognized,
Greek calendars usually contained a series of twelve lunar months. One has
to say ‘calendars’ because Greek cities employed a wide variety of names
for their months and diverse starting-points for their calendrical years
(Trümpy 1997). Though there is much common ground behind certain
groups of calendars, their origins are often mysterious and many probably
go back to a time before Hesiod’s poem was composed. What is clear,
however, is that the vast majority (if not the entire set) of names of months
in Greek calendars have a seasonal or religious significance; sometimes
both. They are tied through etymology with specific times of the year or
with the names of gods, rituals, and so on (again Trümpy 1997; or Nilsson
1906 for a more detailed discussion). Alongside this etymology, there is
also a manifest reference to seasonal work and/or to cultic practice. For
instance, Boedromion may have originally denoted the driving of oxen in
the Athenian calendar, and Posideon, of course, refers to Poseidon and to
sacrifices in his honour.
Beyond a year consisting of lunar months, Greek communities also
developed several lengthier, multi-annual cycles of time. Famous among
these are the Olympiad and the cycle of the Pythian Games, both
quadrennial (in inclusive Greek terms, penteteric) and centred around major
festivals at Olympia and Delphi respectively. Much valuable scholarly
effort has been, and continues to be, expended in the scientific calculation
of Greek chronology and history, notably using these penteteric cycles
(Hannah 2005, especially ch. 4; the classic work is Bickerman 1968, with
extensive tables). An often remarked crux is that a Greek year consisting of
short lunar months (approximately 29.5 days long) regularly grew out of
synchrony with the lengthier solar year and thus with the rhythm of the
seasons. The addition of a supplementary (intercalary) month was
sometimes deemed necessary to adjust the deficit. By the Hellenistic period
at least, it might be possible to easily synchronize penteteric, lunar, solar,
and other astronomical calendars, such as we find inscribed on the dials of
the famous Antikythera Mechanism (Freeth, Jones, Steele, and Bitsakis
2008).
Recent work still has a tendency to focus on the chronometric deficit of
lunar calendars, which is viewed as an exploitable failure in rigorous time-
keeping. The result is that Greek calendars, like many other ancient
calendars, are envisaged as instruments and publications that were primarily
political and social tools (recently, Stern 2012: 25–70). There is an element
of truth in that line of argument, but it must not be overemphasized. Natural
cycles, as well as religious tradition, were paramount in the composition
and the structure of any given Greek calendar. For example, one of the best-
known calendars, that of Athens, carefully distinguished between ‘political’
days—when assembly meetings could be held and law courts were in
session—and religious occasions such as sacrifices and festivals (Mikalson
1975). The former could usually only occur when the latter, more or less
immobile, did not: in this case, religion habitually trumped politics. In the
study of Greek religion, a fruitful approach has been pioneered by a few
studies that seek to reconcile Greek lunar months with the solar year in a
different way, namely, by taking an example from Hesiod and looking more
closely at the seasonal and economic cycles inherent in the order and
structure of calendars (for example, Brumfield 1981).

SACRIFICIAL AND FESTAL CALENDARS

One particularly interesting and prominent category in the extant

epigraphical evidence is that of sacrificial and festal calendars. We usually
define these documents simply as texts that list rituals or festivals in a
precise chronological order (NGSL: 65–8). They often do not include verbs
or conjunctions, and can merely contain elements in the following form:
date (or festival); deity (in the dative); offering (usually an animal, in the
nominative or the accusative). Other details can be filled in as necessary,
but oftentimes they are simply not required. Several Linear B tablets from
the final centuries of the second millennium BCE are inscribed with what
appear to be lists of provisions or offerings, which are prefixed by month
names or festivals (Trümpy 1997: 2–3). Otherwise, our earliest evidence for
Greek sacrificial calendars comes from the Archaic period. Cases include a
fragmentary but monumental stele from Corinth (NGSL: 65–6, c.600–585
BCE) and wall blocks inscribed with the calendar of Miletos (LSAM 41,
c.525–500 BCE). These calendars were manifestly intended for public
display. In late Classical Athens, a specific change in the form of the
calendars took place, but it was perhaps limited to this period alone.
Though the texts remain chronologically arranged, the accounting of the
cost and funding of the rituals now becomes essential as an added element
in the tabulation (cf. LSCG 18, a diminutive stele from Erchia, c.375–350
BCE). But that development remains an exception rather than the rule in a
group of documents that come from all periods and from a variety of
locations in the eastern Aegean.
Greek sacrificial calendars organize religious practice according to what
one might call an ideal and traditional sequence, since the order of lunar
months and dates is very seldom explicitly correlated with external
phenomena or with other records. Beyond the possibility that it could be
synchronized externally, it would be a false assumption to view such a
calendar as principally a tool for precise time-reckoning. Yet this does not
entail that the fixed and cyclically repetitive structure of time was merely
symbolic. A sacrificial calendar was a self-standing aide-mémoire and
therefore perfectly practical in that regard. Only the necessary information
about the rituals is mentioned, and the customary timing remains
primordial. Any person consulting a copy of the published text, perhaps
especially priests and other officials, could view at a glance the key
elements of a given day’s sacrifice. Like other documents, inscribing
calendars was, of course, a political action, potentially enabling revisions,
corrections, and other manipulations, but also conferring greater publicity
and visibility on the ideal and traditional structure of time in the city. In
other words, the form and content of a calendar were elaborated very much
in the spirit of the Works and Days: the calendar followed the recurring
seasons and their essential rituals, enabling one to remain ‘mindful of doing
each thing in its own time’.
Here, we will look at one telling and vivid case of a sacrificial calendar
from a Hellenistic island (in the next section). After tracing a year-long
cycle and its seasonal rhythms within a city’s religious calendar, it seems
appropriate to focus more specifically on highlights of the year, in this case
two major but different festivals, occurring in the same city and during the
same month (the following section, ‘Two Holidays at Magnesia-on-the-
Maeander’). A temporal lens can attempt to shed some light, not on ‘how it
exactly happened’, but on different scales of ritual time—a glimpse of
‘what it felt like’. By following seasonal and yearly rhythms down to major
events and celebrations, we can form a suitable impression of the practical
details of ritual cycles. Perhaps even some of the experiences attached to
these different modes of time may be within our reach.

SEASONAL SNAPSHOTS FROM MYKONOS

From Mykonos in the central Aegean, long overshadowed by its much

smaller neighbour, the sacred island of Delos, comes a tall inscribed stele
bearing a sacrificial calendar (LSCG 96). The preamble of the inscription
from Mykonos is short yet nonetheless unusually explicit for these terse
documents: ‘Gods. In the archonship of Kratinos, Polyzelos and
Philophron, when the cities came together in one community [ll. 2–3], it
pleased the Mykonians to sacrifice the following rites in addition to earlier
ones [ll. 3–4] and revised concerning earlier ones [ll. 4–5].’ In other words,
the calendar must be dated to a specific political context, the synoikism (or
‘amalgamation’) of the cities on the island in c.230–200 BCE (Reger 2001).
This event naturally entailed some modification and recalibration of the
rites that would now be shared by the unified citizenry. Since we have so
little information about the religious landscape of Mykonos, it is not easy to
discern which rituals are ‘additional’ and which are ‘amended’.
Nevertheless, because it is so specific to this context and so unusually
detailed, and at least half of it is well preserved, the calendar from this
small island community is an excellent case for better comprehending and
analysing the relationship between rituals and seasonal rhythms.
Let us visualize the scene. It is midwinter. The fields are void and silent.
As with many Ionian cities, the year begins in this cold and stormy season
on Mykonos (in the Dorian world, by contrast, the year usually begins in
high summer). The month is Posideon: the Mykonians turn their gaze to the
sea and to the eponymous god Poseidon. At this time, fishing is the prime
source of activity and income (Beresford 2013: 258–9). The concern of the
citizenry is naturally to safeguard this initial aspect of its yearly cycle. In a
major celebration at the start of the calendar, the twelfth of this first month,
Poseidon is honoured with a beautiful and ‘uncastrated’ white ram in a
precinct outside the city, perhaps near the sea (ll. 5–8). Other analogous
rites for Poseidon occurred elsewhere, for example at Sinope and Smyrna,
sometimes on the same date (Robertson 1984: 7, nos 8 and 9); the timing
may have corresponded, more or less, with the winter solstice in December.
Another manifestation of Poseidon called Phykios—god of ‘seaweed’—is
simultaneously honoured with a similar but younger male lamb. Only men
—whose business is the sea—can participate in the rites. The civic council
is explicitly said to fund these sacrifices from the fishery taxes (l. 10).
Yet the city also begins to look beyond the gloom of midwinter. At the
same time as the Posideia are taking place, a verdant Demeter (Chloe) is
propitiated with a sacrifice of twin sows (ll. 11–15). One of the two animals
is pregnant, and the twin sacrifice is accompanied by two measures of
barley grains and three of wine. It would be hard not to read this sacrifice
as, to some degree, symbolizing the twin faces of this early part of the year
for the Mykonians. They are thankful for past crops and for animal young,
but also look forward to and wish to ensure a green and fertile spring. They
keep one eye presently on Poseidon and the sea, but another prospectively
on Demeter and the land.
A moon or so later, spring is indeed in the air. We are in the month
Lenaion and agricultural concerns have now come even more to the fore.
Probably at a sanctuary called the Lenaion outside the city, a major festival
of the unified community is to take place over the course of three days. On
the first, when a song is made for good crops (l. 16), sacrifices are held for
Demeter, her daughter Kore, and Zeus Bouleus (‘Zeus of Good Council’,
who is often identified with Plouton, a god of wealth and agricultural
prosperity). Once again, the animal offered to Demeter is a pregnant sow,
and, in the early spring, one that holds her first litter (l. 16). Barley grains
are to be provided for this sacrifice, and particular care is to be taken by the
priests and senior officials of the city to ensure that the rites are attractive
and the divine omens favourable (ll. 19–20). Punctiliousness is necessary
because the rites are envisioned as vital for the nourishment and prosperity
of the whole community.
This festival is also to be distinguished from the one in Posideon by the
wide-scale participation of women, whether citizens or foreigners, who are
initiates of Demeter. A large gathering of people has taken place in the
sanctuary outside the city (l. 23). On the second day of the festival, a
sacrifice for Semele, the mother of Dionysos, is held, and on the last day
comes finally a sacrifice to Dionysos called Leneus, god of the wine press
or wine vat. Since this would seem a rather late stage to harvest and press
wine, it may well be that the Lenaia on Mykonos marked a successful
harvest, and involved drinking from the wine vat and tasting recently
fermented wine, rather than the actual pressing of grapes. A similarly tardy
Lenaia took place in Athens, before the sampling of the preceding year’s
vintage in Anthesterion (February/March). At any rate, the rites clearly
marked the beginning of spring. They are framed by a further sacrifice on
behalf of crops, in this case to Zeus and Ge (Earth) of the Chthon (the
surface of the earth and its underbelly), and consisting of flayed and black
yearling animals. This sacrifice has a distinctive colouring—it is also held
separately and excludes the participation of strangers—and it harks back to
Hesiod and his injunction to propitiate these gods of the dark soil for good
grain (Hes. Op. 465–6: ‘Pray to Zeus Chthonios and Pure Demeter to make
the grain mature and heavy . . . when the ploughing begins’).
One could hardly ask for a more explicit expression of the seasonal
dimension of the calendar than this major celebration. It appears to be the
conflation of two separate occasions in the newly unified Mykonian polity:
on the one hand, a large-scale festival of Demeter, Zeus, and Earth on
behalf of crops; on the other, the Lenaia, in honour of Dionysos and his
mother and focused on wine. Men and women leave the city in processions
and are gathered together to sacrifice, sing, and drink. They honour the gods
of the autumn wine, and, at the same time, herald the coming of spring and
its new crops.
In the ensuing months, the year follows its course, but the calendar of
Mykonos is somewhat less detailed. In Bacchion, perhaps the month
immediately after Lenaion, Dionysos is again celebrated, with the epithet
Baccheus and with feasting on a mountain ridge (ll. 26–9). There are
possibly other intervening months in which nothing significant happens.
Next, the calendar once again becomes more expansive and we are
apparently in early or midsummer, in the month of Hekatombaion—
literally, the occasion for the sacrifice of a hundred oxen. If all has gone
well, new animals have been born in the spring and the flocks have
increased considerably. But the hecatomb is a bit more modest on the small
island of Mykonos. On the seventh day of the month—a sacred day for
Apollo (cf. again Hes. Op. 770–1)—a token bull is sacrificed to the god,
who is also the eponym of the month, Apollo Hekatombios, along with ten
new lambs symbolic of a hecatomb. The participants are exclusively male:
young boys (paides) and young men, ones who are of marriageable age or
who have been recently married (nymphioi), along with the priest and
perhaps other men.
In summer, the community’s focus has accordingly turned towards this
further aspect of its fertility and well-being: animal husbandry and male
maturation. Joining Apollo in this one-day festival is another god,
Acheloios (also Achelous), who receives virtually the same sacrifice of
eleven animals. While Apollo’s sacrifice highlights young men and their
maturation, this other pendant of the celebration clearly takes place in the
countryside, where Acheloios has land consecrated to him (l. 37). In fact,
part of the god’s sacrifice is slaughtered directly into the river (l. 37).
Acheloios is a bull-headed god of rivers; here he must designate the only
central watercourse of the island (the modern Megalo Langadi). The river
god is worshipped and placated to ensure that the water flows in sufficient
(but not excessive) abundance, to moisten meadows and quench the thirst of
shepherds’ flocks. In the summertime, it is quite possible that this
watercourse, like many others in Greece, would have been dry and empty,
hence the need to propitiate the god.
The summer month of Hekatombaion was an important turning point in a
year on the island of Mykonos. A further sacrifice, taking place in this
month, was devoted to the Archegetes or mythical founding hero of the
island, presumably the eponymous Mykonos himself (Reger 2001: 179–80
discusses the possibilities). A small feast resulting from this sacrifice once
again encapsulated the newly unified community. Regrettably, the lower
portion of the stele has now become effaced and we can only barely read
the remaining forty or so lines of the sacrificial calendar. These perhaps
spanned a further four months or so. This was the undoubtedly equally
significant season of autumn, with its harvesting of crops and grapes.
Despite this lacuna, the sacrificial calendar of Mykonos clearly shows
how the high points of a given year occurred in direct connection with the
seasonal rhythms. In all cases, the relationship between the economy of a
small island community in the Aegean (Brun 1996) and its ritual practices
is evident. Here, as elsewhere, religion was a yearly progression that
formed an inextricable component of the community’s outlook and
subsistence. The Mykonians began their year with a focus on Poseidon and
fishing in the winter, then transitioned to rites for Demeter to prepare for the
spring and the coming of the crops, while also paying homage to Dionysos,
god of the new autumn wine; in the summer, after the lambing season of the
spring, young boys and men honoured Apollo, linking their own maturing
with that of new livestock; all the while, the river Acheloios and other
deities and heroes formed the heart and core of the island in a geographical,
political, and religious sense. The cycle would then begin anew.

TWO HOLIDAYS AT MAGNESIA-ON-THE-

MAEANDER

The calendar from Mykonos reveals several major celebrations on the

island, which were interspersed throughout the year and formed a coherent,
cyclical whole. In various decrees and other inscribed regulations from
Greek cities, we receive even more detailed accounts of individual festivals
that were momentous occasions in the calendar. These peaks of the year are
especially elucidated in lengthy civic decrees that sought to revitalize or
enhance festivals in the latter half of the Hellenistic period (generally
speaking, the second and first centuries BCE; Paul 2013). This period has
sometimes been called an ‘Indian summer’ of religious life in Greek cities,
particularly in western Anatolia (so Deshours 2011). Yet this time was
probably not characterized by an increase in religiosity compared to that of
the past, but rather by a desire to make worship more prominent and vivid,
sometimes due to innovative competition between polities, sometimes for
restoring celebrations that had been interrupted due to wars or had fallen
into desuetude; other times for the simple sake of increasing the
conspicuousness of existing offerings; often all of the above. Two
substantial, inscribed decrees from the city of Magnesia-on-the-Maeander,
at the border between Ionia and Karia, may be taken as examples. Together,
they constitute a richly detailed dossier concerning the mode of operation of
festivals in the same city.
Zeus ‘Saviour of the City’
The first decree concerns a sacrifice in honour of Zeus Sosipolis, whose
epithet means ‘Saviour of the City’ (LSAM 32, dated to 197/6 or in the 180s
BCE; see Wiemer 2009: 123–7, also on the context). We are told little about
the motivations for its passing, but the epithet of Zeus may be thought to be
key. We know almost nothing else about this manifestation of Zeus, and his
cult might be thought to be a fairly recent introduction to the city, perhaps
during some recent critical or desperate circumstances. Remains of a temple
dating to the early second century BCE have been attributed to the god, and
the decree concerning the festival was inscribed on one of its doorposts.
The temple of the major goddess of the city, Artemis Leukophryene, was
also rebuilt around this time (discussion of both structures in Schädler 1991:
301–12). Asia Minor was a land of wars and conquest during the Hellenistic
period, and the dates of the decree for Zeus Sosipolis are no exception: the
Seleucid king Antiochos III conquered much of Asia Minor as part of the
Roman–Syrian War in 197/6 (Chaniotis 2005: esp. 143–65 for ‘the effects
of Hellenistic wars on religion’). That does not tell us that Magnesia chose
to honour Zeus Sosipolis specifically because of this, but ‘the saving of the
city’, whether from ‘occupiers’ or even from the depredations of the
‘liberators’, was clearly present in the minds of its citizens.
Perhaps the written act of foundation of the cult would have dealt with
such motivations, but here the focus of the decree is on religion as an
oblique but nonetheless revealing mirror for politics. A précis summarizes
the primary concerns of the decree: first, the selection of an additional bull
for sacrifice; second, the prayer and procession accompanying the ritual;
finally, the erection of a circular tent (tholos) in the agora—where the
Temple of Zeus at Magnesia was located—and the placement of couches
within it for hosting the gods (represented by their statues).
The new plan is to purchase a bull several months in advance of the
sacrifice. The occasion for the transaction is apparently a general gathering
of the people (or panegyris), which takes place every year in the month
Heraion; that festival is unknown but was perhaps also traditionally linked
with Zeus and his consort Hera. The order of the calendar of Magnesia is
unclear, but it is probable that this occasion took place in high or late
summer. The bull purchased during this annual fair, abuzz with people and
animals, is chosen to be ‘as beautiful as possible’ (l. 12). It could then be
fattened up in the intervening time (ll. 59–64, provisions for the purchase
and rearing of the bull, called trophe; see the liturgy called boutrophia at
Bargylia SEG 45.1508A–B and 50.1101, c.120s–100 BCE).
A short while later, during the early autumn, the bull was designated as
being destined for Zeus Sosipolis in a special ceremony (Trümpy 1997:
110–11 §94, Kronion = September/October). Furthermore, the occasion
explicitly marks the beginning of a new agricultural cycle, ‘when the
sowing of seeds begins, on the new moon (first day) of the month Kronion’
(ll. 14–15). At this time, one proclaims the bull’s ‘consecration’ (anadeixis),
at which are present most of the prominent officials of the city: the major
priests and priestesses, the sacred herald, the military commanders, the
administrators, the secretaries of the civic council, as well as a man who is
eventually (but not yet!) to do the actual butchering of the animal. Also in
attendance are nine boys and an equal number of maidens, sent by their
caretakers as participants in the consecration and the ensuing prayers. The
inclusion of these children of citizens appears to be aimed again at
beautifying the rituals, notably through their invocations and through choral
songs. We are expressly told some of the substance of the prayers, and their
sentiment is a perfect summation of the concerns of the local community:
‘For the safety of the city and the countryside and the citizens and women
and children and others who live in the area, and for peace and wealth and a
good harvest of grain and all other produce and herds’ (ll. 26–31).
Still later is the actual sacrifice to Zeus Sosipolis, on the twelfth of the
month Artemision (ll. 34–5). It is unclear exactly how much time has
passed since the original purchase of the bull—at least three months,
probably more—but it must now have been fairly well known as ‘bull-
designate’ among the townsfolk and quite plump. Artemision is the
principal month in the cultic calendar of Magnesia-on-the-Maeander, falling
as far as the spring or summer after the bull was chosen. Rites for the major
goddess of the city, Artemis Leukophryene, are known to have occurred on
the sixth of the month and may have lasted over several days. The
celebration of Zeus Sosipolis takes place some days afterwards, perhaps so
as not to anticipate the Leukophryena, but also as an apt continuation of the
major festival month of the city. Not only is Zeus himself particularly
honoured, but the entire group of the Twelve Gods (Georgoudi 1998: 82) is
brought to the fore on the symbolic day of the twelfth.
 The statues of these gods are to be carried in the procession wearing their
finest raiment (ll. 41–3). A round tent (tholos) is to be set up in the agora
near the altar of these Twelve Gods. The ritual of hosting (theoxenia) which
is to take place in this temporary tent is focused on a subset of this larger
group of Twelve Gods: Zeus, honoured with an additional sacrifice of a
ram, to take place on the nearby altar of Zeus Sosipolis; Artemis
Leukophryene, as expected; and Apollo Pythios, whose priest, the crown-
bearer (stephanephoros) of the city, officiates. The statues are arranged on
three lavish couches and entertained with music, and are probably offered
choice portions from these sacrifices. The significance of this additional
ritual within the wider festival appears to be complementary, and at the
same time definitional. It stresses that the rites for Zeus Sosipolis lie at the
heart of the city whose safety he ensures, in the agora where his temple
stands, and where the altar of the Twelve Gods is also located. And it
further reinforces the city’s focus on its principal goddess Artemis
Leukophryene, who is hosted alongside her father and brother, a few days
after her own festival.
Similarly, the two separate lists of participants in the procession for Zeus
and in the theoxenia rites are quite carefully structured. As we saw with the
proclamation of the bull, a series of high-profile individuals are to be
involved in the procession, all exclusively male, such as the major
magistrates of the city and male priests, but also invoked are young men,
boys, and winners of contests. The number of participants in the triple
sacrifice to Zeus, Artemis, and Apollo during the theoxenia is much more
narrow and selective: the priest called stephanephoros and likely the priest
of Zeus also, the priestess of Artemis (apparently the sole woman involved),
military commanders, select cultic officials (neopoiai), public examiners,
and presiding officers of the public bodies, as well as men who have
performed liturgies and benefactions for the city.
In other words, this was a highly politically charged celebration and its
parameters should be understood as two concentric circles: the larger band
of the male polis, within which lay a smaller, apparently more elite, ring.
The wider, more encompassing circle, shared the bull sacrificed to Zeus (ll.
54–5). Its approximately one hundred kilograms of dressed meat would
have provided sufficient material for a feast that included a good portion of
the male citizenry of Magnesia-on-the-Maeander. The smaller triple
sacrifice to Zeus, Artemis, and Apollo was shared by the more select group
of prominent cultic and political officials (ll. 55–9). These two circles
epitomize the practical ideals of a Greek city like Magnesia-on-the-
Maeander. On the one hand, there was a desire to foster the inclusivity and
participation of the citizenry in the augmented worship of the gods; on the
other, the elaboration of the day’s rituals carefully mirrored the hierarchy of
the political core of the city. Over much of the year, from the autumn to
spring or summer, the focus of these circles of participants remained on the
offering of a bull to Zeus for the safeguarding and the prosperity of the city.

The Special Day of the Isiteria

By contrast, another detailed festival decree from Magnesia-on-the-
Maeander may make the occasion for Zeus Sosipolis seem somewhat
limited in scope, not to say rather male and elitist. This text (LSAM 33A, to
be read with Gauthier 1990) concerns a revitalized celebration for Artemis
Leukophryene in the city, concomitant with the large-scale development of
the festival of the goddess, the Leukophryena. An important and much-
discussed inscription informs us that, as a result of an epiphany of the
goddess, the Magnesians consulted Delphi (IMagn. 16, c.208/7–203 BCE;
see Paul 2013: 241–4, with references to recent work on the text). The
oracle advised them to rebuild her temple and to invite Greek cities to
participate in the revamped festival. The principal text discussed here
(LSAM 33A) is roughly contemporaneous with the decree for Zeus
Sosipolis in the early second century BCE, but at least two other related
documents are also known: one now lost, and one dating to about a century
later (LSAM 33B, c.105–85 BCE; for the date, see Santangelo 2006). We
therefore have parts of a dossier, inscribed together on the pillar of a stoa in
the agora. This dossier was gradually constituted, and incrementally sought
to augment the celebrations of the fundamental holiday for the Magnesians.
Since a new temple (called Parthenon) for the goddess had recently been
constructed, the purpose of the first decree (LSAM 33A) is to define the
installation of the ancient statue (xoanon) of the goddess in this place and
the practicalities of rituals for the goddess on the day in question. The
setting up of the statue is to take place at a specific moment, the sixth of the
eponymous month of the goddess, Artemision, probably in the springtime
or early summer, as we have seen. By virtue of the decree, that day is now
to be known as the Isiteria, a sacred ‘festival of inauguration’ (ll. 24–5).
The sixth day of a given Greek month was typically sacred to Artemis
(Mikalson 1975: 18). It remains unclear, though likely, that this day of the
Isiteria had a close relationship with the larger festival of the Leukophryena
in honour of the goddess, who was reckoned to be the founder of the city
(Archegetis, ll. 18–19). The precise dates of the Leukophryena festival
within the calendar year are unknown but probably also fell on the sixth as
well as the days directly following the Isiteria.
At any rate, the Isiteria must have formed one of the most significant
days of the year in the city of Magnesia-on-the-Maeander. The decree
begins with the typical invocation for good fortune, but also ‘for the safety
of the people and of those who are kindly disposed to the Magnesians and
their wives and children’ (ll. 19–20). In other words, this celebration
possessed a broad, almost universal, appeal. The festival of Artemis was
therefore intended to involve all the residents of the community, not just
male citizens or the inner political body which revolved around Zeus
Sosipolis.
The practicalities of the day of the Isiteria are equally all-encompassing.
It is to begin first with the actual installation of the statue of the goddess (l.
23) by the temple warden and the priestess, and this is accompanied by a
superlative sacrifice. The use of the aorist infinitive form of the verb (ll. 22–
3) in connection with these actions, contrasting with present infinitives and
imperatives elsewhere in the inscription, suggests that this was a one-off
affair: only the first iteration of the Isiteria will require these rituals for
installing the cultic statue. But the inauguration of the statue will be
commemorated in perpetuity through similar and other rituals. All mature
or married women are to be allowed to enter the sanctuary on the special
day of the Isiteria. There, they are to fulfil something unusual beyond the
honour (time) due to the goddess: a cultic attendance that is described as
paredreia . . . tes theou, literally ‘sitting’ or ‘installing beside’ the goddess
(ll. 26–8). This rite not only implies the physical presence of women in the
sanctuary as cult attendants and ‘co-chairs’ of the goddess, but ought also to
suggest that the women had specific tactile contacts with the statue. The
passage is very brief, but we know from other sources that this paredreia
may have involved such gestures as washing the statue, clothing it, and
beautifying it with various adornments (such were the rites performed by
the genos of the Praxiergidai at Athens, attested in the very fragmentary
LSCG 15, c.460–450 BCE; and see the festivals called Kallynteria, and
Plynteria—‘Washing’, which took place late in the month Thargelion—
early June, Parker 2005: 474–5, 478–9).
Even more than in the case of Zeus Sosipolis, the day is to be a holiday
for children and others (ll. 28–31). Choirs of maidens are to sing hymns to
Artemis Leukophryene under the supervision of the temple warden. School
is out for boys, and even male and female slaves can dispense with their
usual labour. The successive annual priestesses of Artemis are to put on a
procession and sacrifice to celebrate and commemorate the sacred day (ll.
31–4). As on the first day of the year at Magnesia, the administration and
the transaction of goods and wares is also to take place on this day (ll. 34–
6). This implies that some accounting took place, but, more importantly,
that the Isiteria was market day, as one finds during the other major
festivals at Magnesia and elsewhere. A fair (panegyris) will have taken
place in the agora of the city (cp. also LSAM 33B, ll. 13–15).
As with the festival of Zeus Sosipolis, we again find a great gathering of
important people in this location. Notable men and officials of the city are
in their ‘best clothes’ and wearing laurel wreaths (ll. 36–42), but, as the
inscription tells us, the gathering is larger: the agora is bustling and full to
bursting. After libations have been performed, the sacred herald calls for
silence and then addresses the general assembly (ll. 43–8):
Upon magnificent (and auspicious) Isiteria, I invite all of the inhabitants of the city and
territory of Magnesia to make a sacrifice pleasing to Artemis Leukophryene on this very day,
according to their household’s means, and to pray that Artemis Leukophryene will give the
Magnesians and their wives health and prosperity, and that she will safeguard their existing
progeny, and grant them good fortune, and make their future offspring (epigone) flourish . . .

The prayer has a wide appeal and the celebration is indeed to be a

popular one. Already, a large group of women have had a hand in the
celebrations taking place in the temple itself. Certainly, the male elite is
once again present at the heart of the procession and the sacrifice, but there
is a significant dissemination of the celebration beyond the cultic centre and
the agora. All citizens and other residents of Magnesia and its surrounding
countryside are urged to construct altars for the goddess privately in front of
their household doors (cf. also ll. 7–10; and see Schorn 2004: 130–1, fr.
*28.2 col. 1, for the papyrus of Satyros concerning altars built in front of
houses or on balconies in honour of Arsinoe II at Alexandria; or FGrHist
160 F 1 28–30 (III), c.246 BCE). It is important to note that participation is
apparently voluntary and there is no minimum requirement for these altars:
each household is to build one according to its own means (ll. 9 and 45). Of
course, some form of competition may naturally have occurred between
households, with peer pressure inciting each to surpass his neighbours in
constructing something durable or fairly costly, rather than simply erecting
a makeshift altar for the goddess. Indeed, the later decree from the dossier
(LSAM 33B, ll. 38–42) reinforces public participation in this aspect of the
Isiteria by invoking a form of curse on those who have bought houses or
workshops and failed to build an altar. There, it is also specified that the
altars are to be decorated and inscribed ‘of Artemis Leukophryene, Bringer-
of-Victory’ (Nikephoros), thus implying that permanent structures were
deemed more desirable.
While the festival of Zeus Sosipolis marked a major celebration and feast
for the city of Magnesia, and particularly its elite, it is clear that the Isiteria
was a different and highly special holiday for the whole community. There
was a significant break in the daily routine and drudgery of the year on the
sixth of Artemision. Each and every one of the inhabitants took part.
Women, children, and even slaves, would be released from their usual
obligations and could partake directly in the celebrations. While an
important sacrifice was taking place in the centre of town, smaller ones
would be offered throughout the city and the surrounding countryside on
household altars built for this explicit purpose. Feasts, both large and small,
would be consumed in parties and in familial settings. The circle of
reciprocity was perpetuated: honours for Artemis were ubiquitous and, at
the same time, she was asked to grant universal benefactions. As the
festivities wound down from this pivotal holiday, the annual cycle of the
religious calendar at Magnesia-on-the-Maeander would, as always, resume
and continue.

CONCLUSION

In a reflective and stimulating introduction to the temporality of Greek

religion, Davidson (2007: 237–8) has pointed to what he calls ‘three types
of time’—accumulative, repetitive, and climactic. While events and
innovations accumulate gradually like sand in the course of history, they
may also be repeated annually or over even longer periods of time;
particularly significant points in the year can reasonably be viewed as
climaxes. We have seen these three ‘types’ at play here: occasions like the
rites for Zeus Sosipolis or the Isiteria could be newly added or rekindled,
but they would immediately be incorporated into a larger framework, the
annual religious calendar of a city. They would form climaxes in a
repetitive cycle, much like the celebrations found in the traditional and
revised calendar of Mykonos.
Despite their utility, then, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that
Davidson’s distinctions only form three congruent, perceptible aspects (not
types) of time and its role in Greek religion. Time, after all, is
fundamentally a dimension which is distinguished from space in a
Euclidian model, or which forms an integral part of the curvature of space-
time in a relativistic model. More plainly, to an ancient Greek time probably
appeared both as an accretive continuum and as an eventful annual cycle. In
other words, it was felt in much the same way as it is today, though many of
us have now lost touch with the essential rhythms of the year—except the
seasons—and, for some of us, much of the background of our holidays has
become quite murky.
Time, and especially religious and ritual time, is not easily represented in
strict geometric concepts. For the Greeks, as for us, it was periodically and
perpetually punctuated by meaningful highlights and regular celebrations
alike. It was concomitantly linear and circular, transcending both of these
simple forms.

SUGGESTED READING
Feeney 2007 is a thoroughly enjoyable and engaging introduction to ancient
concepts of time and calendars, especially concentrating on the Roman fasti
but often keeping an eye on Greece (e.g. ch. 1). Many general surveys are
inclined towards chronometry, for instance Hannah 2009. Hannah 2005 is a
somewhat more balanced introduction and the small handbook of Nilsson
1962 can still be profitably consulted. A detailed, scientific study of ancient
astronomical, astrological, and meteorological calendars can be found in
Lehoux 2007.
 Following the still useful work of Samuel 1972, Trümpy 1997 is a
comprehensive (but sometimes speculative) attempt to reconstruct all of the
lunar calendars attested in Greek cities. This is essentially the opposite
approach to that which Nilsson adopted in his classic work (1906), which
organized festivals according to their principal deity. Nilsson’s volume has
comprehensive indices and remains a very good source of material, dealing
with the whole of the Greek world except Attica. For the better attested
festivals from Athens, Parker 2005, part II, is the most learned and
insightful contemporary discussion (cf. also app. 1, for a checklist);
Mikalson 1975 offers a month-by-month and day-by-day compendium of
the Athenian calendar.
For a wider and admirably cautious discussion of ‘The Experience of
Festivals’, see Parker 2011: 171–223 (ch. 6). A different and highly
innovative approach can be found in Chaniotis 2006, as well as in a large
body of recent work on the dynamic and emotive aspects of festivals and
other Greek rituals.

REFERENCES
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Bickerman, E. J. 1968. Chronology of the Ancient World. London.
Brumfield, A. C. 1981. The Attic Festivals of Demeter and their Relation to the Agricultural Year.
Salem, NH.
Brun, P. 1996. Les archipels égéens dans l’Antiquité grecque (Ve-IIe siècles av. notre ère). Paris.
Chaniotis, A. 2005. War in the Hellenistic World: A Social and Cultural Study. Malden, MA, and
Oxford.
Chaniotis, A. 2006. ‘Rituals between Norms and Emotions: Rituals as Shared Experience and
Memory’, in Ritual and Communication in the Graeco-Roman World. Kernos, suppl. 16., ed. E.
Stavrianopoulou, 211–38. Liège.
Davidson, J. 2007. ‘Time and Greek Religion’, in A Companion to Greek Religion, ed. D. Ogden,
204–18. Oxford.
Deshours, N. 2011. L’été indien de la religion civique, Études sur les cultes civiques dans le monde
égéen à l’époque hellénistique tardive. Bordeaux.
Feeney, D. 2007. Caesar’s Calendar, Ancient Time and the Beginning of History. Berkeley, Los
Angeles, CA, and London.
Freeth, T., Jones, A., Steele, J. M., and Bitsakis, Y. 2008. ‘Calendars with Olympiad Display and
Eclipse Prediction on the Antikythera Mechanism’, Nature 454: 614–17, and ‘Supplementary
Notes’, 1–42.
Gauthier, P. 1990. ‘Epigraphica’, RPh 64: 61–70.
Georgoudi, S. 1998. ‘Les douze dieux et les autres dans l’espace cultuel grec’, Kernos 11: 73–83.
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Hannah, R. 2009. Time in Antiquity. Abingdon and New York.
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du récit’, Kernos 15: 31–40.
Lehoux, D. 2007. Astronomy, Weather, and Calendars in the Ancient World. Cambridge.
Mikalson, J. D. 1975. The Sacred and Civil Calendar of the Athenian Year. Princeton, NJ.
Nilsson, M. P. 1906. Griechische Feste von religiöse Bedeutung, mit Ausschluss der Attischen.
Leipzig.
Nilsson, M. P. 1962. Die Entstehung und religiöse Bedeutung des griechischen Kalenders (2nd edn).
Lund.
Parker, R. 2005. Polytheism and Society at Athens. Oxford.
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L’exemple des Artémis d’Asie mineure’, in Perception et construction du divin dans l’Antiquité,
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Reger, G. 2001. ‘The Mykonian Synoikismos’, REA 103: 157–81.
Robertson, N. 1984. ‘Poseidon’s Festival at the Winter Solstice’, CQ 34: 1–16.
Samuel, A. E. 1972. Greek and Roman Chronology: Calendars and Years in Antiquity. Munich.
Santangelo, F. 2006. ‘Magnesia sul Meandro alla vigilia della prima guerra mitridatica. Nota sulla
cronologia di I.Magn. 100b’, EA 36: 133–8.
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Schorn, S. 2004. Satyros aus Kallatis. Sammlung der Fragmente mit Kommentar. Basel.
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31. Berlin.
 CHAPTER 37

IMAGINING THE AFTERLIFE

RADCLIFFE G. EDMONDS III

INTRODUCTION

THE question of what happens after the moment of death has always
fascinated humanity—at one moment there is a living person, the next only
a corpse; where did the person go? Different ways of imagining the afterlife
appear in every culture, but scholarly accounts of Greek ideas of the
afterlife from Erwin Rohde (1925) onwards have assumed a developmental
trajectory, with the drab afterlife of Homer slowly being replaced by forms
of afterlife where the dead are more active, closer to Christian ideas. While
Rohde’s ideas of historical evolution arising from Eastern influences and
the internal decadence of the Greek spirit have rightly been rejected,
afterlife ideas are still represented as a chronological development by
scholars, even those, such as Johnston (2004), who reject Rohde’s premises.
Jan Bremmer (2002) provides a survey of the ‘rise and fall of the afterlife’
that positions the Greeks as a preliminary to the Christian development of
an afterlife. Albinus (2000) provides a more nuanced picture of two
currents of thought interacting within Greek culture, but it remains a story
of the replacement of the Homeric view with an ‘Orphic’ one. I would
argue that the dynamic would be better described as an ongoing contest of
differing views in which the ideas appear more or less prominently in
different contexts and elaborated by different individuals. Moreover,
different versions and ideas should be understood as jostling for authority in
particular situations, rather than simply authorizing a single canonical
version.
The epics of Homer provide vivid images of a bleak and shadowy
afterlife, but, although this grim afterlife is often taken to be the standard
Greek vision, it is hardly the only way in which the ancient Greeks
imagined life after death. In many sources, life after death is a lively
extension of the life of the living, either a continuation of its activities and
social forms, or a compensation for its problems. This is neither a marginal
vision of eccentric religious groups nor a later development of the
intellectual and cultural maturity of the late Classical period. On the
contrary, varying visions of a lively afterlife appear in sources starting with
the earliest literature, and form the underlying ideology of funerary and
other ritual practices in all periods.
Two forms of imagining the afterlife in Greek religion may be
distinguished: simpler images based on memories of particular people who
have died, and more elaborate visions that reflect upon life itself. Memory
survival may be personal, limited to imagining a relative persisting in
familiar activities and habits, focused upon maintaining a relationship with
them. Communities too, however, preserve the memories of significant
individuals, through stories, monuments, and rituals. The Greek poetic
traditions, especially the epics, provide a means of preserving memories of
important heroes (real or imagined) within communities. This imperishable
fame remains one of the most significant forms of afterlife survival in the
Greek tradition.
More elaborate visions of the afterlife may arise from systematic thinkers
who envision the afterlife as part of the larger nature of a world that
includes both the living and the dead. Such visions tend to be more
elaborate, corresponding in various ways to life in the world of the living;
the afterlife may have a geography, a social structure and hierarchy, and a
specified relationship with the world of the living. The nature of that
relationship varies with the contexts in which these visions are produced.
The philosopher Plato envisions an unseen world of the dead that fits within
a rational order with the visible world of the living, while a social
commentator like the comedy writer Aristophanes imagines the afterlife as
a carnivalesque reflection of the normal world, turning familiar social
structures topsy-turvy. These and other imaginings of the afterlife in the
Greek religious tradition provide models of the world as their authors
understand it, as well as models (positive or negative) for behaviour within
it, whether the afterlife imagined is the simple persistence of a remembered
loved one or an elaborate vision of the workings of the cosmos.

MEMORY SURVIVAL

Personal Relations and Public Memorials

Imagining the deceased as continuing, in afterlife, as they did during life is
the most basic form of imagining the afterlife. For the ancient Greeks,
afterlife resembles life, with parallel forms of activity, environment, and
even social structures. The memories of what a person did or how that
person acted during life provide the material for creating images of what
that person might be like after death, and how they might relate to people
after they have died: gifts or other tokens of respect are imagined to be just
as welcome, while insults or neglect are imagined to merit the resentment of
the dead. The dead are thus thought to have feelings and emotions, as well
as to continue with their most characteristic activities from life. This
imagined life after life of the dead, based on the persisting memories of the
dead, is, of course, rather limited, since it tends not to include all the aspects
of life for the living. This process of simplification increases the longer the
person has been dead, as only the most memorable aspects are preserved in
memory. Of course, memories survive only as long as those who have them
are still living, although stories that perpetuate the memory of an individual
can prolong the process, even if the stories further simplify the memory of
the person—preserving (and perhaps embellishing) only the most salient
details.
Funeral rituals and cultural expectations regarding the tendance of tombs
make clear that the ancient Greeks generally assumed that the dead retained
some sentience in their afterlife, and that their reciprocal relations of care
and respect with the living persisted (Johnston 1999: 43). Sufficiently
respectful performance of funeral rituals was a characteristic of the virtuous
man, and Athenian legal speeches show that tendance of family tombs was
a significant marker of proper family behaviour (Isae. 2.10, 37, 6.65, 8.38–
39; cf. Arist. Ath. Pol. 55; Xen. Mem. 2.2.13). Maintaining positive
relationships with the dead could be as important as maintaining such
relations with the living—or even more so. Properly satisfied dead could
bring benefits to the family or the polis, while the unsatisfied dead could
become a source of trouble—disease, madness, drought, and so on. While
the evidence for these ongoing relationships with the dead is relatively
scarce, there is no reason to believe that it is either a later development or a
primitive superstition the Greeks outgrew, since the earliest evidence
appears in the earliest texts and continues through to late antiquity. The
Erinyes in Homer personify the anger of the dissatisfied dead, as they do in
Classical tragedy, and Odysseus, while he is performing libations and
sacrifices to the dead at the entrance to the underworld, even makes an
elaborate promise to perform further rituals upon his return to Ithaca for the
satisfaction of the dead (Od. 11. 29–33, cf. Od. 10.521–6). Homer’s
audience, in whatever era, would have understood such rituals not as
pointless mummery vainly trying to attract the witless dead, but rather as a
meaningful attempt to influence conscious entities who could make a
substantive response.
The afterlife of the departed is not imagined only through the personal
memories of individuals who knew the deceased, but also through various
forms of public memorialization. The epitaphs that enjoin the passer-by to
stop and remember the deceased bring the living into conversation with the
dead, while larger-scale public monuments, like that for the Marathon war
dead, maintain the memory of the individual for more people for even
longer.
Individuals who provided benefits for the community might continue to
be honoured with cult activity after death. Pindar describes how Battos, the
founder of Kyrene, was given a tomb in the public agora and honoured
after his death, while Herodotos describes the sacrifices and athletic
festivals performed in honour of Miltiades at Cardia in recognition of his
leadership (Pind. Pyth. 5.93–5; Hdt. 6.38; on oikist cult, see, in this volume,
Shepherd, Chapter 38). The inhabitants of Amphipolis, Thucydides relates
(5.11.1), turned the tomb of the Spartan general Brasidas into a hero shrine
and held annual festivals with sacrifices and athletic games in honour of the
man who had done so much for them against the Athenians. Going beyond
the passive presence of a monument, a festival provides an active way for a
community to maintain a relationship with a person who has died. The
deceased lives on in the afterlife as a hero who appreciates the honours and
offerings of the community, even if there is little concern for the precise
nature of his afterlife existence. While some Athenian drinking songs
imagine Harmodios the tyrant slayer living on in the Isles of the Blessed
(Carmina Convivialia PMG fr. 11), little evidence survives of where or in
what conditions oikists or other community heroes were imagined to live
out their afterlives. For the purposes of the ritual, it was sufficient to know
that they would bring good fortune to the community that honoured them.

The Epic Tradition

While ritual celebrations honouring a hero are perhaps the ultimate way of
preserving someone’s memory, to have one’s deeds celebrated in epic
remains one of the most significant modes of afterlife within the Greek
tradition. There can be no doubt that such poetic immortality was indeed
valued, and sought after, by the audiences of Homeric and other epic poetry
from the Archaic Age onwards. Such survival in memory was particularly
sought after by the aristocrats, who competed for honour and recognition in
games and in war, in the assemblies and in the symposia. The fifth-century
epinician poet, Pindar, and his like, provide a similar sort of immortality for
the victors in the Panhellenic contests, while Simonides’ poems on the 479
BCE victory at Plataia show this competition for epic glory continuing into
the time of the Persian Wars (both the poem on the battle, the so-called
‘new Simonides’, on which see Boedeker and Sider 2001, and his epigram
7.251 on those who fell at Plataia).
While some poems do imagine specific places and features of the
afterlife, the poetic tradition—and Homeric epic in particular—emphasizes
memory survival through song over any other form of afterlife. The
Homeric poet repeatedly drives home the message that only the kind of
poetic immortality he can provide is valuable; all other things that one
might desire in life are secondary. At the heart of the Iliad is the choice of
Achilles—immortal fame rather than a safe homecoming—and other
Homeric heroes also make choices so that they may become a subject of
song for men in time to come (Hom. Il. 9.410–16; cf. Il. 2.119, 3.287,
3.460, 6.358, 22.305; Od. 3.204, 8.580, 11.76, 21.255, 24.433).
To sustain such an idea, the primary image of afterlife in the Homeric
epics is exceedingly bleak and unappealing. In a few crucial scenes where
the characters reflect upon the nature of life after death, the message is
hammered home that there is nothing there to look forward to. When the
shade of Patroklos appears to Achilles, he refers to the other ghosts as
phantom souls of the worn out (Il. 23.72). Achilles too laments the
wretched condition of the souls of the dead, as does Odysseus when he tries
to embrace the shade of his mother in the underworld (Il. 23.103–4; Od.
11.218–222; on the development of the idea of the soul, see Claus 1981,
Clarke 1999, and, in this volume, Voutiras, Chapter 27). This bleak vision is
fundamental to the Homeric idea of the hero’s choice—only in life is there
any meaningful existence, so the hero must choose to do glorious deeds.
Since death is inevitable, Sarpedon points out (Il. 12.322–8), the hero
should not try to avoid it but go out into the front of the battle and win
honour and glory. Such glory (kleos) is the only thing that really is
imperishable (aphthiton), the only meaningful form of immortality.
While the Iliad centres on Achilles’ choice of deaths (glorious death in
battle or ignominious death at home), the Odyssey frames the issue as a
choice of immortalities. Odysseus rejects the immortality offered by
Kalypso because, whatever its attractions, it would result in his own story,
his poetic immortality, becoming lost (cf. Crane 1988). Odysseus’ famous
journey to the underworld reinforces the importance of epic memory as the
only meaningful form of immortality, not just through his pathetic
encounter with his mother, but through the parade of famous dead whom he
meets—and whose memories he evokes for the audience of his story. These
heroes and heroines live on vividly in epic poetry, even if their afterlife
existence in Hades is merely a dim shadow. Achilles, who chose to die
young and glorious, would, of course, rather be alive again than remain
among the dead, but he does not repudiate his earlier choice. Moreover,
after his characteristic complaining, he is delighted to hear that his son,
Neoptolemos, is securing himself immortality through his glorious deeds
(Od. 11. 486–540).
 The force and artistry with which this message is put forth in the
Homeric poems have led some scholars to suppose that it was a standard
belief for all Greeks at the time of the poems’ composition, with
alternatives being imagined only later. However, even within the Homeric
poems, the uniformly dreary afterlife is not the only vision presented, as
commentators since antiquity have noticed. Outside the few passages that
emphasize the helplessness of the shades, the Homeric references to life
after death provide a much livelier picture of the afterlife (Sourvinou-
Inwood 1995: 79). The pursuits of the dead mirror the world of the living,
and the social hierarchies of the living world persist in some form after
death.
This afterlife was not imagined to be uniform for all; those who had
angered the gods continued their punishments in the afterlife, while those
who had won their favour continued to enjoy its benefits. In this vision, the
dead were imagined to have feelings and emotions, memories of their lives
in the sun, and the ability to know of and even interfere in the world of the
living. They were thought to appreciate the attentions paid to them by the
living, not simply burial and funeral rituals, but also offerings made
subsequently at the tomb. Although this differentiated afterlife is in direct
conflict with the uniformly dreary one that underscores the importance of
heroic glory, it appears even in the epics as the default version underlying
the epic vision of poetic immortality. Outside the epics a lively afterlife is
also taken for granted as the basis for funerary ritual, the cult of important
figures, and other ritual practices that involve the dead.

THINKING WITH THE AFTERLIFE

Ritual has little room for elaborated imaginations of the afterlife, but these
do appear in the literary and mythic tradition from Homer onwards. The
afterlife is endlessly ‘good to think with’, and many authors from different
periods make use of the Greek mythic tradition to imagine the afterlife,
crafting their visions to express their own ideas. While all of these
imaginings make use of a common set of images, names, and story patterns
that derive from the shared Greek mythic tradition, the particular texts
themselves are the products of bricolage, that is, patched together according
to the intentions of a particular author (Lévi-Strauss 1966: 16–36). Some of
these picture the world reflected through the world of the dead, while others
use the contrast between the worlds of the living and the dead to point to
how the world should be. Because they all use traditional mythic pieces,
each imagining makes sense to its audience, gaining authority from its use
of familiar images and elements. Nevertheless, there is no single way in
which the afterlife was understood or imagined by all the Greeks at any
time, much less at all times.

Continuation vs. Compensation

The simplest way to imagine the afterlife is as a reflection of life, albeit less
vivid and colourful. Such a simple vision appears in the underworld scene
of the Odyssey: the legendary hunter Orion continues to chase game over
the asphodel meadows; the famous king Minos continues to fill the kingly
duty of judging lawsuits. That the dead continue to engage in legal disputes
after death is perhaps the best indicator of this continuity (Od. 11.568–75).
Similarly, vase paintings depict the dead engaged in a variety of pleasant
pursuits, games like pessoi or dice, while Pindar (fr. 130) has the dead
engaging in horsemanship, gymnastics, and lyre-playing. These are the
activities of aristocrats, for life’s social stratifications remain in place in the
afterlife.
Such an image of the afterlife requires the least modification of memories
of the dead: they persist in the same patterns as before death, even if their
features are reduced to only the most salient and their activities to only their
best known. This image of the afterlife appears as a default, when there is
no reason to do any more than evoke the memories of famous people. It
does not lend itself to extended development: even in Homer it appears only
in the background of the epic vision articulated in the crucial scenes.
In many texts, however, the rupture between life and afterlife is the
significant feature; the dead are gone and inaccessible to those left behind
in life. In the mythic imagination, this rupture is often represented by some
barrier or obstacle that separates the worlds of the living and the dead. The
afterlife takes place in the underworld or perhaps off in the uttermost west,
beyond where the sun goes down at the farthest shore of the encircling river
Ocean. In Homer, Kirke describes the rivers of the underworld as Acheron,
Pyriphlegethon, Kokytos, and Styx (Od. 10.514), and Patroklos complains
to Achilles that he cannot cross the river into Hades until his body has
received burial (Il. 23.72–4). Although he does not appear in Homeric epic,
in other sources Charon brings the dead across the river to their new world
and new life in the afterlife, and graves from the late Classical and
Hellenistic period often include coins to pay the infernal ferryman. While
Charon, like the psychopomp Hermes, enables the dead to reach the
underworld, leading them past the barriers that stand in the way of the
living, other barriers ensure that the dead stay in the afterlife. The gates of
Hades are proverbial for the finality of death, while the monstrous hound
Kerberos stands guard over the entryway (Hes. Theog. 770–5). All these
boundaries mark the separation of afterlife from life, highlighting the
differences between life and death.
Most of the accounts of the afterlife in the Greek tradition stress not the
continuity of afterlife with life, but rather the ways in which the afterlife
compensates for the injustices of life. Those who have done wrong without
visible retribution receive the punishments they deserve, while those who
lived well without visible compensation find their reward. The heroes of
epic, like the virtuous in Pindar, go to the Isles of the Blessed, where they
enjoy a life of pleasure without toil (Hes. Op. 168–73; cf. Hom. Od. 4.561–
9). Evildoers, on the other hand, suffer in the black pit of Tartaros. The
geographical separation of the dead in the afterlife appears in a variety of
the evidence, from the marginal gold tablets to the myths of Plato, to the
Athenian drinking song that puts Harmodios in the Isles of the Blessed—
and the nature of its topography varies in turn. Darkness and mud
characterize an unhappy afterlife in a variety of sources, in contrast to light
and air for the happy, who dwell in a place of pleasant conditions, with
sunlight, shade, cool breezes, surrounded by flowers and meadows, near
cool, running water. A good afterlife is full of the things that make for a
good life, which is to say the life of a nobleman or other privileged type.
Although Pindar describes the fortunate dead as engaged in aristocratic
pursuits like riding and hunting, the most popular aristocratic activity for
the afterlife (as in life) seems to be the symposium. Hundreds of funeral
reliefs depict the deceased reclining on a symposiastic couch, often with
cup in hand and sometimes even with a woman at the foot of the couch
(Thönges-Stringaris 1965). The best afterlife is often imagined as an
everlasting festival, one of the best experiences of life, and numerous
funerary inscriptions attest to the idea of choral dancing in the afterlife (e.g.
151.5, 189.6, 218.16, 411.4, 506.8 in Kaibel 1878). Such testimonies
indicate how widespread, and indeed commonplace, it was to imagine that
one’s recently departed relative would enjoy a happy afterlife.

Afterlife Judgement
In many sources, the separation of the good and bad seems to happen
automatically, but others put emphasis on the process. Perhaps the earliest
extant reference to a process of judgement comes in Pindar’s second
Olympian Ode (58–60), where an unspecified judge assigns recompense for
the deeds of life, a blissful existence without toil for the good, unbearable
toil for the bad. Other sources specify the judges as underworld divinities—
Hades or a Zeus below the earth—or as particular semi-divine figures,
Minos, Rhadamanthys, Aiakos, and even Triptolemos (Aesch. Eum. 273–4;
cf. Supp. 230–1 and Pl. Grg. 524a, Ap. 41a). This idea of afterlife
judgement is common enough for Plato, in his Republic, to depict the old
man Kephalos as starting to imagine that perhaps he might have something
to worry about after death (Pl. Resp. 330d–331a). Kephalos refers to myths
he has heard—not special doctrines, but familiar traditional tales—which
assign punishment in the afterlife for injustices committed in life. While he
had not taken them seriously while younger, he says that the approach of
death causes people to examine their lives to see if they will have any
penalties to pay. Those who discover crimes they have not paid for get
anxious, while those who can’t think of any wrongs they have done are
buoyed up by hope. Plato’s depiction of this old man captures the important
role played by personal circumstances in the way people or groups
imagined the afterlife.
Although Homer’s epic depicts a few exceptional figures like Tantalos
and Sisyphos receiving punishment in the underworld (Od. 11. 576–600),
elaborate descriptions of underworld retributions come mostly from later
sources, causing some scholars to suppose that a compensatory afterlife is a
later invention. However, not only does such compensation appear in our
earliest textual source, but Pausanias (10.28.4–6) tells us of the great
painting of the underworld by the fifth-century BCE painter Polygnotos,
which included such depictions. Many of the figures in the painting were
merely famous people continuing the actions for which they were famous in
life—Agamemnon holding a sceptre, Orpheus playing his lyre, Eriphyle
holding a necklace, even Actaion with a deerskin—but some are depicted
suffering punishments for their actions in life. A man who treated his father
unjustly is being throttled by him, while another who plundered a temple is
being tormented by a female skilled in poisons. Pausanias comments that
the Greeks in Polygnotos’ time thought that failing to respect parents and
the gods were the worst of crimes, and that is why Polygnotos has
illustrated these cases. Polygnotos’ painting, while exceptional in size and
scope, is not exceptional in its subject matter: numerous vase paintings
show scenes of underworld reward or punishment, and a Demosthenic
speech mentions paintings depicting the afterlife torments of the impious as
a familiar trope for his audience ([Dem.] 25.53).

IMAGES OF AFTERLIFE

Special Treatment for Special People

Polygnotos’ painting adorned the walls of the Knidian Lesche (Clubhouse)
at Delphi, alongside other images from the Trojan War and other familiar
mythic tales. The Lesche was not just used by Knidians: visitors could
come in and marvel at the images on the walls. Polygnotos’ image of the
afterlife was therefore aimed at a common audience, evoking familiar
myths and shared ideas. By contrast, the images of the underworld found on
the so-called ‘Orphic’ gold tablets were designed for a very private
audience, perhaps only the individuals in whose graves they were placed
(see Edmonds 2004: 64–82, as well as the texts and essays in Edmonds
2011). Some of these texts refer to rewards in the afterlife for the
exceptionally pure or those well-favoured by the gods. Two tablets ask
Persephone to send the bearer to the seats of the blessed (Tablets A2 and A3
= OF 489 and 490B), while others refer to celebrations of festivals beneath
the earth, where the deceased will receive wine (D1 and D2 = OF 485 and
496B).
The deceased claims to be pure and from the pure or to have been
specially liberated by Dionysos Bacchios, and such claims may reflect the
special relationship with the divine produced by rituals known as teletai.
Often misleadingly translated as ‘initiations’, such rituals provide not an
entry into an organized group, but rather a closer relation with the god to
whom the rite is directed—by paying special honour to the god, the mortal
receives special favour. Such favours can extend beyond one’s lifetime into
the afterlife; the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (480–2) promises that those
who honour Persephone in the mysteries will receive a favourable place in
the underworld. While the Eleusinian mysteries had the greatest reputation,
particularly within the culture sphere of Athens, participation in such rituals
was widely recognized as a means of securing a better afterlife: the neglect
of such rituals could doom one to an unhappy afterlife without the favour of
the gods (Ar. Pax 371; Pind. fr. 137; Soph. fr. 837; Isoc. 4.28; Paus. 10.31.9,
11).
By promising a special place in the seats of the blessed or among the
chorus of mystai (‘ritual celebrants’), the gold tablets offer a reward of
favourable status in the afterlife that will compensate for any lack during
life. The graves in which the tablets have been found are, for the most part,
commonplace and unremarkable. The tablets presumably provide a means
of asserting the special identity of the deceased that transcends the usual
categories of polis, genos, and family. They provide instructions for the
deceased to make her way into the underworld, telling her what path to
choose or what to say in order to achieve a successful transition from life to
afterlife, making use of familiar motifs from the mythic tradition to create
an image of the afterlife in which the deceased is among the most happy
and fortunate. Some tablets envisage an encounter with Persephone, Queen
of the underworld, while others describe a white cypress tree shining in the
gloom of Hades that marks the path leading to the spring of Memory (or
Forgetfulness). The deceased must either proclaim her ritual purity or her
special connection with the family of the gods, and it is this claim of
identity, rather than a description of the favourable afterlife, that is the
central concern of the tablets. Indeed, the results of the successful transition
are mere allusions to familiar rewards, like the company of the blessed
dead. These tablets are designed to emphasize the process of transition
rather than the state of existence after death; the image of the afterlife fits
the intended function of the text.

A Comic Turn
In Aristophanes’ Frogs, a play with a chorus of mystai, the focus is upon
the contrasting fates of the happy and unhappy dead, as the comedian takes
aim at various prominent figures in Athens, a city which, in the final
months of the Peloponnesian War, has gone eis korakas, ‘to the crows’ or,
simply, straight to Hell (Ar. Ran. 1477–8, cf. 188–9). The tag from
Euripides, ‘Who knows if life be death or death life?’, is a running joke
throughout the play, and the world below, the afterlife, is very much a
reflection of the world above, although Aristophanes naturally shows it
through a distorted funhouse mirror, rather providing a simple reflection
(see Edmonds 2004: 121). The chorus of mystai revel in the sunlight,
enjoying pleasures that recall the delights of the Eleusinian festivals during
life. They ban from their company—with a parody of the Eleusinian
prorrhesis barring murders and barbarians—all those who are detrimental to
the welfare of the city, especially politicians who stir up factionalism or
otherwise exploit the city’s troubles for their own profit (Ar. Ran. 353–71).
Such folk are not deserving of the happy afterlife of the chorus; they instead
belong in the great muck and ever-flowing excrement to which the
unworthy are doomed (Ar. Ran. 145–51, 274–6). Aristophanes uses the
traditional images of afterlife compensation in his comic social
commentary, presenting the afterlife as a carnivalesque reflection of
contemporary life. The troubles of life are rectified in the afterlife: the
Athenian people, enduring the last phases of the war, are represented in the
play by the blissful chorus of Eleusinian mystai, while those profiting from
Athens’ troubles suffer torments and humiliations.

The Spell of Plato

Some of the most powerful and influential imaginings of the afterlife in
Greek religion appear in the myths that Plato incorporates into his
dialogues. Plato carefully manipulates traditional motifs to provide images
of the afterlife that not only correlate with and illustrate the philosophical
discussions in a particular dialogue, but also set out a vision that coheres
with his ideas of life and the order of the cosmos. Plato uses the afterlife ‘to
think with’, adapting traditional images and ideas with an artistry that
influenced imaginings of the afterlife for millennia.
One of his themes is the role of self-examination, and the importance of
reflection. The myth in the Phaedo, with its complex geography, illustrates
the perils facing someone who relies entirely on the visible world of the
senses instead of the invisible world of thought (see Edmonds 2004: 159–
220). In the Gorgias, Socrates explicitly discusses his methods of
argumentation through the elenchos, in contrast with those of his rhetorical
interlocutors—and his description of the process of afterlife judgement
provides an illustration of this contrast: the vivid picture of the soul stripped
naked and revealing all its deformities and scars to the expert eye of the
judge is an image of the Socratic elenchos (cf. Edmonds 2012). At the end
of the Republic, in the myth of Er, Plato also makes use of traditional
mythic images of a judgement of the soul, along with some less familiar
ideas, like reincarnation, to highlight the critical role of self-examination.
The peculiar double process of determining one’s lot after death reflects the
distinction, made throughout the dialogue, between the extrinsic
recompense for justice and its intrinsic worth. The first judgement, which
sends the deceased to a thousand years of bliss or torment, is compensatory
for the life lived, precisely the kind of extrinsic reward or punishment for
justice that Socrates and his interlocutors dismiss at the start of the
discussion as an insufficient defence of the true value of philosophic justice
(Pl. Resp. 614c–d, 615a–b). After the thousand years, however, the souls
return to the place of judgement for the selection of the next life. Here,
despite the lottery that determines the order of choosing, the new fate of the
soul depends entirely on its ability to examine itself and make the
appropriate judgement. The soul with the first choice, having lived a
basically good life in a good city, never developed the ability to correct
itself and so tragically chooses wrongly, taking the life of a tyrant with
unlimited power, doomed to eat his own children and other typical
misfortunes of tyrants (619b–d). By contrast, the soul of Odysseus, having
learned from his long suffering how to curb his impulses, makes the good
choice of a just and philosophic life. Here, only the inherently just soul,
philosophically trained to examine and govern its impulses and appetites,
can make the right kind of choice when a really important crisis comes
(600b). Again, by transposing the judgement of an external judge into a
personal choice, Plato uses the traditional mythic elements to illustrate the
processes of philosophic thought, self-examination, and judgement
discussed in the dialogues.
While ideas of judgement and differentiated fates for the good and the
bad are familiar motifs in the evidence for Greek imaginings of a
compensatory afterlife, the idea of reincarnation that appears in the
Republic myth is an unusual one, appearing only in a limited range of
philosophical sources in connection with certain cosmological ideas (see
Edmonds 2013). For Plato, the idea that souls return to other bodies
appropriate to their natures illustrates the inherent rational order and justice
in the cosmos. This ethicized version of reincarnation does not appear
before Plato, even though Pythagoras is the figure traditionally credited
with the idea of transmigration (Xenophanes fr. 7 = Diog. Laert. 8.36). The
Pythagoreans, as Aristotle complains, imagine transmigration of any soul to
any body, regardless of the suitability of the soul for the body, and the most
substantive early evidence, Empedokles’ list of incarnations—a boy, a girl,
a bird, a plant, and a fish—baffles any attempt to find the reasons behind his
change of lives (Arist. De an. 407b20; Empedokles fr. 117 = Hippol. Haer.
1.3.2.3–4 = Diog. Laert. 8.77). Empedokles’ idea of such random
reincarnations is perhaps more plausibly linked to his theory of basic
elements that combine and recombine to make all things than to a Platonic
notion of cosmic justice. The return to life through a series of reincarnations
is a peculiar form of afterlife, which may be combined, as in Plato, with
other modes of afterlife, or stand on its own as part of a vision of the
workings of the cosmos.
While reincarnation is generally marked as an extra-ordinary idea
whenever it appears in the evidence, the idea that most surprises Socrates’
interlocutors in the Republic is the notion that the soul is actually immortal
(608d2–6). The image of a soul persisting after death, even being judged
and experiencing rewards and punishments, is familiar from the mythic
tradition, but the idea that all souls are immortal, the same kind of thing as
the gods, is shocking. Previously the idea was that only a few exceptional
figures, the heroes of myth or the greatest founders and benefactors of
society, achieve this status that Plato assigns to all soul by nature
(Empedokles fr. 112 = Diog. Laert. 8.62). Plato makes use of images and
ideas from his philosophical predecessors speculating about the nature of
the soul and the cosmos just as much as he uses ideas from the mythic
tradition, reshaping them all and weaving them into his own imaginings of
the afterlife to serve his own philosophical agenda.

CONCLUSION: NEITHER SINGLE NOR

SIMPLE

From simple visions of the deceased continuing after death as they were
best remembered in life, to elaborate literary and philosophical imaginings
of an afterlife that support complex ethical and cosmological ideas, the
images of afterlife in the Greek religious tradition make use of familiar
mythic elements to articulate their ideas. Underworld denizens such as
Kerberos or Persephone continue to appear in literature from Homer to
Plato, along with geographic features such as the river Styx, the Elysian
Field, or the pit of Tartaros. These traditional features were combined and
recombined in different ways by different authors, and no single vision ever
prevailed. Even though Homer’s epic vision of poetic immortality, as
preferable to a bleak and shadowy existence in Hades, remained influential
within the poetic literary tradition, ritual practices such as funerary cult
attest that other ideas of a more lively afterlife were widespread, and not
merely the province of marginal religious groups or avant-garde
philosophers.
The form in which the afterlife is imagined depends on the one doing the
imagining, and their ideas and intentions. Shaped by the familiar tropes of
the Greek mythic tradition, the specific features of each account arise from
the bricolage performed by the one imagining the afterlife. Individuals,
families, and even whole communities would transform their memories of
the living into a vision of afterlife existence. This kind of memory survival
maintains the relationships between the living and the dead, while
preserving important models of exemplary behaviour (or its opposite). As
these models are elaborated, in poetic form or philosophic argument, they
help to shape models of the way the cosmos works, how life and death are
intertwined, how the elements of the world combine and recombine into
new forms, or even how balance and justice ultimately prevail in a cosmos
governed by rationality. The ancient Greek imagining of the afterlife is, as
Plato says of the path to Hades (Phd. 108a), neither single nor simple, but
as rich and complex as any other aspect of the Greek mythic and religious
tradition.

SUGGESTED READING
Garland 1985 and Vermeule 1979 remain excellent basic introductions to
the topic, while Johnston 2004 sums up the material concisely. Sourvinou-
Inwood 1995 provides a dense and complicated look at the ideas of death
and afterlife in the Greek tradition, and Johnston 1999 examines ideas of
afterlife through an analysis of the problematic dead. References to nearly
all the relevant evidence can be found in Rohde 1925, even though his
nineteenth-century interpretive framework distorts its significance. The
studies of Albinus 2000 and Bremmer 2002 likewise provide good coverage
of the evidence, but their interpretive frames are also, at times, problematic.
Edmonds (2014) provides a more detailed treatment of many of these
themes.

REFERENCES
Albinus, L. 2000. The House of Hades: Studies in Ancient Greek Eschatology. Aarhus.
Boedeker, D. D. and Sider, D. 2001. The New Simonides: Contexts of Praise and Desire. Oxford and
New York.
Bremmer, J. N. 2002. The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife: The 1995 Read-Tuckwell Lectures at the
University of Bristol. London.
Clarke, M. 1999. Flesh and Spirit in the Songs of Homer: A Study of Words and Myths. Oxford.
Claus, D. 1981. Toward the Soul: An Inquiry into the Meaning of Psychē before Plato. New Haven,
CT.
Crane, G. 1988. Calypso: Backgrounds and Conventions of the Odyssey, 556. Frankfurt.
Edmonds, R. 2004. Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the ‘Orphic’ Gold
Tablets. New York.
Edmonds, R. 2008. ‘Extra-ordinary People: Mystai and Magoi, Magicians and Orphics in the
Derveni Papyrus’, CPh 103: 16–39.
Edmonds, R. 2009. ‘Who Are You? Mythic Narrative and Identity’, in The ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets:
Mystic Cults in Magna Graecia, ed. G. Casadio and P. A. Johnston, 73–95. Austin, TX.
Edmonds, R. ed. 2011. The Orphic Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further Along the Path.
Cambridge.
Edmonds, R. 2012. ‘Whip Scars on the Naked Soul: Myth and Elenchos’, in Plato’s Gorgias:
Platonic Myths: Status, Uses, and Functions, ed. C. Collobert, P. Destrée, and F. J. Gonzalez, 165–
86. Leiden.
Edmonds, R. 2013. Redefining Ancient Orphism: A Study in Greek Religion. Cambridge.
Edmonds, R. 2014. ‘A Lively Afterlife and Beyond: The Soul in Plato, Homer, and the Orphica’,
Études platoniciennes 11, <http://etudesplatoniciennes.revues.org/517>.
Garland, R. 1985. The Greek Way of Death. Ithaca, NY.
Johnston, S. I. 1999. Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece.
Berkeley.
Johnston, S. I. 2004. ‘Death, the Afterlife, and Other Last Things: Greece’, in Religions of the
Ancient World: A Guide, ed. S. I. Johnston, 486–8. Cambridge, MA.
Kaibel, G. 1878. Epigrammata Graeca ex Lapidibus Collecta. Berolini.
Lévi-Strauss, C. 1966. The Savage Mind. Chicago.
Rohde, E. 1925. Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, trans. W. B.
Hillis. London.
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 1981. ‘To Die and Enter the House of Hades: Homer, Before and After’, in
Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death, ed. J. Whaley, 15–39. New York.
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 1986. ‘Crime and Punishment: Tityos, Tantalos, and Sisyphos in Odyseey 11’,
BICS 33: 37–58.
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 1995. ‘Reading’ Greek Death. Oxford.
Thönges-Stringaris, R. N. 1965. ‘Das griechische Totenmahl’, MDAI(A) 80: 1–99.
Thomas, R. 1992. Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece. Cambridge.
Vermeule, E. 1979. Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA.
 PART IX

BEYOND?
 CHAPTER 38

MAGNA GRAECIA (SOUTH ITALY

AND SICILY)

GILLIAN SHEPHERD

INTRODUCTION

SOME of the most impressive testaments to ancient Greek religion are to be

found not in Greece, but in Sicily and South Italy, where landscapes are still
dominated today by magnificent Doric temples, much as they were in
antiquity. Despite being unmistakeably Greek, these temples nevertheless
differ in a number of significant respects from their mainland Greek
counterparts; just as for other aspects of Western Greek culture, the
evidence for religion suggests it did not necessarily entail a straightforward
duplication of homeland practices.
This chapter aims to review Greek religion in Magna Graecia in the
Archaic and Classical periods. It is divided into three sections: an overview
of the broad religious profiles of the Western Greek states, including
evidence for the transfer and duplication of cults from mainland Greece, but
also the routes by which states might produce individualized religious
frameworks independent of any other Greek city; a brief discussion of the
physical evidence for Western Greek religion, especially the temples; and,
finally, a review of the evidence for the maintenance of religious ties with
Greece, often seen as fundamental to interstate relationships. It concentrates
on Sicily, since some of the best evidence (both textual and archaeological)
relates to that island; it should be noted that while the term ‘Magna Graecia’
in its strictest application only incorporates South Italy, here it will also be
used in its more casual sense to include Sicily, in the interests of
convenience.

RELIGION IN MAGNA GRAECIA:

TRADITION AND INNOVATION

Transfer of Cult
A long-standing view of religion in Magna Graecia is that, with only a few
exceptions, particular cults can be traced back specifically to the relevant
historical mother-city, or else to Panhellenic cults such as Zeus Olympios
(Dunbabin 1948: 177–83; on the difficult concept of Panhellenic, see, in
this volume, Constantakopoulou, Chapter 19). It is a view based on a range
of contributing factors: one is that there is some evidence that just such a
scenario did indeed occur; it is also a situation that might be predicted and
has, to some degree, been assumed, given the broad cult similarities of
Greek states and the haziness of our detailed knowledge of cults of the later
eighth and earlier seventh centuries. Such an assumption forms part of a
wider and older understanding that Greek settlements abroad duplicated the
cultural practices of their mother-cities; these assessments were informed
partly by passages such as Thucydides’ reporting of relationships between
Corinth and Corcyra (1.25.4 and 1.38.2–4; see further ‘Mother-Cities’
below) and the influence of modern imperialist models on the study of
Greek settlement in the West (for discussion, see Shepherd 2005a, with
references).
 In terms of tracing the transfer of cults from a mother-city to a new
foundation, a classic case study is the three-generation sequence of Megara
(Nisaia) in Greece and Megara Hyblaia and Selinus in Sicily (Hanell 1934:
174 ff.; Manni 1975; cf. Fischer-Hansen 2009: 217). Although (despite
recent excavation) the deities of Megara Hyblaia remain a mystery (Gras,
Tréziny, and Broise 2004: 553), the city is chronologically framed by its
mother-city and sub-colony, for which the cults are better known. The
evidence for Selinuntine cults is rather stronger than that for Megara, since
it comes mainly from a fifth-century BCE inscription (IG XIV 268) that lists
gods in a thank-offering for a victory; for Megara, the evidence is primarily
the account provided by Pausanias (1.39.4–44.3), the late date of which
makes its use for reconstructing the cults of Archaic Megara, let alone
Megara Hyblaia, problematic.
However, two deities attested at Selinus and Megara might point to a
specific link and provide more compelling evidence than the simple
repetition of the regular deities worshipped all over the Greek world.
Pausanias (1.44.4) reports a sanctuary of Demeter Malophoros for Megara.
At Selinus, in addition to a goddess Malophoros, named on the inscription,
a sanctuary of Demeter Malophoros has been identified west of the city.
The other cult—although a less convincing one due to its diffusion
throughout the Greek world especially as a private cult—is that of Zeus
Melichios, attested at Selinus through numerous inscriptions in a precinct
near the Malophoros sanctuary and the lex sacra (a fifth-century inscribed
lead tablet believed to come from Selinus), and at Megara as a private cult,
from an inscribed boundary marker (Jameson, Jordan, and Kotansky 1993:
esp. 81–102).
Nevertheless, while the transfer of cults and maintenance of familiar
religion are inherently likely, there was still room for manoeuvre and
manipulation in the formulation of religion in the Greek West. This is
indicated by the Selinus inscription, which identifies a new deity,
Pasikrateia (‘All-ruling goddess’, possibly to be identified with Kore; see
Calder 1963: 32, with references). Whichever cults were or were not
transferred from homeland cities in the earlier stages of settlement, it seems
clear that it was not a simple case of duplication and maintenance of
nostalgic ties through identical cults: over time, the individual religious
profiles of Western Greek states were moulded so that they distinguished
themselves from their cities of origin through sacral independence, much
like any other Greek polis. This might be achieved in a variety of ways, and
often with some rapidity.
The introduction of minor local deities was an obvious route to achieving
religious and cultic distinction. At Syracuse, a cult of the nymph Arethousa
was centred around the freshwater spring on the island of Ortygia, which is
in unusual proximity to the sea (Figure 38.1)—the sort of geographical
anomaly that prompted a sense of inherent sacredness in the minds of the
Greeks, and often led to the establishment of a cult (Malkin 1987: 141–2).
FIGURE 38.1 The Arethousa freshwater spring on the island of Ortygia, Syracuse, in close
proximity to the sea (photo: G. Shepherd).
 The spring was also mentioned in the foundation oracle as recorded by
Pausanias (5.7.3; see also Pind. Nem. 1.1 and Ibyc. fr. 21 Diehl), and at
some point was given further significance through a link to Olympia: in the
same passage Pausanias recounts the myth of the hunter Alpheios chasing
Arethousa, who escaped only when Artemis turned her into a spring and
Alpheios into the river at Olympia. The spring and river met under the sea:
assertions recorded by Strabo (6.2.4) that the spring ran red with the blood
from sacrifices at Olympia and that a cup thrown into the Alpheios would
resurface in the spring on Ortygia were produced in proof of this. Such
claims of a direct physical link might well have been forged in the context
of Syracusan interest in the cult of Zeus Olympios and Western Greek
activity at Olympia in general (see further ‘Delphi and Olympia’ below).
Elsewhere, other minor deities or claims of mythical events were liberally
sprinkled across the landscape, such as Gela’s river god, Gelas, who
appeared on coins (Dunbabin 1948: 178), or the assertion that the fountain
of Cyane near Syracuse was the site of the rape of Persephone, as was—
perhaps later—Enna (Diod. Sic. 4.23.4, 5.3.2, 5.4.1–2; Dunbabin 1948:
180).

Oikist Cult
A regular addition to a Western Greek pantheon may have been a cult of the
oikist (Malkin 1987: 189–266). The oikist, as leader of the settlement party,
seems to have had a religious role which entailed obtaining an oracle from
Delphi, laying out sanctuaries, and the reward of an honorific cult after he
died. Evidence for oikist cults is scanty; the argument that they were a
general feature of new settlements rests mainly on allusions in Herodotos
(6.38), to sacrifices due to state founders, and on Thucydides (5.11.1), who
describes the burial of Brasidas in the agora of Amphipolis, his adoption as
city founder, and consequent heroic worship. This element of a heroic burial
in the agora and a focal point for a hero-cult is reiterated by the scholion on
Pindar (Ol. 1.149 (= 93)), which notes ‘founders were buried in the centre
of poleis according to custom’.
For the Greek West, the best evidence is a fragment of Callimachus (Aet.
2.43), which lists a number of Sicilian states (including Gela, Leontinoi,
and Megara (Hyblaia)), followed by the observation that ‘no one whoever
once built a wall for any of these cities comes to its customary feast without
being named’, and an explanation for why Zankle presents an exception to
this rule. The implication of this passage is that an annual festival
commemorating the foundation of the city and its founder was a regular
feature across Greek Sicily at least. This annual commemoration might also
have served to preserve other aspects of foundation history, including
foundation stories and chronology (see further Dunbabin 1948: 11 and
Malkin 1987: 197–8). Through a cult of the oikist, individual settlements
could acquire a cult that was unique to that city and which emphasized the
formulation of a new and independent state (Malkin 1987: 200; cf.
Dunbabin 1948).
Archaeologically, the most compelling piece of evidence for oikist cults
is the foot of an early fifth-century Attic kylix, found on the acropolis at
Gela and bearing the inscription Manisthales anetheke Antiphamoi
(‘Manistheles dedicated me to Antiphemos’). Antiphemos was the Rhodian
oikist of Gela (Thuc. 6.4.3). Otherwise, the evidence is more tenuous, but
relates mainly to possible shrines in agoras, although actual tombs are more
elusive. One interpretation of the mysterious sixth-century heröon or
‘underground shrine’ (Figure 38.2) at Poseidonia (which contained iron
spits, bronze vessels, and a late sixth-century Athenian black-figure hydria),
is that it was a cenotaph for the founder of Sybaris, whence the Troizenian
settlers of Poseidonia purportedly came (Pedley 1990: 38–9). At Selinus, an
enclosed precinct (approx. 6.7 × 8.6m) in the agora contained a
sarcophagus-like structure of carefully joined stone slabs; while there is
unfortunately no evidence for its date or purpose, an obvious interpretation
is of a heröon containing the grave or cenotaph of the oikist of Selinus
(Mertens 2006: 178). At Megara Hyblaia ‘building d’ on the west border of
the agora is neither a tomb nor a cenotaph (the oikist Lamis died at Thapsos
(Thuc. 6.4.1), where a reused Bronze Age Sikel chamber tomb may be his
grave: Orsi 1895: 103–4), but is clearly a cult site and has been tentatively
identified as an oikist heröon (Gras, Tréziny, and Broise 2004: 419).
FIGURE 38.2 The sixth-century ‘underground shrine’ at Poseidonia (Paestum), thought to be in or
near the original Greek agora of the city (photo: G. Shepherd).

Olympian Gods
As far as major cults and the Olympian gods are concerned, there is some
evidence to suggest that even where overlaps in cult occurred between
historical founder states and settlements in Magna Graecia, there was some
adjustment of the city pantheon to ensure the differences of prominence and
cultic status which likewise distinguished the religious spectra of other
Greek poleis. The comparison of Syracuse with her historical mother-city
Corinth provides an interesting case study in this respect.
Both cities had early and important temples dedicated to Apollo, both of
which occupied conspicuous positions. However, although at Corinth the
Apollo temple was pre-eminent (on its identification, see Bookidis and
Stroud 2004), at Syracuse Apollo was arguably relegated to a slightly lower
position. The temple was built near the isthmus on Ortygia, and was
obvious to anyone approaching or departing the island, but did not, in fact,
occupy the highest and more central position. This was the focus of a cult
from as early as the eighth century BCE, and was home to a succession of
religious structures culminating in the fifth-century Temple of Athena (Voza
1999). Only a few metres away and parallel to the Athena temple was a
monumental Ionic temple, possibly not completed, but begun in the late
sixth century BCE (Figure 38.3).

FIGURE 38.3 The Piazza Minerva, Siracusa (Syracuse): on the left is the fifth-century Temple of
Athena, now the cathedral of Siracusa (the temple steps and columns are still visible on the exterior);
on the right, the black lines on the pavement mark out the position of the Ionic temple.

The attribution of this temple is uncertain, but one candidate is Artemis,

on the basis of Cicero’s reference (Verr. 4.53.118) to two splendid Temples
of Diana (Artemis) and Minerva (Athena) on Ortygia. Alternatively, Apollo
may have had to share his temple with Artemis (Cultrera 1971, esp. 704; cf.
Dinsmoor 1950: 75 with n. 2, who thinks the Artemis temple was elsewhere
on Ortygia). Outside the main city, Artemis also had sanctuaries at Scala
Greca and Belvedere, and a presence in the Achradina Demeter and Kore
sanctuary by the Classical period (Fischer-Hansen 2009: 2010–14). Overall,
Artemis seems to have been more prominent than in Corinth (Fischer-
Hansen 2009: 214); Apollo perhaps rather less so; and, as Dunbabin (1948:
177) observed, two of the most important goddesses of Corinth—Hera and
Aphrodite—were given little attention in Syracuse.
Another important cult at Syracuse was that of Zeus Olympios, for which
there is only rather limited and late tenuous evidence at Corinth (Paus. 2.5.5
and 3.9.2; Theophr. Caus. pl. 5.14.2; see Dinsmoor 1949 on possible links
to architectural elements found at the north edge of Corinth; cf. Pfaff 2003:
115–19). In Syracuse this cult was sufficiently prominent by the mid-sixth
century BCE to warrant the construction of a monumental extra-urban
temple overlooking the Great Harbour. Here we may see yet another route
by which city-states in the West could acquire particular religious profiles:
the promotion of family or private cults to state level. For Syracuse, this
might have been due to the efforts of the ancestors of one Hagesias, a friend
of Hieron I of Syracuse. Hagesias’ ancestry is detailed in Pindar’s Olympian
6, where he is described as a member of the prophetic family of the Iamidai
of Olympia and also as synoikister (co-founder). The latter term might refer
to collaboration with Hieron (Diod. Sic. 11.49.1, 66, 76.3; Pind. Ol. 6
suggests that Hieron persuaded Hagesias to emigrate from Arcadia to
Syracuse; see Fisher forthcoming), but it prompted a scholiast’s note
(Schol. Vet. Ol. 6.6 8a) that Hagesias was descended from Iamidai who
accompanied the oikist Archias to Syracuse. If so, then they and/or their
descendants may have been responsible for the establishment and
promotion of the cult of Zeus Olympios at Syracuse, and possibly also the
cults of Arethousa and Artemis Alpheioa (Weniger 1915).

Private to State
Further evidence for the escalation of private cults to state level comes from
Gela and Selinus. According to Herodotos (7.153), Telines, an ancestor of
Gelon (tyrant of Gela and a Denomenid) managed to negotiate the return of
Geloans who had taken refuge in Maktorion following civil unrest (late
seventh century?) through sacred objects of the cult of Demeter and Kore.
In securing the deal, Telines made it a condition that his descendants should
be priests of the cult; Herodotos was uncertain as to how Telines had
acquired the objects, but the scholiast on Pindar’s Pythian Ode 2.27b
(Drachmann) notes that the cult was brought to Gela by the first
Deinomenes. This suggests that Telines’ achievement was the promotion of
a family cult to state level. Certainly the cult was very prominent in Gela,
notably at the Bitalemi sanctuary just outside the city. Gelon might also
have had both family and state interests in mind when, upon taking control
of Syracuse, he established twin temples to Demeter and Kore there (White
1964: 261–7; cf. Bookidis 2003: 248–51 for evidence for an early
Corinthian source for the cult).
At Selinus, the lex sacra (see ‘Transfer of Cult’ above) refers to
sacrifices to Zeus Melichios en myskos, translatable as ‘in the plot of
Myskos’; this, together with a similar reference to en euthydamo (‘in the
plot of Euthydamos’) is interpreted by the editors of the inscription as the
names of men belonging to prominent gentilitial groups which, like others
in the Greek world, had a family cult of Zeus Melichios. However, whereas
at Megara and elsewhere the cult of Zeus Melichios was usually a private or
family one, at Selinus the precinct of Zeus Melichios, west of the city near
the sanctuary of Demeter Malaphoros, suggests that the cult extended to the
wider community (Jameson, Jordan, and Kotansky 1993: esp. 7 and 28–9,
with references).
One factor which may have played a very active part in supplying and
promoting cults other than those directly transferable from the historical
mother-city, or which could be created upon settlement like the oikist cult,
is the presence of individuals and groups that traced their origins to
different parts of Greece. The Iamidai at Syracuse, discussed previously,
might present one such case. Dunbabin (1948: 183) suspected that for
settlements like Metaponto in South Italy, which lacked clear traditions of
origin, but which also had a ‘wide range of unusual cults’, this might be the
explanation. In fact, given more recent views on the likely derivation of
settlers and indeed later arrivals—that they are unlikely, on practical
demographic grounds, to have all come from the mother-cities named in the
literary sources (Snodgrass 1994: 2)—this explanation may well have more
widespread application.
Indigenous Influences
It is likely that these mixed populations included individuals deriving from
the indigenous populations of Sicily and South Italy. Although earlier
scholars were reluctant to accept the presence of Sicilians or Italians in
Greek settlements in any context beyond slavery, more recent views accept
that cohabitation and intermarriage are likely to have occurred, despite the
difficulties in identifying such individuals in the archaeological record (for
discussion, and references to scholarship, see Shepherd 2005b). Whatever
the precise realities of the situation, interaction with local communities and
the influence of local religion are clearly important potential factors in the
development of Greek religion in the West.
A difficulty here is our lack of information regarding the nature of
religion in Sicily and South Italy before the arrival of the Greeks. There is a
striking dearth of sites that can be unequivocally identified as religious or
cultic in nature: the assumption must be that, prior to Greek settlement,
indigenous religion had little or no material manifestation. Such cult sites as
are archaeologically identifiable become obvious only in periods post-
dating the arrival of the Greeks, and can include Greek-style structures and
Greek objects as votive offerings. This is the case at the sanctuary of the
twin gods, the Palikoi (mod. Rocchicella di Mineo; Diod. Sic. 11.88.6–
11.89), in south-eastern Sicily: although there are traces of occupation
dating back as far as the Palaeolithic period and including Late Bronze Age
tombs, evidence for cultic use dates only to the seventh century BCE at best,
and most is fifth century and later (Maniscalco and McConnell 2003). It
might reasonably be asked whether the concept of making non-perishable
(and often minor) offerings to a deity might not be a cultural practice
derived from the Greeks.
The idea that a pre-existing indigenous cult site might have prompted
syncretism or the establishment of a Greek cult on the same site has often
been put forward as an explanation and rationale for the choice of a
sanctuary location (for discussion and references, see Malkin 1987, esp.
160–3). Unfortunately, even where evidence of indigenous activity does
pre-date a Greek cult site, there are problems both in chronological
continuity and in identifying the earlier remains as religious rather than, say,
domestic in nature. Two sanctuaries of Demeter—the Bitalemi sanctuary at
Gela and the S. Biagio sanctuary at Akragas—were both originally reported
to have produced indigenous pottery dating between the eighth and sixth
centuries BCE, as well as Protocorinthian and Corinthian pottery (Orsi 1906:
595 ff.; Marconi 1933: 50). For the former, subsequent excavation
identified a lack of material of the first half of the seventh century
(Orlandini 1966: esp. 17–27); for the latter, it is possible that Late
Corinthian pieces were misidentified as Protocorinthian (Dunbabin 1948:
307 with n. 3; Siracusano 1983: 73). In both cases there is no clear evidence
of continuity of use, nor indeed that the sites were always religious in
nature.
That said, there is some evidence that indigenous religion not only
survived, but also that it was of interest to the Greeks. Later references to
cults of a goddess Hyblaia (Paus. 5.23.6; see further Dunbabin 1948: 144–
5); Hadranus (a fire-god identified with Hephaistos: Ael. NA 11.3); and the
Palikoi attest to this, while the prominence of Demeter and Kore in Sicily is
not only explained in terms of their relevance to the agricultural wealth of
the island, but also possible syncretism with an indigenous chthonic deity
(Diod. Sic. 5.2.3–3.2; Pace 1945: 469; cf. Zuntz 1971: 72–3). Many aspects
of this influence may well have been of an irrecoverable nature, perhaps
involving shifts in belief and myth, or alterations and additions to ritual.
Polybios (12.5.10) describes one such case at Locri in South Italy: the
Locrians (having expelled the Sikels) reportedly adopted several Sikel rites
where they had no inherited tradition of their own. However, this was not
without careful adaptation: for the leader of sacrificial processions, the
Locrians substituted a noble virgin for the Sikel well-born youth, on the
grounds of the unusual Locrian custom of matrilineal nobility.
Although signs of local influence on Greek cult are few, difficult to
detect, and oblique rather than direct, there is another important arena in
which such influence might be a factor and which arguably also presents
another manifestation of religious independence on the part of the Western
Greeks: temple design. As noted in the ‘Introduction’ of this chapter, Sicily
and South Italy are littered with the remains of splendid temples that, while
recognizably Greek, cannot be mistaken for the products of Greece.

TEMPLES IN MAGNA GRAECIA

Current scholarship on the development of Greek architecture holds that the
Greeks who first settled in Sicily and South Italy in the later eighth century
BCE did not take with them any tradition of monumental temple
architecture. Rather, what ultimately became the Classical Greek temple
built in stone, and its associated orders, was formulated over the course of
the seventh century BCE. It reached full expression by the early sixth century
BCE, notably in such early Doric structures as the Temple of Artemis on
Corfu and the Temple of Hera at Olympia.
Channels of architectural communication were clearly open, since
developments either side of the Ionian Sea were far from independent: the
essential ground plan, elevation, and orders (including a preference for the
Doric order) are the same in both Greece and Magna Graecia. In this
context it is significant that the earlier date now proposed for the Temple of
Apollo at Syracuse—c.600 BCE rather than c.570 BCE—not only extends its
priority over the Temple of Apollo in Corinth, but also places it amongst the
very earliest monumental temples with a stone colonnade. An intriguing
feature of the temple is the inscription across the top front step: although its
reading has been much debated, it seems likely that it refers to one
Kleomenes in the role of a wealthy contractor or donor, and probably one
with social and even political ambitions (Figure 38.4). A parallel might be
provided by the inscription on the mid-sixth century BCE Temple A2 at
Metaponto, which vaunts ‘to himself and his genos (clan)’, and has been
interpreted as referring to the local tyrant. In the West, the ambitions of the
wealthy might have been more thinly veiled when it came to temple
building (Shepherd forthcoming).
FIGURE 38.4 The Temple of Apollo (Syracuse), with the remains of the double colonnade at the
entrance. The inscription is just visible along the top step: the letters ΚΛ are clearest, under the left-
hand column (photo: G. Shepherd).

Construction
Although in the past Western Greek temple architecture has often been
damned as crude and imitative—Dinsmoor (1950: 75) famously denounced
its ‘barbaric distortions’—the Apollo temple at Syracuse indicates that
monumental architecture in the West was highly innovative from a very
early stage, and architects there were at the forefront of its development.
Certainly, its later development did not exactly parallel that of the mainland,
and in many respects, including engineering, investment, and decoration,
may even have led the way. As in Ionia, at the eastern end of the Greek
world, sixth-century architects in the West were building temples on a
colossal scale, notably Temple GT at Selinus and the Temple of Zeus
Olympios at Akragas; although such a venture was attempted in Peisistratid
Athens, whether for reasons of resources, politics, or motivation, it was
abandoned before the structure was completed.
Other features of scale, such as the tendency to greater unsupported roof
spans in Western structures, might point to better resources such as heavier
timber for beams (Coulton 1977: 158), but equally might indicate more
sophisticated roofing systems such as the truss (Hodge 1960: 38–44); it has
been argued that Sicilian roofing systems influenced those in Greece (Klein
1998). Different solutions to architectural problems were also preferred in
the West: for example, the inevitable problem of positioning triglyphs over
corner columns was usually solved by stretching the metopes in the West; it
was not until c.480 BCE that the angle contraction employed in mainland
Greece throughout the sixth century BCE became a regular feature (Coulton
1974: 72–82; 1977: 62).
In plan and elevation, Western temples also display a distinct local style
throughout the sixth century BCE and down to at least 480 BCE, conspicuous
in three main features: wide flank colonnades in relation to the width of the
cella (main room); a tendency towards elongation with higher numbers of
flank columns (often sixteen or seventeen); and, in part contributing to the
latter factor, frontal emphasis created by a deeper and/or more elaborate
arrangement of the pronaos (front porch), while the rear of the cella was
closed by a plain adyton (back room) rather than the opisthodomos (back
porch) which usually balanced the pronaos on mainland temples (Winter
1976: 140). The Temples of Apollo at Syracuse and Corinth provide good
comparisons in these last respects: the former had a peristyle of 6 x 17
columns, which incorporated a double front colonnade as well as a two-
columned porch and a blank adyton (see Figure 38.4); the Corinth temple
had a colonnade of 6 x 15 columns, and both pronaos and opisthodomos
had two columns.
Other oddities occur more than once also: internal staircases appear in
several Western Greek temples, notably in pairs in the Temples of Concord
(c.430 BCE) and Herakles (c.500 BCE) at Akragas, Athena at Paestum (c.510
BCE), and Victory at Himera (c.480 BCE), where they are located on either
side of the entrance to the cella. These seem unnecessarily elaborate for
simple access to the roof space for maintenance: it has been suggested that
they relate to the use of the attic for storage (and even display), or for ritual
ascents and descents (Hodge 1960: 37–8; Miles 1985). Winter (1976: 140)
suggested that the wide colonnades might reflect their greater use for cult
purposes, especially in Sicily. The regular incorporation of an adyton might
likewise reflect Western Greek approaches to rituals; certainly the highly
unusual enclosed colonnades of Temple F (Selinus) and the Temple of Zeus
Olympios (Akragas), where screen walls stretched between the columns,
suggest quite distinctive cult practices (Dinsmoor 1950: 99, 101). The
possibility that this also reflects some indigenous impact on ritual should
not be discounted.

Locations
In addition to some details of their construction, Western Greek temples are
also notable for their location and number. Their placement in the grid
patterns that distinguish the layout of the cities of Magna Graecia indicate
that they were positioned for both practicality and maximum visibility
(Malkin 1987: 164–86), and they regularly appear in multiples and often in
close proximity to each other (Figure 38.5).
FIGURE 38.5 The Temples of Hera II (‘Temple of Neptune’, mid-fifth century BCE) in the
foreground and Hera I (‘The Basilica’, mid-sixth century BCE) in the background, in close proximity
at Poseidonia (Paestum); compare also Figure 38.3 (photo: G. Shepherd).

In these respects, not only did the sacred landscapes of the West look
very different from those of the mainland, but they also testify to what must
have been a potent, if expensive, form of rivalry between competing city-
states. The total ensemble of monumental temples in each city—six at
Selinus and at least four at Akragas alone by the end of fifth century BCE—
presents an extraordinary degree of urban ostentation that largely preceded
similar efforts elsewhere, such as in Periklean Athens.
The increasing scale of individual temples suggests close attention was
paid to the construction activities of rivals in an effort to outdo them in the
architectural sphere as in others (Snodgrass 1986: 55–6). The earliest
peripteral temple at Selinus (Temple C, c.550 BCE) outstripped both early
temples at Syracuse (Apollo and Zeus Olympios) in the dimensions of the
stylobate and column height; it, in turn, was surpassed by the Temple of
Herakles at Akragas. While the inspiration for the colossal temples at
Selinus (GT) and Akragas (Zeus Olympios) may well have come from the
earlier Ionic versions in Ionia, the dimensions of the two Sicilian edifices—
almost identical in length, but over 2 metres wider for the slightly later
Akragas temple—show that local competition could be fierce. An increase
in length might have been less noticeable on such a huge building, but such
an increase in width, together with taller columns and a higher entablature,
not to mention the monolithic effect of the screen wall, must have made the
Akragas temple the clear front-runner, even though neither temple was
actually finished. One cannot help but suspect that, towards the end of the
sixth century BCE, someone from Akragas paid a visit to Selinus with a
tape-measure in hand.

Sculpture
Given the size, grandeur, and number of temples in the West, one category
of evidence is surprisingly rare in the sanctuaries: sculpture. This applies
both to architectural and free-standing works. For the former, there are
some well-known groups of metopes—interestingly, they appear to be
concentrated at particular sites—such as those from Temples C, FS, Y (all
Archaic) and E (early Classical) at Selinus, of which several survive in a
good state from each temple. The most extensive cycle comes from the
‘Treasury’ of the Heraion at Foce del Sele outside Poseidonia, and to these
may be added the metopes from the temple, but thus far the three great
temples of Poseidonia itself seem to have lacked any sculptural decoration
(Ridgway 1977: 239, 243; Pedley 1990: 49). This lack is especially curious
given that the early date of the Foce del Sele ‘Treasury’ metopes (and,
indeed, those from Temple C at Selinus) might well support Ridgway’s
(1977: 248) suggestion that sculpted metopes were invented in the West—
another instance of Western Greek innovation. Gorgon images were
favoured to some degree, perhaps over the narrative cycles that were
increasingly common in Greece. Examples include the terracotta
pedimental gorgon of Temple C (Selinus) and the gorgon metopes adorning
the sixth-century BCE Temple of Athena in Syracuse. Most surviving
sculptural decoration is metopal rather than pedimental, although variations
could be highly unusual, such as the enormous telamon figures on the
Temple of Zeus at Akragas, which contribute much to distinguishing this
temple from more canonical structures.
There is even less evidence for the free-standing sculptures that might
justifiably be expected as ostentatious dedications in the sanctuaries. Much,
of course, could have been taken (the Romans, especially the rapacious
Verres, are always suspects here), but we should still expect to find some
evidence of their existence in the form of statue bases and inscriptions.
Occasionally some rather unimpressive fixings have been found, such as the
range of thirteen limestone stelai found in the vicinity of the sixth-century
BCE Temple of Athena in Syracuse which the excavator Paolo Orsi (1918)
suggested originally supported bronze or marble sculptures, on the grounds
of cuttings in their top surfaces. Other works, such as the draped kouros
from Syracuse, may have been displayed in sanctuaries (its original location
is unknown), but many of the relatively few pieces of free-standing
sculpture in the West derive from cemeteries, not sanctuaries.

MAGNA GRAECIA AND GREECE:

RELIGIOUS INTERACTION

Delphi and Olympia

In contrast to the sanctuaries in Magna Graecia, lavish dedications from the
Western Greek states are well known in mainland Greece, at least from the
Panhellenic sanctuaries (see also, in this volume, Scott, Chapter 16). The
bronze Delphi Charioteer dedicated to commemorate the chariot race
victory of Polyzalos of Gela in either 478 or 474 BCE, is probably the best
known, but others, such as Gelon’s tripod (Diod. Sic. 11.26.7), also
demonstrate Deinomenid interest in Delphi. Amongst other Western Greek
offerings are Selinus’ gold branch of the celery plant from which the city
took its name (Plut. De Pyth. or. 12), and the relatively late Syracusan
Treasury (Paus. 10.11.5). At Olympia, dedications appear even more
numerous and also of greater antiquity: smaller-scale objects dating to the
eighth and seventh centuries BCE and deriving from Italy and/or Sicily
include fibulae and other jewellery, armour, and weaponry, and account for
at least 8.9 per cent of all foreign dedications (Kilian-Dirlmeier 1985). The
Western Greeks are the most likely candidates as the donors, and some
votives, such as the four spearheads of a type common in Sicily (similar to a
find from the Syracusan Athenaion) seem likely to have advertised a Greek
victory in an encounter with the local population to a very wide audience at
Olympia (Snodgrass 1964: 128–9).
Larger Western Greek dedications at Olympia are helpfully listed by
Pausanias (Books 5 and 6, passim) and include inter alia a Zeus statue, ‘an
offering of the people of Metapontum’ (5.22.5) and a dedication of plunder
by the people of Akragas from their war with Motya (5.25.5). The most
conspicuous dedications were, of course, the treasuries: five of the twelve
structures along the treasury terrace are identified as Western Greek
dedications by Pausanias, with a possible sixth, if the ‘Megarian’ Treasury
is in fact the ‘Megara Hyblaian Treasury’ (Boardman 1978: 160; Morgan
1999: 419).

Mother-Cities
The Western Greeks clearly identified Olympia and Delphi as the best
destinations for objects and structures designed to advertise their successes
and prosperity. But what of ongoing communication in the religious arena
between Western Greek states and their historical mother-cities, as opposed
to the wider platform of the Panhellenic sanctuaries? Amongst the
contributing factors to the view that the Western settlements duplicated
inheritable pantheons are the passages in Thucydides (1.25.4 and 1.38.2–4)
which refer to common festival gatherings and due respect paid to Corinth
by her colonies. The comments are made in the context of Corinthian
annoyance that Corcyra, unlike other Corinthian colonies, did not in the
fifth century observe Corinthian precedence. Since Corcyra, like Syracuse,
was founded in the later eighth century these passages are often taken to
reflect not only universal, ongoing religious relationships between founding
cities and their offspring, but also the antiquity of such relationships and
their existence from the earliest stages of Greek ventures overseas and
throughout the Archaic period.
 There is scattered evidence, especially from Classical and later
inscriptions, that elsewhere in the Greek world some foundations were
required to maintain a relationship with their mother-cities through religion,
including participation in festivals and dedications. However, it is
questionable whether such a relationship can really be applied to the early
settlements and to Syracuse in particular. Other Corinthian settlements—
such as Leukas, Ambrakia, and Anaktorion—were founded later, under the
tyrants. They had a greater degree of political connection, including oikists
who were the tyrants’ sons (Graham 1984), and that may well have been
articulated through religious rites; they were also geographically closer,
which would have facilitated greater interaction. The situation of Syracuse
and Corcyra was rather different, since both were politically independent
from foundation. In addition, Syracuse’s short-lived fifth-century
democracy was preceded by the tyranny of the Deinominids of Gela and,
following Gelon’s reported programme of resettlement, the city would also
have had numerous inhabitants with no nostalgic ties to Corinth. It seems
unlikely that, in the fifth century, there would have been any reason for
Syracuse to maintain a subservient relationship through religion with
Corinth. The fact that Corcyra was singled out as behaving badly, and had
obviously been doing so for some time (Hdt. 3.49), might have had more to
do with possible formalities put in place when that island was under the
domination of the Corinthian tyrant Periander (making Corycra more like
the other tyrant colonies), than with any original arrangement that can be
universally applied even to the earlier Archaic foundations.
The evidence for dedication at mother-city sanctuaries, especially of the
non-perishable variety, is also of interest in this context. In comparison with
that from the Panhellenic sanctuaries discussed (‘Delphi and Olympia’), it
is for the most part an argument ex silentio. Nevertheless, there are
indications that, if an ongoing relationship existed, it was sporadic and
strategic rather than continuous and regularly observed.
Surviving artefacts at mother-city sanctuaries which can be securely
linked with Magna Graecia can be described as negligible in number or
even non-existent. At Perachora, ‘Italian’ objects include twenty-seven
fibulae, some of the ‘bone-and-amber’ type for which there is now evidence
for manufacture at Pithekoussai. Yet exotic objects found at Perachora are
mainly Phoenician in origin, and if the interpretation of the sanctuary as a
stopping-off point for sailors on their way to Corinth and as the recipient of
offerings for a safe sea journey is correct, as seems eminently feasible, then
the relatively few ‘Italian’ objects need have no greater significance than
convenient objects acquired by traders (Payne 1962: 25).
The best evidence for dedications passing between Western Greece and
the homeland comes from Rhodes. Here, at the Sanctuary of Athena Lindia,
Blinkenberg was surprised to find so few traces of the Western Greeks,
given the existence of Gela and Akragas in Sicily. Again, finds were
confined to a sprinkling of fibulae, and the eleven that Blinkenberg
discovered fade into insignificance when placed in the context of the total
of 1592 fibulae of identifiable type which he reported; fibulae were clearly
a standard offering at Lindos (Blinkenberg 1931: 71, 75–6). However, more
substantial offerings from Gela and Akragas purportedly dedicated at
Lindos in the Archaic period are recorded in the Hellenistic inscription
known as the Lindian Chronicle.

Evidence from the Lindian Chronicle

The Lindian Chronicle was composed by Timachidas, son of Hagestimos
(probably identical with the author Timachidas of Rhodes) and Tharsagoras,
son of Stratos in the early first century BCE. It lists offerings made from
before the Trojan War to those dedicated by Philip V of Macedon (238–179
BCE). Fears about the imaginative nature of this document—at least as
regards the earlier dedications—are not allayed by the likelihood that many
votives were destroyed in the temple fire of the mid-fourth century BCE, nor
that the information relating to Sicily was gleaned from the Hellenistic
historian Xenagoras, a dubious source. As such, the Chronicle probably
says more about how the Rhodians wanted to present their past in the
Hellenistic period, and particularly in the face of the escalating power of
Rome, than it does about the realities of dedication in earlier periods. As
Shaya (2005: 435) points out, Roman offerings known from other sources
are conspicuous by their absence, and their omission might be read as an
attempt at cultural defiance.
However, while they are not beyond the bounds of specious invention,
the Sicilian dedications described do sound plausible for the periods
claimed for them. If, for a moment, we suspend scepticism and take the
Chronicle at face value, then it still may provide interesting insights into the
ways in which religious relationships between mother-cities and Greek
states abroad may have worked. The five dedications in question range
from the seventh to the late sixth or early fifth century BCE. The three from
Gela are a krater dedicated upon the conquest of Ariaitos in the seventh
century, a town of unknown location (LC 25.11–14); a wooden gorgon with
a stone face dedicated by Deinomenes (according to the inscription the
Deinomenes who arrived at Gela with the oikist Antiphemos, but possibly
confused with the later Deinomenes, Gelon’s father (LC 27.29–35)); and
daidaleia (wooden statues) dedicated by an uncle of the tyrant Hippokrates
(LC 31.60–4). From Akragas came a krater dedicated by the sixth-century
tyrant Phalaris and purportedly made by Daidalos (LC 27) and a statue of
Athena, part of the spoils from a victory over Minoa (LC 30). As
dedications either commemorating military victories, or made by tyrants or
other prominent individuals, these look more like the sort of calculated and
programmatic dedications that were made at Olympia and Delphi than a
reflection of an regular and continuous relationship based on pious and
nostalgic connections—although, no doubt, the familial links added an extra
edge to the declarations of success.

CONCLUSION

While religion in Magna Graecia had many features in common with the
nature and practice of religion in mainland Greece, it was not a simple case
of the duplication of cults and rituals transferred from the various
homelands of the Greek migrants. Rather, Western Greek states
manipulated their cultic preferences and customized their practices to forge
distinctive religious profiles that contributed to the individual cultural
identities of those city-states, just as comparable arrangements did for other
Greek states.
In the cities of Magna Graecia the traditional gods could be maintained,
promoted, or sidelined; minor deities such as oikists and other local heroes
could be installed; prominent families could further their interests through
the promulgation of their own cults; and local indigenous deities and
practices may well have been drawn upon for inspiration. The paraphernalia
of religion—temples and dedications—could be used not just for pious
purposes, but also competitively in displays of prosperity and success to the
widest possible audience. These distinctive features of religion in Magna
Graecia,which, from the fifth century onwards, also included the religious
movements of Orphism and Pythagoreanism (see, in this volume, Edmonds,
Chapter 37), demonstrate that while the religion of the Western Greeks
fitted comfortably under the very broad umbrella of ‘Greek religion’, it was
nevertheless far from being a replica of the religion of the Greek mainland.

SUGGESTED READING
Although it is now over sixty years old and in some respects outdated,
Dunbabin 1948 remains a fundamental text for the study of any aspect of
the Greek West, including religion, not least because of its thorough
knowledge of the ancient sources. Much has, of course, also been written on
religion in Italian, including Pace’s (1945) classic study (see esp. 723–30
for details of dedications at Olympia and Delphi); other more recent works
include the collected papers in Anello, Martorana, and Sammartano 2006.
On religion and the colonization process (in particular oikist cults), see
Malkin 1987 and Dougherty 1993 (especially on ‘murderous founders’).
For sanctuary architecture, Mertens 2006 is very important and is also made
more widely accessible via its Italian translation; see also de Polignac 1995
and Malkin 1987 on sanctuary location. Studies of Western Greek sculpture
tend to be embedded in broader works (such as Ridgway 1977), but see also
Boardman 1995 and Holloway 1975 for succinct treatments; for the
relationship between art and cultural identity, see Marconi’s study (2007) of
the metopes from Selinus. On relations between mother-cities and colonies
in general across the Greek world, Graham 1984 (first edition 1964) is still
very important; for religious relations, see further Shepherd 2000; and on
the Lindian Chronicle specifically, Higbie 2003 and Shaya 2005.

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Boardman, J. 1978. Greek Sculpture: The Archaic Period. London.
Boardman, J. 1995. Greek Sculpture: The Late Classical Period and Sculpture in Colonies and
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Bookidis, N. 2003. ‘The Sanctuaries of Corinth’, in Corinth XX. Corinth, The Centenary 1896–1996,
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 CHAPTER 39

THE NORTHERN BLACK SEA: THE

CASE OF THE BOSPORAN
KINGDOM

MAYA MURATOV

INTRODUCTION

THE Northern Black Sea littoral (Figure 39.1) is often considered a political
and cultural entity and is treated as such in scholarship. In fact, it is
comprised of three rather distinct (both geographically and historically)
areas: the region of Olbia and its environs in the north-western Black Sea;
Chersonese, its chora, and the western Crimea; and finally the Bosporan
Kingdom, located in the eastern Crimea and the Taman Peninsula, which is
the focus of this chapter.
These three areas differed in their political and cultural developments, in
particular in their relationships with the local people and nomadic tribes that
were a constant presence. In scholarship, the Olbian state is perhaps best
known for the cult of Achilles Pontarchos, the Master of Pontos, whose
major temple was located on the nearby island of Leuke (Hommel 1980;
Rusyaeva 2003; Hupe 2006). Although some evidence for Achilles’ cult
was also found in Chersonese, the latter is generally recognized as the cult
centre of Parthenos, a maiden goddess, identified with Artemis and
Iphigenia, and the main protectress of the city (Guldager Bilde 2009).
This chapter explores certain religious traditions of the Bosporan
Kingdom (Figure 39.1), from the foundation of the apoikiai (new
settlements, literally, ‘home away from home’) sometime in the first half of
the sixth century through the mid-first centuries BCE, that is, through the
death of Mithridates VI. Although this region is gradually becoming
recognized as an important, albeit distant, part of the Greek oikoumene
(inhabited universe), it remains far from being well represented in
scholarship. Following a brief historical overview of the area, this chapter
will first address some of the cults practised over the course of five
centuries on the temenos (the sacred area of the city) and the acropolis of
Pantikapaion, the capital of the Bosporan Kingdom. The section ‘Bosporan
Topography, Cult Places, and Religious Beliefs’ will examine associations
between the chthonian sanctuaries and the unusual features of the local
landscape, namely the mud volcanoes. In both cases, it will focus on the
newly discovered archaeological data and will present some new
interpretations of the older material.
FIGURE 39.1 Greek colonies in the Northern Black Sea, c.450 BCE.
Map adapted from MapMaster CC BY-SA 3.0.

In the late seventh–early sixth century BCE, when most of the

Mediterranean had already been settled, the Greeks turned their attention to
the Black Sea and founded numerous apoikiai on its shores, thus turning it,
so to speak, into a ‘Greek pond’. We are concerned here with the northern
shore. By the second quarter of the sixth century BCE, a number of Greek
colonies (mostly Milesian) were founded on both sides of the Kerch Straits,
known in antiquity as the Cimmerian Bosporos. Initially politically
independent, these apoikiai were united into some sort of polity around 480
BCE (Diod. Sic. 12.31). Thus the Bosporan Kingdom was created, with
Pantikapaion, the main city of the European Bosporos, as its capital.
Starting in the late fifth century BCE, the neighbouring territories, with their
non-Greek populations, were gradually added to this dominion. Eventually,
the population of the Kingdom comprised the Greeks from Ionia and from
other cities around the Black and Mediterranean Seas, and various
indigenous tribes, known to us from literary and epigraphic sources. The
Bosporan Kingdom was one of the early examples of a state with a mixed
population of Greeks and barbarians, featuring, at least until the early
centuries CE, a thoroughly Hellenized, but nevertheless complex, cultural
milieu.
Although the Bosporos remained ostensibly independent, it became a
provincial satellite of Rome shortly after the death of Mithridates VI in 63
BCE. By 14 CE, Bosporan rulers adopted the dynastic names of Tiberii Iulii
and began to style themselves ‘friends of Caesar and of the Roman people’,
while apparently enjoying considerable independence in their domestic and
foreign policy (Gajdukevitch 1971: 359). The prosperity of the Kingdom
was ruined in the 230s–40s CE by an invasion of the Goths; the Huns,
arriving in the 370s CE, delivered the final blow (Gajdukevitch 1971: 355).

GREEKS AND BARBARIANS

The concept of cultural, and especially religious, syncretism between the

Greeks and barbarians remains one of the most hotly debated, yet
practically insoluble, problems of scholarship dedicated to the Northern
Black Sea. The idea that the Greek colonists came into close contact with
the local population immediately after their arrival, and that strong mutual
influences could be discerned as early as the late sixth century BCE, was
common in Soviet scholarship and occasionally persists in recent Russian
scholarship (Ustinova 1999; Shaub 2007). However, this viewpoint seems
both too radical and too simplistic.
First and foremost, we know surprisingly little about the ethnic situation
on both shores of the Bosporos. The general consensus is that these lands
were scarcely populated, and that the Greek apoikiai were established in
unoccupied areas. Archaeological investigations have not so far uncovered
any archaeological remains immediately pre-dating Greek occupation.
However, the names of the indigenous sedentary tribes living in the
surrounding areas have come down to us from literary sources, such as
Hekataios of Miletos, Herodotos, Strabo, Diodorus, and from the Bosporan
inscriptions. Among these tribes, the Maiotians, traditionally placed along
the eastern shore of the Azov Sea (ancient Maiotis), were, in all probability,
not an ethnos but a group of tribes living there. At present, about two
hundred settlements have been identified within the territory associated
with the Maiotians (Limberis and Marchenko 2010: 190). However,
Maiotian material culture was rather unsophisticated, and we know virtually
nothing about these people’s religious beliefs. As for the other tribes
mentioned—Toretoi, Dandarioi, Psessoi—their locations are completely
unknown and they continue to remain ‘archaeological phantoms’. The
closest neighbours of the Greeks on the Taman Peninsula were the Sindians.
At this point, only one settlement (Semibratnee or Labris) and its necropolis
can be associated with them. Based on the poorly published results of
limited excavations conducted in the 1950s, it seems that, by the second
quarter of the fifth century, the Sindians were thoroughly Hellenized
(Goroncharovskii and Ivantchik 2010: 224, 230).
In the eastern Crimea, traces of pre-Greek occupation have not been
uncovered thus far and no indigenous tribes were or are associated with
these lands. However, these territories might have been controlled from a
distance. Because of their proximity to the Eurasian steppe belt, this area
was subject to periodic influxes of nomadic tribes of Indo-Iranian stock,
commonly referred to as Scythians. It does seem that, from very early on
and throughout their existence, the Greek apoikiai had to interact with these
nomadic Scythians. As recent archaeological investigations of the Bosporan
cities testify, these encounters were often anything but peaceful (Tolstikov
and Muratov 2013: 182–3).
Obviously, Greek settlers were not living in isolation, and constantly
interacted with various non-Greeks as initial economic and political
connections were forged. In due course, quite a few of these non-Greeks
settled nearby, or even in the apoikiai, as some of their territories were
incorporated into the Bosporan Kingdom. By approximately the early
fourth century BCE, a new cultural identity—which might be called
Bosporan—had developed. The Bosporan culture was Hellenic at its core,
and Greek remained its lingua franca for both oral and written
communications. Undoubtedly, Greek colonists had to adapt to the new
surroundings, new climate, and their new neighbours. However, as the
evidence demonstrates, what might be deemed to be ‘barbarian influences’
on the religion and material culture of the Greek apoikiai of the Bosporos
are not detectable at all—at least, not until the first century CE, a time period
that falls beyond the scope of this chapter.
 THE TEMENOS AND ACROPOLIS OF
PANTIKAPAION (SIXTH–FIRST
CENTURIES BCE)

Pantikapaion is the metropolis of the Bosporians and is

situated at the mouth of Lake Maiotis. . . . Pantikapaion
is a hill inhabited on all sides in circuit of twenty stadia.
To the east it has a harbour, and docks for about 30
ships; and it also has an acropolis. (Strabo 7.4.4)

Located in the centre of the modern city of Kerch, on a large hill known
nowadays as Mound Mithridates, ancient Pantikapaion, which became the
capital of the Bosporan Kingdom, is believed to have already existed by the
second quarter of the sixth century BCE. The main temenos of the city is
traditionally thought to have been located on the upper plateau of Mound
Mithridates overlooking the sea, as shown by the numerous, albeit
fragmentary, finds dating from the sixth to early fifth centuries BCE. These
include sculpture fragments, akroteria from large and small altars, bases and
other fragments of votive columns from small structures of the Ionic order,
along with architectural details from several monumental buildings of the
Ionic order.

Apollo
Apollo was considered one of the most important deities of the Greek
pantheon in the North Pontic area (Rusyaeva 2005: 204–6). It has been
suggested that, during the Pontic colonization, Apollo Ietros, by far the
most popular epiklesis of this deity, was elevated by the oracle of Didyma
to a special status as the main protector of the colonists and of the newly
founded settlements around the Black Sea (Ehrhardt 1983: 130–2; for an
overview of the literature see Ustinova 2009: 246–60; on the importance of
the cult among the Milesian colonists, see Plin. HN 34.18; Strabo 7.6.1;
Koshelenko 2010: 380).
 The hypothesis that an early temple dedicated to Apollo (most probably
Apollo Ietros) once stood on the summit of Mound Mithridates was first
proposed by V. D. Blavatsky in 1950. This was based on the finds of several
column bases and an architrave, all of the Ionic order. Over the years, more
fragments of capitals and of entablature have been discovered. A recent
meticulous investigation of these fragments allowed V. P. Tolstikov to
corroborate the assumption that a large temple-like structure of the Ionic
order (Samian type), dating from 500–485 BCE, indeed stood on the temenos
of Pantikapaion (Tolstikov 2010). However, its attribution to Apollo Ietros
remains a conjecture, albeit a plausible one.
The rapid growth of the city was halted sometime in the period 490–480
BCE, probably because of attacks by nomadic tribes, attested by destruction
and burned strata found in the Greek apoikiai on both sides of the
Cimmerian Bosporos. The recently discovered traces of some unusual ritual
activity on the temenos of Pantikapaion are perhaps related to these military
events. In the middle of the temenos, perhaps not far from the presumed
location of the Temple of Apollo Ietros, on a makeshift platform right on
top of the burned stratum that contained numerous arrowheads of Scythian
type, was found a skeleton of a horse. The horse had been decapitated, cut
in half, and its spine removed. Afterwards, the carcass was carefully placed
on its side with all four legs, hooves still in place, neatly folded underneath.
This mutilation was quite possibly the result of sphagion—a ritual killing—
performed by the Bosporan Greeks after yet another military confrontation.
The horse probably belonged to the presumed attackers, most likely the
Scythians, as several elements of the harness—bronze roundels in the form
of a coiled wolf in the Scythian animal style—were found on the skeleton.
This so far unique discovery may be evidence for a ritual killing with some
elements of sympathetic magic, in which an enemy horse was symbolically
identified with (and substituted for) the human enemy (Scythians). The
animal’s death may have been meant to influence the outcome of future
battles: ‘What we do to this horse, may we do to our enemies’ (Tolstikov
and Muratov forthcoming).
It is possible that the early Temple of Apollo suffered during these
military events and was later rebuilt. The cult of Apollo Ietros is well
attested in Bosporan epigraphy from the late fifth century BCE onwards
(CIRB 6, 10, 25, 974, 1037, 1044; Tolstikov 1992: 69, fig. 10, 13, 95 n. 9;
Koshelenko 2010: 381). A dedicatory inscription on the statue pedestal
dating from 240–220 BCE is of particular importance: it shows that, by at
least the third century BCE, members of the ruling dynasty of Spartokidai
were hereditary chief priests of Apollo Ietros (CIRB 25).

Artemis-Hekate-Ditagoia
Within the temenos, in the vicinity of the sacred area of Apollo, dwelled his
sister Artemis. In the course of excavations, two chambers have been
uncovered, their foundations cut into the natural rock and partially faced
with marble veneer. The nature of the finds, such as the fragments of marble
sculptures and an offering table (trapeza) with a dedicatory inscription,
implies that this structure had religious functions, and it has been identified
as part of a sanctuary. The archaeological material found in these two
chambers dates from the second century BCE through the early first century
CE (Tolstikov 1987). The identity of the deity (or deities) worshipped there
is not certain. Fragments of a large statue of a goddess—of which a head,
fingers, small pieces of drapery, and fragments of the feet with intricate
sandals survive—suggest Artemis. Furthermore, a marble hekateion, a
triple-bodied statue of Hekate encircled by three dancers, was also
discovered there.
Of particular interest is a marble trapeza, supported by two sculpted
pilasters ending in lion’s paws, which was most probably placed in a niche
in the first room. A Greek dedicatory inscription placed on the front facet of
the table presents a document of utmost importance for the political and
religious history of the Bosporan Kingdom (Tolstikov 1987: 101, fig. 14;
Vinogradov 1987). According to the inscription, the offering table was
dedicated to the sanctuary by Princess Senamotis, daughter of King
Skiloures and wife of Herakleides. The dedication was made for the good
health and well-being of the Bosporan king Pairisades V, the last king of the
Spartokidai dynasty, who, sometime in the last quarter of the second
century BCE, handed over his power to Mithridates VI (Vinogradov 1987:
59; Strabo 7.4.4).
The recipient of the beautiful trapeza was a female deity named Ditagoia.
This is the first, and thus far the only, instance when this evidently non-
Greek name appears in written documents. Its linguistic origins remain
obscure. Senamotis’ father Skiloures, rumoured to have fathered numerous
children (Strabo 7.4.3), was a well-known king of the late Scythians whose
capital was located in Scythian Neapolis—on the outskirts of the modern-
day city of Simferopol (Zaitsev 2001). This inscription, written sometime
between 130–120 BCE, throws some light not only on Greco-Scythian
political relationships in the Bosporos, but also on the religious interactions
in the Kingdom. It vividly demonstrates that dynastic marriages between
Scythian royalty (daughter of the king) and Greek nobility (Herakleides)
took place, and that a certain ‘barbarian element’ was present not only in
the Bosporan cities, but at court as well. Ditagoia, a deity of non-Greek
origin, was openly worshipped by a Scythian princess in the capital of the
Bosporan Kingdom, in the sanctuary presumably dedicated to Artemis and
Hekate, or perhaps to Artemis-Hekate (Burkert 1985: 171 n. 15). Indeed,
there is further evidence that suggests that Ditagoia was somehow
associated with Hekate, as a very similar hekateion was found in the sacred
area of a megaron (a palatial complex) excavated in Scythian Neapolis; its
most likely residents were King Skiloures and his family members (Zaitsev
2001: 268–70).
Worship of Hekate alone is attested at another location in Pantikapaion.
A small cave on the outskirts of the city was discovered between 1846 and
1850. Its floor was covered with a relatively thick layer of pebbles and ash.
On the wall opposite the entrance, in a marble-lined niche, stood a marble
hekateion dated to the early Hellenistic period. This small edifice was
located on the border between the city and the necropolis, near the road and
by one of the city gates, as befits Hekate’s identity as an inhabitant of
liminal spaces and cross-roads, and a protector of city gates (Burkert 1985:
171; Ohlerich 2009: 83).
Artemis seems to have enjoyed a long and continuous veneration on the
acropolis of Pantikapaion, next to her divine brother. The earliest recorded
dedication to Artemis of Ephesos—an inscription on a bronze handle of an
infundibulum (a ritual vessel of Etruscan origin) of the sixth century BCE—
comes from this area (Treister 1999). More recently, the discovery of a
marble lamp dating to the early sixth century BCE also supports the Artemis
connection: these types of lamps are often associated with the sanctuaries of
Artemis in Ephesos, Samos, and Brauron (Tolstikov and Muratov 2013:
183–5). These early finds all come from the area adjacent to the above-
mentioned sanctuary of Artemis-Hekate-Ditagoia, which was still
functioning in the second half of the second century BCE. A dedication to
Artemis, set up by King Pharnakes, son of Mithridates VI and ruler of the
Bosporos from 63 to 47 BCE, was also found in the vicinity of this sanctuary
(CIRB 28).

Palace-Temple
A large monumental complex with an area of at least 1350m2 was recently
excavated on the eastern plateau of Mound Mithridates, within the territory
of the acropolis of Pantikapaion. This edifice, which seems to have
functioned from the mid-fourth until at least the late second century BCE,
featured a peristyle court and was identified by the excavator as a royal
residence, or basileia (Tolstikov 2003: 726–32). In its immediate vicinity,
the remains of a small temple in antis have been discovered. The
completely preserved foundation of the temple featured an anti-seismic
device: two horizontal parallel grooves ran through the blocks of the
foundation around the whole perimeter. These most probably contained
wooden beams soaked in resin to protect the foundation from earthquakes
(Tolstikov 2003: 730; Lozovoi and Dobrovolskaya 2010: 135–6). The
temple’s unusual proximity to the royal residence suggests that it was a
‘palace-church’ of sorts and perhaps was frequented by the inhabitants of
the basileia. Built probably in the mid-third century BCE, the temple
functioned through the first half of the first century BCE. The unusually
good preservation of the temple’s foundation is a result of a thick layer of
green clay that was used to level the surface after the temple’s destruction.
Along with the foundation, a stratum of debris containing objects present in
the temple at the time of destruction was preserved as well.
Among the objects found in this layer were 112 fragments of terracotta
figurines that comprised the majority of finds at the temple site. Among
them, one particular deity, Dionysos, as well as his followers, was
prominently represented. It is not surprising that Dionysos was one of the
deities worshipped in the small temple on the acropolis of Pantikapaion, at
least during the last phase of the temple’s existence. Temples and
sanctuaries located in the vicinity of royal residences often housed the cults
of the divine patrons of the rulers. Mithridates VI Eupator Dionysos, who
became a new ruler of the Bosporan Kingdom in the late second century
BCE, was well known as an avid devotee of Dionysos, his patron god
(Homolle 1884: 102–4; Plut. Sulla 11; Cic. Pro Flac. 25.60), and must have
been responsible for increasing the popularity of this cult in the Bosporan
capital (Ilyina and Muratova 2008; Saprykin 2009: 250–1).
These three case studies provide an overview of (as well as wide-ranging
evidence for) different types of cults, and reveal something of the ways in
which gods were introduced and worshipped, and how some cults
developed, in the capital of the Bosporan Kingdom. The cult of Apollo
Ietros, the patron of the first colonists, was brought by them from Asia
Minor and remained the main state cult well into the late third century BCE,
at the very least. Artemis was venerated alongside her brother. It seems that,
at some point, the cult of Artemis was combined with that of Hekate,
another deity with Asia Minor connections. In the case of Ditagoia, a
goddess of unknown origin, who, at least in the second century BCE, was
associated with Artemis-Hekate, we might have a unique example of an
assimilated foreign deity, who was venerated in the central temenos of the
capital. The small temple located ‘next door’ to the royal residence on the
acropolis of Pantikapaion seems to have been a semi-private temple serving
the basileia. Although the original resident deities remain unknown, one of
its latest likely occupants, Dionysos, was the patron deity of the ruler at the
time. The traces of a ritually slain enemy horse constitute a unique example
of the war-related magic rites performed by the Bosporan Greeks.

BOSPORAN TOPOGRAPHY, CULT PLACES,

AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS

The focus now changes from the cults in the capital to the more general
area of the Bosporan Kingdom. This section deals with ‘one of the most
fundamental [questions] in the history of any religion’—‘how does man
know where to worship his gods?’ (Malkin 1987: 135). Here, we consider
some evidence for how colonists selected the ‘right’ sacred spots for
sanctuaries and temples near to their new settlements (Koshelenko 2010:
356).
 Topographical features of the landscape often played a crucial role in this
selection: the Greeks looked for signs—usually conspicuous landmarks of
some kind—that indicated the inherent sacredness of a locale. Although two
shores of the Cimmerian Bosporos—the Asian and European sides—
presented rather different natural environments in antiquity, as they still do
today, there is one particular natural phenomenon commonly found on both
sides of the straits: mud volcanoes (Lozovoi and Dobrovolskaya 2010:
136). Their numinous beauty and the surrounding landscapes are likely to
have mesmerized the Greeks. Large bubbling puddles, irregular knobby
cones of different sizes oozing dark viscous mud, often accompanied by
steam, odorous vapours, and noises—all these features were probably
understood as signs of proximity to the entrance to the Hades (Ivantchik
2010: 322–3). It is not surprising to find sanctuaries that most likely housed
chthonian cults located in their immediate vicinity, and we now examine
some examples of them.

The Maiskaya Mound

An archaeological site known as the Maiskaya Mound is located on top of a
volcanic hill near Phanagoria in the Asian Bosporos. The remains of a
building, considered by the initial excavator to be either a treasury or a
temple in antis, were uncovered in the course of archaeological explorations
in the 1960s (Marchenko 1963). The location of this sanctuary was not
accidental. Its peculiar feature is a natural cleft (12m long, almost 2m deep,
and 3m wide) flanked by two active mud volcanoes. The sanctuary remains
largely unexcavated, but this cleft was filled with numerous votives,
including 1164 terracotta figurines. The prevailing types among these
figurines were female protomes (terracotta busts made in a single mould),
most commonly associated with Demeter and Kore. All figurines were of
local production.
Based on a careful analysis of all the finds, it has been established that
the terracottas found in the cleft date from the mid-fifth through the mid-
third century BCE, whereas the sanctuary remained in operation until the
first century BCE (Ilyina 2010: 425). It remains unclear whether the cleft
was used as a favissa (a reservoir for the discarded gifts—the property of
the deities—from the sanctuary), or whether the worshippers were
depositing their votives into the cleft themselves. If Demeter and Kore-
Persephone were indeed the main deities venerated here, an opening in the
ground between the two mouths of the mud volcanoes seems like the most
logical place for the offerings.

The Boris and Gleb Mound

In the early nineteenth century, on the mound of Boris and Gleb (in the
Taman Peninsula), as a result of an eruption of a mud volcano followed by a
landslide, the remains of a sanctuary were uncovered. The site yielded two
dedicatory inscriptions, both dated to the second half of the fourth century
BCE: one mentions a temple dedicated to Artemis Agrotera (CIRB 1014) on
behalf of Xenokleides; the other is a statue base inscribed to the ‘mighty’
gods Sanerges and Astara (CIRB 1015), two deities of unknown, but most
probably non-Greek, origin. According to the inscription, the latter
dedication was set up on behalf of Komosarye, daughter of Gorgippos and
wife of Pairisades. Although Komosarye appears in her dedication as a
private person, she should be identified as a member of the Spartokidai
dynasty, wife of the Bosporan king Pairisades I (r. 344/3–311/10 BCE) and
daughter of Gorgippos, the uncle of the latter. Two fragmentary limestone
statues were found nearby and could belong with the inscribed pedestal,
although this is not certain. A statue that might be a representation of Astara
is an almost life-sized figure dressed in a long, high-belted chiton; the head
is missing. The statue believed to represent Sanerges is now lost, but
reportedly it was a cloaked figure of a man.

Aphrodite in the Asian and European Bosporos

It seems that all the sanctuaries associated with the mud volcanoes, which
we have examined here, were connected with female deities of a chthonian
nature, as the dedicatory inscriptions and numerous terracotta figurines
testify. Likewise, the cult of Aphrodite of Apatouros probably also had
chthonian connotations and might have been related to the phenomenon of
the mud volcanoes. Although this cult is attested on both sides of the straits,
it appears to have been much more prevalent in the Asian Bosporos (Taman
Peninsula). Of particular interest are dedicatory inscriptions that contain the
following epikleses: Aphrodite Ourania (CIRB 972), Aphrodite Ourania the
Mistress of Apatouros (Aphrodite Ourania Apatourou medeousa; CIRB 31,
35, 75, 971, 1111), and Aphrodite Apatouriada (CIRB 1045).
Strabo mentions two sites in the Asian Bosporos connected with this cult:
‘Apatouros, the sanctuary of Aphrodite’ and ‘a notable temple of Aphrodite
Apatouros’ in Phanagoria (Strab. 11.2.10). He then attempts to explain the
etymology of this epiklesis by linking it to the Greek word apate
(‘treachery’) through the following story: the giants once attacked the
goddess in the area, and in order to punish them she called upon Herakles
and hid him in a cave. As the impatient giants were arriving to be received
by the goddess in the cave, she gave them one by one to Herakles to be
murdered ‘through treachery’. The origin of this myth is unclear. It could be
considered as one of the ‘colonising’ myths through which Greeks laid
claim to foreign territories (Malkin 1987: 90; Dougherty 1993: 136–56). On
the other hand, because of the erotic and comic undertones of the story—
Aphrodite luring the giants into the cave—it has been proposed that Strabo
may have actually used a text of a mime (a type of comic theatrical
performance) as a source for his story (Tokhtasiev 1983). Nonetheless, what
is important here is the uncanny connection between a cave and a goddess
(Ivantchik 2010: 323); her cult must have had chthonian connotations as
well, linking it to the chthonian cults of Demeter and Kore-Persephone.
To this day, neither the location of Apatouros nor the exact origins of the
cult are known. There exists a popular argument that Aphrodite Ourania
was an amalgamation of a goddess of Scythian and/or of Sindo-Maiotian
origins with a Greek goddess (Ustinova 1999: 29–53; Shaub 2007: 80–123).
Unfortunately, there is no evidence to support this assumption and it has
recently been challenged (Tokhtasiev 1986; Koshelenko 2010: 361–3).
Indeed, it is unlikely that the cult of Aphrodite in the Bosporos had
anything to do with the mysterious and rather elusive ‘great goddess’ of the
Maiotians, or Sindians, or Scythians (Koshelenko 2010: 379). Thus far, no
traces of Sindo-Maiotian sanctuaries have been discovered anywhere in the
Taman Peninsula, and the relationship with the Scythians—at least for the
first two centuries of the apoikiai’s existence—was mostly confrontational.
In addition, practically nothing is known about the religious beliefs of the
Scythians. Our only source on the subject is Herodotos, and it has to be
treated with great caution. Two passages in his Histories are used as
evidence to demonstrate a ‘Scythian connection’ with the cult of Aphrodite.
The first passage (Hdt. 4.8–9) recounts one of the versions of the origins of
the Scythians, where a snake-legged maiden lures Herakles into a cave and
afterwards gives birth to three sons, one of which becomes the forefather of
all Scythians. In the second passage (Hdt. 4.59), the Scythian goddess
Argimpasa is compared with the Greek Aphrodite, among other deities.
Although associations between a chthonian female deity and a cave/crevice
are apparent, this is definitely not enough to postulate a Greek–barbarian
connection in the cult of Aphrodite in the Bosporos.
It has been suggested that the cult of Aphrodite in general, and of
Aphrodite Ourania in particular, spread into the European Bosporos from
the Taman Peninsula, where it seems to have been more prominent in the
fourth century BCE (Ohlerich 2009: 199–202; Koshelenko 2010: 379–80).
The earliest dedication to Aphrodite Ourania found in the European
Bosporos dates from the second century BCE (CIRB 75). It should be noted,
though, that the cult of Aphrodite—not necessarily with the epiklesis
Ourania—could have arrived in the cities of the European Bosporos
independently, with the Milesian colonists (see CIRB 7, 13, 17). Relatively
recently, in the course of the archaeological excavations in Miletos, an
Archaic sanctuary of Aphrodite has been excavated, thus proving what
scholars had long suspected, that a cult of Aphrodite in Miletos existed as
early as the beginning of the sixth century BCE (Ehrhardt 1983: 164–6;
Greaves 2004).
It seems that the mud volcanoes on both sides of the Cimmerian
Bosporos were considered by the Greek colonists as indicators of sacred
spots appropriate for sanctuaries. Because of the underworld connotations
of these sites, it is usually assumed that the deities worshipped there were of
a chthonian nature. As some of these sanctuaries have not been thoroughly
investigated, it remains impossible to determine whether there was any
cultic activity before the coming of the Greeks.

The So-Called ‘Sindian’ Half-Figures

It seems that the natural phenomenon of mud volcanoes influenced the
ideas of the Bosporan Greeks about the underworld—and this found its
manifestation in a group of funerary monuments.
 The notion of anodos (movement upwards) has long been associated with
Kore-Persephone and her ascent back to her mother Demeter. A number of
long busts or half-figures, presumably representing Kore or other female
chthonian goddesses, appear in the Mediterranean from the fifth century
BCE onwards (Sturgeon 1975). Although only a small group in total, the
specimens have been found in diverse locations, such as Kyrene in North
Africa, some islands of the south-western Aegean, Sicily, and southern
Italy. The majority of these demi-statues represent female characters, and
only in the Roman period do a few male examples make their appearance
(Sturgeon 1975: 231, 232). The general consensus is that they all served as
funerary monuments, but only rarely did they represent the deceased; rather,
they have been understood as chthonian goddesses ‘rising to receive the
dead’ (Sturgeon 1975: 235).
The tradition of marking the graves with half-figures appears
independently among some of the inhabitants of the Bosporan Kingdom. A
group of about seventy locally produced limestone sculptures, found mostly
on the Asian side of the Bosporos (although several examples have been
found on the European side as well), were first associated with the Sindians
by the excavator N. I. Sokolsky. However, there is no particular reason to
link them with these people, who, by the mid-fifth century BCE, were
heavily Hellenized and whose material culture probably did not differ from
that of the Bosporan Greeks. Although, unfortunately, all the half-figures
were found in secondary contexts, their identification as funerary
monuments is fairly certain. They should be dated from between the third
and the first century BCE.
The Bosporan semi-figures are rather consistent in their iconography:
men and women are represented in relief (on stelai) or in the round (as free-
standing statues), and all are cut off at the level of the mid-thigh. Since it is
quite certain that these half-figures do not represent the ascending deities,
but the deceased, they should probably be understood as representing a
descent to the underworld (kathodos). Produced and found in the areas
surrounded by the mud volcanoes, this Bosporan sculptural tradition
appears to illustrate Greek beliefs about the underworld, which, in turn,
were undoubtedly influenced by local geological phenomenon (Muratov
forthcoming).
Other Gods
Among other deities whose cults are attested in the Bosporan Kingdom
from the sixth through the first centuries BCE, we find some of the ‘usual
suspects’ of the Greek pantheon. Zeus is mentioned on a number of graffiti
from the fourth century BCE, whereas inscriptions on larger monuments
survive only from the Roman period (Shaub 2007: 368–9, with literature).
It is possible that Athena did not attain popularity among the Bosporans
or that the traces of her cult have not been well preserved throughout the
region. However, there are indications that she may have occupied a place
of some importance at the court of the Spartokidai. Among the debris of the
basileia in Pantikapaion a magnificent marble head of an over life-sized
statue has been found. This head, which initially depicted a goddess
crowned with a metal stephane (diadem), did undergo some iconographic
modifications in the early second half of the third century BCE. The
stephane was removed, the hair on top and on the back of the head chiselled
off, and a new headdress—most probably a metal helmet, to judge from the
additional holes and a large iron clamp—added. The new appearance of the
statue probably reflected the new identity of the goddess, that of Athena. It
is also not coincidental that an image of Athena in a Corinthian helmet
appears on the coins of Leucon II around the same time (Tolstikov 2003:
729).
Dedications to Herakles on vessels are known from the fifth century,
while dedicatory inscriptions on marble and limestone pedestals, found on
both sides of the Bosporos, date from the fourth and third centuries BCE
(CIRB 16, 973, 1036). Several votive reliefs depicting a standing or
reclining Herakles are known from the third century BCE; not to mention, in
addition, numerous terracotta figurines of the hero, most of them produced
locally from the third through first centuries BCE.
The cult of Hermes is attested by graffiti dating from the fifth to fourth
centuries BCE. A third-century BCE inscription from the Asian Bosporos is of
particular interest since it mentions agonistic races by youths in honour of
Hermes (Gajdukevitch 1971: 233).
Dionysos always seems to have been popular in the Bosporan Kingdom,
as attested by a number of his marble statues and statuettes from the fourth
to third centuries BCE. There might have been a sanctuary of the god and a
theatre in Pantikapaion (Polyaen. V, 44; Gaidukevich 1971: 175), but
neither have been located yet. A fourth-century BCE dedication to Dionysos
contains a rather rare epiklesis—Areios (CIRB 15). Recently, a unique
archaeological complex, dating from the first half of the fourth century BCE,
has been uncovered in Nymphaion. More than fifty elaborate architectural
details forming a propylon (monumental entrance) to a temenos have been
found. Particularly noteworthy is a large fragment of an inscribed
architrave: ‘Theopropides son of Megakles, while holding a post of
agonothete, dedicated this propylon to Dionysos’ (Sokolova 2003: 771,
2005). Archaeological investigations of this exceptional complex still
continue. The cult of Dionysos seems to have received a ‘second wind’ with
the coming of Mithridates VI Eupator Dionysos in the last quarter of the
second century BCE, and retained its popularity into the first centuries CE.
Kybele, known in the Bosporos as Meter, Ma, Phrygian Mother, and
perhaps Angisse (CIRB 27), was popular in the Classical and Hellenistic
period. In addition to graffiti that contain the name of Kybele dating from
the fifth through the second centuries, there are also dedicatory inscriptions
(CIRB 21) and several votive limestone reliefs from the first century BCE,
representing Kybele flanked by Hermes and Hekate. Terracotta figurines of
Kybele are attested from the fifth century BCE, and by the third century BCE
they are by far the most numerous group.
Having surveyed a combination of the materials that pertain to official
(large dedicatory inscriptions and statues, coins) and popular (terracotta
figurines, graffiti) worship, it is apparent that, by and large, from the sixth
through the first centuries BCE, the pantheon in the Bosporan Kingdom
comprised deities typical of a Greek city of Asia Minor origins.

CONCLUSION

As the Greeks explored new territories in the Northern Black Sea, they
certainly came into contact with diverse peoples, both sedentary and
nomadic. They might have been influenced to a certain degree by some new
religious ideas and even might have adopted and adapted some of them for
their own use. However, there is very little evidence to support a claim that
the religious beliefs of the settlers were influenced by the local non-Greek
people. No compelling example of Greco-barbarian religious syncretism
has been found yet, at least prior to the first centuries CE. Throughout
almost four centuries of Bosporan history, from the sixth through the
second centuries BCE, only four deities with non-Greek names have been
recorded. Astara and Sanerges (CIRB 1015) received a dedication in the
second half of the fourth century BCE in the Asian Bosporos. The other two
are Angisse (CIRB 27)—probably a derivative from Kybele-related
Agdistis (Radet 1909: 58–60)—and Ditagoia, a goddess of unknown origin
worshipped by a Scythian princess in the sanctuary of Artemis-Hekate.
Both goddesses were venerated in Pantikapaion in the second half of the
second century BCE.
Religious life in the Bosporos undoubtedly reflected historical and
political changes within the state. After the Bosporan Kingdom was
incorporated into the domain of Mithridates VI, some cults (Ma, Mithras-
Attis, Mên) were imported from Asia Minor and Pontos (Saprykin 2009).
Although the Bosporos was never part of the Roman Empire officially, it
was certainly closely observed and occasionally managed by it and, to a
certain degree, received artistic and religious influences. The Bosporan
rulers of the first centuries CE styled themselves philokaiser and
philoromanos (‘friend of Caesar and of the Roman people’) and
occasionally served as priests of the Imperial cult, which was fairly
widespread in the area (Koshelenko 2010: 357).

SUGGESTED READING
The language barrier remains the largest obstacle for students and scholars
interested in the culture and religion of the Northern Black Sea in antiquity,
as the majority of works are written in Russian. Ustinova 1999 provides a
substantial overview of literature, but deals mostly with the cults of
Aphrodite and Theos Hypsistos. A recent collection of articles dealing with
the religious monuments of the Black Sea, including its northern part, is
useful, although the translations of several articles are a bit confusing
(Petropoulos and Maslennikov 2010). The most up-to-date overview of
recent literature, and of archaeological and epigraphic materials from the
Bosporos relating to religion, is to be found in Ivonne Ohelrich’s (2009)
doctoral dissertation.
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CIRB (Corpus Inscriptionum Regni Bosporani). 1965. Ed. V. V. Struve, V. F. Gajdukevich, and M. N.
Tichomirova. Moscow and Leningrad.
Dougherty, C. 1993. The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece. New York.
Ehrhardt, Ha. 1983. Milet und seine Kolonien. Vergleichende Untersuchung der kultischen und
politischen Einrichtungen. Frankfurt am Main and New York.
Homolle, T. 1884. ‘Les Romans à Délos’, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 8: 75–158.
Gajdukevitch, V. F. 1971. Das Bosporanische Reich. Berlin.
Goroncharovski, V. A. and Ivantchik, A. I. 2010. ‘Sindians’ [‘Sindy’], in Nasledie Kubani, vol. 1, ed.
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Hansen and B. Poulsen, 303–32. Copenhagen.
Hommel, H. 1980. Der Gott Achilleus. Heidelberg.
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 CHAPTER 40

THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST

JAN N. BREMMER

INTRODUCTION

THE serious study of the connections between Greek religion and the
Ancient Near East started at the end of the nineteenth century,1 when the
German classicist Otto Gruppe (1851–1921: Biltz 1921; Casadio 2009:
146–7) published a massive review of Greek cults and myths in their
relationships to Oriental religions. He analysed the religious transfers to the
Greeks from the Assyrians, Phoenicians, Phrygians, and Egyptians, but not
the Persians (Gruppe 1887; Marchand 2009: 232–3). His book was mainly
based on snippets of knowledge that have been preserved by ancient Greek
and Roman authors, but barely on sources in the original languages,
although Gruppe knew Hebrew and some Assyrian. His project clearly was
much too ambitious, as knowledge of the original cultures, languages, and
religions of the Ancient Near East was still in its infant stages. In fact, it has
continued to develop slowly, and is still making progress today through the
steady trickle of new texts and inscriptions.
It would be a century before Walter Burkert (1931–2015) renewed
scholarly interest in the influence of the Near East on Greek religion and
culture. This became the most prominent part of his work in the 1980s and
1990s, leading to two fundamental publications: The Orientalizing
Revolution (1992, first German edition 1984) and Babylon, Memphis,
Persepolis (2004), in addition to an important series of accompanying
articles (Burkert 2003). Whereas the first book concentrated on the
transmitters of ‘Oriental’ religious practices, such as travelling charismatics
(see section ‘The Carriers of the Religious Transfers’), and the connections
with Akkadian literature, such as Athrahasis and Enuma elish (see section
‘Ritual, Mythical, and Cultic Transfers from Anatolia and the Levant’), the
second cast its net wider and also looked for Greek connections with Persia
(see section ‘Influence from Persia?’) and Egypt. In addition to Burkert,
Martin West has also displayed a profound interest in the Near East, from
his earliest work to his major contribution on the literary influences of the
Near East on Greek poetry and myth (West 1997) and the first volume of
his collected papers (West 2011).
Undoubtedly, an important factor in the favourable reception of Burkert
and West has been the fierce debate that arose from the publication of
Martin Bernal’s Black Athena (Bernal 1987–2006). Although his results
have been widely rejected (Lefkowitz and Rogers 1996), Bernal raised
consciousness about the influence of Africa and the Near East on ancient
Greece. In contrast to his wild etymologies, naive approach to the sources,
and general neglect of the archaeological evidence, the generally sound
methodology and obvious command of the philological evidence in
Burkert’s and West’s work has been a relief. Even if West’s parallels are not
always convincing (Dowden 2001; Wasserman 2001), and Burkert’s
etymological proposals not always persuasive (Stol 2004), their work has
been the basis for all subsequent studies (for examples, see ‘Suggested
Reading’).
But how should we phrase what we are doing? Are ‘Greek religion’ and
the ‘Ancient Near East’ really satisfactory terms when it comes to serious
research? As regards the first term, it is obvious that we can quarrel about
its utility. The increasing attention to local religion has shown that each
Greek polis had its own pantheon and rituals. Yet the overlap or family
resemblance between different poleis also suggests it is not really helpful to
speak of Greek religions (see further, on such questions, in this volume,
Osborne, Chapter 1).
 It is somewhat different with the Ancient Near East. The term ‘Near
East’ was coined at the end of the nineteenth century after the ‘Far East’
had come into being and, originally, even included the Balkans. Gradually,
it came to mean the area that is also nowadays referred to as ‘Middle East’
(Van Dongen 2014), although it normally leaves out Western Anatolia and
sometimes Egypt. Moreover, it suggests a unity that was certainly not there,
and I will use the term primarily as a geographical unit running from
Western Anatolia to Iran, but with the exclusion of Egypt, which is covered
in a different contribution (this volume, Kleibl, Chapter 41). It is clear,
though, that the Near East is an umbrella term that covers a wide area in
time and place. We only need to think of the Old Akkadian, Hittite,
Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian empires, not to mention the Hurrian,
Luwian, Karian, Lykian, Lydian (three languages related to Luwian:
Melchert 2003; Yakubovich 2010), Phrygian, and Phoenician languages, in
order to realize that we are speaking about many languages and cultures
that had different contacts in many different ways with Greece or, perhaps
better, Greeks, over a period of time that spans many centuries. Moreover,
people may have spoken one language in daily life and used another for
writing or ritual prescriptions. People may have been deported to places
different from their original territory or become dominated by empires with
a different language. Some cultures were less porous than others: the
Hittites welcomed all kinds of foreign gods, but the Mesopotamians did not.
In other words, we have to be very careful in distinguishing between
culture, language, and political entity.
The continuing discovery of archaeological artefacts and increasing
knowledge of the different texts and languages of the area under discussion
make it virtually impossible for a single person to follow the most recent
developments and their relationship to ancient Greek religion. For example,
the discovery of a new Hittite text in 2002, called Ea and the Beast,
contains new evidence on the role of the Mesopotamian/Hurrian god Ea
(Rutherford 2011), who was also in the background of the Prometheus of
Aischylos (Stephanie West 1994: 145–9); the name of the Iliadic, Lykian
hero Sarpedon has now been shown to belong to a Lyko-Karian family of
names (Schürr 2013a), and even the famous encounters of Odysseus with
Nausikaa and with the Cyclops now have, almost certainly, Oriental
ancestries (George 2012; Zgoll 2012). In a way, then, every contribution on
the topic is a preliminary exploration that can get out of date very quickly.
With that proviso, I will focus on some exemplary problems where new
discoveries enable us to advance our knowledge, and limit myself to the
most recent publications in this respect.
In thinking about the influence of the Near East on Greek religion, it will
be helpful to distinguish two types of religious transfers: first, those from
Mesopotamian, Hurrian/Hittite, Phoenician, and Persian religious systems,
and, secondly, those from the epichoric religions, especially Luwian (Hutter
2003), Karian (Debord 2009), and Lykian (Frei 1990; Neumann 1994: 178–
90), as well as Phrygian (Hutter 2006; Strobel 2010), which were
encountered by the Greeks immigrating to Anatolia and slowly integrated
by them into a religious system that still preserved part of its age-old, albeit
fragmented, tradition (Rutherford 2006). The former have been studied
much more than the latter, due to the fact that the Luwian, Karian, and
Lykian languages have become known better only very recently, so I will
pay more attention to them (see section ‘Transfers from the Luwians,
Lykians, and Karians’) than to the second type (see section ‘Ritual,
Mythical, and Cultic Transfers from Anatolia and the Levant’). In both
cases, though, we are faced with the problem of the routes and the carriers
of these transfers (see section ‘The Carriers of the Religious Transfers’). We
will close with some observations on the Persians, which have been studied
least in this respect at this point (see section ‘Influence from Persia?’).

TRANSFERS FROM THE LUWIANS,

LYKIANS, AND KARIANS

Hittite sources mention a country called Arzawa with a most important city
Apasa, the later Greek Ephesos, which covered much of the area later
known as Lydia and its surroundings. Its population spoke Luwian, Karian,
Lykian, and Lydian, and quite a few indigenous names and religious
traditions survived in Karia, Lykia, and Cilicia well into the Roman period,
albeit often in Greek guise (Bryce 2003: 101–4; Parker 2013). Originally,
there was not a single national religious system but a series of local
pantheons (Hutter 2003: 218; Rutherford 2006: 140) with, presumably,
local and national rituals. In the course of time, many local gods seem to
have become incorporated in Hellenized pantheons but they still had
recognizable epithets of non-Greek origin, such as Zeus Osogollis or Zeus
Osogo(as). Even if these epithets have defied interpretation so far, they are
certainly of Anatolian origin.
Only the most prominent gods of the native population will have
survived the many political changes, albeit in ways that reflected their
original identity and representation only partially. For example, the name of
the chief god of the Hittite and Luwian pantheon, the storm-god Tarhunt,
survived in Anatolian onomastics well into Hellenistic times (Hutter 2003:
221; Adiego 2007: 331–2; and see, in this volume, López-Ruiz, Chapter
25). Given his role as god of the storm with its concomitant lightning as
well as with might and strength (Hutter 2003: 220–4), Zeus Stratios, ‘of the
Army’, of Labraunda, probably continued this old god, as he is usually
depicted with the Hittite/Luwian double-axe (Teffeteller 2012). Other
epithets of Zeus in Karia, such as Areios and Strategos, also point to this
‘military’ Zeus, all of them probably being reflections of an ancient Karian
god (vieux dieu carien) related to Tarhunt (Laumonier 1958: 187). One
manifestation of the Luwian storm-god was Pihassassi, the storm-god of
lightning. As he was closely associated with the horse, it is most interesting
that the horse Pegasos, whose name derives from that Luwian god (Hutter
2003: 223), was especially worshipped in Karia and Lykia (Laumonier
1958: 205–7; Bremmer 2013: 68).
Another striking aspect of the storm-god was his connection with
vineyards (Hutter 2003: 224). Now precisely in central Anatolia, in Phrygia,
another area with a Luwian substrate, we find Zeus Ampeleites, ‘Of the
vineyard’ (Robert 1987: 338, 340, 368, 373–86; Drew-Bear and Thomas
1999: 253ff., 318ff.; 355ff., 372; SEG 57.1311), who clearly also had his
roots in Luwian religion and who may help us to explain a problem of the
mythology of Dionysos. Greek inscriptions from Lydia mention a Meter
Hipte who is worshipped together with Zeus Sabazios (Paz de Hoz 1999:
40.19–21). This Hipte is known as the nurse of Dionysos from the early CE
Orphic Hymns (48, 49; see Morand 2001: 174–81), but she has now also
turned up as his mother or a woman (nurse?) who is described as happening
upon him in a new, late third-century BCE papyrus (Obbink 2011: 291–4)
about the birth of the god. His father, Zeus, is identified with Sabazios, and
the story is located in Lydian Maionia, where all the inscriptions concerning
Hipte are found. Now Hipte is the local form of Hebat, a Syrian-Anatolian
goddess who was incorporated into the Hittite pantheon, where she became
the consort of the storm-god Teshub (Trémouille 1997: 41–2), this couple
surely being the ‘ancestors’ of the couple Hipte and Zeus (Sabazios).
Interestingly, although Hebat is not found in Hittite texts beyond the river
Halys—although she was worshipped in Kizzuwatna—her worship must
have expanded westwards, as she was also known in Lykia (Neumann
1994: 171–4, 308; Schürr 2011: 219), which makes her survival in Lydia
the more probable. Her expansion perhaps took place in the time of the
Neo-Hittite, Assyrian, or even Lydian empires, as Gyges made strong
overtures to the Assyrians (West 2011: 351–2). But why would Dionysos
have been connected to this Hipte? Can it be that the association of
Anatolian Zeus with grapes played an important role in this respect?
Next to the storm-god, the Luwians worshipped the sun-god (Hutter
2003: 224–7). Although Helios is a very minor god in the Greek pantheon,
Mausolos, the famous fourth-century BCE ruler of Karia, derived his
ancestry from this particular god, perhaps because the sun-god seems to
have survived as the Karian deity Sinuri (Dale forthcoming a). The only
place in Greece where Helios was really important was Rhodes, where one
could find many ‘curiosités religieuses’ and where the cult of Helios was
clearly old (‘très ancien’, Laumonier 1958: 682–4). It is here, the island at
the periphery of Karia and Lykia, that we would expect ancient Anatolian
gods, such as the sun-god, to survive.
Finally, one of the most famous gods of ancient Greece was Artemis of
Ephesos, whose famous outfit of oval pendants hanging from her chest,
called ‘breasts’ since the Church Father Jerome, has long defied satisfactory
interpretation. In recent years, however, it has been persuasively suggested
that these should be traced back to the Hittite kursa (Morris 2001ab; more
cautiously, Hutter 2003: 268–9), a leather hunting-bag sometimes
personified as a tutelary divinity (Bremmer 2008: 312–17). Indeed,
Anatolian influence in Ephesos is the more likely as Ephesian Athena had
incorporated the Hittite/Luwian goddess Maliya (Taracha 2009: 115;
Hawkins 2013, 127–9; also Lykian: Neumann 1994: 132–3, 136–7, 188–9;
Watkins 2007: 122–5), as Athena Malis (Hipponax, fr. 49.2 Degani2).
Artemis’ priest was a eunuch, and such priests were typical of Anatolia,
witness the famous Galli of Kybele and Attis in Pessinous, the priests of
Hekate of Karian Lagina, and those in the temple of the Galli in Phrygian
Hierapolis (Bremmer 2008: 288–9; Taylor 2008). Moreover,
Hermaphroditos originated in Karian Halikarnassos, and in neighbouring
Pedasa Athena grew a beard every time the community was threatened from
outsiders (Bremmer 2009: 298–302, 304). As this playing with biological
markers seems to be limited to Western Anatolia, we may suspect a pre-
Luwian influence, but to suggest that we could identify this influence—the
Hatti?—would be explaining obscurum per obscurius.

RITUAL, MYTHICAL, AND CULTIC

TRANSFERS FROM ANATOLIA AND THE
LEVANT

Let us now take a closer look at the routes of transmission of two famous
transfers: the scapegoat rituals, and the Succession Myth of Kronos and the
Titans. In 1919, shortly after the decipherment of Hittite, the British pioneer
Assyriologist Archibald Sayce (1846–1933) noted the parallel of the Hittite
scapegoat ritual with that of Leviticus 16 in the Old Testament. And in
1925, the German Hittitologist Johannes Friedrich (1893–1972) observed
the parallel between the Hittite and a Greek scapegoat ritual (Burkert 1979:
60–1; Bremmer 2008: 170–96). We find similar rituals, then, in Israel,
among the Hittites and at the Greek west coast of Anatolia. How do we
explain this distribution and where did the ritual originate?
The largest mention of Anatolian scapegoats occurs in Arzawean ritual
texts found in Hattuša, although our knowledge of them derives from Hittite
ritual compositions (about 1300 BCE: Strauss 2006: 119–33; Collins 2010:
56–9). This has led the Hittitologist Miller (2004: 466–7) to suggest that
Arzawa was the ‘homeland’ of the scapegoat rituals, which subsequently
‘moved east’ towards Kizzuwatna (in Classical times known as Cilicia) and
the Levant. However, his suggestion does not take into account the fact that
our oldest testimonies come from Ebla and are dated to about 2350 BCE,
thus well before the invasion of Anatolia by the Hittites and Luwians
(Bremmer 2008: 170). These rites probably moved both southwards
towards Israel and to the west in the direction of Cilicia, which was known
for its close ritual contacts with the Levant (Miller 2005). From Kizzuwatna
the scapegoat rituals will have been exported to Arzawa, probably via
Luwians, rather than Hittites, as Hittite presence in Western Anatolia was
fairly minimal (Niemeier 2008: 327–30; Vanschoonwinkel 2010). From
Arzawa, the Ionian Greeks will have appropriated the ritual, perhaps even
first in Ephesos, as Hipponax (frr. 6, 26, 30 Degani2) from Ephesos is our
oldest source for the Greek version of the scapegoat ritual, and from
southern Ionia the ritual spread to Athens and northern Ionia (Bremmer
2008: 175–96).
Our second example is the transfer of the Hurrian–Hittite Succession
Myth, traditionally called the Kingship in Heaven Cycle. Its opening song
was known as Song of Kumarbi, until in 2007 it was noted that its real title
was Song of Emergence (Beckman 2011; Van Dongen 2011, 2012). Since
1930, when the Swiss scholar Emil Forrer (1894–1986; Oberheid 2007)
first pointed to the resemblance, its contents have often been compared to
those of Hesiod’s Theogony (most recently, Rutherford 2007; Van Dongen
2011). This myth of, originally, the Hurrians in North Syria was
appropriated both by the Hittites and the Phoenicians. Yet how this myth
came to the Greeks is still not wholly clear.
Recent studies (Rutherford 2007; Lane Fox 2008: 259–314; López-Ruiz
2010) have persuasively derived the Succession Myth from the
Phoenicians, and, as they show, the prominence of the monster Typhon—
whose name, ‘Whirlwind’ (typhoon!), is related to the Phoenician mountain
name Sapon, modern Jebel al-Aqra, via folk etymology (Haider 2005)—
fully supports their arguments. Yet the picture is complicated, and new
evidence seems to somewhat nuance this view. Now, Hesiod’s version had
passed through Delphi, as he mentions the stone in Delphi that Kronos
swallowed instead of Zeus (Theogony 498–500; West 2011: 144): the
location means that there was already a version of the myth in circulation
before Hesiod. Moreover, the Archaic Corinthian poet Eumelos knew a
version of the Titanomachy with older motifs than that of Hesiod (West
2011: 355–67). Evidently, there were a number of versions, which, every
moment, could be adapted to new input from accounts of the Succession
Myth heard somewhere in the Ancient Near East (Rutherford 2007: 31).
Yet two problems of the Succession Myth have not yet been satisfactorily
explained: the name of Kronos and the origin of the Titans. Kronos’ non-
Greek etymology suggests an import from peoples of Western Anatolia,
such as the Solymoi and Lykians (Schürr 2011: 221), who, unlike the
Greeks themselves, attached a certain importance to Kronos. Consequently,
behind Kronos we have to suspect a Luwian, Hittite, or other indigenous
god. An Anatolian background is supported by the fact that his festival, the
Kronia, was celebrated only in a very limited area, namely in Samos and its
colonies Perinthos and Amorgos, Naxos, Notion/Kolophon, and Magnesia
on the Maeander. Evidently, the origin of Kronos must be looked for in that
region in about the eighth century BCE, as the Homeric formula ‘of Kronos
with the crooked counsels’, only fits the metre with the Ionian contraction,
which points to a young stage of entry into epic (Bremmer 2008: 82).
But what about the Titans? They were called ‘the old gods’, old and/or
dumb people were insulted as Kronoi, and Attic comedy used expressions
such as ‘older than Kronos’ and ‘older than Kronos and the Titans’
(Bremmer 2008: 85, updated here). Evidently, the antiquity of this divine
generation had become proverbial at a relatively early stage of the tradition.
Now, the expression ‘early gods’ has recently been identified in a
Hellenistic Greek grave inscription in Lykia (SEG 58.1605.2) as well as in
Lykian epichoric inscriptions (Schürr 2011) and persuasively related to the
well-known Hittite ‘primeval gods’. Moreover, the number twelve of the
Titans (West 2007: 162–3; Bremmer 2008: 77–8) also points to Anatolia
where groups of twelve gods were well known; the Hittite ‘primeval gods’
actually consisted of two groups of six male and female divinities, as in
Hesiod (Rutherford 2010: 51–2; Schürr 2013b). In fact, the Archaic poet
Eumelos located the birth of Zeus in Lydia in a tantalizingly brief fragment
that has been persuasively assigned to his Titanomachy (West 2011: 356).
The location seems to be one more pointer to a connection with Western
Anatolia.
It seems, then, that various versions of the Near Eastern Succession Myth
reached Greece both via the sea route from the Levant and the land route of
Anatolia. Yet there seems to be no indication that the Titanomachy reached
Greece via the Levant. Can it be that, originally, the Succession Myth
proper came to Greece via Euboia, which was a major ‘hub’ for both
literary and material Oriental influences in the Archaic Age (Lane Fox
2008; West 2011: 62–3), and that the Titanomachy came or was given new
input via the Anatolian route? That is as far as we can go at the moment, as
the early process of development of these various versions and their mutual
influences wholly escape us.

THE CARRIERS OF THE RELIGIOUS

TRANSFERS

In what ways did the transmission of myths, rituals, and gods take place
between the Orient and Greece? Let us start with the myths. Where did the
Near East preserve its myths and how were they transmitted? One answer
is, of course, that they were recited during rituals. Yet the main
mythological epics that influenced Greek mythology probably came along
different routes. A recent study of the preservation of Hittite mythological
texts (Lorenz and Rieken 2009) has concluded that much mythological
literature, including Mesopotamian myths, was preserved in the libraries of
the Lower City of Hattuša as material for scribal training. In Mesopotamia
we find the same situation, although its scribes exercised with Sumerian
rather than Akkadian literature. Interestingly, the same literary and
mythological material that was used to train scribes in Hattuša was also
found in the Amarna letters and in Ugarit. Although we find much less
Mesopotamian literature in Ugarit than in Hattuša, both Atrahasis and
Gilgamesh are attested, the latter with a tablet containing the beginning of
the epic (George 2007); the Gilgamesh tablet of Megiddo probably also
derives from scribal education (Byrne 2007: 8).
Homer took some of his Oriental material from the beginnings of
Atrahasis and Enuma elish (Burkert 1992: 95); similarly the Song of
Emergence is the first song of the Kumarbi Cycle (Bremmer 2008: 87–8),
and a first tablet of Gilgamesh, as we just saw, was found in Ugarit.
Apparently, it was a bilingual Greek or Levantine scribe who started the
chain of transmission that eventually resulted in the Near Eastern material
appropriated by Homer and Hesiod. Perhaps this scribe gave his material to
one of the wandering, possibly also bilingual (West 1997: 607–9), poets of
the Near East or Greece (Hunter and Rutherford 2009; West 2011: 344–52).
 For rituals we have to look in a different direction. Burkert (1992) has
drawn attention to migrating seers and healers as well as public workers as
the carriers of religious transfers (see also West 1997: 586–630; Bremmer
2008: 133–51; López-Ruiz 2010: 171–202). Burkert and West concentrated
especially on transmission from the Levant, although we have shown that
Western Anatolia should not be neglected either; hepatoscopy, too, probably
reached Greece via Western Anatolia (Bachvarova 2012), just like augury
(Mouton and Rutherford 2013), and not from Mesopotamia (Burkert 1992:
46–51). On the whole, though, the model has kept up well in the last two
decades, and the stress on the Assyrian empire as an important factor (West
1997: 614–16; Burkert 2004: 7–11, 23) has only increased through study of
the interaction between Greek art and the Orient (Gunter 2009), although
contacts between Greeks and the Levant seem to have intensified during the
Neo-Babylonian period (Kuhrt 2002).
As regards travelling seers, recent insights and discoveries enable us to
improve our understanding in two cases. First, Tacitus (Hist. 2.3) mentions
a Cypriot seer, Tamiras, who came from Cilicia, and whose name has to be
connected to a gloss in Hesychios (τ 107) mentioning Tamiradai as ‘some
priests in Cyprus’. His name probably is to be explained from a Hittite word
MUNUSdamara, ‘cult personnel’ (Egetmeyer 2010: 1.289). Apparently,

Cilician seers had moved to Cyprus: one of the oldest Cypriot inscriptions,
dating to 750–700 BCE and published only in 2001, was found in Cilicia
(Egetmeyer 2010: 2.845).
A newly discovered Phoenician-Hieroglyphic Luwian inscription from
Cilician Çineköyhas also contributed to a better understanding of the seer
Mopsos whom Greek tradition represented as moving between the Ionian
coast and Cilicia (Bremmer 2008: 136–43; López-Ruiz 2009; Fowler 2013:
546–50; Eidinow 2014: 80–2). The form of his name in Mycenaean Greek,
Mo-qo-so, demonstrates that, originally, it is Greek not Anatolian (Oettinger
2007: 8–14; Yakubovich 2010: 154–6). Yet the name already occurs in the
late fifteenth-century Hittite Maduwattas text of Boghazköy as Mu-uk-šu-uš
(Beckman, Bryce, and Cline 2011: 94–5), who seems to have been a
Mycenaean leader (Yakubovich 2010: 154); and indeed, linguistic contact
between Greece and Anatolia during the second millennium BCE is well
attested (García Ramón 2011). In Greece, in the course of time, the name
Moxos developed into Mopsos, following the normal development kw> p
(cf. Mycenaean e-ko>hippos), but the original form maintained itself in
Lydia where the fifth-century Lydian historian Xanthos mentions an early
Lydian king Moxos, even though this has become Mopsos in part of the
manuscript tradition. The name occurs no less than four times among forty
names in a later fourth-century BCE Ephesian inscription about the
condemnation to death of inhabitants of Sardis; there even was a rather
obscure Lydian city, Moxoupolis (Bremmer 2008: 142–3).
In the newly discovered inscription, the king himself, the late eighth-
century Urikki, is said to be ‘an offspring of the house of Mopsos’, whereas
the Luwian version calls him a ‘grandson of [Muk]sas’ (Yakubovich 2010:
155; Beckman, Bryce, and Cline 2011: 263–6). This Mopsos does not only
carry a Greek name, but is also said to be the grandson of an ‘(Ah)hiyawan
king’. Recent linguistic analysis confirms that Ahhiyawa was the Hittite
name for the Mycenaean Greeks, as has long been suspected. This finding
supports the long-standing view that Cilicia was colonized by early Greeks
after the fall of the Hittite empire in the twelfth century BCE (Oreshko
2013). Evidently, the Phoenicians had heard the name in its later form,
Mopsos, whereas the Luwians continued to call him by the older form
Muksas. Clearly, Mopsos’ name stands at the crossroads of Greek,
Phoenician, and Luwian traditions, which, in their entanglement, show us
that we should be reticent in identifying cultural influences all too
specifically and keep in mind the fluid nature of religious and other cultural
transfers (rightly, López-Ruiz 2009: 498–9).
Finally, attention to poets, seers, and other religious specialists should not
blind us to the possibility of other channels. As regards the transmission of
gods, who, for example, was responsible for the transmission of Adonis to
Greece? Given that his rituals were practised exclusively by women and are
attested first in the work of a female poet (Sappho: fr. 140a, 168 Voigt), is it
unthinkable that they were introduced from the Levant by wives of Greek
merchants or mercenaries or even female Oriental slaves (West 1997: 618–
21)? We will probably never know but the question should be posed.

INFLUENCE FROM PERSIA?

Although the influence of Persia on Greek religion has been the subject of
more sustained argument only very recently (Burkert 2004: 99–124; Horky
2009), Heraklitos (fr. 22 DK) already ascribes a certain ritual influence to
Persian magoi, as they are grouped together with all kinds of people
practising initiations. As Ephesos had already been under Persian
dominance for more than forty years at the time of Heraklitos’ writing, and
the priest of its main goddess, Artemis, even had acquired a Persian name,
Megabyxos (Bremmer 2008: 353–6), these might have been ‘freelance’
magoi rather than official Persian priests. The gradual rise of the concept of
‘magic’ in the course of the later fifth century (Bremmer 2008: 235–48)
supports the interpretation of these magoi as itinerant priests. The
interpretation has gained weight with the publication of the Derveni
Papyrus, which contains a most interesting description of a ritual practised
by magoi in Athens at the turn of the fifth century (column 6.1–7):
[. . .] libations and sacrifices appease the artades, ‘those who possess the truth’ (i.e. the
ancestors), and the incantation of the magoi is able to drive away the daimones when they get
in the way. Daimones are very able to get in the way of the souls. This is why the magoi
perform the sacrifice, just as if they were paying a penalty. And on the offerings they pour
water and milk, from which they also make the libations. (New text, Ferrari 2011: 75–7)

The text continues with further ritual details, but, for our purpose, it is
enough to see that the magoi had not only preserved their rituals but even
some of their traditional terminology, as artades is an old Zoroastrian term,
deriving from west Iran (Brust 2005: 122–4). On the other hand, water
libations were alien to Iranian religion: apparently, the magoi had adapted
their ritual to that of the Greeks who did libate with water (Bremmer 2008:
245). Moreover, the fact that the magoi operated as if they had to pay a
penalty brings them suspiciously close to the Orphics, who also promoted
payments for the sins of the ancestors (Ferrari 2011: 79). The magoi seem
to have tried to bring their ritual and message closer to what other itinerant
priests, such as the Orpheotelests, had to offer at the time. This way of
proceeding is, of course, not strange. Modern sociology of religion teaches
us that new religions are the more successful the closer they come to the
existing ruling religions (Stark and Finke 2000). Evidently, the magoi had
already learned this lesson.
 CONCLUSION

Following the investigations of the last three decades, there can be no doubt
whatsoever that the Ancient Near East influenced and enriched Greek
religion. Yet this influence was not felt all over Greece or accepted in all
Greek milieux. To give two examples: whereas Samos has been found to be
a treasure full of Oriental goods and clearly was a kind of Archaic trading
‘hub’, neighbouring Chios has given us virtually no Oriental material
(Gunter 2009: 129–30). Second example: whereas we might think that
Hesiod had established an Oriental-influenced theogony as the ruling
paradigm, early mythographers, except for Akousilaos (frr. 6–22 Fowler)
and Pseudo-Epimenides (frr. 6–13 Fowler), only rarely referred to it;
Lesbian poets do not even seem to have used it at all (West 2011: 392–407),
although Lesbos (Hittite Lazpa) was an important interface between the
(Neo-)Hittites and the Eastern Aegaean (Bremmer 2008: 317; Dale 2011;
Teffeteller 2013; Dale forthcoming b). This rarity of the theogony makes its
employment in Orphism perhaps even more significant: the poet whom the
ancient Greeks called Orpheus clearly opted for a model that was not
generally accepted.
Having established the general importance of the Ancient Near East for
Greek religion, future research should thus look for the geographical and
social spread of this influence, as well as for the modifications of that
influence in the course of the transmission and reception. The problem of
the Orient and its influence will not quickly find a satisfying solution.

SUGGESTED READING
For an excellent survey of the work by Burkert in this field, see Casadio
2009. In addition to Burkert and West, see, in general, Bremmer 2008, Lane
Fox 2008, and López-Ruiz 2010, 2014, but also more specialized studies,
such as those by Bachvarova 2005, 2009, 2012; Bernabé 2004, 2006
[2004], 2008, 2011; Van Dongen 2007–2013; Petit 2011; Rollinger 2001,
2003, 2004, 2012; Rutherford 2006–2011; and Watkins (1933–2013) 2008.
For the contacts between the Hittites and the Mycenaeans, Genz 2011: 303–
9 is an up-to-date survey.

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1 I am most grateful to Lorenzo d’Alfonso and Roderick Campbell for letting me present my text
in their seminar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in May 2013. I thank the
organizers and the audience, especially Alvise Matessi and Sam Mirelman, as well as Laura Feldt,
Bob Fowler, Georg Petzl, Beate Pongratz-Leisten, Ian Rutherford, and Walter Sallaberger, for most
helpful information and comments.
 CHAPTER 41

GRECO-EGYPTIAN RELIGION

KATHRIN KLEIBL*

INTRODUCTION

GREEK sources from the fifth century BCE show a strong interest in Egypt.
Herodotos devoted a book of his Histories to the land on the Nile, paying
particular attention to Egyptian religion, which he considered a source for
true understanding of Greek cults. He identified the Egyptian goddess Isis
with the Greek Demeter and Io, Osiris with Dionysos, Amun with Zeus,
Horus with Apollo, Bastet with Artemis, and Hathor with Aphrodite (Hdt.
2.42ff.). All forms of divination, according to Herodotos, had originated in
Egypt, as had the first major religious festivals and processions. He
assumed the daughters of the Egyptian king Danaos brought the mysteries
of the Greek goddess Demeter to Greece. He also stated that the teachings
of the Orphics and Dionysiac mysteries came from Egypt, and that a certain
Melampos imported the cult of Dionysos—with the procession of the
phallos—into Greece.
In Egypt, during the Ptolemies’ 300-year rule, the Greeks represented the
ruling class. As a result, they grew closer to certain Egyptian gods, in
particular, Osiris, Sarapis, Isis, Horus, and Anubis. Along with travelling
merchants, the Ptolemaic dynasty was a decisive driving force for the
dissemination of these now-Hellenized Egyptian deities, which were clearly
connected with the dynastic cult. Sarapis, a conflation of Osiris and the
bull-god Apis, was raised to the status of the Ptolemaic dynastic god; his
main sanctuary was built in Egyptian Alexandria (Stambaugh 1972; Kessler
1989: 56–101).
Archaeological evidence for the worship of Egyptian gods in Greek lands
can be found in Athens from the fourth century BCE. Egyptians—probably
sailors and merchants—were permitted to build a temple to Isis in the port
of Piraeus (RICIS 101/0101). Sanctuaries in other port cities of the eastern
Mediterranean soon followed; prominent examples are the three places of
worship on the island of Delos (see further, in this volume, Scott, Chapter
16), and the sanctuary at Eretria in Euboia (Bricault 2001). Greco-Egyptian
cult grew rapidly, first in the area of Greek culture, then in the western
Mediterranean.

MYTH

No full text summarizing the myth of the Egyptian family of gods has
survived from pharaonic times. In the first century CE, however, Plutarch
recorded the story in the Greek treatise On Isis and Osiris. Relying mostly
on Egyptian sources, he collected various pharaonic traditions, episodes,
and ‘images’ into a homogenous myth in narrative form. One of the most
important sections of the myth relates the resurrection of Osiris by Isis, after
his murder by Seth, and the subsequent ‘wedding of the dead’ (Plut. De Is.
et Os. 18). ‘In tears’, Isis collects all of Osiris’ parts except for his phallos
(eaten by the fish of the Nile), then seeks help from the jackal-headed
Anubis, god of mummification. Together they revive Osiris, but not to full
earthly life: he remains lord of the underworld, and the only part of him that
returns to earth is a phallos, embodying fertility and the life force. Isis
presents it to him during the following ‘wedding of the dead’, in which she
appears as a female falcon to her husband in the realm of the dead, in order
to produce another Horus child with him. This child is basically another
manifestation of Horus, called Horus the Younger. Osiris prepares his son
Horus for vengeance and struggle against his murderer Seth—a struggle
that Horus wins, thenceforth serving as ruler/pharaoh of Egypt (Plut. De Is.
et Os. 19, 36, 38).

THE GRECO-EGYPTIAN PANTHEON

Osiris
In Egypt, Osiris is identified by name by the end of the fifth dynasty
(Mojsov 2005; Kleibl 2009: 22). He was the god of the dead, for whom the
first rites of death connected with an afterlife were performed. In the
Middle Kingdom, Osiris began to be approximated to the Egyptian pharaoh
and became king of the underworld. In late Egyptian times, Osiris was one
of the most dominant gods of Egypt, standing hierarchically even above the
pharaoh. He was worshipped especially as a fertility god, symbolizing the
land of Egypt, and the crops of the land sprouted from his body. A
particular aspect of Osiris was his identification with the water of the Nile,
which was considered to be his semen. Osiris was thus the Nile, the giver of
life to Egypt: he died when the Nile dried up and he was reborn when its
flooding made the land fertile (Kleibl 2009: 154f.).
Osiris was not adopted into the Greco-Egyptian pantheon in his Egyptian
form; for the Greeks, the representation of a dead god was unusual.
Although he was identified by Herodotos with Dionysos, another
‘Hellenized’ god took Osiris’ place beside the goddess Isis: the already-
mentioned Sarapis.
Osiris was not worshipped outside Egypt as a ‘physically tangible’ deity,
but he still had a symbolic role in cultic practice. He symbolized
transformation and flow through his self-renewal and change. In their
initiation into the community of faith—the mysteries—the followers of the
Hellenized Isis cult relived the death and resurrection of Osiris in their own
bodies. Although there were no cult images of Osiris, he was still honoured
in his manifestation as water, as a second-century BCE dedication from
Thessaloniki makes clear: Phylakides erected a temple to Osiris with a
hollow chamber containing water; in this chamber the god moves around in
the ‘starlit night’ and brings joy to Isis. From the first century BCE, canopic
jars containing the sacred waters of the Nile—vessels with the head of the
god as a cover, called Osiris-Hydreios figures—were placed in the
sanctuaries.

Isis
Isis is attested in Egyptian religion from around 2400 BCE in epigraphic
sources, not as a goddess but as a priestess (Kleibl 2009: 20–2). The
pyramid and coffin texts place Isis as a mourner at the foot of the bier
during the embalming process, while her sister Nephthys stood at the head
end. Isis’ deification during the fifth dynasty is associated with the
appearance of Osiris. In the Middle Kingdom she was understood as the
wife of the deceased ruler and pharaoh in the underworld. She was also
recognized by ordinary Egyptians as the goddess of the dead.
In the New Kingdom, the chthonic role of Isis became that of a mother
and sky deity. The pharaohs now referred to themselves as the sons of Isis,
and her womb was regarded as a royal throne; her name means ‘throne’ or
‘seat’. In the nineteenth dynasty (1292–1190 BCE) the worship of Isis
reached its first climax and she rose to the status of a universal goddess,
absorbing the essence of the other Egyptian goddesses. Egyptian queens
identified themselves with Isis, a tradition adopted by Ptolemaic rulers.
Greek religion of the fourth century BCE was particularly receptive to
saviour deities with maternal, helping, or healing functions. Thanks to her
universality, the Egyptian Isis, an all-embracing, transnational, trans-
cultural, and trans-religious world goddess, was integrated with little
difficulty into the Greco-Egyptian pantheon. Of particular importance in
this connection are the aretalogies that concern self-revelations ‘put in the
mouth of Isis’: a text that lists her miracles and characteristics. The
aretalogies were inscribed on stelai in certain sanctuaries of gods outside
Egypt, such as in Kyme (RICIS 302/0204), in Thessaloniki (RICIS
113/0545), in Thracian Maroneia (RICIS 114/0202), in Telmessos (RICIS
306/0201), and on Ios (RICIS 202/1101) and Andros (IG XII, 5 739); the
earliest dates from the first century BCE, the latest from the third century CE.
They purport to be ‘verbatim’ copies of a third-century BCE Memphian
archetype from the Temple of Hephaistos. One of these tablets was
probably placed in each sanctuary outside Egypt and used in daily worship.
Their textual style shows strong affinities with the hymns of Egyptian
origin that were known to be sung by priests.

Horus/Harpokrates
Horus is the son of Isis and Osiris and an important member of the family
of the gods. ‘Horus the child’—Har-pa-chered in the original Egyptian—
was Hellenized into Harpokrates. As in Egypt, in Greco-Roman culture, he
was represented in human form as a child with his finger to his mouth. In
Egypt this gesture was still considered a symbol of childhood, but the
adherents of Greco-Egyptian cult interpreted it as an admonition to be silent
about their initiation rites, about which no word should be spoken (Plut. De
Is. et Os. 68; Ovid Met. 9.629).
Horus/Harpokrates is mentioned fairly frequently in epigraphic sources
(RICIS 770, 773–5). Like his parents, he was the recipient of votive
offerings and sacrifices. He also received sacrifices in common with Isis,
Sarapis, and Osiris, in the spirit of family solidarity. In the Greco-Roman
world, however, a separate place of worship was never built for
Harpokrates. Sources do indicate that at least one temple structure was
dedicated to him, in Amphipolis (RICIS 113/0905), but no archaeological
traces have been found. It is likely that the dedication means that a chapel to
Harpokrates was built within a sanctuary of Isis and Sarapis. This would be
consistent with other places of worship (e.g. in the Iseion at Pompeii)
dedicated to his divine parents, in which many chapels and cult niches are
detectable.

Anubis
Jackal-headed Anubis is the god of mummification from the time of the Old
Kingdom; in the desert he watched over the dead of the anch-tawi
Necropolis, the cemetery of Memphis (Kleibl 2009: 278, 283). As a
psychopomp (guide of the dead), he was an intermediary between this
world and the next. He is the son of Seth and Nephthys, but accompanied
his foster-mother Isis in search of her missing husband Osiris, and later
mummified his corpse. While Isis and Nephthys mourned the dead, Anubis
performed the ‘mouth-opening ritual’ on the corpse, which allowed the Ka
(a part of the soul) to return to the dead body; in Egypt it was assumed that,
without the soul, the dead could not live on in the afterlife. In the Egyptian
cult of the dead, Anubis (or a priest of Anubis) was always in charge of
embalming and mummification. Later, in the Greco-Egyptian cult of the
gods, the ‘mouth-opening ritual’ was still performed by priests to revive the
cult statue.
In the so-called Egyptian ‘Osiris mysteries’, in which the search for
Osiris became a cultic performance, a masked priest played the role of
Anubis. A depiction from Dendera shows a priest in such a costume
(Dendérah IV, table 31; Quack 2003: 61). The jackal-headed appearance of
Anubis was also adopted by the Greco-Egyptian cult of the gods. A priest
masked as the jackal-headed Anubis is shown in various depictions of the
Isis procession. The leading position of Anubis in the processions is also
shown by his display in the calendar as a symbol for certain feast days.
Herodotos refers to Anubis in connection with embalming rituals in
Egypt, but does not mention his name or equate him with any Greek god
(Hdt. 2.86.2.3–7). In the Greek world, however, there was a tradition of his
identification with Hermes, who also functioned as a psychopomp; he was
often called Hermanubis. In a divergence from the Egyptian myth as related
by Plutarch, a Bithynian hymn (found in Kios) to Anubis from the first
century CE calls him the son of Isis and Osiris-Sarapis (SIRIS 325). Worship
of Anubis outside Egypt is demonstrable only in the context of Greco-
Egyptian cult: there were no shrines built especially for Anubis.

Sarapis
The old view that Sarapis was a god artificially created by the Ptolemies is
no longer tenable in light of present research (Hornborstel 1973; Mayr
2001). The thesis that the archetype of Sarapis came from Sinope on the
Black Sea coast, and stood as godfather for later representations of the
deity, has also been proven to be wrong. The epithet ‘Sinopion’ was
erroneously derived by ancient authors from Sinope, and in fact refers to the
area in Egyptian Memphis where there was a Sarapeion. It is thus an
indication of an Egyptian origin for Sarapis, and Sarapis should be
understood as resulting from a pre-existing, evolving syncretism, probably
beginning in pre-Ptolemaic times, and then promoted by Ptolemy I Soter
(304–283/2 BCE; see Mayr 2001). Sarapis was a special manifestation of
Osiris or the underworld God Oser-Apis, who came from Memphis and
appeared there as a bull. Therefore, Sarapis stood originally for the dead
Apis bulls that became Osiris after they died. In Sarapis, the Egyptian gods
Osiris, Apis (Ptah of Memphis), Amun, and Ra were united in one form;
thus he, like Osiris, was a god of the dead and of fertility.
With the transfer of his cult to Alexandria around 320 BCE, Sarapis was
also worshipped as the king of the gods: his function was now to legitimize
the rule of the Ptolemies—wholly in the tradition of the Theban Amun-Ra
as god of the realm. Isis was placed at his side as his wife, and, together
with Horus/Harpokrates, they formed the Greco-Egyptian divine trinity.
The Ptolemies also worshipped Sarapis as the lord of eternity and time,
seeing him as the arbiter of fate and as an oracle god, and giving him equal
status with Zeus, Hades, Dionysos, and Asklepios.
Sarapis’ appearance also supplies information about his Greco-Egyptian
nature. Usually he sits on a throne, with a sceptre in his left hand, a kalathos
or harvest basket as a crown, and three-headed Kerberos at his feet. These
insignia of power identify him as king of the gods. The harvest basket is a
fertility symbol marking him as the god of grain; Kerberos—the guardian of
the underworld in Greek mythology—takes up the Egyptian origin of the
god (Osiris as ruler of the underworld). But while the Hellenistic
iconography of Sarapis certainly refers to Egyptian thought, it shows no
similarity with traditional ancient Egyptian representations of Osiris.
Though in nature an Egyptian god, Sarapis was completely Hellenized in
outward form.
Sarapis is thus a god without a mythological history, an unusual
condition in both Egyptian and Greek religion. His cult was important
mainly for the Greek population of Egypt. The Egyptians themselves took
little interest in him; especially in the rural areas of Egypt, Sarapis remained
the foreign god of the Greeks. Nevertheless, a socio-political commitment
to integrate Egyptian and Greek traditions can certainly be recognized in the
Ptolemies’ development and promotion of the cult of Sarapis.
 GRECO-EGYPTIAN CULT

In the Greek world, Greco-Egyptian cult was first practiced in private.

Elements from ancient Egyptian religion were integrated into the familiar
repertoire of Greek religion, without greatly violating its nature. Such an
adaptation of the unknown to the known is also reflected in the architecture
of places of worship.

Places of Worship
The architecture of Greco-Egyptian sanctuaries was initially oriented to the
Hellenistic architectural tradition (Kleibl 2009: 48–130), drawing on an
astonishing range of building types. Neither the temples nor the other
elements of Greco-Egyptian sanctuaries were characterized by a unique
architectural language. Nevertheless, there are some special features of
Greco-Egyptian sanctuaries that distinguish them from those of Greek
deities; they derive primarily from the example of ancient Egyptian
temples. Thus, the sanctuaries of Greco-Egyptian gods—like most temples
of Egyptian gods—were situated in urban contexts. In Hellenistic times, the
sanctuaries were integrated into residential areas and had a partly private
character. They came to be built in harbours, in commercial districts, or
right in the centres of urban life, suggesting that their religious communities
consisted mostly of merchants and sailors. The situation was different only
in Egypt itself, where Greco-Egyptian cult was connected with the
Ptolemaic dynasty. Not until the official recognition of the Greco-Egyptian
gods outside Egypt did the cult gain adherents among other, native social
classes—a development that, in Roman times, led eventually to its
reconnection with the cult of the ruler.
The orientation of Greco-Egyptian temples played no important role in
cultic practice; only a very rough orientation of religious buildings to the
south and east is observable. As in ancient Egyptian sanctuaries, the
availability of a water source was more important, as demonstrated by the
numerous waterworks installed in the temenoi (sanctuaries; sing. temenos).
 Like the Egyptian temples, almost all the sanctuaries had a sacred area
completely shielded by a high wall from the outer, profane world. The
effect of the sanctuary on its surroundings was limited to its front entrance:
these sometimes powerful pylon-like structures were derived from either
Egyptian models or the elaborate propylaia (gateways) of Greek
architecture. Outwardly, most Greco-Egyptian sanctuaries were
architecturally indistinguishable from the places of worship of other deities.
Only an inscription placed over the entrance, a floor mosaic, or statues
made reference to the gods worshipped in the temenos. There were also
pools at the entrance, from which water for the symbolic cleansing of
believers was drawn before they entered the sanctuary—this was
particularly characteristic of Greco-Egyptian religion.
The temple and its courtyard dominated the inside of the sanctuary.
Nearly all such facilities had courts or open spaces in which worshippers
could assemble for the ‘morning opening of the temple’, sacrifices, and
other rituals. These courts were built to many different designs, but were
often shaped as wide peristyle courts, very like those of Egyptian temples.
They also shared this aspect: one side of the temple was flanked by the
temenos wall or by the portico, so that the gaze of the community could be
focused on it. On the other hand, almost all temples were pushed to the rear
of the sanctuary, sometimes even beyond the surrounding temenos wall, so
that the courtyards occupied a far larger area than the temple. This
arrangement stressed the importance of the meeting place and gave more
space to the forecourt.
The courts could serve as an auditorium from which events in the temple
could be followed and the cult image seen. In the Greco-Egyptian cult of
the gods, awareness of the threshold, a transition region, is of essential
importance: for the adherent of the cult, all of life depended on this
threshold. The court not only functioned as a meeting place for
worshippers, but was also the space in which this intermediate state was
ritually manifested. Thus, the courts were generally left open—if they were
locked up this was infrequently—and this is why there was a requirement
for clearly marked religious boundaries, in order to manage the potential
invasiveness of the profane.
Also remarkable is the predominance (for religious reasons) of secondary
buildings over somewhat smaller religious structures. With regard to
decoration, the elaborate design of the courtyard area, the exterior of the
temple, the side chapels, and meeting places is striking, while other spaces
seem to have been rather neglected. This focus on the public area of the
sanctuary, at the expense of other areas, probably simply reflects the usual
location of the worshippers; the side rooms that they did not enter did not
require elaborate decoration.
The temples of Greco-Egyptian shrines were modelled on Greek building
types modified only by local and temporal peculiarities. Therefore, the size
of the temple varies enormously, between 13 m2 and 1412 m2. In
Hellenistic times, the prevailing forms are the templum in antis (the
simplest type of temple, a rectangular structure with projecting side walls
forming a porch before the main hall), and the naos (the inner chamber of a
temple) with surrounding peristasis (a four-sided colonnade). The main
temples had the function of protecting the cult image and housing religious
objects and votive offerings. Large temples offered cult adherents the
opportunity to participate in worship within the temple. All temples of the
Greco-Egyptian gods show a clear focus on the front of the building.
Porticoes could be designed differently, but they all served as ‘stages’ on
which priests could carry out ritual acts before worshippers standing in the
courtyard. These areas in front of all temples offered sufficient space for the
placement of religious images and for the carrying out of ritual activities.
Directly before the temple or in its pronaos (the inner area of the portico of
the temple, resembling an entrance hall) there were benches for the
assembled priests or other religious personnel.
To the pronaos was connected the cella (the main inner chamber of the
temple), which overlooked a broad entrance and could be closed off by
shutting a door; the cult image was set up on a raised platform against its
back wall. If the temple was orientated to the east or south, the image was
illuminated by the sun when the temple was opened in the morning. In deep
cellae and large hall temples, special lighting effects could also be created
by means of small windows, skylights, reflective flooring, water basins, or
wall coverings, possibly made of glass. The door openings allowed the
worshippers to look from the courtyard into the cella. Between 1200 and
1400m2 in area, the cella was normally a rectangle with its narrow axis to
the front, although some temples featured a rectangular cella presenting its
long axis, a design probably intended to allow as many people as possible
to see the inner sanctum from the courtyard. The different sizes of the cellae
reflect different temple functions. In temples with smaller cellae,
worshippers could not enter, but gathered in the yard in front of the sacred
building. Half of the rituals were therefore carried out with the community
excluded, while the other half took place in the forecourt of the temple. In
religious buildings with a large cella, such as hall temples, worshippers
could follow the rites inside the temple itself.
Additional equipment and closets for cult images—(for which it is more
difficult to find evidence in the small cellae)—indicate the performance of
special rituals. In some cellae, water basins have been found below or in
front of the cult image platform, as well as gutters, channels, and basins in
the inner chamber. These allowed fluids from sacrificial victims and water
used by temple servants for daily cleaning of the cult statues to run off
directly, but they also formed visible barriers, marking the limits of contact
with the cult image for the unauthorized. Stepped pools and tubs in the
inner rooms of cellae indicate the performance of ritual purifications,
apparently associated with initiations.
In the cavities of the bases of some cult images, objects have been found
that suggest repositories for cult apparatus or reference libraries. In addition
to utensils used for the daily cleaning and adornment of the cult image,
these hollows held scrolls containing the most important liturgical texts and
ritual prescriptions. In some temples there were also spaces within the base
of the temple, in which—as in the subterranean crypts of Egyptian temples
—cult objects were stored.
The cult image stood at the back wall of the cella, elevated and orientated
on the axis of the temple, so that the god looked towards the door and into
the court beyond. The higher position of Greco-Egyptian cult images is
analogous to the position of those in ancient Egyptian temples, where the
floor level also rises continually up to the naos with its cult image. Thus, in
both the Egyptian and Greco-Egyptian temple there is a rising, sacred
topography: forecourt–cella–cult image. The connection between the area
in front—a courtyard or a separate area within the cella—and the cult
image in the temple interior allowed direct communication (previously
unthinkable in Egypt) between simple worshippers and the divine in
sanctuaries of Greco-Egyptian gods. This made the courtyard a richly
equipped space for the community, with a fitting backdrop created by the
combination of Hellenistic–Roman decoration with Egyptian and
Egyptianizing elements. The designs and sacred symbols in the courtyard
also served as religious instruction by establishing a connection to the cult
practices and the myths of the Greco-Egyptian gods.
Sanctuaries of Greco-Egyptian gods also always had side chapels, for the
worship of gods associated with the chief deity of the temple. These were
usually separate structures, but in the immediate vicinity of the main
temple. If integrated into other rooms, they lay mostly near or directly
behind the temple. If reduced to niches, they were inserted into the portico
surrounding the courtyard. There were also chapels in the entrance area,
which worshippers could visit before entering the main courtyard. At the
back of a few temples could be found ‘hearing ear’ chapels, known from
the temples of Egypt, which allowed the ordinary worshipper to approach
the deity directly. It is also possible that they were the site for the oracular
consultations known from epigraphic sources, which could deal with
religious, hierarchical, political, legal, and private matters.
The water crypts discovered in some sanctuaries are specific to Greco-
Egyptian cult. Their placement within the sacral topography was probably
unimportant; what mattered was that they were of limited access and
underground. In their function they resembled the Egyptian nilometer or
pseudo-nilometer: in these water crypts (Nile) water was stored for
religious purposes, which included the daily cleansing of the temple as well
as rites of initiation, in which the Nile water made possible a mystic
identification with Osiris.
Dining rooms and meeting halls can also be found in the sanctuaries.
Some had benches that ran around the perimeter, which are also known
from comparable spaces in late Egyptian temples. In their architecture these
rooms do not differ from those of other Greek temples of the time, but their
sometimes very elaborate cultic apparatus gives them a specific character.
The design of the assembly rooms in the sanctuaries of Greco-Egyptian
gods is fairly flexible, depending on the space, financial resources, and
needs of particular communities. In sanctuaries without separate meeting
rooms, courtyards, and porticoes probably served as places of assembly.

Rites and Practices

Participation in Greco-Egyptian cult was connected, for its worshippers,
with initiation into mysteries (Kleibl 2009: 142–5), which marked a clear
boundary for unbelievers. The architecture of many sanctuaries already
differentiated the cult from the outer world, creating a clearly defined area
and a sense of belonging to a community of faith. Accordingly, the
courtyard of the sanctuary, and the rituals held within them, were accessible
only to members and those who aspired to join them.
One of these daily rituals was the ‘morning opening of the temple’
(Kleibl 2009: 131–3). Its sequence, like the ‘ritual of the hours’, was taken
over from Egyptian religion. Before its performance, the priests washed in
shallow water basins, corresponding to the cleansing pool of the priesthood
in Egyptian sanctuaries. Then a priest awakened the cult image in the holy
of holies of the temple. By means of the ‘opening-mouth ritual’ adopted
from Egypt, the image of the god was transformed into a living, present
deity. It was fed, washed, painted, dressed, and made part of a theatrical
production (the hypostoloi or stolists assumed the duty of caring for the
image, see Kleibl 2009: 159); in order to be transported in rituals and
processions, the statues were mostly smaller than life size. Thus animated,
the cult images made the gods accessible and touchable.
After this ritual, special hymns were sung at the morning opening of the
temple, in the court area, by priests and aretalogoi (Kleibl 2009: 157–8);
fresh (Nile) water for libation vessels was drawn from water crypts, wells,
or cisterns. At the main altar—which could be designed as a ‘horn altar’—
and at numerous smaller altars, sacrifices were performed in sacrificial pits
and areas. In Egypt, these rituals took place mostly in the temple, but here
benches were set up in the court area and the porticoes. The rites were
accompanied by singers and musicians with sistrum, flute, trumpet,
tympanum, harp, and bells. The sistrum is especially characteristic of cult
of Greco-Egyptian gods (Kleibl 2009: 148–50); like the long flutes and the
funnel-shaped trumpets, it was taken over from the cult of Hathor, which
also came from Egypt.
In accordance with the Egyptian model, sacrifice was offered by a senior
priest, assisted by pastophoroi (auxiliary priests). Before some altars there
were front steps that raised the priest and his activity above the religious
community. In addition to the main altar, the raised pronaoi of some sacred
buildings probably served as a religious stage for all the visible
performances of sacrifice. The offerings consisted mainly of cereals, fruit
cakes, dates, figs, pineapples, hens’ eggs, a milk–honey mixture, water,
geese, chickens, and, more rarely, cattle. The air was purified with incense
and other aromatic material burned on the altars and in special censers
(Kleibl 2009: 150–1); along with resins, frankincense, and myrrh, the
Egyptian kyphi (a highly prized incense) was also used. All these actions
took place with the worshippers gathered in the courtyard. Their
participation in the daily, monotonously repetitive rituals not only made the
myth manifest, but also created a sense of communal belonging. Not all the
rituals and ceremonies of Greco-Egyptian cult were connected with secret
initiation into mysteries. Elaborate and spectacular processions also took
place in public civic and harbour areas on the occasion of annual festivals
(Kleibl 2009: 139–42). These gave non-initiates a look at the unfamiliar
cult, and allowed the community to recruit potential members.
The calendar of Greco-Egyptian cult had several annual festivals: the
New Year’s Festival, the Inventio Osirides (or Isia, a festival that honoured
Isis’ search for and discovery of Osiris) and the Navigium Isidis
(‘navigation of Isis’; Kleibl 2009: 139–42). These celebrations were rooted
in the temple festivals of the ancient Egyptian sanctuaries. The New Year’s
festival had forerunners in the festivals of Isis-Sothis and of Sokar-Osiris,
celebrated in Egypt in mid-July, on the day of the highest flooding of the
Nile. The Inventio Osirides or Isia had its origin in the Egyptian ‘mysteries’
of Osiris. During the celebrations, the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris was
staged to commemorate the resurrection of the god. The Navigium Isidis
festival—which opened the seafaring season in March—was celebrated for
the first time in the Ptolemaic period in Canopus, near Alexandria, and
involved the worship of Isis as patroness of sailing. Processions within and
outside the sanctuaries were an integral part of all these festivals. Apuleius
gives a detailed description of the Navigium Isidis: in the accompanying
sacrifices a vessel of (Nile) water, along with banners, was presented. In all
cultic celebrations, great importance was given to dramas in which priests
assumed the roles of gods, making the myth visible to the faithful. The
large, lake-like pools in the courtyards—a parallel to the holy lakes of
Egyptian temples—served as performance spaces for such productions, in
which the worshippers could identify with Osiris as well as with Isis. All
festivities ended with a meal shared by the worshippers in the courtyard or
one of the dining rooms.
 CULT PARTICIPANTS

Mysteries and Initiation

Before being accepted into the community, the adherent of Greco-Egyptian
cult had to undergo an initiation into the dogma of the faith, the so-called
mysteries: first, initiation into the Isis mysteries, then a second initiation,
that of Osiris, which allowed the faithful to assume priestly duties; a fee
was charged for both initiations (Kleibl 2009: 142–5).
Apuleius provides essential information on the Isis mysteries in the
eleventh book of his Metamorphoses (second century CE), where he gives
an idealized description of a sanctuary in Kenchreai in Greece (Kleibl 2009:
25–8). About its actual contents he is silent—as befits a secret. Before
being initiated, the candidate was instructed in the religion, probably in the
sanctuary itself, where depictions of teaching and indications of reference
libraries have been found. The neophyte had to perform menial services in
the temple before the initiation (Met. 11.21.1), to guard against impatience
and disobedience (11.21.6), and had to live abstemiously, renouncing
unclean and sinful food (11.21.9). Those who wished ‘after the completion
of life and on the threshold of being . . . to be, in a sense, reborn to a new
existence’ (11.21.7) were initiated. The instructions were carried out during
the subsequent initiation ‘in voluntary surrender to death and salvation by
grace’ (11.21.7). The goddess Isis announced the time and cost of the
initiation ceremony in a dream.
According to Apuleius, the community came to the shrine at night to
present the neophyte with gifts of honour; the discovery of stores of lamps
and torches confirms these nocturnal rituals. Dressed in new garments of
white linen, the initiate was led by the priest into the holy of holies.
Apuleius explains what happens next using imagery: ‘I approached the
border of death, trod the threshold of Proserpine, was carried back through
all the elements; at midnight I saw the sun blazing with a white light; I
approached the gods of the underworld and of heaven face to face, and
worshipped them at close range’ (11.23.7). The initiate had to pass
symbolically through the twelve gates of the underworld, a ritual that refers
to the underworld journey of the Egyptian god Ra. The religious rebirth of
the initiate may have taken place in the water crypts, into which he
descended at night, to begin, at daybreak, a new life consecrated to the god.
On the morning after the initiation, the initiate, clothed in finely
embroidered linen, was placed on a wooden platform before the cult image
in the temple. A precious mantle hung on his shoulders, decorated with all
kinds of fabulous creatures—comparison with the Egyptian Book of the
Dead leads to new understanding of the choice of motifs. ‘When I was thus
adorned like the sun and set up like a statue, the veils suddenly parted, and
the people pressed in to see me’ (11.24.4). The day was celebrated with a
meal and festivities.
Candidates could be initiated into the Osiris mysteries only once a year.
Apuleius describes it, but only in hints, as it were. Living later in Rome,
Lucius is invited in a dream to a second initiation, one year after his first
one: he was not yet ‘illumined by the rites of the great god and the greatest
father of the gods, unconquered Osiris. For although these deities and faiths
were connected, indeed united, there was nonetheless a great difference in
the initiation’ (11.27.2ff.). In the dream an initiate appears to him, who lays
thyrsoi, ivy fronds, and other secret attributes before his house altar and
announces a solemn meal; according to Apuleius, these festivities were
connected with great financial expenditure. After a period of abstinence and
the shaving of the head, ‘I was illumined by the nocturnal rites of the first
among the gods and applied myself with full devotion to the holy worship
of the kindred religion’ (11.28.5).

Religious Communities
Some believers of the communities came together to form internal groups
(Kleibl 2009: 162–6). These cliques—Melanephoroi, Therapeutai, Isiastai,
Sarapiastai, Anubiastai, Osiriastai, and so on—functioned primarily as
religious communities, but there were also groups with largely social and
economic purposes. They met for meals to honour the gods in the meeting
places and dining rooms of the sanctuary, and discussed community
concerns, such as the construction and maintenance of the facility. As an
example we may cite the sanctuary in Ostia, which has extensive dining and
meeting rooms (Kleibl 2009: cat. 28 Ostia 272–6). In the courtyard of the
sanctuary there were thesauroi containing various votive offerings—small
altars, divine images, statues of the donor, statuettes, or votive tablets given
by individuals or groups. The collective feeling arising from dedicating
statues, sharing meals, and so on, had both religious and socio-political
dimensions.

Cult Personnel
Greco-Egyptian cult personnel were organized hierarchically—priests,
pastophoroi (assistant priests), and other functionaries (Kleibl 2009: 157–
61). Originally, the priests were still Egyptian-born, passing their
knowledge down to their sons, who would take up the office (e.g. on Delos:
RICIS 202/0101). In late Hellenistic times there could also be non-Egyptian
priests, as long as they fulfilled certain requirements: to be ordained,
candidates had to complete a multistage initiation ritual adopted from
Egypt.
The more highly placed functionaries of Greco-Egyptian cult had shaved
heads and clean-shaven faces, like Egyptian priests. They were clothed with
a robe knotted over the chest, a fringed shawl, and shoes probably made
from palm or papyrus fibres, according to ancient Egyptian tradition. The
task of the priests was to perform the liturgies and rites in a traditional
manner. In some sanctuaries, the priests were supported by prophets
(prophetes), who also understood the sacred teachings, but had to manage
the finances of the sanctuary. The pastophoroi, however, were recruited
from the indigenous population from the beginning, but had to undergo an
initiation like that of the priests to qualify for their office. The main task of
the pastophoroi was to carry the cult image (hence their designation as
shrine porters). They also had the duty of keeping the cult apparatus and the
privilege of being able to enter the cella of the temple. Under the
pastophoroi in rank stood the hypostoloi, also known as stolists or
hierostolists. They served the cult image, washing, anointing, and dressing
the statue, as in ancient Egyptian ritual. This office was drawn from the
indigenous population and was one of the few in Greco-Egyptian cult that
could be assumed by women.
From the Metamorphoses of Apuleius we know that a grammateus—a
sort of secretary—invited the pastophoroi to a gathering after the New Year.
In the mural in the portico of the Iseum at Pompeii, the scribe wears a
feather on his temple, probably a reminder that a hawk brought the priests
of Thebes a scroll wrapped with a red ribbon containing the rules of the
cult. Hence, it is assumed that the scribes were generally Egyptians, a
supposition confirmed by an inscription from Aquileia in which a male
hierogrammateus is called Arnouphis of Egypt. Oneirokritai—dream
interpreters—are mentioned in inscriptions from Athens, Sarapeion C on
Delos, and Tomi; they evaluated the dreams of cult members and initiates,
and also determined the timing of initiation, as with Lucius in the
Metamorphoses of Apuleius.
Aretalogoi (orators) were the priests who sang the hymns in the rituals;
they are known from Athens, from Sarapeion C on Delos, and later from
Rome. Neokoroi (temple guards) and zakoroi (temple workers) certainly
represented the lowest-ranking staff in the sanctuaries, but their tasks were
still important: they stood in the sacred area, monitored access to the
sanctuary, and maintained order. Initially chosen to hold office only for a
year, they could later be appointed for several consecutive years.

CONCLUSION

The adherents of Greco-Egyptian cult entered, as it were, a parallel world.

Shrine porters, priests, scribes, initiates, and simple believers all played
their part in staging an effect of absolute power. Within the sanctuary was
manifested a force more potent than the commonly known gods. Greco-
Egyptian cult promised a righteous life without class differences and gave
believers hope of existence after death.
How attractive and captivating Greco-Egyptian cult was, even in its
decline, is shown by a text from the fourth century CE, which, on the one
hand, is written in the style of the ancient Egyptian Isis aretalogies and thus
reveals an unbroken tradition, but, on the other, apostrophizes a present,
current, and all-embracing deity. What Apuleius presents as a harmless
story with touches of burlesque—the transformation of an ass into a man—
can be recognized in its full force in this Christian spell (London Magical
Papyrus No. 46):
 I am the truth, full of revulsion against the misdeeds in the world. I am what makes lightning
[here magical words are inserted] and thunder. I am he whose sweat falls as a rain on the earth
to fertilize it. I am he whose mouth is utterly in flames. I am what produces and reproduces. I
am the grace of the world’s age.

SUGGESTED READING
On the cult in general, see Vidman 1970, Witt 1971, Solmsen 1979, Bricault
2013. Cartography: Bricault 2001. Archaeology: Kleibl 2009. Iconography:
individual gods in LIMC. Literary sources: Griffiths 1970 and 1975, Burton
1972, Merkelbach 1995. Epigraphical sources: Vidman 1969, Totti 1985,
Bricault 2005 (addenda in Bricault and Veymiers 2008). Numismatics:
Bricault 2008.

REFERENCES
Bricault L. 2001. Atlas de la diffusion de cultes isiaque (IVe s. av. J.-C.—Ive s. apr. J.-C.), Mémoires
de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 23. Paris.
Bricault, L. 2005. Recueil des inscriptions concernant les cultes isaiques (RICIS), Mémoires de
l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 31. Paris.
Bricault, L. 2008. Sylloge Nummorum Religionis Isiacae et Sarapiacae, Mémoires de l’Académie des
Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 38. Paris.
Bricault, L. 2013. Les cultes isiaques dans le monde gréco-romain, La Roues à Livres/Documents.
Paris.
Bricault L. and Veymiers, R. 2008. Bibliotheca Isiaca I-. Bordeaux: Éditions Ausonius.
Burton, A. 1972. Diodorus Siculus, Book I, A Commentary, EPRO 29. Leiden.
Griffiths, J. G. 1970. Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride. Swansea.
Griffiths, J. G. 1975. Apuleius of Madauros. The Isis Book (Metamorphoses XI). Edited with an
introduction, translation and commentary, EPRO 39. Leiden.
Hornborstel, W. 1973. Sarapis. Studien zur Überlieferungsgeschichte der Erscheinungsformen und
Wandlungen der Gestalt eines Gottes. Leiden.
Kessler, D. 1989. Die heiligen Tiere und der König, Teil 1: Beiträge zu Organisation, Kult und
Theologie der spätzeitlichen Tierfriedhöfe, ÄAT Band 16. Wiesbaden.
Kleibl, K. 2009. ISEION—Raumgestaltung und Kultpraxis in den Heiligtümern gräco-ägyptischer
Götter im Mittelmeerraum. Worms.
Mayr, P. 2001. ‘Serapis. Zur Entstehung eines ptolemäischen Gottes’. Unpublished MA thesis,
Universität München.
Merkelbach, R. 1995. Isis Regina—Zeus Serapis. Die griechisch-ägyptische Religion nach den
Quellen dargestellt. Stuttgart and Leipzig.
Mojsov, B. 2005. Osiris: Death and Afterlife of a God. Malden, MA.
Quack, J. and Takacs, S. A. 2001. ‘Serapis’, in Der Neue Pauly 11, 445. Stuttgart and Weimar.
Solmsen, F. 1979. Isis among the Greeks and Romans (Martin Class. Lect. XXV). Cambridge, MA,
and London.
Stambaugh, J. 1972. Sarapis under the Early Ptolemies, EPRO 25. Leiden.
Totti, M. 1985. Ausgewählte Texte der Isis- und Sarapis-Religion. Hildesheim, Zürich, and New
York.
Vidman, L. 1969. Sylloge inscriptionum religionis Isiacae et Sarapiacae. Berlin.
Vidman, L. 1970. Isis und Sarapis bei den Griechen und Römern: Epigraph. Studien z. Verbreitung u.
zu d. Trägern d. ägypt. Kultes. Berlin.
Witt, R. 1971. Isis in the Greco-Roman World. London.
* Translation: Jay Kardan.
 CHAPTER 42

BACTRIA AND INDIA

RACHEL MAIRS

It would seem that the Greek gods in India, though they remained as official coin-types or
material for artists, had little enough to do with the religion of the people . . . it cannot be
said how far Heracles and Dionysus were merely Krishna and Siva, and certainly Zeus was
almost always the elephant-god of Kapisa. (Tarn 1951 [1938]: 392)

INTRODUCTION

AT the time of the publication of Tarn’s monumental The Greeks in Bactria

and India in 1938 there was little or no archaeological or epigraphic
evidence for the religious practices of the inhabitants of the Greco-Bactrian
and Indo-Greek kingdoms. This situation has changed dramatically. Most of
the sites and monuments discussed in this chapter began to be excavated
only in the mid- to late-twentieth century, and some unprovenanced finds,
especially of inscriptions, were first published only in the 2000s. However,
Tarn’s hunch that the ‘Greek’ gods of the easternmost Hellenistic states may
have been known under different names by different constituencies has, if
anything, been confirmed.
 The Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek states are not well documented in
the extant historical sources. The majority of their kings are known only
from their coins (for discussion see Holt 2012, and for examples, the
catalogues Bopearachchi 1991 and 1998). Establishing a firm chronology is
therefore difficult. A few significant dates may, however, be borne in mind.
In the 320s BCE, Alexander campaigned through Bactria and north-western
India, and established a number of garrison settlements populated by Greek
and Macedonian soldiers. In a treaty of 303 BCE, the lands south of the
Hindu Kush (Arachosia and north-west India) were ceded by Seleukos I to
the Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya. The remaining Greek
settlements north of the Hindu Kush, in Bactria, remained nominally part of
the Seleukid empire until the mid-third century BCE, when they became
independent under a local Greek dynasty, the Diodotids. By the turn of the
third–second century BCE, the Greek kings of Bactria who succeeded the
Diodotids were powerful enough to undertake military campaigns into
Arachosia and India, recapturing many of the territories lost in the treaty of
303. Around the 140s BCE, Bactria itself was lost to a fatal combination of
nomadic incursions, war with Parthia, and internal dynastic strife. However,
the politically fragmented Indo-Greek states survived, some perhaps as late
as the turn of the Common Era.
Against the inclusion of a chapter on the Hellenistic kingdoms of Bactria
and India in a work on Greek religion, it might be objected that both the
Greekness of the inhabitants of these kingdoms, and the Greekness of their
religions are questionable. The former point can essentially be dismissed:
the descendants of Alexander’s settlers, who maintained, to some extent,
Greek language and customs in the East, considered themselves to be
Greek, and were described as such by their neighbours; for example, a
‘Greek ambassador’ to the court of an Indian king will be introduced in the
section ‘Arachosia and India’, below. The Greekness of Greco-Bactrian and
Indo-Greek religion is, however, more difficult to defend. The religious
practices of people who asserted, in public discourse, and especially
political imagery, a connection with Greeks and Greece were diverse. Greek
gods were depicted on coins and temple images, but whether in the use of
Near Eastern temple designs or in the dedication of Buddhist relics, Greek
cults were only part of the religious constellation of the region.
In the following discussion, I aim to approach the religious practices of
the Greek or Greek-dominated communities of the ‘Hellenistic Far East’
with as few ethno-cultural assumptions as possible. My emphasis will be on
the multiplicity of cult practices at religious sites, the various names and
meanings that might be attached to the same images and practices by
different constituencies, and the political purposes for which religious
imagery might be employed. This material illustrates the diversity of what
we might think of as ‘Greek’ religious practice, and also the degree of
innovation and evolution that might take place, especially in zones of
contact with other cultures and religious traditions.

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND

EPIGRAPHIC EVIDENCE

Bactria
Most of our evidence for religious practice in the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom
derives from eastern Bactria (modern north-eastern Afghanistan and
southern Tajikistan), because this is the region in which the greatest number
of sites of the third and second centuries BCE have been excavated. (The
material from and literature on these sites is reviewed in Mairs 2011.) The
capital, at Bactra (modern Balkh, near Mazar-i-Sharif), has not yet been
thoroughly excavated. The two most important sites for our purposes are Ai
Khanoum and Takht-i Sangin, both of which were settlements situated at
junctions of tributaries with the river Oxus.
At Ai Khanoum, a city which was occupied from the late fourth/early
third century BCE to the 140s BCE, we have two excavated temples (Mairs
2011, 2013). The city’s main temple, set within a walled sanctuary where
evidence of ritual practice includes small limestone altars and vases for
chthonic libations, was built on a Near Eastern architectural model, with a
distinctive stepped niche decoration on its outer walls. What is preserved of
the main cult statue, on the other hand, is Greek in style. The thunderbolt
motif on the statue’s sandal suggests that it represented a Zeus, perhaps
syncretized with a local god (Grenet 1991). The second temple at Ai
Khanoum lay just outside the city walls and had the same niched decoration
as the intramural temple. Nothing has been preserved of its ritual equipment
or divine image(s).
Ai Khanoum had other loci of cult activity, outside the formal temples.
On the city’s natural acropolis, a small open-air altar, set on a stepped
podium, was oriented for offering towards the rising sun, a practice which
has been linked to similar Iranian rites (Boyce and Grenet 1991: 181–3,
who also discuss possible local comparanda). The gymnasium contained a
Greek dedicatory inscription to Hermes and Herakles. The shrine of the
city’s founder, Kineas, contained a lengthy Greek inscription, only a
fragment of which is preserved, of Delphic maxims, which states that it was
set up in Kineas’ temenos (Rougemont 2012: nos 97–8; Robert 1968 is the
editio princeps of both the gymnasium and shrine of Kineas inscriptions).
Some of the city’s dead were interred in mausolea outside the city walls,
with Greek inscriptions and sculptural decoration. Most of these
inscriptions are very brief, confined to the deceased’s name, but two longer,
although again very fragmentary, texts have recently been published by
Rougemont (2012: nos 136–7). A fragmentary Greek epitaph from another
Bactrian site, Djiga-tepe (close to Dilberjin, see below), belonged to a man
named Diogenes and makes reference to Hades (Rougemont 2012: no. 91).
The ‘Temple of the Oxus’ at Takht-i Sangin, downstream from Ai
Khanoum on the Tajik bank of the river, around 100km as the crow flies,
has yielded a much larger range of cult equipment than the Ai Khanoum
temples, although analysis of the cult practice there remains problematic.
(See Litvinskij and Pičikjan 2002 for an introduction to the site; there is a
good, concise summary of the principal points of debate about the function
and identification of the temple in Grenet 2005.) Comparatively little has
been excavated of the surrounding settlement. The temple itself stood
within a fortified sanctuary. Subsidiary corridors within the main temple
building have yielded large numbers of dedicatory offerings. The deified
river Oxus was the principal cult object. We find a dedication to the river, in
Greek, on a small altar bearing a statuette of a satyr playing a double flute:
‘Votive, dedicated by Atrosokes, to the Oxus’ (Rougemont 2012: no. 95).
More items from the site bearing brief Oxus dedications have recently come
to light, testifying to continuity in cult practice during and after the fall of
the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom in the mid-second century BCE (Rougemont
2012: nos 95–6; Drujinina and Lindström 2013). Theophoric Oxus names
were especially popular in the region at all periods for which we have
documentation.
Among the offerings in the temple caches, we find a large number of
weapons, ivories (some of them in Greek style, or of Greek subjects, such
as Herakles), gold plaques portraying worshippers, and items depicting
mythical creatures, including an appropriately aquatically themed
‘hippocampess’ (Litvinskij and Pičikjan 1995). There is considerable
controversy over whether, in addition, the Temple of the Oxus might be
identified as a Zoroastrian fire temple. (See the discussion of Boyce and
Grenet 1991: 173–9; Bernard 1994; and the note on the topic in Grenet
2005.) Two small chambers filled with ashes and altars were excavated in
the wings of the main temple building, which led to this suggestion by the
excavators. The matter remains open for debate but, as with the temples at
Ai Khanoum, I would emphasize the diversity of the forms of cult activity
that took place within this single space, and the multiplicity of
interpretations that may have been attached to the cult.
Even the most overtly ‘Greek’ images and practices may have been read
in different ways by different constituencies; two more Bactrian examples
bear this out. A Greek inscription found in the region of Kuliab, in southern
Tajikistan, contains the dedication of a man named Heliodotos to Hestia, in
a grove (alsos) of Zeus, for the sake of King Euthydemos (reigned c.230–
200 BCE) and his son Demetrios. The stone is unprovenanced, so we know
nothing of the cult place that, in Greek, is termed the ‘grove of Zeus’. We
do not know whether there was a temple building, and statues of the gods,
or, if there were, what they looked like. Nor do we know the forms of cult
practice took place there; nor, perhaps most importantly, whether the ‘Zeus’
and ‘Hestia’ of Heliodotos’ inscription were known by different names by
different worshippers.
Another Bactrian site where superficially ‘Greek’ signals permit different
readings is Dilberjin, a town in the Bactra oasis, and its ‘Temple of the
Dioskouroi’. (See Kruglikova 1977, although it should be noted that the
chronology of the site has been much debated.) Although both town and
temple may have existed in the Greco-Bactrian period, the excavated
remains date, for the most part, to the Kushan period, the early centuries CE.
It nevertheless provides useful testimony to the durability of Greek divine
imagery, although perhaps not religion, two centuries or more after the fall
of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. A wall painting in the temple’s vestibule
depicts the Dioskouroi, standing next to their horses, holding their bridles,
and wearing their characteristic pilos caps. The iconography is recognizably
Greek, but it is unaccompanied by any textual indication of the names by
which these figures were known. It is possible that the images of the
Dioskouroi, and an ‘Athena’ on a wall painting from the same temple, were
inherited from their appearance on Greco-Bactrian coinage (Kruglikova
1977: 409, 421; Grenet 1987a; on Greco-Bactrian coins as the source for
later religious iconography, see Boyce and Grenet 1991: 161).
I shall return to the topic of divine images on Greco-Bactrian and Indo-
Greek coins in ‘Religious Iconography’, below. Like coins, engraved gems
depicting Classical figures, even with legends in Greek, were small,
portable, and of sufficient intrinsic value to ensure that they might be
passed from hand to hand over long distances and time periods. For
example, a ring from Tomb II at Tillya Tepe (a collection of nomadic tombs
in Bactria, dating to the first century BCE) contains a gem depicting Athena,
captioned in Greek, in a gold setting (Hiebert and Cambon 2011: 242, no.
55).

Arachosia and India

The evidence for religious practice in the Greek communities and states of
Arachosia and India is more heavily weighted towards the epigraphic than
the archaeological. Although archaeological investigations were carried out
at the site of Old Kandahar (ancient Alexandria in Arachosia) in the 1970s,
the city remains little known. However, the small number of inscriptions
discovered at the site give a disproportionately rich level of insight into
both the local religious practices of its inhabitants and attempts by an Indian
emperor to introduce them to the teachings of Buddhism. I will introduce
the evidence for Buddhism at Old Kandahar below in Buddhism, and
restrict my remarks here to two other Greek inscriptions, belonging to a
man whose father’s name was Aristonax (early third century BCE) and to
Sophytos son of Naratos (second century BCE). The changing political status
of Alexandria in Arachosia throughout this period, from Persian control to
conquest by Alexander, to province of the Mauryan empire, to Greco-
Bactrian control, should be borne in mind.
 The short, badly damaged dedication by the son of Aristonax states that it
has been set up ‘in this sanctuary (temenos)’, in thanks for his salvation, but
the rest of the preserved text permits widely varying reconstructions (Fraser
1979; Rougemont 2012: no. 81). It may contain a reference to the city’s
eponymous (re)founder, Alexander: only the portion ‘Alex-’, however, is
preserved. The dedicator’s salvation may have been from a wild animal
attack (theros).
The autobiographical epitaph of Sophytos son of Naratos was acquired
on the antiquities market, but its provenance is considered to be Old
Kandahar (Bernard, Pinault, and Rougemont 2004; Rougemont 2012: no.
84). Its author (whose name is not Greek, but may be Indian) describes his
education, career, and restoration of his family’s wealth and honour in
elegant Greek verse, peppered with allusions to the Fates and his cultivation
of ‘the virtue of the Archer (Apollo) and the Muses’ (Mairs 2012). His
name and patronymic are spelled out in an acrostich. Whether or not the
content of the inscription can tell us anything about the religious practices
of Sophytos and his community, we can see that the names of Greek gods
and supernatural entities, and knowledge of the matters of which they
served as patrons, were in currency in second-century Kandahar, even
among those who did not have Greek names (I deliberately leave the
question of Sophytos’ ethnic identity—as opposed to name or descent—
open).
It is in the Indo-Greek states that we find the most decisive evidence
(textual and artistic) for Greek adoption of local religions. Although Greek
divinities continue to be depicted on coins, as I shall discuss in ‘Religious
Iconography on Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek Coins’, below, Indian gods,
iconography, and languages also appear. The city of Taxila (near modern
Islamabad), like Ai Khanoum, had temples whose architecture and religion
owed more to local ways than to Greek. Outside the Indo-Greek domains, at
the city of Vidisha (modern Besnagar, Madhya Pradesh) we find a Taxilan
Greek patronizing a local Indian cult centre.
The Indo-Greek period settlement at Taxila—Sirkap—was one of several
cities founded in the vicinity at different periods. Although the city of
Sirkap was founded in the period of the Greco-Bactrian expansion into
India, in the early to mid-second century BCE, its excavated strata are, for
the most part, much later, dating to the period after the fall of the Indo-
Greek kingdoms (on the excavation of Taxila, see Marshall 1960). Caution
should therefore be exercised in interpreting the remains of the city’s
religious institutions and deciding whether they had the same form under
the Indo-Greeks.
Apollonios of Tyana visited Taxila in the first century CE, and a brief
account of the city is given in Philostratos’ Life, which includes a
description of a large, columned stone temple containing a small shrine
(2.20). There are two candidates for the identification of this temple: Jandial
C, some distance to the north of the walls of Sirkap, and Mohra Maliaran, to
the west of the city (Rapin 1995). Although Philostratos claims that the
temple contained wall scenes depicting Alexander the Great and Porus, he
does not name a cult object. Both temples are more overtly Classical in
style than any of the Ai Khanoum temples, with columns and peristyles
(Mohra Maliaran) or windowed circumambulatory corridors (Jandial C),
but little or nothing remains of their religious equipment. The question of
whether they were dedicated to a Greek, Iranian, or Indian deity, and the
form of worship, therefore remains essentially open.
Within the city of Sirkap itself we find further religious institutions.
Here, the connection to Indian religions is clearer. There are two Buddhist
stupas (mound-like structures containing relics), one of which, the ‘Double-
Headed Eagle Stupa’, bears pilasters in Greek style with Corinthian
columns. The city’s largest cult site was the ‘Apsidal Temple’, but this was
destroyed by an earthquake in around 30 CE, and a Buddhist shrine rebuilt
in its courtyard. Whether or not the temple was originally Buddhist in
denomination, it was therefore appropriated by what had become the
dominant religion of the region.
A Taxilan Greek named Heliodoros, who served as ambassador from the
Indo-Greek king Antialkidas (reigned c.115–95 BCE), left an inscription, in
Prākrit, on a pillar at Besnagar, the capital of a local Indian king named
Bhagabhadra, in which he described himself as a devotee of the god
Vāsudeva, a patronymic indicating Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu (trans.
Salomon 1998: 265–7; see further Mairs forthcoming). Many questions
arise from this inscription: does Heliodoros dedicate out of personal piety,
or because erecting a pillar outside the temple at Besnagar was the ‘done
thing’ for an ambassador seeking to make a positive impression on the local
ruler? If a devotee of Vishnu, had he begun to worship the god during his
posting at Besnagar, or in his home city of Taxila? Would Heliodoros have
understood the ‘Vishnu’ of his inscription at Besnagar as another god—
perhaps a Greek-named god—in another city or context? As I have already
suggested, the superficially ethnocentric names of gods, temples, and cults
that we find in our sources from the Hellenistic Far East may, in fact, permit
multiple readings, in both contemporary discourse and modern analysis.

RELIGION AND POLITICS

Buddhism
I have already discussed two Greek inscriptions from the site of Old
Kandahar, ancient Alexandria in Arachosia, which tell us something of the
religious life and cultural milieu of the Greek-literate community there. A
further group of inscriptions reflect an attempt at proselytization. The
Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya had received Arachosia in 303 BCE.
In the 260s BCE, his grandson, Aśoka, embraced Buddhism, and set up a
series of edicts, on pillars and rock faces throughout his empire,
proclaiming his own conversion and promoting the Buddhist dhamma
(‘Law’). Several such inscriptions have been found at Kandahar, and
instead of being in Prākrit, they are in Greek and Aramaic. A comparatively
lengthy Greek inscription (although not all of it is preserved) represents a
translation of Aśoka’s Twelfth and Thirteenth Major Rock Edicts
(Rougemont 2012: no. 83). A shorter, bilingual Greek–Aramaic inscription
is a freer translation of the format and sentiments of other edicts
(Rougemont 2012: no. 82). As well as recording his desire that the peoples
of his empire should adopt pious virtues such as vegetarianism and respect
for their elders, Aśoka also indicates that he has tried to spread the dhamma
beyond his borders. The Kandahar translation does not preserve the full text
of the Thirteenth Major Rock Edict, but more complete texts elsewhere
contain the following passage:
Now it is conquest by Dhamma that Beloved-of-the-Gods considers to be the best conquest.
And it (conquest by Dhamma) has been won here, on the borders, even six hundred yojanas
away, where the Greek king Antiochos rules, beyond there where the four kings named
Ptolemy, Antigonos, Magas and Alexander rule, likewise in the south among the Cholas, the
Pandyas, and as far as Tamraparni. Here in the king’s domain among the Greeks, the
 Kambojas, the Nabhakas, the Nabhapamkits, the Bhojas, the Pitinikas, the Andhras, and the
Palidas, everywhere people are following Beloved-of-the-Gods’ instructions in Dhamma. Even
where Beloved-of-the-Gods’ envoys have not been, these people too, having heard of the
practice of Dhamma and the ordinances and instructions in Dhamma given by Beloved-of-the-
Gods, are following it and will continue to do so. This conquest has been won everywhere, and
it gives great joy—the joy which only conquest by Dhamma can give. But even this joy is of
little consequence. Beloved-of-the-Gods considers the great fruit to be experienced in the next
world to be more important. (Dhammika 1993, 26–8.)

The Thirteenth Major Rock Edict indicates Asoka’s desire and efforts to
proselytize Greeks both inside and outside his empire, but we know little
about the reception of these attempts at conversion—certainly not among
the Hellenistic monarchs to the west whose names he knew and with whom
he was most probably in some form of diplomatic contact. Evidence exists,
however, to document the success of Buddhism in later periods, among
later Indo-Greek monarchs and their people. I have already noted the
presence of Buddhist stupas at Taxila, in a region which was later a great
centre of Buddhism (Brancaccio and Behrendt 2006; Bactria, too, was an
important centre of Buddhism in periods long after the fall of the Greco-
Bactrian Kingdom: see e.g. Litvinskij and Zejmal’ 2004). As I shall go on
to discuss in ‘Religious Iconography on Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek
Coins’, below, Buddhist imagery appears on the coins of some Indo-Greek
kings. But one particular Indo-Greek king, Menander (reigned c.155–130
BCE in northern India), not only appears to have adopted Buddhism himself,
but, as ‘King Milinda’, enjoyed a legendary status in Indian tradition as a
convert to and patron of the religion.
Menander is one of the very few Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kings to
be mentioned in Classical sources, which, however, celebrate his military
prowess more than his religious leanings. Strabo (11.11.1) records that he
advanced far into northern India, and was one of a series of local Greek
kings who, between them, conquered more territory in India than Alexander
the Great. The Periplus of the Erythaean Sea (47) states that coins of
Menander are still to be found in the present day (first century CE) in the
north-western Indian port of Barygaza. During Menander’s reign,
Buddhism certainly flourished in north-western India: a Buddhist reliquary
from Bajaur, in Gandhara, bears a regnal year of Menander (Majumdar
1937). But the most remarkable account of Menander and his reign is a
much later Pali Buddhist text, the Milindapanha, or Questions of King
Milinda (Rhys-Davids 1890; on Menander, see also Bopearachchi 1990a,
1990b; Fussman 1993). In this dialogue, Menander, who is described as a
Greek king, is depicted in debate with a Buddhist sage, Nagasena, and is
eventually won over to Buddhism. The account is, on the whole, given its
priorities, light on historical detail. What it does indicate is that, according
to later tradition at any rate, Menander was favourable towards Buddhism
and most likely an adherent himself.

Religious Iconography on Greco-Bactrian and

Indo-Greek Coins
Like their colleagues in the other Hellenistic monarchies, some, at least, of
the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kings received divine honours.
(Antimachos I was deified during his reign, as attested in the dating formula
of a Greek tax receipt from Bactria: Clarysse and Thompson 2007; on royal
cult in Bactria, see further Martinez-Sève 2010: 13–18.) They also acted as
patrons of religious cults: both the temple with indented niches at Ai
Khanoum and the Temple of the Oxus contained clay sculptures with
diadems. The coinage of the Greco-Bactrian kings displays a range of
Greek deities (see, concisely, the discussion of Martinez-Sève 2010: 2–6; a
browse through the catalogues Bopearachchi 1991, 1993, or 1998 will give
an idea of the range of deities depicted on both Greco-Bactrian and Indo-
Greek coins). Zeus was favoured by the Diodotids on their silver coinage
(the eponymous ‘thundering Zeus’ of Holt 1999), with the pairs of Hermes
and Athena, and Zeus and Artemis on the bronze coinage of Diodotos II.
Euthydemos introduced a type of Herakles, used also by his son Demetrios
I, and Eukratides employed the Dioskouroi. As I have already noted, the
creators of paintings and statues in later temples (such as the ‘Temple of the
Dioskouroi’ at Diberjin) could have drawn inspiration from such images on
coins. As Martinez-Sève notes, all such depictions of apparently ‘Greek’
gods could have carried a double meaning, intentional or unintentional.
Artemis, for example, could have been understood as the Near Eastern
goddesses Anahita or Nana, or a local Bactrian equivalent (Martinez-Sève
2010: 5–7).
Following the conquests of the early second century BCE, Indo-Greek
kings such as Agathokles and Pantaleon also began to strike hybrid Indo-
Greek coins with bilingual legends, and to adopt Indian religious imagery in
addition to Greek. Agathokles introduced images of the gods Samkarshana
and Vāsudeva-Krishna—the Taxilan Greek Heliodoros’ later dedication to
Vāsudeva at Besnagar should be recalled. Heliodoros’ own king,
Antialkidas, stuck more closely to the Greek iconographic tradition, even
on bilingual coins. He employed types of a throned Zeus, Zeus with an
elephant, caps of the Dioskouroi with palms, and an elephant alone. The
famed ‘Buddhist convert’ Menander favoured a greater variety of symbols.
He issued types of Athena and Nike, Herakles, an elephant, a bull’s head, a
camel, a tripod, a palm, and a boar’s head, but the type which has attracted
the greatest attention is that bearing the image of a wheel, identified with
the Buddhist ‘Wheel of Law’. The political context of all of these choices
of image, language, and design must be borne in mind: as well as being
prompted by the personal piety of these individuals, where relevant, their
use of images to appeal to particular communities and constituencies was
carefully managed.

Greek Gods in the Kushan Empire

The numismatic and epigraphic record from the Kushan empire, which rose
to dominance in the former Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek domains in the
early first century CE, provides indirect evidence that the earlier ‘Greek’
gods of the region in fact had multiple identities. The ‘Greek gods’ of the
Hellenistic Far East were (or became) something more complex than that.
The coins of Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kings, as I have discussed,
bear many divine images with familiar Classical iconography. Even the
most quintessentially Greek of these ‘images from a foreign pantheon’ may
well have been susceptible to alternate readings by the local peoples of
Central Asia and India (Boyce and Grenet 1991: 161). Images of Helios, for
example, with his ‘sunburst’ crown, and driving a chariot, appear on the
coins of the Greco-Bactrian king Plato (for examples, see Bopearachchi
1991: pl. 24; Boyce and Grenet 1991: 162–3, already see an evolution in the
imagery of Helios on these coins towards that more typical of the Indian
god Surya, or Iranian Mithra). Helios is also depicted, in bust form, on cult
objects from both Ai Khanoum and Takht-i Sangin (noted by Shenkar 2012:
140; the objects in question are a plaque depicting Kybele from the Temple
with Indented Niches at Ai Khanoum: Francfort 1984: 93–104; and a silver
plaque from the Temple of the Oxus: Litvinskii 2010). On other coins of
Plato, Helios is depicted standing and holding a sceptre, again with his
distinctive sun rays.
This image survives onto the coinage of the Kushan emperor Kanishka in
the early second century CE, where it undergoes a reinterpretation. Kanishka
implemented a policy of replacing Greek legends on his coins with text in
the Bactrian language, and at the same time of ‘translating’ captions which
identified gods by their Greek names into the names of local Iranian gods
(Cribb 2007: 366–7). The god recognizable from Plato’s coins, and
captioned on Kanishka’s early issues, as ‘Helios’, becomes ‘Mithra’ without
any further change in iconography. This ‘translation’ of Greek into Iranian
gods was only the culmination of a long process of syncretism, which had
begun under Greco-Bactrian rule. Multiple such assimilations might be
possible for any individual ‘Greek’ god: in addition to Helios, in his solar
aspect, Mithra might also be equated with Zeus (Martinez-Sève 2010: 8–9).

CONCLUSIONS

As well as the cults of Greek gods, other religions flourished in the Greco-
Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms. In Bactria, the river Oxus was
worshipped, and the archaeological evidence is also suggestive of the
existence of other local and Near Eastern cults, both within the precincts of
shrines such as the Ai Khanoum temples and the Temple of the Oxus, and
in independent locations. In India, we find evidence of the importance of
Buddhism and the cults of Indian gods both to the region’s inhabitants,
Greek and non-Greek, and in political display.
There was considerable flexibility in iconography and religious practice
in the Hellenistic Far East: sites might serve as foci of multiple religious
rites, perhaps with different ethnic ‘slants’, and be patronized by more than
one ethnic group, or by individuals with a more complex personal ethnic
identity. The use of multiple names for the same temple or divine image
need not necessarily have operated at the level of officially orchestrated or
approved syncretism. But if this did occur, as I suspect it did, it may have
allowed diverse ethnic communities to use the same site without the
necessity of ‘appropriating’ the deity and its worship for any particular
ethnic affiliation. This is not to impute any degree of ‘split personality’ to
the identity and iconography of the divinity. Greeks may have looked at the
‘Dioskouroi’ at Dil’berdzhin and seen one thing, and local Bactrians may
have looked at them and seen another (how would a Greek and a Bactrian
have referred to them in conversation with one another?). On the other
hand, it is possible that people who looked at such an image did so with a
conscious awareness that it was more all-encompassing, something that
could have the attributes of one god without denying its identity as the
other.

SUGGESTED READING
The classic accounts of the history of the Greek kingdoms of Bactria and
India are Tarn 1951 [1938] and Narain 1957, but both are now essentially
only of historiographical interest. For references to the archaeological
literature on the sites discussed in this chapter, see Mairs 2011, regularly
updated at <www.bactria.org>. The collections of articles edited by Bernard
and Grenet 1991 and Grenet 1987b contain debates, inter alia, on the
identification of cult statues and of practices associated with
Zoroastrianism. On Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek numismatics, good
starting points are Holt 1999 and the catalogue Bopearachchi 1991.

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 CHAPTER 43

CHINA AND GREECE:

COMPARISONS AND INSIGHTS

LISA RAPHALS

INTRODUCTION

THIS brief account of Chinese and Greek religion focuses on three topics
that are not only of significant interest to both subjects, but also lend
themselves to comparison: cosmogony, cosmology, and gods and humans
and mantic practices (divination). I begin with several points of
methodology and the problem of how to structure a comparison, and then
discuss why a comparison between Chinese and Greek religion is
rewarding.
Any comparison must take into account substantial differences in both
sources and theoretical accounts. Chinese sources vastly outnumber the
Greek. This situation offers the opportunity of using the Chinese evidence
to address some lacunae in the Greek record. The range of Chinese
evidence offers a view of important changes and debates within as well as
between cultural traditions. Attention to internal changes and debates is
important in order to avoid overgeneralization.
 Several differences between the Chinese and Greek evidence are
noteworthy. The Chinese evidence offers the advantage of historical
continuity, which has little or no Greek counterpart. For example, despite
the political upheavals of twentieth-century China, mantic activities remain
widely practised in greater China. By mantic activities I mean divination,
fortune-telling, the use of the Yi jing (Classic of Change). The Chinese
evidence thus offers the prospect of both historical and ethnographic
materials within one tradition. In both these areas, present research has only
begun to sketch the possibilities. The Chinese evidence thus offers multiple
opportunities to defamiliarize or ‘parochialize’ well-known Greek
perspectives.
Several methodological perspectives are important. The first is the need
to focus on both intellectual and social institutions. This point was
articulated in a landmark volume in which Jean-Pierre Vernant (1974)
addressed the rationality and coherence of divination and its significance in
the formation of social institutions. Recognition of the importance of the
social role of divination in turn prompted other questions, for example, the
authority of divination within a society and the place of mantic specialists
in social hierarchies. Vernant also emphasized the normalcy of both aspects
of divination in civilizations where it was central.
A second methodological point is the importance of anthropology and the
use of ‘comparables’ across cultures (in the sense of Detienne 2000 and
2001). To posit comparables, we must consider historically specific and
concrete comparanda within each culture within its indigenous historical
context. Only then can we look between contexts. For social practices, we
must compare concrete particulars embedded in their social contexts and
institutions. For ideas, we must draw on histories of change and debate
within each context. Cultural comparison, undertaken in concrete situations
and on questions subjected to debate in each particular context, can bring
new and unexpected insights to help us better understand concepts and
practices that, because of their universality, can easily lead us to partial and
reducing generalizations.
Yet not all aspects of Chinese and Greek religion are equally comparable.
One problem is how we understand and compare genres. In areas like
medicine or historiography, textual genres and interpretive problems are
readily comparable, but in others they are not, for example, in the very
different Chinese and Greek histories of astronomy, astrology, and
mythology.
A third point is the issue of diversity and contestation within ancient
Greek and early Chinese religions. Neither can be taken as a timeless,
essential whole. But once we historicize either, the ground begins to change
under our feet, and comfortable terms cease to hold purchase.
The theoretical histories of Chinese and Greek religion have very
different strengths. The long history of engagement between Greco-Roman
classics and anthropology, and especially the contributions of Moses Finley
(1953, 1954, 1973), Jean-Pierre Vernant, Marcel Detienne (2000, 2001),
and others to establish comparative methods in these disciplines have
created theoretical perspectives that have no Chinese equivalent.
An engagement between Hellenist and Sinological methods allows us to
reconsider ultimately Greek categories and taxonomies that have dominated
the comparative study of religion, especially divination (Lloyd 1996). For
example, the distinction between inspired and technical divination is a
legacy of Plato and Cicero that simply does not fit the Chinese mantic
picture (Raphals 2013).

COSMOGONY AND COSMOLOGY

Chinese systematic thought about cosmology may date to as early as the

ninth century BCE, and gives rise to several fundamentally important
concepts. First is the idea of a universe characterized by interactions of time
and space (yu zhou ), especially the correlation of areas of the world to
the seasons of the year and periods of time such as the sexagenary cycle
(ganzhi , the combinations of Ten Heaven Stems and Twelve Earth
Branches). This cosmos is ultimately composed of qi (the energy that
constitutes and organizes matter and causes growth and change) in
processes of constant change, based on the interactions of yin and yang
and the Five Agents (wuxing ), and interactions between heaven,
earth, and humanity. Chinese cosmologies thus depict a universe that is
interdependent and sometimes described as ‘organic’ (Needham 1956; cf.
Hall and Ames 1998), and characterized by the ongoing transformation of
yin and yang (Graham 1986; Raphals 1998). Notions of cosmic unity also
underline cleromantic techniques such as Yi divination (prognostication by
means of the Yi jing or its predecessor, the Zhou yi (Zhou ‘Changes’),
in which the random manipulation of milfoil (yarrow) stalks revealed the
underlying patterns of yin and yang manifest at the time and place of the
procedure.
A cosmology based on cyclic transformations has several important
implications. One is a relative disinterest in cosmogony. While there are
Chinese legends of the creation of the universe, cosmogony is less
important than transformation and the view that the universe is in a constant
process of mutual transformation of the yin and yang qi of which it is
composed. A second is the notion of good and ill auspice (ji xiong ):
that is, that certain times were propitious or inauspicious for certain
activities. This idea was also central to Chinese mantic and ritual practice
(discussed in ‘Mantic Practices’), and informed a large number of mantic
techniques. Third, was the belief that sages could perceive pervasive
connections and systematic correspondences between aspects of a cosmos
in constant change.
A cosmology based on transformation contrasts completely with the
attempts of the ancient Greek Presocratic philosophers to identify stable
ultimate constituents of matter, since yin–yang and wuxing are ‘phases’,
rather than elements. It also introduces a striking alternative to the Greek
idea that human–divine interaction is the best or only way to understand the
cosmos and the human place in it. Nonetheless, the Chinese attempt to
understand the world as a constant transformation of yin and yang is also
entirely commensurable with belief in the gods and spirits of its traditional
religion.
Given these differences, it is striking that macrocosm–microcosm
analogies appear in both Chinese and Greek sources, but their significance
is very different. In Chinese accounts, parallels between terrestrial and
cosmic events and phenomena seem to have arisen precisely because they
were considered to be interconnected, and events at one level were
understood to produce effects at the other. Astronomical anomalies such as
eclipses and comets were of particular interest, because they signified
disruption in the heavens corresponding to disruptions in the human world,
usually understood to be misrule by the reigning dynasty. By contrast,
Greek astronomy and cosmology did not focus on anomalies in this way
(Lloyd and Sivin 2002: 214–15).
Greek accounts present very different relations between the human
microcosm and the cosmic macrocosm. The components for a macrocosm–
microcosm theory—distinct from an explicit articulation of such a theory—
have been attributed to early Greek thinkers, including Heraklitos,
Demokritos, the Pythagoreans, Empedokles, and the authors of the
Hippokratic Corpus (Conger 1922: 2–7). The one extant clear Greek
articulation of a macrocosm–microcosm analogy recognizes some kind of
similar structure or process in the cosmos and in humanity. The fragment is
ascribed to Anaximenes by Aetius: ‘Just as our soul which is air holds us
together, so it is breath and air that encompasses the whole world’ (Diehls–
Kranz 1903: 13 B 2; trans. Conger 1922: 2; cf. Allers 1944: 321–37; Lloyd
1966: 235–6).
Plato also uses, but does not articulate, microcosmic theories, primarily
analogies between structure, functions or health of the body or soul, and the
state (Resp. 434–5, 441, 580d–e); and between the created visible universe
and its original (Ti. 30c, 35a, 36d–e, 39e, 40a–b). Aristotle describes the
relation between the macros cosmos and micros cosmos as one of
opposition (Ph. 252b26). But none of these theories are interactive in the
sense that Chinese cosmologies are: Greek microcosmic theories focus on
technology, especially the complex interrelations between cosmological and
biological theories. Finally, Greek theories reflect an anthropomorphic
religion and an anthropocentric cosmos (Lloyd 1966: 194–9, 295–9) that
has little or no Chinese counterpart.

GODS AND HUMANS

Vernant argued that the ancient Greeks defined the human condition within
a triad of animals, humans, and gods (1980; cf. Detienne 1977 [1972];
Detienne and Vernant 1989 [1979]; Lloyd 2011). Vernant’s study is part of
an ongoing engagement between classics, anthropology, and structuralism,
and he rejects three interdependent assumptions: (1) that every mythical
figure is an independent entity with its own essence; (2) that this essence
corresponds to some reality in the natural world; and (3) that the relation
between myth and reality is symbolic in nature. Instead, Vernant argues that
every god is defined by a network of relations of affinity and opposition to
other gods within the pantheon (1980: 145). One function of polis religion
and sacrifice in particular was to maintain the boundary between humans
and gods: the use of animal victims ritually maintained the distinction
between humans and animals (Detienne 1977 [1972]). While many Chinese
legends and literary motifs also feature interdependent relations between
humans, animals, and gods, it is difficult to compare mythological systems
because myth itself is a vexed category in Chinese thought and religion
(Girardot 1976; Duara 1988). What can be compared are debates of various
kinds about the boundary between humans, animals, and gods, and the
possibility that humans can practise some form of self-divinization and
become like gods.
A different context of triadic relations between humans, animals, and
gods is comparable. Several Greek and Chinese philosophical texts created
scales of nature that located humans within an evolutionary scale of animate
beings. For example, the philosopher Xunzi (c.312–230 BCE) describes a
progression of living things based on ascending faculties. According to
Xunzi, water and fire have qi but no capacity for procreation. Grass and
trees procreate but lack awareness. Birds and beasts have awareness but no
capacity for moral judgement (yi ). Humans have qi, procreation,
awareness, and also the capacity to behave correctly; therefore, they are the
highest form of life (Xunzi 9: 164).
Aristotle (De an. 414b1–29b1) provides an interesting contrast in his
account of the faculties of the soul: nutrition and reproduction (threptikon);
sensation (aisthetikon), desire (oretikon), locomotion (kineton kata topon);
imagination (phantasia); and reason (nous, to dianoetikon). Again, the
higher the being, the more numerous and more nuanced its faculties.
Almost all living things nourish themselves and reproduce; all animals
share sensation, desire, and locomotion. Some animals have imagination
and limited reason, but only humans possess imagination and reason.
Aristotle (Metaph. 1.1, 980b1–981a3) grants animals intelligence
(phronesis), but qualifies this by differentiating animal from human
phronesis (Eth. Nic. 1141a22–8). Elsewhere he denies animals reason,
thought, and intellect (De an. 404b4–6; 414b18–19; 428a19–24; cf. Sorabji
1995: 12–16). Finally, Aristotle privileges reason, and places humans
between animals and gods (Eth. Nic. 1177b25–32); and states that a man
without a polis is either bad or above all humans (Pol. 1252a1).
Both Xunzi and Aristotle thus portray animals and humans on
evolutionary scales, but of very different kinds. Xunzi’s scale ends with
human morality, with no reference to divine powers. Aristotle considers
contemplation (theoria) akin to the activity of the gods (while other virtues
are purely human (Pol. 1178a8–10)). Both passages are interesting for what
they do not say. Many Chinese gods were people who excelled in virtue or
who became revered ancestors. Recent Sinological scholarship has turned
attention towards a fourth-century self-cultivation literature, often
associated with the sixteenth chapter of the Guanzi (Nei ye , 16:1a–6b;
trans. Rickett 1998: 39–55). This literature described the use of self-
cultivation through qi to gain power over things in the world. Thus,
according to some claims from this period, the human–divine boundary is
also permeable insofar as humans could attain divine powers through self-
cultivation techniques. Michael Puett argues that the term shen (‘spirit’)
has two distinct referents. It refers to spirits who reside in the extra-human
world and hold power over natural phenomena; but it also refers to refined
forms of qi within the human body (2002: 21–2). Either way, the boundary
between the human and the divine is permeable.
By contrast, the Greek boundary between mortals and immortals is
absolute and defined by mortality. Gods lived forever and could know the
future. For example, Julia Kindt (2003) has argued that ‘Delphic oracle
stories’ are an important part of a Greek reflective discourse on the world
and the place of humans within it. Differing attitudes towards the nature of
divinity also may have contributed to very different attitudes towards the
boundary between what was considered ‘natural and supernatural’. The
relative harmony between the human and divine realms in much (though
not all) Chinese religious thought contrasts with Greek accounts of tension
between humans and gods, in which the human and divine are
incommensurable categories.
Both Chinese and Greek metaphysics assumed the existence of gods or
divine powers and the possibility of communicating with them (with
important implications for the mantic arts). Within both traditions there is
disagreement over whether divine powers had a benign interest in human
affairs. In both traditions there are examples of economies of human–divine
relations based on prayer and sacrifice. Greek bird and weather divination
and Chinese oracle bone divination offered ways for diviners to effectively
negotiate with the gods by means of repeated questions, as, for example, at
Dodona (Eidinow 2013 [2007]). Both traditions also include ethical
frameworks for divination, based on presumed correlations between cosmic
and human orders. Both Chinese and Greek philosophers emphasized the
ethical role of divination as part of the divine concepts of justice and
retribution.
But Greek and Chinese understandings of the nature of these interactions
were very different, and there was a long history of debate within each
tradition. Chinese models of divine–human relations were genetic (gods as
royal ancestors) or bureaucratic (gods as a hierarchy of rulers and officials).
Some Chinese mantic techniques addressed particular gods responsible for
specific time periods and modes of activity, but they progressively de-
emphasize direct communication or negotiation with divine powers.
Greek assumptions about the benevolence and interest of the gods in
humanity are equivocal. Bird and weather diviners associated a wide range
of phenomena with communications from particular gods and predictions of
particular kinds, and omens were understood to systematically reflect divine
intentions. These practices persisted into Hellenistic Greece, but the legacy
of Plato and Cicero privileged oracular divination. The gods of Greek myth
were notoriously fickle; the arbitrariness of human fates and the
indifference of the gods are recurring themes. Hellenistic philosophers
shifted to the idea that the future was somehow predetermined and thence
predictable, but this shift corresponded with cults of and ideas about tuche
(Bobzien 1998; Hankinson 1998; Eidinow 2011). One result was a
systematic and abstract reflection on problems of cause, necessity, and the
logical preconditions that made divination possible and legitimate.
Starting in the late Warring States period, competing schemata began to
link yin and yang (variously described) to phenomena in space (the
directions), time (the calendar), notions of good and ill auspice, and the
body. The eventual hermeneutics of Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE)
correlative cosmology focused on elaborate microcosm–macrocosm
correspondences between the three realms of heaven, earth, and humanity,
and used numbers to express these symbolic correlations. Chinese
correlative cosmology also provided ‘natural’ explanations for the
establishment and expansion of the Han dynasty, while scholar officials
used correlative cosmology and discourses on omens to define (and
circumscribe) royal power through admonition.
This contrast between Chinese and Greek attitudes towards the gods and
divinity also informs a defining issue in twentieth-century discussions of
Chinese thought; namely, the cultural uniqueness of Chinese cosmology or
its commensurability with ‘Western’ cosmologies. On one side of the
debate, Weber (1951) argued that the Chinese were limited by the lack of a
notion of transcendence or tension between the human and divine realms.
On the other, Marcel Granet (1980 [1934]) argued for the distinctiveness of
Chinese cosmology because of the lack of demarcation of human and divine
realms, including a notion of transcendence. Granet’s work informed a wide
range of subsequent studies, especially the work of Joseph Needham
(Needham (with Wang) 1956), K. C. Chang (1986), A. C. Graham (1986,
1991), David Hall and Roger Ames (1995), and Michael Puett (2002).
These all argue that radically different cosmologies distinguish China and
the West.

MANTIC PRACTICES

The early history of Chinese mantic practice presents important contrasts to

Greek modes of divination (see further, in this volume, Flower, Chapter 20,
and Iles Johnston, Chapter 32), and also to comparative studies of Greek
and African divination. Vernant’s key insight—the need to study divination
through the dual aspects of intellectual and social operations—arose
specifically through the comparative study of African divination. Yet the
impetus for the comparison arose entirely from the study of Greek religion,
especially the Delphic oracle; and the comparison privileged issues central
to Greek religion. A second problem was that the Greek–African
comparison did not use comparable contexts because comparisons of
Apolline divination at Delphi and various forms of African divination
juxtaposed official or ‘state’ and private queries.

Social and Institutional Comparables

We can identify five comparable social and institutional contexts of Chinese
and Greek mantic practices (Raphals 2013, which informs this entire
section). The first is a contrast between official and independent
practitioners, although it must be emphasized that Greek and Chinese
official and independent mantic specialists practised under very different
conditions. The Greek distinction was between oracles and the independent,
self-employed, and sometimes itinerant manteis. There is a corresponding
Chinese distinction between court ritualists (who determined auspicious
days and prognosticated on other official matters) and independent
marketplace fortune-tellers and fate calculation experts (suan ming
xiansheng ). In both contexts, we know less about the independent
practitioners, since few records of such consultations survived. Both Greek
and Chinese independent practitioners seem to have enjoyed lower status
than their official counterparts. Within a Greek context, a possible
explanation is that their procedures were perceived as less objective and
more subject to manipulation. Here, a Chinese perspective parochializes the
Greek evidence because many independent Chinese mantic specialists used
the same methods as their official counterparts: turtle and milfoil, diviner’s
boards, and hemerology (Shi ji 127; Loewe 1994).
A second comparable is the importance of mantic lineages, albeit for
different reasons. Greek manteis derived competitive advantage from
claims of descent from a mantic family, and some oracles were managed by
priestly clans. With no institutional procedures for selecting and training
mantic specialists, lineage claims provided some assurance of competence,
as well as a context for instruction and the transmission of texts. In some
Chinese cases family transmission included daughters as well as sons (Hou
Han shu 82B: 2717).
A third comparable is competition between mantic expertise and other
kinds of technical, textual, or ritual mastery. The relative independence of
mantic experts and the absence of central political power in both Warring
States China (450–221 BCE) and fifth- and early fourth-century Greece led
to intense intellectual and political competition between intellectual
specialists. The extent of state control of mantic activity in early China is a
matter of debate, and no such control existed in Archaic Greece. In Warring
States China, social and geographic mobility probably helped diffuse
mantic activity from the courts of kings. Mantic experts competed for
employment by local courts and wealthy families. Nonetheless, the official
character of divination persisted through its links to state ritual; mantic
practices performed in local courts or families drew their authority from
connection to state ritual.
A striking result of this competition in the Chinese case is the pervasive
absence of mantic texts from the received textual tradition. (Many titles
survive in the technical sections of the bibliographic treatise of the Standard
History of the Han (Han shu 30), but only the Yi jing has survived in the
received tradition (Raphals 2008–2009.) By contrast, mantic texts are
widespread among texts excavated from tombs.
Greek mantic activity was competitive at several levels. Independent
manteis needed quick wits, flexibility, and a great deal of personal
charisma, possibly a result of a ‘cultural translation’ of Mesopotamian
mantic practices to Greece (Flower 2008). In China, by contrast, the two
types of practitioner coexisted, interacted, and often used the same methods.
There was also a polarization between the status and activities of male and
female Greek diviners that has no equivalent in China. Female manteis
were of lower status than their male counterparts for several reasons.
Priestesses worked under the management of the male priestly lineages, and
female independent manteis lacked access to the key roles of military
advisor and ritualist. (For further details, see Flower 2008 and Raphals
2013.)
A fourth comparable is the dynamics of mantic consultation: both
question topics and the dynamics of interaction between consultor and
practitioner. Initially, Chinese and Greek question topics seem strikingly
similar. States sought mantic advice on warfare, alliances, rainfall and
harvests, disasters, choice of personnel, major plans and policies, and on
ritual, sacrifice, and other matters of state religious cult. Private consultors
asked about domestic matters—especially marriage, children, prosperity,
and illness—and about intended actions, including travel, changes of
residence, and decisions about livelihood or financial decisions.
Importantly, most questions are not predictive; they ask what will be
advantageous, pleasing to the gods, or auspicious. Such questions do not
invite factual and direct verification.
But there are important differences. Chinese questions and methods
attempt to map good and ill auspices onto chronological cycles. The result
is a model of the operation of good auspice that is not immediately
dependent on divine goodwill. The focus of risk and doubt becomes
temporal, and questions of this kind ask not what to do but when to do it.
Both Chinese and Greek materials indicate the psychological interactions
between client and practitioner, and the possibility of negotiation when the
results are undesirable. Contemporary fieldwork shows Chinese temple
diviners and itinerant practitioners finding ways to mitigate truly disastrous
results without undermining their own authority. Xenophon’s (An. 7.8.3–6)
account of his meeting with the mantis Eukleides also attests to the
importance of a skilled mantis knowing his client. Accounts of both
Chinese temple diviners and Greek independent manteis stress their
combination of astute observation and self-confidence. We see these skills
equally clearly in the hostile accounts of ‘reformed’ fortune-tellers from the
People’s Republic of China revealing the tricks of their trade. In this, they
differ from ‘official’ practitioners, whose choice of method was at least
partially determined by their office. By contrast, a choice of methods is
good for business.
The consultors we know least about are women and slaves, who
frequently appear as topics in questions posed by men, but rarely speak in
their own voices. There is evidence that women and slaves consulted
oracles of Zeus at Dodona and Asklepios at Epidauros; and flight and
manumission may be topics of consultation at Dodona (Eidinow 2012, 2013
[2007]: 102–5; Lhôte 2006: nos 60–4). Chinese evidence shows women
using mantic expertise, especially in physiognomy. This expertise would
have become increasingly invisible with the institutionalization of mantic
practices in the Western Han.
A fifth comparable is the ways in which mantic consultation reflects
perceptions of risk; consultation by individuals tells us something about the
personal concerns and perceived dangers of ordinary people (Eidinow 2013
[2007]: 3–5). Here, the archaeological and textual records offer fewer
opportunities. Because of the very different institutions and methods of
mantic consultation, it is very difficult to find comparable Greek and
Chinese sources. The Shuihudi daybooks (Poo 1998) and Dodona lead
tablets (Parke 1967; Eidinow 2013 [2007]) both present explicit categories
of mantic query, and, juxtaposed, give us a comparative window on the
perception of risk in everyday life.
We also find perceptions of risk in the questions posed by official
consultors, especially on the subject of warfare. Both Hellenistic Greek and
late Warring States Chinese warfare were transformed by the emergence of
large armies and new technologies, yet criticisms of military divination
underscore that it was still performed. Astronomy and astrology were a very
different case. Astronomy became politically charged, especially during the
Eastern Han (Eberhard 1957) and the Roman Empire (Barton 1994),
because of the potential of omens and anomalies to affirm or question the
legitimacy and future of the ruling house. (Physiognomy also had
ideological and rhetorical uses, but it did not become an object of the same
kind of imperial patronage or debate.) Official interest and patronage also
coexisted with the expanding use of personal or private divination. This
situation provided both advantages and disadvantages for diviners and their
consultors.

Intellectual Comparables
Divination also left its mark on a wide range of Chinese and Greek
intellectual domains (Vernant 1974; Chemla, Harper, and Kalinowski
1999). I focus on two comparables. First, both Chinese and Greek
metaphysical assumptions led to beliefs in semiosis and hermeneutics: that
mantic signs manifested hidden patterns, and could be read and interpreted
by those with the correct expertise (Manetti 1993; Struck 2004). But these
beliefs (and debates about them) resulted from different assumptions, led in
different directions, and changed over time. Greek divination was linked to
speculation about cosmology and to the development of theories of
hermeneutics and semiosis (Struck 2004). In China, the problem of criteria
for validating and rejecting interpretations was closely linked to the use of
writing (Bagley 2004). Second, these practices affected the growth of
systematic thought and abstraction. They led to a perceived need for
techniques for validating or rejecting signs and interpretations. The
ambiguity that was so central to Greek reflective narratives about divination
is virtually absent in China, where theorizing cosmic regularity was a key
goal of mantic activity.
The Chinese and Greek mantic arts are also important elements in the
development of systematic enquiry (Lloyd 2002). At times, divination was
a conservative influence, for example, in the development of Greek
philosophy and science. A comparative perspective reveals a different
picture: areas in which divination was linked to the observation of
regularities in nature, the development of techniques for observation and
verification, and to analyses of cause and effect. Finally, mantic expertise
produced the systematic expression of abstract concepts in formal systems
such as the hexagrams of the Yi jing. Even if we no longer use systems such
as Stoic mantic hermeneutics (Bobzien 1998; Hankinson 1998), the
importance of the ability to articulate such systems cannot be overstated.
The oldest Chinese written records are divination questions inscribed on
animal scapulae and turtle shells, the so-called oracle bone inscriptions
(jiaguwen , Keightley 1978, 1988; Bagley 2004), although there is
also significant evidence that the oral aspects of mantic ritual were
important (Djamouri 1999). Chinese mantic practitioners developed
strongly visual symbolic practices that have no counterpart in Greek
divination, including milfoil divination, techniques for observing qi
(including the vapours of clouds and mists), and physiognomy. Finally,
there was no Greek equivalent to Chinese ritual classics, such as the Li ji
(Record of Rites) and Zhou li (Rites of Zhou), which provided the
theoretical and practical foundations for ritual practice, including
divination. Nor did the Greeks ever connect divination, ritual, writing, and
record-keeping in the tight relation that was fundamental to Chinese mantic
practices and intellectual development.
This picture contrasts with a Greek preference for spoken divination
(Vernant 1974; Thomas 1992); both Greek and African practices were
predominantly oral and performative (Peek 1991). But as written literature
increasingly replaced traditional Greek modes of oral expression, new
political, scientific, and philosophical systems of thought assimilated and
partially displaced divination in a new discourse of rationality. Oracles
introduced complex sequences of consultation, response, and transmission
of an original response to a distant consultor state (Fontenrose 1976;
Maurizio 1997).
The oral orientation of early Greek divination did not encourage the
development of systematic or symbolic systems for decoding and
interpreting omens. By contrast, from an early period Chinese divination
was based on a system of written signs, the hexagrams of the Yi jing. Mantic
practices based on writing offered a prospect of decoding the text of the
universe itself. Thus, Greek divination was culturally conservative in
important ways that have no Chinese counterpart. Although traditional
Chinese emphasis on ritual has often been described as culturally
conservative or counterproductive to progress, the history of divination
suggests a very different possibility.
Why were mantic and ritual texts compiled in China but not in Greece?
Divination by shells, bones, and milfoil pre-date Chinese mantic texts by
hundreds or thousands of years. Michael Loewe (1994) has speculated that
stylized ritual procedures displaced the spontaneous actions and reactions of
earlier mantic experts, and that even the original motives for mantic
procedures may have been lost by the time ritual and texts were written
down. Similar questions concern possible reasons for the creation of the
omen collections that, over a long and complex history, became the Yi jing.
Greek and Chinese divination methods also diverge in relation to
naturalistic thinking. Here, the key difference is the perceived involvement
of divine powers. Chinese mantic methods and attitudes were compatible
with naturalistic enquiry and offered opportunities for it. By contrast, a
tension between naturalism and divination closely tied to the gods seems
peculiarly Greek. Although Greek naturalistic medicine coexisted with
iatromancy, explicit Greek medical notions of nature and cause have no
Chinese counterpart. Here again, comparison underscores the danger of
broad historical generalization from limited and culturally specific Greek
evidence.
An enduring intellectual legacy of the Western Han was the selective
canonization and official sponsorship of some texts and marginalization of
others. Technical arts, including the mantic arts, were largely excluded from
official ideology and institutions. The Yi jing continued to enjoy a
privileged position as a work of moral knowledge, not as a mantic text.
These developments were intellectually conservative, and, overall,
constrained the kind of systematic and abstract thought often linked to the
development of science and philosophy. Here astrocalendrics are an
exception. Both standard histories and excavated texts show the increasing
complexity of astronomical observation and theory. By contrast, Greek
interest in astronomy, astrology, and calendrics did not take the form of
state sponsorship (Lloyd and Sivin 2002).
In summary, Chinese and Greek mantic practices contributed to
systematic thought in very different ways. Chinese notions of symmetry,
number, and abstract patterns of change were central to the development of
systematic medicine, astronomy, and cosmology. Greek debates about
divination were central to the development of scepticism, logic, and
theories of causation.

CONCLUSION

The Chinese evidence challenges received opinion in Classical scholarship

on religion, cosmology, and divination in several ways. It is immediately
striking that many Chinese mantic techniques simply do not fit into
conventional frameworks of ‘inspired and technical’ or ‘intuitive and
inductive’ divination (Bouché-Leclercq 1975 [1879–1882]). Greek
divination addresses the will of the gods, mediated through natural
phenomena and a communication system of signs. Most Chinese methods
keep a respectful distance from divine powers, and are abstract, systematic,
and significantly based on number and calculation. Most Greek procedures
presupposed a direct divine origin for divinatory signs that privileged
spontaneous events, especially the movements of birds, thunder and
lightning, involuntary motion, and dreams. Given these fundamental
differences, it is no surprise that apparently similar techniques were
understood very differently. Wind divination, physiognomy, and
cleromancy are cases in point.
The origins of oracular divination and the Delphic oracle have vexed
Greek scholarship on divination for decades (Fontenrose 1978; Price 1985;
Maurizio 1995, 1997), and here the Chinese evidence has a particular
contribution to make. Comparative evidence has been used to claim that, in
other societies, oracles also provided ways to address social change, attain
consensus, and diffuse blame. The Chinese evidence contributes to a trans-
cultural understanding of the origins of oracles, their roles in periods of
social and political upheaval, and the nature of religious and mantic
authority. For example, Greek oracular divination (especially at Delphi)
drew authority from its independence from the state. By contrast, Chinese
mantic activity drew its authority from connection with rulership.
Comparison also shows that mantic queries provided a wide range of
responses, including predictions (which were verifiable), normative advice,
and a means for political consensus and authority. The Chinese evidence
thus invites reconsideration of the sociological argument that divination was
less concerned with prediction than with social regulation and consensus
(Parke 1967; Parker 2000 [1985]; Morgan 1989, 1990; Bowden 2005). The
Chinese evidence makes it clear that we cannot reduce the social function
of divination to consensus and regulation. It presents clear interest in both
prediction and verification as early as the oracle bone inscriptions.
In conclusion, we can identify two coexisting tendencies in Chinese and
Greek religion and divination. One was towards empirical procedures that
relied on observation, was refined by experience, and whose pragmatic
value was predictive. The other was towards a symbolic mode of discourse
that provided normative advice or social consensus, whose procedures were
religious and ritual, which understood phenomena as correspondences
between macrocosm and microcosm, and whose pragmatic value was
rhetorical, social, and political.

SUGGESTED READING
For Chinese cosmology, religion, and mantic practices see especially Ngo
Van Xuyet 2002 [1976], Graham 1991, Loewe 1994, Poo 1998, Chemla,
Harper, and Kalinowski 1999, and Puett 2002. For Greek cosmology,
religion, and divination, see especially Vernant 1974 and 1980 [1972], Price
1985, Parker 2000 [1985], Bowden 2005, Flower 2008, and Eidinow 2011
and 2013 [2007]. For comparative perspectives see Raphals 1992 and 2013,
Detienne 2000, Lloyd 2002, Lloyd and Sivin 2002, Yu 2007, and King
2013. Considerations of gender in mantic practice are discussed in Maurizio
1995, Raphals 1998 and 2013, Eidinow 2012 and 2013 [2007], and Flower
2008. (This chapter does not attempt to cite all modern work on Greek
divination. For a further selection on this topic, see, in this volume,
Chapters 20 and 32.)

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 GENERAL INDEX

Numbers in bold refer to illustrations.

Abramson, H. 387
Acheloos (god) 58–60
Achilles (mythological hero) 55, 154–5, 157–8, 160, 162, 399–401, 554–5
Achilles Pontarchos cult 7, 589
Adomėnas, Mantas 363
Adonis (god) 30, 139, 250–2, 613
Aelius Aristides (orator) 68, 509, 511
Sacred Tales 70–1, 79–80
see also Index of Passages
Aeschines 74, 263, 297, 426
Aeschylus 30, 31, 43, 94, 206, 298, 364, 399, 406, 448, 479, 607
Agamemnon 13
Choephoroi 448
Eumenides 31, 43, 183, 187–8, 298
Oresteia 187, 189, 359, 364
Persae 183, 406
Prometheus Bound 477–9, 607
see also Index of Passages
Ajax (mythological hero) 55
Albinus, Lars 551
Alcock, Susan 69, 117, 228
Aleshire, Sarah B. 313–14
Alexander of Aphrodisias 219
Alexander the Great 131, 203, 318, 345, 434–41, 642, 644
Alexander Polyhistor 418
Aleximachos of Amorgas (hero) 391–3
Alfayé, Silvia 400
Allers, Rudolf 654
Alonge, Mark 105
Alroth, Brita 102, 122
Amasis II (pharaoh) 13, 14
Ames, Roger 653, 657
Amphiaraos (mythological hero) 469
Amphictyon (mythological hero) 275
amulets 248–9, 525
Anatolian culture and religion 7, 64, 317, 372, 375–6, 510–12, 543, 606–13
Anaxagoras of Klazomenai 219, 326, 333
Anaximander 212
Anaximenes 212, 654
Andanian msteries 2, 34–6, 102, 342
Anderson, Ralph 12, 30, 234–5, 259, 372
Andokides 326, 331–2, 334–5
see also Index of Passages
Andres, F. 414
Ano Englianos excavations 155
anthropology 125, 370, 381, 414, 418, 425, 472, 521–2, 525, 527, 652
social 23, 534
Antiochos III the Great (king) 438, 543
Antonaccio, Carla 318, 385–6
Anubis (god) 624–5
Aphrodite (goddess, aka Mylitta, Ailat, Mitra) 12, 14, 46, 86, 90, 132–3, 251, 372, 374, 377–80, 495,
598–9
Apollo (god) 13, 31, 34, 74, 76, 140, 153, 156–7, 161, 179, 185, 370, 374, 434, 440, 482, 484, 509–
10, 542
depiction/imagery of 57, 57–61, 84–93
sanctuary at Akraiphnion in Boiotxzia 16
sanctuary at Corinth 572, 576, 578
sanctuary at Delos 13–14, 16, 87–90, 236, 278–81, 279, 330
sanctuary at Delphi 16, 17, 137, 478–80
sanctuary at Didyma 265, 483, 486, 593
sanctuary at Kalapodi 15
sanctuary at Pantikapaion 592–3
sanctuary at Syracuse 572–3, 576–8, 577
Apollodoros (mythographer) 204, 251, 464
see also Index of Passages
Apollonios Rhodios 43, 282–3, 525
Argonautica 360–1
see also Index of Passages
Apollonios of Tyana 423–4, 642
Apuleius 421–2, 516, 631–4
archaeobotany 118
archaeology
Classical 115
cognitive 116
context 119, 121–3
history and theory 115–17
linguistic 375
mapping and sensing technology 117–18
methodologies 117–19
New Archaeology 115–16
post-processual 116
processual 115–16
small finds 119, 125, 282–4, 583
see also architectural features; coins; inscriptions; pottery; statuary
architectural features 61–4
 Echinos marble relief 243
Greco-Egyptian sanctuaries 626–9
herms 166–7, 249
monumentalization 102–3, 274, 276, 278, 280–1
monuments 101–4, 276, 495, 553
Naxian sphinx 276
New Phaleron marble relief in Peiraeus 57, 57–61
Nike Balustrade 58
Parthenon Frieze 58, 250, 267, 362
sculpture 580–1
Telemachus Monument 313–14
temples in Magna Graecia 576–81, 577, 579
votive reliefs 241–3, 452, 491–4, 491, 496
see also inscriptions; statuary
Argos 43–6
Aristomenes (king) 34–5
Aristophanes 159, 206, 471, 512, 552
Birds 334
Clouds 33, 212, 333
Frogs 182, 404, 559–60
Heroes 402
Lysistrata 252, 334, 532
Peace 53
see also Index of Passages
Aristotle 30, 152, 212–13, 417, 654–5
Athenian Constitution 480
On Dreams 481
Politics 296, 441
Rhetoric 432–3
see also Index of Passages
Arnaoutoglou, Ilias 106, 258
Arsinoe II (queen) 438–9
Artemidoros 402, 494
Artemis (goddess) 33, 100–1, 184, 188–9, 241, 251, 260, 274, 524–5, 532–3, 543, 545–8, 609
Laphria festival 14–15
Mounychia shrine 233, 532
sanctuary at Athens 100–1, 233–5
sanctuary at Brauron 241, 274, 491–6, 491, 525, 532
sanctuary at Delos 236, 278–81, 279
sanctuary at Kalapodi 15
sanctuary at Magnesia-on-the-Maeander 543–8
sanctuary at Pantikapaion 594–5
Arvidsson, Stefan 376
Asad, Talal 24
Ascough, Richard S. 114
Asheri, David 151, 372, 379
Asklepios (god and cult) 31, 34, 71, 79–80, 233, 234, 241–2, 253, 294, 350, 372, 431, 497–9
sanctuary at Athens 311, 313–16, 319–20
sanctuary at Epidaurus 505–10, 512, 514, 625
Aspinall, Arnold 117
Assmann, Jan 141
Aston, Emma 496
astrology 305, 537
astronomy 652–3, 659, 661
Athanassiadi, Polymnia 220
Athena (goddess) 71, 91, 157, 161, 187–91, 194–5, 250, 311–12, 374
bouphonia ritual 33
cult at Lindos 429
depiction on coins 264
sanctuary at Athens 16, 266
sanctuary at Emborio 17
sanctuary at Syracuse 573
statues in Athens 167–71
temple at Troy 165
Athenaeus 45, 230, 437
see also Index of Passages
Athens
acropolis 16, 167–71
Areopagos 187–9, 205
Asklepieia 34
asembly 14, 99, 267, 310
citizenship 246, 251–2, 258, 262, 267, 330
images of the gods 165–76
laws and prescriptions 325–36
loss of civic rights (atimia) 330
Palladion 169–71, 206
Parthenon 167–75
sanctuary of Artemis Agrotera 33
sanctuary of Artemis Aristoboule 33, 311
sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia 100–1
sanctuary of Asklepios 311, 313–16, 319–20
sanctuary of Dionysos Eleuthereos 181
shrine of Pan 311–13, 318, 494, 499
statues/images of Athena 167–76
tribes and kinship groups 258, 262–4
athletic contests/games 182, 391–2, 527, 553
Arsinoeia and Philadelpheia games 439
crown games (periodos) 274–7
Isthmian games 274, 277
Nemean games 274
Olympic games 274, 388, 390–1, 538
Ptolemaian games 437
Pythian (Delphic) games 276–7, 538
Attica 32–3, 58–60, 102, 170, 188–90, 199, 204–5, 258, 266, 274, 305, 316, 457, 491–2, 531–2
Aubriot-Sevin Danièle, 448–9
Auffarth, Christoph 98, 103
Ault, Bradley A. 119
Aune, David 137–8
Ausfeld, Carl 449
Austin, Michel 500
Azim, Firdous 317

Baal (god) 376–7

Babbitt, Frank C. 415
Babcock, Barbara A. 530
Babylon 70
Bachofen, Johann Jakob 357
Bachvarova, Mary R. 612
Bactrian and Indian culture and religion 7, 637–46
Arachosia 637–8, 641–3
archaeological excavations 638–43
Buddhism 641–4
Kushan empire 645–6
Baeumer, Max L. 362
Bagley, Robert 660
Bahn, Paul 116
Baird, Jennifer 106
Ballet, Pascale 118
Barber, E. J. W. 169
Barker, Elton 76–7
Barlou, Vasiliki 278
Barrett Caitlín, 3, 114, 120–4
Barthes, Roland 196
Barton, Tamsyn 659
Baslez Marie-Françoise, 123, 235, 259
Baumann, Richard A. 326–7, 332
Beard, Mary 18
Beaumont, Lesley A. 246, 248
Beckman, Gary M. 610, 613
Behr, Charles A. 70–1
Behrendt, Kurt 644
Belayche, Nicole 495, 510
belief
centrality of practice 21–7
concept of 23, 25–6
high intensity vs. low intensity 23–6
inscriptions as evidence 3, 97–108
material culture 113–25
materialistic systems 22
ritualistic 21–7
texts as evidence 3, 26–7, 67–80
visual imagery as evidence 3, 51–64, 83–95
see also inscriptions; myth/mythology; papyri/papyrology; religion/theology
Bell, Catherine 21, 116, 470
Bell, Harold I. 131–2
Bendis (goddess) 30, 259, 311, 313, 372
Benitez, Rick 4, 195
Benjamin, Walter 196
Bérard, Claude 386, 404
Berenike II, queen 133
Beresford, James 540
Bergquist, Birgitta 357
Bernabé, Alberto 133, 135, 401
Bernal, Martin 606
Bernard, Paul 640–1
Bes (god) 123, 143
Beschi, L. 60
Betegh Gábor, 133, 212, 300
Bettinetti 170
Betz, Hans D. 137–8
Bhabha, Homi 317–18
Bickerman, Elias J. 538
Billot, F. 275
Biltz, O. 605
Binford, Lewis 116
Bingen, Jean 228, 319
birds
divination 162, 298, 477–8, 485, 656, 662
sacrificial victims 14–15
symbol of sovereignty 44
Birge, Darice 115
Bitsakis, Yanis 538
Black Sea region
acropolis of Pantikapaion 590, 592–6, 600–1
Boris and Gleb mound 597–8
Bosporan Kingdom 7, 589–602
Chersonese 7, 499, 589
Greek colonies 589–92, 590
indigenous tribes 591–2
Maiskaya Mound 597
Olbia 6, 363, 457, 589
Blackman, D. J. 284
Blakely, Sandra 282–4
Blänsdorf Jürgen, 458
Blavatsky, V. D. 593
Blinkenberg, Christian 583
Bluck, R. S. 217
Blundell, Sue 244
Boardman, John 55, 399, 448, 581
Bobzien, Susanne 656, 660
Bodel, John 448
Boedeker, Deborah 124, 359, 362, 524, 554
Boehringer, David 385–6
Bohringer, F. 386, 392
Bommelaer Jean-François, 276
Bonnechère, Pierre 464
Bookidis, Nancy 572, 574
Bopearachchi, O. 637, 644–5
Boreas (god) 30, 33
Borgeaud, Philippe 495
Bouché-Leclercq, Auguste 478, 662
Bourdieu, Pierre 347
Boutantin Céline, 123
Bowden, Hugh 5, 17, 73, 123, 268, 277, 281–2, 284, 299, 494, 662
Boyce, Mary 639–40, 645
Boyer, Pascal 23
Brancaccio, Pia 644
Brashear, William M. 136, 138
Brasidas (military general) 385, 553, 569
Brauron 33, 100–1, 188–9, 205, 241, 523
Bravo, J. J. 389
Breiger, Ronald L. 317
Brelich, Angelo 402, 522, 531
Bremmer, Jan N. 7, 14, 39, 186, 199, 232, 250, 257, 268, 325, 358, 370, 375, 377, 397–9, 401, 405,
449, 464, 482, 497, 551, 609–10, 612–15
Bresson, A. 108
Brickhouse, Thomas C. 335
Broadhead, Henry D. 404, 406–7
Broise, H. 568, 571
Brown, John P. 376–7, 380
Bruit, Louise 494
Bruit Zaidman, Louise 78, 124, 257, 329
Brulé, Pierre 349
Brumfield, Allaire C. 538
Brun, Patrice 542
Bruneau, Philippe 122–3, 236–7, 278, 280–1
Brust, Manfred 614
Bryce, Trevor 613
Buck, C. D. 18
Buckler, John 276
Buddhism 114, 641–4
Budelmann, Felix 93
Budin, Stephanie 18, 70, 380
Bürchner, Ludwig 232
Burkert, Walter 6, 14, 41, 51, 123, 134, 141, 173, 196, 218, 228, 257, 282, 297, 317, 357–8, 360, 362,
369–70, 374–9, 384, 387–90, 464–7, 470–3, 478, 496, 521, 526, 594–5, 605–6, 610, 612–13
Burnyeat, Myles F. 334
Burrell, Barbara 63, 229, 432
Burstein, S. M. 114
Burtt, J. 74
Busine, Aude 349
Buxton, Richard 199, 493
Byrne, Ryan 612

Calame, Claude 2, 3, 68, 93, 182, 185–6, 197, 449, 527

Calder, William M. 569
Callimachus 84, 200, 434, 439, 571
Calvo Martinez, José L. 403
Cambon, Pierre 641
Camp, John 233
Canciani, F. 448
Caneva, S. 432, 439
Carawan, Edwin 332
Carbon, Jan-Mathieu 6, 341, 343, 347–8
Casabona, Jean 464, 471
Casadio, Giovanni 605
Catling, H. W. 117
Celsus (philosopher) 220, 421–3
Chadwick, Henry 423
Chadwick, John 373
Chang, K. C. 657
Chaniotis, Angelos 98, 103, 105, 264–5, 340–2, 347–9, 432, 436–7, 454, 497, 510, 543
Chankowski, Andrzej S. 265
Chankowski Véronique, 275, 280–1
Chapouthier, Fernand 122–3
Chemla, Karine 659
Chester, P. 118
Chinese culture and religion 651–62
cosmogony and cosmology 651–4, 656
divination and fortune-telling 651–2, 656–62
human–divine relationship 654–7
mantic practices 657–62
Chios 14, 16, 614
Christianity 21–7, 39, 218, 415, 472–3
Christidis, A.-P. 486
Cicero 333, 572, 652, 656
see also Index of Passages
Clack, Timothy 114
clan/kinship group (genos) 14, 184, 234, 260, 295, 298, 314, 332, 454, 547, 559, 576
Clarke, Katherine 203, 207, 410
Clarke, Michael J. 554
Claros or Clarus, see Klaros
Clarysse, Willy 132, 143, 644
Claudius Ptolemaeus 219
Claus, David B. 554
Cleland, Liza 100
Clement of Alexandria 135, 464
Cline, Eric H. 613
Clinton, Kevin 282, 284, 359, 494
Cocteau, Jean 513
Cohen, David 326–7
coins 3, 51, 61–4, 62–3, 264, 439, 569, 600, 637–8, 640–1, 644–6
Coldstream, J. N. 385–6
Cole, Susan G. 122–3, 228, 262, 264, 282, 284, 363, 533
Collar, Anna 316
Collins, Billie Jean 610
Collins, Derek 114, 302–3
Comella, Annamaria 100
communal religion 1, 4, 257–69, 273–85
creation and maintenance of trust 259
 cultural memory 97, 105, 174, 264–5
Greco-Egyptian communities 632
obscure vs. spectacular activities 261–2
oracles and divination 6, 13–14, 293, 296–9, 477–87, 651–2, 656
polis model 1, 113–14, 119, 124–5, 186, 217, 257, 654
public vs. private ritual practice 259–60, 263
range of polities 258–61
social capital 261
social cohesion and identity 264–9, 317, 393, 439–40
tribes and kinship groups 258, 262–4
comparative linguistics 373–6
Comte, Auguste 197
Conan, Michel 115
Conger, George P. 654
Connelly, Joan B. 167, 229, 244
Connerton, Paul 105
Connor, W. R. 268, 497
Conolly, James 118
Constantakopoulou, Christy 4, 45, 106, 230, 275, 280–1, 568
Cook, Arthur B. 137, 247
Copenhaver, Brian P. 138
Corcella, Aldo 151, 372, 379
Corcyra 568, 582
Corinth 18, 70, 152, 568, 571–6, 578, 582–3
Corlu, André 448
Cornford, F. M. 207
cosmogony 7, 91, 371, 651–4
cosmology 54–7, 516, 651–4
Costa, C. D. N. 409
Costabile, Felice 402–3
Coulton, J. J. 578
courtesans (hetairai) 120
Crane, Gregory 555
Crawley Quinn, Joesphine 167
Creuzer, Georg Friedrich 356–7
Cribb, Joe 646
Croesus (king of Lydia) 26, 202, 481
Crowther, Charles 350
Csapo, Eric 196
cult
change/continuity over time 2, 29–37, 124–5, 309–20
foundation/origin stories 31–37, 312, 571
hero-cults 5, 153, 310, 383–93, 403, 440–1, 571
oikist cults 6, 569–71
‘persona’ 40–1
regional networks (amphictionies) 4, 6–7, 33, 41, 117, 273–85, 316–17
ruler cults 429–42
sharing of cults and alliances 310, 315–16
transfer 567–84, 605–15
see also heroes/heroines; myth/mythology
cultic ritual practice
calendars and festivals 537–49
curse tablets 142, 144, 302, 305, 400, 407, 454–9, 511, 516
financial upkeep and donations 106–7
fasting 16
feasting 16, 33, 118, 262–3, 265–6, 466–7, 526, 541, 545, 548
gifts to the gods 16, 167, 169, 171, 173, 310, 432, 492, 500
magic 1, 114, 136–45, 228, 359–62, 407–8, 485–7
prayers and curses 2, 5–6, 103–6, 156–9, 174–5, 185–7, 262, 268, 426, 447–59
processions 102, 118, 167, 169–70, 179, 181–2, 265–6, 438, 497–8, 526, 631
ritual performance 2, 39–47, 180, 183, 191, 294, 296, 497
sacrificial and festal calendars 537–49, 630–1
scapegoat rituals 268, 464, 609–10
secret 36, 262, 630–2
teletai (rituals seeking divine favour) 72, 301, 559
theoria (religious experience and practice) 79, 655
theoxenia (ritual reception/hosting ceremony) 181, 389, 392, 393, 494, 498–9, 545
see also death and the afterlife; festivals; gods and goddesses; healing; household; life-change
rituals; oracles; priests; sacrifice; sanctuaries/temples; songs and music; women
Cultrera, Giuseppe 572
Cumont, Franz 401, 403
Curd, Patricia 212
Currie, Bruno 385–7, 392, 402–3, 440
Cyrino, Monica S. 378
Cyrus the Younger (prince and general) 302–3

Daeira (goddess) 206

daimon/daimones 5, 13, 74, 78, 114, 141–2, 144, 212, 245, 349, 401, 407–8, 413–26, 614
Dakaris, S. 486
Dale, A. 609, 615
D’Angour, Armand 33
Daniel, Robert 139
Dark, Ken R. 116
Daumas Michèle, 123
Davidson, James 548
Davies, John K. 106, 228, 259, 273, 276–7
Davis, Jack L. 155
Dawe, Roger 405
Deacy, Susan 5, 172, 310, 362, 374, 384, 463
death and the afterlife 5–6, 218
Book of the Dead 140, 144, 632
communication with souls of the dead 398–400, 402–3, 404–7
conceptions of death 397–410
corpse (soma) 153, 398–9, 523, 526, 551, 624
curse tablets 142, 144, 302, 305, 400, 407–8, 426, 511, 516
dead as conscious entities 553, 555
epic narratives 552, 554–5
feasting 526
funerary inscriptions 42, 401, 426, 454, 557
funerary monuments 391–2, 599–600
 funerary processions 526
funerary regulations 329
funerary reliefs 557
funerary ritual 104, 399, 526, 553
funerary speeches 74, 265
ghosts/restless spirits/revenants 141–2, 399–400, 402–3, 407–9
grave goods 57, 118, 457
Hades (Underworld) 55–7, 72, 139–42, 144, 251, 301, 304, 319, 355, 357–8, 360, 364, 377–8,
384, 398–401, 403–8, 457, 511, 553–9, 562, 597, 599, 600, 622–3, 625, 632
Isles of the Blessed/Elysian Fields 400–1, 554, 557, 562
judgement and punishment 557–8, 560–2
life and death dichotomy 5, 383–93
link between living and the dead 57, 399, 551–62
magic 407–8
memorials 552–4
memory survival 552–5, 562
necromancy and oracles 404–6
pollution and purification 399, 526
processions 526
public funerals 265
reincarnation 401, 561
role of women in death ceremonies 523, 526
social status 104
soul (psyche) 397–8, 401, 424–5, 560–1
summoning of souls 406–7
Tartaros (abyss below Hades) 91, 401, 557, 562
tending of tombs 553
transmigration of souls 561
see also life-change rituals; pollution
Debord, P. 607
de Cesare, Monica 58
de Grummond, Nancy T. 229
Delgado, Luis M. 400
Delian League 266, 280, 316
Delli Pizzi, A. 329–30
Delos 87–93, 120–4, 259, 277–81, 318, 622
sanctuaries/temples 16, 235–7, 278–81, 279
Delphi 59, 89–92, 227, 500, 538, 581–4
amphictiony 276–7
oracle 17, 32, 76–7, 92, 264, 268, 276, 311, 386, 451–2, 478–81, 483–4, 486, 546
Pythian Apollo 13, 35, 58, 60–1, 89, 234, 298–9, 302, 402–3, 478, 480–1, 483–4, 512
Sacred Wars 276–7
sanctuary of Apollo 16–17, 31, 276, 330, 478–80
Demand, Nancy 525
Demargne, P. 168–70
Demeter (goddess) 31, 135, 206, 250, 372, 453, 455, 496, 540–2
Demetrios Poliorketes (king) 435–7
Demokritos 485, 653
Demosthenes 74, 180, 297, 300, 469, 533
see also Index of Passages
Depew, Mary 105, 448, 451–2
de Polignac François, 228, 230–1, 274
Deshours, Nadine 35, 543
Despinis, Georgios 492
Des Places, E. 220
Despoina (goddess) 102
Detienne, Marcel 40, 242–3, 415, 418, 464–6, 469–73, 652, 654
de Wilde, Marc 196
Dhammika, V. S. 643
Dickie, Matthew W. 300
Diehls, Hermann 654
Diggle, James 133
Dignas, Beate 261, 267, 295
Dillery, J. 299
Dillon, John M. 139, 166
Dillon, Matthew 2, 4, 61, 166, 242–4, 250, 252–3, 532
Dimitrova, Nora 284
Dinsmoor, William B. 572–3, 578–9
Diodorus Siculus 204, 274, 284, 333–4, 433, 591
see also Index of Passages
Diogenes Laertius 305, 421
see also Index of Passages
Diogoras of Melos 326, 333–5
Dione (goddess) 86
Dionysios of Halikarnassos 203
Dionysios I of Syracuse 440
Dionysios II of Syracuse 293, 496
Dionysos (Bacchus, god) 13, 41, 93, 102, 133–5, 151, 160, 179, 187, 189, 191, 218, 356, 362–4, 370,
372, 374, 381, 384, 420–1, 440, 514, 525, 541–2, 559, 595–6, 601, 608–9, 621
Dionysia festivals 180–4, 186, 252, 263, 267, 294, 469
objection to his arrival as a new god 32
sanctuary at the Athenian acropolis 181
worship by women 248–9, 251
Dioskouroi (twin gods) 198, 284, 431, 450, 640, 645
Djamouri, Redouane 660
Dobbins, J. J. 100
Dobrovolskaya, E. V. 595–6
Dodd, David 522
Domitian (Roman emperor) 61–3
Donnadieu, M.-P. 397, 404
Donnay, G. 326
Donohue, Alice A. 171
Dörpfeld, Wilhelm 344, 388
Dougherty, Carol 318, 598
Dover, Kenneth J. 326
Dowden, Ken 374–6, 378, 522, 527, 532, 606
drama
comedy 179, 180, 182, 183, 199, 408–9, 512
masks 180, 187
political 189–91
 ritual and relations with the gods 183–7
satyr drama 183
tragedy 3, 68, 86, 93–4, 179–91, 199
tragic plots (muthoi) 182
see also epic narrative; poetry/poetic performance; songs and music
Dreyer, Boris 432
Drozdek, Adam 212
Drujinina, A. 639
Duara, Prasenjit 654
Dubois, Laurent 385
Ducat, Jean 16, 236, 274, 278, 280, 531
Dumézil, Georges 40
Dunand Françoise, 318–20
Dunbabin, Katherine M. D. 105
Dunbabin, T. J. 568–9, 571, 573–5
Dunn, Francis M. 189
Duplouy, Alain 230–1
Durkheim, Émile 466
Dyggve, Ejnar 392

Easterling, Patricia 68, 183

Eberhard, Wolfram 659
Edelstein, Emma 313, 505, 508–9
Edelstein, Ludwig 313, 505, 508–9
Edlund-Berry, Ingrid 229
Edmonds III, Radcliffe G. 6, 104, 135, 218, 363, 398, 404, 426, 527, 558, 560–1, 584
Edwards, Mark W. 156
Edwards, Michael J. 331–2
Egetmeyer, Markus 612
Egyptian culture and religion 7, 12–13, 105, 114, 120–5, 131–45, 151, 219–20, 235–7, 318–20, 372–
4, 437–9, 621–34
see also Greco-Egyptian culture and religion
Ehrenberg, Victor 275
Ehrhardt, Norbert 593, 599
Eich, Peter 165, 172, 174
Eidinow, Esther 26, 42, 103–4, 114, 248, 257, 261, 268–9, 299–300, 311, 316–17, 326–7, 331, 400,
407–8, 451, 457, 479, 612, 656, 659
Eileithyia (goddess) 46, 281, 524
Einodia (Hecate, goddess) 185–6
Eitrem, Samson 464, 471
Ekroth, Gunnel 2, 5, 98, 310, 358–9, 383, 385, 387, 389–90, 440, 482
Eleusinian mysteries 206, 267, 293–5, 314, 334, 335, 401, 404, 437, 496, 559
Eleusis 31, 33, 35, 122, 153, 198, 219, 469, 495
Eliade, Mircea 199
Ellis-Hansen, A. 525
Elsner, Jas 69, 71, 78–9, 116, 238
Empedokles 83, 213, 222, 418, 441, 451, 464, 561
Epaminondas (military general) 34, 305, 469–70
epic narrative 3, 11–18, 83, 151–63
authority of 86
 poetic imaginary 152
preservation of memory 552, 554–5
religious performances 155–9
Thebaid 152, 158
see also Hesiod; Homer
epichoric religions (Luwian, Karian, Lykian, and Lydian) 607–9
epichorios (local practice/culture) 78
Epidauros 44, 314–15, 450, 497–9, 659
epigraphs, see inscriptions
epiklesis (cult title) 78
Epiteles (military general) 34–5
Erbse, Hartmut 404
Erichthonios (king) 168, 185, 266
Eros (god) 86
Erskine, Andrew 39
Euripides 41, 187, 417, 472, 559
Bacchae 30, 248
Erechtheus 189–91
Ion 183–5, 199, 360
Iphigenia in Tauris 188–9, 483–4
see also Index of Passages
Eusebius 18
Euthyphro (religious prophet) 14

Facella, M. 350
Fairbanks, Arthur 357
Faraone, Christopher A. 124, 139, 170, 174, 246–8, 456–8, 466, 522
Farnell, Lewis R. 384–5, 387–8
Fates (goddesses, Moirai) 42–3, 141, 498, 641
Faulkner, Andrew 494
Fauth, Wolfgang 137–8
Fedak, Janos 386, 391
Federico, C. M. 196
Feeney, Denis 24, 67
Felton, D. 402, 408–9
Ferguson, W. S. 258
Ferrari, Gloria 523, 526–7, 614
festivals 537–49
Adonia 250–3
Andania 2, 34, 102
Anthesteria 182, 263
Apatouria 263, 264, 530–1
Arrhephoria 262
Artemis Brauronia 33, 100–1, 184, 188–9, 241, 274, 491–6, 491, 525, 532–3
Artemis Kindyas 260
Artemis Leukophryene 543, 545–8
Asklepeia 267, 313–15, 499
Choes 205
Daidala 44
Dionysia 180, 182, 186, 252, 263, 267, 294, 469
 Eleusinia 153, 182, 314, 560
Epidauria 314, 315
Epidemia 494
Isiteria 546–8
Kallynteria 547
Kronia 261, 611
Laphria 14–15
Lenaia 267, 363, 541
Leukophryena 545–6
Navigium Isidis 630–1
Panathenaia 157, 165, 167, 169, 180, 182, 183, 184, 186, 250, 252, 263, 265–7, 294, 468–9, 527
Panionia 274
Plynteria 169, 547
Posideia 540
Proerosia 263
Ptolemaia 437–8
Pyanopsia 261, 263
Soteria 500
Thargelia 182, 267, 469
Theophania 494
Thesaia 182
Thesmophoria 16, 242, 250, 252, 263
Tonaia/Heraia 45
Festugière, André J. 245
Finke, Roger 614
Finley, Moses 652
Fiorelli, Giuseppe 115
Fischer-Hansen, Tobias 568, 572
Flannery, K. 116
Flower, Michael A. 4, 101, 268, 298–9, 304, 311, 484, 496, 657–8
Fogelin, Lars 116
Fontenrose, Joseph 137, 402, 483, 660, 662
Ford, Andrew 160
Forrer, Emil 610
Forrest, W. G. 275, 345
Forsén Bjørn, 512
Foucault, Michel 100
Fowler, Robert 4, 68, 77, 195, 200–2, 206, 482, 612, 614
Fraenkel, Carlos 217, 218
Fraenkel, Eduard 13
Frame, Douglas 153
Francfort, H.-P. 646
François, Gilbert 416
Frankfort, Henri 140
Frankfurter, David 143
Fraser, P. M. 106, 641
Freese, J. H. 433
Freeth, Tony 538
Frei, Peter 607
Freyer-Schauenburg, Brigitte 230
Friedrich, Johannes 610
Fröhlich, P. 387
Furley, William D. 186, 331–2, 449, 497
Furtwängler, A. 388
Fussman, G. 644

Gabrielsen, Vincent 257, 259, 261

Gaffney, Chris 117
Gager, John G. 455–6
Gagné, Renaud 3, 326, 332
Gaifman, Milette 3, 60, 114, 165–6, 171, 174–5
Gajdukevitch, V. F. 591, 601
Gaki-Papanastassiou, K. 118
Galen 219–20
Gane, Mike 196
Ganschinietz, R. 137
Gantz, Timothy 51, 56, 90
Garbrah, K. 497
García Ramón, J. L. 613
García Teijeiro, M. 401–2
Garland, Robert 22, 30, 233–5, 310–16, 495
Gartziou-Tatti, A. 154
Gasparro, Giulia S. 5, 212, 407, 426
Gater, John 117
Gauthier, Philippe 391, 546
Gawlinski, Laura 36, 342
Ge (Gaea/Gaia, goddess) 91–2, 359, 371–2, 374, 457, 483, 514, 541
Gebauer Jörg, 51
Gebhard, Elizabeth 390
Geertz, Clifford 163
George, A. 607, 612
Georgoudi, S. 545
Gerber, Douglas E. 389
Gernet, Louis 40
Giangiulio, M. 276
giants 199, 598
Giddens, Anthony 347
Gill, D. W. J. 167
Gillings, Mark 118
Giordano-Zecharya, M. 335
Girard Renée, 464
Girardot, Norman J. 654
Girone, M. 508
Giuman, Marco 189
gods and goddesses
anthropomorphism 214–15, 319–20, 432, 492, 496, 654
chthonian 5, 140–2, 355–64
deification 5, 429–42
depiction/imagery of 4, 51–64, 83–95, 114, 153, 165–76, 317, 319, 491–3, 644–6
divine agency 31–2, 77
 divine negligence (ameleian) 74
divine perfection 216
divine retribution 26, 74–5
essentialization of 39–40
hierarchy 424
human–divine relationship 17, 57, 75–7, 175, 183–7, 491–501, 654–7
naming and identifying 12–13, 30
new deities 4, 12, 29–30, 233–4, 309–20, 372–3
offerings of robes (peplos) 157, 167–9, 176, 266, 494
Olympian 5, 11, 355–64, 404, 571–4
Olympian/chthonian binary concepts 355–64, 384, 388
origins 5, 40, 369–81
pantheon 40–1, 78, 369–81, 432, 622–6
personifications (the Fates) 42–3, 46, 141, 498, 641
ritual reception (theoxenia) 181, 389, 392–3, 494, 498–9, 545
unity and plurality 39–46
universal and local nature of 11, 13–14
see also heroes; myth/mythology; and individual deities
Goff, Barbara 244, 250
Golden, M. 524
Goldhill, Simon 68–9, 77
Goroncharovski, V. A. 591
Gordon, Richard 173, 511
Gould, John 27, 77
Graf, Fritz 6, 16, 55, 135, 137, 143, 173–5, 265, 363–4, 369, 374, 401, 404–5, 407, 448, 454, 456,
465, 486, 494, 496–7, 509, 515–16, 522, 529, 531
Graham, Alexander J. 281, 582
Graham, Angus C. 653, 657
Graham, Daniel 212
Graham, J. Walter 245
Granet, Marcel 656–7
Granger, H. 213
Gras, M. 568, 571
Greaves, Alan M. 599
Greco-Egyptian culture and religion 7, 136, 621–34
festivals 630–1
mysteries and initiation 631–2
priests 633
temples and sanctuaries 626–9
Greco-Roman culture and religion 51, 121, 123, 131, 432, 516, 624
Gregory, Andrew 72
Grenet, Frantz 639–40, 645
Grondin, Jean 213
Gruppe, Otto 605
Guarducci, Margherita 58, 99, 508
Guldager Bilde, Pia 589
Gunter, Ann C. 612, 614
Güntner, Gudrun 58
Guthrie, William K. C. 135
Habicht, Christian 387, 431–3
Hades (god) 283, 292, 363–4, 400, 403–5, 496, 523, 557, 625, 639
Hadzisteliou-Price, Theodora H. 362, 385
Hägg, Robin 228
Haider, P. W. 610
Hall, David 653, 657
Hall, E. 407
Hall, Jonathan M. 275
Hamilakis, Yannis 118
Hamilton, Richard 248
Hanell, Krister 568
Hankinson, R. J. 656, 660
Hannah, Robert 537–8
Hansen, M. H. 257, 326, 330, 534
Harding, Phillip 204–6
Harper, Donald J. 659
Harpokrates (child-god, aka Horus) 120, 624–5
Harrington, J. M. 118
Harris, Diane 16, 168, 173
Harris, Roy 105
Harrison, Jane Ellen 357
Harrison, Thomas 2, 23–4, 26, 68–9, 72, 75–7, 206, 247, 398, 495
Hart, Mary L. 120, 122
Hausmann, Ulrich 241
Hawkins, Shane 609
Head, B. V. 61–2, 64
healing 505–17
Epidaurian healing inscriptions (iamata) 505–10
epidemics and plagues 506, 513–16
erection of statues 514–15
incubation (healing dreams and visions) 6, 142–3, 479, 481, 494, 499, 506–10, 516
On the Sacred Disease (Hippokratic text) 72, 301, 505
penitence 505
Phrygian ‘Confession Stelai’ 506, 510–12, 516
purification ritual and law 17, 136, 213, 218, 248, 262, 296, 297, 301, 302, 304, 399, 402, 418,
422, 505–6, 513–16, 628
sacred animals 507
see also pollution
Heinze, Richard 414, 420
Heitsch, Ernst 141
Hekate (goddess) 185, 247–9, 356, 359–62, 404, 594–6
Helios (personification of the Sun) 54–5, 54, 138, 141, 161, 609, 645–6
Hellenistic kings and rulers 429–42
Helmis, A. 391
Hellström, P. 102
Henderson, John 18
Hengstl, Joachim 132, 136, 143
Henige, David 204
Henrichs, Albert 94, 103, 108, 131, 134, 358–9, 402, 533
Hephaistos (god) 167, 371, 374, 379, 575, 624
Hera (goddess) 11, 43–6, 359, 374
depictions of 43–4, 46, 62–4, 90–2
sanctuary on Samos 62–4, 230–2, 274
temple at Boiotian Plataia 44
temple at Parthenia 45
temple at Poseidonia 579
Herakles (god/mythological hero) 13, 91, 201, 259, 372, 377–8, 384, 404, 435, 600–1
kraterophron (cult epithet) 86
sanctuary on Thasos 17
visual depictions of 51–7, 52, 54, 601
Heraklitos 69, 72, 175, 219–20, 363, 613–14, 653
Herbich, T. 117
Herculaneum 115
Herington, C. J. 168, 172
Hermann, Arnold 214
Hermes (god) 137, 139–40, 166, 167, 482
Herodotos 4, 12–14, 18, 33–4, 68–71, 83, 123, 131, 151–2, 195, 198–9, 238, 250, 264, 282, 298, 312,
379, 406, 495, 512, 553, 574
Histories 75–7, 151, 200–1, 371–2, 599, 621
story of Helen of Troy 201–3
see also Index of Passages
heroes/heroines
causes of pollution 2
hero-cults 5, 153, 310, 383–93, 403, 440–1, 571
imperishable fame 552
libation tube feeding of dead heroes (enagismos) 392, 463
life and death dichotomy 5, 383–93
revenants 402–3
significance of death 383–5
tombs and funerals 384–8
traffic in bones 388, 389
see also drama; epic narrative; gods; myth/mythology; and individual names
Herrero, Miguel 134–5
Herrmann, H. V. 388–9
Herrmann, P. 454
Herzog, Rudolf 507
Hesiod 13, 31, 70, 77, 83–7, 151–3, 162, 214, 216, 220, 369–75, 385–6, 401, 416, 450, 466, 471,
610–12, 614
Theogony 12, 56, 68, 86–7, 93, 151, 160, 361–2, 370–1, 374, 378–80, 415–17, 610
Works and Days 87, 385, 537–49
see also Index of Passages
Hestia (goddess) 246
Heubeck, A. 405
Hiebert, Fredrik T. 641
Hieropolis 15, 70, 514, 515, 609
Higbie, Carolyn 107, 496
Hild, J. A. 414
Hiltebeitel, Alf 153
Hipparchos 167
Hippokrates 304
historiography 4, 68, 83, 98, 101, 201–2, 207
history 4, 195–207
foundation myths 32, 181, 189–91, 198, 203–7, 571
heroic legend 197, 199–201
ideology 196
local vs. ‘great’ 203
mythistory 198–207
notion of truth 195, 203, 207
positivism 196
see also heroes; historiography
Hitch, Sarah 2, 99, 399, 493
Hock, Geog 174
Hodder, Ian 116
Hodge, A. Trevor 578
Hodos, Tamar 118
Holt, Frank L. 637
Homer 13, 68, 85, 77, 213, 385, 416, 441, 447–8, 612
Iliad 11, 34, 41, 43, 83, 86, 151–63, 165, 371, 398–400, 448–9, 471, 487, 493, 495, 512–13, 515,
554–5
Odyssey 11, 14, 141–2, 151–63, 220, 371, 398–401, 405, 471, 482, 555–6, 558
see also Index of Passages
Homeric Hymns
Aphrodite 379–80, 494–5
Apollo 31, 276, 278, 370–1, 374, 484, 524
Demeter 31, 153, 524, 559
Hermes 482
Hestia 246
Hommel, Hildebrecht 589
Homolle, T. 596
Hooker, J. T. 401
Hopfner, Theodor 137–8
Hordern, J. 134–5
Horky, Phillip S. 613
Hornblower, Simon 274, 276–8
Hornborstel, Wilhelm 625
Horus (god) 137, 143, 624
Houby-Nielsen, S. 57
household (oikos)
altars 548
ancestral gods 166, 205
divine images 166–7
family piety 107, 241–53, 497
gender roles 521
hearths 245, 246
location of ritual practice 2, 4, 246–7, 250–3
shrines 242, 245–6, 248–9
women’s quarters 246
see also life-change rituals; women
Hughes, Dennis D. 18, 387, 530
Hume, David 25
Humphreys, S. C. 526
Hunter, Richard 435, 612
Hupe, J. 589
Hurcombe, Linda 100
Hurrian/Hittite culture and religion 7, 606–13, 615
Hurwit, Jeffrey M. 180, 190
Hutson, Scott 116
Hutter, M. 607–9
Hutton, William 71, 78–9
hymns, see songs and music

iconography 40, 44, 55, 58, 118, 122–4, 181, 241–3, 299, 317, 319, 369, 389, 440, 491–3, 491, 600,
626, 640–1, 644–6
Iggers, G. G. 196
Ilyina, T. A. 596–7
impiety (asebeia) 4–5, 72, 268–9, 311, 325–36
atheism 325, 327, 329, 333–6
legal procedure (graphe asebeias) 325–6, 328–9, 333
sacrilege 26
see also religious authority
inscriptions 51, 59–61, 97–108, 313–14, 452, 497–8
commemoration and devotion 104–6
cultural memory 97, 105
dedications 99–102, 237
Epidaurian healing inscriptions (iamata) 505–10
footprints 105
funerary 42, 401, 426, 557
hymns 105
laws and prescriptions 329–31, 339–51
Lindian Chronicle 107–8, 429–31, 434, 499, 583–5
Linear B 152, 373–4, 385, 539
Phrygian ‘Confession Stelai’ 506, 510–12
power and authority 97–8, 101–4
prayers and curses 103–6
religious experience 104–6
sacrificial calendars 537–49
social ties and connectivity 106–8
see also Index of Passages
Insoll, Timothy 116, 118
Instone, S. 105
Ion of Chios 93
Epidemiai 84
Iossif, Panagiotis 440
Isis (goddess and cult) 7, 13, 30, 115, 123, 236, 318, 372, 438, 621–4, 631–2
Ismard, P. 99, 258
Isokrates 358, 364
Ad Nikolem 297
Areopagitikos 30, 33
Panathenaikos 74
see also Index of Passages
Isyllos of Epidauros (poet) 342, 350, 497–9
Ivantchik, A. I. 591, 597–8
ivory 16, 171

Jacoby, Felix 203, 205–6

Jaeger, W. 398, 400–1
Jakov, D. 450
Jameson, Michael H. 16, 115, 245–6, 261, 359, 402, 494, 568, 574
Jeammet, Violaine 120
Jeanmaire, Henri 522
Jensen, Søren S. 415
Jiménez, Ana E. 135
Johnston, Sarah Iles 6, 16, 135–6, 141, 268, 298, 300, 311, 361, 363–4, 373, 399–400, 402, 404,
407–8, 451, 478, 480–2, 485–7, 512, 551, 553, 657
Jones, Alexander 538
Jones, Christopher 387
Jones, Horace L. 528
Jones, Lindsay 228
Jones, Martin 118
Jones, Nicholas F. 258–9
Jordan, D. R. 359, 402, 568, 574
Jost, J. T. 196
Jost, M. 318
Jouan, F. 406–7
Jouanna, J. 100

Kabeiroi (gods) 122–3, 282

Kader, I. 386, 391
Kahil, Lilly 532–3
Kaibel, Georg 557
Kajava, M. 448
Kalinowski, Marc 659
Kaltsas, Nikos 241–3
Kalydon 14, 392
Kambitsis, S. 139
Karakasi, Katarina 230
Katz, J. 480
Kaukon (mythological hero) 34–5
Kavoulaki, Athena 497
Kearns, Emily 2, 11, 98, 100, 316, 342, 355, 387
Keesling, Katherine 167
Keightley, David N. 660
Kennell, Nigel 531
Kephisos (god) 60
Kessler, D. 621
Kienast, H. J. 230
Kilian-Dirlmeier, I. 273, 581
Kindt, Julia 76, 105, 113–14, 116–17, 167, 173, 257, 261, 274, 315, 331, 356, 360, 496, 655
King, Charles 23
King, Helen 524–5
Kitts, Margo 158
Klaros 514, 515
Kleibl, Kathrin 7, 131, 151, 235, 318–19, 373, 606, 622–4, 626, 629–33
Klein, N. L. 578
Kleisthenes (statesman) 180, 258, 316, 479
Klinghardt, Matthias 449
Kloppenborg, John S. 114
Koch Piettre, R. 496, 500
Koenen, Ludwig 432
Koetschau, P. 449
Kohl, Philip 116
Kolde, Antje 350, 497
Konsolaki, E. 118
Kortansky, R. D. 359, 402, 568, 574
Koshelenko, G. A. 593, 596, 598–9, 602
Kötting, B. 105
Kouremenos, Theokritos 133, 212
Kowalzig, Barbara 88, 274–5, 280–1
Kranz, Walther 654
Krauter, S. 265
Kravaritou, S. 537
Kreon (mythological ruler) 14
Krieger, Leonard 196
Kroll, J. H. 168
Kron, Uta 244, 264
Kronos (god) 44, 46, 91, 151, 609–11
Krüger, O. 346
Kruglikova, I. T. 640
Krumme, M. 170
Krummen, E. 390
Kubinska, J. 386
Kucan, D. 118
Kuhrt, A. 612
Kurke, Leslie 120, 318
Kurtz, Donna C. 399
Kushan empire 640, 645–6
Kybele (goddess and cult of the Great Mother/Meter) 317, 372, 601–2, 645
Kyrene 17, 532, 553
Purification Law 248
Kyriakidis, Evangelos 116
Kyrieleis, Helmut 44, 230–2, 274, 388–9
Lactantius 45, 464
see also Index of Passages

Ladike (wife of Amasis II) 14

Laidlaw, W. 237
Lake, Mark 118
Laks, A. 133
Lambert, S. D. 258, 260, 531
Lamberton, Robert 160
Lambrinoudakis, V. 278
Lampon (seer) 14
Lane, Eugene 350
Lane Fox, Robin 136, 377, 487, 610–11
Langdon, Merle 100
Langin-Hooper, S. M. 124
Lapatin, K. D. S. 168, 170–3
La Rocca, E. 500
Larson, Jennifer 58, 385
Lateiner, Donald 77
Laum, B. 386, 391–2
Laumonier, Alfred 123, 609
Launey, Marcel 260
Lawall, M. 124, 282
Lawton, C. L. 61
Lazzarini, M. L. 99
LeBlanc, S. A. 116
Lefèvre François, 276–7
Lehmann, Karl 281–2, 284
Lehmann, P. W. 281–3
Lehoux, D. 118
Leitao, David 525
Lesbos 615
Lesher, James H. 213–14
Leto (goddess) 87–8, 90
Leumann, M. 86, 92
Levantine culture and religion 374, 376, 379, 606, 609–13
Lévêque, P. 384
Levi, P. 79
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 556
Lewis, Naphtali 132, 282–3
Lhôte, Éric 451, 479, 486, 659
Lichtheim, Miriam 140
LiDonnici, Lynn R. 32, 507
life-change rituals 2, 6, 521–34
adolescence and puberty 522–5, 527–34
Amphidromia (recognition of newborns by fathers) 246
baby’s first bath 524
female initiation ceremonies 532–3
gender segregation 523
hairstyles 525
homosexuality 529–30
male initiation ceremonies 528–31
marriage and death rituals 525–7
naming of children 246
pregnancy and birth 524–5
symbolic clothing 525, 529
Lightfoot, Jane L. 15
Limberis, N. Y. 591
Lincoln, P. 522–3
Lindberg, David C. 138
Linder, M. 24
Linders, Tullia 100–1, 103
Lindos 107
Lindström, G. 639
Linfert, A. 58
Lipinski, Edward 379
Lissarrague, F. 53
Little, Lester K. 513
Litvinskii, B. A. 646
see also Litvinskij, B. A.
Litvinskij 639–40, 644
see also Litvinskii, B. A.
Livy 203
Lloyd, Alan B. 137, 151, 372, 379
Lloyd, Geoffrey E. 72, 652–4, 660–1
Loewe, Michael 657, 661
logos/logoi (discourse/argument/language) 68, 79, 133–4, 137, 139, 141–4, 197
López-Ruiz, Carolina 5, 371, 376, 610, 612–13
Loraux, Nicole 265, 386
Lorenz, C. 196
Lorenz, J. 612
Lorenz, Konrad 465–6
Loucas, E. 102
Loucas, I. 102
Lozovoi, S. P. 595–6
Lucan 405
Luce, Jean-Marc 276
Lucian 18, 70–1, 360, 406, 409, 481, 530
On the Syrian Goddess (De Dea Syria) 15, 71
see also Index of Passages
Luck-Huyse, Karin 397
Lührmann, D. 496
Lupu, Eran 99, 102, 340–2, 344, 346–7
Luraghi, Nino 35, 203
Lykourgos 32, 68, 74–5, 469, 528–9
Lyons, Deborah 360, 385
Lysias (orator) 32–3, 74, 103, 167, 331–2, 334–5, 417, 512

Ma, J. 342
McCauley, B. 388
McConnell, B. E. 575
Macdonald, M. C. A. 105
MacDowell, Douglas M. 206, 331–2
McInerney, Jeremy 277
Mackil, Emily 258
MacKillop, James 159
Mackley, Robert 23
McLean, Bradley H. 99
McPherran, Mark L. 334
Magna Graecia (South Italy and Sicily) 6, 567–84
 indigenous religion 575–6
religious interaction with Greece 581–4
religious tradition and innovation 568–76
temples and sanctuaries 570, 572, 573, 576–81, 577, 579
Magnesia-on-the-Maeander 499, 543–8, 611
Mairs, Rachel 7, 106, 114, 638–9, 641–2
Majercik, R. 221
Majumdar, N. G. 644
Malcolm, Norman 25
Malkin, Irad 33, 569, 571, 575, 579, 596, 598
Mallwitz, A. 388
Maltomini, F. 139
Manetti, Giovanni 478, 660
Maniscalco, L. 575
Manni, E. 568
Mansfield, J. M. 168–9
Marcadé, J. 236
Marchand, Suzanne L. 605
Marchenko, I. D. 591, 597
Marcone, A. 514
Marconi, C. 282, 585
Marcus, J. 116
Mari, Manuela 282
Marinatos, Nanno 228
Marshall, John 642
Martin, Alain 213
Martin, Gunther 69, 74
Martin, Richard 3, 153
Martinez, David 3, 83, 136–9, 144
Martinez-Sève, L. 644–6
Martlew, Holley 118
Marx-Wolf, H. 415
Maurizio, L. 267, 660, 662
Mayhew, Robert 328–9
Mayr, P. 625
Mazarakis Ainian, Alexander 230–2, 278
Megara 455, 568, 571, 574
Melaerts, H. 432
Melchert, H. Craig 606
Melfi, M. 314
Men (god) 30, 350
Menander (dramatist)
Arbitrator 426
Phasma 408
Samia 251
Menander (king) 644–5
Menodotos of Samos 45
Merkelbach, R. 139, 143, 514
Mertens, D. 571
Mertens, J. R. 54
Mesopotamian culture and religion 7, 376–7, 380, 440, 466, 514, 606–7, 612
Messenia 34–6
Meuli, Karl 465
Meyer, E. A. 104
Migeotte Léopold, 106–7
Mikalson, Jon D. 29, 67, 69, 77, 124, 216, 259, 295, 318, 513, 538, 546
Miles, M. 578
Miletos 265, 317, 486, 599
Miller, F. D. 398
Miller, J. L. 610
Miltiades (statesmen) 312, 553
Mitchell, M. M. 493
Mitsopoulos-Leon, V. 101
Mittag, P. F. 500
Mnasistratos the hierophant 35–6
Mnemosyne (goddess) 86
Möbius, H. 299
Mojsov, Bojana 622
Molinos Tejada, M. T. 401–2
Monbrun, P. 91
monotheism 39
monsters 91, 359, 377–8, 610
Monti, C. 118
Morenz, Siegfried 144
Morgan, Catherine A. 17, 99, 231, 258, 275–7, 581, 662
Morgan, Michael L. 216–18
Morris, S. P. 317, 609
Morrison, J. V. 156
Most, G. W. 133, 196
Moyer, Ian 373
Muller, Arthur 124
Müller, Karl Otfried 356
Muratov, Maya 6, 592–3, 595–6, 600
Murray, A. T. 449
Musaios (poet) 86, 133, 299, 301
Muses (goddesses) 86, 90, 93, 137, 160–1
Mykonos 260, 280, 344, 540–2, 548
Mylonopoulos, Jannis 172, 228, 275
myth/mythology 3, 11–18, 195–207
bricolage 556, 562
change and continuity 31, 200, 206–7, 375
depiction/imagery of 4, 51–64, 52, 54, 167, 169
dream imagery 34–5, 142–3
encoded/symbolized truth 195, 203–4
foundation myths 31–7, 181, 189–91, 198, 203–7, 312, 571
mythographers 200, 204–7, 251, 464
mythos as fiction 195
oral tradition 97, 103, 144, 200, 204, 403
origin of the gods 369–81
stories/storytelling 2–3, 11–12, 18, 26–7, 56, 78, 93–4, 166, 195, 198–207, 553
 transmission 83–95, 151–63, 179–91, 611–13
see also drama; epic narrative; history

Nachtergael, G. 106
Naerebout, Frederick G. 24, 27
Nag Hammadi texts 221–2
Nagy, Gregory 88, 153, 157, 388–9
Naiden, Fred 6, 14, 21, 52–3, 118, 181, 265, 329, 341, 466, 471, 492
Napier, J. L. 196
Needham, Rodney 23, 25, 653, 657
Neer, Richard T. 58, 174, 280
Neils, Jenifer 167, 169, 242–3, 362, 525
Nestor (mythological hero) 153–5
Neumann, G. 607–9
Nevett, L. 119
Nevett, Lisa C. 245
Nicholls, R. V. 119–20, 122
Nick, Gabriele 170
Nielsen, T. H. 257
Niemeier, W.-D. 29, 610
Nietzsche, Friedrich 362
Nightingale, A. 69
Nijhawan, M. 347
Nikainetos of Samos 45
Nikias (military commander) 302
Nikomachos 32–3, 103
Nilsson, Martin P. 51, 315, 538
Nock, A. D. 258, 387, 500
Noegel, S. B. 317
Norden, E. 400, 405
Numenius 220–1

Oakley, John H. 57
Obbink, D. 608
Oberheid, Robert 610
O’Brien, Joan V. 63–4, 359
Odysseus (mythological hero) 11, 71, 154, 156, 159, 161–2, 278, 398–401, 404–5, 493, 554–5, 561
Oedipus (mythological hero) 14, 180, 183, 513, 516
Oettinger, N. 613
Ogden, Daniel 59, 102, 360, 405–6, 456
Ohlerich, I. 595, 599
Oldfather, C. H. 431
Olympia 274, 390, 538, 569, 581–4
cult of Pelops 388–91, 393
sanctuaries 15, 18, 227
Olympiodoros 135
oracles 6, 13–15, 35–6, 136–45, 293, 296–9, 496, 498, 656–62
Chaldaean 220–1
Clarion Apollo 514–15, 517
collectors, chanters, and interpreters (chresmologoi) 299, 310–11
cosmic sympatheia 485
 Delphi 17, 32, 76–7, 92, 264, 268, 276, 311, 386, 451–2, 478–81, 483–4, 486, 546
Didyma 483, 486, 593
divination 162, 243, 298–9, 303, 467, 477–87, 656, 662
Dodona 32, 311, 372, 425, 451, 478–9, 486, 656, 659
drawing of lots 479–80
incubation 6, 142–3, 479, 481, 494, 499, 506, 508, 510, 516
independent diviners (pythones) 480
magic 485–7
natural vs. technical methods 478–81
Pythia 13, 298–9, 302, 402, 478, 480–1, 483–4, 512
Pythian Apollo 13, 35, 58, 60–1, 89, 234, 298–9, 302, 402–3, 478, 480–1, 483–4, 512
reading of entrails 243, 298–9, 303, 467, 477–8, 481, 485
seers/diviners (manteis) 293, 296–305, 310–11, 612–13, 657–8
Trophonios at Lebadeia 79–80
use of birds 162, 298, 477–8, 485, 656, 662
oratory/orators 73–5
Oreshko, R. 613
Orestes (mythological hero) 31, 188–9, 388
Origen 220, 422, 449
Orlandini, P. 575
Orpheus 133, 404
Orphic tradition 6, 30, 31, 103, 131, 281, 220–1, 300, 316, 360, 363, 371, 401, 404, 584, 614–15, 621
Bacchic gold tablets 135, 363–4, 426, 557–9
Derveni Papyrus 30, 93, 133–6, 212
Orsi, Paolo 571, 575, 581
Osborne, Robin 2, 22, 56, 98–9, 118, 167, 182, 228, 230, 243, 464, 606
Osiris (god) 13, 30, 140, 143–4, 319, 372–3, 421, 621–6, 629–32
Ostwald, Martin 333
Otto, Walter F. 132, 137, 398
Ouranos (god) 86, 92
Ousterhout, Robert G. 227
Ovid 200, 524
see also Index of Passages

Pace, B. 576
Pache, C. O. 385
Pakkanen, P. 275
Palme, B. 132
Pan (god) 30, 32–3, 311–13, 318, 495, 498–9
Papalexandrou, A. C. 58, 229
Papanastassiou, D. 118
papyri/papyrology 3, 131–45
‘Curse of Artemisia’ 131, 144
Derveni Papyrus 30, 93, 133–6, 212–13, 222–3, 300, 418, 614
documentary 132–3
magical 136–45
Strasbourg Papyrus 222
Parássoglou, G. M. 133, 212
Parcak, Sarah 117
Pariente, A. 387
Parke, H. W. 136, 169, 451, 659, 662
Parker, Robert C. T. 15–18, 23–4, 29–30, 33, 39–41, 61, 71, 73–5, 92, 98–9, 135, 166–7, 169, 191,
233–5, 246, 248–50, 258–9, 261–3, 266–9, 273–4, 280, 295, 300, 310–14, 316–18, 325, 329,
333–5, 340, 342, 347, 358–60, 364, 372–3, 380, 386, 399, 402, 471, 492, 512, 521, 523–4, 526,
532, 534, 547, 608, 662
Parmenides 216, 221
Partenie, Catalin 217
Partida, Elena 276
Patras 14–15
Paul, S. 543, 546
Pausanias 14–15, 18, 34, 37, 68–9, 78–80, 86, 168, 171, 173, 181, 275, 297, 389–90, 482, 506, 558,
568–9
Description of Greece see Index of Passages
Pausanias the Atticist 206
Pax, E. 493
Payne, H. 583
Pecorella Longo, C. 326
Pedley, John 228, 571, 580
Peek, P. M. 660
Pellizer, E. 448
Peloponnesian War 70, 76, 167, 173, 190–1, 234, 280, 297, 305, 314, 559
Pelops (mythological hero) 388–91, 393
Pensky, R. 196
Penttinen, A. 275
pepaideumenos (educated man) 71, 79
Peppas-Delmousou, D. 101
Percy, William 529
Perlman, P. 533
Persephone (goddess) 135, 139, 158, 205–6, 251, 282, 293, 403–5, 407, 457, 496, 523, 533, 559,
562, 569, 597–9
Persian culture and religion 7, 12, 16, 201–2, 327–8, 406–7, 605–7, 613–14
Persian Wars 16, 33–4, 70, 168, 171, 233, 265, 311, 313, 316, 429–30, 481, 554
Peterson, E. 135
Petrakos, V. 469
Petridou, Georgia 494, 496–7
Petrovic, Andrej 17, 329, 342, 349
Petrovic, Ivana 5, 342, 349, 387
Petsalis-Diomidis, Alexi 71
Pettazzoni, Raffaele 510
Petzl, Georg 510–12
Pfaff, C. A. 573
Pfister, Friedrich 385, 493, 500
Phanodemos (historian) 203–7
Pheidias (sculptor) 71, 83, 170–2
Philemon (dramatist) 247, 408
Philip of Macedonia 498, 583
Philipp, Hanna 100
Philippides (mythological hero) 32, 312–13, 495, 499
Philippus of Opus 419–20
Philo of Alexandria 39, 139, 325
Philochoros 169, 204–5, 300
philosophy 4, 211–23
aletheia (truth) 83
reason 215, 221–2
see also individual philosophers
Philostratos 642
Phoenician culture and religion 7, 123, 201–2, 259, 372–3, 378–81, 466, 583, 605–7, 610, 612–13
Piccardi, L. 118
Pičikjan, I. R. 639–40
Pickard-Cambridge, A. W. 180
pilgrimage 79, 105
Pinault, G.-J. 641
Pindar 18, 84, 93–4, 384, 389–90, 401, 485, 553–4, 556–7
see also Index of Passages
Pinney, G. F. 55–6
Pirenne-Delforge, Vincianne 2, 36, 41–3, 78, 175, 341, 343, 347–8, 356, 417
Pironti, Gabriella 2, 41–3, 356, 417
Planeaux, C. 313
Plato 73, 195, 211, 213–14, 216–22, 247, 304, 398, 401, 525, 530, 654
Apology 217, 333
conception of the afterlife 552, 557–8, 560–2
doctrine of the Forms 217
ethics 217–18
Euthyphro 14, 329
Gorgias 560
Kratylos 13, 416
Laws 16, 69, 72, 166, 216, 217, 296, 301–2, 328–9, 331, 334
Meno 217, 300
myth of Eros 418–19
Parmenides 222–3
Phaedo 560
Republic 133, 135–6, 182, 212, 216, 220, 245–6, 301, 485, 557–8, 560–1
Symposium 86, 418
Theaetetus 217
theory of recollection 217
Timaeus 219
see also Index of Passages
Platonism 211, 214, 219–22
Platt, Verity 6, 114, 136, 165–6, 170–1, 173, 175, 430, 493–4, 496–7, 499–500, 508
Pliny the Elder 509
Pliny the Younger 409
Plotinus 220–1
Plutarch 172, 198, 219–21, 233–5, 248, 252, 293, 300, 305, 319, 331, 333, 419–22, 426, 464, 469–
71, 484, 496–8, 526, 529–30, 622, 625
Life of Timoleon 496–8
On the Disappearance of Oracles 415, 421
On Isis and Osiris 219, 415, 421, 622
see also Index of Passages
Pluto (god) 131
poetry/poetic performance 3, 11–18, 68
 Homeric Hymn to Apollo 84–93
poetic language 86
religious role of 83–95
symbolic capital 84
tool of socialization 85
see also epic narrative; Homer; songs and music
Poland, Franz 259, 263
Polinskaya, I. 523, 531
pollution 268
conceptions of 2, 6, 74
death 523, 526
hereditary sin 135
hero cults 390
marriage, childbirth, and death 523
miasma from animal sacrifice 424
Polyaenus 485, 497
Polybios 204, 327–9, 576
Polygnotos (painter) 558
polytheism 2, 17, 23, 29, 39–46, 186, 320, 424, 432, 493
French structuralist approach to 40
see also gods and goddesses
Pomeroy, Sarah B. 245
Pompeii 115
Poo, M. C. 659
Poole, R. S. 61–2, 64
Popham, M. R. 386
Porphyry 30, 220–1, 223, 247, 358, 423–5, 464, 470
see also Index of Passages
Poseidon (god) 11, 152–3, 155, 157–8, 161, 190, 311–12, 361, 372, 374, 450, 538, 540, 542
Poseidonia 571, 572, 579, 580
Poseidonios 67, 421
Potter, D. 318
pottery
Attic vases 166, 170
cult vessels dedicated to Artemis (krateriskoi) 532
depiction of the dead 556
grave goods 57
portrayal of women’s religious role 243, 249
vases/pots (lekythoi) 51–7, 52, 54
Poulsen, F. 392
Preißhofen, F. 172
Prêtre, Clarisse 99
Preucel, R. 116
Price, Martin 62, 63
Price, Simon R. F. 11, 22–3, 266, 431–2, 440, 471, 662
Price, T. H. 362
priests (hiereis)/priestesses (hiereiai)/priesthood 14, 133, 136, 267, 293–305, 486, 614
duties and functions 295–7
Greco-Egyptian 633
hierophants 35–6, 295, 332
 Pythia 13, 298–9, 302, 402, 478, 480–1, 483–4, 512
see also religious authority
Primavesi, Oliver 213
Pritchett, W. K. 497
Proclus 401, 449
Ptolemy I (Soter, king) 319, 373, 430–8, 625
Ptolemy II (Philadelphos, king) 252, 434–5, 437–8
Ptolemy III (Euergetes I, king) 132, 438
Ptolemy IV (Philopator, king) 133–4, 438, 441
Puett, Michael 655, 657
Pulleyn, Simon 13, 447–9
Purvis, Andrea 105, 311
Pythagoras 220–1, 401, 415, 420, 561
Pythagoreanism 218–21, 223, 401, 414, 416–21, 423, 561, 584, 653

Quack, J. 624

Rackham, H. 441
Radcliffe-Brown 521
Radet, G. 602
Rambach, J. 388
Raphals, Lisa A. 652–3, 657–8
Rapin, C. 642
Rauh, Nicholas K. 259
realia (objects of everyday life) 52–3, 84
Redfield, J. 402, 523, 526–7
Redman, C. L. 116
Reger, Gary 273, 540, 542
Rehm, A. 106
religion/theology
cognitive science 23
credal 23
diversity/plurality 2, 5, 11–18, 39–46
influence of the Paris School 257, 464
network theory 316–17, 331
old vs. new 29–37
Olympian/chthonian binary concepts 355–64, 384
polis religion 1, 113–14, 119, 124–5, 186, 217, 257, 273, 320, 326, 331, 439, 501, 523, 654
postcolonial analysis 317
syncretism 114, 132, 134, 139, 220, 575–6, 591, 625, 646
theologia naturalis, theologia fabularis, theologia civilis distinction 67, 73
religious authority
adoption of new deities 309–20
ancestral customs (ta patria) 340, 348
divine agency 349–50
experts (exegetes) 4, 14, 268, 293–305, 486
monuments and inscriptions 101–4
regulation of behaviour 102, 327
sacred law/prescriptions 5, 14–18, 30, 35–6, 98, 101–4, 329–31, 339–51, 467–72
scribes 612, 633
seers/diviners (manteis) 293, 296–305, 310–11, 612–13, 657–8
 sorcerers/begging priests 299–301, 614
see also impiety
religious experience 59–61, 68–71, 79–80, 104–6
epiphany 6, 13, 59, 61, 105, 251, 438, 463, 491–501
Renberg, G. 497
Renfrew, Colin 116–17
Reuthner, Rosa 169
Rhea (goddess) 44, 134–5, 360
Rhodes, Robin F. 100
Rhomaios, K. 392
Rhys-Davids, T. W. 644
Richardson, N. J. 92
Richer, N. 311
Rickett, W. Allyn 655
Ricoeur, Paul 197
Ridgway, B. S. 55–6, 58, 168, 580
Rieken, E. 612
Rigsby, Kent J. 499
Rives, J. 114
Robert, Louis 346, 608, 639
Robertson, N. 169–70, 276, 402, 540
Robinson, D. M. 245
Robinson, Annabel 357
Roeder, H. 228
Rohde, Erwin 356–7, 362, 551
Roller, Lynn E. 317
Rolley, C. 274, 276
Romano, I. B. 168–9, 174
Rose, H. J. 247
Rosenmeyer, T. G. 401
Rosenzweig, Rachel 379
Rougemont, Georges 344, 346, 385, 639, 641, 643
Rouse, W. H. D. 345
Roussel, Pierre 123, 236–7
Rousset, Denis 277
Rowlandson, Jane 133
Roy, Jim 313
Rubsam, W. J. R. 133
Rückert, Birgit 167
Rudhardt, Jean 326, 464
Rusyaeva, A. S. 589, 592
Rutherford, Ian 70, 79, 106, 282, 284, 607, 610–12

Sabazios (god) 30, 247, 251, 316, 373, 608

sacrifice (thysia) 12, 13, 261–6, 463–73
aesthetic performance 464–5, 467, 470, 544
ancestral (patria) vs. additional (epitheta) 32–3
animal slaughter 14–15, 16, 51–3, 52, 118, 181, 231, 241–2, 247, 265, 296, 391–2, 424, 463, 465–
72, 544–5, 654
blood sacrifice 6, 422–5
 ‘holocaust’ sacrifice 14, 387, 390
human 18, 463–4, 516, 529
incense burning 463, 469, 630
Laphria festival 14–15
libations 53, 94, 118, 176, 243, 250, 282, 357, 387, 392–3, 399, 436, 463–4, 466, 547, 614, 630
Olympian vs. chthonian 98, 463–4
ritual cries 242, 246–7
rules and prescriptions 30, 32–3, 344–5, 467–72
sacramental act 22
sphagia (bloodletting) 463
standards of decorum 467–72
thysia (burned/cooked offerings) 387, 423, 463–4, 467–8
use of cakes 98
vegetal offerings 463, 466
wild animals 15, 231
women’s role 242–4
see also sanctuaries/temples
Salomon, Richard 642
Samos 43, 44–6, 61–4, 230–2, 264
Samothrace
mystery cult 281–5
sanctuary of the Great Gods 118, 277, 281–5, 283, 333
Sanchez, P. 275–7
Sancho Rocher, L. 326
sanctuaries/temples 4, 13–15, 227–38
altars 15, 230
architecture 228, 230, 236
asylum 16
catchment areas 273–4, 280
festivals and courtship 16, 262
floral offerings 118
political function 228–9
prohibition on sexual intercourse 18
sacred law/prescriptions 5, 14–18, 102
sacred prostitution 18, 70, 380
sacred space 4, 114–15, 117–18, 228–38, 438
votive offerings 3, 15–17, 59–61, 99–100, 115, 122, 172–3, 231–2, 452
Santangelo, F. 546
Sappho 251, 613
see also Index of Passages
Sappho Painter 52, 54
Saprykin, S. Y. 596, 602
Sarapis (Osiris Serapis/Oserapis/Oser-Apis, god and cult) 68, 123, 131, 143–4, 235–6, 318–20, 373,
621, 623–6
Sayce, Archibald 609
Schachter, A. 123, 228, 274
Schädler, U. 543
Schazmann, P. 392
Scheer, Tanja 3, 51, 84, 166–70, 172–6, 206, 215
Scheid, John 24
Schiffer, M. 119
Schlesier, Renate 357–9, 384, 452
Schliemann, Heinrich 115
Schmidt, Armin 117
Schmidt, Francis 39
Schmidt, J. 138
Schmidt, M. 237
Schmidt, S. 166
Schmitt Pantel, Pauline 78, 124, 257, 261, 266
Schöpsdau, K. 328
Schorn, Stefan 548
Schröder, H. O. 219
Schürr, D. 607–8, 611
Scott, David A. 114
Scott, Michael 4, 15, 99, 106–7, 115, 229, 274, 276, 581, 622
Scullion, Scott 98, 206, 355–6, 358–9, 384, 387, 463
Scully, Vincent 228
Scythians 201, 591–4, 598–9
Seaford, Richard 206, 362–3, 374, 527
Segal, Charles 362
Segel, R. 252
Segre, Mario 346
Selinus 568–9, 571, 574, 578–81
Seth (god) 137, 622, 624
Shapiro, Harvey A. 241–3
Shaub, I. Y. 591, 598, 600
Shaw, R. 114
Shaya, J. 583
Shear, J. L. 106
Shear, T. L. 122
Shenkar, M. 645
Shepherd, Gillian 6, 553, 575–6
Sherwin-White, S. M. 392
Sider, David 554
Siebert, G. 166, 167
Siewert, P. 262
Silanos of Ambrakia (seer/diviner) 302–4
Sineux, P. 498
Sinn, U. 229
Sinos, R. H. 497
Siracusano, Anna 575
Sivin, Nathan 653, 661
Skinner, Joseph E. 274–5
Skinner, Quentin 26
Slater, W. J. 499
Smith, Morton 137–8
Smith, Nicholas D. 335
Smith, Robertson 21–5
Smith, William C. 23, 26
Snell, B. 398
Snodgrass, Anthony M. 117, 229, 574, 580–1
Sokolova, O. Y. 601
Sokolowski, Franciszek 14, 98, 99, 344, 346–8
Sokolsky, N. I. 600
Sokrates 30, 216, 269, 311, 325, 333–6, 452, 560
soldiers and mercenaries 159, 259–61, 302–4, 385, 400, 430, 637
Solon 32
Sommerstein, A. 532
songs and music 85–93, 160–1
choral dance 85
choral poetry 182, 183
construction of authority 87, 92–4
dithyrambs 179, 180–2
hymns 2, 5, 68, 84–93, 137–43, 179, 183–7, 449
lyric song (melos) 179–80, 185–7
mediator of divine reality 85
musical contest (mousikos agon) 86, 179–83
processional song (prosodion) 179
sistra (musical instruments) 115
Sophokles 84–5, 93, 182, 313, 372
Oedipus Tyrannus 183, 513, 452
see also Index of Passages
Sorabji, Richard 655
Sørensen, Jesper 23
Soskice, Janet M. 27
Sourvinou-Inwood, Christiane 40, 67, 69, 93, 113, 165, 169–70, 180–1, 189, 199, 206, 245, 250, 257,
267, 273, 310–12, 320, 331, 484, 521, 525, 532–3, 555
Soury, G. 421
Sparta/Spartans 191, 198, 304–5, 522–3
citizenship 302, 531
free men (perioikoi) 35
kings 200, 305, 311
male initiation ceremonies 528–31
marriage ceremonies 526
sacrificial practice 469–70
Sperber, Dan 25–7
Spittle, D. 281–2
Stähli, A. 166
Stambaugh, John 621
Stark, Rodney 614
statuary 61–4, 167–71, 174–5, 181, 234, 545–7, 597–601
figurines 118, 119–25, 120–1, 242, 595–7, 601
kouroi/korai 16, 184, 274
remedy against disease 514–15
Stauber, J. 514
Stavrianopoulou, Eftychia 99, 347–8
Steele, John M. 538
Steiner, D. T. 167, 170–1, 174–5
Steiner, G. 405
Steinhauer, G. 101
Stengel, Paul 357, 384, 387, 464, 471
Stephens, S. 373
Stern, Sacha 538
Stesichoros (poet) 183
Stevens, A. 495
Stewart, Charles 35, 114
Stocker, S. 155
Stoics/Stoicism 421, 485
Stol, M. 606
Stone, I. F. 334
Strabo 18, 70, 83, 189, 275, 277, 497, 506, 528–9, 569, 592, 598, 644
see also Index of Passages
Stramaglia, Antonio 400, 402, 408–9
Strauss, B. S. 332
Strauss, R. 610
Strauss Clay, Jenny 91, 361
Stroud, R. S. 458, 572
Strubbe, J. H. M. 454
Struck, Peter T. 93, 485, 660
Sturgeon, M. C. 599–600
Summa, D. 499
Svoronos, J. N. 57
Swain, Simon 37

Tacitus 612
Tanner, Jeremy 492
Taracha, Piotr 609
Tarn, W. W. 637
Tarrant, Harold 4, 195, 221–2
Tassi, F. 118
Tausend, K. 275, 281
Taylor, Claire 3, 104, 106
Taylor, P. 609
Teffeteller, A. 615
Teiresias (mythological prophet) 14, 142, 405, 483, 493
Teubner, Hans 344
Thales 212, 417–18
Thasos 17, 106, 372, 441
Thayer, K. 118
Theagenes of Rhegion 160
Theagenes of Thasos 385, 441
Thebes 152, 180, 203, 205, 248, 251, 310, 372, 483, 513, 633
Themis (goddess) 42, 43
Themistokles (statesman) 233–5, 311–12, 464
Theognis 70
theogony 12, 30, 31, 40, 68, 204, 371
Theokritos 252, 435, 437–8
Theophrastos 133, 247–8
Theoris of Lemnos (sorceress) 300
Thomas, Christine 608
Thomas, Rosalind 103, 204, 660
Thompson, Dorothy B. 124
Thompson, Dorothy J. 131–2, 318, 644
Thompson, Homer H. 124
Thönges-Stringaris, R. N. 557
Thucydides 70, 73–4, 76, 173, 195, 198–9, 278, 281, 297, 299, 513, 553, 568
see also Index of Passages
Tilley, C. 100
time
calendars 537–49
conceptions of 6, 548–9
primeval 200–1
Timoleon (statesman) 293
Timotin, Andrei 415
Tipping, R. 118
Titans (gods) 92, 135, 361, 363, 609, 611
Titanomachy 610–11
Todd, S. C. 33, 103, 331–2, 335
Tokhtasiev 598
Tolstikov, S. R. 592–5, 600
Tomlin, R. S. O. 458
Török, L. 114
Totti, M. 139, 143
Trampedach, Kai 261, 327
Travlos, John 233–4
Tréheux, J. 280
Treister, M. Y. 595
Trell, Bluma L. 62, 63
Tremlin, Todd 23, 25
Trémouille, M.-C. 608
Tresp, A. 341
Tréziny, H. 568, 571
Trojan War 11, 44, 152, 180, 558
Trümpy, C. 537–9, 544
Tsagalis, C. 104
Tsakirgis, B. 115
Tsantsanoglou, K. 133, 212
Turcan, R. 397
Turkeltaub, D. 493, 495
Turner, John D. 221, 223
Turner, Victor 522–3, 530–1
Tynnichos of Chalkis 30
Tzedakis, Y. 118

Uhlenbrock, J. 124
Underworld, see death and the afterlife: Hades
Usener, Hermann 344
Ustinova, Yulia 591, 593, 598

van der Eijk Philip 72

van Dongen, E. 606, 610
van Gennep, Arnold 522, 531
van Nijf, Onno 259
van Straten, Folkert 51–3, 60, 100, 115, 448, 450, 472, 497
Vanschoonwinkel, J. 610
Vansina, Jan 204
Várhelyi, Z. 486
Varro 45, 67
Vasselli, O. 118
Vedic soma rituals 153
Ventris, Michael 373
Verbanck-Piérard, A. 384, 387
Verhoeven, M. 116
Vernant, Jean-Pierre 6, 40, 46, 175, 361, 369, 464–6, 469–73, 652, 654, 657, 659–60
Versnel, Hendrik S. 2, 5, 23–4, 39, 41, 45, 68, 87, 103, 158, 184, 273, 335, 359, 363, 407, 449, 450,
452, 454–5, 458–9, 493, 495–6, 511
Veyne, P. 206
Vial, C. 280
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre 523, 530–1
Vikela, E. 60
Villatte, S. 397, 404
Vinogradov, Y. G. 594
Virgil 400
Visintin, M. 402
Visser, M. 386
Vitruvius 62
Vlassopoulos, Kostas 2, 4, 99, 273, 312
Vokotopoulou, I. 486
Volk, K. 480
von der Mühll, P. 404
von Prott, Johannes 344–5
von Ranke, Leopold 197
von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. 357, 505–6
Voutiras, Emmanuel 5, 104, 142, 402, 407–8, 450, 554
Voza, G. 572

Walbank, F. W. 432
Wallace, R. W. 326
Wasserman, N. 606
Waszink, J. H. 141
Watkins, C. 153, 609
Watson, P. J. 116
Weber, Max 300, 656
Webster, J. 105
Weingreen, J. 138
Weinreich, O. 452
Weiss, P. 62
Wells, B. 275
Weniger, L. 298, 574
Wescoat, Bonna D. 118, 124, 227, 282–3
Wesler, Kit 116
West, Martin L. 12, 92, 133–5, 138, 152, 218, 370–1, 374–5, 377–80, 606, 609, 611–13, 615
West, Stephanie 607
Wheatley, David 118
White, D. 574
White, Hayden 196
Whitehead, David 263
Whitley, J. 116, 228
Wickkiser, Bronwen L. 34, 313–15
Wiebe, Donald 25
Wiemer, H.-U. 543
Wilburn, A. T. 114, 139
Wildberg, C. 363
Wiles, D. 183
Will, E. 237
Willey, Hannah 3, 200–1, 512
Williams, Bernard 197
Williamson, Margaret 244
Winckelmann, J. J. 171
Winiarczyk, M. 325
Winter, F. E. 578
Wittgenstein, Ludwig 25, 27
women
basket bearers at festivals (kanephorai) 167, 181, 250, 252, 527, 532
childbirth rituals 523–4
clothing required at festivals 102
dedication of clothing (peplos) to goddesses 100–1, 157, 167–9, 176, 243, 266, 494, 525
divine protection in childbirth 188, 243, 251, 523–5
female diviners/seers (manteis) 298–9, 485, 496
marriage 523–7, 532–3
midwives 524
parthenos (unmarried girl, maiden) 44–5
participation in festivals 169, 243–4, 250–2
participation in magic 247–8
physiological change and pollution 6, 523–7
prostitutes/courtesans 18, 70, 120, 251–2, 380
punishment for adultery 242, 467
role in death ceremonies 523–4, 526
role in religion and ritual practice 2, 4, 59–61, 169, 241–53
women’s police (gynaikonomoi) 526
worship of herms 249
Woodbury, L. 334
Wormell, D. E. W. 451
Wycherley, Richard E. 233–4
Wypustek, Andrzej 387

Xenokrateia 60–1
Xenokrates 420–2
Xenophanes of Colophon 83, 174, 211, 213–16
Xenophon 73, 182, 199, 305, 327, 529, 659
Anabasis 27, 71, 302–4, 451–2
 Hellenica 198
Hipparchos 182
Memorabilia 335
see also Index of Passages
Xunzi (philosopher) 654–5

Yakubovich, Ilya 606, 613

Yavis, C. G. 51
Youtie, H. C. 131–2

Zaitsev, Y. P. 594
Zanker, P. 167
Zeitlin, F. I. 185
Zejmal’, T. I. 644
Zeus (god) 11, 12, 31, 42, 43–6, 74, 86, 90–2, 131, 135, 137–8, 140, 151–4, 156–62, 187, 246, 251,
311–12, 359, 361–2, 374–7, 482, 608, 644–5
sanctuary at Dodona 154, 425, 451, 478–9, 656, 659
sanctuary at Labraunda 267
sanctuary at Magnesia-on-the-Maeander 543–5
sanctuary at Mount Hymettos 100
sanctuary at Mount Lykaion 15
sanctuary at Mount Olympos 15, 18, 56, 83, 298
sanctuary at Syracuse 573–4
Zgoll, C. 607
Ziehen, Ludwig 344–5, 347
Zimmermann, K. 260
Zografou, A. 361
Zoroastrianism 219
Zubrow, E. 116
Zuntz, G. 576
Żybert, E. 360
 INDEX OF PASSAGES

AELIUS ARISTIDES
1.1 K 80
2.1 K 80
2.8 K 80
2.23 K 79
2.41 K 71
2.65 K 71

AESCHYLUS
Agamemnon
88–91 359
104–30 479
122–247 525
160 13
1198–212 482
Choephoroi
142–6 448
957 417
Eumenides
1–11 483
103 399
273–4 557
956–67 43
1044–7 187
Persae
158 417
355–554 417
604–32 406–7
623–80 406
825 417
Prometheus Bound
484–99 477

ANDOKIDES
1.10 332
 1.29 332
1.48–53 332
1.71 332
1.110–16 331
1.112–31 332
1.124 332
1.125–6 531

ANTONINUS LIBERALIS
29 42

APOLLODOROS
1.3.1 378
1.9.1 464
1.9.11–12 483
3.4.3–4 363
3.7.4 483
3.14.4 379
3.14.6 168

APOLLONIOS RHODIOS
Argonautica
1.917 282
1.917–18 283
1.996–7 43
2.707–9 525
3.148 360
3.531 360
3.532–3 360
3.803 360
3.861 360
3.862 360
3.1191–224 360
3.1207–11 361
3.1213 361
4.148 360
4.829 360
4.1020 360

ARISTOPHANES
Acharnians
888 245
Birds
667–70 172
1073 334
Clouds
225 333
247–407 212
 367 333
984–5 33
1479–81 167
Frogs
145–51 560
274–6 560
353–71 560
388 242
920–3 180
1477–8 559
Knights
1169–70 172
Lysistrata
177–9 242
387–98 252
396 252
641–7, 253 532
Peace
277–8 283
371 559
605 171
923–4 249
960 471
1053 53
Thesmophoriazusae
502–16 525
750–61 242
Wasps
121–3 34
1019–20 480

ARISTOTLE
Athenian Constitution (attrib.)
1 305
3.1–2 263
6.63 435
18.2, 250 266
21 480
42.3 530
43.6 267
55 553
56–7 267
57.2–3 206
57.3 169
De Anima
404b4–6 655
407b20 561
 411a7 417
411a8 212
414b1–29b1 655
414b18–19 655
428a19–24 655
History of Animals
579a18–25 533
Metaphysics
980b1–981a3 655
982b17 221
983b20 212
986b21 213
986b27 213
1026a19 212
1064b3 212
1091b4 213
1091b8–9 213
Nicomachean Ethics
1141a22–8 655
1177b25–32 655
On Dreams
461a 481
On the Heavens
294a23 213
Physics
203b11 212
252b26 654
Poetics
1447b17–18 213
1148a24–9 182
1448b32–8 182
1459a18 182
1459a37 152
Politics
335b12–14 525
1178a8–10 655
1252a1 655
1272a25 529
1284a3–14 441
1322b18–29 296
Rhetoric
1.5.9 432
Rhetorica ad
Alexandrum (attrib.)
1423a–4a 30
ARTEMIDORUS DALDIANUS
1.79 35

ATHENAEUS
3.125d 402
4.167 167
5.197c–203b 437
6.63 253d–f 435
11.473b 166
12.525f 230
9.370d 246
11.473b–c 247
12.525f 230
15.672a–4b 45
15.673b 45

CALLIMACHUS
Aetia
2.43 571
Hymns
1.10–23 524
1.12 524
1.79–83 434
2.1–3
2.25–27 434
4.16–22 277
4.160–88 434
5.107–18 494
Iambics
IV, fr. 194 483
Fragments
Frr. 98–99 402
Fr. 99 403
Fr. 229 482, 483

CICERO
De divinatione
1.11–12 478
1.34 478
1.34.76 479
1.72 478
1.118 485
1.131 485
2.34–9 485
De inventione rhetorica
2.66 327
De natura deorum
 3.89 333
Pro Flacco
25.60 596
Tusculanae disputationes
2.14 530
2.34 530

DEMOSTHENES
1.10 73
21 326
22.2 328
Schol. 22.13, 167 168
Schol. 23.71 179
24.28 469
59.85–6 467
60.19 74
204 74
De Corona
259–60 263

DIODORUS SICULUS
4.23.4 569
4.43.1–2 283
4.48.5–7 284
4.49.6 284
5.2.3–5.3.2 576
5.3.2 569
5.4.1–2 569
5.47.2–3 123
5.48.4–50.1 282
5.49.3–4 282
5.49.5–6 284
5.75.5 379
11.26.7 581
11.49.1 573
11.66 573
11.76.3 573
11.88.6–
11.89 575
12.39.2 333
13.6.7 334
15.49.1 274
15.54.2 305
16.26.1–6 484
16.66.3–5 293
20.95 430
20.98 430
20.100.1–5 430
DIOGENES LAERTIUS
2.40 30
7.151 421
8.24–33 418
8.36 561
8.62, 441 561
8.77 561

EURIPIDES
Alkestis
499 417
561 417
Andromache
98 417
974 417
Bacchae
6–12 363
32–6, 248 249
216–20 248
272–97 30
664–5 248
699–703 248
894 417
Ion
184–218 199
417–24 184
452–71 184
467–71 184
1048–9 360
Iphigenia in Tauris
1234–83 483
1455 188
1458 189
1461 188
1462–5 533
1462–7 188
1463 189
1471 189
1490–4 189
Medea
1347 417
Phoenissae
343–8 526
1653 417

HERODOTOS
1.1 203
1.1–5 77
1.2 201
1.5, 198 202
1.19–22 512
1.55.2 481
1.60 497
1.64.2 280
1.66–8 388
1.91.5 481
1.99 18
1.105.2–3 379
1.105.3, 372 379
1.131 12
1.132.2 76
1.147 264
1.148 274
1.199 380
2.3, 202 203
2.4 12
2.13.3–4 173
2.21–3 202
2.40 13
2.41 13
2.42, 13 621
2.43 13
2.43–4 372
2.43–64 371
2.44, 372 384
2.49.3 372
2.50 131
2.50.1 372
2.50.2 372
2.50.2–3 372
2.51, 123 281, 282
2.51–4 372
2.53, 13 68, 83, 151, 372, 450
2.64.1 18
2.77 203
2.86.2.3–7 625
2.113–20, 201 202
2.144.2 137
2.181 14
3.37 123
3.39–60 231
3.49 582
4.5 201
4.8–9 599
4.8–10 201
4.11 201
4.35.4 280
4.46 203
4.59 599
4.205 77
5.62 278
5.63 481
5.80 198
5.80–1 310
5.86.3 77
5.90–1 481
5.92.3 77
5.92.7 406
6.27 77
6.35 200
6.38, 553 569
6.52 200
6.56, 305 311
6.66 481
6.75 481
6.83–4 512
6.105, 32 312
6.105–6 495
6.107 35
6.122 481
6.160 497
7.6 299
7.33 18
7.61–2 200
7.140 174
7.140–4 481
7.142–3 299
7.150 198
7.153 574
7.157–62 198
7.169–70 198
7.193 201
7.197 464
7.200.2 275
7.204 200
8.104 275
8.129 77
8.131 200
8.144 227
9.26–7 198
9.33–5 302
9.81 59
9.81.1 76
9.92–5 298
9.100 77
9.116.3 18
9.120 26
HESIOD
Theogony
1–34 160
1–115 87
27–8 93
32 160
116–27 371
116–33 371
122–6 416
154–206 86
185–206 371
189–200 380
192–6 379
200 380
313–35 43
346–8 524
4.11–12 361
4.13 361
4.15 361
4.16 361
432–47 361
444–6 361
450–2 362
453–91 377
498–500 610
707–8 376
746–54 56
770–5 557
820–2 359
823–35 84
901–6 42
924–9 371
942 362
Works and Days
1–10 87
106–201 401
109 416
121–6 416
123 153
141 153
156–73 153
157–68 385
166–73 401
168–73 557
383–4 537
383–828 537
422 537
456 359
465–6 541
 641–2 537
770–1 542

HOMER
Iliad
1, 471 512
1.3 398
1.35–42 157
1.37–43 448
1.72 162
1.197–201 495
1.502–10 157
1.517–21 43
1.528–30 83
2.1–75 481
2.119 554
2.400–1 159
2.402–18 158
2.419–20 159
2.484–92 87
2.485–6 161
2.492 161
3.275–300 158
3.287 554
3.351–4 156
3.460 554
4.119–21 156
5.60–3 162
5.170–1, 371 374, 378
5.352–430 380
5.370 86
6.273 169
6.286 11
6.297–311 157
6.308 157
6.311 157
6.358 554
7.37–53 162
7.421–3 56
7.442–63 153
8.407–8 43
9.410–16 554
9.413 400
9.443 155
9.447–57 158
9.457 359
9.502–14 160
11.632 154
11.636–7 153
12.5–35 153
 12.195–250 162
12.233 162
12.243 162
12.322–8 554
12.447–9 153
14.153–353 11
14.201 371
14.246 371
14.271–9 359
14.302 371
15.24–30 43
15.34–8 359
16.225 154
16.225–7 154
16.233 154
16.249–52 154
16.514–26 156
17.89–104 416
18.23–7 154
18.212 275
19.104 275
19.255–65 158
20.131 493
22.305 554
23.72 554
23.72–4 556
23.103–4 554
23.146 524
23.192 154
23.200–21 155
23.768–72 156
24.601–20 160
Odyssey
1.1 161
1.338 161
1.346–52 161
2.157–76 162
2.171–6 158
3.4–33 265
3.4–66 14
3.25–8 162
3.40–64 154
3.48 159
3.62 155
3.204 554
3.450 242
4.561–9 557
4.563–7 400
4.761–6 157
6.162–3 278
 7.153–4 154
8.63 161
8.73 161
8.266 161
8.266–366 379
8.362–3 379
8.480–1 161
8.488 161
8.580 554
9.528–36 157
9.551–5 472
10.509–12 398
10.513–15 398
10.514 556
10.521–6 553
11.9–50 405
11.16 138
11.21–2 398
11. 29–33 553
11.36–41 399
11.38–41 142
11.76 554
11.122–3 220
11.218–222 554
11.245 524
11.476 399
11.486–540 555
11.488–91 400
11.568–75 556
11.576–600, 401 558
11.601–27 404
12.356–65 472
13.184–7 472
13.312–13 493
14.53–4 156
14.327–30 154
15.225–54 482
17.354–5 156
19.296–9 154
20.60–90 159
20.98–101 159
20.102–21 159
21.255 554
22.345–8 161
22.348–9 161
23.65–7 399
24.433 554

INSCRIPTIONS AND FRAGMENTS

CID (Rougemont et al.)
 1–4 346
1.10 277
4.1 275
4.71.4 469
FGRH
4 F23 282
70 F120 282
70 F150 275
81 F80 462
107 F20 282
115 F344 469
140 F22, 247 249
239 A5 275
239 A37 276
324 F58 275
325 F4 194
328 F60 300
328 F64b 169
328 F121 171
392 F6 84
532 429
548 F1 282
627 F2 437
1224 F22a–b 479
IG (Inscriptiones Graecae)
IG I3 7 169
IG I3 7.12 42
IG I3 78 234
IG I3 84 234
IG I3 436–51 171
IG I3 453–60 171
IG I3 948 234
IG I3 987/IG II2 4548 60
IG II2 1 264
IG II2 204 479
IG II2 709 469
IG II2 713.9–10 469
IG II2 839 384
IG II2 1006.11–12 169
IG II2 1006.12 181
IG II2 1006.69 386
IG II2 1008.9–10 169
IG II2 1011.10–11 169
IG II2 1126 277
IG II2 1186.10 469
IG II2 1237.118 531
IG II2 1421.112 173
IG II2 1514 525
IG II2 1514–30 100
IG II2 1635 330
IG II2 2499, 263 384
IG II2 2501 384
IG II2 2934 260
IG II2 2940 260
IG II2 3453 295
IG II2 4547, 42 60
IG II2 4960 31
IG II3 416.20–1 328
IG IV2, 1 57 510
IG IV2, 1 121 510
IG IV2, 1 122.69–82, no 33 32
IG IV2, 1 128.8–9 350
IG IV2, 1 128.10 342
IG IV4 950 497
IG V, 1 1390, 36 102
IG V, 2 514 102
IG XI, 4 1299 236
IG XII, 1 127 261
IG XII, 1 764 107
IG XII, 4 346
IG XII, 4 283 329
IG XII, 4 348 42
IG XII, 5 595 469
IG XII, 5 739 623
IG XII, 7 1 455
IG XII, 7 241.6–7 469
IG XII, 7 515 391
IG XII, 7 515.6 391
IG XII, 9 1189 107
IG XII Suppl. 414 17
IG XIV 268 568
IG XIV 966 508
LGS I & II (Ziehen), 341 344–6
LINDIAN CHRONICLE
25.11–14 583
27 584
27.29–35 584
30 584
31.60–4 584
LIMC (Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae)
Astra 56
Acheloos 58
Adonis 251
Apollo 59
Artemis 241
Asclepius 241
Athena 242
Herakles 55
Hermes 249
LSAM (Sokolowski)
5 346
16 267
17 340
19 350
20 350
20.41–5 340
32, 267 543
32.12 469
33 262
33A 546
33B, 546 547–8
34 469
41 539
42 469
45 340
50 265
72 42
81.6–9 469
LSCG (Sokolowski)
15 547
18, 263 539
37 267
46 349
55 350
65, 267 342
65.22–3 16
68 16
69 296
96, 250 344, 540
96.25 359
 109 342
Suppl. 115, A29–39 248
150 329
150A11 342
154A6–9 342
156A 267
LSS (Sokolowski)
10 32
14.35–40 469
20.17–23 265
45 342
46 265
69 342
90 329
115B.16 532
129.7–11 14
ML (Meiggs and Lewis)
73.47–61 14
NGSL (Lupu)
3–110 346
4–9 347
6 342
65–8 538–9
RO (Rhodes and Osborne)
27.27–8 14
73.2–3 469
97 17
102.5 18
SEG (Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum)
4.616 268
21.540 261
22.116.5 234
25.845 344
33–4 102
33.147, 102 264
34.103 189
37.30 100
37.34 101
45.1508A–B, 260 544
50.1101 544
52.170 492
57.1311 608
58.1605.2 611
SYLL.3
37–8 454
398 500
725, 429 496
 735 35

ISAEUS
2.10 553
2.37, 526 553
3.76–9 531
6.65 553
8.18–19 531
8.19–20 242
8.38–9 553
8.39 526

ISOKRATES
Ad Nikolem
6 297
Areopagitikos
29–30 33
Panathenaicus
1.186 74

LACTANTIUS
1.18 8, 45
1.21 464

LUCIAN
Anacharsis
38–9 530
On the Syrian Goddess
6 18
49 15
Philopseudes
17.22–4 360
27–8 406
30–1 409

OVID
9.629 624
10.243–97 379
10.503–739 379

PAPYRI GRAECAE MAGICAE

I 263–96 137
I 263–347 136
I 296–314 137
I 315–27 137
I 318 142
 IV 277–8 140
IV 296–406 139
IV 296–433 136
IV 333–4 142
IV 356–68 142
IV 385–6 144
IV 436–61 141
IV 1957–89 141
IV 2773 137
V 471–2 137
VII 686–92 140
VIII 15–21 140
VIII 74–81 143

PAUSANIAS
1.4.4 496
1.8.6 431
1.14.7 379
1.15.1 167
1.19.3 181
1.22.3 251
1.22.6 168
1.22.8 167
1.24.3 233
1.24.5–7 170
1.28.2 167
1.28.8 169
1.28.9 170
1.32.4 386
1.39.3 78
1.39.4–44.3 568
1.44.4 568
2.5.5 573
2.11.4, 42 43
2.17.3, 44 172
2.17.4 44
2.17.7 297
2.20.6 251
2.23.5, 78 170
2.27.3 506
2.35.4–8 242
2.38.2–3, 44 45
3.9.2 573
3.11.1 78
3.11.6–10 482
3.17.10 529
3.23.1 379
4.1.5–9 34
4.2.6 34
4.17.1 242
 4.20.3–4 34
4.26.6–8 34
4.27.5 34
4.31.7–8 14
5.7.3 569
5.7.6–8.5 391
5.11.10 170
5.13.1–7 390
5.13.4–7 389
5.13.6 389
5.13.11 298
5.15.10 298
5.22.5 581
5.23.6 575
5.25.5 581
5.31.1 389
6.2.4 569
6.6.7–11 402
6.11.2–9 384
6.22.1 389
7.3.1–2 483
7.4.19 464
7.18 14
7.22.4 171
8.8.2–3 79
8.22.2–3 42
8.54.7 78
9.2.7 44
9.3.1–9 44
9.8.2 464
9.33.4 464
9.33.6 174
9.39.4–14 79
9.39.12 80
9.41 86
10.7.2–5 276
10.8.1 275
10.11.5 581
10.23.1–2 496
10.28.4–6 558
10.31.9 559
10.31.11 559
10.32.14–17 15

PINDAR
Nemean Odes
1.1 569
3.22 384
6.39 275
11.19 275
Olympian Odes
1.149 571
2.24–6 363
2.85 93
6 573
6.6 8a 574
6.41 85
6.41–4 42
6.44 483
10.24–5, 389 391
10.45–6 390
13.105 417
58–60 557
Pythian Odes
2.27b 574
4.11–56 485
4.66 275
5.93–5 553
5.122–3 417
10.8 275
11.1 363

PLATO
Apology
24c1 216
26c–d 333
26e 333
28–30 217
33c 217
41c 218
Charmides
156–7 218
Euthyphro
4c–d 14
6a 216
Gorgias
492–3 218
508a 218
523–7 217
524f 399
526d 217
527 218
527a 86
Hippias Major
285e–6a 86
492–3 218
508a 218
 523–7, 217 218
524a 557
524f 399
526d 217
527 218
Kratylos
397e–398a 416
398b 218
400e 13
403b 218
425d 217
Krito
48 218
54d 218
106b 217
Laws
633b–c 530
642d 305
642d4–643a1 480
644–5 217
713c–d 416
717a–b 385
726a 218
731c 218
738b–e 439
759a 296
779b 328
868d–869a 328
869a–c 328
869c 330
870d–e, 72 218
881a 218
884a 328
885b 328
886, 166 216
886–9, 167 217
886–900, 167 217
887d 166
892a 218
899b 417
904–5 218
904d 218
907d–e 328
908–9 302
908b–c 329
909a8–b6 301
909e–910b 245
933a–b 301
933d–e 302
 941a 328
953a 296
955e–956b 16
959–60 218
959a 218
967b 218
968B10f 69
984b–e 30
Meno
80a–b 300
81–5 218
81a10, 217 218
81c 218
86b 217
99e 217
Parmenides
129a–c 217
130b 217
Phaedo
62–7 217
62b 221
63b–c 218
67–9 218
69e–85b 401
70–2 218
73–8 218
78–84 218
78c6 217
78d2 217
78d5 217
78e4 217
81–2 218
84a6–b2 217
96–100 217
100c5 217
102–6 218
107–14 217
107d–108b 419
108a 562
111e–114c 398
113–14 218
113d 419
114d 218
246–59 217
Phaedrus
114d 217
229c 221
245–6 218
247c 218
 248–9 218
262d 217
278b 217
Philebus
20b 217
27–8 217
39e 218
Politics
269–74 217
Protagoras
314b–316a 336
322a3 217
343a 212
345c 218
347e 92
Republic
325b 218
328a 372
330d–331a 558
350e 86
364b–c 135–6
364b–e, 133 301
364b–365a 485
377–83 216
377–92 216
379a5 212
381c8–9 217
391b 464
427b 385
427b–c 349
428–35 218
434–5 654
441 654
498c 218
500c–d 217
508a 217
565c–d 464
580d–e 654
585c 217
585d 218
600b 561
608d2–6 561
608–11 218
614c–d 560
614–21, 217 218
615a–b 560
615c 327
619b–d 561
620d–e 419
 621a 221
621b, 217 218
Sophist
227–9 218
246e 218
Symposium
180d 379
202d–203a 419
202e 425
203a–204c 418
208a8 217
212b 218
Theaetetus
149c 524
149c–d 525
160e 246
176b1–2 217
Timaeus
27c 217
27–9 217
27–92 217
30c 654
34c 218
35a 654
36d–e 654
38–40 217
39e 654
40a–b 654
41c–e 218
42e 218
69c 218
90a 218
90a–c 419

PLINY THE ELDER

4.12.65 277
7.152 403
20.125 509
34.18 593
34.76 295

PLUTARCH
Agesilaos
33.6 469
Alkibiades
18.5 252
19–22 331
 34.1 169
Alexander
2.2 282
Aristides
17.10 529
Kimon
8 388
De facie in orbe lunae
940f–945d 422
De defectu oraculorum
414e 480
414e–415a 415
414e–422c 421
415a–b 415
415b–c 422
416c–d 420
418e 418
419a 420
420d 418
De genio Socratis
589f– 592e 422
De Iside et Osiride
18 622
19 622
36 622
38 622
68 624
358f–359a 219
360d–e 416
360e 420
361b 420
374e 219
De Pythiae oraculis
12 581
De sera numinis vindicta
563b–568f 422
Lykourgos
4 528
15.3–4 526
17.4 529
18.1 529
19.8 469
28.1–2 530
Moralia
230c–d 280
869c–d 233
Nikias
13.11 252
23.5 302
Perikles
31.2–3 171
31.4 172
32 333
38.2 248
Pyrrhos
1.1–4 154
Quaestiones Graecae
6.293b–c 426
Solon
12.1–4 480
21 526
21.5 526
Themistokles
1.3–4 233
22.1 234
22.1–2 233
22.2, 233 235
22.7 464
Theseus
36 388
Timoleon
8, 293 496
90a–c 422

POLYBIOS
12.5.10 576
18.46 277
36.9.15 327

PORPHYRY
De abstinentia ab esu animalium
1.25 471
2.9 471
2.16.4 247
2.18, 30 172
2.20.1 246
2.33 423
2.34 423
2.34.4 423
2.36.3–4 423–4
2.36.5 424
2.37.1 424
 2.37.4 424
2.37.5 424
2.38.2 424
2.38.3 425
2.38.4 425
2.39.1–4 425
2.39.2 424
2.43.1 425
2.54 464
2.55 464
De antro nympharum
6 358
Plotinus
14.17–21 220
16 221

SAPPHO
Fr. 140 251
Fr. 140a 613
Fr. 168 251

SOPHOKLES
Antigone
891 527
992–3 14
1058–9 14
Oedipus Tyrannus
1.312–17 513
1.447–74 513
190f 452
284–6 14
1213 513
1329 513

STRABO
6.2.4 569
6.3.9 479
7.4.3 594
7.4.4, 592 594
7.6.1 593
8.3.30 83
8.6.14 275
8.6.15, 497 506
8.6.20 18
8.6.21 380
9.1.22 189
9.2.33 275
10.4.17 528
 10.4.20 528
10.4.21 528
10.5.1 277
11.2.10 598
11.11.1 644
11.14.16 18
16.1.20 18

THUCYDIDES
1.8.1 180
1.23.6 198
1.25.4, 568 582
1.38.2–4, 568 582
1.112.5 276
1.126 18
1.128 18
1.132 59
1.132.2 76
1.134 18
2.2.1 297
2.5.4 74
2.11 514
2.47 73
2.47.4 333
2.47–53 513
2.53.4 333
3.104, 18 275, 278, 280, 524
3.104.1–2 180
3.104.3 281
4.133.2–3 297
5.11.1, 553 569
6.4.1 571
6.4.3 571
6.27, 166 167,
6.27–8 331
6.28.2 332
6.53 331
6.56.1–2 250
6.60 331
8.1.1 299

XENOPHON
Anabasis
1.7.18 302
3.1.5f 451
4.5.3–4 304
5.2.25 417
5.6.15–19 303
5.6.28–30 303
 5.6.29, 303 481
5.6.34 303
5.7.35 304
6.4.13 304
7.8.3–6 659
Constitution of the Spartans
2.2–3 529
2.3–9 529
Cyropaedia
1.6.2 481
8.8.7 328
Hellenica
1.4.12 169
2.4.20 264
3.1.8 198
3.4.3 198
6.3.6 198
6.5.47 198
7.1.34 198
Hipparchos
3.2 182
Memorabilia
1.1.1 334
1.1.2 335
1.2.20 335
2.2.13 553
Symposium
8.40 295
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