Myths On The Map The Storied Landscapes Of

Ancient Greece Illustrated Greta Hawes download

https://ebookbell.com/product/myths-on-the-map-the-storied-
landscapes-of-ancient-greece-illustrated-greta-hawes-38442410

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Myths On The Margins Of Homer Prolegomena To The Mythographus

Homericus Joan Pags Editor Nereida Villagra Editor

https://ebookbell.com/product/myths-on-the-margins-of-homer-
prolegomena-to-the-mythographus-homericus-joan-pags-editor-nereida-
villagra-editor-50265706

Myths On The Margins Of Homer Prolegomena To The Mythographus

Homericus Joan Pags

https://ebookbell.com/product/myths-on-the-margins-of-homer-
prolegomena-to-the-mythographus-homericus-joan-pags-43076658

Myths On The Margins William Loader

https://ebookbell.com/product/myths-on-the-margins-william-
loader-59323164

Quinqui Film In Spain Peripheries Of Society And Myths On The Margins

Jorge Gonzlez Del Pozo

https://ebookbell.com/product/quinqui-film-in-spain-peripheries-of-
society-and-myths-on-the-margins-jorge-gonzlez-del-pozo-11739952
Runaway Notes On The Myths That Made Me Erin Keane

https://ebookbell.com/product/runaway-notes-on-the-myths-that-made-me-
erin-keane-46337740

Runaway Notes On The Myths That Made Me Erin Keane

https://ebookbell.com/product/runaway-notes-on-the-myths-that-made-me-
erin-keane-48782378

Exploding The Western Myths Of Empire On The Postmodern Frontier 1st

Edition Sara L Spurgeon

https://ebookbell.com/product/exploding-the-western-myths-of-empire-
on-the-postmodern-frontier-1st-edition-sara-l-spurgeon-51354148

Life On The Autism Spectrum Translating Myths And Misconceptions Into

Positive Futures 1st Ed Matthew Bennett

https://ebookbell.com/product/life-on-the-autism-spectrum-translating-
myths-and-misconceptions-into-positive-futures-1st-ed-matthew-
bennett-9961198

Dressing On The Side And Other Diet Myths Debunked First Edition
Jaclyn London

https://ebookbell.com/product/dressing-on-the-side-and-other-diet-
myths-debunked-first-edition-jaclyn-london-34898208
MYTHS ON THE MAP
Myths on the Map
The Storied Landscapes of Ancient Greece

Edited by
G R E T A HA W E S

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Greta Hawes and Oxford University Press 2017
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2017
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016954265
ISBN 978–0–19–874477–1
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 This book is dedicated to
Jessica Priestley and Christine Lee.
 Acknowledgements

Most of the papers in this volume were presented at the sixth Bristol
Myth Conference, co-organized by Jessica Priestley and Greta Hawes
and held 31 July–2 August 2013 in the idyllic surrounds of Goldney
Hall. We are grateful for generous financial support received for this
event from Bristol’s Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical
Tradition, Bristol’s Institute for Research in the Humanities and
Arts, and Bristol’s School of Humanities. We also received funding
for postgraduate bursaries from the Classical Association and the
Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies. We would like to
thank several people who supported the conference and helped with
its organization—Samantha Barlow, Robin Dixon, Bob Fowler, and
Shushma Malik—and all of the participants, who created such a
collegial and productive environment.
Oxford University Press has published a number of volumes based
on Bristol Myth Conferences since its inaugural theme, From Myth to
Reason?; I was delighted to be able to continue this relationship.
Charlotte Loveridge, Annie Rose, and Georgina Leighton supported
the development of the volume with efficiency and enthusiasm. I am
also grateful to the two anonymous readers for their wise suggestions
at a critical moment. An earlier draft of Charles Delattre’s chapter was
translated from the original French by James Grieve; I thank him for
his work, and the School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics at
the Australian National University, which funded it. I also thank
ANU’s University House and ANU’s Classics Endowment Fund for
providing funding for editorial assistance.
Finally, I wish to thank Jessica Priestley—collaborator par
excellence—and all the contributors to this volume: their generosity,
clever ideas, and good humour made it all not merely possible, but
pleasurable.
Greta Hawes
Tucker Beach, Central Otago
January 2016
 Contents

List of Figures xi
List of Contributors xiii

Of Myths and Maps 1

Greta Hawes
1. Walking through History: Unlocking the Mythical Past 14
Katherine Clarke
2. Cities-Before-Cities: ‘Prefoundational’ Myth and the
Construction of Greek Civic Space 32
Daniel W. Berman
3. Landscapes of the Cyclopes 52
Richard Buxton
4. Mapping the Hellespont with Leander and Hero:
‘The Swimming Lover and the Nightly Bride’ 65
Elizabeth Minchin
5. Centaurs and Lapiths in the Landscape of Thessaly 83
Emma Aston
6. Meddling with Myth in Thebes: A New Vase from
the Ismenion Hill (Thebes Museum 49276) 106
Stephanie Larson
7. Callimachus and the Poetics of the Diaspora 122
Jeremy McInerney
8. Pausanias’ Arcadia between Conservatism and Innovation 141
Julie Baleriaux
9. Rivers Run Through It: Environmental History in Two
Heroic Riverine Battles 159
Christina A. Salowey
10. Fountains as Reservoirs of Myth and Memory 178
Betsey A. Robinson
x Contents
11. Scandalous Maps in Aeschylean Tragedy 204
Aara Suksi
12. Imaginary Islands in the Hellenistic Era: Utopia on the
Geographical Map 221
Iris Sulimani
13. Imaginary Itineraries in the Beyond 243
Robert L. Fowler
14. Islands of Knowledge: Space and Names in Imperial
Mythography 261
Charles Delattre
15. Serpents in the Soul: The ‘Libyan Myth’ of Dio
Chrysostom 281
Richard Hunter

Bibliography 299
Index Locorum 329
General Index 330
 List of Figures

4.1. Map of Hellespont 67

4.2. Bronze coin of Abydos (c. AD 177) from the British Museum
Collection: Reverse 80
5.1. Map showing Thessalian sites 84
6.1. Attic black-figure kantharos of the Boeotian Dancers Group.
Thebes Museum R50.265 112
6.2. Fragments from an Attic black-figure hydria of the Leagros
Group. Cahn Collection no. 855 114
6.3. Attic red-figure askos, preliminarily attributed to the
workshop of the Cleophon Painter. Thebes Museum 49276 116
6.4. Attic red-figure askos, preliminarily attributed to the
workshop of the Cleophon Painter. Thebes Museum 49276.
Detail 117
6.5. Late-classical red-figure Attic pelike, attributed to the
Painter of Munich 2365. Met 06.1021.179 118
9.1. Attic red-figure column krater. Louvre G 365 175
10.1. Plan of Roman Corinth 182
10.2. Corinth: Peirene fountain 183
10.3. Corinth: Peirene fountain, Hellenistic period 185
10.4. Corinth: Peirene fountain, early Roman period 186
10.5. ‘The Taming of Pegasus,’ reverse of a Corinthian coin
issued between 43 and 42 BC by Corinthian duoviri
P. Tadius Chilo and C. Iulius Nicephorus 188
10.6. Corinth: Glauce fountain 190
10.7. Corinth: Glauce fountain, reconstructed section of porch 191
10.8. Plan of Roman Ephesus 193
10.9. Ephesus: Heroon of Androclus, Hellenistic period 195
10.10. Ephesus: Hydrekdocheion of C. Laecanius Bassus 197
xii List of Figures
10.11. Ephesus: Hydrekdocheion of Trajan 200
12.1. Map showing journey of Euhemerus 235
12.2. Map showing journey of Zeus 236
12.3. Map showing journey of Iambulus 239
 List of Contributors

Emma Aston is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of

Reading. Her first monograph was Mixanthropoi: Animal-Human
Hybrid Deities in Greek Religion (Kernos, 2011). Her current work
concerns the regional identity of Thessaly from the seventh to the
second centuries BC, and its articulation in myth, religion, language,
and political organization.
Julie Baleriaux was awarded her doctorate at the University of
Oxford, where her thesis, ‘Religious Landscapes, Places of Meaning.
The Religious Topography of Arcadia from the End of the Bronze
Age to the Early Imperial Period’ was supervised by Robert Parker
and Nicholas Purcell.
Daniel W. Berman is Professor of Greek and Roman Classics at
Temple University. He is author of Myth and Culture in Aeschylus’
Seven against Thebes (Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 2007) and Myth, Litera-
ture, and the Creation of the Topography of Thebes (CUP, 2015). He
has published articles on Aeschylus, the city of Thebes, the Dirce
spring, the Boeotian poetess Corinna, and related subjects.
Richard Buxton is Emeritus Professor of Greek Language and Lit-
erature and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol. He is
the author and editor of many books about ancient Greek myth and
tragedy, including Imaginary Greece (CUP, 1994), The Complete
World of Greek Mythology (Thames and Hudson, 2004), Forms of
Astonishment (OUP, 2009), and Myths and Tragedies in their Ancient
Greek Contexts (OUP, 2013).
Katherine Clarke has been Tutorial Fellow in Ancient History at
St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford, since 1998. She is author
of Between Geography and History: Hellenistic Constructions of the
Roman World (OUP, 1999) and Making Time for the Past: Local
History and the Polis (OUP, 2008), and is particularly interested in the
configuration of space in historical narratives.
Charles Delattre is maître de conférences HDR at the University of
Paris Ouest Nanterre. He has published a Manuel de mythologie
xiv List of Contributors
grecque (2005), a study on objects thrown into the sea (Le Cycle de
l’anneau, de Minos à Tolkien, 2009) and a translation of ps.-Plutarch,
De fluviis (Nommer le monde, 2011). He is currently working on a
new edition and translation of Antoninus Liberalis.
Robert L. Fowler has been H.O. Wills Professor of Greek at the
University of Bristol since 1996. He is editor of the Cambridge
Companion to Homer (CUP, 2004) and author of the two-volume
Early Greek Mythography (OUP, 2000–13).
Greta Hawes is Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the
Australian National University. Her first book, Rationalizing Myth
in Antiquity, appeared with OUP in 2014. She is currently working on
a project exploring the spatial dynamics of myth in Pausanias.
Richard Hunter is Regius Professor of Greek at the University of
Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. His most recent books
include Critical Moments in Ancient Literature (CUP, 2009), (with
D. Russell) Plutarch, How to Study Poetry (De audiendis poetis) (CUP,
2011), Plato and the Traditions of Ancient Literature (CUP, 2012),
Hesiodic Voices: Studies in the Ancient Reception of Hesiod’s Works
and Days (CUP, 2014) and Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica IV
(CUP, 2015). Many of his essays have been collected in On Coming
After: Studies in Post-Classical Greek Literature and its Reception (De
Gruyter, 2008).
Stephanie Larson is Associate Professor of Classics and Ancient
Mediterranean Studies at Bucknell University. Since 2011 she has
co-directed the Synergasia excavations on the Ismenion hill in
Thebes, Greece. She has published widely, including Tales of Epic
Ancestry: Boiotian Collective Identity in the Late Archaic and Early
Classical Periods (Franz Steiner, 2007), and articles on the Odyssey,
Pindar, Sappho, and Herodotus. Her current research interests
involve Theban archaeology and history, Pindar’s use of mythic
narrative, kingship in Herodotus, and traditions of Helen in myth
and cult.
Jeremy McInerney is Davidson Kennedy Professor of Classical Stud-
ies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of books on
state formation in archaic Greece and the importance of cattle in the
culture of ancient Greece, as well as, most recently, editor of the
 List of Contributors xv
Blackwell Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean. He
is currently working on the function of hybridity in Greek culture.
Elizabeth Minchin is Professor Emeritus of Classics at the Australian
National University. She is author of Homer and the Resources
of Memory (OUP, 2001) and Homeric Voices: Discourse, Memory,
Gender (OUP, 2007). Her research interest is principally the role of
memory in the composition of the Homeric epics, but a parallel
interest in the ways in which collective memory functions has led
her to study certain distinctive features of the landscape in the
Hellespont region and the transmission of stories associated with
them.
Betsey A. Robinson is Associate Professor of History of Art, Anthro-
pology, and Classical Studies at Vanderbilt University. Her first book,
Histories of Peirene: A Corinthian Fountain in Three Millennia
(ASCSA, 2011), won the 2011 PROSE Prize for Archaeology and
Anthropology. Her current project, ‘Divine Prospects: Mounts
Helicon and Parnassus in Ancient Experience and Imagination’, is a
book-length project on Hellenistic and Roman perceptions of, and
engagement within, Greek landscapes and sanctuaries.
Christina A. Salowey is Professor of Classics at Hollins University in
Roanoke, VA. She has served twice as the Gertrude Smith Professor
at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Her current
research interests are environmental history, the mythology and
religion of ancient Greece, and war memorials in modern Greece.
She has published on Heracles as a cult figure, archaic funerary korai,
Hellenistic grave stelae for women, and the use of maths and science
in the teaching of ancient art.
Aara Suksi is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of
Western Ontario, where she teaches ancient Greek language, litera-
ture, and mythology. Her research focuses on the interaction of Greek
tragedy and novels with Homeric epic.
Iris Sulimani is Senior Lecturer at the Open University of Israel. She
is the author of Diodorus’ Mythistory and the Pagan Mission: Histori-
ography and Culture-Heroes in the First Pentad of the Bibliotheke
(Brill, 2011) and has published other works on the historiography,
mythography, and geography of the Hellenistic period. She is cur-
rently working on Plutarch’s biographies of mythical figures.
This is the edge of the map:
‘beyond here are monsters, the stuff of tragedy, a land inhabited
by poets and mythographers, untrustworthy traditions,
apparent only in the vaguest outline’
Plutarch, Life of Theseus, 1.1
 Of Myths and Maps
Greta Hawes

Greek myth readily illustrates an intricate, integral relationship with

its physical surroundings. We find nymphs transformed into trees
and springs; rivers at once gods and forces of nature; tombs marking
the burial sites of heroes; place names explained by the deeds of their
eponyms. Stories articulate a particular kind of conceptual map, with
borders populated by hybrid beasts, a centre marked by Delphi’s
colliding eagles, its extent measured by the itineraries of heroes
and, arcing above it, heavens held up by Atlas. The very activity of
storytelling has spatial implications: founding narratives furnish a
core sense of ethnic identity, heroic genealogies underpin diplomatic
kinship, and stories of past hostilities model territorial ambitions
and anxieties. Added to this are the Panhellenic dynamics of literary
transmission, which preserved intact flourishing mythical cities even
as their homonymous locations in the real world faded into obscurity.
This is merely to scratch the surface. The spatial turn in the
humanities has fuelled new ways of thinking about landscape as a
lived environment which is radically affected by human hands and
human minds, and which radically affects human experience. At the
same time, scholars of Greek myth have become more sensitive to the
contextual dynamics which animate the mythic tradition, having
come to see storytelling as an activity which is both precisely situated
in, and contingent on, its environment. This volume brings together
fifteen papers on the spatiality of Greek myth and its interrelation-
ships with the landscapes of the Mediterranean. It does not seek
polemically or dogmatically to advance any one particular approach;
rather, as a collaborative project, it makes a virtue of variety and
2 Myths on the Map
proliferation within the confines of its central theme. The essays
display diverse approaches and introduce a wide range of material,
reflecting in this way the many possible ways in which myth-making
blended into map-making. As a guiding intellectual principle, the
volume holds that ‘landscape’ is no more a singular entity than
‘myth’ a unified category.

THINKING SPATIALLY ABOUT MYTH

That spatial and mythical thinking are intertwined seems an inevitable

observation: stories—quite literally—take place. That said, exactly how
we go about fixing stories to landscapes varies from location to
location, from community to community, from culture to culture.
The songlines of the Western Desert differ qualitatively from the
pilgrimage routes of Braj: it is not merely that stories are contingent
on the environments that produce them, but that how they are used is
native to particular traditions of storytelling.1
One of the most remarkable examples of this comes from Keith
Basso’s ethnographic account of the Western Apache. He records the
following conversation (given here in English translation). Louise is
upset that her brother, recently fallen ill, refuses to seek help from a
snake medicine person:
LOUISE: My younger brother . . .
LOLA: It happened at Line of White Rocks Extends Up and Out,
at this very place!
[PAUSE: 30–45 seconds]
EMILY: It happened at Whiteness Spreads Out Descending To
Water, at this very place!
[PAUSE: 30–45 seconds]

1
There is unfortunately still no comprehensive account of the workings of Indi-
genous Australian Songlines, although Chatwin (1988) captures something of the
experience of them. For a recounting of one songline of the Western Desert, see James
and Tregenza (2014). For an account of how the stories of Krishna came to be
localized around Braj, and the pilgrimage traditions they still inspire, see Entwistle
(1987); Haberman (1994). I owe these examples and references to discussions with my
colleagues Diana James and McComas Taylor. I also thank Prof. Jane Simpson, who
first mentioned Keith Basso’s work to me.
 Of Myths and Maps 3
LOLA: It happened at Trail Extends Across a Red Ridge With
Alder Trees, at this very place!
LOUISE: [Laughs softly]
ROBERT: Pleasantness and goodness will be forthcoming.
LOLA: Pleasantness and goodness will be forthcoming.
2
LOUISE: My younger brother is foolish, isn’t he, dog?

Any bystander would have seen that this exchange assuaged Louise’s
worries; but understanding how it did so requires intimate experience
of Western Apache customs in ‘speaking with names’ and specific
knowledge of local places. As Basso goes on to explain, each of the
place names mentioned is related to a particular story of a young
person who suffered on account of ignorance or impulsiveness there,
and then recovered. Here is how Lola herself describes how the
conversation worked:
We gave that woman [Louise] pictures to work on in her mind. We
didn’t speak too much to her. We didn’t hold her down. That way she
could travel in her mind. She could add on to them [the pictures] easily.
We gave her clear pictures with place-names. So her mind went to those
places, standing in front of them as our ancestors did long ago. That way
she could see what happened there long ago. She could hear stories in
her mind, perhaps hear our ancestors speaking. She could recall the
knowledge of our ancestors.3
This coded system allows for the delicate chastisement of other
community members, and one’s membership of the community—
knowing not only the places, and their names, but the stories attached
to each, and subscribing to the same ethical and communicative
assumptions—is key to its efficacy. While the particulars of this
story–landscape nexus might be unique to the community of Cibecue
studied by Basso, we find internally coherent examples of ‘speaking
with names’ in antiquity and in the resonant reception of the ancient
landscape: the same reliance on a shared repertoire of common
knowledge is apparent when we consider the brutal associations of
Cithaeron in Attic tragedy, or the way Roman poets mapped poetic
inspiration and the gradations of genre through allusions to the
springs and rivers of Helicon, or indeed the ‘Arcadia’ of the Western
imagination. To understand such allusions, one needs to understand

2 3
Basso (1996) 79. Basso (1996) 82–3.
4 Myths on the Map
not merely the myths and maps that they reference, but the habits of
myth-making and map-making that they intersect with.
Spatially inflected mythical thinking is part of the here and now; it
is neither pre-rational nor sub-rational. This observation emerged
clearly in structuralist interpretations. So, when Jean-Pierre Vernant
maps the relationship between Hermes and Hestia through the
conceptual oppositions of inside and outside, we see quite clearly
that the temporality of these stories is subsumed within consider-
ation of the abstract experience of space.4 More recent approaches
have stressed differences of context, perspective, intention, and
investment within ancient storytelling tradition. Greek myth has
come to be understood as a series of variants and versions drawn on
and manipulated differently by different communities, on different
occasions. This shift quite naturally encourages appreciation of the
contingency of different genres—the unprecedented recent interest
in mythography is of particular note in this regard—but also of the
importance of localism.
The local landscapes of Greek myth have been accessed in various
ways. We have seen studies of regional and civic myths which exam-
ine the way that stories related to precise topographies.5 But likewise,
we have seen studies of landscape genera: the conceptual associations
inherent in stories located on mountains and islands, in caves, and the
sea, and stories about fauna.6 Story types and functions create another
way of accessing the tradition: so, the founding narrative has received
welcome attention recently,7 an attention which extends interest in
how myth strengthens civic kinship networks and ethnic affiliation.8
Like any sub-discipline, the study of Greek myth lies open to broader
scholarly cross-currents. Memory studies has provided an innovative
methodology for expressing the connections between community,
material culture, and the past;9 this sense of embodied engagement
has likewise been apparent in renewed interest in the performative
contexts of antiquity;10 and in the spatial dynamics of cult.11

4 5
Vernant (1963). e.g. of Thebes: Berman (2015).
6
e.g. Buxton (1994) chap. 6; Buxton (2009) chap. 8; Aston (2011) chap. 4; Hopman
(2013) chap. 3; Beaulieu (2016).
7
e.g. Dougherty (1993); Mac Sweeney (2013; 2015).
8
e.g. Scheer (1993); Malkin (1994); McInerney (1999); Hall (2002); Patterson
(2010).
9 10
e.g. Alcock (2002); Kühr (2006). e.g. Kowalzig (2007); Fearn (2010).
11
e.g. Alcock and Osborne (1996); Cole (2004); Pirenne-Delforge (2008).
 Of Myths and Maps 5
Running parallel to these developments in the study of myth are
developments in our understanding of ancient conceptions of space.
It is notable that ancient cartography and geography have emerged as
a prominent object of study at the same time as we have welcomed a
number of resources which map the world of antiquity in using both
traditional and digital means.12 The spatial turn in the humanities has
likewise proved fruitful for the study of ancient literature; with ‘space’
as a means of analysis, these studies have shown both how places
become imbued with meaning, and how they are represented, pro-
jected and experienced within literary forms.13 Finally, we might say
that the very idea of ‘landscape’, that is, the sense of the physical
world as it intersects with a wealth of practical, historical, conceptual,
and mnemonic concerns, highlights the inherently interdisciplinary
nature of Classical Studies and the profoundly complex picture of
antiquity that can be built up through collaborative expertise and
diverse perspectives.14

WITH HERACLES AS GUIDE

Heracles will reappear in several guises through the essays that follow,
and so it is appropriate that I introduce this central idea of plurality in
myth-making and map-making by tracking (largely via the observa-
tions of that other great ancient traveller, Pausanias) this hero who is
seemingly both omnipresent, and yet precisely localized in the world
of the ancient Mediterranean.

12
On ancient cartography and geography: e.g. Clarke (1999); Talbert (2012); Geus
and Thiering (2014); Bianchetti, Cataudella, and Gehrke (2015); Bouzarovski, Pelling,
and Isaksen (2015); in this field the German TOPOI network is leading the way with
its collaborative model. Recent projects to map the ancient world include the mag-
nificent Barrington Atlas (available also as an app) and two ‘born digital’ projects, the
AHRC-funded HESTIA, and the Pleiades site of the North Carolina Ancient World
Mapping Centre.
13
e.g. Clay (2011); Thalmann (2011); de Jong (2012b); Tsagalis (2012); Skempis
and Ziogas (2013); Gilhuly and Worman (2014). Of particular note in this regard
is Purves (2010), which is discussed below, on pp. 204–10, pp. 249–50, and pp.
266–72.
14
This sense of collaborative interdisciplinarity was key to the success of the 2014
Penn-Leiden Colloquium, subsequently published as McInerney and Sluiter (2016).
6 Myths on the Map
On the slopes of Mt Coryphum, between Argos and Epidaurus, there
was in the late second century AD an olive tree nicknamed ‘twisted’. We
know this tree existed because Pausanias gives its story (2.28.2):
It has this appearance because Heracles twisted it around his arm;
whether he did indeed put it there to mark the boundary with the
people of Asine in the Argolid, I do not know; wherever the land has
been depopulated, it is difficult to be sure about boundaries.
This simple story of Heracles wrapping a sapling around his arm
quite literally demarcates Argive territory. But more than this, it
illustrates a more pervasive kind of map-making: the rich conceptual
associations which encased the realia of the Greek landscape. The
interplay between geographical awareness and imagination is not
merely relevant in relation to places never seen; it is an integral aspect
of the human experience of space. The strange appearance of this tree
requires explanation, and the aetiology given turns it into a relic, a
repository for recalling Heracles’ sometime journey through the
Argolid. Further, the connection with Heracles makes the tree visible
in new ways: it becomes a landmark which draws the eye because it is
worthy of being pointed out. And it is on account of this strange little
mythic datum that a misshapen tree lives on almost two millennia
later, now as a waymark in the periegete’s itinerary.
We might say that the first broad way in which myths and maps
come together is that storytelling creates a layering of conceptual
associations on the land through place names, significant monu-
ments, ritual practices, and simply the habit of saying ‘This is where
that happened.’ Places thus come to be imbued with the sediment of
communal memory; indeed, myth might be literally inscribed into the
landscape, as we see in the instance of the birthplace of Heracles at
Thebes, where, Pausanias reports, an epigram displayed on site once
proclaimed that a certain ruined building contained the chamber
which Amphitryon chose for his wife Alcmene and himself (9.11.1).
A second important dynamic of this theme is the crafting of linear
connections. Here we must think of the story–landscape nexus as
functioning both in time—it links past to present—and spatially—it
forges networks of places. Pausanias attributes to the people of Phlius
the following story (2.13.8):
Heracles came to Phlius on personal business after he had retrieved the
apples of the Hesperides from Libya. While he was there, Oeneus
arrived from Aetolia to see him. . . . Either he invited Heracles to dine
 Of Myths and Maps 7
or was invited by him. Heracles, unhappy with the drink given to him,
struck the boy Cyathus, Oeneus’ cup-bearer, on the head with a finger.
The boy died immediately from the blow. The Phliasians maintain a
shrine in his memory . . . which contains stone statues of Cyathus offer-
ing a cup to Heracles.
This story is ostensibly localized on a single landmark: the shrine with
its depiction of the event. It is, in other ways, however, part of a
radiating network of associations. It is precisely located in mythical
time in that it marks the moment when the biography of Heracles
(he passes through the Argolid in his return from the Garden of
the Hesperides) comes into contact with that of Oeneus, king of
Aetolia, and thus the intersection of two more extensive genea-
logical networks.
The place of contact in Pausanias is Phlius, in the Argolid. Else-
where, however, Oeneus’ son (whose name varies) was said to have
been killed by Heracles at home, in Aetolian Calydon (Apollod. 1.150,
Diod. 4.36). In Apollodorus (2.150–1) Heracles afterwards leaves
Calydon in self-imposed exile and while crossing the nearby river
Euenus, kills the centaur Nessus; the story thus figures quite differently
in the episodes of the hero’s life when its location is shifted. Another
story of Heracles inadvertently killing a host was told in relation to
the Achaean colony of Croton, in southern Italy. Here territorial
expansion was echoed in myth. Heracles’ driving off of the cattle of
Geryoneus might share features of other heroic journeys to ‘the
beyond’, but it could also be variously localized within the Mediterra-
nean basin;15 its eventual association with Iberia offered a convenient
peg on which to hang founding narratives for the new colonies of the
western Mediterranean and gives us a pointed example of the way
Greek myth could be expanded to take in a new sense of the expanse of
the Greek world.16 Such doubling of stories is not, of course, uncom-
mon in a mythic tradition so notably ‘tolerant of plurality’: There were
at least eight locations across the Greek world at which Heracles was
said to have retrieved Cerberus from the underworld.17 Pausanias,
who mentions three of them (2.31.2, 2.35.10, 3.25.5), does not attempt

15
See Fowler (2013) 299–304.
16
See Stafford (2012) 156–60. As Daniel Berman shows in Chapter 2 of this
volume, such stories do not merely establish geographical relationships, but create a
more stratified sense of the mythical past.
17
Ogden (2010) 105–7.
8 Myths on the Map
to reconcile this apparent logical contradiction of the same event
happening severally.18 ‘What is said’ in these locations is part and
parcel of their significance and—in this particular instance—separate
from consideration of how the autonomy of various local traditions
might be mapped into a single Panhellenic entity. That is not to say
that the ways in which myths played out on the ground did not have
their effects: at Taenarum Pausanias argues that Hecataeus must have
been correct in suggesting that the ‘hound of Hades’ was no infernal
dog, but a large snake, since there is no possible passage underground
at the place (3.25.5 = Hecataeus fr. 27 Fowler).19
This sense of an intricately networked story–landscape nexus
resists in any case the certainty and clarity of an entirely consistent
model. When Plutarch places myth on the map, he pushes it out to
the distant edges; it is analogous to those places about which we have
just vague reports (Thes. 1.1). In practice, though, myth intersects the
known and the unknown, the close and the far away, the mundane
and the sublime. A sensitivity to the dynamics of spatial mythology
makes clear that myth belongs to a world which is connected to that
of everyday reality, and yet which is not like the world of the present.
When we consider storytelling to have both geographical and tem-
poral dimensions, these issues come into clearer focus. The far-
ranging travels of heroes like Heracles tie together not merely the
Mediterranean in a system of itineraries, but the tripartite universe,
encompassing the underworld, and the Olympian realm as well. The
existence in the present world of entrances to the underworld sug-
gests that these somehow fill contiguous geographical space; for the
Phliasians, their town existed in the past somehow on the same plane
as the Libyan ‘Garden of the Hesperides’ with its mysterious apples
and guardian snake; how exactly this is thought to work, however,
remains difficult to express neatly.20

18
See Ogden (2010) 116: ‘I would argue, tentatively, that Pausanias’ silence
indicates that there was no established or developed tradition of confronting the
supposedly competing claims of the various underworld passages with each other.
A cultural refusal to address such issues head-on tended to construct by default a
curious identification between the various passages, rendering them at once both
spatially distinct and spatially identical.’
19
On the topographical implications of Pausanias’ rationalistic attitudes towards
myth, see Hawes (2014) 206–12.
20
The conceptual relationship between the here and now and the Beyond is one
theme of Robert Fowler’s chapter in this volume.
 Of Myths and Maps 9
The forging of networks through myth brings us to the third
crucial aspect of spatial mythology: perspective. The very idea of
‘landscape’ is bound up in ideas of cultural appropriation and sub-
jectivity. This interactivity of selectivity, emphasis, and exclusion is
similarly notable when we consider how myths might be encountered
on the ground. Standing before the temple of Zeus at Olympia, one
might ‘read’ the story of the twelve labours on its metopes. Each
episode is given equal weighting: the focus is figural (no background
details mark changes of location) and no one labour seems more
prominent than the others. The impression is of a Panhellenic cycle in
which the actions of the hero take place in a kind of abstract space.
Local interest, however, must have produced a more uneven tableau.
Each of these labours belonged to a particular location. In Pausanias’
time one might visit the cave of the Nemean lion (2.15.2), the
birthplace of the Hydra (2.37.4), or the breeding ground of the
Stymphalian birds (8.22.4): each of these places had its own character
and the view from the ground brings into focus those aspects of the
cycle with relevance to the close-at-hand. This constant interplay
between Panhellenic and local viewpoints is a recurrent theme of
this collection.
One’s perspective can, of course, shift. In his Histories, Herodotus
discusses non-Greek gods he identifies as Heracles.21 The Greek hero,
he argues, is a calque and no figure of Hellenic exceptionalism: a cult
on Thasus predates his lifetime by some five generations (2.44.4); in
any case, the very name ‘Heracles’, he says, passed from the Egyptians
to the Greeks (2.43.1) and indeed Amphitryon and Alcmene might be
counted as being Egyptian, given their descent from Perseus, whom
Herodotus likewise traces to Egypt (2.43.1, 2.91.2-6). Herodotus’
researches allow him to step outside the closed circuit of his own
culture and offer a new view on a rather familiar problem—how
might Heracles be both a hero and a god? Herodotus justifies the
Greeks’ worship of two different Heracleis by pointing out that the
Egyptian god is indeed a separate figure from the Greek hero (2.4.5).
The movement of people brings about shifts of perspective and
unusual new cultural products.

21
For identification of the various gods, see Asheri, Lloyd, and Corcella (2007) ad
loc. The religious syncretism for western Sicily, where the Greek Heracles fused with
the Phoenician Melqart, is an important case study in its own right: see Malkin (2011)
chap. 4.
10 Myths on the Map
The sense of uniqueness and accommodation thrown up by such
shifts of perspective brings us to the fourth key dynamic of the story–
landscape nexus: the extension of mythic knowledge with the exten-
sion of geographical knowledge into new physical and conceptual
territories. Polybius boldly asserts that ‘in the present day, now that
all places have become accessible by land or sea, it is no longer
appropriate to use poets and writers of myth as witnesses of the
unknown’ (4.40.2). Yet mythology was never entirely banished:
myths were incorporated into geographical descriptions throughout
antiquity and across a broad spectrum of genres, even as activities
such as exploration, conquest, and scientific endeavour altered how
the world was understood and perceived. What we might say is that
geographical expansion made inherited mythical traditions more
complex in their resonances. The ancient sense of ‘old Greece’ at
the centre of a Mediterranean sealed off by the Pillars of Heracles at
the west and of which Delphi could claim to be the omphalos may be
preserved in the literary canon, but did not reflect the broad range of
Greek-speaking peoples throughout the region. We have already seen
how the communities of Magna Graecia could claim parts of Hera-
cles’ journey as their own and inflate the importance of this part of the
cycle; this connection was still being celebrated in the Renaissance,
with images of Heracles and his pillars forming part of the civic
imagery of cities in the region.22 What—or where—these pillars
were was a problem difficult to solve on the geographical map, as
Strabo’s account demonstrates (3.5.3–6). The mental map, in fact,
shows greater clarity; on that, they served quite simply as limits—of
Heracles’ journey and at times of the extent of human voyaging.
Indeed they fuelled rich conceptual associations which extended
beyond antiquity. For Dante’s vaunting Ulisse, the desire to sail
beyond ‘the narrow strait where Heracles set down the warning that
men should not go farther beyond’ (Inf. 26.107–9) is part and parcel
of his desire to ‘seek virtue and knowledge’ (26.120). His shipwreck
and placement in the eighth circle makes clear where such ambitions
sit in the ethical landscape of Dante’s vision. By the early seventeenth
century, this sensibility had taken on a different cast. Emperor
Charles V’s emblematic device of the Pillars of Heracles with the
words ‘plus ultra’ (‘farther beyond’), was well in keeping with a

22
See Stafford (2012) 220–1.
 Of Myths and Maps 11
monarch whose fame and power gave him an almost heroic cast,
and who extended Spanish rule well beyond the Pillars into the New
World.23

THE PAPERS OF THIS VOLUME

I have opted not to divide the volume into subsections. Instead, the
essays are ordered in such a way as to cluster around various themes
and landscape features without suggesting exclusive groupings.
The first essay in the collection opens up our theme by charting the
ways in which myths inhabited the ancient landscape through three
productive metaphors: the palimpsest, networked islands, and patch-
work. Katherine Clarke’s title, ‘Walking through History’, signals her
prevailing concern with movement, travel, and the passing of time.
Using material drawn from the prose geographers, she highlights the
ways that human experience in the present animates encounters with
the mythical past. This sense of layered time accessed through space is
figured quite distinctively in Daniel W. Berman’s discussion of a
novel narrative category: ‘prefoundational’ myth. Through studies
of Thebes, Croton, and Athens, he illuminates the ideological expe-
diency of pushing histories of place back beyond the apparent
moment of foundation. From the political resonance of naming a
city, Richard Buxton takes us to the myriad imaginative resonances of
mythological homonyms. The various Cyclopes, he argues, share in a
series of overlapping ‘conceptual domains’, domains which came to be
localized on the fire-and-liquid landscape of Etna. Elizabeth Minchin
uses the operations of memory—in both its psychological and its
collective incarnations—to examine the story of Hero and Leander
and its distinctive Hellespontine setting. Each retelling of the story
activates an affective response as one pictures the tragic events in one’s
mind’s eye, and the elements of the story—two lovers, the towers, and
the strait between them—are so closely associated that just one or two
of them might metonymically prompt the full narrative. Notably, she
finds that the setting of this story, as it is told both from a distance and

23
See Rosenthal (1971).
12 Myths on the Map
at the Hellespont itself, is remarkably stable through time such that it
becomes intrinsic to the tale.
The next two chapters take up this question of distanced and local
viewpoints. Emma Aston explores the local dynamics of one of the
most recognizable of Panhellenic motifs, the Centauromachy. She
finds within Thessaly stories of territorial disputes between rival
tribes, the Centaurs and the Lapiths, and evidence of active local
engagement in shaping and exploiting local affiliations with various
aspects of this mythological cycle. This local perspective provides a
corollary to the more accessible Panhellenic one, but as Aston ends by
arguing, we should think of neither as essentialist or hermetically
sealed but caught up in a mutual process of cross-fertilization. Steph-
anie Larson studies one particular instance of mythic manipulation,
a strange scene of sphinxes fighting on an Attic red-figure askos
recently discovered on the Ismenion at Thebes. Theban myth is
most visible to us through the Athenian genre of tragedy; she argues
that this piece of material evidence shows us what might be commis-
sioned at Athens to suit a local Theban context.
Jeremy McInerney shows how this sense of localism based on
ethnic ties to the Greek mainland changes with the diaspora poetics
of the Hellenistic courts. He traces the new webs of mythic signifi-
cance which attach to the new landscape of power through Callima-
chus’ Hymn to Apollo, Hymn to Artemis, and Lock of Berenice. Julie
Baleriaux takes us back to the heart of the Peloponnese, but again
delves into the consequences of political upheaval and the way insider
and outsider perspectives could fuse and mutate. Her portrait of
Arcadia begins from Pausanias’ comments on the deep antiquity of
the region and shows how this aura of unchanging ritual practice was
in fact the result of particular geopolitical changes, with sanctuaries
jostling for attention in the new atmosphere of Roman patronage and
wealthy local elites.
The next two chapters concern the practical and conceptual out-
comes of securing water supply in the Greek world. Christina
A. Salowey situates stories of the riverine battles of Achilles and
Heracles within the ancient experience of unpredictable water flows
in the karst landscapes of the Mediterranean. In this environment,
powerful rivers were both necessary generators of fertility, and poten-
tially destructive, and this double identity shapes their imaginative
traditions. Betsey A. Robinson moves us to the built environment of
civic fountains. She examines the way two imperial cities, Corinth and
 Of Myths and Maps 13
Ephesus, localized stories at urban springs, and the political reson-
ances of such architecture as a repository of memory.
The four chapters which follow deal specifically with mental top-
ographies which operate beyond the work done by maps. The map is
a representation of the physical world which is both much more and
much less than the realia on the ground. Aara Suksi shows how
Aeschylus could exploit the cartographic perspective in a way which
threatened the established hierarchy of divine privilege. The appro-
priation of the divine synoptic view by Prometheus and Clytemnes-
tra, with the attendant ability to know past and present and control
the future, underscores the subversive potential of technological
innovation in mapping space. The question of geographical know-
ledge in an expanding world likewise concerns Iris Sulimani. Her
chapter explores the ways in which Diodorus locates imaginary
islands within the oikoumene. By describing them in terms of plaus-
ible geographical details, recycling aspects of real locations in his
accounts of utopian ones, and incorporating them into the data of
historical journeys, Diodorus achieves a striking new level of realism
for these places. Robert L. Fowler takes us off the edges of the map; his
Beyond simultaneously shares in and eschews the mappable spaces
with which we are familiar. His three voyages into the beyond, with
Homer’s Odysseus, Pherecydes’ Heracles, and with Herodotus, sketch
not merely the diverse ontologies of these spaces, but their different
epistemological statuses. Charles Delattre gives us another distanced,
Panhellenic perspective, that of imperial mythography. To convey the
topographical dimensions of a genre concerned with ‘ordering the
world’ of paideia, he returns to Clarke’s image of an archipelago of
islands as an analogy for the uneven landscape of mythical know-
ledge. Mythographic space, he argues, is fragmentary and discontinu-
ous. It is made up of toponyms and itineraries with a kind of
referentiality contingent on, but not consistent with, the spaces of
the real world of Roman power.
Richard Hunter takes our theme to its furthest extent—
paradoxically the intimate interior landscape of human passions.
Through a discussion of Dio Chrysostom’s Libyan Myth he explains
how exploring the desert of the Greek imagination could chart
allegorically the struggles of the soul against temptation and despair;
the beasts of the Libyan expanses are within us.
 1

Walking through History

Unlocking the Mythical Past

Katherine Clarke

LANDSCAPE AS PALIMPSEST: AT THE

CROSSROADS OF SPACE AND TIME

The palimpsest, on which erasure precedes reuse, may seem an

unlikely parallel for the development of an imagined landscape, a
mental map, or a conceptual geography.1 Nevertheless, this analogy
captures the way in which experiences through time constantly set
down new imprints on the faded experiences of the past and effect-
ively encapsulates the layered nature of ancient landscapes. These
landscape palimpsests embody certain tensions. In particular, while
landscapes are built up and imbued with ever greater significance over
time, there is nevertheless a privileging of certain key moments in the
past, which are dominant in their level of resonance and signification.2
Furthermore, the importance of continuity across time, however
unevenly textured, is mirrored by continuity across space. In spite of
the local nature of stories that attach to each place and the conse-
quently fragmentary sense of space that might emerge, it is interaction

1
The title of this chapter refers to the Channel 4 series, Walking through History,
featuring Tony Robinson, who according to the series description ‘embarks on
spectacular walks through some of Britain’s most historic landscapes in search of
the richest stories from our past’. Julia Bradbury’s BBC series Railway Walks similarly
typifies the sense of uncovering the past by travelling through the present landscape
which this article explores.
2
On this, see Clarke (1999) 245–93.
 Walking through History 15
and connectivity, above all conducted through travel, that predominate.
Such movement through a landscape in the present enables us to
unlock the mythical past and its narratives. As the traveller continues
on his or her way, the past comes to life, and the landscape becomes
not only the one being journeyed through, but simultaneously the one
experienced by figures from the past, evoked by place names, artefacts,
and stories.3

MYTH AND LANDSCAPE: A NATURAL

PARTNERSHIP

Let us start by acknowledging that both myth and landscape are

problematic terms. In terms of its chronological scope, ‘myth’ has
most naturally been defined as dealing with the age of gods and
heroes, although even here there is a long history of scholarly dispute.
Carlo Brillante, for example, places great significance on the temporal
distinction between myth and history, whereas Claude Calame offers
a broader definition in which the presence of a narrative, the focus on
the time of gods and heroes, and the element of imagination are the
three definitive cornerstones.4 The term ‘landscape’ too begs a sharp-
ening of focus on whether we are using it to refer to a discrete physical
entity, which is almost objective in its existence, or, more pertinently
here, to a human ‘construction’ of space.5
The constructed nature of landscape and its relationship to myth
are beautifully illustrated by the work of Pausanias, a traveller
through and creator of mythical landscapes.6 Susan Alcock describes

3
Here the language of de Jong (2012a) 4 may be helpful for its distinction between the
‘setting’ of the action and ‘frames’, that is ‘locations that occur in thoughts, dreams, or
memories. . . . Such frames may bring in distant, inaccessible, hypothetical, or counter-
factual locations, which all expand the space of a story in various significant ways.’
4
See Brillante (1990) 101–5, and Calame (2003) 3–25.
5
On the difference between real and constructed landscapes see Buxton (1994) 81,
reminding us that, while there are real landscapes, ‘human beings create an image of
their surroundings through their interaction with them, so that perception of a
landscape is inevitably mediated by cultural factors’. See Clarke (1999) 17, 28–9, for
the parallel ‘construction’ of ‘place’, which can be seen as generated from space by
human interaction; and also now Gilhuly and Worman (2014) 6–7.
6
For Pausanias’ preference for distant periods of the past over more recent and
current history, see Cohen (2001) 95–6: Pausanias ‘ignored those spaces touched by
16 Myths on the Map
landscape as ‘convey[ing] the totalizing and constructed nature of
Pausanias’ narrated world, implying a geography conceived from the
perspective of one individual observer. Moving through space . . . he
creates the entire terrain the reader too travels.’7 Pausanias’ professed
focus on the combination of logoi and theorēmata (1.39.3), stories and
sights, eloquently expresses the process by which travel in the text
gives rise to tales about the past, as the predominantly spatial organ-
ization of the Periegesis yields a ‘discontinuous and anachronic
exploration of the Greek past and present through its monuments
and remains’.8 The author and reader of this text, then, leap together
backwards and forwards in time as the present landscape becomes
temporarily and imaginatively the landscape of the mythic past
through memories and stories evoked by monuments, rituals, and
place names.9 It is the arrival of the interested traveller which triggers
the process of turning the clock back, so that one location shares two
time frames.10 Building on this interpretation of Pausanias’ text,
I shall argue more broadly that while the physical environment
provides a setting for mythical episodes, those myths in turn facilitate
the intellectual transformation of physical space into a resonant
‘landscape’. The ‘mythic landscape’ thus spans a period from the
distant past to the present in which location is the constant and
myth is a medium through which that space is articulated and
experienced.
The relevance of the distant past, the world of myth, to those who
would seek to understand, describe, even create a landscape is
addressed directly in the most completely preserved geographical
text from the ancient world, Strabo’s Geography (8.3.3):
I am comparing present conditions with those described by Homer; for
we must initiate this comparison because of the renown of the poet and

imperial power and populated the land with imaginary superhuman beings’; also
Pretzler (2007) 77–8.
7
Alcock (1996) 249.
8
Akujärvi (2012) 238.
9
See Alcock (1996) 249, for the active construction of memory in the landscape:
‘One of the primary means by which memories were preserved and promulgated was
through the marking of specific places in the landscape, either through the telling of
stories, the enactment of rituals, or the building of commemorative monuments.’
10
See Hawes (2014) 195, for the tension between the continuity of location and the
gap in time frame, which yields a ‘paradoxical relationship between the realms of
myth and contemporary experience’.
 Walking through History 17
because of our familiarity with him from our childhood, since all of us
believe that we have not successfully treated any subject which we may
have under discussion until there is left in our treatment nothing that
conflicts with what the poet says on the same subject, such trust do we
place in his words.
The importance of the mythical, epic, distant past in the mental
geography of Strabo’s imagined readership was due partly to its
inherent appeal,11 and partly to the nature of classical paideia with
Homer at its heart.12 The ongoing centrality of Homer in the ancient
mindset offers a compelling explanation for why putting Greek myths
on the map remained a concern throughout classical antiquity and
beyond.13
As Strabo (2.5.17) makes clear, even though places may change
physically or even drop off the map altogether, significant elements
of their past can override their current demise. Mapping the world
through the past rests on the premise that places are made through
time; the past does not vanish but remains embedded in the
identity of a place and enhances its current status and appeal.14
This idea is borne out in the strength of the currency of myth in
the creation of local identity and the generation of political power.
Claims that a particular hero had passed by carried high value,
especially in the competitive, performative, and intrinsically related
worlds of local historiography and intercity diplomacy, as we shall
see later.
In spite of his belief in the fundamental importance of Homer,
Strabo does express reservations about the lack of accuracy in a world
mapped out by myth.15 The mythic layer of the landscape palimpsest
stretches credibility and sits uncomfortably with the reality on the

11
See 13.1.1 for the idea that a strong Homeric element was demanded by
‘everyone who longed to know about famous and ancient things’.
12
See Biraschi (2005) 81, on the ‘absolute pre-eminence of Homeric tradition in
Greek education, culture and history’.
13
The inescapability of the Homeric geographical frame is familiar from Herod-
otus’ need to engage with the notion of an all-encircling Ocean (2.21; 2.23), on which,
see Fowler, Chapter 13 of this volume, pp. 252–3.
14
On this, see Clarke (1999) 245–93 and Clarke (2008a) passim, but esp. 140–50 in
relation to Strabo. For the idea that mythic motifs ‘were fundamental for the imagi-
naire of a community, a polis, a league, and indeed the Hellenic world as a whole’, see
Gehrke (2001) 300.
15
See Calame (2003) 115–16, discussing Strabo’s difficulties in placing Homer on
the truth scale.
18 Myths on the Map
ground, and the problem is exacerbated by those who believe and
endorse fanciful tales just to fill in the gaps in their knowledge of how
the world shapes up (Strabo 7.3.1):
It is because of men’s ignorance of these regions that any heed has been
given to those who created the mythical ‘Rhipaean Mountains’ and
‘Hyperboreans’, and also to all those false statements made by Pytheas
the Massalian regarding the country along the ocean . . . So then, those
men should be disregarded . . . Let us confine our narrative to what we
have learned from history, both ancient and modern.
Strabo seems uncertain about where to draw the line on the place of
myth in the generation of landscape, claiming, for example, that the
story of Dodona and its doves is ‘excessively poetic, but appropriate
for this current geographical work’.16 His concerns over the implaus-
ibility of some mythic landscapes never in fact entail the rejection of
the mental map of an educated reader, which was inevitably based on
a mythical world of the Homeric epics, the wanderings of Odysseus,
and the dispersal of heroes from Troy.17 Such epic lustre, a link to the
mythical past, invested a place with special status and added to the
competitive claims of cities.
Myth was clearly a significant component in the geographer’s
world view. It encapsulates the continuing relevance of the distant
past partly for the sake of prestige. But seeing the physical and
imagined landscape through the prism of myth highlights its con-
stantly shifting nature: geography is evolving, growing in depth and
resonance, ‘created’ in the sense of humanly conceived and some-
times even man-made. Therefore, it is contestable and contested,
redefined and renegotiated.18 Geographical space and the narrative
medium of myth mesh together to create links across time, across
different key episodes which have taken place in the same location
and have in turn each enriched that space and made it into a place.

16
Strabo, Geography 7.7.10: τὰ μὲν ποιητικωτέρας ἐστὶ διατριβῆς τὰ δ᾿ οἰκεῖα τῆς
νῦν περιοδείας. On this passage and the implications of Strabo’s analysis of the myth
for the contested nature of mythical material, see Hawes (2014) 10.
17
See Kim (2010) 47–84, for discussion of Strabo’s attempt to reconcile Homer’s
poetic and historical roles partly through a defence of Homer’s geographical
knowledge.
18
For space as ‘constantly negotiated and reconstructed in the physical, cultural,
and political map’, see Skempis and Ziogas (2013) 1.
 Walking through History 19
ISLANDS OF MYTH AND TRAVELLING HEROES

Many myths are very local, as the contributions in this volume

illustrate. They both take place in a particular location, and enrich
and define that place as a mythic landscape for the future, evocative of
particular resonant narratives. The fragments of space defined and
enriched by different myths might be compared to a multitude of
islands, broken up by clear water. These ‘islands’ of mythical signifi-
cance, in which places are made meaningful and resonant by their
pasts, might potentially, if put together, enable us to create a com-
posite ‘map of myths’. Some areas might be particularly rich in
mythical figures and episodes, with different myths overlaid to create
a deep and concentrated set of resonances; others would be under-
populated with mythical material. Looking down magisterially on
such a map of myths would present a picture of incomplete coverage,
with some areas picked out in significantly more glorious technicol-
our than others.
But the static view from the divine vantage point is quickly ren-
dered dynamic, and the space becomes an experienced rather than
simply a viewed one, when we consider the myths which poleis
adopted or which local historians favoured in their accounts. Hera-
cles, a naturally itinerant figure, appears in the fragmentary remains
of a geographically diverse range of local histories, both from the
Peloponnese, especially Elis, and beyond.19 Hegesippus of Mecyberna
takes him north to Chalcidice (FGrH 391), where he was involved in a
gigantomachy at Phlegraea, while writers on Italy and Sicily naturally
involved him in a gigantomachy at a different Phlegraean plain.
Timaeus of Tauromenium related Heracles’ journey through Italy,
via the battle between giants and gods, and on down to Sicily (F89).
A more inventive appropriation of the ‘Heracles fought the giants
here’ theme is to be found in the third-century BC work on Cyzicus by
Agathocles, which concerns the competitive creation of small islands
near Cyzicus (FGrH 472 F2). One island was piled up by Giants,
another by Kore, on which she destroyed the Giants with that flexible
hero, Heracles, at her side. Pelops was another such disputed mythical

19
See Heracles in the Argolica of Hagias-Dercylus (FGrH 305); as father of
Megara’s children in the Argolica of Deinias (FGrH 306); with the horse, Arion, in
the Arcadica of Ar(i)aithus of Tegea (FGrH 316); in the Eliaca of Echephylidas; or
outside the Peloponnese in the Attica of Philochorus.
20 Myths on the Map
figure, part of the competition between local historians to appropriate
major Panhellenic heroes for inclusion in their local accounts.20 Istrus
the Callimachean claimed that Pelops was a Paphlagonian; while
Autesion said that he was an Achaean and from the city of Olenus
(FGrH 334 F74).
The kudos attached to mythical associations is neatly illustrated by
Strabo, who criticizes the author of a work on Thessaly for distorting
his history and misappropriating more famous tales than the region
really deserved in order to please his audience: ‘wanting to gratify
the Thessalians with mythical stories’, says Strabo, ‘he says that the
temple at Dodona was transferred there from part of Thessaly’
(7.7.12). These local histories exemplify the effectiveness of myth in
the competitive field of polis or regional self-enhancement. They
furthermore reinforce the convenient blurring that could be made
between spatium mythicum and spatium historicum, which facilitated
the creation of histories that could run, at least intermittently, from
the distant past to the present day. Mobile heroes—Heracles, Pelops, the
fleeing Trojans and homeward-bound Greeks of the epic cycle—not
only brought lustre to multiple locations, but linked different parts of
the world together through their travels. Travelling heroes set down
points of mythical significance as they covered large tracts of the
Mediterranean world, which in turn became an archipelago of islands
of myth, linked by the lines of their journeys. Barbara Kowalzig
argues, ‘If we traced all the voyages of gods and heroes on a giant
map of the Mediterranean, positioning little figures where they left
behind a cult, few spots would remain blank.’21 I would press for a less
continuous mythic landscape than that posited by Kowalzig, and for
the possibility that other factors and figures besides founding heroes
might play some part in the spatial articulation of Greece. Kowalzig’s
picture of a ‘map of Greece entirely [my italics] shaped by itinerant
gods, heroes and humans from a distant past, who establish cults and
rituals, and set up and carry around cult images and other spoils from
a time long ago’,22 may seem overstated. Nevertheless, the notion of
heroic travellers depositing hot spots of mythic resonance is an

20
Even minor figures from the mythical period apparently carried some prestige.
As Pausanias claims of the people of Troezen (2.30.5): ‘They glorify their own country
more than anyone else. They claim Orus as first-born in their land, even though Orus
is not even a Greek name.’
21 22
Kowalzig (2007) 24. Kowalzig (2007) 24.
 Walking through History 21
appealing one, and illustrates how we may see myth sitting at the
intersection of a web of links across the matrix of space and time.

CREATING THE HEROIC LANDSCAPE:

A PATCHWORK OF MYTH AND HISTORY

The predominance of travel in the mythical age ties ‘mythical islands’

into a network, which has implications for the continuous nature of
the mythical landscape, since it generates linear connections between
discrete mythic locations. When we try to plot myth and landscape
against the matrix of time, the picture is no less complex. Alongside
the idea of the mythic landscape spanning vast stretches of time in a
process of constant redefinition and renegotiation, we may introduce
the image of the patchwork. This has been frequently applied to myth,
particularly with respect to the temporal interface between myth and
history. Thus Moses Finley notes that ‘Patchwork is the rule in myth,
and it gives no trouble. Only the historically minded see the rough
stitches and the faulty joins and are bothered by them.’23 Similarly,
Carlo Brillante describes myth, in contrast to history, as ‘a stitching
together of heterogeneous elements’.24 Not only does this imagery
reinforce the ‘bricolage’ of mythical narrative, but it also implies that
the temporal links between distant past and present are, however
roughly assembled, nevertheless continuous. However, as Finley him-
self notes in his discussion of myth, memory, and history, we do not
recall the past by working steadily backwards along a continuous
timeline; rather, the ‘memory leaps instantaneously to the desired
point and it then dates by association’.25 Thus, while the temporal
relationship is continuous in principle, in practice it is accessed by the
memory in non-continuous ways.
The prevalence of moments of foundation in myth, expressed
through place-name aetiologies as well as foundation stories,26
naturally places the creation of a landscape at the centre of many
mythic narratives and also locates the chronological focal point at
the earliest extent of the place’s existence. That foundations are

23 24 25
Finley (1975) 16. Brillante (1990) 101. Finley (1975) 23.
26
See Malkin (1994) 20, for the importance of mythological land genealogies, as
providing the explanation for the names of landmarks.
22 Myths on the Map
routinely conducted in the course of heroic travels further serves to
tie the mythical landscape associated with each mythical foundation
into a more extensive web of contacts. Myth thus underpins the
essential aim of local historiography, namely to set out the claims to
importance, the identity, the story of a particular place both locally
and in the broader context of the world beyond. Mythic discourse
offers a medium through which this duality between local and
universal can be articulated. Because of the characteristic mobility
of the mythical world, it seems that jumping back to the moment of
foundation often offers the best opportunity in the life of a city to
stress its interconnectedness with the wider world.
Irad Malkin has discussed this issue extensively, in the context of
his interest in networks and connectivity, arguing that myth is a,
perhaps the, key mode through which interaction and relationships
between poleis could be expressed. Malkin notes that the creation of a
symbolic landscape often involved the reconfiguration of the city’s
past to focus on the period of myth. He gives the example of the fifth-
century Italiote city of Achaean Croton, which effectively replaced its
historical founder Myscellus of Rhypae with the new, more presti-
gious, mythical founder, Heracles, in whose name the city started
striking coins.27 The ubiquitous Heracles was, as the fragments of
local historiography demonstrate, ideal for the purpose of enabling
cities to buy into a Panhellenic identity and give themselves a history
which was even older than the Trojan War. However, a different form
of one-upmanship can be seen in the behaviour of the Spartan colony
of Taras, which replaced its founder, Phalanthus, in the Classical
period with Taras, the eponymous hero of a local river. This was
clearly not a Panhellenic move, but rather one which projected the
city’s past further back in time.28
The period of mythical foundations encapsulates a moment of
supreme mobility, entailing travel on a grand scale, which gave the
resulting communities Mediterranean as well as local identities.29
Even tales of heroic foundations, which appear on first sight to
involve relatively static models, serve to illustrate the way in which

27
See Malkin (2005) 64; and Berman, Chapter 2 of this volume pp. 42–3.
28
See Malkin (2005) 64.
29
See Malkin (2005) 56, for the displacement of hierarchies such as that embodied
by the centre-periphery model, by the notion of a network which ‘fosters a new view
of geography and human space’.
 Walking through History 23
the story becomes more fluid when the full mythic context is taken
into account. One such example, preserved in Justin’s epitome of
Pompeius Trogus, brings together the story of Jason and Medea with
that of Heracles. Jason is worshipped by ‘almost the whole Orient’ as
its founder, and the city of Media is said to have been established in
honour of Medea.30 The region as a whole, Armenia, is given the
rather obvious aetiology of having been founded by Armenius, a
companion of Jason, a detail which provides the initial impetus for
telling the stories of the Golden Fleece and of Medea and thereby
evokes a broad spatial scope (Justin 42.2.7–12). This is further
extended by mention of the treaty made between the new settlers
and the Albanians who followed Heracles from the Alban Mount
when he drove the cattle of Geryon there. Casting back to the
mythical age of heroic foundations almost inevitably entails the
critical ingredient of travel, knitting together a web of connections
between places which might initially seem discrete.
The strong element of fluidity in the world of myth is enhanced by
one of its other striking features, namely the multiplicity of compet-
ing versions of foundations, which conjure up different landscapes
through different heroic journeys. The parameters for competition
were no doubt set by existing narratives and consequent expectations,
but, as Simon Price rightly notes in his discussion of the power of
myth in local identity in the cities of the Greek East, it is not clear who
had the right to adjudicate.31 Stories concerning the foundation of
Rome were a case in point. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus
(1.45–9), Hellanicus gave the best account of Aeneas’ travels to Italy,
and almost all Roman writers attested to the arrival of Aeneas and the
Trojans, for which there was evidence in the form of rituals. However,
the exact route taken was controversial, and Dionysius decides to set
it out in full detail (1.49.4–53.3) in order to refute the suggestion
made by some historians that Aeneas did not come to Italy at all.
Sometimes, unsurprisingly, vested interests got in the way of the
‘truth’, and this was apparent in the appropriation of big heroes by
individual poleis. According to Strabo (13.1.53), Demetrius of Scepsis

30
See Justin, Epitome of the Historiae Philippicae of Pompeius Trogus 42.3.5–6.
31
Price (2005) 119–20. A slightly different angle is offered by Mac Sweeney (2013)
15, who sees the multiplicity of competing foundation stories as reflecting the needs
of different audiences and occasions; they are thus concurrently valid as part of a
‘foundation discourse’.
24 Myths on the Map
thought that Scepsis was a royal residence of Aeneas; but Strabo knew
that Aeneas was not part of that story at all.
Writers of the Hellenistic period and beyond devoted a great deal
of attention to working out who went where after the fall of Troy.
Such journeys exemplify the impact that mythical mobility had on
the later conceptual mapping of the Mediterranean world and the
imaginative creation of its landscape. But these mythic migrations
sat alongside more recent tales of travel and resettlement. Strabo’s
account (3.4.3) of Abdera, founded by the Phoenicians, and of other
cities in Spain, founded by an array of heroes, illustrates the rather
hazy boundary between mythic and historical foundation stories, all
of which could be told in the same breath and in the same spirit. It
also includes the testimony of Asclepiades of Myrleia, who tells of a
temple to Minerva above the city of Ulyssea, in which were hung
up spears and prows of vessels, ‘monuments of the wanderings of
Ulysses’ (ὑπομνήματα τῆς πλάνης τῆς Ὀδυσσέως, 3.4.3). The arrival
of Odysseus clearly carried great prestige, and was all the more
powerful because it could be authenticated by the artefacts them-
selves. According to Asclepiades, some followers of Heracles and
some inhabitants of Messene settled in Iberia, illustrating again the
easy transition between mythical and historical founders.32 Iberia
and other parts of the Mediterranean, according to Asclepiades, were
full of Greek heroes from the Trojan War, as well as being populated
by more recent itinerants. Each hero from the mythical, Homeric
age brings a fresh layer of glossy prestige to a region and to individ-
ual cities. At the same time, each evokes a journey, often a tortuous
one, such as formed the subject base of the epic cycle, which not
only links the start and end points, but also encompasses much along
the way.
That still later writers in the period of the Second Sophistic, trying
to provide aetiologies for the importance of certain parts of the
contemporary world, were left with the task of gathering up bundles
of sometimes incompatible myths is clear from Plutarch’s Life of
Romulus, which opens with multiple versions of a foundation myth
for Rome, all evocative of different itineraries around the Mediterra-
nean world, and hence of different mental maps. Whether it was

32
A further example of the juxtaposition of mythical and historical foundation
tales is that of the Laconian settlement of Cantabria, set alongside the foundation of
Opsicella by Ocela, who passed into Italy with Antenor and his children (Strabo 3.4.3).
 Walking through History 25
the notoriously nomadic Pelasgians, who settled on the site ‘after
wandering (πλανηθέντας) over most of the habitable earth and sub-
duing most of mankind’ (Rom. 1), or fugitives from Troy, or alterna-
tively one of the dispersing Greek heroes,33 all these variants entail
and evoke long journeys linking Rome into the wider networks of
mythic travel around the Mediterranean. Even more obviously local
versions offered by Plutarch, such as a Rome founded by Romis,
tyrant of the Latins, nevertheless allude to a world of large-scale
mobility, since Romis first had to drive out the Tuscans, who had
passed from Thessaly into Lydia, and from Lydia into Italy. The name
of Romulus too conjures up multiple mental maps, depending on
whether he is believed to be the son of Aeneas and Dexithea, the
daughter of Phorbas, brought to Italy in his infancy, along with his
brother Romus, or alternatively, the Romulus who was grandson of
Telemachus, or the Romulus who was son of Mars and of Aemilia, the
daughter of Aeneas and Lavinia.
Plutarch’s contribution to the creation of a mythic landscape is in a
sense complementary to that of Strabo. While Strabo’s primary inter-
est is to understand and provide aetiologies for the Mediterranean
map as it is in his day, for Plutarch, the main purpose is to produce an
acceptable version of Roman history, in the course of which the tracks
evoked by the various options serve incidentally to bind together the
mental geography of the Mediterranean. Putting down heroic foun-
dations was an itinerant activity that belonged to the mythical period.
It is, however, clear that there was an acute awareness of these travels
across time, and that this interest would be manifested by different
viewers and authors in ways which reflected their own times, exigen-
cies, and genres. Authors from the archaic period onwards allude to
a web of heroic travels which spans the Mediterranean, although
the political capital to be gained from tying city foundations into
mythical travels was sometimes realized only at later stages in the
history of a polis.34

33
Such as Romanus, a son of Odysseus and Circe, or Romus, sent from Troy by
Diomedes son of Emathion, both at Plut. Rom. 2.
34
See Malkin (2005) 65, for the contrast between the spatial network offered by
the heroic age, and the later articulation of foundation myths which exploited and
consolidated that web of connections. See also Mac Sweeney (2013) 10, stressing
foundation myths as politically useful, social constructs and later creations rather than
reflections of community tradition from the distant past.
26 Myths on the Map
TRAVEL AND RE-ENACTMENT: UNLOCKING
THE MYTHICAL PAST

We have already seen with Pausanias the key role played by travel in
not only prompting description of its own real-time geography but
also, often through the encounter with sights (theorēmata) which give
rise to stories (logoi), magically unlocking mythological geographies
from the distant past. In the Periegesis it is the figure of the author
who travels through the present and thereby evokes, perhaps even
generates, a set of distant mythic landscapes.35 The author and reader
of this text transcend time as the present landscape becomes tempor-
arily the landscape of the mythic past through memories and stories
evoked by monuments, rituals, and place names.36 In the world of
Hellenistic inter-polis relations, it was the travels of ambassadors
which tapped into and utilized the diplomatic capital encapsulated
in the travels of mythical figures, who then became appropriated by
particular poleis.37 Being tied into this web of Panhellenic mythology
enhanced the status of otherwise small and insignificant places, quite
literally putting them on the map. Furthermore, the mythological
geography of the heroic age, through its web of connections, facili-
tated a similar set of interactions from place to place in the world of
the Hellenistic polis and, as Simon Hornblower has noted, through its
articulation of kinship ‘made it possible for Greeks to bridge the
mythical and historical worlds in so apparently effortless a way’.38
The capacity of later travels to unlock the resonance of the mythic
landscape may alternatively be encapsulated in historical narratives.
Here again, the two travelling time frames of the heroic world and of
characters within the narrative might be seen to share a geography,
or to have an intertwined one, which leaps via stepping stones or,
more often, directly across vast stretches of intervening history. The

35
Hawes (2014) 190, expresses this double-matrix of the Periegesis well as ‘both a
tour of Greece and a journey back into its past’.
36
See Alcock (1996) 249, for the active construction of memory in the landscape:
‘One of the primary means by which memories were preserved and promulgated was
through the marking of specific places in the landscape, either through the telling of
stories, the enactment of rituals, or the building of commemorative monuments’.
37
See IC 1.24.1 for a Cretan inscription honouring two Tean ambassadors for their
performances of material concerning the gods and heroes of Crete, with Erskine
(2002) 97; and Clarke (2008a) 347–9.
38
Hornblower (2001) 137.
 Walking through History 27
progress of Xerxes’ expedition against Greece in Herodotus’ narrative,
marching through a heroic and mythologically charged landscape,
illustrates this point. The journey is made through a fifth-century
world, through a landscape that belongs to the present; but as the
troops pass through mythologically resonant locations, their journey
unlocks a past geography. Their progress brings an apparently dor-
mant landscape back to life, evoking key moments of its past. The
mention of the Iliadic river Scamander (7.42) and Xerxes’ excitement,
or rather passion, to visit the site of Troy, linked explicitly to its famous
Iliadic phase as Priam’s Pergamon (ἐς τὸ Πριάμου Πέργαμον ἀνέβη
ἵμερον ἔχων θεήσασθαι), might seem at first to lend heroic status to the
narrative of the Persian campaign. The appeal of myth and of Troy
in particular to Xerxes and especially to his adviser Mardonius has
indeed been noted as a key part of the characterization of those
players.39 However, in spite of these impassioned attempts by Persians
to appropriate the epic grandeur associated with Troy, the Trojan
landscape witnesses the first of many setbacks offered by the forces
of nature, as the river Scamander is unable to satisfy the needs of the
army, and the troops are assailed by lightning and thunderbolts as they
halt for the night under Mt Ida (7.42).40
But Troy was not everything, even in the progress of ambitious
Persian kings. The landscape of Eastern Europe and down into Greece
offers a non-Trojan mythical edge to Xerxes’ expedition. In the after-
math of the destruction of 400 Persian ships off the Magnesian coast near
Cape Sepias, the Persians moor their remaining ships in a bay (7.193):
where it is said that Heracles, at the start of the voyage of the Argo to
fetch the Golden Fleece from Aea (Colchis), was put ashore by Jason
and his companions to get water, and was left behind. The place
acquired the name of Aphetae (‘putting forth’) because it was the
intention of the Argonauts to make it their point of departure after
watering the ship.

39
Baragwanath (2012) 299. For Mardonius in his mission against Athens embodying
Xerxes’ passion (ἵμερος) for Troy, see 9.3. The Trojan echo is reinforced by Mardonius’
wish to indicate to Xerxes his expected capture of the city by a chain of beacons across the
islands, evocative of the Agamemnon. On this, see Chapter 11 (by Aara Suksi) of this
volume, pp. 216–20.
40
For the idea that association with the mythical age might be unsatisfactory, and
might fail to enhance the narrative, see Munson (2012). Saïd (2012) 96, argues that
although both Greeks (9.26–7) and Persians (as here) attempt to appropriate the
Trojan heritage, Herodotus endorses this in the case of the former and not of the latter.
28 Myths on the Map
Just as the mythological connotations of the Troad might lend only a
compromised epic grandeur to the Persian expedition, here one of the
Persians’ lowest moments sits in poignant contrast to their mytho-
logically charged location, at the junction of two of the most iconic
mythical journeys—those of Heracles and of the Argonauts. The
Persian journey yet again unlocks the mythological past through the
telling of the story that explains the place name. It is not only a static
moment in space and time that is elicited here, but two further lines of
travel, the journeys of the two respective heroes, which are evoked to
generate a more complex and extensive spatial network. Thus, the
chronological depth offered by the mythological resonances generates
further geographical breadth. Furthermore, the triple coincidence of
Xerxes’ fleet with the point at which the travels of Heracles and of the
Argonauts had come together transforms an otherwise insignificant
bit of space along the shore into a highly resonant ‘place’.
The area is clearly rich in mythological resonance. Xerxes’ guides at
Halos tell him about the local legend of the Laphystian Zeus. Phrixus
was almost sacrificed at this shrine by his father King Athamas, but
escaped to Colchis with the Golden Fleece (7.179). From a geograph-
ical point of view, this apparently local legend immediately evokes
another more distant mythological venue and is intimately bound
up with one of the most famous heroic journeys, the voyage of the
Argonauts to retrieve the Fleece. Thus, Xerxes’ progress again unlocks
not just the mythological geography of the regions he travels through,
but also the broader spatial network of the associated narratives. The
river Dryas in Thessaly adds a new dimension, being given an aeti-
ology which relates back to the labours of Heracles, since the river
arose in order to save the demigod from flames (7.198). Xerxes and
the Persians thus occupy a landscape that was not only traversed but
actually generated by mythical heroes.
Although I have suggested above that the primary focalization for
experiencing the mythical landscape of Herodotus’ narrative is
through the characters themselves, nevertheless, as Ewen Bowie has
acutely analysed, the mythological content of Xerxes’ expedition
facilitates also an authorial commentary on its religious and moral
quality, often to its discredit.41 The story of the flaying of Marsyas

41
This sense of Herodotus using mythical associations as an interpretative tool
pulls against the proposition of Haubold (2007) that Xerxes and the Persians cre-
atively use, rewrite, and exploit Homeric resonances no less than do the Greeks.
 Walking through History 29
(7.26.3), situated at the key geographical point of Celaenae in Phrygia,
at the confluence of the Maeander and Cataractes, offers, as Bowie
notes, a reminder of a hybristic man who was brutally punished,42
with clear warning signals for Xerxes himself. Time and again, the
mythological episodes elicited by the unfolding narrative tell tales of
hubris and consequent divine displeasure. The Scamander (7.43.1)
evokes Achilles’ violent arrogance; the headland of Sarpedon (7.58) is
the location of Heracles’ destruction of a hubristic tyrant; the marsh
of Stentor (7.58) too carries strong warning signals, commemorating,
as it does, the Thracian who was killed when he challenged Hermes to
a shouting competition.
We have already seen how famously mobile heroes and demigods
such as Pelops and Heracles create a complex geography made up of
discrete points of interest at which particular episodes for the myth-
ical narrative took place, but linked by the linear journeys they took
from one eventful stop-off point to another. As the Persian army
progresses, it unlocks these mini-mythological narratives at key
points along the way. In doing so it creates a multi-temporal narra-
tive, which flashes backwards and forwards between mythical times
and the present day, making the landscape itself into the constant.
Thus, the journeys and episodes of the distant past, which give
resonance to various locations, combine with the power of later
journeys, which ‘flick on the switches’ of historical and mythical
narratives, linking past and present time through space, and adding
still further moral depth and complexity to the world of Herodotus’
narrative.
The geography of the historical present and that of the mytho-
logical past may be brought into contact through such imagined,
diplomatic, recreational, or military itinerancy. But in some cases,
the line of travel and the act of the journey itself not only serve to
unlock other spatial frameworks at points of coincidence and overlap,
such as the triple coincidence of Xerxes’ fleet with the point at which
the travels of Heracles and of the Argonauts had come together. The
coincidence between past and present geographies can run much
closer; even to ‘re-enactment’ of key journeys from the past that have
articulated particular bits of space. Here the world of theōria comes to
the fore—sacred ambassadors criss-crossing the Mediterranean world

42
Bowie (2012) 273–6.
30 Myths on the Map
in journeys whose very content and route mirror the content and
routes of the mythological age.
As ever, Herodotus gives us a beautifully evocative example in the
amazing journey made not, in fact, by a single set of envoys but by
holy offerings wrapped in straw and sent by the Hyperboreans to
Scythia (4.33).43 The offerings are then passed on by neighbours in
succession to the farthest west point in the Adriatic, then taken
southwards, where the people of Dodona are the first of the Greeks
to receive them, then down to the Melian Gulf, across into Euboea
and from city to city to Carystus; then the Tenians take them to their
final resting place of Delos.44 As Herodotus explains, it was a real
journey made by two young girls which originally underlay the relay
described above. The two young girls and the five men who escorted
them on the first such pilgrimage simply never returned, although
they appear to have made it as far as Delos, since they were given
honorific names by the Delians (Hyperoche and Laodice for the girls,
and the Perpherees collectively for their guides). The Hyperboreans,
unhappy at the idea of losing people every time they send offerings to
Delos in the future, therefore devise this postal system for their
offerings, by which, like the Orient Express still today, each land is
given responsibility for conveyance through its territory. Stage by
stage, the offerings and the reader are carried from the edges of the
earth right to the core of the Greek world at the pivotal island of
Delos, surely a resonant set of bookends for a journey. Conceptually,
we have here, as so often, a multilayered sense of space—the linear
space of the successive sections of the journey in what we might call
the geography of theōria, and simultaneously the linking up of the
religious and commercial centre of the known world and one of its

43
See Kowalzig (2007) 56–80, for excellent discussion of a close parallel in the
form of the Deliades, re-enacting mythical accounts of the birth of Apollo and
Artemis. As Kowalzig notes (67), the Deliades simultaneously perform in two time-
spheres as companions of female deities in mythical tale and as a chorus of women in
the current festival. They are both narrators of and actors in the story, performing in
ritual what they are narrating in myth: ‘In this double role, the chorus of Δαλίων
θύγατρεϛ bridges the time gap, linking the mythical past to the present ritual.’
Kowalzig notes (122) a significant overlap between these Deliades and the Hyperbor-
ean girls, ‘suggesting an intriguing link between the different sets of mythical
worshippers’.
44
Rutherford (2004) 60 n. 7, notes the surprising omission of Andros, which,
certainly in the early fourth century, was the only state except Athens known to have a
part in the administration of Delos and the Amphictyony.
 Walking through History 31
notorious edges, creating a bridge by which the intervening space is
leapfrogged. A journey from the distant past is re-enacted across time,
with geography the constant. Myth acts as the medium through
which not only is that space articulated and linked, creating a linear
geography of the journey being performed, but the journey of the
present time, being identical to and mimetic of the version belonging
to the mythical age, somehow compresses time itself or perhaps
creates a timeless geography, free-floating, neither mythical nor his-
torical or maybe both of these.45

CONCLUSION

In spite of the local nature and uses of so many mythical narratives,

and their significance in giving places meaning and status, it is travel,
connections, and journeys from which the real power of myth in
geography and geography in myth derives. The mobility of the heroic
world creates a web of connections which links together the islands of
myth generated by often very localized episodes. Making sense of the
frequently contradictory narratives of heroic travel and especially
foundation stories was to vex many writers of later periods. But,
perhaps predictably, the greatest insight and resonance were derived
from stepping in the footsteps of the heroes themselves. Travelling
through the world, whether oneself, as in the case of Pausanias, or
vicariously, as with the characters in Herodotus’ historical narrative,
flicks on the switches of historical and mythical narratives, linking
past and present time through space.

45
See Kowalzig (2007) 28, for the proposition that aetiology ‘transcends real
(historical) time by postulating a physical or local continuity of religious place’.
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
stomacke, and could digest no meate, nor other nourishment
receiued, and this discrasie, or feeblenesse continued for the space
of three quarters of a yeare; which time expired, the fore mentioned
griefe fel downe from the stomacke into his hands and feete, so that
his fingers did corrupt and were cut off; as also his toes putrified
and consumed in a very strange and admirable manner.
Neverthelesse, notwithstanding these calamities, so long as he was
able, went still to Sea, in the goods and shippes of sundry Merchants
(for it was his onely meanes of living) but neuer could make any
prosperous voyage, eyther beneficiall to the Owners, or profitable to
himselfe.
‘Whereupon, not willing to bee hindrance to others, and procure no
good for his owne maintenance by his labours, left that trade of life,
and kept home, where his former griefe encreasing, sought to
obtaine help and remedie by Chirurgerie; and, for this end, went to
Yarmouth, hoping to be cured by one there, who was accompted
very skilfull: but no medicines applyed by the Rules of Arte and
Experience, wrought any expected or hoped for effect; for both his
hands and feete, which seemed in some measure, euery euening, to
be healing, in the morning were found to have gone backeward, and
growne far worse than before. So that the Chirurgian, perceiuing his
labour to bee wholly frustrate, gaue ouer the cure, and the diseased
patient still continueth in a most miserable and distressed estate,
unto the which hee was brought by the hellish practises of this
malitious woman, who, long before, openly in the streetes, (when,
as yet, the neighbours knew of no such thing,) reioycing at the
Calamity, said, Orkton now lyeth a rotting.’ She was executed
January 12, 1616.
‘The Examination, Confession, Triall and Execution of Joane Williford,
Joan Cariden, and Jane Hott, who were executed at Faversham in
Kent, for being Witches, on Munday, the 29 of September, 1645,’
furnish us with other particulars, especially as they all confessed
their crimes.
Joan Williford confessed ‘That the divell, about seven yeeres ago, did
appeare to her in the shape of a little dog, and bid her to forsake
God, and leane to him; who replied that she was loath to forsake
him. Shee confessed also that shee had a desire to be revenged
upon Thomas Letherland and Mary Woodrufe, now his wife. She
further said that the divell promised her that she should not lacke,
and that she had money sometimes brought her, she knew not
whence, sometimes one shilling, sometimes eightpence, never more
at once: shee called her Divell by the name of Bunne. She further
saith, that her retainer Bunne carried Thomas Gardler out of a
window, who fell into a back side. She further saith, that neere
twenty years since, she promised her soule to the Divell. She further
saith that she gave some of her blood to the Divell, who wrote the
covenant betwixt them. She further saith that the Divell promised to
be her servant about twenty yeeres, and that the time is now almost
expired. She further saith that the Divell promised her that she
should not sinke, being throwne into the water, and that the Divell
sucked twice since she came into the prison; he came to her in the
forme of a Muce.’
Joan Cariden’s confession was commonplace, but Jane Hott said that
‘a thing like a hedge hog had usually visited her, and came to her a
great while agoe, about twenty yeares agoe, and that if it sucked
her, it was in her sleep, and the paine thereof awaked her, and it
came to her once or twice in the moneth, and sucked her, and when
it lay upon her breast, she strucke it off with her hand, and that it
was as soft as a Cat.
‘At her first coming into the Gaole, she spake very much to the other
that were apprehended before her, to confesse if they were guilty;
and stood to it very perversely that she was cleare of any such
thing, and that, if they put her into the Water to try her, she should
certainly sinke. But when she was put into the Water it was apparent
that she did flote upon the Water. Being taken forth, a Gentleman to
whom, before, she had so confidently spake, and with whom she
offered to lay twenty shillings to one that she could not swim, asked
her how it was possible she could be so impudent as not to confesse
herselfe? To whom she answered, That the Divell went with her all
the way, and told her that she should sinke; but when she was in the
Water, he sate upon a Crosse beame and laughed at her.’
 CHAPTER XVII.
Confessions of Witches executed in Essex—The Witches of
Huntingdon—‘Wonderfull News from the North’—Trial of Six Witches
at Maidstone—Trial of Four Witches at Worcester—A Lancashire
Witch tried at Worcester—A Tewkesbury Witch.

A sickening story is told in ‘A true and exact Relation of the seuerall

Informations, Examinations, and Confessions of the late Witches,
arraigned and executed in the County of Essex. Who were arraigned
and condemned at the late Sessions, holden at Chelmesford before
the Right Honorable Robert Earle of Warwicke and severall of his
Majesties Iustices of Peace, the 29 of July 1645,’ etc., London, 1645.
In this veritable ‘bloody assize,’ the rascally Matthew Hopkins
appears, and it would almost seem as if the poor women confessed
anything in order to have the luxury of dying. The charges against
them were so frivolous, and the confessions so silly, that they must
have either been imbecile or reckless. The following is a list of them:

Elizabeth Clarke confessed executed.

Elizabeth
denied do.
Gooding
Anne Leech confessed do.
Helen Clark confessed executed.
Rebecca West do. acquitted.
Mary Greenleife denied fate unknown.
Mary Johnson do. do.
Anne Cooper confessed executed.
Elizabeth Hare denied condemned, but reprieved.
 died on the way to
Margaret Moon do.
execution.
Marian Hocket do. executed.
Sarah Hating do. do.
Rose Hallybread died in gaol.
Elizabeth Harvie confessed executed.
Joyce Boanes do. do.
Susan Cock do. do.
Margaret
do. do.
Landishe
Rebecca Jones do. do.
Joan Cooper do. died in gaol.
Anne Cate do. executed.

The confession (!) of this latter will serve as an example of the

puerility of them all.
‘This Examinant saith, that she hath four Familiars, which shee had
from her mother, about two and twenty yeeres since; and that the
names of the said Imps are James, Pricke eare, Robyn, and
Sparrow; and three of these Imps are like Mouses, and the fourth
like a Sparrow. And this Examinant saith, that to whomsoever shee
sent the said Imp called Sparrow, it killed them presently; and that,
first of all, she sent one of her three Imps like Mouses, to nip the
Knee of one Robert Freeman, of Little Clacton, in the County of
Essex, aforesaid, whom the said Imp did so lame, that the said
Robert dyed on that lamenesse within half a yeere after: And this
Examinant saith, that she sent her said Imp, Prickeare to kill the
daughter of John Rawlins of Much-Holland aforesaid, which died
accordingly within a short time after; and that she sent her said Imp
Prickeare to the house of one John Tillet; which did suddenly kill the
said Tillet.
‘And this Examinant saith that shee sent her said Imp Sparrow, to
kill the childe of one George Parby of Much-Holland aforesaid, which
child the said Imp did presently kill; and that the offence this
Examinant took against the said George Parby to kill his said childe,
was, because the wife of the said Parby denyed to give this
Examinant a pint of Milke; and this Examinant further saith that shee
sent her said Imp Sparrow to the house of Samuel Ray, which, in a
very short time did kill the wife of the said Samuel; and that the
cause of this Examinant’s malice against the said woman was,
because shee refused to pay to this Examinant two pence which she
challenged to be due to her; And that, afterwards, her said Imp
Sparrow killed the said Childe of the said Samuel Ray: and this
Examinant confesseth, that as soon as shee had received the said
four Imps from her said mother, the said Imps spake to this
Examinant, and told her, shee must deny God and Christ, which this
Examinant did then assent unto.’
In ‘The Witches of Huntingdon, their Examinations and Confessions,’
etc., London, 1646, we have eight cases of witchcraft which were
tried at different times early in 1646. Among these eight, two were
men; but there is no record of the fate of any of them. They are the
same old story, the one with the most originality being that of Jane
Willis, of Keiston, in the county of Huntingdon.
‘This Examinate saith, as she was making of her bedde in her
Chamber, there appeared in the shape of a man in blacke cloaths,
and blackish cloaths about six weeks past, and bid her good morrow,
and shee asked what his name was, and he said his name was
Blackeman, and asked her if she were poore, and she said I:[47] then
he told her he would send one Grissell and Greedigut to her, that
shall do anything for her: Shee looking upon him, saw hee had ugly
feete, and then she was very fearfull of him, for that sometimes he
would seem to be tall, and sometimes lesse, and suddenly vanished
away.
‘And being demanded whether he lay with her, shee said hee would
have lain with her, but shee would not suffer him: and after
Blackeman was departed from her, within three or 4 dayes, Grissell
and Greedigut came to her, in the shape of dogges, with great
brisles of hogges haire upon their backs, and said to her they were
come from Blackeman to do what she would command them, and
did aske her if shee did want any thing, and they would fetch it: and
shee said she lacked nothing. Then they prayed her to give them
some victuals, and she said she was poore and had none to give
them; and so they departed: Yet she confessed that Blackeman,
Grissel and Greedigut divers times came to her afterwards, and
brought her two or three shillings at a time, and more saith not.’
Another type of witchcraft is to be found in ‘Wonderfull News from
the North; or, a true relation of the sad and grievous torments
inflicted upon the Bodies of three Children of Mr. George Muschamp,
late of the County of Northumberland, by Witchcraft,’ etc. London,
1650. It begins thus:
‘First in harvest, some two Months before Michaelmas, about four or
five of the Clock in the afternoone, Mistris Margaret Muschamp
suddainly fell into a great Trance; her Mother being frighted, called
Company, and with much adoe recovered her; as soone as the childe
looked up, cryed out, deare Mother, weepe not for me; for I have
seene a happy Sight, and heard a blessed sound, for the Lord hath
loved my poore Soule, that he hath caused his blessed Trumpet to
sound in my eares, and hath sent two blessed Angels to receive my
sinfull soule. O weepe not for me, but rejoyce, that the Lord should
have such respect to so sinfull a wretch as I am, as to send his
heavenly Angels to receive my sinfull soule: with many other divine
expressions.’
After this she continued pretty well till Candlemas Eve, when she
was taken very bad indeed, losing the use of her limbs and speech,
‘and such torments, that no eyes could looke on her without
compassion.’ For 16 weeks she refused all food, saying ‘that God fed
her with Angel’s food: for truely all the 16 weekes fast she did not
appeare to diminish her fatness or favour anything at all.
‘On Whitsun Eve in the morning, she had eight hours bitter torment.
In the afternoone, her mother being abroad, left her Husband’s
Brother’s Daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Muschamp with her, who made
signes to her to carry her into the Garden, in her mother’s absence;
her Cozen, casting a mantle about her, gave her her desire, and sate
in the Garden with her on her knee; who, in the bringing down, had
so little strength in her neck, that her head hung wagging downe;
but was not set a quarter of an houre, till showing some signes to
her Cozen, bolted off her knee, ran thrice about the Garden,
expressing a shrill voyce, but did not speake presently: she that was
brought down in this sad condition came up stairs on her owne legs.’
However, this improvement did not last long; she had more illnesses,
and in one of them she made signs that she wished to write; so
‘they layd paper on her brest, and put a pen with inke in her hand,
and she, not moving her eyes, writ, Jo. Hu. Do. Swo. have been the
death of one deare friend, consume another, and torment mee.’ The
wiseacres puzzled over this, and at last came to the conclusion that
Mistress Dorothy Swinnow, then wife to Col. Swinnow, who
subsequently died, had bewitched her. At another time this Margaret
Muschamp wrote the same words with the addition, ‘two drops of his
or her bloud would save my life; if I have it not, I am undone; for
seven yeares to be tormented before death come.’
On this they sent to one John Hutton, a reputed wizard, who told
them that it was Mistress Swinnow who was the culprit, and he gave
them two drops of his own blood, which he wiped off his arm, with
the paper on which the girl had written. Returning home, they
applied this remedy, in some way unstated, and ‘On Munday night
she fell into a heavenly rapture, rejoycing that ever she was borne,
for these two drops of blood had saved her life.’ The girl was
afterwards very ill, and Dorothy Swinnow, now a widow, was
arrested, and committed to prison, where the narrative leaves off,
with the addition of the confession of one Margaret White, who
‘Confesseth and saith, That she hath beene the Divells servant these
five yeares past, and that the Divell came to her in the likenes of a
man in blew cloaths, in her owne house, and griped her fast by the
hand, and told her she should never want, and gave her a nip on the
shoulder, and another on her back; and confesseth her Familiar
came to her in the likenesse of a black Gray-hound. She also
Confesseth upon Oath that Mrs. Swinnow and her sister Jane, and
herselfe were in the Divels company in her sister Jane’s house,
where they did eate and drinke together, and made merry.
‘And Mrs. Swinnow, and her the sayd Margaret’s sister, with her
selfe, came purposely to the house of Mr. Edward Moore of Spittle,
to take away the life of Margaret Muschamp and Mary, and they
were the cause of the Children’s tormenting, and that they were
three several times to have taken away their lives, and especially
upon St. John’s day at night gone twelve moneths: and sayth that
God was above the Divell, for they could not get their desires
perfected; and saith that Mrs. Swinnow would have consumed the
childe that Mrs. Moore had last in her wombe, but the Lord would
not permit her; and that after the childe was borne, Mrs. Swinnow
was the occasion of its death; and that she and her sister were also
the occasion, and had a hand in the death of the sayd child; and
further confesseth that she and her sayd sister were the death of
Thomas Yong of Chatton (by reason) a kill full of Oates watched
against her sister’s minde; And further saith that the Divell called her
sister Jane (Besse); She confesseth that her sister Jane had much
troubled Richard Stanley of Chatton, and that she was the occasion
of his sore leg.’
In ‘A Prodigious and Tragicall History of the Arraignment, Tryall,
Confession and Condemnation of six Witches at Maidstone in Kent,
at the Assizes there held in July, Fryday 30, this present year 1652,’
a new feature is introduced.
‘The said Anne Ashby further confessed, that the Divell had given
them a piece of flesh, which whensoever they should touch, they
should thereby effect their desires.
‘That this flesh lay hid amongst grasse, in a certain place which she
named, where, upon search, it was found accordingly.
‘The flesh was of a sinnewy substance, and scorched, and was seen
and felt by this Observator, and reserved for publique view at the
sign of the Swan in Maidstone.’
They were duly hanged, but ‘Some there were that wished rather
they might be burnt to Ashes; alledging, that it was a received
opinion amongst many, that the body of a witch being burnt, her
bloud is prevented thereby from becomming hereditary to her
Progeny in the same evill, which by hanging is not.’
However, in the case of four witches tried at Worcester on March 4,
1647,[48] they ‘received Sentance to be Burnt at the Stak all Four
together.
‘When being come to the Place of Execution, they made a strange
and lamentable Yeling and Howling, after which they Confessed the
Crimes for which they Suffered, and also declared how they had
kill’d abundance of Cattle for several years past, and that it was
extream Pride, Malice, and Revenge, that caused them to enter into
such a curssed and Hellish League with the Devil, who told them to
the last, that he would secure them from Public Punishment, but
now, too late, they found him a Lyer, as he was from the beginning
of the World. Cock and Landish seemed penitent, desiring all young
Women to take Warning by their Devilish Lives, and Shameful
Deaths, assuring the Spectators, that as Satan in the first Infancy of
the World, prevail’d on the Woman to bring his Hellish attempts to
pass, so he still strives with that Sex, as the weaker Vessels, to Work
their Distructions; they both said the Lord’s Prayer very distinctly, but
Rebecca West and Rose Hallybread dyed very Stuburn and
Refractory, without any remorss, or seeming Terror of Conscience for
their abominable Witch-craft.’
‘A RELATION OF A LANCASHIRE WITCH, TRYED AT WORCESTER, IN
THE YEAR 1649.[49]
‘At Droitwich in the County of Worcester, a poor Woman’s Boy in the
Month of May, looking for his Mother’s Cow, espied some Bushes in
a Brake to shake; and, supposing the Cow to be Brousing there,
went to the Place, where he found no Cow, but an Old Woman, who,
upon his approach, said Boh to him: whereupon he presently lost his
speech, and could only make a Noise, but could not speak any thing
articulately, so as could be understood. In this condition he came
home to his Mother, made a great Noise, but no body could
understand what ailed him, or what he meant. A while after, he ran
out, and, at Sir Edward Barret’s door, found, about One a Clock,
amongst other poor People, the same old Woman supping up a Mess
of hot Pottage, and ran furiously upon her, and threw her Pottage in
her Face, and offered some other Violence to her. Whereupon the
Neighbours wondering at the condition of the Boy, and his rage
against the old Woman, and suspecting that she had done him some
hurt, Apprehended her, and she was committed to the Prison, which
they call the Checker. At Night the Boy’s Mother Lodged him in a
Garret over her own Lodging; and, in the Morning, hearing a great
Bussle over her, ran up, and found the Boy gotten out of his Bed,
with the Leg of a Form in his hand, striking furiously at something in
the Window; but saw nothing there that he should strike at. The Boy
presently put on his Cloaths, and ran downe into the Street towards
the Prison; and, as he was going, endeavouring to speak, found his
Speech restored.
‘When he came to the Prison, he asked for the old Woman, and told
the Gaoler how she had served him, and how his Speech came to
him again in the Way. The Gaoler, in the mean time, suspecting that
she had Bewitched the Boy, would not let her have either Meat or
Drink, unless she would first say the Lord’s Prayer, and bid God bless
the Boy: which, at last, her Hunger forced her to do; and it appeared
to be at the same instant, as near as can be guessed, that the Boy
had his Speech restored to him. The Boy asked the Gaoler, why he
did not keep her faster, but let her come out, and trouble him? The
Gaoler answered, he had kept her very safe. The Boy replied No, he
had not; for she came and sat in his Chamber Window, and grinned
at him; and that, thereupon, he took up a Form Leg, and therewith
gave her two good bangs upon the Back, as she would have scutled
from him, before she could get away. Whereupon the Gaoler caused
some Women to search her, who found the Marks of two such
Strokes upon her, as the Boy said he had given her. All this was
Sworn upon her Tryal by the Boy, his Mother, the Gaoler, and the
Women. Upon Examination she was found to be a Lancashire
Woman; who, upon the Scarcity in those Parts, after the Defeat of
Duke Hamilton, wandred abroad to get Victuals.’

‘ANOTHER RELATION OF A TEUKSBURY WITCH, TRYED AT

GLOUCESTER ABOUT THE SAME TIME.
‘At Teuksbury, about the same time, a Man, who had a Sow and
Pigs, observing his Sow to have great store of Milk, and yet the Pigs
to be almost Famished, and consulting with his Neighbours about it,
they all concluded that she must needs be Sucked by something
else, and so the Pigs be robbed of their milk. Whereupon he
resolved to watch till he found out the Matter: and, having placed
himself conveniently for that purpose, at last he saw a black Four
footed Creature, like a Pole Cat, come and beat away the pigs, and
having a pitchfork in his Hand, he ran the Prongs into the Thigh of it,
and ran it to the ground. Yet it struggled so as to get off from him at
last. There were some Neighbours not far off, but they saw no such
creature, but saw a Wench go away, and that Blood fell from her as
she went: whereupon they searched her, and found her so
Wounded, as the Man said he had wounded the thing which he
found Sucking: And, thereupon, she was Apprehended and Tryed at
Gloucester Assizes, where this Matter was given in Evidence against
her.’
 CHAPTER XVIII.
A Case of Vomiting Stones, etc., at Evesham—Anne Bodenham—
Julian Cox—Elizabeth Styles—Rose Cullender and Amy Duny.

Baxter, in his ‘Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits,’ etc. (London, 1691),

gives what he considers an indisputably authentic case of witchcraft,
as follows:
‘But the certaintest and fullest Instance of Witchcraft that ever I
knew, I shall here give you in the words of others: Only adding that
about twenty years ago, at the time it was doing, my worthy and
dear Friend, Mr. George Hopkins, the then Faithful Minister of the
Gospel at Evesham, told it me himself, and told me of their Care and
Watchfulness, to see that there were no Fraud committed in it. And
the Witch was hanged at Worcester, and the Woman herself is yet
living in Evesham, and the thing never there doubted of: But, having
occasion lately to instance the fact against some Unbelievers, I sent
to Evesham, to a Godly, Credible Friend to send me word, whether
any doubt had, in these years past, risen concerning it, and to send
me some of the Flint Stones which were voided by the Girl; who sent
me word, that there were no doubt of the thing, and procured the
now Minister of the Place to write me the Narrative which I here
subjoin. And he sent me One stone, about the breadth of a small
Groat, and the thickness of a Half-crown, which, he said, was all that
is there kept of them, taken by the Major’s Wife her self, and kept by
her, and, therefore, I must send it back again: Many had sent for the
Stones, and so many troubled the House about them, that they
threw away, or buried the rest: And Mr. Boyle told me that the Earl
of South Hampton, Lord Treasurer, for his Satisfaction, had got a
great number of them. I carried this about me, a quarter of a year,
and then sent it home. But that which I chiefly inform the Reader of,
is, that the thing was so long in doing, and so Famous, and so many
Pious, Understanding Persons minded it, that suspition of Fraud was
by their Diligence avoided.
‘The Narrative as lately sent me from most Credible Persons in
Evesham, is as followeth:
‘About the Month of April 1652 Mary, the daughter of Edward Ellins,
of the Burrough of Evesham, in the County of Worcester, Gardner,
then about nine or ten years old, went in the fields on a Saturday,
with some other Children, to gather Cowslips, and, finding in a Ditch
by the way-side, at the said Town’s end, one Catherine Huxley, a
single Woman, aged then about forty years, the Children called her
Witch, and took up stones to throw at her, the said Mary also called
her Witch, and took up a stone, but was so affrighted that she could
not throw it at her; then they all run away from her, and the said
Mary being hindmost, this Huxley said to her (Ellins you Shall have
enough stones in you.) Whereupon Mary fell that day very ill, and
continued so weak and Languishing that her Friends feared she
would not recover; but, about a Month after, she began to void
stones by the urinary passages, and some little urine came away
from her; also, when she voided any stone, the stone she voided
was heard by those that were by her, to drop into the Pot or Basin;
and she had most grievous pains in her Back and Reins, like the
pricking of Pins. The number of the stones she voided was about
eighty, some plain pebbles, some plain flints, some very small, and
some about an ounce weight. This she did for some space, (a month
or two, or there abouts) until, upon some strong suspitions of
Witchcraft, the forenamed Huxley was Apprehended, Examined and
Searched, (at whose Bed’s Head there was found several Stones
such as the said Mary Voided) and was sent to Worcester, where, at
the Summer Assizes in the said year 1652 (then at hand) she was, at
the Prosecution of the Friends of the said Mary, Condemned and
Executed: upon whose Apprehension and Commitment, Mary ceased
to void any more stones; but, for a while, voided much blackish and
muddy Sand, and also, in short time, perfectly recovered, and is yet
living in the Town, in good and honest Repute, and hath been many
years Marryed, and hath had seven Children; but never voided any
stones since, nor been troubled with the pain fore mentioned.
Abundance of people yet living, know the Substance of this to be
true, and her Mother in Law (since dead) kept the stones till she was
tired with the frequent Resort of people to see them, and the said
Mary, and to hear the Relation of the matter, and beg the stones;
(for though many offered Money for them, yet she always refused it,
nor did they ever take any, but it cost them much upon the Girl, and
the Prosecution of the said Huxley) and then she buried them in her
Garden. Edward Ellins, the Father of the said Mary, is also yet living,
and a Man of honest Repute, and utterly free (as is also the said
Mary, and all the rest of her Friends) from the least Suspition of any
Fraud or Cheat in the whole business: This was known to hundreds
of People in the said Town, and parts Adjacent, and many of them,
yet living, are ready to attest to the truth of it.’
In the case of Anne Bodenham,[50] which is too long and intricate to
give even a résumé of, we have some entirely new features,
partaking more of the magician than the witch. She lived at
Fisherton-Auger, Wilts, was a married woman, and at the time of her
malpractices kept a small elementary school. She was considered a
‘cunning,’ or ‘wise,’ woman, and was resorted to by the people round
about, for consultation as to the recovery of lost or stolen property,
and, according to this pamphlet, her doings were marvellous. The
first case records a woman going to consult her as to the loss of
some gold money.
‘The Witch put on her Spectacles, and, demanding seven shillings of
the Maid, which she received, she opened three Books, in which
there seemed to be severall pictures, and amongst the rest, the
picture of the Devill, to the Maid’s appearance, with his Cloven feet
and Claws; after the Witch had looked over the book, she brought a
round green glass, which glass she layd down on one of the books,
upon some picture therein, and rubbed the glass, and then took up
the book with the glass upon it, and held it up against the Sun, and
bid the Maid come and see who they were that she could shew in
that glass, and the Maid, looking in the glass, saw the shape of
many persons, and what they were doing of in her Master’s house,
in particular, shewed Mistriss Elizabeth Rosewel standing in her
Mistriss Chamber, looking out of the Window with her hands in her
sleeves, and another walking alone in her Master’s Garden, one
other standing in a room within the kitchen, one other standing in a
matted room of her Masters, against the window, with her Apron in
her hand, and shewed others drinking, with glasses of Beer in their
hands. After the Witches shewing this to the Maid, she then bad her
go home; which, when she came home, she asked the people (she
so saw in the Witches glass) what they had been doing while she
had been wanting, and by their answers to her, she found that they
had been doing what she saw they were in the glass: and the Maid
relating this to Elizabeth Rousewel, she replyed, that Mistriss
Boddenham (meaning the said Witch) was either a Witch, or a
woman of God.’
She was also able to raise devils, and had several at her command,
Beelzebub, Tormentor, Satan, and Lucifer, and one scene with them
is thus described: ‘And, presently, the back Door of the house flying
open, there came five spirits, as the Maid supposed, in the likeness
of ragged Boys, some bigger than others, and ran about the house,
where she had drawn the Staff, and the Witch threw down upon the
ground Crumbs of Bread, which the Spirits picked up, and leapt over
the Pan of Coals oftentimes, which she set in the middest of the
circle, and a Dog and a Cat of the Witches danced with them; and,
after some time, the Witch looked again in her book, and threw
some great white seeds on the ground, which the said Spirits picked
up, and so, in a short time, the wind was layd, and the Witch, going
forth at her back Door, the Spirits vanished.’
But she also dabbled in poisoning: ‘And in a short time after, Mistress
Rosewel sent her again to the Witch, to know of her when the day
should be, that Mistris Goddard should be poysoned, and delivered
her eight shillings to give the Witch; so the Maid went again to the
Witch accordingly, and gave her the eight shillings, and the Witch
replyed she could not tell her then, but gave the Maid one shilling,
and bid her go to an Apothecary, and buy some white Arsenick, and
bring it to her to prevent it, which the Maid did, and carried it to the
Witch, who said to her she would take it and burn it, to prevent the
poysoning, but she burnt it not, as the Maid could see, at all....
‘The next day following, the Maid was sent again to the Witch, to get
some example shewen upon the Gentlewoman that should procure
the poyson, upon which the Maid went again to the Witch, and told
her for what she was sent. Then the Witch made a Circle, as
formerly, and set her pan of Coles, as formerly, and burnt something
that stank extremely, and took her book and Glass, as before is
related, and said Beelzebub, Tormentor, Lucifer, and Satan, appear!
And then appeared five Spirits as she conceived, in the shapes of
little ragged Boyes, which the Witch commanded to appear, and go
along with the Maid to a meadow at Wilton, which the Witch shewed
in the Glass, and there to gather Vervine and Dill, and, forthwith, the
ragged Boys ran away before the Maid, and she followed them to
the said meadow; and, when they came thither the ragged Boys
looked about for the Herbs, and removed the Snow in two or three
places, before they could find any; and, at last, they found some,
and brought it away with them, and then the Maid and the Boys
returned back to the Witch, and found her in the Circle paring her
Nayls, and then she took the said Herbs, and dryed the same, and
made powder of some, and dried the leaves of other, and threw
Bread to the Boys, and they eat and danced as formerly; and then
the Witch, reading in a book, they vanished away. And the Witch
gave the Maid in one paper the powder, in another the leaves, and in
the third, the paring of the Nayls; all which the Maid was to give to
her Mistress. The powder was to put in the young Gentlewomens
Mistriss Sarah and Mistriss Ann Goddard’s drink or broth, to rot their
Guts in their Bellies; the leaves to rub about the rims of the Pot, to
make their Teeth fall out of their Heads; and the parings of the Nayls
to make them mad and drunk. And the Witch likewise told the Maid,
that she must tell her Mistriss, and the rest, that, when they did give
it to them, they must cross their Breasts, and then say, In the name
of our Lord Jesu Christ, grant that this may be, and that they must
say the Creed backward and forward.’
The death of this wicked woman was worthy of her life: ‘Afterwards,
she fell into a rage, and wished for a Knife: she said she would run it
into her heart-blood. Being replyed unto by some, Oh Mris
Boddenham, you would not offer to doe such wickednesse? would
you? She swore by the Name of God, but she would, had she but a
Knife. She then went forth to the place of her Execution, where a
numerous company were spectators; and, as she went along
towards the gallows, by every house she went by, she went with a
small piece of silver in her hand, calling for Beer, and was very
passionate when denyed. One of the men that guarded her on the
way, told her that Mr. Sheriff would not let her be buryed under the
gallows, upon which she railed at the man extremely that told her
so, and said she would be buryed there. When she came to the
place of execution, she went immediately to goe up the Ladder, but
she was pulled back again and restrained: I then pressed her to
confesse what she promised me she would, now before she dyed,
but she refused to say anything. Being asked whether she desired
the prayers of any of the people, she answered, she had as many
prayers already, as she intended or desired to have, but cursed
those that detained her from her death, and was importunate to goe
up the Ladder, but was restrained for a while, to see whether she
would confesse any thing, but she would not. They then let her goe
up the Ladder, and when the rope was about her neck, she went to
turn herself off, but the Executioner stayed her, and desired her to
forgive him: she replyed. Forgive thee? a pox on thee, turn me off:
which were the last words she spake. She was never heard, all the
while she was at the place of Execution, to pray one word, or desire
any others to pray for her, but the contrary.’
‘Julian Cox, aged 70 years, was indicted at Taunton in
Somersetshire, about summer assizes, 1663, before Judge Archer,
then judge of assize there, for witchcraft.[51]
‘For the proof of the first particular. The first witness was a
huntsman, who swore that he went out with a pack of hounds to
hunt a hare, and not far off from Julian Cox’s house, he, at last,
started a hare. The Dogs hunted her very close, and the third ring
hunted her in view, till, at last, the huntsman, perceiving the hare
almost spent, and making towards a great bush, he ran on the other
side of the bush to take her up, and preserve her from the dogs;
but, as soon as he laid hands on her, it proved to be Julian Cox, who
had her head grovelling on the ground. He, knowing her, was
affrighted, so that the hair on his head stood on end, and he spake
to her, and asked her what brought her there? But she was so far
out of breath that she could not make him any answer: his dogs also
came up, with full cry, to recover the game, and smelt at her, and so
left off hunting any farther. And the huntsman, with the dogs, went
home presently, sadly affrighted.
* * * * * * * *
‘Thirdly, Another swore that Julian passed by his yard while his
beasts were in milking, and stooping down, scored upon the ground
for some small time. During which time his cattle ran mad, and some
ran their heads against trees, and some of them died speedily:
Whereupon, concluding they were bewitched, he was, after, advised
to this experiment, to find out the Witch, viz. to cut off the ears of
the bewitched beasts, and burn them; and that the witch would be
in misery, and could not rest till they were plucked out. Which he
tried; and while they were burning, Julian Cox came into the house,
raging and scolding, that they had abused her without a cause; but
she went presently to the fire, and took the ears which were burning
and then she was quiet.
* * * * * * * *
‘The prisoner was called for up to the next bar in the court, and
demanded if she could say the Lord’s Prayer? She said, she could,
and went over the prayer readily till she came to that petition. Then
she said And lead us into temptation, or, And lead us not into no
temptation, but could not say, And lead us not into temptation,
though she was directed to say it after one that repeated it to her,
distinctly, but she could not repeat it otherwise than is expressed
already; though tried to do it near half a score times in the open
Court. After all which the Jury found her guilty, and, judgement
having been given, within three or four days, she was executed
without any confession of the fact.’
‘Elizabeth Styles, her confession of her Witchcraft January 26 and 30
and Feb. 7, 1664. before Robert Hunt Esqre.[52] She then confessed,
That the Devil, about ten years since, appeared to her in the shape
of a handsome man, and after, of a black dog. That he promised her
money, and that she should live gallantly, and have the pleasure of
the world for 12 Years, if she would with her own blood, sign his
paper, which was to give her soul to him, and observe his laws, and
that he might suck her blood. This, after four solicitations, the
examinant promised him to do. Upon which, he pricked the fourth
finger of her right Hand, between the middle and upper joint (where
the sign, at the Examination, remained) with a drop or two of blood,
she signed the paper with an O. Upon this, the Devil gave her
Sixpence, and vanished with the paper.
‘That, since, he hath appeared to her in the shape of a man, and did
so on Wednesday seven night past: but more usually, he appears in
the likeness of a dog, or cat, or a Fly like a Miller; in which last
(shape) he usually sucks her on the Poll, about four of the Clock in
the morning; and did so Jan. 27, and that it usually is pain to her to
be so sucked.
‘That when she hath a desire to do harm, she calls the Spirit by the
name of Robin; to whom, when he appeareth, she useth these
words, O Satan, give me my purpose. She then tells him that he
should so appear to her, was part of her contract with him.
‘That about a Month ago, he appearing, she desired him to torment
one Elizabeth Hill, and to thrust thorns unto her Flesh, which he
promised to do, and the next Time he appeared, he told her he had
done it.
‘That a little above a month since, this Examinant, Alice Duke, Ann
Bishop, and Mary Penny, met about nine of the clock, in the night, in
the common near Trister Gate, where they met a man in black
Cloaths, with a little band, to whom they did courtesie and due
observance; and the examinant verily believes that this was the
Devil. At that time Alice Duke brought a picture in Wax, which was
for Elizabeth Hill: The man in black took it in his Arms, anointed it’s
Forehead, and said, I baptize thee with this oyl, and used some
other words. He was God father, and the examinant and Anne
Bishop, God mothers; they called it Elizabeth or Bess. Then the man
in black, this examinant, Anne Bishop, and Alice Duke, stuck thorns
into several places of the Neck, Hand wrist, Fingers, and other parts
of the said picture. After which they had wine, cakes and roast meat,
(all brought by the man in black,) which they did eat and drink; they
danced and were merry, were bodily there, and their cloaths.
‘... She saith, before they are carried to their meetings, they anoint
their foreheads and hand wrists with Oyl the Spirit brings them,
(which smells raw) and then they are carried in a very short time;
using these words as they pass, Thout, tout a tout, tout, throughout
and about; and when they go off from their meetings, they say,
Rentum Tormentum.
‘That, at their first meeting the man in black bids them welcome,
and they all make low obeysance to him, and he delivers some wax
candles, like little torches, which they give back again at parting.
When they anoint themselves, they use a long form of words, and
when they stick thorns in the picture of any they would torment,
they say, A pox on thee, I’ll spite thee.
‘That, at every meeting, before the Spirit vanishes away, he appoints
the next meeting, place and time; and at his departure there is a
foul smell. At their meeting, they have usually Wine or good beer,
cakes, meat or the like; they eat and drink really; when they meet in
their bodies, dance also, and have musick. The man in black sits at
the hither End, and Anne Bishop usually sat next to him: He useth
some words before meat, and none after; his voice is audible, but
very low.
‘That they are sometimes carried in their bodies and their clothes,
sometimes without, and, as the examinant thinks, only their spirits
are present; yet they know one another.... The man in black
sometimes plays on a pipe or cittern, and the company dances: at
last the Devil vanisheth, and all are carried to their several homes, in
a short space. At their parting, they say, Hey boy, merry meet, merry
part.’
The story of the trial of Rose Cullender and Amy Duny at Bury St.
Edmund’s, before Sir Matthew Hale in 1664, has been often told, but
in one particular it differs from other cases of witchcraft.
‘Diana Bocking Sworn and Examined, Deposed. That she lived in the
same Town of Leystoff, and that her said Daughter having been
formerly Afflicted with swooning fits, recovered well of them, and so
continued for a certain time; and, upon the First of February last,
she was taken, also, with great pain in her Stomach, like pricking
with Pins; and, afterwards, fell into swooning fitts, and so continued
till the Deponents coming to the Assizes, having during the same
time taken little or no food, but daily vomiting crooked Pins; and,
upon Sunday last, raised Seven Pins. And, whilst her fits were upon
her, she would spread both her Arms, with her hands open, and use
postures as if she catched at something, and would instantly close
her hands again; which being immediately forced open, they found
several Pins diversely crooked, but could neither see nor perceive
how, or in what manner they were conveyed thither. At another
time, the same Jane being in another of her fitts, talked as if she
were discoursing with some persons in the Room (though she would
give no answer, nor seem to take notice of any person then present)
and would in like manner cast abroad her Arms, saying, I will not
have it, I will not have it; and at last, she said, Then I will have it,
and so waving her Arm with her hand open, she would presently
close the same; which, instantly forced open, they found in it a Lath-
Nail.’
The two witches were executed, neither confessing.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Case of Mary Hill of Beckington—The Confession of Alice Huson
—Florence Newton of Youghal—Temperance Lloyd (or Floyd), Mary
Trembles, and Susannah Edwards.

But this case of vomiting pins is as nothing compared with the

following, which is taken from Baxter’s ‘Certainty of the World of
Spirits,’ etc.:
‘Mr. John Humphreys brought Mr. May Hill to me, with a Bag of
Irons, Nails and Brass, vomited by the Girl. I keep some of them to
shew: Nails about three or four inches long, double crooked at the
end, and pieces of old Brass doubled, about an Inch broad, and two
or three Inches long, with crooked edges. I desired him to give me
the Case in Writing, which he hath done as followeth. Any one that
is incredulous, may now, at Beckington, receive Satisfaction from
him, and from the Maid her self.
‘In the Town of Beckington, by Froome in Somersetshire, liveth Mary
Hill, a Maid of about Eighteen years of Age, who, having lived very
much in the Neglect of her Duty to God, was some time before
Michaelmas last past, was Twelve-Month, taken very ill, and, being
seized with violent Fits, began to Vomit up about two hundred
crooked Pins. This so Stupendous an Accident, drew a numerous
Concourse of People to see her: To whom, when in her Fits, she did
constantly affirm, that she saw against the Wall of the Room
wherein she lay, an old Woman, named Elizabeth Currier, who,
thereupon, being Apprehended by a Warrant from a Justice of
Peace, and Convicted by the Oaths of two Persons, was committed
to the County Goal.
‘About a Fortnight after, she began to Vomit up Nails, Pieces of Nails,
Pieces of Brass, Handles of Spoons, and so continued to do for the
space of six Months and upwards. And, in her fits, she said there did
appear to her an old Woman, Named Margaret Coombes, and one
Ann Moore; who, also, by a Warrant from two Justices of the Peace,
were Apprehended and brought to the Sessions, held at Brewton, for
the County; and, by the Bench, committed to the County Gaol. The
former of these dyed as soon as she came into Prison: the other two
were tryed at Taunton Assizes, by my Lord Chief Justice Holt, and for
want of Evidence, were acquitted by the Jury. The Persons bound
over to give Evidence, were Susanna Belton, and Ann Holland, who,
upon their Oaths, Deposed, that they hookt out of the Navel of the
said Mary Hill, as she lay in a dead fit, crooked Pins, small Nails, and
small pieces of Brass, which were produced in Court before the
Judge; and, from him, handed to the Jury to look upon them.
Whereupon Mr. Francis Jesse, and Mr. Christopher Brewer declared,
that they had seen the said Mary Hill, to Vomit up, at several times,
Crooked Pins, Nails, and Pieces of Brass, which they, also, produced
in open Court; and to the end, they might be ascertained it was no
Imposture, they declared they searched her Mouth with their Fingers
before she did Vomit.
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com