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"Hero" has no feminine gender in the age of heroes.
--M. I. Finley
[¶3.] The daunting judgment of a distinguished ancient historian that "`hero' has no feminine gender in the age of heroes" might appear to call into question the very phenomenon I propose to study here: heroines in ancient Greek myth and cult.1 If there is no word for the female counterpart to the hero in the earliest times, how can we speak of the myths and cults of heroines without being anachronistic? How can we speak coherently of heroines at all?
[¶4.] Based on his observation that no word for heroine is attested in archaic Greek, Finley concludes that there is no female counterpart to the hero, that heroism, for the Greeks of the archaic period, is impossible for a woman. He makes this observation within the context of Homeric epic, where it is perhaps true. We must not allow this to deter us, however, given that the object of our study is not only heroism but rather the entire range of cultural meanings and practices associated with the myths and cults of heroines. I will argue, furthermore, that the "feminine gender" of hero is recoverable, if not in Homer, then in other archaic texts.
[¶5.] Homeric epic is famous for its silence on the topic of hero cult, but even so it can be made to yield some evidence. The opinion of earlier scholars such as Wilamowitz, Rohde, and Farnell, that hero cult was unknown to Homer or irreconcilable with the worldview of the poems, has been effectively challenged.2 The most explicit references to cult are in the Catalogue of Ships in the Iliad, which mentions the tomb of Aipytos (2.604) and offerings to Erechtheus in the temple of Athena (2.546-51), but hints of cult may be found in other passages.3 Nagy finds traces of hero cult in the treatment of the dead warrior Sarpedon in Iliad 16, suggesting that the tradition preserves knowledge even of practices that cannot be made explicit.4 It has recently been argued that Homeric epic was directly responsible for the diffusion of hero cult, but this claim has not been universally accepted.5 The generic requirements of epic limit its usefulness for an archaeology of hero cult, but it has a few things to tell us, not only about heroes, but about heroines as well. Other archaic texts are fortunately more forthcoming, and archaeological evidence shows that heroines are included in some of the earliest manifestations of hero cult.6 The shrines of Pelops and Hippodameia at Olympia may be of great antiquity, early hero-reliefs show hero and heroine pairs, and a dedication to Helen is perhaps the earliest known Laconian inscription, dating from the second quarter of the seventh century.7
[¶6.] The difficulties posed by these kinds of early evidence must be confronted, insofar as they call into question the category of heroine as the female equivalent of hero. In the absence of a word for heroine in the earliest texts, we are forced to extrapolate, looking on the one hand toward figures such as the famous women (called "wives and daughters of the best men") whom Odysseus meets in the Underworld in Odyssey 11, and on the other hand to some of the more powerful female figures of myth, who in fact share many characteristics with male heroes. But "wives and daughters of the best men" may seem to be less than heroes, while figures like Ino-Leukothea, or Helen, for whom we have some of the earliest evidence, are at times worshiped as goddesses (theoi) and hence seem to be more than heroines.8 The category of heroine as female counterpart to the hero, poised neatly between mortal and immortal beings, seems threatened.
[¶7.] Despite Homeric reluctance to speak of hero cult, there are clear epic references to heroes who transcend their heroic status. The Odyssey refers to one of the most famous of all heroes, Herakles, in a way that emphasizes not his status as a heroized mortal, but his apotheosis.9
And after him I saw the powerful Herakles,
or rather, his phantom; he himself among the immortal gods
enjoys the feast, and has as his wife lovely-ankled Hebe,
child of great Zeus and golden-sandled Hera.
(Odyssey 11.601-4)
[¶10.] Strikingly similar treatment is accorded Leukothea, the divine apotheosis of the heroine Ino:
But then Kadmos' daughter, slender-ankled Ino, saw him--
Leukothea, who once was a mortal endowed with human speech
but now deep in the sea, has a share of honor among the gods.
(Odyssey 5.333-35)
[¶13.] Although the reference to Herakles' phantom has been treated by some as an interpolation, no one has ever challenged the authenticity of the lines about Ino. We can conclude from this that Homeric epic (or at least the Odyssey) has no objection to speaking of heroes--once they have become gods, admittedly a rather exclusive company. The other conclusion to be drawn is that the poet of the Odyssey is at least as willing to speak of divinized heroines, and to speak of them in a way that leaves no doubt about their originally human status. By the some token, the cults of heroines are not likely to have been any more foreign to the Homeric tradition than the cults of heroes.
[¶14.] The phrase "wives and daughters of the best men (aristoi)," which introduces the catalogue of heroines in the Nekyia (Underworld) section of the Odyssey (11.227), provides another clue. The women, who include Alkmene, wife of Amphitryon (266), and Ariadne, daughter of Minos (321-2), are identified by their male relatives, not only husbands and fathers, but also sons (e.g., Herakles 267-68). What is more, all of these male relations--fathers, husbands, sons--are heroes of myth and cult. As Nagy has shown, being "the best" is not merely a characteristic of heroes, but their defining feature. The heroes are the aristoi, the best, and aristos is the functional equivalent of heros.10 To see the relevance of this to our elusive heroines, we may now turn to that other more extensive, although fragmentary, catalogue of female mythic figures, the Hesiodic Catalogue of Heroines.
Now sing about the race of women, sweet-voiced
Olympian Muses, daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus,
sing of those who were the best of their time
who loosened their girdles,
mingling in union with the gods
(frg. 1 Merkelbach-West)11
[¶17.] The poet begins by asking the muses to sing of the gunaikon phulon, the "tribe of women." In the fragmentary lines that follow, these gunaikes are described as "the best of their time" (hai tot' aristai) who "had intercourse with the gods" (misgomenai theosin). In other words, they are not ordinary women, but the same wives and daughters (and mothers) of heroes encountered by Odysseus in the Nekyia, along with others of similar mettle.12 The poet of the Catalogue, however, in referring to them as aristai, has given these figures an appellation that clarifies their heroic status. The word aristai shows that they are the counterparts of the heroic aristoi of the Homeric poems. A more complete examination of the linguistic field shows that Finley did not look far enough. Here, then, is the "feminine gender" of hero in the age of heroes.
[¶18.] The troublesome indeterminacy found in the earliest texts gives way by the early fifth century. By the time of Pindar at the latest, heroine is clearly a recognizable category. Pindar's use of the word herois (êrôis), in an ode written for Thrasydaios of Thebes, is generally taken to be the earliest extant example of a female equivalent of heros (êrôs). Thrasydaios, according to the scholia, won two victories, one in the boy's footrace of 474, and one twenty years later. Most commentators assign this ode to the earlier victory. The word herois (gen. pl. êrôidôn, Pythian 11.7) is unlikely to be a Pindaric invention, especially as it appears in an invocation, generally a conservative element in Greek poetry. A fragment of the Boiotian poet Corinna (PMG 664b = Campbell 664b) proclaims her subject as the "merits (or valor) of heroes and heroines" (eirôôn aretas / kheirôadôn).13 If she was indeed a contemporary of Pindar, as the ancient tradition has it, this is further evidence for the diffusion of a female form of heros (at least in Boiotia) by the first quarter of the fifth century.14 Indeed, the fragment from Corinna may be even older than the Pindaric ode, even if we do not accept the later date for the victory of Thrasydaios which it celebrates.
[¶19.] We may also approach the problem of the heroine by examining the criteria for establishing the status of male heroes. For a male hero, in the absence of archaeological evidence such as a named dedicatory inscription, we rely on textual evidence for myth or cult. Heroes are generally considered to be those who have one or more of the following attributes: heroic or divine parentage; a close relationship--erotic, hieratic, or antagonistic--with a divinity in myth; ritual connection with a divinity, such as a place in the sanctuary or a role in the cult; a tradition or evidence of a heroon (hero-shrine) or tomb, sacrificial offerings, or other ritual observance. If we consider those figures generally numbered among male heroes, we will find these criteria to cover most instances. The next step is to see whether we can apply the same criteria to heroines.
[¶20.] As a test, let us consider some figures for whom we have the kind of archaeological evidence we spoke of above, and see whether the other criteria apply. Both Herakles and Helen have divine parentage, and both have ample evidence of cult.15 Hyakinthos and Semele are united erotically in myth with divinities, and in each case there is the requisite cult evidence.16 These two figures could fit equally well into our third category, that of ritual connection with a god, but we can supply other examples, such as Hippolytos and Iphigeneia.17 This demonstrates the degree to which the various features of heroic myth and cult coincide, regardless of the gender of the heroized figure. Other heroes and heroines languish in comparative obscurity, and in these instances we do not have the evidence on which to base firm conclusions. We can, nonetheless, learn something about heroines by extrapolating even in circumstances in which we have less than complete documentation.
[¶21.] If "heroine" is clearly a recognized category by the early fifth century, it is also true that the category "hero" is an extremely expansive and inclusive one, which changes through time. The term heros, ostensibly more stable and tangible by virtue of its impeccable Homeric lineage, proves scarcely easier to define than its linguistically more elusive female counterpart. To put our problem in perspective, let us examine attempts by several scholars, all of whom have made considerable contributions to the field, to define hero. For Brelich, the hero is "a being venerated in cult and remembered in the myths of the ancient Greeks."18 That he felt it necessary to defend this definition, stressing the essentially religious character of myth, was a reaction to prevailing tendencies in the study of Greek religion at the time. Kirk offers a more hesitant definition: heroes are "men who had a god or goddess as one parent or who at least walked the earth when such figures existed."19 With time, the balance has shifted. Unlike Brelich, who is concerned to restore myth to its rightful place in the study of religion, Kirk, writing more than a decade later, takes the importance of myth for granted but is somewhat apologetic about cult, and about the fact that many of the heroes have only the most tangential relation to it.20 Burkert recognizes two separate senses of "hero," the first being a character in epic, and the second, "a deceased person who exerts from his grave a power for good or evil and who demands appropriate honour."21 This two-part definition corresponds to the two parts of Brelich's formulation, but the substitution of "epic" for the broader category of "myth" is surprising, given the importance of myth in Burkert's own work.
[¶22.] If heroines, while retaining the right to be called by that name, deviate in various ways from standards of male heroism, it is also true that heroes themselves frequently do so. If female heroized figures frequently slip across the border into divinity, male heroes occasionally do so as well. In other words, although the mass of heroines act or react in ways that deviate from the male heroic norm, nothing they do--allowing for biological difference--is outside the range of possible behavior for heroes.
[¶23.] In what follows, I adopt a flexible definition of "heroine," which corresponds to Brelich's two-tiered definition of "hero." While I insist on the integrity of the category of hero/ine as a distinct religious and mythic phenomenon, I do not consider it to be a privileged one, and in this I follow the usage of the ancient Greeks themselves. While for the purposes of my study, I will admit to finding those heroines who figure in both cult and myth the most interesting, we do not always know who they are. For this reason, the operating definition must be the more inclusive one of "female figure in epic, myth, or cult." As we saw in attempting to bring the heroes of Homer into relation with the practice of hero cult, there is some overlap, and there would likely be more if both archaeological data and literary sources were more complete. Since there is no way of knowing what we are missing, it seems unwise to exclude anything that might allow patterns to emerge. To prevent this inclusivity from becoming imprecision, I will indicate the limits of available evidence for each heroine, signaling those places where conjecture has been allowed to exceed it.
[¶25.] All words used to indicate the female equivalent of heros (êrôs) are in fact derived from this masculine form, which appears in the earliest extant Greek literature. Although in Homer it refers exclusively to living beings, in Hesiod it already implies a recipient of local honor after death (Works and Days 159-72). As Chantraine notes, the antiquity of the cult of heroes is shown by the form ti-ri-se-ro-ei found on a Mycenaean tablet, which would correspond to *triseros, an otherwise unattested form meaning "the very ancient hero."22
[¶26.] Various etymologies for heros have been proposed. Attempts to connect it with Latin servare (to preserve, protect) based on a postulated early Greek form *êrô-, are called into question by the discovery of the Mycenaean form mentioned above, which shows no trace of the expected w-sound. Chantraine considers more plausible the etymology favored by Pötscher, from the root *ser- (or perhaps *ier-), which would connect it with the goddess Hera, as well as with the noun hora (ôra), "time, hour, ripeness," and the adjective horaios, (ôraios), "timely, ripe, marriageable." Pötscher argues, based on this etymology, that the hero is the young divine consort of the goddess, with whom he shares the quality of being "ripe for marriage."23 O'Brien emphasizes the connection with the seasons (Horai) and the hero as one "who belongs to the goddess of the seasons."24 Householder and Nagy argue that the hero's association with goddesses, and specifically with Hera, is signaled not only by the etymology of heros, but also by the language of epic itself.25
[¶27.] The feminine form of this word appears for the first time relatively late and is never stabilized in Greek. As mentioned above, the earliest form, êrôis, -idos (herois, heroidos), found in Pindar (Pyth. 11.7) and Corinna (PMG 664b), remains the most common. This form also gives its name to a Delphic festival in honor of Semele.26 The names of festivals are usually of great antiquity, which suggests, but cannot prove, that the word predated Pindar by many generations.27 The form êrôinê (heroine) appears in Aristophanes, Theocritus, Callimachus, and others, as well as in various inscriptions. In the Hellenistic period, the form êrôissa (heroissa) is particularly popular.28 This form is used to invoke the intriguing "Founder Heroines" (Hrôiisôn Ktistôn, IG 9.2.1129) on an urn at Volos in Northern Greece. In addition to these, there are many other variations.29
[¶28.] This indeterminacy of form and the derivative nature of all words in Greek for "heroine" or "female heroized person" have led some, like Finley, to doubt the existence of heroines as a recognizable class. It can, however, be shown, as I have argued, that despite these linguistic variations, a coherent concept of the heroine can already be identified in the earliest Greek texts. The "wives and daughters of the best men" whom Odysseus meets in the Underworld, and the mothers of heroes whom Zeus lists among his conquests, as well as the women of the Hesiodic Catalogue are as much heroines as Achilleus, Odysseus, and Perseus are heroes. And once the word herois has entered the language, its use accords with expectation. Pindar, who uses it to refer to the daughters of Kadmos and Harmonia, addresses these heroines not only as members of a heroic family, but also as powerful beings worth invoking in a sacral context.
[¶29.] Nonetheless, words for "heroine" appear very rarely in classical authors. Aristophanes uses the word êrônai (heroinai) to refer to the Clouds, but his meaning is unclear.30 Epigenes, the writer of Middle Comedy, entitled one of his plays Heroine, but the few remaining fragments tell us nothing much about it.31 Later authors who use these words include Plutarch, Lucian, and Strabo. Eventually, the terms herois or heroine come to mean nothing more pronounced than "female protagonist or figure in epic." This is the case for Eustathius, who uses them generously in his commentaries on the Iliad and Odyssey. In this, his usage parallels the use of the word heros by the epic poets themselves. Eventually, heros and heroine become standard terms for the commemorated dead, frequently appearing in Roman funerary inscriptions of the imperial period.32
[¶30.] The same carelessness of usage is visible in the various titles given the Hesiodic catalogue. Although it was usually known as the Gunaikon Katalogos (Catalogue of Women), the Suda cites it as the Gunaikon heroinon katalogos and Tzetzes as the heroike genealogia, "the heroic genealogy," an ambiguous phrase that leaves some doubt about whose "heroism" is at issue.33
[¶32.] Where does one go to look for evidence of heroines? The sources consist of material remains--inscriptions, vase paintings, archaeological finds--as well as a great variety of literary sources. These writings range in date from the late eighth or early seventh century B.C.E. to the sixth century C.E. and include the disparate genres of epic, tragedy, guidebook, and lexicon. Not only is our evidence varied in kind, but it also concerns two partly separate matters: the stories told about heroines and heroes, and the cult practices enacted in their honor. The definition of myth and its relation to cult are difficult problems of long standing, which this study does not pretend to solve. In the material at hand, which deals with both myth and cult, the two will frequently be seen to be inextricably entwined. Nonetheless, there is a distinction to be made.
[¶33.] One way of expressing this distinction would be to borrow the terms applied by Jane Harrison to the Eleusinian mysteries, legomena, "things said," and dromena, "things done."34 Inscriptions tell us something about the dromena, as do archaeological sites, when we know how to read them. Our written sources generally concentrate on the legomena, the stories told about gods and heroic figures, which constitute the corpus of Greek myth. It is important to keep in mind, however, that much of what we know about ancient Greek cults and cultic practice comes from written texts, and that in these texts the distinction between myth and cult is frequently pushed to its limits. Here, in the grey area between myths of heroic exploits and descriptions of contemporary cultic practice, we find foundation myths attributing the establishment of these very cults to the heroes and heroines themselves. Thus we have not only myth that may or may not be the reflex of cultic practice, but also myth about that cultic practice, which strives to place it within the heroic context. In this way the hero acts as a pivotal figure, at times being heroized as a direct result of a role in the founding of a divine cult (as was the tragedian Sophocles).35
[¶34.] Sources for the myths of heroines range over many centuries, creating considerable difficulties of interpretation. Most important for this study are Homeric epic and the Homeric Hymns; the Hesiodic corpus, especially the Theogony and the Catalogue of Women; lyric poetry, especially Stesichorus and Pindar; tragedy, especially Euripides; Plutarch; Pausanias; Apollodorus; and Antoninus Liberalis. Ancient commentaries known as scholia provide much useful information. Some valuable citations come also from Byzantine and Alexandrian reference works from the fifth to the twelfth centuries C.E.36 The earliest of these texts, by virtue of their antiquity, may be presumed to provide us with early versions, but the converse is not necessarily true, that later texts must give us only late versions.37 Pindar, for example, frequently uses unfamiliar versions of myths, but these apparent innovations often turn out on further investigation to be earlier traditions he has chosen to revive.38 Euripides, a known innovator, may play fast and loose with the plot but usually seems to conform to contemporary practices when he places an aetiology in the mouth of the deus ex machina at the end of so many of his plays.39 A source like Pausanias reports both on the monuments he sees and on the local traditions and cult practices surrounding them, both the legomena and the dromena. That he is in fact a reliable witness about what he has seen has by now been well established.40 From this, and from the care he takes to detail his own and other peoples' disagreement with these traditions, we can assume that he is equally reliable about what he has heard.
[¶35.] As the ancient myths and cults become more a focus of antiquarian interest than of piety, authorial emphases change. Later sources are less likely to manipulate the material for political or moral propaganda, although there are some exceptions. (Plutarch is as much a moralist as Pindar.) On the other hand they are more likely to shape it to suit the generic requirements of the project at hand. For example, a compiler of katasterismoi will obviously prefer versions of myths in which the heroine is transformed into a star, even when there may be other traditions of greater antiquity. Such a writer may have rewritten myths to fit his requirements, on the analogy of others he knows, but even this does not render a source useless.41 The late Byzantine commentators and lexicographers are closer in years to our own time than to Homer, but they have nonetheless the benefit of a continuous tradition. Moreover, the genres of commentary and lexicon are inherently conservative, designed as they are to elucidate ancient data. Used with care, they can be illuminating.
[¶36.] The following discussions of specific sources and genres are intended both to provide a brief introduction to some texts that may not be familiar to all readers, and also to indicate my assumptions about the usefulness of these texts for the study of heroines. It includes some works used primarily as sources for the catalogue of heroines at the conclusion of this work.
[¶38.] The largest archaic source for heroines is certainly the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, also known as the Ehoiai, from the repeated phrase ê'oiê, "such a one [was] . . ." which introduces many of the heroines.42 This long (albeit fragmentary) genealogical poem, although in a class by itself, may be compared to other shorter pieces of catalogue poetry in the Homeric corpus, which are also fruitful sources.43 One of these is the catalogue of gods who mate with mortals at the end of the Theogony, long recognized as a bridge to the Ehoiai.44 The possibly interpolated, but certainly archaic, catalogue of heroines in the Nekyia (Underworld) episode of the Odyssey (11.225-332) is also of great interest, together with the scholia containing commentary by the fifth-century mythographer Pherecydes.45 In this passage Persephone sends forth the "wives and daughters of the best men" (aristêôn alokhoi . . . êde thugatres, 227) to meet Odysseus. These women are not explicitly called heroines, but neither are their male connections called heroes. Moreover, the use of the key term aristoi has its counterpart in the use of aristai (frg.1 M-W), as discussed above. Most of their stories involve an encounter with a god, and the inevitable birth of a child. In a short space, Odysseus sees fourteen or fifteen women.46 The passage reflects obvious delight in the stories for their own sake, as one might expect, considering that the narrator is none other than Odysseus himself.
[¶39.] Other comparable passages show a more purely genealogical interest, such as the brief catalogue of Zeus' erotic adventures in Iliad 14, or the Catalogue of Ships in Iliad 2, with its interest in dynastic information.47 In this passage the spheres of men and women in the heroic age achieve their greatest point of contact. The role of women is to produce the sons who will be warriors. The woman's moment of crisis in childbirth is the logical precondition of the hero's moment of crisis on the battlefield. Later in the poem, the pain of a wound suffered by Agamemnon is compared to the pain of childbirth.48 In these texts sons and fathers are important, while heroines are treated quite summarily. Nonetheless, the archaic catalogues are helpful in trying to reconstruct the "prehistory" of the heroine.
[¶40.] From these early examples, it is clear that women have a place in heroic poetry as far back as that tradition is accessible to us. These wives and daughters of heroes are important for dynastic reasons, since they provide access to the divine lineage desired by any noble family. Here "biographies" of heroines are stripped to their essentials. In the few lines allotted each woman are the kernels of the more developed myths of seduction, concealment, and disaster that will be represented on vases, staged by tragedians, and eventually collected by the writers of mythological handbooks.
[¶42.] A look at the titles not only of extant tragedies, but also of lost ones shows how important a role was played by the myths of heroines. Figures like Iphigeneia, Medea, Elektra, Helen, and others are the eponymous protagonists of familiar tragedies. Among the lost works of the tragedians are numerous plays bearing the names of heroines.49 Heroines also play an important role in plays named for the chorus or a male protagonist (e.g., Deianeira in Sophocles' Trachiniai, Phaidra in Euripides' Hippolytos). Sometimes doubt about the actual name of a lost play makes it unclear whether it was named after a female protagonist, a male protagonist, or the chorus: Aeschylus' Semele is also referred to as the Hydrophoroi, and Sophocles' Hippodameia may actually have been called the Oinomaos.50 These uncertainties point nonetheless to the importance of heroines in almost all tragedies, regardless of title. In fact, only one extant tragedy, the Philoktetes of Sophocles, has no female characters, and in many tragedies they are central.
[¶43.] While a general treatment of female characters in the Greek tragedians lies beyond the scope of this study, the female protagonists of tragedy are of interest to us insofar as they are representations of figures of myth and cult. That Greek tragedy deals almost exclusively with the myths of a few important heroic houses is well known. For our purposes, then, these works are valuable as instantiations of the myths. No myth exists in "pure form," but only in its versions--individual attempts to present, and of necessity to interpret, the themes at hand. The more innovative the poet, the farther away we may find ourselves from early mythic material. Poetic license in the plots of tragedy is not uncommon. Familiar examples are the Sophoclean Antigone, radically different from any earlier version, or Euripides' Medea, for the first time a deliberate murderer of her children.51 Neither of these mythic innovations can, however, be assigned with complete confidence to the particular tragedian, who may not have been the first to present the myth in this form. Tragic poets may also, like Pindar, choose at times to exploit an old but less-known variant of the myth in question. Still, tragedians are rarely the sources of first resort for early versions. This is not, however, to dismiss the tragic texts as of no interest for this study. One feature of tragedy that is invaluable for the study of heroine cult, and of Greek religious practice in general, is the frequent use of an aition, a brief narrative establishing some religious rite or custom, to achieve closure. These aitia are usually put in the mouth of the deus ex machina, whose function it is to resolve the tragic conflict, to predict the future, and to establish cult.52
[¶44.] As I have said above, even for a poet like Euripides, whose use of the mythic inheritance is often inventive, the treatment of cultic practice is quite another matter. These cults are in some sense the common property of all Athenians (or all Greeks, where Panhellenic cult is concerned), and a fair degree of accuracy would be demanded by the audience.53 Although Euripides uses the device of deus ex machina and cult aetiology more consistently than any other tragic poet, he is not the only one to do so.54 The ending of Aeschylus' Eumenides provides the earliest extant example of cult aetiology in tragedy, and Sophocles uses the same technique at the end of the Oidipous at Kolonos, to predict the establishment of the hero cult there. The aition most important for us is the one at the end of the Iphigeneia among the Taurians, which specifies dedications to Iphigeneia at Brauron. Other aitia of particular significance are those that close the Helen, concerning the burial of Klytemnestra and the divinity of Helen.
[¶45.] While other dramatic forms also drew on the myths of heroines, too little has survived for these to be valuable sources here. The satyr-play at the end of a trilogy often burlesqued the same myths used in the tragedies that preceded it. Aeschylus' lost Amymone, for example, was a satyr-play. Comedy as well made use of this material, although often as a parody of a particular tragedy. Aristophanes wrote a play called the Danaids, while another practitioner of Old Comedy, Plato, wrote the Europe, Io, and Nux Makra ("The Long Night," a play about Zeus' encounter with Alkmene). We also have suggestive titles by other dramatists, but the use of mythological themes is more a characteristic feature of Middle Comedy, which exists only in fragments.55 Philemon, a writer of New Comedy, seems to have continued the use of mythological themes with his Neaira and Nux, but the practice was on the wane. For visual evidence of this tradition, we can point to a comic scene of the birth of Helen on a fourth-century South Italian vase (figure 1).56
[¶47.] Figure 1: Comic scene of the birth of Helen, Apulian bell krater, c. 380-370 B.C.E. (Museo Archeologico, Bari 3899. Photograph Courtesy of Deutsches Archäologishes Institut, Rome).
[¶49.] The second century C.E. travel writer, and a major source of information for ancient cult-sites and religious customs, has a great deal to say about heroines and their role in religious tradition and practice. I have already commented on his reliability, but since he is so frequently cited throughout this study, it is worth saying more about the nature of his contribution. In writing his Description of Greece, he is mainly interested in recording monuments and other sites of interest, and the local traditions about them. (He is only interested in Greek antiquities and does not even record contemporary Roman monuments.) As he travels around, he picks up not only many local versions of myths about known figures, but also traditions about local ritual observances. These traditions typically connect a familiar myth to some feature of the local landscape or history. In his chapter on Messenia, for example, Pausanias describes "a place on the coast regarded as sacred to Ino. For they say that she came up from the sea at this point" (4.34.4).57 The pattern is to "bring the myth home" in some way, and then to use this point of contact as the aetiology for a local monument or observance.
[¶50.] Pausanias faithfully records local claims to the grave of a particular heroine along with the inhabitants' testimony about how she came to be buried there. At times he dissents from the local tradition, usually because he finds an opposing local tradition more plausible:
[¶51.]
[¶52.] The insistence on finding the correct location befits a guidebook, but it also emphasizes a central feature of hero cult, its necessarily local, place-bound quality. The efficacy of the heroine or hero as helper emanates directly from the physical remains. The most explicit example in Pausanias concerns the dispute about where to bury the bones of Alkmene (1.41.1), which brings to mind Herodotus' accounts of struggles over the bones of the heroes Orestes (1.67-8), or Adrastos and Melanippos (5.67).59
[¶53.] As in the passage cited above, Pausanias often bases his judgments about the authenticity of local tradition on something he has read. The works he cites most in this connection are Hesiod, Homer, Pindar, Stesichorus, and other lyric poets. He also makes extensive use of otherwise unknown local writers, both poets and historians. Thanks to his reading habits, Pausanias is a major source for modern reconstructions of both the Catalogue of Women (Ehoiai) and the Great Catalogue (Megalai Ehoiai) attributed to Hesiod.60
[¶54.] Pausanias frequently speaks of the tombs of mythic women, but only occasionally mentions cult observances connected with them, and it is hard to say if they are in fact hero-shrines (heroa). Pausanias uses the word only occasionally, in most cases preferring the word mnema, or "memorial," with its overtone of commemoration.61 He frequently uses the word taphos (tomb or burial) interchangeably with mnema, to avoid repetition, which he is at greater pains to do than classical Greek authors. He also uses these two terms in alternation (presumably to preclude the idea of a joint burial), when he describes the graves of those who, hostile to each other in life, are nonetheless buried in close proximity.62 In fact, we know very little about the form of hero-shrines, and particularly about heroines' shrines. A recent work on three temples to Artemis in Attica argues against the notion of an architectural feature common to all, an inner room that has been called the adyton, with a common function in honor of the heroine Iphigeneia. Even in this case, in which there is some archaeological evidence, interpretation is difficult.63
[¶55.] In Pausanias, mention of heroines is not limited to burial but may include dedications and offerings to them, or the dedications or festivals they themselves established in honor of the gods. Occasionally, the object Pausanias discusses is not only a monument but itself a carrier of mythic information. There are two works of art of particular relevance for heroines, each of which he describes at length. These are the "Kypselos chest" in the temple of Hera at Olympia (5.17.5-5.19.10), and Polygnotos' paintings of the Ilioupersis (Sack of Troy) and the Nekyia (Odysseus' visit to the Underworld) at Delphi (10.25-31), great pictorial summaries of myths of gods and heroes which we know only from his descriptions. Several mythic scenes are also shown on the throne at Amyklai (3.18.9-16). Pausanias only rarely uses works of visual art to support his arguments, tending rather to see them as objects requiring interpretation, although he is at great pains to record the information they contain.64
[¶56.] Pausanias' descriptions are accompanied by a great deal of mythological commentary, which is almost always concretely bound to the physical context. His goal is to describe a landscape, and it is a landscape marked by the works of mortals. But it is also a landscape inhabited by gods and heroes, and most of the human monuments he describes are attempts at communication with the divine, part of the dialogue between mortal and immortal which is an essential feature of Greek religion. Given a general tendency to translate female mythic figures into natural phenomena (e.g., the Pleiades) or features of the landscape (e.g., Niobe), it is instructive to note that for Pausanias they are also firmly embedded in a physical space that is decidedly human in origin.65
[¶58.] Sources from the Hellenistic period and beyond fall in general into two main categories: works that are primarily antiquarian in character, like that of Pausanias, and those that deal exclusively with mythology. Among the antiquarian writings, the works of Plutarch, dating from the end of the first to the beginning of the second centuries C.E., are particularly important. Especially valuable for our purposes are the Quaestiones Graecae (Greek Questions), and some of the lives, particularly those of mythic figures, like the Life of Theseus. Innumerable valuable citations from ancient texts otherwise lost are preserved for us by Athenaeus, whose collection of table talk, the Deipnosophistai (Sophists at Dinner), dates to the end of the second century C.E.
[¶59.] Notable among the mythological works is the Bibliotheke (Library), which bears the name of Apollodorus. Apparently compiled in the second century C.E., it is a compendium of familiar myths along with some unusual variations. The considerably more erratic and idiosyncratic Fabulae of Hyginus (2nd c. C.E.) provide intriguing variants, but one is often hard-pressed to know what to make of them. This work shows the Alexandrian influence in its organization into headings such as Qui filios in epulis consumpserunt (Those who ate their children for supper), and the unfortunately missing Quae immortales cum mortalibus concubuerunt (Goddesses who slept with mortals). The Hellenistic interest in collecting and codifying myth also led to the development of specialized genres, among which the two most useful for the study of heroines are the books of Katasterismoi and Metamorphoses. The former genre, accounts of catasterism, i.e., transformation into constellations, goes back at least as far as Eratosthenes (3rd c. B.C.E.), although the fragments that survive under his name are apparently not genuine. The Metamorphosis tradition can be traced at least as far as the second-century poet Nicander, although this part of his work does not survive. Ovid takes off from this tradition in his Metamorphoses, although his poem transcends the dry nature of the genre. More typical is the work of the same name by Antoninus Liberalis, a writer of the second or third century C.E. who frequently cites Boios or Nicander as his source.66
[¶60.] We have alluded above to the problems inherent in the use of these materials for our study. Works centered around metamorphosis or catasterism naturally tend to emphasize the most dramatic aspects of heroic mythology, those involving crises in the mortal sphere which can only be resolved by drastic divine intervention, usually resulting in the translation to another sphere. In such contexts the solution to the problem of mortality is translation into the animal or vegetable world, with species-continuity replacing the continuing life of the individual, or transformation into astronomical phenomena whose enduring nature is obvious.
[¶61.] These specific interests act to narrow the range of action available to a mythic figure. Female figures are especially prone to this kind of presentation, perhaps because of their limited sphere of action in the world outside of myth.67 Orion becomes a constellation, but this is only a small part of his very rich mythic tradition. By contrast, many heroines, deprived of the ability to defend themselves, can hope for nothing better than a transformation as a way out of present difficulties. For those who would interpret mythic treatment of the heroine, such material is especially problematic. That heroines are frequently transformed in this manner is a point to which I will return.68 On the other hand, once books of metamorphoses become popular, these transformations of heroines may take on a certain decorative nature that obscures the degree to which we are in the presence of authentic mythic material.
[¶63.] For many scholars of Greek religion, the starting point for understanding hero cult is the proper categorization of heroes. There has been no more enthusiastic or influential proponent of this approach than Farnell. In Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality, he offers the following categories: 1) heroes and heroines of divine origin or hieratic type, with ritual legends or associated with vegetation ritual; 2) sacral heroes and heroines; 3) heroes of epic and saga; 4) cults of mythic ancestors, eponymous heroes, and mythic oecists [city-founders]; 5) functional and culture-heroes; 6) cults of real and historic persons.69
[¶64.] The list of categories, some based on origin and some on function, recalls Borges' Chinese Encyclopedia, in which the classifications "animals belonging to the Emperor" and "animals which from a distance resemble flies" are given equal weight, and the frame of reference constantly shifts.70 It is nonetheless of great interest as an attempt to describe hero cult and a potential source of information about heroines, compiled by a scholar of profound learning. Unfortunately, the conclusions one can draw from Farnell's work are somewhat limited by the incompleteness of his data. Several of Farnell's categories overlap, and the arbitrary assignment of a figure to one group or another is often unsatisfying, while some heroines whom we would expect to find are excluded. In almost every category, heroes outnumber heroines by a significant margin, as might be expected. Only in the first group, "heroes and heroines of divine origin or hieratic type, etc.," is this trend reversed. Here female figures outnumber male, approximately two to one. Although this finding is suggestive, certain features of Farnell's organization seriously limit the value of his categories. Why, for example, is Helen placed among the "heroes of epic and saga" when she might equally well be considered a hero of divine origin? Why does Penelope appear neither among heroes of epic and saga, nor anywhere else? For that matter, why is Klytemnestra omitted? Hippodameia, here among the ancestors, eponymous heroes, and oecists, could also be placed among sacral heroines as founder of the Heraia (for it is in this category that Farnell has placed Physkoa, whom Pausanias mentions almost in the same breath). And where is Aithra, whose role in the cult of Athena Apatouria ought to give her a place? Many eponymous heroines mentioned by Pausanias are omitted from the list of ancestors, eponymous heroes, and oecists. The task of classification is a difficult one, and one can only regret that Farnell did not make explicit his principles of inclusion.
[¶65.] The problem lies partly in the necessity of integrating information that, leaving aside tremendous variations in antiquity and reliability, simply does not always answer the same questions. How are we to harmonize myth or saga recounting the adventures of heroes and heroines as living beings, with local tradition about the acts of these figures in religious contexts, as founders of cults and festivals, as well as the evidence of honors accorded these figures after their death? This information may take the form of aetiologies of the classical period, or of local traditions recounted by Graeco-Roman antiquarians, or it may come to us from the realia--inscriptions, temples, or other dedications. A heroine of epic like Helen may be the recipient of both heroic and divine cult honors, as we know from a combination of extant inscriptions and local traditions from different parts of the Greek world. Choosing an original version or meaning is futile, and it is therefore usually impossible to assign a single "value" to any heroic figure.
[¶66.] The least ambiguous of Farnell's categories is that of "real and historical persons." While the individual figures, for the most part, fall outside the scope of this study, some useful inferences can be drawn. This list contains 93 heroized individuals, of whom 13 are female. This ratio certainly corresponds to our expectations, given the restricted role of women in the Greek world. Accordingly, the heroines in this list are mainly Hellenistic queens and hetairai. The exception is the poet Sappho, who like other poets of the archaic and classical periods, received heroic honors.71
[¶67.] Pfister, writing a decade before Farnell, makes less of an attempt to categorize types of heroes. His interest is in the cult of relics of heroes (and its similarity to the cults of Christian saints), and so he concentrates on the nature of the remains, and their location. He does list graves of eponymous heroes, but it is interesting to note that none of the heroines in the list appears in Farnell's list of eponymous figures. His larger list of hero-shrines accompanied by a tomb includes figures from four of Farnell's six categories, as well as some, like Penelope, whom Farnell omits entirely. His most inclusive list of heroes' graves includes those of 80 heroines, of whom only 23 coincide with Farnell's 52 nonhistorical heroines.72
[¶68.] The approach of Brelich, instead of seeking to establish the "essential nature" of the hero, examines roles and functions, recognizing that they may be multiple and overlapping. He considers heroes in their relation to a number of mythic and religious themes, both as figures in myth or epic taking part in a variety of relationships--social, familial, and religious--and as the focal points for cults embodying many of the diverse aspects of Greek ritual practice. In considering the relation of a particular hero to healing, to choose one example, he discusses in turn the hero as a healer in myth, and the role of healing in the cult of that hero. His approach stresses both the importance of the distinction and the necessity of bringing together the two kinds of evidence.73 This is an especially important point for the study of heroines, as will become clear if we look at two areas of heroic activity--invention and city-founding. The prestige of both these kinds of activities derives from the special honor accorded to those who did something for the first time.74 So pervasive was the interest in "being the first," that it has been said that in Greek culture, "everything had to have an `inventor."'75
[¶69.] The range of action permitted heroines in myth is perhaps not as restricted as the actual scope of women's lives in the archaic and classic periods.76 It is, however, more limited than that allowed male heroes. Let us start with the example of city-founding. Founders of cities, as we know, are often honored with burial in the agora and other observances. These honors, also given to mythic and historical ancestors and legislators, were the most notable exception to the general Greek prohibition against burial within the city, and one that lasted until the end of Greek antiquity.77 The sacral aspect of city-founding is reflected in myth and in religious practice.78 It is also the case that glorious enterprises could be made more glorious by the imprimatur of a heroic name, in which case the foundation of a city becomes just another deed easily inserted into the hero's busy program. For these reasons it is difficult to decide if one becomes a hero by founding a city, or if one founds a city because one is a hero and that is what heroes do. When all we have is the name of an eponymous hero, of whom we have heard nothing before, it is tempting to assume that the hero has been trumped up for the occasion.79
[¶70.] This indeterminacy has particular consequences for our interpretation of eponymous heroines. Given the unlikelihood of a woman having led a colonial expedition, we do not expect to find many heroines as city-founders, nor do we. The inscription in honor of the "Founder Heroines" (Heroissai Ktistai, mentioned above) is suggestive, but relatively late in date, and its use of the plural may also signal a symbolic collectivity rather than any specific historical figures. The degree of women's participation in Greek colonization is a matter of debate.80 Pausanias has two examples of female oecists: Leprea, founder of Lepreus (5.5.5), and Antinoe, daughter of Kepheus (8.8.4), who in obedience to an oracle and guided by a snake, moves the city of Ptolis to a new site. Antinoe, by virtue of not being eponymous, may appear the more convincing of the two. Her foundation story, moreover, is carefully buttressed by sacral and mystical details that would make female participation more palatable. What is more, Pausanias' account suggests that she may have received heroic honors for her role, as he tells us that her tomb was to be found among other famous graves near the theater in Mantineia (8.9.5).
[¶71.] Pausanias provides other examples of eponymous heroines, particularly in Boiotia, where the cities are more often named for women than men (9.1.1), but he gives them no explicit role in foundation.81 He also considers somewhat critically the tradition of an eponymous Mykene (2.16.3-4), citing both "Homer in the Odyssey," i.e., the Nekyia in book 11, and the Great Ehoiai as sources, and rejects the idea of a male eponym Mykeneus son of Sparton, on the grounds that although the Laconians have a statue of Sparte, they would be very surprised to hear of a Sparton. Here we have a chance to see the material evaluated not by modern notions of plausibility, but by local, more or less ancient ones. From Pausanias' discussion we see that while female founders of cities, mythic or not, may have been rare, the idea of an eponymous heroine caused no trouble. Indeed, in instances such as this, a female eponym could be more credible than a male one, if the sources concurred.82
[¶72.] Perhaps our best evidence for the political and religious importance of an eponymous heroine comes again from Pausanias, in his account of the founding of Messene in 369 B.C.E. after the liberation of Messenia by Epaminondas. The importance of Messene the daughter of Triopas for the community called by her name is both religious and political. She, together with Polykaon, was supposed to have consecrated the precinct of Zeus on Mt. Ithome and for this reason was given heroic honors (4.3.9). While the role of cult-founder is a more frequent one for heroines than that of city-founder, Messene was also given at least a symbolic role in the refoundation of the Messenian polity.83
[¶73.] As Pausanias describes the ritual surrounding the foundation of the city, it is here that Messene assumes preeminence. When the Messenians summoned the heroes to return to their midst, Messene was first and foremost, and only the hero Aristomenes was summoned with greater enthusiasm (4.27.6). Pausanias also records among the sights of Messenia the temple of Messene and her image of gold and Parian marble (4.31.11).
[¶74.] Few if any heroine-inventors are recorded. I have found only three. According to a certain Agallis, a learned Corcyraean woman, Nausikaa invented ball-playing (Athenaeus 1.14d). This is a perfect example of Robertson's dictum: as the first to appear playing ball in Greek literature (Odyssey 6.100), she must be its inventor. The other examples are rather obscure. Boudeia is associated with the invention of the plough (schol. Iliad 16.572). She is also known as Bouzuge, a talking name (Ox-Yoke) apparently related to this invention (schol. AR. 1.185), but the exact nature of her contribution is unclear. The third example, Phemonoe, is doubly important as the first Pythia and the inventor of hexameter (Paus. 10.5.7). But as with city-founding, myths of invention may attract heroines even if only as passive participants. One such tradition links a heroine to the invention of writing. According to Skamon in his fourth-century book on inventions, the alphabet was named by its inventor, Aktaion king of Attica, in honor of his daughter Phoinike who died young.84 In this instance, the letters gain prestige from the name of the princess, while in turn giving honor to her.
[¶75.] In our investigation of the nature of heroes and heroines, two questions alternately claim our attention: "What do heroes do?" and "What does one do to become a hero?" The relationship between these two questions is complicated by the fact that we are dealing with a phenomenon that is already old at the time of our first sources, and that continues to be vigorous into the late Hellenistic period. This means not only that the old traditions about heroes are being maintained, and that observance continues, but that new heroes are still being made throughout the period in which many of our sources were written. It is difficult to say exactly when hero cult ceased in antiquity, especially since it can be seen to reappear in the form of emperor cult in certain parts of the Greek east.85 There are those who would even see its survival in the Christian cult of saints.86
[¶76.] It seems likely that the Greeks were generally comfortable with a flexible notion of what heroes were and did, and that this notion allowed a certain amount of revision and reevaluation backward and forward in time. The earliest and most venerable source of information about heroes was the Iliad, perhaps supplemented by other epics and especially the Hesiodic Catalogues, and it was easy to extrapolate the behavior of later heroes on the basis of these poems. If the Greeks knew their city-founders as the inhabitants of heroic tombs in the agora, then obviously founding cities was something heroes did. Some of this flexibility comes from the fact that, although in the historical period people could only be heroized after their death, the earliest traditions about heroes concerned people who were very much alive.
[¶77.] The prestige offered by a heroic ancestor or antecedent is clear, but when an invention or other "first" is ascribed to a hero the prestige is in some sense reciprocal, as with the Phoinikeia grammata. The same holds true for the establishment of a religious institution: on the one hand, the heroine is magnified by her role in founding a festival or dedicating a temple, and on the other, so important an undertaking as temple-foundation must, of necessity, have been carried out by an important personage. There is little to be gained by trying to establish the order of these events, but taken together they give us a very clear idea of what the Greeks expected of their heroes once they had made them.
[¶78.] What, specifically, did the Greeks expect of their heroines? That is the question to which we now turn, examining both the place of heroines in the ritual life of the individual and the community, and the cultural meanings of the myths told about them.
FOOTNOTES:
1 M. I. Finley, The World of Odysseus, 2d rev. ed. (New York, 1978) 33. The title of this section calls for apologies to Stephen Jay Gould, "What, If Anything, Is a Zebra?" in Hen's Teeth and Horses' Toes (New York, 1983) 355-65.
2 Ulrich v. Wilamowitz, Homerische Untersuchungen (Berlin, 1884); Erwin Rohde, Psyche (London, 1950 [Freiburg, 1898]); L. R. Farnell, Greek Hero Cults and Ideas of Immortality (Oxford, 1921). An early attack on these views can be found in R. K. Hack, "Homer and the Cult of Heroes," TAPA 60 (1929) 57-74.
3 Erechtheus is also mentioned in Odyssey 7.80-81, where Athena is said to enter his pukinon domon (well-built house). The relationship with the goddess is clear, but the passage does not explicitly refer to cult honors.
4 G. Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans (Baltimore, 1979), and "On the Death of Sarpedon," in Approaches to Homer, ed. Rubino and Shelmerdine (Austin, 1983) 189-217, now reprinted in different form in G. Nagy, Greek Mythology and Poetics (Ithaca, 1990) 122-42.
5 The debate can be followed in A. Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece (Edinburgh, 1971) and Archaic Greece (Berkeley, 1980); T. Hadzisteliou Price, "Hero-Cult and Homer," Historia 22 (1973) 129-44 and "Hero Cult in the `Age of Homer' and Earlier," in Arktouros, ed. G. Bowersock et al. (Berlin, 1979); J. N. Coldstream, "Hero-Cults in the Age of Homer," JHS 96 (1976) 8-17, and Geometric Greece (London, 1977).
6 For an important reconsideration of early evidence for hero cult, see C. Antonaccio, An Archaeology of Ancestors: Tomb Cult and Hero Cult in Early Greece (Lanham, Md., 1995).
7 Hadzisteliou Price (1979) 223-24 considers the Pelopeion at Olympia the "earliest reasonably well-attested heroon," along with the nearby Hippodameion (Paus. 6.20.7). Antonaccio (1995) 176 comes to a more negative conclusion. For the shrine of Helen and Menelaos at Therapne and its dedications, see H. W. Catling and H. Cavanagh, "Two Inscribed Bronzes from the Melenaion, Sparta," Kadmos 15.2 (1976) 145-57 and Antonaccio (1995) 155-66. For hero-reliefs, see below, p. 47.
8 As Isocrates says about Helen and Menelaos, they are worshiped not as heroes, but as gods (oukh ôs êrôsin all' ôs theois, Praise of Helen 10.63).
9 Lines 602-4 were rejected by ancient critics as an interpolation, and many modern critics have held the same opinion. See F. Solmsen, "The Sacrifice of Agamemnon's Daughter in Hesiod's `EHOEAE,'" AJP 102 (1981) 355nn. 6 and 7. Mark Griffith, "Contest and Contradiction in Early Greek Poetry," in Cabinet of the Muses: Essays on Classical and Comparative Literature in Honor of Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, ed. M. Griffith and D. J. Mastronarde (Atlanta, 1990) 206n.48 remarks that it hardly matters if the passage was interpolated, since "in either case, the effect of the existing text on the reader/listener is the same."
10 Nagy (1979) esp. 26-41.
11 The Greek text cited is that of R. Merkelbach and M. L. West, Fragmenta Hesiodea (Oxford, 1967). Brackets indicate missing text or conjectural readings.
12 Another text that brings together male and female figures in an epic setting is Hom. Hymn 3 (Apollo) 160, in which the Delian maidens delight their audience by singing a hymn about the women and men of long ago (mnêsamenai andrôn te palaiôn êde gunaikôn / umnon aeidousin, thelgousi de phul' anthrôpôn).
13 The dialect form used by Corinna, *eirôas in the nominative, is not found elsewhere.
14 Sources for Corinna: Plutarch Glor. Athen. 4, 347f-348a; Aelian Varia Historia 113.25; Paus. 9.22.3. See J. M. Snyder, The Woman and the Lyre (Carbondale, 1989) 41-54 and M. Lefkowitz, The Lives of the Greek Poets (London, 1981) 64-65.
15 For Herakles, see Chapter 2, n. 93; For Helen, see n. 7 above and Appendix. Also L. Clader, Helen: The Evolution from Divine to Heroic in Greek Epic Tradition (Leiden, 1976) 63ff.
16 For Hyakinthos, see S. Eitrem, RE 9.1 (1914) 4-16. For Semele's abaton: Paus. 9.12.3; her tomb: Paus. 9.16.7. There is only late inscriptional evidence (3rd c. C.E.) for observances at her tomb (SEG 19.379 Delphi), but sacrifices are recorded for her in the ritual calendar of Erchia (SEG 21.541) discussed below.
17 Hippolytos: Eur. Hipp. 1423ff.; Paus. 3.12.9--heroon; 1.22.1--grave at Athens. Iphigeneia: Eur. I.T. 1462ff.; Paus. 1.33.1; 2.35.1; 7.26.5; Chapter 5 below.
18 "Un essere venerato nel culto e ricordato nei miti degli antichi greci," Heros: Il Culto greco degli eroi e il problema degli esseri semi-divini (Rome, 1958b) 14.
19 G. S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Function in Ancient and Other Cultures (London, 1970) 175.
20 "The truth seems to be that cultic association and semi-divine ancestry were felt more and more, from the time of Homer and Hesiod on, to be the hallmark of important heroes; but that many heroic figures of myth, and not only in the developed literary forms of the Iliad and Odyssey, just belonged to aristocratic families that traced their ultimate genesis to a god or goddess. Such heroes would normally have no individual cult, but were nevertheless conceived as belonging to a generation that still enjoyed the protection of the gods and shared, to a varying extent, their supernatural capabilities, in favoured cases their very blood." Kirk (1970) 176.
21 Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, trans. J. Raffan (Cambridge, Mass., 1985) 203.
22 P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue grecque (Paris, 1968) 2:417. The Mycenaean tablet is PY Fr 1204. See John Chadwick and Lydia Baumbach, "The Mycenaean Greek Vocabulary," Glotta 41 (1963) 201, 250.
23 See W. Pötscher, "Hera und Heros," RM 104 (1961) 302-55 for the etymology of Hrôs and its connection with Hera, as well as his "Der Name der Göttin Hera," RM 108 (1965) 317-20. D. Adams, "Hrôs and Hra," Glotta 65 (1987) 171-78, taking a different line, sees both words as linked to Hebe.
24 Joan V. O'Brien, The Transformation of Hera: A Study of Ritual, Hero, and the Goddess of the "Iliad" (Lanham, Md., 1993) 113-19.
25 Fred W. Householder and Gregory Nagy, Greek: A Survey of Recent Work (The Hague, 1972) 51-52.
26 Plut. Quaest. Gr. 12, 293c-d and Hesych. s.v. Semelê.
27 Our sources for the Herois are all late. Plutarch mentions it in connection with two other Delphic festivals, the Charila and the Septerion, which were celebrated in succession at eight-year intervals. Burkert (1983) emphasizes the antiquity of the Septerion, 127-28. Joseph Fontenrose, Python: A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins (Berkeley, 1959) 377-78, has his own take on the festival, translating Herois as "Mistress" and connecting it with the name Hera.
28 We find êrôssai in Apollonius of Rhodes (4.1309; 1323; 1358) and êrôssai in Nicaenetus (Greek Anthology 6.225.1, 6), both referring to the daughters of Libya and Poseidon. For the cult of the Libyan heroines, see J. Larson, Greek Heroine Cults (Madison, 1995) 23. Callimachus uses the form êrôssai at Aitia 66.1 but elsewhere uses êrôidas (Hymn 3.185) and êrôinês (Hymn 4.161).
29 `Hrôinê is contracted at times to êrônê and has the Lesbian variant êroina, while êrôissa is contracted to êrôssa. There is also the Cretan hapax, êrôassa, and the second-century form êrus found at Lilybaeum, "about which one can only speculate" (Chantraine [1968] 2:417).
30 Clouds 315. The heroinai are the Nephelai (Clouds) of the title. Is it possible that there is a play intended on the word Nephele understood as the name of a woman? This name belongs to at least one heroine, the wife of Athamas and mother of Helle and Phrixos, as well as to the cloud made by Zeus to deflect Ixion from his lustful attack on Hera. The joke, if one is meant, is still not clear. The scholia are mostly concerned with metrical problems posed by the form, although Johannes Tzetzes does gloss it as "heroic women, wives of heroes," êrôikai, êrôôn gunaikesm (schol. Aristoph. Clouds 315).
31 They are preserved in Athenaeus Deipnosophistai 11.469c; 474a; 502e; II.417 Kock.
32 A computer search of the corpus of Greek literature (Thesaurus Linguae Graecae) yielded less than 100 relevant matches for the search pattern "êrôi-" of which 48 were found in Eustathius. Additional searches for forms with iota subscript yielded only 7 matches from four authors. A search of inscriptions and papyri yielded approximately five times as many references, almost all from Roman funerary inscriptions.
33 I take Gunaikon heroinon katalogos to mean something like "Catalogue of Heroine Women" rather than "Heroic Women," since herois is not usually used adjectivally, but the distinction is perhaps not pronounced. See M. L. West, The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (Oxford, 1985) 1f.
34 See Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (Cambridge, 1927) 42, 329 for ta drômena and ta epi tois drômenois legomena.
35 He was honored as the Heros Dexion (the receiving hero) for giving house-room to the cult of Asklepios before a temple was built in Athens (Etym. Mag. 256.6). On his role see H. W. Parke, Festivals of the Athenians (Ithaca, 1977) 135.
36 Hesychios' Lexicon was written in Alexandria in the fifth or sixth century. From Byzantium come the writings of Stephanus Byzantinus, a sixth-century grammarian; Photius' reading notes from the ninth century (known as the "Library"); the Suda, a tenth-century lexicon; the twelfth-century Etymologicum Magnum; and Eustathius' commentaries on Homer from the same period.
37 See Brelich, Gli eroi greci (Rome, 1958) 23-77 for a detailed discussion of the many problems attendant on the use of ancient sources for myth.
38 See G. Nagy, "Pindar's Olympian I and the Aetiology of the Olympic Games." TAPA 116 (1986) 71-88 and Nagy (1979) 71 on Pindar's conservatism.
39 For the debate on this point, see below n. 53.
40 C. Habicht, Pausanias' Guide to Ancient Greece (Princeton, 1985) uses recent archaeological excavations to corroborate Pausanias' assertions. Brelich (1958) 45ff. also considers Pausanias a reliable witness for local traditions.
41 See P.M.C. Forbes Irving, Metamorphosis in Greek Myths (Oxford, 1990) 19-32 for a concurring view. He remarks (32), on the subject of one Hellenistic author, "Everything we have considered so far suggests that if Nicander is innovating he is at least doing it according to the rules and in a framework that does not belong just to his own times, and that therefore even his innovations would be a valuable source for the study of Greek myths."
42 Merkelbach and West's edition (1967) has now been supplemented by the third edition of West's Hesiodi Opera (Oxford, 1990). See also West (1985) for discussion of the character of the work, its structure, and origins.
43 G. McLeod, Virtue and Venom: Catalogues of Women from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Ann Arbor, 1991) 9, aims to analyze "all catalogues as attempts to express or critique cultural attitudes towards women." Unfortunately, despite this interesting approach, the sections on ancient Greek poetry contain inaccuracies that limit their usefulness.
44 Although the Catalogue was traditionally considered the work of Hesiod, West (1985) believes that it cannot be the work of the poet of the Theogony (127). He argues for a sixth-century, Attic origin (130-36; 164-71). For a view of the Hesiodic corpus as emerging from a tradition of oral composition, see R. Lamberton, Hesiod (New Haven, 1988) 11-27.
45 See West (1985) 127-30 on the connection between the Theogony and the Catalogue of Women. He also notes the similarity of the Nekyia passage with these texts (32 with n. 7).
46 Tyro (235-59); Antiope (260-65); Alkmene (266-68); Megara (269-70); Epikaste (271-80); Chloris (281-97); possibly Pero, Chloris' daughter (whose story begins at line 287); Leda (298-304); Iphimedeia (305-20); Phaidra, Prokris, and Ariadne (321-25); Maira, Klymene, and Eriphyle (326-27).
47 The heroines mentioned in Iliad 14 (discussed at length in Chapter 3) are Dia (317-18), Danae (319-20), Europe (321-22), Semele and Alkmene (323-25). In the Catalogue of Ships, we find the heroines Astyoche (513-15), Astyocheia (658-60), Aglaia (672), Alkestis (714-15), and Hippodameia (742-44). On the relation of the Iliad's "little catalogues" to larger free-standing ones, see R. Hope Simpson and J. F. Lazenby, The Catalogue of the Ships in Homer's Iliad (Oxford, 1970) 166.
48 Iliad 11.268-72. This comparison is given a different emphasis by Euripides' Medea, who says, "I would rather stand three times in the front lines than give birth once." (ôs tris an par' aspida / stênai theloim' an mallon ê tekein apax, Medea 250-51). See N. Loraux, "Le Lit, la guerre," L'Homme 21.1 (1981) 37-67, now translated as "Bed and War" in The Experiences of Tiresias, trans. Paula Wissing (Princeton, 1995) 23-43. For a contemporary feminist analysis of this theme, see N. Huston, "The Matrix of War: Mothers and Heroes," in The Female Body in Western Culture, ed. S. Rubin Suleiman (Cambridge, 1985) 119-36, esp. 130-31.
49 Known titles of plays by Aeschylus contain the names Alkmene, Atalanta, Europe, Helen (three titles), Hypsipyle, Iphigeneia, Kallisto, Penelope, and Niobe; Sophocles: Andromache, Andromeda, Danae, Erigone, Eriphyle, Hermione, Hippodameia, Iphigeneia, Kreousa, Nausikaa, Niobe, Polyxene, Prokris, Tyro, Phaidra, and possibly others; Euripides: Andromeda, Antiope, Hypsipyle, Ino, Melanippe (two titles), and Stheneboia.
50 See Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, 2d ed., ed. A. Nauck with suppl. by B. Snell (Hildesheim, 1964).
51 Sophocles' tragedy is the first extant text in which Antigone dies for the crime of burying her brother. Iliad 4.394, where Maion is said to be the son of Haimon, may reflect an earlier tradition in which they live to marry. For Medea, it is impossible to be certain that Euripides was indeed the innovator. See R. Seaford, "Dionysos as Destroyer of the Household: Homer, Tragedy, and the Polis," in Masks of Dionysos, ed. Carpenter and Faraone (Ithaca, 1993) 123n.38.
52 See B.M.W. Knox, "The Medea of Euripides," YCS 25 (1977) 206. Nagy (1979) 279n.2 stressing the important distinction between explanation and motivation, defines an aition as "a myth that traditionally motivates an institution, such as a ritual."
53 The argument over the reliability of Euripides' descriptions of ritual continues. See R. Eisner, "Euripides' Use of Myth," Arethusa 12 (1979) 153-74 and Christian Wolff, "Euripides' Iphigeneia among the Taurians: Aetiology, Ritual, and Myth," CA 11 (1992) 308-34. Francis M. Dunn, "Euripides and the Rites of Hera Akraia," GRBS 35 (1994) 103-15 takes a particularly sceptical view, concluding that Euripides rewrites "not only character and legend but the `real world' of cultural practice and belief." I am more in sympathy with Richard Seaford's cautions against underestimating Euripides' traditionalism, Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State (Oxford, 1994) 285n.21.
54 W. S. Barrett, ed. Hippolytos (Oxford, 1964) 412 notes that every Euripidean play for which we possess a satisfactory ending, except the Trojan Women, ends with an aition.
55 Some known titles for Old Comedy: Epicharmos' Atalantai and Medea (possibly by Deinolochos), Strattis' Atalante and Medea, and Theopompos' Althaia and Penelope; Middle Comedy: Alexis of Thurii's Anteia (possibly by Antiphanes), Galateia, Helen, Hesione; Antiphanes' Alkestis, Anteia (possibly by Alexis), Omphale; Euboulos' Antiope, Auge, Europe, Laconians or Leda, Medea, Nausikaa, Prokris (known to be a parody of a tragedy), Semele or Dionysos; Nikostratos' Pandrosos; Philetairos' Atalanta; Timokles' Neaira.
56 LIMC s.v. "Helene" 5. See A. D. Trendall, Phylax Vases, 2d ed. (BICS suppl. 19) 1967, 27-28.
57 Trans. W.H.S. Jones and H. A. Ormerod, Pausanias' Description of Greece, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Mass., 1920). Pausanias himself reports a conflicting tradition at 1.42.7, where the Megarians claim that it was on their shores that Ino was washed up. See Gregory Nagy, "Theognis and Megara: A Poet's Vision of His City," in Thomas J. Figueira and G. Nagy, Theognis of Megara: Poetry and the Polis (Baltimore, 1985) 79-80 on this variant tradition.
58 Translation adapted from Jones.
59 See D. Boedeker, "Hero Cult and Politics in Herodotos: The Bones of Orestes," in C. Dougherty and L. Kurke, eds., Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece: Cult, Performance, Politics (Cambridge, 1993) 164-77.
60 See Habicht (1985) 132-34, 142-44, on Pausanias' literary tastes and sources of information.
61 In Pausanias only the following heroines are explicitly said to have a heroon: Andromache (1.11.2), Ino (1.42.7), Iphigeneia (1.43.1), Hyrnetho (2.28.7), Kyniska (3.15.1), and Plataea (9.2.7).
62 For example, he speaks of the tomb (taphos) of Phaidra, located near the monument (mnema) of Hippolytos (2.32.4). In the same way, at 2.21.7, he distinguishes the grave (mnema) of Gorgo from that (taphos) of Gorgophone, who, as the daughter of Perseus, is presumably opposed to her by reasons of etymology as well as lineage. (Her name, "Gorgonslayer," commemorates her father's most famous exploit and calls ironic attention to their proximate burial.)
63 See M. B. Hollinshead, "Against Iphigeneia's Adyton in Three Mainland Temples," AJA 89 (1985) 419-40.
64 For a reconstruction of Kypselos' chest, see K. Schefold, Myth and Legend in Early Greek Art, trans. A. Hicks (New York, [1966]) 72-73. See also H. A. Shapiro, "Old and New Heroes: Narrative, Composition, and Subject in Attic Black-Figure," CA 9 (1990) 138-40. On Polygnotos, see M. D. Stansbury-O'Donnell, "Polygnotos' Iliupersis: A New Reconstruction," AJA 93 (1989) 203-15.
65 F. Pfister, Der Reliquienkult im Altertum (Giessen, 1909) 1:328-65, lists natural phenomena connected with heroes. These are for the most part not the results of actual transformations but are landmarks connected with and occasionally created by the heroes themselves. Heroines are frequently associated with springs, which they create either deliberately, like Atalante striking her spear against the rock (Paus. 3.24.2), or inadvertently, like the weeping Niobe (Pherec. in schol. T Iliad 24.617). For Niobe herself as a rocky outcropping, see Paus. 1.21.3. See Forbes Irving (1990) passim.
66 For a discussion of this tradition, see Forbes Irving (1990) 19-36.
67 F. I. Zeitlin, "Configurations of Rape in Greek Myth," in Rape, ed. S. Tomaselli and R. Porter (Oxford, 1986) 122-51, 261-64 (notes) explicitly connects metamorphosis with the woman's flight from sexual violence (123).
68 See Chapter 3, below, pp. 96, 101.
69 Farnell (1921). See discussion throughout, and the lists on pp. 403-26.
70 Jorge Luis Borges, Other Inquisitions, trans. Ruth L. C. Simms (New York, 1968) 103.
71 See Farnell (1921) 367 on the cult of Sappho on Lesbos. For poets as heroes, see Brelich (1958) 320-22 and Nagy (1979) especially 279-308. Other female poets who might have received cult honors are Telesilla and Corinna, who are not mentioned here. See Paus. 2.20.8-9 for the bravery of Telesilla, and the relief commemorating it, and 9.22.3 for the tomb of Corinna.
72 Pfister's list of heroes' graves seems to include every instance in which Pausanias records a mnema or a taphos (two words he uses almost interchangeably for "grave"). Farnell applies a more complicated, and at times elusive, standard. For eponymous heroes and heroines, see Pfister (1909) 1:279-89; for hero-shrines with tomb, Pfister (1912) 2:450-55; for graves of heroes and heroines, 2:627-40.
73 See Brelich (1958) 79 for elucidation of this principle; 113-18 for its application to healing. See also Deborah Lyons, "Manto and Manteia: Prophecy in the Myths and Cults of Heroines," in Sibille e linguaggi oracolari, ed. I. Chirassi Colombo and T. Seppilli (Pisa, forthcoming).
74 See Brelich (1958) 27 for the importance of the first time; 166-77 for the hero as protos heuretes, "inventor" or "originator."
75 M. Robertson, "Adopting an Approach I," in Looking at Greek Vases, ed. T. Rasmussen and N. Spivey (Cambridge, 1991) 4.
76 The topic of the position of women in archaic and classical Greece lies for the most part outside the scope of this study. For an account of the debate on seclusion, see I. Savalli, La Donna nella società della Grecia antica (Bologna, 1983), and M. Arthur, "Review Essay: Classics," in Signs 2.2 (1976) 382-403. Overviews of women's economic and legal status include D. M. Schaps, Economic Rights of Women in Ancient Greece (Edinburgh, 1979); R. Just, Women in Athenian Law and Life (London, 1989); and R. Sealey, Women and Law in Classical Greece (Chapel Hill, 1990).
77 Roland Martin, Recherches sur l'agora grecque (Paris, 1951) 194-95. F. de Polignac, La Naissance de la cité grecque (Paris, 1984) 132, argues that these founder-tombs need not all have been new installations. Some may have been ancient burials rediscovered and attributed to hero-founders. See Antonaccio (1995).
78 See Marcel Detienne in the Annuaire. Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes 94 (1985-86) 371-80, on Apollo as the city-founding god. For the role of Delphi in colonization, see H. W. Parke and D.E.W. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle (Oxford, 1956) 1:49-81; Joseph Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle (Berkeley, 1978) passim; Carol Dougherty, The Poetics of Colonization: From City to Text in Archaic Greece (New York, 1993).
79 According to Martin (1951) 195, the eponymous hero is "le produit d'une réfection de la tradition religieuse" (the product of a remaking of the religious tradition) in response to internal political events or major external ones. De Polignac (1984) 132ff. also suggests that sometimes it was necessary to invent the mythic founder.
80 See A. J. Graham, "Religion, Women and Greek Colonization," in Religione e città nel mondo antico (Rome, 1984) 293-314.
81 Heroines who give their names to cities include Abia, Alalkomenia, Amphissa, Andania, Araithyrea, Arene, Arne, Boura, Dyme, Eirene, Ephyre, Harpina, Helike, Hyrmina, Ismene (?), Kombe, Kyrbia, Kyrene, Lampsake, Larisa, Larymna, Messene, Mothone, Mykene, Myrine, Nemea, Nonakris, Oichalia, Oinoe, Physkoa, Psothis, Side, Sparte, Tanagra, Thebe, Therapne, Thespia, Thisbe, Thyia (2), Triteia. Others are said to give their names to demes (Aglauros, Hekale, Melite), tribes (Hyrnetho, Milye), and the gates of Thebes (Elektra). On the eponymous heroines of demes, see E. Kearns, The Heroes of Attica. BICS suppl. 57 (1989) 101-2.
82 Pfister (1912) 2:279-89, lists about 60 examples of graves of eponymous heroes, 10 of whom are actually heroines.
83 The subject of heroines as cult-founders is discussed in Chapter 5 (with appendix). See Carolyn Dewald, "Women and Culture in Herodotus' Histories" in Reflections of Women in Antiquity, ed. Foley (New York, 1981) 91-125, especially p. 110-12; 122.
84 FGrH 476 F 3 = Photius and Suda s.v. Phoinikêia grammata. See J. Svenbro, Phrasikleia: An Anthropology of Reading in Ancient Greece, trans. J. Lloyd (Ithaca, 1993 [Paris, 1988]) 8-9, 82-86.
85 On cults of emperors, see S.R.F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1984).
86 Pfister, for example, follows pagan examples with Christian ones throughout his study of Reliquienkult. It is precisely in the matter of relics that the comparison is most tempting. See P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints (Chicago, 1981) 5-6 for a critique of this idea.
OTHER GRAECO-ROMAN SOURCES
CATEGORIES OF HERO AND HEROINE
