GREEK RELIGION

Walter Burkert
Translated by John Raffan

r
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
 II t I
.
‘WORKING SACRED THINGS’ ANIMAL
SACRIFICE 55
diverted activity for the apathy which rema
II claim to the highest seriousness, to the abso
When considered from the point of view of
ins transfixed in reality; it lays
lute.
the goal, ritual behaviour
appears as magic. For a science of religion whic
Ritual and Sanctuary action as meaningful, magic must be seen as
h regards only instrumental
the origin of 4religion, since acts
which seek to achieve a given goal in an unclear
but direct way are magical.
The goal then appears to be the attainment
of all desirable boons and the
elimination of possible impediments: there is
rain magic, fertility magic, love
magic, and destructive magic. The conceptio
n of ritual as a kind of language,
however, leads beyond this constraining artifi
ce; magic is present only
insofar as ritual is consciously placed in the servi
ce of some end which may
then undoubtedly affect the form of the ritua —

l. Religious ritual is given as a

collective institution; the individual participat
es within the framework of
An insight which came to be generally acknowledged in the study of religion social communication, with the strongest moti
vating force being the need not
towards the end of the last century is that rituals are more important and to stand apart. Conscious magic is a matter for
individuals, for the few, and
more instructive for the understanding of the ancient religions than are is developed accordingly into a highly complica
ted pseudo-science. In early
changeable myths.’ With this recognition, antiquity is no longer seen in Greece, where the cult belongs in the com
munal, public sphere, the
isolation, but embraced in the totality of so-called primitive religions, while importance of magic is correspondingly mini
mal. And however much the
in the higher, theologically developed religions, the same basis is quite Greeks may hope that good things will flow
from pious acts, they are
certainly present in the practice, but forced into the background in the act of nevertheless always aware that fulfilment is
not guaranteed, but lies in the
reflection. An origin for the rituals themselves was sought, for the most part lap of the gods.
without discussion, in primitive thought or imagination. In recent times, A survey of the forms of ritual might be artic
ulated in terms of the various
the tendency is more to regard rituals as an initially autonomous, quasi- social groups which express themselve
s in ritual: the family and clan,
linguistic system alongside and prior to the spoken language. Behavioural peasants, craftsmen and warriors, citizens,
king, priests. Alternatively, it
science, which has identified what are at least analogues of ritual in the might follow the spheres of life in which
ritual unfolds its function: birth,
animal kingdom, is able to come some way towards this position. From this initiation, and death, hunting and harvest,
famine and plague, war and
perspective, ritual is an action divorced from its primary practical context victory. Yet, the same repertoire of signs is
employed by various groups in
which bears a semiotic chatacter; its function normally lies in group formation, various situations. For this reason, the indiv
idual but complex ritual actions
the creation of solidarity, or the negotiation of understanding among members will be examined here first of all, and the
Greek practice viewed against the
of the species. Such actions constitute specifically religious ritual insofar as they background of more universal contexts. Only
then, and in conjunction with
signal a turning towards something extra-human or super-human; defacto the the rich mythological elaboration, can the interactio
n of religion and com
very act of turning away from the human has an eminently social function. munal life among the Greeks be presented.
Usually this something is circumscribed most universally as the sacred’ or as
the power, and the experience of the sacred is portrayed as the intense
interplay of mysterium tremendum, fascinans and augustum. In the repertoire of I ‘WORKING SACRED THINGS’: ANIMAL
SACRIFICE
signs this interplay is shown by the juxtaposition of things threatening and
alluring fire, blood, and weapons, on the one hand, and food and sexuality on
— •i Description and Interpretation
the other by gestures of submissiveness alongside imposing displays of power,
—

and by the sudden alterations of darkness and light, masking and unmasking, The essence of the sacred act, which is henc
e often simply termed doing or
rigidity and movement, sound and silence. This quasi-language operates not making sacred or working sacred things,
is in Greek practice a straight
only through learning and imitation, but acts as an imprinting force, forward and far from miraculous process:
the slaughter and consumption of
especially for children and adolescents. It signals and creates situations of a domestic animal for a god.’ The mos nobl
t e sacrificial animal is the ox,
anxiety in order to overcome them, it leads from the primal fear of being especially the bull; the most common is the
sheep, then the goat and the pig;
abandoned to the establishment of solidarity and the reinforcement of status, the cheapest is the piglet. The sacrifice of
poultry is also common,’ but other
and in this way it helps to overcome real situations of crisis by substituting 3 geese, pigeons to say nothing of
birds —
—
4 are rare.
fish,
56 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II I. I II 1.1 ‘WORKING SACRED THINGS’ ANIMAL SACRIFICE
57
The sacrifice is a festive occasion for the community. The contrast with Occasionally the heart is torn still beating from the body before all else.’
2
everyday life is marked with washing, dressing in clean garments, and To taste the entrails immediately is the privilege and duty of the innermost
5 woven from twigs on the head
adornment, in particular, wearing a garland — circle of participants. The inedible remains are then consecrated: the bones
a feature which does not yet appear in Homer. The animal chosen is to be are laid on the pyre prepared on the altar in just order.’ 3 In Homer,
perfect, and it too is adorned, entwined with ribbons, with its horns gilded. beginnings from all limbs of the animal, small pieces of meat, are also placed
A procession escorts the animal to the altar. Everyone hopes as a rule that on the pyre: the dismembered creature is to be reconstituted 4 symbolically.’
the animal will go to the, sacrifice complaisantly, or rather voluntarily; Later texts and paintings emphasize the pelvic bones and the tail; in the
edifying legends tell how animals pressed forward to the sacrifice on their Homeric formula it is the thigh bones which are burned. Food offerings,
own initiative when the time had come. 6 A blameless maiden at the front of cakes and broth, are also burned in small quantities; above all, the sacrificer
the procession carries on her head the sacrificial basket in which the knife for pours wine over the fire so that the alcohol flames up. Once the splanchna have
sacrifice lies concealed beneath grains of barley or cakes. A vessel containing been eaten and the fire has died down, the preparation of the actual meat
water is also borne along, and often an incense burner; accompanying the meal begins, the roasting or boiling; this is generally of a profane character.
procession is one or several musicians, normally a male or female flute- Nevertheless, it is not infrequently prescribed that no meat must be taken
player. The goal is the stone altar or pile of ashes laid down or erected of old.
7 away: all must be consumed without remainder in the 5 sanctuary.’ The skin
Only there may and must blood be shed. falls to the sanctuary or to the priest.
Once the procession has arrived at the sacred spot, a circle is marked out The ritual of animal sacrifice varies in detail according to the local
which includes the site of sacrifice, the animal, and the participants: as the ancestral custom, but the fundamental structure is identical and clear:
sacrificial basket and water vessel are borne around in a circle, the sacred is animal sacrifice is ritualized slaughter followed by a meat meal. In this the
delimited from the profane. All stand around the altar. As a first communal rite as a sign of the sacred is in particular the preparation, the beginning, on
action water is poured from the jug over the hands of each participant in the one hand, and the subsequent restitution on the other: sacralization and
turn: this is to begin, archesthai. The animal too is sprinkled with water, desacralization’ about a central act of killing attended with weapons, blood,
6
causing it to jerk its head, which is interpreted as the animal nodding its fire, and a shrill cry.
assent. The god at Delphi pronounced through the oracle: ‘That which As soon as reflection found expression among the Greeks, the pious claim
willingly nods at the washing of hands I say you may justly 8 sacrifice.’ A bull attached to this sacred act became ambivalent. Such a sacrifice is performed
is given water to drink: so he too bows his head. for a god, and yet the god manifestly receives next to nothing: the good meat
The participants each take a handful of barley groats (oulai, oulochytai) from serves entirely for the festive feasting of the participants. The sacrifice, it
the sacrificial basket. Silence descends. Ceremonially and resoundingly, and is known, creates a relationship between the sacrificer and the god; poets
with arms raised to the sky, the sacrificer recites a prayer, invocation, wish, recount how the god remembers the sacrifice with pleasure or how he rages
and vow. Then, as if in confirmation, all hurl their barley groats forward onto dangerously if sacrifices fail to be 7
performed.’ But all that reaches to the sky
the altar and the sacrificial animal; in some rituals stones are 9 thrown. This, is the fatty vapour rising in smoke; to imagine what the gods could possibly
together with the washing of hands, is also called a beginning, katarchesthai. do with this leads unfailingly to burlesque. The ritual simply does not fit
The sacrificial knife in the basket is now uncovered. The sacrificer grasps the anthropomorphic mythology of the gods. ‘When gods and mortal men
the knife and, concealing the weapon, strides up to the victim: he cuts some parted,’ Hesiod relates, sacrifice was 8 created:’ yonder the gods, immortals
hairs from its forehead and throws them on the fire. This hair 0 sacrifice’ is untouched by death, the heavenly ones to whom the sacrificial flame points;
once more and for the last time a beginning, aparchesthai. No blood has here men, mortals, dependent on food, killing. Admittedly, Hesiod’s tale
flowed, but the victim is no longer inviolate. is then able to explain the division of the portions between gods and men only
The slaughter now follows. Smaller animals are raised above the altar and as a deception. At that separation at the first sacrifice, Prometheus, the
the throat is cut. An ox is felled by a blow with an axe and then the artery in ambivalent friend of man, set on one side the flesh and fatty entrails of
the neck is opened. The blood is collected in a basin and sprayed over the the slaughtered bull and covered them with the hide and stomach, and on the
altar and against the sides: to stain the altar with blood (haimossein) is a pious other side he hid the white bones in glistening fat. In the name of the gods,
duty. As the fatal blow falls, the women must cry out in high, shrill tones: Zeus chose the latter portion, intentionally, as Hesiod makes sure to
the Greek custom of the sacrificial cry” marks the emotional climax. Life emphasize; an earlier version will have told that the father of the gods was
screams over death. duped.’ At all events, biting comments about the burning of the bones and
9
The animal is skinned and butchered; the inner organs, especially the gall for the gods later form part of the standard repertoire of 2 comedy: can
°
heart and the liver (splanchna), are roasted on the fire on the altar first of all. that which is not a gift be a sacrifice?
58 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 1.1 I II 1.2 BLOOD RITUALS
’ surrounded its own scenes of uncanny violence and
Greek tragedy
2 the torches, and the leading of the animals; then come the stages of the
necessary destruction with the metaphors of animal sacrifice almost as a beginning, the praying, the slaughter, the skinning, and the dismemberment;
standard accompaniment, and frequently described and played out scenes of this is followed by the roasting, first of the splanchna, then of the rest of the
sacrifice. Without doubt both poet and public experienced what Walter F. meat, then the libations of wine, and finally the distribution of the meat. Boys
Otto has called the ‘violent drama of the animal bleeding to death, . .the. and girls, women and men all have their place and their task. Directing the
expression of a mood whose grandeur is paralleled only in works of high action is the sacrificer, the priest, who prays, tastes, and makes libation; in
22 The shock of the terrors of death present in the warm flowing blood
art’. his awe of the divine he also demonstrates his own power, a power which,
strikes home directly, not as some painful adjunct, but as the very centre although it brings in reality only death, appears e contrario to embrace life
as
towards which all eyes are directed. And yet in the subsequent feast the well. The order of life, a social order, is constituted in the sacrifice through
encounter with death is transformed into life-affirming enjoyment. irrevocable acts; religion and everyday existence interpenetrate so com
Historically, this ritual of the sacrificial meal may be traced to the pletely that every community, every order must be founded through
a
23 hunting, especially big-
situation of man before the discovery of agriculture: sacrifice.
game hunting for cattle and horses, was the prime task of the male, and the
principal source of food for the family. Killing to eat was an unalterable 3.2 Blood Rituals
commandment, and yet the bloody act must always have been attended with
a double danger and a double fear: that the weapon might be turned against The power of blood in belief and superstition has often been the
subject of
a fellow hunter, and that the death of the prey might signal an end with no ethnographic discussion.2
6 Among the Greeks what is striking
is, if anything,
future, while man must always eat and so must always hunt. Important a certain reticence towards blood magic; there is nothing of a universal
blood
elements of the rites that came before and after the sacrifice may accordingly taboo as in the law of the Jews.
29 Animal sacrifice is the shedding of blood;
be traced to hunting customs, in particular the laying down of the bones, that the altars become bloody (haimassesthai) is a characteristic
of the
especially the thigh bones, the raising up of the skull, and the stretching out sacrificial act as such.
° On vase paintings the white-chalked sides of the
3
of the skin: attempts to restore the slain animal at least in outline. What Karl altars are always shown splashed with blood in testimony to the
sacred work.
4 called the ‘comedy of innocence’, the fiction of the willingness of the
Meuli’ An altar in Didyma was said to have been made from the blood
of the
victim for sacrifice, is also to be seen in this context. In the sacrificial ritual, ’ Significantly, the victims which are pleasing to the gods
3
victims.
are warm
of course, these customs are closely interwoven with the specific forms of blooded animals, mostly large mammals; fish, though much more
important
Neolithic peasant animal husbandry. The fact that the domestic animal, a for everyday sustenance, are rarely if ever sacrificed. What
counts is the
possession and a companion, must nevertheless be slaughtered and eaten warm, running blood which arouses fear and suspicion. Unbloody
sacrifices
creates new conflicts and amcieties which are resolved in the ritual: the are described with special emphasis as pure (hagna thymata).32 The
sacrificer,
animal is consecrated, withdrawn from everyday life and subjugated to an however, is not in some sense impure, but enjoys a sacred,
exceptional status
25 turned back into a wild animal. The
alien will; not infrequently it is set free, in accordance with the divine ordinance which sanctions
and demands the
fruits of agriculture, corn and wine, are also incorporated into the execution shedding of blood at the sacred spot. For this reason a man who
sits on or
of the deed, as beginning and end, marking as it were the boundaries of next to an altar cannot be harmed or killed; this would be a
perversion of the
domesticated life2S from between which death erupts as from an atavistic sacred and would inevitably plunge the whole city into ruin. The
asylum of
chasm when the fruits of the earliest agriculture, the groats of barley, are the altar stands in polar relation to the shedding of blood; the
shedding of
transformed into symbolic missiles. human blood constitutes the most extreme, yet dangerously
similar contrast
However difficult it may be for mythological and for conceptual reflection to the pious work.
to understand how such a sacrifice affects the god, what it means for men is In a number of cults human blood is shed; this the Greeks
then trace to
7 Membership of the community is
always quite clear: community, koinonia.’ some barbaric origin. The image of the Taurian Artemis,
which presided
marked by the washing of hands, the encirclement and the communal over the human sacrifices in Coichis and was later brought
to Greece by
throwing; an even closer bond is forged through the tasting of the splanchna. Orestes along with Iphigeneia, is mentioned in particular as
provoking such
From a psychological and ethological point of view, it is the communally rites; it is said to be preserved in Halai Araphenides in
Attica, where at the
enacted aggression and shared guilt which creates solidarity. The circle of sacrifice for Artemis Tauropolos a man has his throat
scratched with a
the participants has closed itself off from outsiders; in doing so, the knife,34 or else with Ortheia in Sparta where the epheboi
are whipped at the
participants assume quite distinct roles in the communal action. First there altar.35 .

is the carrying of the basket, the water vessel, the incense burner, and There are sacrificial rituals in which the shedding of blood
appears to be
6o RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 1.3 II ‘.3 FIRE RITUALS 6i
carried out for its own sake and not as the prelude to a meal; these are blood destruction: things great, fixed, and solid dissolve in smoke and
ashes. Fire
sacrifices in the narrower sense, 6
sphagia. They are found primarily in two with its multiple fascinations is present in almost every cult act of
the Greeks.
extreme situations, before battle and at the burial of the dead; the other Sacrifices without fire are rare, conscious exceptions,
8 and conversely there
context in which they occur is at purifications. Before battle the Spartans is rarely a fire without sacrifice; the hearth, Hestia, is a goddess
as well.
49
37 usually, however, the reports mention
slaughter a goat for Artemis Agrotera; An early form of the temple is the hearth house; the early temples
at Dreros
no god, but just the fact that on the battlefield, in view of the enemy, the and Prinias on Crete are of this type, as indeed is the temple of
Apollo at
general or the seers who accompany the army will cut the throats of animals; Delphi which always had its inner hestia.° Otherwise the altar
stands as a
whole herds are driven along for this purpose. From certain signs in the rule in the open air opposite the temple entrance; by virtue of its
function, the
victims the seers determine the prospects of success in the battle. The quasi- altar is the pre-eminent fire place, the hearth of the gods.
’ Fire miracles are
5
harmless and manageable slaughter is a premonitory anticipation of the spoken of only in the Dionysos cult.
52 Nevertheless, a sudden burst of flame
battle and its unforeseeable dangers; it is a beginning. It is asserted that from the altar fire is seen as a sign of divine presence,
53 and this gives special
before the battle of Salamis captured Persians were sacrificed in place of the import to the libations of oil and wine poured over the altar.
8 Myth knows many variants of the ideally willing sacrifice of
animals. — — Just as in the home the fire on the hearth is not allowed
to die, so too in
maidens before battle; Iphigeneia in Aulis can also be placed in this group. 39 many temples an eternal fire is maintained: most notably
in the temple- of
In Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes the threatening anticipation of bloodshed is Apollo at Delphi, but also in the temple of Apollo Lykeios at
Argos and in the
presented as a binding oath: before the walls of Thebes the Seven slaughter a temple of Apollo Karneios in Cyrene.54 As a kind of technical
refinement, the
bull ‘into a black-rimmed shield’, touch ‘with their hands the blood of the ever-burning lamp takes the place of fire in the temple of
Athena Polias in
bull’, and swear ‘by Ares, Enyo and bloody Terror’ to win or die. ° Otherwise
4 Athens and in the temple of Hera in Argos and also in the
Asklepios cult.
rites of blood brotherhood and the communal drinking of blood are generally A fire of this kind is the embodiment of the continuity of
the sanctuary and
attributed to babarians or else to extreme groups at the edge of society. ’
4 of the body politic; Athena’s lamp went out shortly
before Sulla stormed
At the burial of the dead, animals are slaughtered and burned on the and destroyed Athens.5 With the extinguishing and
rekindling of the fire,
funeral pyre. At the funeral pyre of Patroclus, Achilles slaughters many impressive enactment may be given to the sequence of
completion, purifica
sheep and oxen, four horses, two dogs, and twelve captured Trojans. 42 This tion, and new beginning. In Argos, the hearth of a
house in which someone
can be understood as an outburst of helpless fury: ‘If you are dead the others has died is extinguished, and after the prescribed period
of mourning, new
43 Nevertheless, when it is related that ‘about the dead man
should not live.’ fire is fetched from the state hearth, and the domestic
hearth is kindled anew
flowed blood such as could be drawn in cups’, it is clear that the intention with a sacrifice.
6 The island of Lemnos
was for the blood to reach the dead man in some way, to give him back life is purified at a certain time of the year, and the fire
and colour; red colouring is used in burials as early as the Palaeolithic. on the island
is extinguished for nine days. A ship bearing festal
Sacrifices of this kind are also repeated in honour of the dead man. Here no envoys fetches
fire from Delos. Once the ship has arrived and they
45 into which the blood
altar is set up, but a pit is dug in the ground (bothros), have distri
buted the fire for all other needs of life and especially
flows. The idea then arises that the downward flowing blood reaches the for the
craftsmen who depend on fire, they say, ‘from now on
6 In the earliest and definitive
dead: ‘satiating with blood’, haimakouria. a new life
begins for them’.7
literary text describing such a sacrifice, this has become a conjuring up of the
dead man: Odysseus, on the instructions of the enchantress Circe, digs out a After the battle of Plataea, the Greeks all decided
to fetch new fire from
square pit (bothros) at the edge of the world, and after a threefold libation and Delphi; thereafter, on the basis of certain signs,
the Athenians repeatedly
a prayer to Hades and Persephone, he slaughters a ram and a black sheep, sent a Pythian mission to Delphi to bring fire
to Athens in a tripod
causing the blood to flow into the pit; thereupon the souls (psychai) gather to 8
cauldron.
drink the blood and so to awake to brief consciousness. The sacrificed The altars which stand in the open air do not have
fire burning on them
animals are burned next to the pit. 47 continuously; they are kindled in an impressive ceremony
in the course of the
festival. At Olympia, the victor in the stadion race has
the right to ascend to
3.3 Fire Rituals the altar to which the stadion leads, where
the consecrated portions lie
prepared, and to light the fire.
59 At the Panathenaia, the fire is carried in a
Fire is one of the foundations of civilized life. It is the most primitive torch race from the grove of Akademos through
the market place to the altar
protection from beasts of prey, and so also from evil spirits. It gives warmth of the goddess on the Acropolis.
° The Argives fetch fire for their celebrations
6
and light, and yet is always grievous and dangerous, the very epitome of in Lerna from the distant sanctuary
of Artemis Pyronia.
’ Nocturnal
6
62 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 1.3 II 1.3 FIRE RITUALS 63
6 are among the most primitive customs and never
processions with torches times with the earliest temple being built in the seventh century. The myth
fail to impress; above all they have their place in Dionysos festivals. associated with her cult is older still; the Iliad tells of the anger of Artemis
Nothing lends a more unique and unmistakable character to an occasion which led to the Calydonian boar hunt and finally to the death of Meleagros;
than a distinctive fragrance; fire speaks not only to eye, ear, and physical he died, according to the original, pre-Iliadic version, when his mother
sensation, but also to the sense of smell. The sacred is experienced as an pijthaea placed back on the fire a log which had been torn from the fire at his
atmosphere of divine fragrance. This was no doubt always taken into 6 a reflex of a sacrifice through destruction by fire. Clearly related are
birth:
consideration in the selection of the woods and twigs for the sacral fire. In a the Elaphelilia of Artemis of Hyampolis and the festival of the Kouretes
•63
Homeric formula the gods already have their ‘fragrant altars’ In Homer, in Messene. Another fire festival attended with bull sacrifice and contests
too, the beginnings of that shift in meaning may be discerned whereby took place on Mount Oita in honour of Heracles.’ It was regarded as a
the ancient word for fumigating, thyein, came to be the normal word for commemoration of Heracles’ terrible self-immolation at that very spot, a
sacrificing. Exactly what Patroclus throws onto the hearth fire for the gods
6 3 myth which undoubtedly took over important elements from the ritual. In
and what Hesiod commends to be burned every mornin g and evening as an Thebes there is a parellel nocturnal festival in which ‘at the sinking of the
incense offering is not clear.
6 At all events, the import of specialized incense sun’s light the flame rising celebrates unceasing through the night, kicking
wares, primarily frankincense and myrrh, commenced about 700 at the upwards to the aether with fatty smoke’ .‘ Here the Alkeidai are honoured,
latest; these came to Greece from southern Arabia via Phoenician inter the Sons of the Valiant One, identified as the children of Heracles; it was
mediaries, and in Greek they retain their Semitic names. The cult practice then told that their father had killed them in a fit of madness and burned
must have expanded along with the trade. The type of incense burner used, them. On Mount Kithairon near Plataea, the Boeotians celebrated their fire
the thymiaterion, is of Babylonian—Assyrian origin, and probably came to the festival by burning rude, human-shaped idols made of wood, the Daedala,
Greeks and Etruscans via Cyprus. Incense offerings and altars are associated and the story was told of Hera’s quarrel and reconciliation with Zeus. 73
particularly with the cult of Aphrodite and of Adonis; appropriately, the first Again and again, the sacrifice of a man or of a god, hinted at in ritual and
mention of frankincense is found in that poem by 6 Sappho which conjures up executed in myth, lies behind the fire festivals. The annual fires of European
the epipha of the goddess Aphro dite in her grove of apple trees and roses peasant custom are not, therefore, the origin and explanation of the ancient
ny
between quivering branches and incense-burning altars. The use of frankin rituals, which are not necessarily connected with the course of the sun and
74
cense is later customary everywhere; to strew a granule of frankincense in the the rhythm of the year, but are rather offshoots and reinterpretations from
flames is the most widespread, simplest, and also cheapest act of offering. the same root. Connections with the Minoan peak cults, and perhaps even
The festivals which are wholly defined by the destructive power of fire are with the Semitic and Anatolian fire festivals, must be considered, even
extravagantly costly. The most detailed account of a festival of this kind is though it is impossible to find direct proof.
75
the one — admittedly from Imperial times which Pausanias gives of the
—
Fire sacrifices in which animals or even men are burned wholly,
festival of Laphrià at Patrai:
68 holocausts, are characteristic of the religion of the West Semites, the Jews,
and Phoenicians. Children where still burned in Carthage in historical times,
Round the altar in a circle they set up logs of wood still green, and in Jerusalem the daily burning of two one-year-old lambs in the temple
each of them up to sixteen cubits long; inside on top of the altar became the centre of the divine 6 service. The Greeks marvelled at this
lies the driest of the wood. At the time of the festival they complete surrender to the god which contrasted with their own questionable
construct a smoother ascent to the altar by piling earth on the Promethean sacrificial 77 practice. Among the Greeks, holocausts are found
altar steps. They throw alive onto the altar edible birds and primarily in the cult of the dead, as described in the Odyssey; this corresponds
victims of all kinds, and further wild boars and deer and gazelles; to the burning of the corpse, and in both cases one speaks of a fire place,
some bring even wolf and bear cubs, others even fully grown wild 8 For this reason, burning is widely regarded as characteristic of a
pyra.
beasts. They also place on the altar fruits of cultivated trees. special class of Chthonic 79 sacrifices in contrast to the Olympian sacrificial
Then they set fire to the wood. At this point I saw how a bear and feast. This dichotomy, however, does not fit the evidence: there are sacrificial
many another animal forced its way out at the first rush of the banquets in the cult of gods who are explicitly called 8 Chthonic, and also in
°
flames, some even escaping by their violence; but those who had the cult of the dead and especially in the hero cult; ’ moreover, even if the
8
thrown them in now drive them back into the pyre. great fire festivals for Artemis or Hera are excluded as special cases, there are
The sanctuary becomes an amphitheatre. And yet the cult of Artemis holocausts even for Zeus.
’ What is significant is more the fact that for Zeus
8
Polieus, for example, first a piglet is burned, then a bull is slaughtered for the
Laphria comes from Calydon, where the cult place existed in Geometric
64 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 1.4
I JI 1.4 ANIMALANDGOD 65
8 a sequence
sacrificial meal — which is also very familiar among the Semites myth is suppressed and kept secret since it is scarcely compatible with the
and which seems to correspond in an exaggerated way to the sequence of the public image of the divine.
normal sacrifice with the burning of the thigh bones followed by the meal. In the iconography, god and animal are intimately associated: the bull
appears with Zeus, the bull or horse with Poseidon, the ram or he-goat with
1.4 Animal and God Hermes, the stag or roe with Apollo and Artemis. The iconographical
tradition, however, has a life of its own, especially as it needs to differentiate
Evolutionary theories found in animal worship a very attractive, more gods by means of attributes; the bull god and stag god can be traced to Asia
primitive antecedent to the belief in anthropomorphic gods. Further support Minor/Hittite tradition;
° the owl of Athena, the eagle of Zeus, and the
9
for this view came from the discovery about the turn of the century of a half peacock of Hera-Juno are little more than heraldic animals for the Greeks.’
understood totemism which was seen as an original form of religion as such. In myth Hecabe is transformed into a dog and accompanies the goddess
It was not surprising therefore that animals worshipped as gods, animal Hecate, doubtless an association of the names Hecabe—Hecate; nevertheless,
gods, and totem animals were sought and found behind the gods of the this dog is described as the agalma of the goddess,
92 a show-piece in which she
8 Where this means that the god is identical with his victim, then the
Grecks. takes delight, just as all gods take delight in the animal figures set up in their
god himself is sacrificed and eaten. The explosive power of these reflections sanctuaries. Many of these figures represent in turn the favoured sacrificial
derived not least from their contiguity with the Christian theology of the victims of the god: bulls for Zeus and Poseidon, stags and goats for Artemis
sacrifice in the mass. and Apollo, rams and he-goats for Hermes, and doves for Aphrodite.
The concept of the theriomorphic god and especially of the bull god, Animal sacrifice is the underlying reality. In sacrifice, the power and
however, may all too easily efface the very important distinctions between a presence of the Stronger One, the god, are experienced. Following a custom
god named, described, represented, and worshipped in animal form, a real which stretches back to catal Hflyük and beyond, horns, especially bull
animal worshipped as a god, animal symbols and animal masks in the cult, skulls with horns, bucrania, are raised up and preserved in the sanctuary;
93
and finally the consecrated animal destined for sacrifice. Animal worship of they mark the site of sacrifice as eloquently as the stains of blood on the altar.
the kind found in the Egyptian Apis cult is unknown in Greece. Snake The Horn Altar of Artemis on Delos, which was made from goat horns, was
worship is a special case.° Myth, of course, toys with animal meta famed as one of the wonders of the world. The most remarkable and most
morphoses. Poseidon in stallion shape sires with Demeter, who is trans
—
direct evidence for the wearing of animal masks is also found in the context of
formed into a mare the primal horse Areion and a mysterious daughter.
— 86 sacrifice: in Cypriot sanctuaries masks to cover the head were made from real
Zeus in the shape of a bull abducts Europa from Tyre to Crete and fathers bull skulls; terracotta figures wearing these bull-masks have also been found.
Minos on her. When we then hear how the sacrificial bull risen from the sea These figures are not directly representing a bull god, but are priests, as is
coupled with Minos’ wife Pasiphae and fathered the Minotaur, the evident from the accompanying myth of the Horned Ones, the Kerastai, who
identification of divine progenitor and sacrificial victim seems complete.
8 made gruesome human sacrifices.
94 The sacrificer conceals himself by
Nevertheless, in the fully formulated myth, Minos and Minotauros are no assimilating himself to the victim, and at the same time he seems to bring to
more equated than their begetters. Jo, Hera’s priestess in Argos, is watched life again the creature killed earlier. One may surmise that goat
sacrifice,
over as a cow by a guardian cloaked in a bull’s hide called Argos, is made masked Pans, and the goat god Pan belong together in a similar way, and
pregnant by Zeus, and is driven across the world by Hera; here, connections that for this reason the satyr play follows the tragedy, as the goat lamented
with the cattle herds and cattle sacrifices of Hera of Argos are manifest. by the goat singers is resurrected in a droll manner in the shape of a
man
Nevertheless, the Greeks avoid calling Zeus or Hera bull or cow even masked in its skin.
95 Similarly, the wearing of a ram’s fleece for purification
6
metaphorically, although in Egypt or Ugarit gods were addressed in this way was very probably connected with a ram sacrifice. But direct evidence
is
without scruple. The only appellation of this kind is found in the fixed lacking.
Homeric formula of the ‘cow-eyed Mistress Hera’ where it is no longer At the same time, the animal in Greek sacrifice seems to be associated in
a
possible to distinguish what was metaphor and what was belief. particular way with man. Again and again, myth relates how an animal
Dionysos is an exception. In the cult hymn from Elis he is invoked to come sacrifice takes the place of a human sacrifice or, conversely, how an
animal
as a bull, ‘with bull foot raging’.
8 Quite frequently he is portrayed with bull sacrifice is transformed into a human sacrifice;
97 one is mirrored in the other.
horns, and in Kyzikos he has a tauromorphic cult image. There is also a A certain equivalence of animal and man is doubtless inherited from
the
myth which tells how he was slaughtered as a bull-calf and eaten by the hunter tradition and is also quite natural to the cattle breeder. To
both
impious creatures of old, the Titans. In the Classical period, however, this belong eyes, face, eating, drinking, breathing, movement, and
excitement in
66 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 2.1 I II 2.1 FIRST FRUIT OFFERINGS 67
then reveals the warm blood, flesh, skin and portions for ‘Hermes and the nymphs’. Before the men start
attack and flight. The slaughter eating, he makes
splanchna which have always had the same names in both first bits, argrnata, go up in smoke.
6
bones and also the
Elsewhere, also, first fruit offerings are regarded as
animal and man heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, and gall-bladder, and finally
— characteristic of a
simple, age-old peasant world.
7 The pious man takes to a sanctuary a little
the form and function of the genitals. That an animal is sacrificed in place of of
everything which the seasons bring, seasonal gifts (horaia), ears
a man may be expressly stated. At that separation of gods and men in the of corn or
bread, figs and olives, grapes, wine, and milk. Such gifts
sacrifice, the dying animal belongs to this extent on the side of men, mortals. dedicated in small
rural shrines are a favourite theme of Hellenistic epigrams.
To the god it stands in a relation of polarity: through the death which it dies, 8 Popular, lesser
gods are mentioned: Pan, Hermes, the nymphs, Heracles,
it confirms e contra rio the superior power of the wholly other, deathless, Priapos, and
naturally Demeter and Dionysos; but heroes too are honoured in
everlasting god. this way, as
are those who fell at the battle of Plataea,9 and occasionally
even the city god
himself such as Poseidon of Troizen.b0 The harvest festivals
proper are not
GIFT OFFERINGS AND LIBATION
incorporated in the state calendar. The peasant or lord
2 celebrates his
thalysia” once the harvest has been gathered in from his field
or estate; festal
First Fruit Offirings eating and drinking are naturally uppermost here, even though
2.! the gods are
not forgotten; in this way the first fruit offering flows over
once again into the
In human society the exchange of gifts is a social process of the first order; customary animal sacrifice.
through giving and receiving, personal bonds are forged and maintained, Xenophon” used part of his share in the spoils from the
March of the Ten
and relations of superiority and subordination are expressed and recog Thousand to found an Artemis sanctuary with an altar
and temple at
Skillous near Olympia,
nized.’ If the gods are the Stronger Ones and also the Givers of Good, then
they have a claim to gifts. Plato has Socrates define piety’ as ‘knowledge of and thereafter he always brought to the sanctuary
sacrificing and praying’ and sacrificing as ‘making gifts to the gods’, and he the tithe of
what the fields bore through the seasons of the
counts on unquestioning assent. That the actual practice of animal sacrifice year and made a
sacrifice to the goddess; and all the citizens and the
does not accord with this is seen as an age-old deception; 3 the practice men and
women of the neighbourhood took part in the festival.
nevertheless goes hand in hand with gifts to the gods, not to mention the fact To those
encamped in tents the goddess gave barley meal,
that the domestic animal as a possession must be given up for slaughter in bread, wine,
nuts and olives, and a portion of the sacrificed
honour of the god. animals from the
sacred herd and a portion of the hunted animals.
An elementary form of gift offering, so omnipresent that it plays a decisive
role in the discussions concerning the origin of the concept of the divine is the The tithe is transformed into the gift which the
goddess in turn offers to her
primitial or first fruit offering, the surrender of firstlings of food whether won guests at the festival. Elsewhere the tithe is often handed
over to the temple
4 The Greeks speak of ap-archai,
by hunting, fishing, gathering, or agriculture. in the form of a lasting votive gift, as a kind of
3
tax.’
beginnings taken from the whole, for the god comes first. How exactly About 420 the sanctuary of Eleusis proclaimed its title
to collect first fruit
something of this portion may come to reach a higher being is, of course, of offerings for the corn goddess Demeter throughout
Greece:’
little importance. Such gifts may be set down on a sacred spot where they are
left to other men or animals, they may be sunk in springs and rivers, fen and The Athenians shall bring first fruit offerings to the
two goddesses
5 or they may be burned; gift sacrifice turns into sacrifice through
sea, from the fruits of the field following ancient
custom and the oracle
destruction. It is possible, of course, that the gifts may even come to benefit from Delphi: from one hundred bushels of barley,
no less than
man again via the organization of temple economy and priesthood; but in the one sixth of a bushel, from one hundred bushels
of wheat, no less
first instance at least, the act of renunciation demonstratively recognizes a than one twelfth of a bushel . .The demarchoj shall collect this
.

higher order beyond the desire to fill one’s belly. in the villages and deliver it at Eleusis to the
sacred officials of
The model of simple piety in the Odyssey is the swineherd Eumaios, who Eleusis. Three corn silos shall be built in Eleusjs
The allied . . .

also manifests his good sense in relation to the gods. When he slaughters a states shall also bring first fruit offerings in the
same manner . .

pig for Odysseus, he lays pieces of raw meat ‘taking the beginning from all
—
They shall send them to Athens The city council shall also
. . .

limbs’ in fat, sprinkles this with barley meal and throws the lot on the fire.
—
send notice to all other Greek cities and shall urge them to
. .
.

At the distribution of the meat, he first of all sets aside one of the seven make first fruit offerings if they wish And if one of these cities
. . .
68 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 2.2
Ir II 2.2 VOTIVE OFFERINGS 6g
in
brings offerings the sacred officials shall receive them the same and danger man seeks to find deliverance through a voluntary act of
manner. Sacrifice shall be made from the sacred cakes according renunciation, one determined and circumscribed by himself. He seeks to
to the instructions of the Eumolpidai, and also a sacrifice of three master the uncertainties of the future by means of a self-imposed ‘if— then’.
animals (trittoia) beginning with an ox with gilded horns, for Any situation of anxiety may present the occasion for a vow: for the
each of the two goddesses from the barley and from the wheat, individual, sickness or the perils of a sea voyage; for the community, famine,
then for Triptolemos and the god and the goddess and Euboulos plague, or war. The vow is made aloud, ceremonially, and before as many
each a perfect victim, and for Athena an ox with gilded horns. witnesses as possible the Greek word euche means simultaneously a loud
—

cry, a prayer, and a vow.

22 If the Outcome is successful, fulfilment of the vow
The silos were then in fact built, and the revenues that flowed into the is an irrevocable duty, as well as an opportunity to parade one’s success
sanctuary were obviously regarded simply as the capital of the temple and before the eyes of gods and men.
were used to finance normal sacrificial festivals. The vow may involve any gift requiring some minimal expense. An animal
The animal sacrifices in turn are — as in Semitic ritual—. regularly 23 may be specified, for example, in which, once the crisis is over,
sacrifice
5 ‘They shall
accompanied by food offerings. A bequest on Thera prescribes:’ men reassure themselves of the divine order; equally common is the promise
sacrifice an ox, then [as food offerings] of wheat from one bushel, of barley of first fruit offerings or the promise to increase these offerings. Votive
from two bushels, one measure of wine and other firstlings which the seasons offerings and first fruit offerings then become linked in an unending chain
bring.’ In addition to the unground groats of barley which are taken and throughout the year: at the harvest festival, prayers are made for new growth
thrown at the beginning, there is also ground barley, psaista, in various forms, and increase, and the gods are promised their portion in turn. One may even
6 here a rich variety is found from place
as flour, broth, pancakes, and cakes;’ go so far as to found a new sanctuary with an altar or even a temple,’4 but an
to place. Offerings of this kind are burned on the altar, some before and some initiative of this kind would generally require some special sanction through
after the bones and fat of the victim. Nevertheless, the amount of food a divine sign. Slaves and animal herds may be bestowed on existing
destroyed in this way was kept within limits. From Classical times onwards sanctuaries, and very occasionally members of the household are pledged for
there is increasing evidence of tables of offering, trapezai, being set up along service in the temple.
25 Movable goods, primarily costly garments, may be
side the altar; choice pieces of roast meat, cakes, and similar offerings were handed over to the temple, or even a tract of land. Most common, however, is
placed on them; the offerings then fall to the priest. The procedure is the practice of setting up in the temple artefacts made by oneself, votives
in
rationalized even further when these gifts are collected from the very outset the true sense, anathemata.’
6
in cash; they are still called firstlings, but they are to be placed straight into The most extravagant form of setting up connected with vows and first-
the offertory-box, thesauros.’
7 fruit offerings is occasioned by war. Hector promises to dedicate the armour
In special cases the offering of first fruits stands on its own, without animal of his opponent to Apollo, and Odysseus hands over Dolon’s cap,
bow, and
sacrifice, or even in contrast to it. In Phigaleia in Arcadia, offerings are made spear to Athena.’
7 Later, a fixed proportion of the booty won in war, usually
from ‘the fruits of cultivated trees and especially the fruit of the vine, along a tithe (dekate), was taken out for the god before the distribution of
the spoils
with honeycombs and raw wool still full of its grease. These they place on the began: this tribute is also called akrothinia, the topmost of the pile.
Even
altar. . 8 In this case the associated myth of
then they pour oil over them.” before battle, however, a share of the spoils is awarded through vows to
one
Demeter and the form of the ritual indicate a connection with Bronze Age or several gods; this also avoids any doubt about the god or gods to
whom
Anatolia. The altar of Apollo Genetor, Begetter, on Delos never served for the army owes its victory.’
8 Booty consists primarily of weapons: all Greek
blood sacrifice, and in front of the Erechtheion in Athens, there stood another sanctuaries were resplendent with weapons captured in war, especially
9 As in Paphos, these
bloodless altar dedicated to Zeus Hypatos, Highest.’
20
shields. A large revenue was also raised from the sale or ransom of
prisoners
altars may preserve a Bronze Age tradition: the altar as table of offerings in of war, and a tithe of this revenue was given in turn to the god in
the form
the Minoan—Mycenaean mould. of splendid votive gifts. Some of the most renowned artistic
monuments of
Greece came into existence in this way, from the Snake Column from
the
2.2 Votive Offerings Persian Wars, to the Nike by Paionios in Olympia and the Nike from
Samothrace. The Sacred Way at Delphi is lined with monuments to the
The votive offering, the gift made to the god in consequence of a vow, differs victories with which the Greeks destroyed themselves in the fifth and
fourth
from the first fruit offering more in occasion than in substance. It pervades all Centuries. Polytheism allows every victory to be recognized without inhibit
ancient civilizations and plays an essential part in defining the relation ion as proof of the power of a Stronger One, as an act of favour
of specific
between men and gods as established in the exchange of gifts. ’ In distress
2 gods who are then entitled to an appropriate thanks offering from
those
70 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY 112.3 II 2.3
whom they have exalted; but the gods give no guarantee against vicissitudes the second to the heroes, and from the third LIBATION 7i
of fortune or precipitate downfall. and last to Zeus Teleios, the
Finisher; or alternatively, from the first to
At the same time, gifts of a kind which no man might be offered also find the Agathos Daimon and from
third to Hermes. Each participant is the
their way into sanctuaries as a result of vows. Of these the most common is free to invoke a god with
libations. further
9 At Patroclus’ bier Achilles cuts off a long lock of hair
the hair offering.’ Invocation and prayer are inseparable
which is pledged to his native river Spercheios. In many places boys and girls from libation: the cup is filled
order to pray, and the filled cup is passed in
on entering their majority would cut their hair and dedicate it to some deity, to the guest with the invitation
pray in turn. In order to supplicate to
the gods aright at all, a
a river, a local hero, or a god; the most pettily pretentious would even travel therefore required.
9 When embarking on a
3 libation is
to Delphi to do so. Similarly, a girl would dedicate the playthings of her voyage, wine is mixed in kraters
and then emptied into the sea from the
childhood in a sanctuary and present her girdle to Artemis before marriage.
30 stern of the ship, amid prayers
’ When Achilles sends Patroclus
4
vows. and
On their retirement, aged hunters, fishermen, and peasants would dedicate out to battle, he takes from
the cup from which he alone drinks, his chest
their trade in a ’
3
sanctuary. The things which man leaves behind cleans it, washes his hands, and
the tools of the wine; then, stepping into the court, draws
point in his life remain preserved in the shrine. This dedication he pours out the wine and,
at a turning to the sky, prays for the Victory and looking up
safe return of his friend. Zeus
cannot be annulled; the renunciation is irrevocable. The background to this prayer, but denies the other.’ grants one
practice is clearly the sacralization of the remains of the sacred act, the Wine libations also have a fixed
place in the ritual of animal
hanging up of the skin and the elevation of the skull. By dedicating his hair, a cry sponde!, sponde! may introduce any sacrifice. The
man surrenders a part of himself to a higher power a loss which admittedly sacrificial act.
’ To Conclude the ritual,
4
—
wine is poured over the flames on the
causes no pain and is quickly replaced. Just as the sacralization at the altar which are consuming the
Thus the sacrificer with the libation remains.
bowl in his hand above the
sacrifice contains something of bad conscience and restitution, so here the became a favourite iconographical flaming altar
anxiety associated with the turning point in life becomes a symbolic 43 Even the gods
motif.
however, were shown holding themselves,
the libation phial
4 in real statues and
redemption from the powers which have previously ruled one’s life. The especially in paintings. Perhaps the
bride in particular must not forget to show reverence to the virgin Artemis. priest would pour the wine
divine libation bowl and the wine into the
would flow from there in turn.
The garments of women who have died in childbirth are dedicated in her it were, makes offering to himself; The god, as
or rather, he is drawn into
’ as if the miscarriage indicated a debt which must be
sanctuary at Brauron,
3 taking of the serenely flowing the giving and
stream, an epitome of self-sustaining
settled posthumously. The libation consequently stands piety.
in a certain polarity to the blood
which precedes it. The sphtigia sacrifice
Libation open hostilities; the spondai end
2.3 Normally there is no other word for hostilities.
armistice or peace treaty than
spondai. ‘We, the polis, have made simply the
33 though it has now disappeared from
The outpouring of liquids, libation, libation’45 means: we have
Committed ourselves The Truce resolved and
of God at the time of the
our culture, was one of the most common sacral acts during prehistoric times festivals, the Olympic Games, or Panhellenic
the Eleusinian Mysteries, is
and especially in the civilizations of the Bronze Age. Alongside the poetic in this way. ‘Sponde bearers’4
6 make their way through also designated
word leibein, loibe, the Greeks use two terms in which Anatolian and Indo and bring about the truce; such the lands to proclaim
34 spendein, sponde on the one hand, and cheein, choe on libation is bloodless, gentle, irrevocable,
European tradition meet, final. and
the other. Spendein, significantly, is associated primarily with wine, the fruit of Libations which the earth drinks7
the Mediterranean; there are, however, also choai with wine and spondai with are destined for the dead and
gods who dwell in the earth. for the
A rite of this kind is already
35 The distinction is based in the first instance on the
honey, oil, and water. Odysseus as he conjures up the performed by
vessel employed and the manner of its manipulation: the sponde is 9 around the offering pit
dead:4
type of libation for all the dead, first with he pours a
a honey drink, then with wine,
made from the hand-held jug or bowl and the pouring is controlled; the choe with water; over this he and thirdly
strews white barley and
involves the complete tipping and emptying of a larger vessel which may be promising future burnt sacrifices. beseeches the dead,
held or may stand on the ground. The choe is intended for the dead and for brings milk, honey, water, Similarly, in Aeschylus’ Persians,
wine, and oil and also flowers the queen
Chthonic gods; nevertheless, one can also speak of spondai for the chthonioi.
6 dead king;49 the songs which to the grave of the
accompany the pouring call the
The sponde is performed whenever wine is drunk. Before drinking one’s fill, the light. The second play dead Darius to
in the Aeschylean Oresteia
a libation is poured; this is already found fixed in a formula in Homer. 3 Libation Bearers, from the takes its title, The
offerings which Electra brings
8 there are later specific rules which prescribe, for instance, that
In symposia maidens to the grave of the with her hand
dead Agamemnon. The unfolding
from the first krater a libation is to be made to Zeus and the Olympians, from has a rhythm which of the ritual
corresponds to that of the normal
sacrifice: first the
72 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 2.3
I II 3 PRAYER 73
ceremonial procession to the grave with all the vessels being borne along; described by the Greeks in many different ways. At the beginning of the
then a silence, a prayer to the dead man; then the pouring, accompanied by normal sacrifice one speaks simply of the washing of hands, chernips.
’ Also
5
50 In Oedipus at Colonus,
wild cries of grief like the Ololyge at the sacrifice. when water is poured out at the grave, bathing water
6 for the dead is often
Sophocles provides the most detailed description of a libation ritual which is mentioned; in particular it is said that someone who has died unmarried
performed in the grove of the Eumenides by way of atonement. First, water is must in this way receive a posthumous bridal bath6 in order to attain the
fetched from a freshly flowing spring; cauldrons which stand in the sanctuary goal of life. At the same time, however, the thirst of the dead is also spoken
are garlanded with wool and filled with water and honey; turning towards 6 libations of water conclude the other outpourings of honey and wine.
of
the east, the sacrificer tips the vessels towards the west; the olive branches Then there are special water-carrying festivals, Hydrophoria, such as the one
which he has been holding in his hand he now strews on the ground at the in Athens. In the sanctuary of the Olympian Earth there was a cleft in the
place where the earth has drunk in the libation; and with a silent prayer he ground where, it was said, the water from Deucalion’s flood had flowed
’ The silent peacefulness of this act becomes a
departs, not looking back.
5 away; here the water which had been carried along was obviously poured
symbol for the mysterious disappearance of the dying Oedipus. away. To conclude the Eleusinian Mysteries two vessels of a special form
’ ‘are nourished by the libations.’ Accordingly,
‘The souls’, wrote Lucian,
5 were filled with water? and then overturned, one towards the west and
—
—

the libation is usually accepted without question as a drink offering, a gift of one towards the east, while to the heavens one cried ‘rain!’ and to the earth
food. That the earth drinks is said explicitly often enough. Mythology must ‘conceive!’ in Greek a play on words: hye kye.
—
7 The same formula was
6 —

then admittedly attribute curious needs to the dead and subterranean beings, engraved on a fountain. Dearth and surplus, rain magic, and flood clearly
and why wine is poured straight onto the ground for the Heavenly Ones constitute the semantic field of such a ritual, though not in the form
of
53 In fact, however, the libation of wine before drinking
remains unexplained. sympathetic magic, but taken once again from the fundamental sense of
is a clear instance of a first fruit offering in its negative aspect. What is libation: raising to hope through serene wastefulness.
important is not that the libation reaches its destination, but that the offerer
surrenders himself to a higher will in the act of serene wastefulness. The
libations to the dead therefore signal a recognition of the power of the dead. PRAYER
3
What distinguishes the outpouring from other gifts of food is its irretrievabil
ity: what is spilled cannot be brought back. The libation is therefore the Libation, sacrifice, first fruit offerings—these are the acts which
define piety.’
purest and highest form of renunciation. But each of these acts must be attended by the right word. Any
wrong, evil,
And yet this is not all. The role of oil in libations has been noted with coarse, or complaining word would be harm, blasphemia, and
surprise: how can something which is not a drink be a drink offering? so the good
speech, euphemia, of the participants consists in the first instance
Nevertheless, oil is specified along with wine and honey for spondai.
55 When silence.2 Out of the silence there rises in holy
up the apostrophe to an Opposite, an
grave stelae are anointed and 6
garlanded, they may be taken as representa invocation and entreaty: the prayer.
3 There is rarely a ritual without prayer,
tives of the dead who, like the living, are anointed and wreathed for the and no important prayer without ritual: litai thysiai, prayers
festival. But oil is also poured over special stones in special places without
—
— sacrifices is
an ancient and fixed conjunction.4 In the O4yssey, when
anthropomorphic associations. In front of the Palace of Nestor in Pylos there Penelope prays to
Athena, she washes, dresses in clean garments, and prepares
stands a stone which always glistens with oil and on which the king takes his the groats of
barley in the sacrificial basket.
5 As a rule, wine is fetched for libation or
57 Stones glistening with oil stand at crossroads; whoever it was that had
seat. granules of frankincense are strewn in the flame. On important
made libation there, the superstitious man at least is careful to demonstrate occasions a
full sacrifice is performed, and a special procession,
8 In this case it is obviously simply a matter of
his veneration for these stones. known as a procession of
supplication, hikesia, may even be organized to the god in his
demarcation, of fixing a centre or point of orientation. Whoever pours out oil 6
sanctuary.
The usual word for to pray, euc/zesthai, also means to
here assures himself of the spatial order of things; any stranger who passes by boast, and in victory,
to let out the cry of triumph: such prayer is more
an act of drawing attention
recognizes from the glistening that other men have established their order to oneself than of submission. The king, general,
here. Similarly, the traces of offerings at the grave of Agamemnon announce or priest who directs the
sacrifice and makes libation prays aloud and for all.
59 and this is also the sense given by the stains of
the presence of Orestes, Usually the prayer
includes within it the vow which is likewise called
blood left on the white-chalked altar.° The centre of the world is, as
6
—
euche; so it is made
officially and before witnesses. The gods, of
mythology knows, the Omphalos stone at Delphi; this too is a place of course, can also hear soft
8 and in exceptional cases, in the cult
entreaties;
’
6
libations. of uncanny, subterranean
gods, silent prayer is prescribed.
9
The outpouring of water has many associations and is understood and Ara, too, means prayer and vow, but at the
same time it is also a curse.
74 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II
fl 4.1 PURIFICATION 75
Success and honour for one is usually inseparable from humiliation and has performed works pleasing to
suppliant the god, has burned sacrifices and
destuction for another; the good ara and the evil ara’° go hand in hand. Ara
built temples, then this should now hold good. Often the assurance ‘for you
has an archaic sound and recalls the direct power which the word of prayer
exercises as a blessing or as a curse which, once uttered, can never be are able’ is slipped in. Once contact has been established, the entreaty is
made succinctly and clearly and is usually accompanied by the promise for
retracted. In the Iliad, the title of the priest who knows how to manipulate
the future, the vow; piety is supposed to guarantee constancy. Philos
such words of prayer is areter:” it is Chryses who brings the plague on the
ophically refined religious sensibility later took exception to the self-
Achaean army with his prayer and who later brings the plague to an end.
interested directness of these euchai; one should, it was recommended, pray
In the poetic setting, this prayer is admittedly a well-formulated entreaty to
simply for the Good and leave the decision to the god.’ 8 Such sublimated
the personal god Apollo, who heeds his priest.
piety could never become the general rule: Normally the Greeks had no
A more elementary stratum of invocation is touched by those traditional,
qualms about praying for an other’s destruction.
linguistically meaningless, word-sounds which accompany specific dances or Kneeling down to pray is unusual.’
9 The gesture of entreaty is outstretched
processions each of which is associated with a particular god. Through sound
arms. To invoke the heavenly gods, both hands are raised to the sky with
and rhythm they help to mould the experience of the festival, and at the same
upturned palms; to call on the gods of the sea, the arms are extended out to
time they receive their content from that experience. The act of sacrifice is
the sea; the hands are also stretched towards the cult image. A cult image or
marked by a shrill cry, the Ololyge of the women; the same cry of women
sanctuary must always be given a friendly greeting a chaire even if one is
accompanies birth as the coming and intervention of a birth goddess is
— —

simply passing by without any special reason,’° or else the gesture of a kiss
awaited, and it recurs in other situations of crisis, such as supposed
may be made by raising a hand to one’s lips; ’ a short, simply prayer may
2
2 The Dionysian revellings are recognized by wild shouts,
possession.’
always be added, Socrates greets the rising sun also in this way. ’ Simple
2
especially the cry euhoi transcribed as evoc in Latin and also thriambe,’
— — 3
apostrophes invoking the gods punctuate everyday life; in excitement, fear,
dithyrambe. Associated with the Apollo cult is the Paean, or more precisely,
amazement, or anger, the ‘gods’ or some fitting divine name are invoked.
the shout ie ie paian, with the special rhythm of three short and one long; this Often names of local gods trip off the tongue, or else Zeus and Apollo and
shout gives its name to the hymn which drives out pestilence and celebrates especially Heracles, the averter of all that is evil; Herakleis mehercule in Latin
4 Iakch’ o Iakche is the
victory, and also to the god who so manifests himself.’
—

— is almost as overworn as the exclamation, ‘Jesus!’. Women have their own

shout which accompanies the procession to Eleusis; here, too, a name is
special goddesses, Artemis, Pandrosos, and so on. 23
heard in the cry, Iakchos, the name of the one who is supposed to lead the Special measures are required, however, if the dead or the gods of the
procession as a daimon and is probably identical with Dionysos; later he was underworld are to be reached. Poets describe how the suppliant hurls himself
also carried along in the form of a statue.’
5 Dithyrambos was also used as an
on the ground and hammers the earth with his fists.24 Where the purpose was
epithet of Dionysos. The collective scream leads to the brink of ecstasy; as to harm or curse, the silent and lasting inscription replaced such invocations
soon as the Greeks come to offer an account of these words, they speak of from the fifth century at the latest: leaves of lead of the kind also used for
personal, anthropomorphically represented gods.
—

letter-writing were inscribed surrendering one’s enemy to the gods of the

—

It is a striking fact, but one that is very closely connected with this underworld; these leaves were buried in the shrines of subterranean gods or
anthropomorphism, that in Greek no ancient liturgical prayer formulae are in graves. While the official cult always continues with the spoken word, the
transmitted, no Veda and no Arval Hymn. Indo-European comings are innovation of the written word is used to serve magical ends. The magical act
preserved in the poetic language, but by virtue of that very fact they may be replaces the invocation: ‘I write down’, ‘I bind down’;’
5 this is therefore
employed quite freely. A basic prayer form’
6 with variations in detail arises called Icatadesis, deJlxio.
from its function. At the beginning, underlined by the request ‘Hear!’, comes
the name of the deity. Great importance is attached to finding the right
name, especially appropriate epithets; as much as possible, epithets are
4 PURIFICATION
heaped one upon another a feature which probably also derives from Indo
—

European tradition and the god is also offered the choice: ‘With whatever
—

4. i Function and Methods

name it pleases you to be called’.’
7 An attempt is also made to define the
sphere of the god spatially by naming his favoured dwelling place or several All creatures must keep clean, eliminating matter which is a source of
possible places from which he is to come. This is followed by a justification irritation and so is defined as dirt. For man, cleaning becomes one of the
for calling on the god, in which earlier proofs of friendship are invoked by formative experiences of childhood. Cleanliness sets limits. The child learns
way of precedent: if ever the god has come to the aid of the suppliant, or if the how ready others are to banish a dirty person along with his dirt, and how,
 II 4.2 THE SACRED AND THE PURE 77
76 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 4.1
and eliminated. In practice few words and no detailed explanations were
by following certain procedures, an acceptable status may be regained.
needed: the social function was immediately manifest and effective.
Purification is a social process. To belong to a group is to conform to its Purification rituals are familiar in the Ancient Near East as in the Old
standard of purity; the reprobate, the outsider, and the rebel are unclean.
Testament. Homer mentions not only the ‘pure garments’ and the washing of
Groups which set themselves apart from the rest of society may do so
hands before prayer and sacrifice, but also the purification of the entire army
through an appeal to special, heightened purity. Accordingly, the emotion
after the plague.’
4 A number of special prescriptions are found in Hesiod.
ally charged activities of cleaning have become ritual demonstration. By
Still able to find a place in mythology were the purifications from madness
celebrating the elimination of irritating matter, these rites delimit a more
—

Melampus and the Proitides’

5 and from blood guilt’
— — Apollo and Orestes.
6
highly valued realm, either the community itself in relation to a chaotic problem of murder and the murderer, especially its power to cast a
The
outside, or an esoteric circle within society; they mediate access to this realm shadow over later generations and the means of overcoming this by purifi
and so to a higher status; they play out the antithesis between a negative
cation, seems to have become increasingly urgent during the course of the
and a positive state and so are suited to eliminate a state which is truly
seventh century. The Deiphic Oracle clearly played a leading role in this
uncomfortable and disruptive, and to lead over to a better, pure state. development while nevertheless exploiting local traditions whenever
Purification rituals are therefore involved in all intercourse with the sacred 7 Special purifying priests, kathartai, also appeared who promised
possible.’
and in all forms of initiation; but they are also employed in crisis situations of
relief in cases of epidemic and civil discord. The most famous of these,
madness, illness, and guilt. Insofar as in this case the ritual is placed in the
Epimenides of Crete, purified Athens of the Cylonian pollution some time
service of a clearly identifiable end, it assumes a magical character.’
before 600.18 Families and individuals were also inclined to trace calamities
The most widespread means of purification is water, and in Greek of all kinds to some ancient pollution, to the wrath, menima, of some
2 contact with water is fundamental. In addition, there is
purification rituals mysterious power.’
9 From the practice of ritual, in the figure of impurity, a
3 to eradicate foul smells, a primitive form of
the practice of fumigation concept of guilt develops; purification becomes atonement.
disinfecting; Odysseus sulphurates the hail after the blood bath he has A process of internalization of this kind leads, of course, to a questioning of
4 The Greek word for to purify, kathairein, is perhaps to be derived
caused. ritual. Already in Hesiod an inner dimension corresponds to the outer when
from the Semitic word for cultic fumigation, qtr. 5 Since, moreover, fire
he warns against crossing a river ‘without washing wickedness and one’s
consumes and destroys everything, including things unpleasant and disgust ° Plato later writes, ‘The impure man is whoever is wicked in his
2
hands’.
6 Two further requisites of Greek
ing, one can say: ‘fire purifies everything.’ ’ and even an orator
2
soul’; 22 can demand that a priest should ‘not keep
purifications are less immediately intelligible, the winnowing fan (liknon) and himself pure for a certain number of days, but be pure in his whole way of
sea onions (skilla). The winnowing fan 7 purifies the corn as the swinging life’. An often quoted line which was engraved over the entrance to the
movement of the basket allows the chaff to be blown away by the wind. The Askiepios sanctuary at Epidaurus reads: ‘Purity is to think pious things.’23
swinging of the basket over the head of the initiand, suggests analogy magic, In practice, such statements were regarded not as devaluing the outer forms
but equally the showering of the newcomer° may be recognized as an of piety, which were still rigorously upheld, but as adding a deeper
abreaction of aggressive feelings, just as the victors in the games are dimension. In the sphere of purification, ritual and ethical reflection could
honoured by pelting with leaves (phjllobolia). No Greek explanation is found therefore merge without a break.
9 but a Hittite ritual text is illuminating: the onion is
for the use of onions,
0 in this way the disturbing matter
peeled skin by skin, until nothing remains;’
4.2 The Sacred and the Pure
is eliminated very elegantly. The use of blood sacrifice for purification is
ambiguous, but nevertheless purification is thereby brought within the The demand for purity draws attention to the boundary which separates the
central reserve of the sacred work. sacred from the profane; the more scrupulously and intensively purification is
Whatever is ritually and forcibly eliminated in the act of purification can be pursued, the greater the difference in order appears. ‘In no way can a man pray
interpreted as a gift to certain powers who are therefore uncanny and perverse to Zeus spattered with blood and filth’;
’ hence the washing of hands, chernips,
2
and better not mentioned by name: ‘For you the dirty water for whom it is before libation and sacrifice. Clean clothing is also worn, and occasionally
necessary and for whom it is right.” From the time of Xenocrates onwards, white garments are prescribed.’
5 Vessels containing water, perirranteria,’
6 are
one speaks of daimones;” concerned with unclean things, they are in turn set up at the entrances to the sanctuaries, like the fonts of holy water in
unclean. Modern interpreters, seeking to clarify the ideas which accompany Roman Catholic churches; everyone who enters dips a hand in the vessel and
3 which can be
the ritual, prefer to speak of a material conception of pollution’ sprinkles himself with water. There is no consecration of the water, but often
transmitted through contact, but which can also be isolated, concentrated,
78 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 4.2
Ir II 4.3 DEATH, ILLNESS AND MADNESS
it must be drawn from a particular source. Not a few sanctuaries have their 79
Dirt gathers even in sanctuaries and on images of gods; regular
own spring or fountain, but occasionally the water must be fetched from cleaning is
as unavoidable as it is delicate. Ritual has once again transformed this
further afield, from an ever-flowing spring or from the always powerful sea. into a
festival, or rather an anti-festival, an uncanny and impure occasion
The water-carrying maiden with the jug on her head, the hydrophoros, is fixed which at
the same time enhances the proper, pure festival by way of antithesis.
in the iconography of worship and also appears frequently in votive terra The
demonstrative enactment of the uneasiness of the defilement
27 The purifying power of fire is joined to the power of water when a
cottas. makes the
purity of the new beginning all the more secure. So in Athens the
log is taken from the altar fire, dipped in water, and used to sprinkle the Plynteria,4’
the washing festival, fall in the last month of the year. Virgins and
sanctuary, altar, and participants.’
8 women
clean the ancient wooden image of the city goddess Athena: ‘they
The Indo-European word for sacred, hagnos,’
9 is defined and narrowed remove her
ornaments and veil the image’; the day is regarded as a day of
down in Greek through its opposition to defilement, mysos, miasma. The ill omen on
which no important business should be started. Not to be confused
conception of specifically cultic purity is defined by considering certain more with this
is the annual procession in which the epheboi carry another image
or less grave dislocations of normal life as miasma. Disturbances of this kind of Athena,
the Palladion,
43 to the sea where it is purified in order to be set up
are sexual intercourse,
30 birth, ’ death, and especially murder. 1-fagnos in
3 once more
on the ancient site of an important law court, where crimes such
the exemplary sense therefore applies to whoever shuns contact with blood as homicide
are tried: the condemned man is banished, but after certain
and death, especially the virgin. Virgins play leading roles in many cults. purification
ceremonies he may occasionally be able to return. His exile,
Priestesses must often observe chastity at least for the period of their office;
32 purification, and
return follows the path of the image which goes to be purified.
but priests and temple servers too must on occasion attain a certain degree of A similar
procession in Argos in which a Pallas image is carried to the
hagneia, especially in preparation for the festival. This involves not only bath is known
from a poem by Callimachus’ An inscription from Kos
avoiding sexual intercourse and contact with women in childbirth and prescribes that
when a sanctuary has been polluted by a dead body, the
households in mourning, but also observing dietary prohibitions, fasting for priestess must take
the boy-nursing goddess, Kourotrophos, to the sea to purify
several days, and eating certain unusual foods.
33 These prescriptions vary her there.
45
In this way the proper distinction between the divine and
according to time and place; there are no universally unclean foods as with the mortal is
re-established.
the Jews. Curiously, the hagneia may even involve a prohibition on bathing:
the contrast with everyday life or some future act of cultic purification is
more important than obvious cleanliness. 4.3 Death, Illness, and Madness
A bath followed by dressing in new robes forms part of individual
Disturbances which set everyday life out ofjoint are confined and
initiations, of initiations into mysteries,
34 and of the wedding ceremony mastered
by the demand for purification precisely because they
which, of course, is celebrated as a sacrificial feast. In the sanctuary of cannot simply be
avoided or eliminated. The most harmless of these is sexual
Athena Kranaia near Elateia there are special bath-tubs for the boy who intercourse, but
a purification is still necessary before intercourse with
holds the five-year office of priest.
35 Before the Eleusinian initiation the mystai the gods may be
resumed. Death cuts much more deeply into the life of relatives,
all bathe together in the sea near Athens on a certain day.
6 Reliefs show how of the house;
those affected are impure and are excluded for a certain
this was Ibliowed by a purification with torches: Heracles, in the act of period from normal
life. Anyone who visits them must purify himself on leaving
receiving the Eleusinian initiation, sits on a ram’s fleece with his head veiled by sprinkling
himself with water.
6 During this period the defilement is given dramatic
while a priestess holds a torch close beneath him.37 On another relief, the outward expression: the mourners wear torn or dirty
Two Goddesses themselves seem to hold out torches towards a child sitting clothes, refrain from
washing, and rub earth or ashes on their heads. When
on the ground; while in mythology, Demeter thrusts the Eleusinian child a Spartan king dies,
two free persons from each family must defile themselves,
Demophon straight onto the fire on the hearth in order ‘to purge him of all says Herodotus —

not spontaneous reaction, but action prescribed. In Julis

8 When other portrayals of Heracles’ initiation show the use of the
mortality’. on Keos a decree
restricts by law the number of those who may and must
liknon as well,
39 late systemization
° was able to speak of a purification
4 defile themselves
(miainesthai) in this way:
47 mother, wife, sisters, daughters of the dead man
through the elements, water, fire, wind. There is also a purification by earth, and their daughters, and then not more than five other
a wiping off: in certain mysteries clay and bran are smeared on the initiand, women. At the end of
the prescribed period, they must all purify themselves
especially on his face, and then wiped off. Thus, a purifier is someone who with a bath by pouring
water over their heads; the house too must be purified
has knowledge of offscourings.
’ By its contrast to the artificial defilement,
4 sprayed with sea
—

water, smeared with earth, and then swept out. Sacrifice

the subsequent purity appears all the more impressive. is then to be made
on the hearth which has meanwhile been extinguished:
the normal relation to
 r
8o RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 4.3 II 4.4 PURIFICATION 8i

the gods is restored. It is clear how the constraint of the ritual is also a help; proclaims Heraclitus, thus exposing to his ridicule the paradox in this most
whatever is able to be done is thereby externalized, objectified, and can be set striking of purification rituals.
55 It has its place especially in the purification
aside at the specified time. of the murderer. The act of murder gives rise to a peculiar, almost physically
Illness and disease can also be understood as defilement. In the first book experienced pollution, agos, in which the murderer is ensnared: he is enages.
of the Iliad, as the wrath of Apollo turns aside after reparation has been made Admittedly, his extreme position is ambivalent, just as sacrament and
to his priest, Agamemnon commands the Achaeans to wash off their defile sacrilege merge in every act of sacral killing; thus it has been debated
ment (apolymainesthai); ‘and they washed themselves and threw the washings whether the word agos and the word for sacred, pure, hagnos, might share
into the sea.’ The purification is followed immediately by the festival of the a common root.6 This, at all events, would lead into prehistory. The
god, which fills the whole day with the beautiful cult hymn, the paean, and community of Archaic times knows its obligation to drive out the agos and the
with sacrifices. Apollo is the god of such purification and healing. His murderer with it: he must leave his home and seek a protector abroad who
sanctuary in Didyma is said to have been founded when Branchos came will take charge of his purification; until then o word must pass his lips, nor
there to drive out the plague, which he did by swinging bay branches and may he be received in any house, nor share a table with others: anyone who
sprinkling the people with them while chanting a mysterious, incompre comes into contact with him is similarly defiled.
57 The mythical instance is
49 Mention is repeatedly made in the Archaic period of
hensible hymn. the matricide Orestes who flees abroad after his deed. Various places with
purifying priests of Apollo who could similarly banish plagues. °
5 their local rituals claim connection with his purification: in Troizen
8 in front
The special preserve of purifying priests is mental illness, madness, which of the Apollo sanctuary stood a hut of Orestes which was said to have been
is regarded unquestioningly as sent by a god. The purification is to conduct erected to avoid receiving the murderer in a normal house. A priestly group
the abnormal over into normality. The mythical instance is the madness of met there regularly for a sacral meal. In Athens, the curious wine-drinking
the daughters of King Proitos of Tiryns which was provoked by Hera or on the day of defilement during the Anthesteria festival
59 was traced back to
Dionysos and which spread to all the women of the city. ’ In reality this is
5 the arrival of Orestes. After Aeschylus it was imagined how Apollo himself
a ritual breaking away from normality; the description of the outward had purified Orestes at Delphi with a pig sacrifice. Vase paintings give an
disfigurement of the mad Proitides recalls primitive make-up and masks, like idea of the procedure, similar to that used for the purification of the Proitides:
the hideous idols from the shrine in Mycenae. The path back to normality the piglet is held over the head of the person to be purified and the blood
was found by the seer Melampus. One version transfers the purification must flow directly onto the head and hands.° Naturally, the blood is then
6
which he performed to the sanctuary of Artemis in Lousoi: the name Lousoi washed off and the regained purity is made outwardly manifest as well.
was associated with washing, lousthai. In the clear light of the fifth century, A purification of this kind is clearly in essence a rite de passage. The
the author of On the Sacred Disease holds forth against the ‘magicians, murderer has set himself outside the community, and his reincorporation at a
purifiers, begging priests and quacks’ who treat epilepsy with ‘purifications new level is therefore an act of initiation. Thus the purification of Heracles
and incantations . . and of the remains from their purifications, some they
.
before the Eleusinian initiation and the purification of Orestes have distinct
hide in the earth, others they throw in the sea, and others they carry away structural parallels; a piglet sacrifice is involved at Eleusis as well.
6 To offer
into the mountains where no one will touch them or tread on them.’ 52 a surrogate victim to the pursuing powers of vengeance is an idea which
The Korybantic madness to which Plato repeatedly alludes was regarded seems natural in expiating a murder, but the essential aspect seems to be that
as a special kind of 53
possession. The Korybantes stand under the sway of the the person defiled by blood should once again come into contact with blood.
Great Mother of Asia Minor. At the sound of one specific tune each will lose The ritual is a demonstrative and therefore harmless repetition of the
consciousness and be driven to a delirious dance under the power of the shedding of blood in which the result, the visible defilement, can equally
Phrygian music. When the dancer is finally overcome with exhaustion, he demonstratively be set aside; in this way the deed is not suppressed but
feels release not only from his madness, but from everything which had overcome. Comparable is the primitive custom where the murderer sucks in
previously oppressed him. This is the purification through madness, the the blood of his victim and then spits it out 2
6
again:
he must accept the fact
purification through music, which was later to play such a prominent role in through intimate contact, and at the same time effectively free himself of it.
the discussions about the cathartic effect of tragedy.
54 Blood is also quite frequently shed for purification in other contexts. The
most detailed evidence is given in connection with the lustration of the
4.4 PurifIcation bj Blood Assembly and of the Theatre in Athens. At the beginning of the assembly,
special officials, peristiarchoi,
6 carry piglets around the square, cut their
‘They purify themselves by defiling themselves with other blood, as if throats, spray the blood over the seats, cut off the genitals and throw them
someone who stepped in mud should try to wash himself with mud,’ away. How the carcass was disposed of we do not learn. The name of the
82 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II II 45 PHARMAKOS 83
officials indicates that the ritual is taken originally from the purification of and one for the women’; they are draped with figs and led out as
the men,
the domestic hearth, a preparatory sacrifice before the rekindling of thc and perhaps they too were driven out with stones. On dire
katluirsia,
hearth and the resumption of normal sacrifices and prayers to the gods.
occaSi0a such as plague, the people of 7 Massalia—Marseilles resorted to
’
Purificatory sacrifices of this kind are accompanied by an act of encirclement. similar meaSures a poor man was offered pure and costly food for a year,
The Mantineans
6 purify their whole land by leading blood victims (sphagia)
then, decked in boughs and sacred vestments, he was led around the whole
all around the boundaries before slaughtering them. In Methana,
6 to protect toWfl amid curses and finally chased away. From the cliffs of Leukas 72 in the
the vineyards from a blighting wind, a cock is cut in two, and then two men precinct of Apollo Leukatas a condemned criminal was plunged into the sea
run around the vines in opposite directions each carrying a bleeding piece;
every year; he was, however, provided with wings to lighten his leap and an
the pieces are buried at the point where the men meet. Demonstration of attempt was made to fish him up again. Another report 73 speaks of a young
power, demarcation, and eradication are elements of such action. The being plunged into the sea for Poseidon, in order to be rid of all evil
man
connections with the normal sacrifice, especially with the bloodying of the
with him: ‘become our offscourings’ (peripsema). In Chaironeia, Hunger,
altars, are manifest; but here especially, the purification ritual appears Boulimos, is whipped out of the door in the form of a slave. 74
reduced to a magical-instrumental function. Speculations about the Vegetation Spirit have tended to obscure the
A counterpart to the act of encirclement is the act of passing between the simple and terrifying character of this drama. The same drama, well-nigh
bloody halves of a bisected victim. The Macedonian army in particular is bereft of ritual accompaniment, appears in a possibly historical report from
purified by being marched between the parts of a bisected dog the head
— 73 As the plague was raging in Ephesus, the miracle man
late antiquity.
to the right, the hind quarters to the left. A sham battle follows. ApollOfliOs assembled the entire population in the theatre, then suddenly
A corresponding ritual exists not only in Boeotia, but even earlier among the
he pointed to an old beggar clad in rags: this was the plague daimon.
Hittites; Old Testament and Persian parallels can also be adduced. The Thereupon the poor beggar, in spite of his pleas for mercy, was stoned until
deliberate cruelty is part of the steeling for battle; it may even be said that a a great cairn towered over his corpse. The aggression excited by fear is
man who has refused military service is taken as the blood victim. To this c.oncentrated on some loathsome outsider; everyone feels relieved by the
extent the bisected victim represents a special form of the preparation for communal projection of the fury born of despair, as well as by the certainty of
battle through sphagia. The passing through, the rite depassage, is purification standing on the side of the just and the pure.
in that it leads to the desired status; for this reason, the expiation of murder Accordingly, the performance of the ritual in exceptional situations of
and the initiation into war can both be called purification. amciety, such as in Massalia, may well be the earlier form. That the Attic
Ostrakismos, the judgement by potsherds on a disturbing individual, is a
6
4.5 Phar,nakos democratic rationalization of a similar tradition has long been recognized.
The Thirty Tyrants were then able to designate their political murders as
Among the purification rituals special attention has long been focused on the a purification
77 — a purge in the most ominous sense of the word. The
expulsion of the Pharmakos, for here at the very centre of Greek civilization religiously circumscribed form is connected in lonia and Attica with the
human sacrifice is indicated as a possibility, not to say as a fixed institution.
6 festival of the Thargelia in the early summer, with the first fruit offerings
Thanks to the insulting poems of Hipponax,
68 the most remarkable details from the new harvest: purification as a prerequisite of the new beginning.
are known from Colophon in the sixth century. Hipponax threatens his It is clearly essential that the creature to be driven out be first brought into
enemies with ignominious destruction by vividly describing how one deals intimate contact with the community, the city; this is the sense of the gifts of
with a Pharmalcos: a man chosen on account of his ugliness is first feasted on food which are constantly mentioned. Figs 8 are doubly contrasted to normal
figs, barley broth, and cheese, then he is whipped out with fig branches and culture, to the fruits of the field and to the flesh of the victim; they point
sea onions, being struck above all seven times on his membrum virile. Our to sweetness, luxury, licentiousness, a breath of a golden age from which
Byzantine witness then claims that he was finally burned and his ashes reality must be rudely distinguished. The encircling, which is also found in
scattered in the sea; whether he is to be believed has long been disputed. purifications with water and with blood, includes all the pure members of the
In Abdera,
9 some poor victim is bought every year as a purificatory sacrifice,
6 community; the outcast is then called the one wiped off all around,peripsema.
katharsion; he is fed royally and then on a certain day is led through the city This is not active killing, but simply a matter of offscourings which must be
gates, made to walk round the city walls, and finally chased across the thrown across the boundaries or over the cliffs, never to return.
boundaries with stones. Similarly, at the Thargelia festival in Athens,
° two
7 Corresponding to this in the Old Testament is the famous, though itself
men are chosen again on account of their particular loathsomeness, ‘one for quite puzzling rite of driving the scapegoat out into the desert; this has given
84 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 5. II 5.1 TEMENOS 85
79 In Greece there are a
the whole complex the usual name of scapegoat ritual. groves with their rustling leaves, singing birds, and murmuring 3 Yet
brooks.
number of instances of an ox being driven out, either towards enemies on the cult is not a response to the experience of the landscape.
4 If ever a breath
° Comparable rituaLs
whom it brings misfortune, or else across the boundary.
8 of divinity betrays some spot as the sphere of higher beings,
5 then this is
are attested in the Near East.
’
8 evoked by the institutionalized cult.
To expel a trouble-maker is an elementary group reflex; perhaps in the Just as the rites frequently give form to the opposition between indoors and
most distant background there is also the situation of the pack surrounded by outdoors, so in relation to the township there are centrally and peripherally
beasts of prey: only if one member, preferably a marginal, weak, or sick placed sanctuaries. The former crown the high fortress the Acropolis or
—
—

member, falls victim to the beasts can the others escape. The outcast is then border On the market place the Agora; the latter seek out mountain heights
—

also the saviour to whom all are most deeply indebted. or else swamps and marshland, limne. In particular there is an Artemis
The Greek description as katharmos makes the process seem unequivocal, Limnatis and a Dionysos en 1imnais.’ Here in the marshes the ancient practice
as if it were merely dirt which is eradicated; myth, however, points to the of sacrifice by sinking or drowning has doubtless left its trace while the
provocative ambivalence. It may even be the king who becomes the outcast: climbing up, the leading up of victims to the mountain can call on an equally
King Kodros of Athens has himself killed by the enemy while dressed as a impressive tradition. The sanctuaries, however, were often placed not on the
’ there is the wandering King Oedipus;
8
beggar; 8 King Thoas of Lemnos is very summit but on a protected col. 7 The divine names are not confined to
cast out to sea in a chest at the revolt of the women, the great katharrnos.
4
8 specific functions. There is Apollo in the market place, 8 as well as in the
Alternatively, the group member handed over to the enemy, pelted, and lonely mountains of Bassae; there are peak cults of Zeus, but equally Hera
killed is a particularly beautiful, chosen maiden, such as Polykrite of Naxos, Akraia or Aphrodite on Acrocorinth. The goddess of the citadel is pre
8 The expulsion of
who is honoured with sacrifices at the Thargelia festival. eminently Athena; outside the city on a hill there often lies a sanctuary of
adolescents, as in the case of the Lokrian maiden tribute to Athena of Ilion, 9 which enters into a certain polarity with the everyday life of the
Demeter,
which is described as propitiation for the sacrilege of Ajax the Lokrian, may, city.
of course, also be part of an initiation ritual in which the purifying separation The sacred site must he marked unmistakably, but natural features are
leads on to a reincorporation which allows the old order to continue. In the seldom appropriated for this purpose. Grottos and caves play only a
foundation sagas of a number of colonies it is related that the first settlers had marginal role; the most striking is the mystery cult in the Ida cave.” The
been dedicated as tithes to the god at Delphi and so had been sent abroad; wild rocky gorge at Lebadeia with its many springs undoubtedly lent features
the driving out, a kind of ver sacrum, is here interpreted as a first fruit offering to the subterranean Trophonios cult;” there are also sanctuaries which are
8 in other foundation sagas it is again outsiders,
instead of as a katharmos; located at hot springs.” The simple marking with rock and tree is usually
bastards, and slaves, who are driven out and find a new beginning in the sufficient. At the centre of the Eleusinian sanctuary stood an unhewn rock
foreign land.
88 that was always left open to view;’
3 the sanctuary of the Olympian Earth in
Athens encompassed a natural cleft in the rock.’ 4 Nevertheless, stones are
also set up, unwrought stones (argoi litIwi);’5 in Delphi the stone worked in
5 THE SANCTUARY the characteristic form of the navel was regarded as the centre not only of the
sanctuary, but also of the world: the two eagles which Zeus released from the
5.1 Temenos furthermost West and the furthermost East met at this spot.’ 6
The tree, however, is even more important than the stone in marking the
The cult of the Greeks is almost always defined locally: the places of worship’ sanctuary, and this corresponds not only to Minoan—Mycenaean but also to
are fixed in ancient tradition and cannot be moved lightly. Sanctuaries are Near Eastern tradition.’
7 The shade-giving tree epitomizes both beauty and
often preserved and tended through catastrophes, revolution, and changes in continuity across the generations. Most sanctuaries have their special tree.
population. The Temple of Apollo continued to tower over Corinth long after In Athens the carefully tended olive tree stands on the Acropolis in the
the city had been destroyed by the Romans, and even today a number of its sanctuary of the Dew Goddess, Pandrosos; that it immediately broke into leaf
columns are still standing. Even Christians followed tradition, erecting again after the Persians had burned down the temple in 480 was a vivid
chapels in place of sanctuaries or transforming temples into churches; the assertion of the unbroken vital force of Athens.’
8 In the Hera sanctuary on
cathedral of Syracuse incorporates the Athena Temple from the fifth century. Samos the willow tree (lygos) remained always at the same spot and was even
Modern experience of a Greek sanctuary is indissolubly fused with Greek incorporated into the great altar.’9 On Delos the palm tree was shown
landscape.’ Something of this even touched the ancients: they speak of the against which Leto had leaned at the birth of the twin gods Artemis and
towering heights, the rocky cliffs of Delphi, and the sweet charm of sacred Apollo; Odysseus can compare Nausikaa’s virgin beauty with nothing more
86 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 5.1 II 5.2 ALTAR 87
° In Didyma” there stood the laurel tree of
fitting than this Delian palm.
2 the water basins only what is pure is admitted.
39 Hence within the sanctuary
Apollo; in Olympia it was a wild olive tree (kotinos) , whose twigs were used to everything is forbidden which would produce a miasma sexual intercourse,
—

22 Particularly old and sacred was the oak (phegos) of

wreathe the victors. birth, and death. As time went on, the scruples if anything increased: Delos
Dodona which imparted the oracle with the rustling of its branches.
23 was purified twice, under Pisistratus and again in the year 426/5;4° first,
The tree is closely associated with the goddess. The carved image of graves were removed from the area which could be seen from the sanctuary,
Athena in Athens is made of olive wood 24 and the image of Hera in Tiryns is then from the whole island; pregnant women and the dying were transferred
made of wild-pear wood.25 Coins from Gortyn2 6 and from Myra in Asia to the neighbouring island of Rhenia. Pausanias the Spartiate, who had been
27 show a
Minor goddess sitting in a tree: the former depicts Europa, who is left in the sanctuary of Athena Chalkioikos to starve, was dragged Out still
approached by Zeus in the shape of an eagle, and the latter shows Artemis alive, although this also violated the asylum of the sanctuary.
’ Admittedly,
4
Eleuthera. Nonetheless, dark myths which tell of the goddess or the maidens the taboos of the sacred are essentially ambivalent here too: the god can
in her service being hanged on the tree2S are a warning against taking the tree celebrate marriage in the sanctuary, Apollo and Artemis were born on Delos,
cult simply as a precursor of the goddess cult. Offerings have been hung on and sacrificial victims forever bleed to death at the altar. Frequently a site of
trees from time immemorial: animal skins by age-old hunting custom, and sacrifice is interpreted as the grave of a hero whose grisly death in the
also discs, oscilla, which move in the wind; for mythological fantasy or sanctuary is then recounted in myth.
42 In order to make way for the gods,
tradition these are hanging sacrifices. Thus it may also be said that a who are out of the ordinary in the most eminent sense, all that is exceptional
Dionysos idol is made from the wood of the pine tree on which Pentheus met in the life of men must remain excluded.
his death.
29
Often a tract of woodland belongs to the sanctuary, a grove, alsos, 5.2 Altar
called allis in Olympia, either constituting the sanctuary itself or lying
° The name feeding place points to its practical
immediately adjacent.
3 The temenos is set apart for the sacred work, for sacrifice; its most essential
function as a grazing area for the pack animals and mounts of the element, more essential than the cult stone, tree, and spring, is the altar,
participants at the festival, though this in no way precludes a certain feeling bomos, on which the fire is kindled.
43 ‘Temenos and fragrant altar’ of the god
for nature, especially as the grove is reserved for sacral use. is already a Homeric formula.
44 There are natural rock altars; 4 altar and cult
More important still is water for drinking and for watering the animals as stone are then identical. In simple rustic shrines a few stones roughly set
well as for the special purity of the cult. Many sanctuaries have their own together may serve as an altar.
6 In a number of large and important
’ but in Didyma
springs and fountains, especially the Demeter sanctuaries;
3 3 sanctuaries the remains of ash and bone are allowed to grow up into great
too there is a well near the altar; from the Alea temple in Tegea
33 a separate mounds; even at Olympia this and nothing else was the Altar of Zeus.
47 The
door leads down to the fountain; the Heraion of Argos has its brook at least at normal Greek altar, however, is well built, constructed of bricks and white
34 In Delphi, the water of the Kassotis spring flows into the
the foot of the hill. washed with lime or else fitted together from carefully hewn stone blocks.
Apollo sanctuary itself while the much more powerful and more famous Not infrequently the sides are decorated with volutes. In between lies the
Castalian spring gushes from the rocky gorge nearby.35 On the Acropolis in metal tablet on which the fire burns. Large altars have one or more steps
Athens, the most important mark of the cult apart from the olive tree was the built to one side, which the priest can mount to lay the consecrated portions
‘sea’, a little pool of salt water in a hollow in the rock; though incorporated on the fire and to pour the libation.
into the north hall of the Erechtheion, it had always to remain open to the According to literary sources, the celebrants stand around the altar; the
6 Here it is the symbolism of the deep which is important, rather than
sky. water vessel is carried around everyone in a circle at the beginning. In many
any practical use. sanctuaries, however, the altar stands so close to the temenos wall that an
The Greek sanctuary, however, is properly constituted only through the irregular semicircle is the only conceivable arrangement.
8 The temple façade
demarcation which sets it apart from the profane (bebelon). The land cut off then, as a rule, forms the background. The entrance to the temenos usually
and dedicated to the god or hero is known by the ancient term which really leads directly into the cult area in front of the altar. In a number of cases
37 Even when a river or the all-seeing sun
signifies any domain at all, temenos. there is theatre-like terracing which could make the ceremonies visible to a
god Helios is worshipped, he receives his well-defined temenos. 8 The greater number of people.
49
boundary is marked by boundary stones which are often inscribed, or else by The altar is ceremonially set up when the first sacrifice is performed; this
a massive stone wall, usually about the height of a man. Mostly only one act is often attributed in myth to some hero, to a king of ancient times, or
to
entrance is allowed; there the water basins for purification are set up. Within Heracles. Thereafter, the position of the altar remains fixed, whatever other
 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY
II 5.3
88 II 5.3 TEMPLE AND CULT IMAGE 89
alterations may affect the sanctuary. In the Heraion on Samos the excavators to lay a robe on her knees, a seated image of the goddess is certainly
were able to distinguish seven different states of the altar before it received its 57 cult image and temple belong together. The early temples are
presupposed:
final, monumental form at the hands of Rhoikos about 55o.° in fact dedicated to those very gods who are also represented by cult statues:
A temenos need not be reserved for one god alone, but may include several Hera, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, and then Demeter;5
8 Poseidon and Zeus
sacrificial sites, several altars, which then stand in a defined relation to one temples follow later. Nevertheless, a number of sanctuaries always remained
another. Frequent is the antithesis of offering pit or ground level hearth and without temple and cult image.
raised stone altar, corresponding to a Chthonic and an Olympian sacrifice; For temple and image,just as for the altar, there is a ceremonial setting up
hero and god are in this way directly associated with each other; otherwise 59 Foundation offerings are buried beneath the walls precious
(hidyein).
each may have his own separate temenos.
’
5 —

heirlooms, statuettes of gods, and pots with offerings of food; animal

slaughtering, fire, a sacral meal, and libations always accompany the
i:j. Temple and Cult Image ceremony. Connections with Hittite—Anatoljan tradition are probable. The
cult image is called hedos as that which has an immovable seat; poets are also
Greek culture as a whole has been termed a temple 52 culture, for it was in the
fond of using the word bretas which must be of foreign origin.
°
6
building of temples, not of palaces, amphitheatre s, or baths, that Greek The prehis tory of the temple has many strands. The connection with the
architecture and art found its fulfilment. But from the point of view of Greek
niegaron of the Mycenaean royal palaces has often been emphasized.
religion, the temple was by no means given as a matter of course; most
Corresponding to this in the eighth ct1tury is the hearth house temple, an
sanctuaries are older than their temples, and a number always disdained the
oblong building with an entrance on the narrow side and a central hearth;
temple. The temple is the dwelling place, naos, of the deity; it houses the
the most important examples are at Perachora near 6 Corinth and at Dreros
’
anthropomor phic cult image. The beginnings of temple building therefore
on Crete. In the Dreros temple a cult bench of Minoan—Mycenaean appear
overlap with the history of the development of the images of the gods. ance was found, but there were also unique figures made of hammered
Greeks themselves later proposed the theory that the pure and earliest bronze which represent Apollo, Leto, and 6 Artemis. Perhaps these may be
2
worship of the gods was without 53 images. In fact, in many places the most called cult images; nevertheless, cooking and eating also took place in the
important gods of the Mycenaean period, Zeus and Poseidon, did without hearth house temple. The elongated apsidal buildings in Thermos, in the
cult image and temple down into Classical times. It is possible that the Indo. federal sanctuary of the Aetolians, were probably also houses for sacrificial
Europeans used no images of the gods. On the other hand, the temple as banquets; when, in the eighth century, a building of this kind was
house of the cult statue had long been the centre of worship in the religions of surrounded by a ring of wooden columns, there arose one of the earliest
Egypt and Mesopotamia and was taken over by the Hittites and with the —

examples of a columned 6 temple. Earlier still and truly decisive for the
exception of Israel by the West Semitic peoples. Before and alongside this
—
following period is the installation in the Heraion on Samos
4 not a hearth
6
there are the (usually female) statuettes of Neolithic tradition, but rarely can
—

house, but an elongated rectangular building with a central row of columns

anything specific be ascertained about their meaning or use. 54 The Minoan— probably dating from as early as the ninth century. This building was then
Mycenaean civilization occupies a special positio
55 n. Here there are indi
enclosed, again in the eighth century, by a ring of wooden columns. Here the
vidual temples and, at least in the late phase, statuettes, mostly statuettes of fire site, the altar, stands in the open air opposite the temple which opens out
goddesses, are set up in sanctuaries. But these statuettes usually appear in
towards it; the altar dates back into the tenth century. Hera’s cult image was
groups; there is not the unique cult statue which represents the god as lord of a wooden image probably dating from the eighth century, some impression of
the sanctuary. which is given by a statuette from the seventh Century. The memory still
The Homeric poems, on the contrary, know the temple as the dwelling lingered, however, of an earlier stage when the goddess had been represented
place (neos) of a particular god, and this corresponds to the situation at the simply by a plank (sanis),just as on the island of Ikaros a rude piece of wood
end of the Geometric period. Apollo transports Aeneas to his temple in Troy was regarded as 6 Artemis. The particular type and role of the image led to
where Leto and Artemis tend his wounds in the adton. In the Odyssej, Athena the particular form of temple. An entirely different kind of building, a horse
betakes herself to Athens and enters the ‘close built house of Erechtheus’, shoe shaped wooden structure, was erected in the eighth century at Eretria to
The Phaeacian city has its temples of gods, and the companions of Apollo 66 Daphnephoros, perhaps as a tabernacle, a bay hut corresponding to
Odysseus wish to set up a temple to Helios and to furnish it richly to atone the bay bearing in honour of this god. Quite different again is the rectangular
6 When in the sixth book of the Iliad the
for the slaughter of the god’s cattle. stone building of the Athena temple at Gortyn
6 which was constructed about
Trojan women organize a procession of supplication to the temple of Athena Boo and stands in the North Syrian/Late Hittite tradition. It encloses not a
90 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 5.3
Ir 11 5.3 TEMPLE AND CULT IMAGE
91
cult image but an offering pit; a large altar was added shortly afterwards and its outstretched right hand held statuettes of
the three Charities; the
somewhat further down the hillside, and an almost life-size stone figure of a image was overlaid with gold.
seated goddess was set up nearby. The subsequent development is a commonplace
in all histories of architec
Images of gods do not seem to have been produced in the dark age, but ture and art. After the invention of the roof tile,
the familiar normal type of
were used nonetheless. Minoan—Mycenaean figurines remained to hand and Greek temple develops in the seventh century,
everywhere replacing the
were employed as foundation offerings as late as 700. In the temple on Keos, diverse earlier, primitive structures: a platform
raised in three steps supports
the head of a large Middle Minoan statue had clearly been set up as a cult a rectangular stone building with a gently sloping
gable roof, preferably one
68 In Olympia, too, there was discovered a very modest little
image. hundred feet long ( hekatompedos) Not without
.
Egyptian influence, the column
Mycenacan figure which had been deposited or lost there at some very much orders are perfected, the lonian in Asia Minor
and the Doric in Argos and
6 In addition, a considerable number of small bronze statuettes of
later date. Corinth. From the sixth century on, we find a
universal acceptance of those
a Warrior god of Syrian—Hittite origin clearly also found their way to Greece, fixed conventions for columns, entablature,
frieze, and pediment which were
with helmet, shield, and threateningly brandished spear.° The possible role
7 to dominate the architecture of the
Mediterranean for more than seven
of wooden figures quite eludes our grasp. Nonetheless, xoanon, carved figure, hundred years. The centre of the temple is the
naos proper, in Latin, the celia,
’ There are a number of pointers towards the
is the usual word for statuette.
7 where the cult image is set up on a pedestal; the
furnishings include a table of
use of small, movable figures in the cult. In Patrai, an image of Dionysos is offerings, incense stands, and occasionally
an ever-burning lamp; the room is
kept in a chest and produced only once a year for the nocturnal festival, for lit by the great, high doorway which faces
towards the east. A porch often
the sight of the image brings madness; the priestess of Ortheia in Sparta adjoins the door opening. Occasionally a door
leads behind the celia into an
wears the image of the cruel goddess on her arm during the bloody inner room which only a few may enter, an
’
8
adyton.
With the rise of large-scale marble
72 in Aigion the priest of Zeus and the priest of Heracles each keep a
spectacle; sculpture in the seventh century, and
73 The gods which Aeneas the discovery of hollow casting in bronze
bronze statuette of their god in their own homes. in the sixth century, the creation
statues of the gods becomes the most of
brought from Troy are imagined as small figures in a closed container, like elevated task of plastic art. The cult
images were generally already in existence
those that the head of a household still possessed very much later, 74 Ovid and could not be replaced; the
Mother Goddess numerous wooden images famous archaic and classical works are
describes how in the cave of the almost all votive gifts.
2 Still there are
8
75
seen. All this may in principle be older than the setting new temples to be built and new
of the gods are to be images to be consecrated. In the
century the chryselephantine image fifth
up of cult images in temples. As a separate tradition there is the undoubtedly appears in place of the wooden statues
as the highest display of artistic splendour:
ancient custom of erecting wooden phalloi or ithyphallic figures as apotro around a wooden core, the robes
are worked in pure gold and the
paic markers, forerunners of the herms.6 flesh is worked in ivory. Just as
temple
In the eighth century, images of gods in clay and bronze begin to be architecture attained its acme and a
certain finality in the Temple of the
produced once more, some in the typical epiphany gesture of Minoan— Olympian Zeus (about 460) and in the
Parthenon on the Athenian Acropolis
Mycenaean tradition, and others in the now particularly popular Warrior (consecrated in 438), so, in the
judgernent of the ancients, the two
chryselephantin images by Pheidias,
style. The unique pillar-shaped cult image of Apollo at Amyklai with helmet the Athena Parthenos on the Acropolis
77 and its influence continues and the Zeus of Olympia, were the
and spear also seems indebted to this latter type, culmination of all Greek religious art.
Pheidias’ Zeus in particular set its seal
to be felt in the large-scale sculptures of powerful, war-like gods: Athena with on the artistic representation of the
gods for centuries; even a Roman
the lance, Zeus with the thunderbolt, and finally the magnificent god from general was awestruck by its majesty. 8
Artemision. However much the picture of Greek
religion was thereafter defined by the
temple and the statue of the god, for
The surviving images are almost exclusively small votive figures from the living cult they were and remained
more a side-show than a centre. The
sanctuaries; the true cult images were xoana, carved from wood. Besides the sacredness of the ancient xoana was, of
course, extolled, and often it was
standing image such as the image of Hera on Samos, another principal type said that they had fallen from heaveri; 4a
8
Palladion in particular was a possession
is the image of the seated goddess a type which ultimately goes back to
— to be cherished greatly, even though
it was never a pledge of
çatal Hüyük. A seated goddess is portrayed in the image of Hera of Tiryns, divine nearness as in Rome. There are
rites to give life to the cult image no magical
which was later housed in the Argive Heraion and regarded as one of the as in Babylon.
5 The statues which were
8
8 the ancient image of Athena Polias in Athens famous were the work of artists who
oldest images in existence; were known by name; these were
for their beauty as agalmata, famed
79 and the same type is presupposed in the sixth book of the
was also seated, glorious gifts in which the gods must
also delight.
Iliad. The much larger than life-size cult image of Apollo on Delos which was Philosophers from Heraclitus onwards
with the god, ‘as if they were to warned against confusing the image
made in the sixth century achieved wide renown:° its left hand held a bow
8 try and converse with houses’;
nevertheless,
92 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 5.4
Ir J 5.4 ANATHEMATA 93
one can say in prayer, ‘Thy image, 0 goddess’, without equating image and initiation ritual, or indeed anything left behind at a cultically accentuated
86 As a matter of fact, the suppliant did go up to the image to pray,
deity. turning point in life, will also remain at the sacred spot. 95 And if the
8 the image was cleaned and
and this was the reason for entering the temple; distinctiveness of the sacred is to be upheld, then the implements employed
decked out in the festal rite, it was presented with a new robe (peplos) and at sacrifice cannot simply be returned to profane use.
dressed. Such attention was bestowed primarily on the ancient xoanii; the From such beginnings, the custom of setting up things in the sanctuary
great Panathenaic procession immortalized on the Parthenon frieze can only (anatithenai) clearly underwent an unprecedented expansion from the eighth
have encircled the Parthenon in order to take the robe to the very ancient century onwards, primarily in connection with the votive offering. The object
88 Processions with images of gods
image later set up in the Erechtheion. — set up in this way, anathema,
6 is a lasting, visible gift: a witness to one’s
which play a major role in the Ancient Near East are an exception. There
—
relationship to the deity, the principal form of expression for private devotion
are purification processions such as those for the Palladion or the abduction and the most representative document of official piety. As the inscriptions
and return of the Samian Hera; such a moving of the immovable is an state, the donor expects a gracious gift in return, even if only that the god
uncanny breaking up of order. As an antithesis, an expression of binding may grant him occasion to set up another gift in the future. The gifts can
order, there are fettered images of gods, especially of Artemis, Dionysos, and take many forms. Valuables in early times are garments and metal. Since the
° they await the abandoned and perilous unchaining in the festival of
9
Ares: object set up acts as a sign, a substitute model, a sign of the sign, can take its
licence, which must then lead back to the established order. place: bronze and terracotta figurines, or a painting on clay or wood; quite an
During the sacred work of sacrifice at the altar the temple is at the back of industry in devotional objects developed at an early date.
the participants; they look towards the east and pray to the sky, just as the One group of anathemata can be understood as giving permanence to the
’ So the pious man stands as it were beneath the
temple opens out to the east.
9 sacrificial act: vessels of all kinds, roasting spits, sacrificial axes, and above
eyes of the deity; but it is not the inner space of the temple which draws him all tripods. The tripod cauldron, which was used as a cooking utensil for
in, withdrawing him from the world. The festival is enacted in the open air boiling the meat and at the same time had considerable intrinsic value as
around the altar and temple; built as a façade, the temple, which can be metal, became the most representative votive gift of Greek sanctuaries,
8
circled in the shade of the column-borne entablature, provides the magnifi In this Olympia led the way; from about 700, the dominant form was the
cent background; it stands giving strength behind the man who looks out on Orientalizing griffin cauldron which showed Urartian/North Syrian
the world; it dismisses him as it welcomed him. influence. Animal figures should also be seen in the context of sacrifice,
9
However much skill and craftsmanship of the highest quality went into especially the ox figures which appear with a certain continuity even through
the construction of a Greek temple, the scale and expenditure were kept the dark age. Cult scenes are often depicted on votive tablets, and, from the
within human proportions: the entire Periclean building programme on fourth century onwards, on large elaborate votive reliefs.”
0
the Acropolis cost the city of Athens no more than did two years of the To what extent the small anthropomorphic votive figures represent the
Peloponnesian War.
92 god or his devotees is often very difficult to decide;’°’ both undoubtedly
appear. Gods can be recognized in early times by the epiphany gesture, and
Anathemata later by certain characteristic attributes; men often carry an animal for
5.4
sacrifice. The votive figures need not be strictly related to the deity of the
The sacred spot arises spontaneously as the sacred acts leave behind lasting sanctuary in which they are placed; statuettes of other gods can also be
dedicated.o2 Large statues in limestone, marble or bronze may be
traces: here sites of fire, there stains of blood and oil on the stone rudiments
—
erected by
of altars of differing types and functions. Where ash, charcoal, and bones those who have been connected with the god in a special way and wish to
give lasting expression to this bond, particularly boys and girls who have
accumulate at the same place the great ash altars are formed. Even the
Palaeolithic hunters, moreover, deposited bones and raised up the skulls of discharged temple duties, such as the Arrhephoroi on the Acropolis and the
the animals hunted; in the shrines of catal Hüyuk bull skulls are set up in Children from the Hearth in Eleusis,”' or priests and priestesses. The victors
at Olympia similarly have the right to set up a bronze statue in the
rows, So too in Greek sanctuaries skulls from the victims of the hunt and
93 bucrania with garlands therefore become
sacrifice are placed on display; sanctuary.
the stereotype relief decoration on altars and sacral buildings. In sanctuaries The pious act of dedication is thereby transformed into an act of public
dedicated to Artemis and Apollo goat horns accumulate; a deposit of this ostentation. One creates one’s memorial, mnema. The anathemata of much
kind was found in Dreros, and on Delos the great Horn Altar of Artemis, frequented sanctuaries are the most efficacious testimonies to a glorious past.
Gyges of Lydia was always known to the Greeks through his gold in Delphi,
which was viewed with astonishment as one of the wonders of the world, was
and Croesus of Lydia the proverbial Croesus
constructed from goat horns. Furthermore, the locks of hair shorn at an —
— secured even greater
94 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY
II 5.4
I r II 6 PRIESTS 95
04 Changeable as the fortune of war was, the victor always hastens to
renown.’ sanctuary was nonetheless achieved by the builders and architects even in
erect his monument in Olympia and Delphi. Shields in sanctuaries are Archaic and Classical times; the vitality of this sacral architecture
lies
already spoken of by Homer, but all other weapons could also be surrendered precisely in its seeming irregularity.
to a god; to commemorate a sea battle, a ship’s beak or even an entire ship
might be dedicated.’°
5
Within a relatively short period of time the popular sanctuaries inevitably 6 PRIESTS
became quite overwhelmed with votive gifts. Priests supervised the setting
up. The worthless trinkets were buried from time to time in the sanctuary, Greek religion might almost be called a religion without priests:’ there is
no
to the delight of modern archaeologists; the most valuable gifts constituted priestly caste as a closed group with fixed tradition, education, initiation,
and
the principal assets of the temple and careful account of them was kept. hierarchy, and even in the permanently established cults there is no
disciplina,
As stories attach to remarkable objects, the temple inventory becomes a but only usage, nomos. The god in principle admits anyone, as long as
he
inscription.b0 To produce
chronicle; the anagraph of Lindos is preserved in 6 respects the nomos, that is, as long as he is willing to fit into the
local
votive gifts from the Trojan War gradually became a matter of course. The community; for this very reason, of course, role distinctions between
riches naturally attracted rapacious attention. The gold of Croesus was strangers and citizens, slaves and freemen, children and adults, women
during the Sacred War (356—346) and and
melted down for Phocian mercenaries men, are all important at times. Herodotus records with amazement
that
many a later tyrant financed himself by the same method. Clearings in the the Persians must call on a Magus for every sacrifice;2 among the Greeks,
forests of statues were later made by Roman art collectors, but Pliny could sacrifice can be performed by anyone who is possessed of the desire
and the
still write of thousands of statues in Delphi.’
07 means, including housewives and slaves. The tradition of rites
and myths
Votive gifts are a stimulus to further building activity in the sanctuary. is easily learned through imitation and participation; much can
even be
Characteristic are long, open colonnades, stoai, usually at the boundary of the acquired of the specialist arts of the seer simply through observation.3
sacred precinct. The earliest and exemplary structure of this kind was At every major cultic occasion there must, of course, be
someone who
erected once again in the Heraion on Samos as early as the seventh century; assumes the leadership, who begins, speaks the prayer, and
makes the
8 The colonnades offer the visitor
Didyma followed suit shortly afterwards)° libation. Prerequisite for this role is a certain authority and
economic power.
shelter from sun and rain and also encourage him to linger awhile. In the The sacrificer is the head of the house, family, or village, the
president of the
sixth century separate treasure houses, thesauroi, begin to be set up, above all council, the elected chief magistrate of the city known as the
—
archon in
in Olympia and Delphi; these themselves are in the shape of small temples Athens or the army general. Where there is still a kingship, as
—

in Sparta,
and are in turn a gift to the god, part of the aparche or dekate. Like the the kings have special responsibility for intercourse with
the sacred.
4
sacrifices which votaries multiply in the votive representations, so divine In Athens, alongside the archon, there is also a king, Basileus,
who like the
image and temple are reproduced. The god will delight in everything, just as archon is elected for one year. The king is responsible for
the ancient
man can take pride in everything; all are agalmatai°
9 religious ceremonies, conducting ‘all traditional sacrifices’, in particular,
the
Priestly dwellings in the sanctuary itself are the exception;”° the demands Mysteries, the Lenaia, and the Anthesteris — in which his wife also has
of purity admit no normal human life. On the other hand, houses for a spectacular role to play. The archon, on the other
hand, directs the
sacrificial banquets, hestiatoria,” are frequently erected within the temenos or Panathenaia and the Dionysia, the major festivals that were organized
in the
very near by, especially after the hearth house temple had given way to the sixth century. At Olympia, the organization of the cult is
closely associated
normal temple which serves solely as a dwelling place for the deity. with the administration of the Elean state: the city magistrates
elected in Elis
The layout, especially of the ancient and important sanctuaries, arose make the annual sacrifice of a ram to Pelops in the
6
Pelopion.
gradually over the centuries, with constant rebuilding and additions. There The sanctuary is the property of the god; the temenos is
removed from
is therefore no real architectural plan, no strict organization of the buildings human use, unless for the benefit of the sanctuary and the
sacrificial festivals.
in reciprocal relation. Each building, especially each temple, is in the first To ensure that everything is done in proper order,
a responsible official is
instance an individual, constructed for its own sake and beautiful as an required — the priest, hiereus, or the priestess, hureia. Priesthood is
not a
agalma. Only the relationship between the temple and altar with the general status, but service of one specific god in one
particular sanctuary.
intervening sacral area is defined functionally and to some extent constant. No one is a priest as such, but the Priest of Apollo
Pythios or the Priestess of
The symmetrical layout of temples, colonnades, stairways and altars was the Athena Polias; several priesthoods can, of course, be
united in one person.
product of Hellenistic architects designing great temple complexes for new Various officials function as precinct governors. There will
generally be
foundations. A harmonious relationship between the individual parts of a just one caretaker, neokoros. To organize the sacrifices,
from the purchase
96 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY 116 116
PRIESTS 97
of the animals to the sale of the skins, sacrifice executors, hieropoioi, are well. With progressing rationalization, fixed charges are set
and levied along
appointed; and more important still are state commissions to oversee the with the victim; once these are fixed in cash, the sanctuary
receives a
8 The priest rarely lives in
finances of the sanctuaries, epimeletai, hierotami.az. collection box, thesauros, with a slot for coins.’
7 The begging procession of the
the sanctuary, but he is expected to be conscious of his responsibilities; in one priest is an exception in Greece, but belongs in an ancient
8
tradition.’
case an inscription specifies that the priest be present in the sanctuary at The temples in the Near East, from the very beginning of
high civilization,
least ten days a month. If necessary, the sacrifice can be performed without a were economic concerns Supporting a large body of
priests. Scarcely
9
priest. anything comparable exists in Greece, although parallels
deriving from
Priesthoods are often hereditary in certain ancient families which owe their Eastern traditions can certainly be found in Asia Minor.
Delphi is an
status not least to this prerogative. In Athens it is the Eteoboutadai who exception: situated in craggy isolation on the steep
hillside, it is simply
provide both the priest of Erechtheus—Poseidon and the Priestess of Athena unable to support a peasant community of any size. In the
Hjmn to Apollo, the
Polias, so administering the central cults on the Acropolis. Their eponymous Cretans whom the god has led to Pytho as his priests enquire:
‘And how shall
ancestor Boutes whose name points to the sacrifice of oxen was, they say,
—
— we now live?’ Smilingly the god comforts them: ‘Each man
shall carry a knife
the brother of the first king Erechtheus, putting their priesthood almost on a in his right hand and simply slaughter sheep and these will
—
be available in
level with the kingship. The family of the Praxiergidai oversees the Plynteria plenty.. . But guard my temple and receive the crowds
of men.’ So the
festival, so assuming office shortly before the priest of Erechtheus and the Delphians live for the sanctuary and from the sanctuary.’
9 The oldest family,
priestess of Athena leave the Acropolis. The Thaulonidai perform the ancient traced back to Deukalion, the survivor of the flood,
furnishes the five
bull sacrifice for Zeus on the Acropolis at the Bouphonia. The Bouzygai Consecrated Ones, hosioi;
° another kin group, the Labyadai,
2
with its festal
provide the priest of Zeus at the Palladion. The Mysteries of Eleusis banquets, is known through an ancient cultic decree.21
remained until the end of antiquity in the hands of the Eumolpidai and the Non-Greek elements are evident in the cult of Artemis—Upis
of Ephesos,
Kerykes, with the Eumolpidai providing the hierophantes and the Kerykes not only in the remarkable cult image with its pectoral
which was later seen
providing the Torch-bearer, dadouchos, and the Sacred Herald, hierokerjx.’° as many-breasted. The high priest, megabyos, is a
eunuch. A society of men,
The Branchidai maintain a similar relationship to the Apollo sanctuary at set apart for a year and bound to sexual abstinence,
meets for sacral meals;
Didyma. Upstarts also invest themselves with a dignity to suit: Gelon and they are called essenes, bee kings. There are also
conserated maidens; the
Hieron, the tyrants of Gela and Syracuse, claimed that a hierophantic office myth tells of Amazons who founded the sanctuary.22 Castrated priests are
of the Chthonic gods was hereditary in their family, and after their great attested in the cult of Kubaba—Kybele, and Hecate
of Lagina in Caria also
victory over Carthage in 480 they proceeded to build a Demeter temple in has eunuchs, just as Aphrodite—Astarte has her
male transvestites.
23
Syracuse.” Founders of sanctuaries later regularly secured the priesthood for In Greece the priesthood is not a way of life, but
a part-time and honorary
themselves and their families ‘for all eternity’.’
2 office; it may involve expense, but it brings
great prestige. The pious man
Priests are installed; as early as the Iliad it is said that the Trojans treats the priest with reverence: at the sack of
Ismaros, Odysseus spares
3 As with other posts, the
established (ethelcan) Theano as priestess of Athena.’ Maron in the grove of Apollo, and Alcibiades frees
priests without ransom.
24
appointment is decided by the community, usually the political assembly. The priest is consecrated (hieromenos). His hair is
usually long and he wears
Sortition may be seen as an intimation of divine will. In Asia Minor, a head-band (strophion), a garland, costly robes
of white or purple, and a
priesthoods were regularly auctioned in many places from Hellenistic special waistband; he carries a staff in his
hand. The priestess is often
4 Depending on the nomos, the priesthood may last for a year, for a
times.’ represented carrying the large key to the temple,
kleidoucho.c. In the theatre
festal cycle, or for life. An annual priesthood is frequently eponymous, that is, seats of honour are reserved for the priests.25
The priest is ‘honoured among
the local chronology is related to the list of the names of the priests. For the people as a god’, as the Iliad says.2
6
Hellanikos towards the end of the fifth century, the list of the Hera priestesses In a number of cases the priest seems
almost to appear as a god. In
at Argos, as the list reaching furthest back, was the backbone of his historical Thebes, the priest of Apollo Isrnenios is a
boy of noble family; at the
5
chronology.’ Daphnephona festival he follows behind the laurel
pole, wearing a golden
A priestly office brings revenues, at least provisions, in accordance with garland and a long festal robe and with his hair
the youthful god with unshorn hair. untied the epitome of
ancient custom. Together with the sacrificial victim the priest receives gifts of
—

2 At the Laphria festival in Patrai, the

food, which he uses only in part at the sacrifice; he is accorded an honorary priestess of Artemis rides on a chariot drawn
by deer;hi similarly, when the
portion (geras) of the roast meat, usually a leg, and the foods deposited on a Hera priestess at Argos drives to the sanctuary
on an ox-drawn cart, she is
table next to the altar eventually fall to him.’6 Often he receives the skin as especially close to the cow-eyed goddess.
29 At Pellene the priestess of Athena
 1

98 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 6 JI 7.1

THE FESTIVAL
99
appears with helmet and 3 shield, and in Athens the priestess of Athena
°
wanders through the streets wearing the 3 aegis. In mythology Iphigeneia
’ 7 THE FESTIVAL
is the victim , prieste ss and double of Artem is.
A prieste ss very comm only officiates for goddes ses and a priest for gods, 7.3 Pompe
but there are important exceptions and 3 complication
2 s. In Athens, the
priestess of Athena Polias is not a virgin but a mature woman who has put As the sanctuary articulates space, so the festival articulates time.’
Certain
conjugal relations behind her. 33 Pallas in Argos is escorted to the bath by a days — reckoned to include the preceding night — are set off from the
priest. In the Demeter cult priests are common, notably hierophantai, though
34 everyday; work is laid aside and customary roles are dissolv
ed in a general
they are, of course, accompanied in office by priestesses and hierophantide. relaxation, but the festival programme holds new roles in readine
ss. Groups
Dionysos quite frequently has priestesses, and so may Apollo and even the come together, setting themselves apart from others. The contras
t with
Zeus of Dodona. normality may be expressed in mirth and joy, in adornm
ent and beauty, or
Widespread and characteristic is the consecration of boys and girls for a else in menace and terror.
period of temple service. In Athens two arrhephoroi are allotted to serve on the The fundamental medium of group formation is the
procession, pompe.’
Acropolis; they start the work of weaving the peplos for Athena and tend the The active participants separate themselves from the amorphous
crowd, fall
sacred olive tree; at the end of the year they are discharged in a mysterious into formation, and move towards a goal, though the demon
stration, the
nocturnal 35 ceremony. Similarly, in Aigeira and Patrai, a maiden is interaction with the onlookers, is scarcely less important
than the goal itself.
consecrated to Artemis before marriage, while in Kalauria a maiden is Hardly a festival is without its pompe. The centre to which the
sacred action is
consecrated to 6 Poseidon; in Athens, girls are sent to Artemis at Brauron as drawn is naturally a sanctuary where sacrifices take place; but
the pathway is
37 Boys are consecrated not only to Apollo as in Thebes or to
she-bears, arktoi. also important and sacred. To reach a centre such as
the Acropolis in
Zeus as in 8 Aigion, but also to Athena as in Tegea and 39 Elateia. In the Athens, the procession sets out from the city gates and makes
its way through
temple of Aphrodite at 4 Sikyon, an old woman, serves as neokoros along with a
° the market place.
3 At the Eleusinian festival the Sacred Way
runs from the
virgin known as the water carrier, loutrophoros; these two alone may enter the same gateway through thirty kilometres of countryside. The
sacred objects
temple, while all others may pray to the goddess only from the entrance: the are first brought along this pathway to Athens by the
epheboi and then
goddess of sexual life can be approached freely only by those who are returned at the head of the great procession of mystai
for the nocturnal
excluded from her works. The tension seeks discharge: mythology tells how celebrations. In Paphos the procession leads from the
4
new city to the old
Poseidon, to whom the virgin in Kalauria is consecrated, ravished Aithra on city with its ancient 3 sanctuary. There are also processions which vividly
the Sacred Island nearby and sired 4 Theseus. In the background initiation
’ enact the abandonment of the sanctuary, the interru
ption for a period of
rituals may be sensed which merge, iii mythology at least, with child purification.
6
expulsion and child sacrifice. Pompe means escort, but how far the procession is an
end in itself can be
The significance of all such details is revealed only in each individual case. seen from the expressicm meaning to celebrate a festiva
l, pompas pempein,
As a common denominator of what is required of a priest there remains the literally, to accompany the escorts. There are all kinds
of appurtenances to
hagneia, befitting the sacred. This involves eschewing contact with
purity, 42 be carried and corresponding roles with fixed titles
such as basket bearer,
43 and with women in childbed, and a negatively charged relationship
death water bearer, fire bearer, bowl bearer, and bough bearer.
7 In the Demeter
to sexuality. Life-long celibacy is scarcely ever 44 found. From time to time and Dionysos cult covered containers whose contents
are known only to the
dietary prohib itions and fasts are to be observ ed, but real asceticism develops initiate are carried around in connection with the
Mysteries the round
—

only in protest against the civilization of the polis and its 4 priesthoo
5 d. At the wickerwork basket with a lid, kiste, and the veiled winnow
ing fan, liknon
8 and
installation of a priest there are frequently special initiations, teleisthai, as for consequently there are kistephoroi and liknophoroi.
Sacred appurtenances of
Delphi. As for other requirements, the priest should above all be
the hosioi in 6 this kind may also be borne along on a chariot
, as is Demeter’s basket,
a worthy representative of the community. This means that he must possess kalathos, in the procession in 9 Alexandria. An especially impressive form of
full 4
citizensh
7 ip and also that he must be free from any physical defect, transport is the ship on wheels, the ship chariot
. Above all, the procession
The mutilated and crippled are excluded. Otherwise, in contrast to more almost always includes the victims for the sacred
work and the festal
responsible positions, it is true that anyone can become a 49 priest. banquet. The participants themselves demonstrate
their special status not
only with festal garments, but also with garland
s,”’ woollen fillets, and twigs
which they hold in their hands.

I
100 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY
117.1 I 117.2 AGERMOS ror
great pompe is the
The classical monument which gives the fullest idea of a advent of the god in the ship chariot.b In Therai in the mountains of
which ran around the celia
Parthenon Frieze, originally i6o metres in length, Taygetos, a Kore statue is escorted from the Marsh to the sanctuary of
of the year the Panath enaic
wall of the Parthenon.” At the beginning flemeter Eleusinia for the 7 festival) The Magna Mater makes her entrance
robe had
procession presented the goddess with a new robe, the peplos; the seated on an ox-drawn 8 wagon.’ Then there is the leading away of cult
ship chariot and now, represe nted on the
been carried through the city on a images for the unsettling purification. Terror spreads when the otherwise
to the temple, the Erecht heus priest stands
east face over the entrance unmoved image is moved. The image of Artemis of Pellene ‘usually stands
procession
holding the folded robe between the twelve Olympian gods. The untouched in the temple, but when the priestess moves it and carries it out,
sides of the temple towards this centre: there are basket
moves along both no one looks on it, but all avert their gaze; for not only to mankind is its
one side, and a
bearers and victims for Athena (four oxen and four sheep on aspect aweful and grievous, but even trees it causes to become barren and
and water bearers (to
suggestion of a hecatomb on the other), bowl bearers cast their fruit wherever it is 9
carried.” The divine presents a Medusa head;
privilege and duty of the
donate and carry these vessels was the special those who escort it share in its power.
youths, some
metics), musicians, venerable old men, and above all warrior
armed with shields and some on horseb ack who are particu larly eye-
chariot with warrio rs practis ing the special 7.2 Agermos
catching. There are also war s
the festival —jumping down from the hurtlin g chariot.
sport associated with Processions collecting gifts are widespread and still survive in some places in
Naturally the civic officials are also represented, as well as the virgins and European popular culture.’° In ancient Greece customs of this kind make
themselves in
women who have made the peplos. The entire citizenry present only a marginal appearance, but they certainly exist. Only from a late
their essential groupings in this, the greatest pompe of the year.
Daphnephoria Byzantine source do we learn by chance that even the priestess of Athena
A characteristic form of the Apollo cult is the bay bearing, the Polias went through the city collecting on certain days.
’ On such occasions
2
Theban festival for which Pindar
festival. We have a description of the she wore the aegis of the goddess, now no longer a real goat skin, but a
composed songs: garment made of woollen fillets, though something of the ancient terror still
They wreathe a piece of olive wood with bay sprigs and flowers of attached to it by its very name. In particular, the priestess sought out newly
many colours; at the top a bronze globe is fixed from which married wives, who no doubt owed gifts to the virgin goddess so that the
smaller spheres hang down; a smaller globe is fixed at the centre terror would become a blessing to them. The priestess of Artemis at Perge in
of the piece of wood and purple ribbons hang from it; the lower Pamphylia also 22 collects. Aeschylus had Hera appear as a wandering
part of the wood is wrapped about with a saffron-coloured cloth priestess seeking gifts for the Nymphs, the ‘life-giving daughters of the river
At the head of the daphnephoria goes a boy whose parents are lnachos’. In lonia, the women collect gifts while singing a hymn to Opis
23
still living; his nearest relative carries the piece of garlanded and Arge, the Delian 24maidens. In Sicily, herdsmen enter into the cities in a
wood; the bay bearer himself follows behind and touches the special procession, wearing deer antlers, hung about with bread in the shape
laurel branch; his hair is untied and he wears a golden garland, a of animals, and carrying a leather pouch with all kinds of grains and also a
festal robe reaching down to his feet, and special sandals; he is wine skin; as they collect gifts they announce in song the advent of peace,
followed by a chorus of maidens with twigs in their hands) 2 good luck, and health.
25 Elsewhere, processions of this sort are staged by
place of children in Athens at the Thargelia festival in summer and at the
At simpler festivals one can imagine a straightforward bay branch in
—

in the Pyanopsia in autumn. They carry an olive branch wreathed with fillets of
the maypole or Christmas tree type of object described here. So,
branch from the wool and laden with numerous firstlings, fruits of all kind, bread, and little
Delphic ritual, every eight years a boy fetches the bay
flasks of oil. The branch is called Eiresione, and they sing: ‘The Eiresione
Tempe valley in 3 Thessaly.’ brings figs and fat bread, honey in pots, and oil to rub down, a cup of strong
Apollo himself is called bay bearer, Daphnephoros, and myth tells how the wine so you go drunk to bed.”
6 On Samos, the children sing ‘Wealth enters
god himself brought the purifying bay to Delphi after slaying the dragon. in’, while on Rhodes the Swallow Song adds light-hearted threats
to to the
The boy in Thebes, specially decked out and grasping the bay, seems begging requests: ‘or we’ll carry off your door, or your wife.”
himself. In the Hymn to Apollo the poet has the god himself 7 These, once
represent the god again, are Apollo festivals. To the promise of blessings there corresponds
leading the procession to Delphi with lyre in hand and playing 4 sweetly.’ The an
with almost sacral claim to gifts. Elsewhere such activities, performed by societies
god is present; but for this cult images are not necessary. Processions
of of men or boys, are often connected with the cult of ancestors
exception.’ At the Great Dionysia the image who are
cult images are more the 5 represented in masks. This cannot, or perhaps can no longer, be shown
vase paintin gs portray the to be
Dionysos is brought to Athens from Eleutherai; the case anywhere in Greece. The public cults are financed from
the public
102 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 7.3
IF JJ 7•4 MASKS, PHALLOI, AISCHROLOGIA 103
purse. Collecting therefore appears as a characteristic of unofficial sects; Minoan tradition.” Elsewhere too, the experience of the dance merges with
8 there were aLso the
in addition to the Apollo collectors such as Abaris,’ the experience of the deity. At the Gymnopaidia boys dance for Apollo, and
adherents of the Magna Mater of Asia Minor, the Meter collectors, everywhere girls dance for Artemis: the vigorous, youthful form of these
9 the true polis Greek treated them with disdain.
metragyrtai;’ divine siblings appears as a projection of these dances. Apollo himself plays
for the dance, and Artemis joins in the dance with her Nymphs.° In the
7.3 Dancing and Hymns groups of Nymphs or Charites, in the bands of Kouretes, and even in the case
of the dance-loving satyrs, divine archetype and human reality are often
Rhythmically repeated movement, directed to no end and performed virtually inseparable, except that what for man is the short-lived blossom of
together as a group, is, as it were, ritual crystallized in its purest form: ‘Not a youth attains permanence in the mythical-divine archetype.
single ancient initiation festival can be found that is without dancing.’’
3 Although the names and basic rhythms of the dances are traditional, the
To belong to a traditional group means to learn their dances. Following on cult in no way demands the repetition of ancient, magically fixed hymns. On
ancient custom, the Greeks have group dances of many kinds, not for virtuosi the contrary, the hymn must always delight the god afresh at the festival;
and not for arbitrarily paired couples, but for representative members of the therefore for dance and hymn there must always be someone who makes it,
community. The group of dancers and the place for dancing are both called the poet, poietes. The literary genre of choral lyric, which can be traced from
choros; there are choruses of boys, of maidens, and of women, and also war- the end of the seventh century, accordingly develops from the practice of
the
dances for warriors. Dancing and music are inseparable. Even the simplest cult and culminates in the first half of the fifth century in the work of Pindar.
musical form, the song, leads to dancing; as musical instruments,
’ the
3 The invocation of the gods, the enunciation of wishes and entreaties,
is
double flute, aulos, and the plucked string instruments, kithara and lyra, are interwoven ever more artfully with mythical narratives and topical
allusions
most prominent; percussion instruments are associated with foreign orgiastic to the festival and chorus. Already in the seventh century, several choruses
worship. are competing for the honour of performing the most beautiful hymn with —

To celebrate a festival is to set up choruses. Even the processions have the costuming of the chorus then also playing its role. The religious function,
their special hymns; Pindar wrote daphnephorika for Thebes. The procession the relationship with the gods, is in danger of being lost in the rivalry; but
all
may halt at various points along the route in order to perform exacting are well convinced that the gods, like men, take a delighted interest in
the
hymns and dances. In Miletos there is a guild of singers, molpoi, in honour of contest.
Apollo Delphinios; along the pathway of the procession to the Apollo
sanctuary at Didyma there are six appointed shrines at which they perform 7.4 Masks, Phalloi, Aischrologia
their paean.
’ The hymn becomes associated with the sacrificial victim which
3
is led along in the procession: Pindar speaks of the ‘ox-driving dithyram ’ the most ancient means of surrendering one’s own identity
4
Masks,
and
33 and the goat singers, tragodoi, and hence ultimately tragedy, probably
bos’, assuming a new extraordinary identity, come to the Greeks through
various
take their name from a procession which leads the goat to sacrifice.
34 traditions. There are Neolithic and also Near Eastern connections.
There
In the sanctuary itself, the special dances are even more elaborate. On are animal masks, and also, in particular, ugly, ridiculous masks.
Besides the
Delos, boys and girls dance the Crane Dance (geranos) with tortuous, labyr processions and the dancing of masked figures, there are masks
which are
inthian movements: it is said that the maidens and youths from Athens raised up and worshipped, sometimes even becoming cult idols.
invented this dance together with Theseus after escaping from the laby The most direct evidence for the wearing of animal masks
comes from
35 Mythical Kouretes brandish their shields in a dance around the new
rinth. those bull skulls cut into mask shape which were found
in Cypriot
born Zeus child; and the Orientalizing bronze shields from the Ida cave on sanctuaries; this practice, however, did not have any direct
influence
Crete testify to the reality of such shield dances in the context of an initiation outside Cyprus. Nevertheless, the wine-pouring youths at
the festival of
festival of the eighth century.
6 In a hymn from Palaikastro, youths invoke Poseidon in Ephesus are called bulls, tauroi, maidens in
the Spartan
Zeus as greatest Kouros to come to Dikte to spring in flocks, fields, towns, and Leukippides cult are called foals, poloi, priestly groups of bees,
melissai, are
ships, and doubtless it is the dancing leaps of the youths themselves in which more frequent, and there are also bears, arktoi.
45 Along the selvage of the robe
this power of the god is present.
37 When Pallas Athena leapt in full armour on the Despoina statue from Lykosoura all kinds of
musicians are shown
from the head of Zeus, she brandished her shield and lance in a war-dance, masked as animals, mostly with donkey-like masks, but
also creatures with
and in imitation of this divine origin, the war-dance, pyrrhiche, is performed at cow and pig heads;
6 even though the iconographical motif of the animal
her festival, especially at the Panathcnaia.
8 The names Paean and Dithyr orchestra reaches back to Sumerian times, some ritual context
must lie in the
ambos refer equally to the god, his hymn, and his dance, perhaps from background. That hybrid creatures such as Centaurs and Pans
are in reality
304 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY
well informed about the
II 7.4
costume
r 117.5 AGON
between the sexes is played up and finds release in lampoonery. A name for
io
masked figures is highly 47
probable. We are
of the Silenoi and Satyrs: the fiat-nosed mask with animal ears and the mocking songs on such occasions is lambos developed as a poetic genre
—

animal skin apparel or loin cloth with horse tail and phallos attached. This since Archilochus; the ritual background still shows through in the lambos on
Women by Semonides, which tears the opposite sex to pieces type by type.
get-up has admittedly become the literary satyr play from the end of the sixth ’
6
century, and has thereby attained a different relation to reality from the lambe was made into a mythical figure, a maid who was able to cheer up
earlier ritual.
8 Demeter after her sorrow and fasting.
’ In Athens, the Stenia festival
6
Grotesque masks of old women are found in the sphere of female deities, immediately before the Thesmophoria was given over to the exchange of
abuse between the sexes.
3 The women in Aegina, financed by specially
6
especially Artemis; striking clay specimens were found as votive gifts in the
appointed choregoi, presented mocking choruses at the festival of Damia and
Ortheia sanctuary. It is said that the masks were properly made of wood
° men could also Auxesia, though here the raillery was directed only at other women from the
and that the wearers were called kyrittoi, and b7yllichistai;
5
6 On the island of Anaphe, however, men and women jeered at one
district.
appear in masks of ugly women. The story was told that by the river Alpheios
another at the sacrifice for Apollo Aigletes a practice initiated, according to
in Elis, Artemis and her nymphs had smeared their faces with mud in order —

to escape the amorous attentions of the river god a reflection of the ritual
—
legend, by the slave girls of Medea during the Argonaut expedition.
6 During
’ Terracotta, pot-shaped masks from the Hera
use of such grotesque masks.
5 the procession to Eleusis grotesquely masked figures sat at a critical narrow
sanctuary at Tiryns date from as early as the eighth century the earliest
—
pass near the bridge across the brook known as the Rheitoi and terrorized and
Gorgon heads with wild tusk-like fangs;52 they undoubtedly go together with insulted the passers-by. At Dionysian festivals wagons drove through the
metamorphosis of the daughters of King Proitus, streets carrying masked figures who shouted abuse at everyone they passed
the myth of the witch-like
which took place in Tiryns, and with the grotesque painting on the idols from in a proverbially coarse manner.
6
Rites with sexual emphasis are generally understood in terms of fertility
Mycenae.
If the three avenging goddesses, Praxidikai, were worshipped in the shape magic in Frazer’s sense. The Greek evidence, however, always points most
53 these will doubtless have been pot-masks of this kind. The Gorgon
of heads, conspicuously to the absurdity and buffoonery of the whole affair: there is a
mask appears on its own as an apotropaic sign, with round goggling conscious descent to the lower classes and the lower parts of the anatomy,
54 An ancient Gorgoneion which was mirrored in the talk of mythical maids, Just as pomp and ceremony contrasts
eyes, lolling tongue, and jutting teeth.
with everyday life, so does extreme lack of ceremony, absurdity, and
said to be the work of the Cyclopes stood in the market place at Argos. 55
in Arcadia, and at the obscenity; a redoubled tension arises between the two extremes, adding
A mask of Demeter Kidaria was kept in Pheneos
would don the mask and ‘beat the subterranean further dimensions to the festival. Similarly there are sacrifices which
mystery festival the priest
6 An elevated, bearded mask may represent the god demand the very opposite to the usual holy silence, wild cursing or affected
dwellers with a rod’.
57 that it was also worn to represent the frenzied god directly may
Dionysos; 6 By plumbing the extremes the just mean is meant to emerge,
lamentation.
just as the sexes which greet each other with jeers are dependent on each
be surmised.
other.
The mask effects a transposition into a new and unknown world, but apart
from the petrifying Gorgon, this, for the Greeks, is not so much an uncanny
and unsettling world as a world ofabsurdity and aggressive obscenity. There
are many variants of the procession with giant false phalloi; the wearers of 7.5 Agon
these massive membra must conceal their bourgeois identity by smearing
The agonal spirit, der agonale Gei.st, has, since Friedrich Nietzsche, often been
themselves with soot or bran or by wearing masks. Thus a Hellenistic author
describes the soot-smeared phallophoroi and the ilhyphalloi who march described as one of the characteristic traits and driving forces of Greek
8 Mask and phallos also go together ° The number of things which the Greeks can turn into a contest is
7
cuhure.
along in masks representing drunks.
in the satyr costume. But even in the Artemis cult there were girls who astounding: sport and physical beauty, handicraft and art, song and dance,
59 Clown-like mummers, probably connected with
appeared in phallic attire. theatre and disputation. Whatever is instituted as custom comes almost
some popular dithyrambos, are known in particular from Corinthian vase automatically under the jurisdiction of a sanctuary. On Lesbos, a beauty
paintings, where they parade a mock nudity with their buttocks padded out contest of the girls took place at the annual festival in the sanctuary
of Zeus, Hera, and Dionysos;’ some such contest seems to be mirrored
in an exaggerated way and indulge in all kinds of buffoonery.
°
6 in
are sayings, aischrologia, and obscene the myth of the judgement of Paris. On a votive gift from Tarentum, a girl
As a counterpart to this there ugly
in women’s festivals, especially at the Thesmophoria. As the boasts of having outshone all others in a wool-carding contest;
’ the earliest
7
exposures
Greek inscription concerns a boy who ‘of all dancers plays most gaily’.
women celebrate on their own at the expense of the men, the antagonism 73
 I
io6 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 7.5 II 7.6 S
000
THEBANQUETOFTHE 107
Musical contests appear primarily in honour of Apollo and Dionysos; flute- sport that Apollo himself killed his youthful
favourite Hyakinthos as if the
players, flute-players with singers, and kithara-singers each compete with throw with the unpredictable stone disc sought —

out a chance victim.

one another at the Pythian Games in Delphi; in Athens, dithyrambs,
comedies, and tragedies are staged competitively at the Dionysia, while at 7.6 The Banquet of the Gods
the Panathenaia, rhapsodes vie with one another in the recitation of Homer.
Even more popular, of course, were the sporting contests. The simplest The natural and straighforward aim of a festival
is feasting eating and
form, the foot-race, and its most extravagant variant, the chariot race, which drinking. In Greek sacral practice this element is
always present. The meal
developed from the Bronze Age chariot fight, were the most important, and in the sanctuary may be marked as extraordinary
tended to overshadow the other events such as wrestling, boxing, long when, in contrast to
normal civilization, the ancient way of life is
8 a bed of twigs,
imitated:
jumping, and javelin throwing. Nevertheless, the sporting event is no profane 79 takes the place of seats or banqueting
stibas,
couches, and the house is
festival. Funerary rites are at first a major occasion for games, as evidenced replaced by an improvised hut, skene
° misleadingly translated as tent. The
8 —

by the epic description of the funeral games for Patroclus and also by twigs on which one sits assume a symbolic character
Geometric vase paintings and later inscriptions; the epitaphios agon persists which varies according
to deity and festival: pine or willow for the
Thesmophoria, and wild olive
into Classical times. Karl Meuli has described how the prize contest branches in Olympia.
’
8
proceeds from the grief and rage of those affected by the death.
74 Later, The festival is spoken of as the ‘fulsome banquet
of the gods’;
’ and yet the
8
however, attention is focused on the games connected with calendrically portion of the gods at the normal Olympian sacrifice
is somewhat more than
fixed festivals, and the trial of strength of the living also has an initiatory precarious. For gods to be expressly entertained
as guests at a meal is the
character. In the sixth century, four Panhellenic festivals come to form a exception, but it still gives a number of festivals their
recognized group: the Olympia, the Pythia at Delphi, the Nemeios in honour special character. So in
Athens, Zeus of the Friends, Zeus Philios,
8 may be invited to a banquet:
of Zeus and the Isthmia for Poseidon near Corinth. Other city festivals such a banqueting couch (kline) is prepared and the table
is spread with all that is
as the Panathenaia in Athens or the Heraia in Argos strove to attain an equal necessary; reliefs show the god present at the feast.
The mortals themselves
status without quite succeeding.
75 obviously join in with a will. This Zeus who is
Mythology associates these games also with funeral games, with a local hero treated on such familiar
terms is obviously not immediately identical
with the sky god who hurls
whose death had occasioned the first celebration; Pelops or Oinomaos in thunderbolts.
Olympia, Archemoros in Nemea, Palaimon on the Isthmus, and in Delphi the The real guests at the entertaining of gods,
theoxenia, are the Dioskouroi.
Python dragon. As a matter of fact, the agon, as transition from an aspect of They are celebrated above all in the Dorian area,
in Sparta, but in Athens
death to an aspect of life, is intimately connected with the various sacrificial also they are presented with a breakfast in the
rituals. In Olympia, the games are preceded by a thirty-day period of Prytaneion where a table is
spread with cheese, cakes, olives, and leeks. Vase
preparation during which the athletes are required to observe a vegetarian paintings and reliefs show
the divine horsemen galloping through the
air towards the two klinai
diet and sexual abstinence. The festival opens with sacrifices, a preliminary prepared for them.
8
sacrifice for Pelops, and great ox sacrifices for Zeus. In Delphi,
8 the Theoxenia are a major festival
which also gives a month
its name. Delegations arrive from all over
The consecrated portions then lay on the altar, but had not yet Greece and numerous gods are
been set alight; the runners were one stadion away from the altar; invited to the banquet, though, understandably,
Apollo comes to dominate
the proceedings more and more. A scurrilous
in front of the altar stood a priest who gave the starting signal agon is fought out: whoever can
offer Leto the largest horn onion receives a
with a torch. The victor put fire to the sacred portions and so portion from the sacred table. All
went away Olympic victor) portions from the table of the gods, however,
are eventually distributed to
men, and the breakfast of the gods is followed
by general eating and drinking
The oldest stadion led directly to the Zeus altar; the victor in the simple foot on the part of mortals.
race was the Olympic victor whose name was recorded from 776 onwards. It was from Delphi that the Romans took
over the feasting of the gods,
The sprint marks the transition from the bloody work to the purifying fire, lectisternium; but at the same time, ancient
tradition was probably preserved
from the Chthonic to the Olympian, from Pelops to Zeus. Similarly at the and activated in this; the Veda after all
repatedly shows the invitation of gods
Panathenaia, the special sport, the leap from the chariot, is intimately to a meal, and the Dioskouroi most
particularly point to Indo-European
connected with the sense of the New Year festival; at the Dorian Karneia 86 Among the Greeks this is in part
tradition.
more a matter of family custom
festival the race is still more ritual than sport.
77 An event curiously than polis religion; along with Zeus Philios
there is the custom of meals for
surrounded by mythology is the discus throw: it was while practising this heroes and meals for the dead.
 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY
II 7.7 I H 8.i
ro8 ECSTASY AND DIVINATION 109
fact that in mythology lasion is struck by a thunderbolt indicates that a
7.7 Sacred Marriage sacred marriage of this kind stands closer to sacrifice than sensual pleasure.
In the domain of Dionysos the sexuality is less veiled; in some forms of
Especial curiosity has always been aroused by a number of allusions to the Dionysos initiations at least, just as in later Gnostic sects, real sexual
secret climax of a festival in sexual union, a sacred marriage, hieros gamos. intercourse seems to have taken place, in particular pederasty at the
In fact, as far as Greece is concerned, the evidence is scanty and unclear. initiation of mystai;9 primitive initiation rituals, the introduction of adoles
A tradition of sacred marriage exists in the Ancient Near East: 88 the cents to sexuality, may lie in the background. When such things became
Sumerian king is the lover of the Great Goddess and betakes himself to public, however, it was regarded as a scandal; Rome proceeded against it
the temple of the goddess to consummate his marriage ceremonially . In the with unprecedented severity.
same way a priest may then be united with a goddess, or a priestess with a At the Dionysian Anthesteria festival in Athens, the wife of the king, the
god. In Egyptian Thebes, the chief priestess is the divine consort of Amun, Basilinna, is given to the god as wife;
99 their union was said to take place in
and on Cyprus, Astarte is the consort of the priest-king. Beside this there is the Boukolion in the market place. The technicalities of the act, whether an
the sacral prostitution in the Ishtar—Astarte cult, the presence of male and image was involved or whether the king donned the mask of the god, are left
female prostitutes in the sanctuary, something also attested on Phoenician to speculation. The mythical reflection of this is Ariadne whom Theseus, the
Cyprus; similarly, Aphrodite has her hetairai even in 8 Corinth. first king of Attica, had taken as wife and whom, at divine command, he was
Quite different in kind is the idea of the marriage of the Sky Father with then obliged to surrender to the god at night time. Ariadne is surrounded
the Earth Mother in the thunde
°
9 rstorm . With burlesque grandeur the Iliad with orgiastic rites and lamentation, just as at the Anthesteria wantonness
portrays how Zeus and Hera unite at the summit of Mount Ida, veiled in a appears united with dark myths of death. Here, too, the marriage is sacred
golden cloud from which glistening drops fall to the earth. Later poetry insofar as it is more than human pleasure.
depicts the fructifying marriage of heaven and earth more directly, without
using divine names, whereas the visual arts remain bound by the spell of
Homeric 9 anthropomorphism.
’ 8 ECSTASY AND DIVINATION
To what extent such a sacred marriage was not just a way of viewing
nature, but an act expressed or hinted at in ritual is difficult to say. In Athens 8.z Enthousjasmos
the marriage of Zeus and Hera was celebrated towards the end of the winter
in the Theogamia 92 festival, but all we learn is that there was sumptuous Since the sacred, the divine, always appears as out of the ordinary and
feasting on that day. The procession with wooden figures, daedala, in wholly other, the overwhelming experiences of a changed and extended
Boeotia is interpreted in the aetiological myth as a bridal procession, but it
93 consciousness are, if not the sole origin, at least one of the most essential
ends in a fire festival in which the figures burn along with the wooden altar. supports of religion. The experience may rest on natural disposition,
On Samos also the Hera festival is much too complicated to be understood acquired technique, or the influence of drugs, but at all events, the individual
simply as Hera’s 94 wedding. sees, hears, and experiences things which are not present for others; he
Near Knossos on Crete the marriage of Zeus and Hera is likewise stands in direct contact with a higher being and communicates with gods and
celebrated, indeed, it is 95 imitated; this might, of course, be no more than an spirits. For the ancient high civilizations it is nevertheless characteristic that
evening bridal procession followed by a nocturnal festival, pannychis. Never the established cult is to a large extent independent of such abnormal
6 that it was on Crete that Demeter united with lasion in
theless, Hesiod tells phenomena. This is also true of Greece where ecstatic, mediumistic, and
a thrice-ploughed corn field and thereafter gave birth to Plutos, wealth in yoga-like experiences are far from unknown, but are either pushed to the
corn. Here, perhaps from ancient Neolithic tradition, we find the association periphery of religious life or else strictly circumscribed; they do not become
between ploughing/sowing and procreation, and between harvest and birth. the foundation of a revelation.
Since Mannhardt, this has been connected with popular customs of couples The words which the Greeks use to describe such phenomena are varied
rolling on the cornfield, the Brautlager auf dem Ackerfeld. The name lasion is and inconsistent. An ancient name and interpretation for an abnormal
connected also with Samothrace, thus pointing to both mysteries and pre psychic state is entheos: within is a god’,’ who obviously speaks from the
Greek customs. That sexual elements play a role in mystery initiations is person in a strange voice or in an unintelligible way and induces him to
virtually certain, but there is hardly any clear evidence; how in Eleusis, for perform odd and apparently senseless movements. At the same time,
example, conception and birth-giving was indicated remains 97 obscure. The however, it is said that a god seizes or carries a person, that he holds him in
 — .

iTO RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 8

. i II 8.2 THEARTOFTHESEER Iii
his power, katechei, which gives in translation the term possessio, possession.’ remote and wondrous people, the 2 Hyperboreans.’ In the seventh and sixth
But stepping out, ekstasis, is spoken ofjust as much, not in the sense that the centuries, a number of such miracle men seem to have travelled about; they
soul leaves the body, but that the person has abandoned his normal ways and have been called wandering shamans, and influences from the realm of
3 and yet one can also say that his understanding (nous) is
his good sense; Scythian nomads are 3 probable.’ Whether, like shamans, they gave ecstatic
4 These various expressions can neither be reconciled
no longer in him. demonstrations is something which can only be inferred indirectly from the
systematically nor distinguished in terms of an evolution in the history of legends which surround them, especially those concerning their ability to fly.
ideas; they mirror the confusion in the face of the unknown. The most There is also the report concerning Hermotimos from Klazomcnai, whose
common term is therefore mania, frenzy, madness. body lay as if dead while his spirit went journeying and brought back
Frenzy is described as a pathological outburst provoked by the anger of a information about distant places and even about the 4 future.’ More
god. As well as the pathological frenzy of the individual, there is also ritual widespread and doubtless older is the conviction that every seer must stand
and institutionalized, collective frenzy, especially the frenzy of the women of in a special relationship to the divine since his words presuppose a knowledge
a city as they break out at the festival of licence. The aim, nonetheless, in which is more than human; and similarly the oral singer is dependent on his
reality and in myth, is to bring madness back to sense, a process which goddess, the Muse, who sends him happy inspiration from moment to
3 In particular, the Greeks
requires purification and the purifying priest. moment.
seems to have discovered ecstatic cults connected with flute music in Plato distinguishes the prophetic madness of Apollo from the telcstic
northern Asia Minor among the Phrygians; accordingly, the possession madness of Dionysos, before adding, as other types of madness, the poetic
mentioned most frequently is possession by the Mother of the Gods, whose and the erotic or philosophical 5 enthusiasm.’ By naming Apollo and
power also extends over the initiation and purification of the 6 Korybantes. Dionysos in this way, the peripheral phenomena of consciousness are
Nevertheless, Hera, Artemis, Hecate, Pan, and other gods can also send consigned within well-defined spheres: divination here, initiation there. Two
madness. Epilepsy, as the sacred disease, is interpreted and treated brothers, the sons of Zeus rule over the respective spheres, while Zeus
according to this same schema, with the attack of the god being countered himself, the highest god, stands as father above them in the clear space of
with 7 purifications. thinking, phronein.
That divine presence in transfigured consciousness can also be experi
enced in a positive way as a blessing, namely in song and dance, is illustrated 8.2 The Art of the Seer
only by one early but later forgotten passage: the choruses of maidens on
Delos know ‘to imitate the dialects and chatterings of all men; each would In acting, man is compelled to make a hopeful projection of the future.
In
say that he were speaking himself: in such a way is the beautiful song joined doing so, it is simply a feature of animal learning that specific expect
ations
together for them.’ This has justly been compared to the Pentecostal miracle are linked to specific observations: one recognizes signs which for man
—
are
and the speaking in tongues in the New Testament. The disciplined hymn linguistically fixed and culturally transmitted. For a distinction
between
dissolves into uncontrolled sounds which are nevertheless miraculously filled chance and causal nexus there is at first neither theory nor method
;
with meaning for the festival 8 participants. Perhaps some vestige of the experiments can scarcely be risked. Furthermore, the gain in confid
ence
epiphany of the deity in dance, as inferred for the Minoan religion, is which the signs bring as an aid to decision-making is so consid
erable that
preserved here. occasional falsification through experience does not tell against them.
In the Dionysos cult ecstasy plays a quite unique role, with the result that Faith in signs can persist without religious interpretation, as supers
tition,
Dionysos almost acquires a monopoly over enthusiasm and ecstasy, but this just as in our own culture. Similarly, the casting of lots functio
ns quite
ecstasy is ambivalent. In mythology the frenzy may appear once again as a automatically as a rule of play, as a decision-making mechanism.
In the
9 but since the god himself is the
catastrophe sent by the implacable Hera, ancient cultures nevertheless a religious interpretation is long establi
shed:
Frenzied One, the madness is at the same time divine experience, fulfilment, signs come from the gods, and through them the gods give
direction and
and an end in itself the madness is then admittedly almost inseparably fused guidance to man, even if in cryptic form. Precisely because there
are no
with alcoholic intoxication.” revealed scriptures, the signs become the pre-eminent form of contac
t with the
At the same time, there is the phenomenon of a quite different, sober higher world and a mainstay of piety. This is also the case among
the Greeks:
emotion which overtakes the individual. There are people who are seized by to doubt the arts of divination is to fall, under suspici
on of godlessness.
the nymphs and abandon house and home to hide in caves in the wilder All Greek gods freely dispense signs following grace and
favour, but none so
ness;” there is the case of Aristeas who is seized by Phoibos and miraculously much as Zeus; the art of interpreting them is bestowed
by his son 6 Apollo.’
transported to northern lands from which he returns with tales of Apollo’s For to discover the interpretation which is convincing and
beyond doubt, a
 I
II 8. II 8.2 THEARTOFTHESEER 1i3
1 2 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY
eagerly awaited and evaluated at every act of slaughter. This technique
charismatic gift, inspiration, is required. From time immemorial this task has originates in Mesopotamia, and its diffusion can be traced through Man and
been performed by a highly esteemed specialist, the seer, mantis, a prototype AlalaCh to Ugarit and the Hittites and into Bronze Age Cyprus. In Homer,
of the wise man. The gift is handed down from generation to generation. Not at all events, there is an allusion to this practice at one point;
30 evidently it
only did mythology create genealogical connections between the legendary was taken over from the East by the Greeks in the eighth/seventh centuries.
seers Mopsos as grandson of Teiresias but even historical seers would
The Etruscans obtained their much more detailed haruspicina from the same
— —

trace themselves back to some figure such as Melampus; in Olympia there source, not via the Greeks; no Greek counterpart has as yet been discovered
was the line of seers known as the Iamidai.’
7
for the liver models with inscriptions and signs such as are known from
Significantly, the Greek word for god, theos, is intimately related to the art Assyria, Ugarit, Cyprus, and Etruria.
of the seer: an interpreted sign is thesphaton, the seer is theopropos, and what he The inspection of entrails is the prime task of the seers who accompany the
8 The Iliad seer Kalchas is the son of Thestor;
does is a theiazein or entheaein.’ armies into battle. Herds of victims are driven along expressly fhr hiera and
the seer with second sight who is introduced into the Odjssev is called sphagia — although also, of course, for provisioning. Without favourable
Theoklymenos, and the tribe which guards the unique Oracle of the Dead in sacrificial signs no battle is joined. At Plataea, Greeks and Persians remained
Epirus is called the Thesprotoi. Insofar as the seer speaks in an abnormal state, encamped opposite each other for ten days because the omens obtained by
he requires in turn someone who formulates his utterances, the prophetes) 9
—

the same techniques — did not advise either side to attack.

’ Even that
3
‘The word for seer itself, mantis, is connected with the Indo-European root for mercenary horde, the Ten Thousand, which plundered its way through
mental power, and is also related to mania, madness. barbarian lands, would never embark on a raid without sacrifices; when the
In practice, however, the art of interpretation becomes to a large extent a omens remained unfavourabLe for several days they were threatened with
quasi-rational technique. Any occurrence which is not entirely a matter of starvation, but an expedition undertaken in defiance of the signs did in fact
course and which cannot be manipulated may become a sign: a sudden prove disastrous. Finally the right sacrificial liver came to light and the day
° a stumble,
2
sneeze, ’ a twitch;
2 22 a chance encounter or the sound of a name was saved.
32 King Agesilaos could still be persuaded in 396 to abandon a
23 celestial phenomena such as lightning, comets, shooting
caught in passing; campaign on the basis of unfavourable omens. 33
stars, eclipses of sun and moon, even a drop of rain. 24 Here the transition to Whether the credit for a victory was due to the commanding general or the
scientific meteorology and astronomy is made almost inperceptibly. Then, of mantis was therefore a matter which was certainly open to dispute; at all
course, there are dreams ‘the dream also is from Zeus’ but Penelope in the
— —

have good the

events, to a seer was of utmost importance. At the the time of
Odyssey already knows that not every dream has a meaning. 25 Persian Wars, the Spartans went to exceptional lengths the
to secure services
The observation of the flight of birds plays a special role, perhaps from of the Teisamenos the line
seer from ofMelampus, who did in fact win five
Indo-European tradition. This is the special art of the seers in the ancient great victories for them, including the victoryPlataea. And the
at
epics, of Teiresias and Kalchas; their title is therefore also oionopolos. Oionos, Athenians, their Cnidos,
the bird of omen, is pre-eminently the bird of prey: whether one or several
after victory at
394 ordained
in in an inscription

that the seer Sthorys who had led them be granted Athenian citizenship.
appear, and whether from right or left, is always of significance. The seer has Alexander still had his the Hellenistic
seers; in their influence
armies
his fixed 6
seat;2
the association of right good, left bad is unequivocal; as a
— —

diminishes.
rule the seer faces north. Nevertheless, the Greek seers do not seem to have That the seer creates the good omens in some magical way and so induces
developed a fixed disciplina like Etruscan and Roman augurs. In Homer, 27 the success is never articulated;
6 rather it is believed that there is a complicated
bird omens are poetic invention, unlikely contrivance, making the interpreta and tortuous path to the goal which must be discovered by means of signs.
tion all the more self-evident. Nevertheless, a man like Xenophon2B still The philosophical question as to how omens, predetermination, and freedom
sought out a seer in the year 401 to discover what was meant by the fact that of the will can be reconciled was discussed extensively only in Hellenistic
he had heard a perched eagle screaming to his right: this, he learned, was a times; the discovery of natural laws in the sphere of astronomy acted as a
great sign, but one which also portended suffering; this knowledge helped catalyst to this discussion, and at the same time produced a new and
him endure. enormously influential form of divination in the shape of astrology. In the
Sacrifice, the execution of the sacred work, is followed with heightened early period one can always try to make something even of unfavourable
attention; here everything is a sign: whether the animal goes willingly to the signs by waiting, circumvention, purification, repetition; conversely, it is
altar and bleeds to death quickly, whether the fire flames up swiftly and important that even favourable omens be accepted37 with an approving word
clearly, what happens at the burning in the fire, how the tail curls and the or vow in order for them to achieve their fullest efficacy. Here we find
29 In particular, the inspection of the livers of the victims
bladder bursts. confirmation that the aid to decision-making, the gain in self-confidence, is
developed into a special art: how the various lobes are formed and coloured is
I 14 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 8.3 LI 8.2 ORACLES 115
more important than real foreknowledge, just as the seers decide above all installation uncovered through recent excavations dates only from the fourth
what is to be done and what is not to be done without saying what will century; earlier structures were doubtless lost when that monumental new
happen. building was erected. The centre is a square complex with walls of polygonal
masonry three metres thick giving a Cyclopean appearance. Around this
8.3 Oracles z.uns the approach corridor, once completely dark, passing a bathroom,
incubation and dining chambers, places for purification, for throwing a
It is in the cults which attach to specific sanctuaries that the gods are present, stone, and for bloody sacrifice, and finally leading through a labyrinth with
and their signs, too, are therefore concentrated on cult places. But success in many doors into the central chamber, beneath which a vaulted crypt
the interpretation of signs could, more than anything else, carry the fame of a represents the world of the dead. Perhaps there was a machine for producing
god and of his sanctuary far and wide. In this way, from the eighth century ghostly appearances iron rollers which have been found are interpreted
—

onwards, a supra-regional and even international importance was attained in this way — or perhaps the eating of certain kinds of beans had a
by certain places where the god offers a service, chresmos, to those in search of hallucinogenic effect; numinous experience and manipulation may overlap.
counsel; the Greeks called a place of this kind chresterion or manteion, the Comparable is the oracle of Trophonios at Lebadeia.
6 A veritable journey
8 Near Eastern and Egyptian sanctuaries had led the way
Romans oraculum. into the underworld is reported by Pausanias from his own experience. After
in such specialization; the oracles of Daphne near Antiocheia,
39 Mopsuestia long preparations, the inquirer at the oracle is led at night time into a vaulted
in Cilicia,
° Sura
4 ’ and Patara in Lycia,
4 ’ and Telmessos in Caria
4 43 stand in chamber from which a whirlwind miraculously carries him through a
Asia Minor tradition; the Greeks probably came to know the Amon oracle at small aperture above the ground; when he returns he is unable to laugh. This
the oasis of Siwa shortly after the foundation of Cyrene about 63o. By that last detail, as well as the descent, kataba.ns, is also mentioned in the early
time the Lydian King Gyges had already sent offerings of gold to Delphi. 45 57 but it is not known to what degree the theatrical, and perhaps even
sources,
The methods of imparting oracles are almost as varied as the cult forms; mechanical, elaboration of the process is a product of the Imperial Age.
attention is attracted first, of course, to the most spectacular mode, that in Dream oracles are more straightforward. After preparatory sacrifices, the
which the god speaks directly from a medium who enters the state of inquirer spends the night in the sanctuary; priests are at hand to assist in the
enthousiasmos. interpretation of the dreams.
8 This incubation later flourished above all in
Dodona, the sanctuary of Zeus in Epirus, boasted of being the oldest the domain of the healing gods, in the Amphiaraion at Oropos59 and in the
6 The Iliad has Achilles pray to the Pelasgian Zeus of Dodona; ‘about
oracle. Asklepieia. The practice, however, also leads back into Asia Minor tradition:
you dwell the Helloi (Selloi?), the interpreters, with unwashed feet, sleeping the oracle of Mopsos in Cilicia was a dream oracle, as was the oracle of the
47 That remarkable body of priests later disappeared, and
on the ground.’ Telmessians in Caria.
even their name is discussed only on the basis of this Iliad text. Odysseus Mopsos, grandson of Teiresias and rival of Kaichas, was also regarded as
alleges he has gone to Dodona ‘in order to learn the plan of Zeus from the oak founder of the oracle at Klaros near Colophon.
° This oracle persisted
6
8 the Hesiodic Catalogues perhaps already spoke of three
of lofty foliage’; through a number of crises and destructions into the Imperial Age, when it
doves which dwell in the oak tree;49 according to later tradition it is three enjoyed its greatest renown. In the Imperial building a vault led beneath the
priestesses who are called the doves;
50 they enter a state of ecstasy, and temple to the sacred spring which, according to mythology, had gushed from
‘afterwards they do not know anything about what they have said.’ ’ The
5 the tears of Teiresias’ daughter Manto; the thespiodos drank from this water
excavations have exposed the simple tree sanctuary; not until the fourth and thereby became entheos. Whoever wished to enter in to the oracle was first
century was a small temple added, after the Molossian kings of Epirus had required to undergo an initiation, myesis.
’
6
assumed the protectorship of Dodona. From that time onwards, Dodona A sacred spring also existed in the other great Apollo oracle of Asia Minor
enjoyed a certain popularity; nevertheless, it is mostly private individuals at Didyma near Miletos. Here it was a priestess who entered a state of
who on the surviving lead tablets approach the god for advice on everyday ecstasy while holding the laurel wand of the god in her hand, wetting her feet
problems. with the water, and breathing in its vapours.
’ In Patara in Lycia the
6
The Oracle of the Dead at Ephyra’ must be of ancient repute and the
5 priestess was shut up in the temple at night: she was visited by the god and
name of the surrounding Thesprotoi clearly points to their divine mission; filled with prophecy.
the association of Odysseus’ journey to Hades with this spot is probably There is no oracle of which so much is known or about which so much is in
53 The two rivers there were then given the names of
older than our Odyssey. dispute as that of Pytho, the sanctuary of the Delphians.
6 Originally, it is
the rivers of the underworld, Acheron and Kokytos.
54 About 6oo the tyrant said, the god gave responses here only once a year at the festival of his advent
Periandros of Corinth conjured up the soul of his dead wife there. 55 The in the spring;
6 but as a result of the fame of the oracle, services came to be
 I
i i6 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 8.3 II 8. ORACLES ‘17
offered throughout the entire year; indeed, at times three Pythiai held office Patara, and Telmessos are non-Greek, but nevertheless have no inspired
at once. The Pythia is a woman dedicated to the service of the god for life; she divination; in the Branchos tradition of Didyma
77 and also in Klaros pre
6 After a bath in the Castalian spring and after the
is dressed as a young girl. Greek elements may be present. In addition there is the tradition about the
preliminary sacrifice of a goat, she enters the temple, which is fumigated with sibyls, individual prophesying women of early times who admittedly are
barley meal and laurel leaves on the ever-burning hestia, and descends into known only through legend. The most famous sibyl was connected with
the adyton, the sunken area at the end of the temple interior. This is where the Erythrai, but a sibyl is also supposed to have reached Delphi; it is interesting
Omphalos stands and where, over a round, well-like opening in the ground, that a Babylonian sibyl is also mentioned.
8 The sibyl of Kyme—Cumae
the tripod cauldron is set up; the cauldron is closed with a lid and it is on this became most important by virtue of her influence on Rome; the conquest of
that the Pythia takes her seat. Seated over the chasm, enveloped by the rising Cumae by the Oscans in the fifth century admittedly destroyed this tradition,
vapours, and shaking a freshly cut bay branch, she falls into a trance. The but at the same time provides a terminus ante quem.
79 Heraclitus assumes as
Hellenistic theory that volcanic fumes rose up from the earth has been well-known that the sibyl ‘with raving mouth . .reaches over a thousand
.

disproved geologically; the ecstasy is self-induced. Medium-like abilities are years . .by force of the god’.
. ° The Delphian sibyl also called herself the
8
not entirely uncommon. Admittedly it was also regarded as possible to bribe wedded wife of the god Apollo.
’ In 458 Aeschylus presented Cassandra on
8
the Pythia. The utterances of the Pythia are then fixed by the priests in the stage as a frenzied prophetess; she refused to satisfy the desire of the god and
normal Greek literary form, the Homeric hexameter. in punishment her prophecies are no longer belicved.
2 How the sibyl suffers
8
The Apollo temenos in Delphi was obviously not founded before 75o; violence from the god is alluded to by Vergil also. 8 There are hints .of a
nevertheless, the Iliad already speaks of the rich treasures held fast within the similar relationship between the Pythia and Apollo, even if it was only
6 It is clear that in the founding of the Greek colonies in
door-sill of the god. Christians who first elaborated this with sexual details.
8 The priestess in
the West and on the Black Sea from the middle of the eighth century the Patara had a relationship of this kind with her god and parallels are found
instructions of the Delphian god assume a leading role.68 Once again this is elsewhere in Asia Minor,
8 but this is manifestly not the case in Semitic
less a matter of prediction than of helping to make decisions in these risky inspired divination; in Kiaros and on Mount Ptoion
86 a male seer is seized by
and often abortive undertakings. Later, important state constitutions are also the god. Inspired divination is again too complex for its origin and the
submitted to the Delphian god for approval; this was done with the Spartan stations of its diffusion to be clearly defined.
Rhetra which was attributed to Lycurgus and even with the thoroughly The preservation of oracular utterances was doubtless one of the earliest
rational phylai constitution introduced by Cleisthenes in Athens in 510.7° applications for the art of writing in Greece, which began to spread about
Apollo’s proper domain is cultic questions innovations, restorations, and
— 750. The utterance is thereby freed from the context of question and answer,
purifications in the cultic sphere. The sacred law of Cyrene and the aparche from the execution of the ritual, and can become of importance at another
decree of Athens were both ratified by Delphi.” That Delphi manifestly place at another time. Age inspires respect; ancient sayings especially are
failed to foresee the Greek victory in the Persian Wars and all too clearly therefore collected in writing and so are always ready to hand. That forgery
recommended surrender badly damaged its reputation, in spite of all begins as soon as recording goes without saying. Sibyl oracles which last a
attempts to reinterpret its pronouncements. Thereafter political decisions thousand years probably played a leading role among the written oracles;
72 Instead, we hear
were increasingly taken without reference to the oracle. later, probably about 6oo, oracles of Epimenides of Crete appear, 7 then,
8
of inquiries by private individuals such as Chairephon’s question whether overshadowing his, oracles of the ancient bard Orpheus and of his disciple
73 Before joining Cyrus’ adventurous revolt
anyone was wiser than Socrates. 88 The oracles of Bakis,
Musaios. 8 who claimed to owe his inspiration to
against the Great King, Xenophon inquired at Delphi not whether he should the Nymphs, become important at the time of the Persian Wars and even
become involved or not, but ‘to which gods he should sacrifice in order to thereafter; Bakis seems to be an Asia Minor, Lydian name. His oracles take
remain safe and sound’;
74 in obedience to the response he sacrificed to Zeus the general form of a conditional prediction: ‘but when .
.‘; a particular
.

Basileus, and even though he achieved no great success, he at least returned event is alluded to in bold metaphors, often drawn from the animal world,
safe. which will be followed by something terrible, very rarely something
There was also a lot oracle in Delphi;
75 this is also recalled by the formula gratifying; ritual advice is then given. Cities began to make official collections
‘the god took up’ (aneile) for the giving of the response. The inspired of oracles. Most long-lasting was the influence of the libri Sibyllini written in
—

divination is therefore clearly secondary; indeed, it is generally believed to be Greek in Rome. In Athens, Onomacritus was charged with the task of
—

of non-Greek origin. Frenzied women from whose lips the god speaks are collecting the oracles of Musaios about 520; the poet Lasos proved him guilty
recorded very much earlier in the Near East, as in Man in the second of a forgery and Onomacritus was forced to leave Athens. ° Whereas
9
millennium and in Assyria in the first millennium;
6 Mopsuestia, Daphne, Herodotus energetically defends the authority of Bakis, ’ the comedy of
9
i i8 RITUAL AND SANCTUARY II 8.
Aristophanes presents highly dubious figures touting oracle books, and in
Plato the mockery is compounded with a moral condemnation of the misuse
of ritual. Even the collections of oracles did not become holy writ, the
surviving collection of the Sibylline Oracles is of Judeo-Christian origin.
Onomacritus instead became the exemplary name for the problems con The Gods
nected with the editing and forging of literary texts.

I THE SPELL OF HOMER

The rituals, even if they may be described as a kind of language intelligible

in
its own terms, are in fact always bound up with language in the true sense.
Human speech is integrated into the rituals to invoke an opposite, and then
as explanations are invented, questions asked, and tales told about this
opposite, the very substance and meaning of religion itself is spoken
of.
For the high civilizations of the ancient world this opposite is assum
ed
unquestioningly to consist of a plurality of personal beings
who are
understood by analogy with man and imagined in human form; the notion
of the ‘gods’, anthropomorphism and polytheism are found everywhere as
a matter of course.’
The peculiar quality of Greek religion within this common framew
ork is to
be understood negatively in the first instance: there is no priestly caste with
a
fixed tradition, no Veda and no Pyramid texts; nor is there any author
itative
revelation in the form of a sacred book. The world of writing is long
kept
apart; classical drama is still enacted in a single, unique perform
ance, and
Plato’s philosophy retains the fiction of living dialogue.
But a polytheistic world of gods is nevertheless potentially chaotic,
and not
only for the outsider. The distinctive personality of a god is constit
uted and
mediated by at least four different factors: the established local cult
with its
ritual programme and unique atmosphere, the divine name, the myths
told
about the named being, and the iconography, especially the cult
image. All
the same, this complex is easily dissolved, and this makes it quite
impossible
to write the history of any single god. The mythology, of course
, may relate to
the ritual, the divine name may be etymologically transparent
and illuminat
ing, and the images may point with their various attribu
tes to both cult
and mythology; but names and myths can always be spread
abroad much
more easily than rituals, while images transcend even linguis barrier
tic s, and
so the various, elements are continually separated from
one another and
reformed in new combinations.
So in Greece, very similar cults do in fact appear under
the names of
different gods: fire festivals’ belong to Artemis, Demeter, Heracl
es, and even