§ 8
As a rule there was no difficulty in securing great or famous names when it was necessary to find a patron-Hero for the city. In particular the founder of the city and its regular worship of the gods, and the whole divine circle which hedged round the life of the citizens, was regularly worshipped with high honour as Hero Archegetes.[63] Naturally, they were mostly mythical or even arbitrarily invented figures to whom the greater or lesser cities of Greece, as well as their offshoots in foreign lands, did honour as their “Founder”.
But from the times when colonies were frequently dispatched and laid out in accordance with a carefully thought-out plan, under the leadership of a single person (generally named by an oracle) who was given plenipotentiary powers,[64] this real Oikistes was himself usually promoted after his death to the rank of Hero. Pindar speaks of the sacred grave of the [128] Hero-founder of Kyrene in the marketplace of the city;[65] the inhabitants of the Thracian Chersonnese made sacrifices to Miltiades the son of Kypselos as their Oikistes, “as the custom is,” and held games annually in his honour;[66] at Katana, in Sicily, Hieron of Syracuse was buried, and was worshipped with the honours of a Hero as the Founder of the city.[67] At Abdera the Teians on the occasion of the second founding of the city restored to his position of Hero its original founder Timesios.[68] On the other hand, the original and real Oikistes of a colony might be deprived of his worship if the inhabitants quarrelled with the mother country, and another “Founder” chosen after the event and given the highest honours of a Hero in his place. This was what happened in the year 422 with Hagnon and Brasidas in Amphipolis.[69]
In these cases Hero-making leaves the sacred mists of antiquity and enters the light of the contemporary world: faith and cult become profaned by political motives. The name of Hero, once applied only to the glorified figures of the far distant past, now that such Heroizing of the recent dead was possible, must have begun to have the more general meaning of one who has come to enjoy a higher nature and enlarged capacities after his death. In fact, any kind of prominence during a man’s lifetime seems at last to have given him a virtual claim to heroic honours after his death. As Heroes are now regarded, great kings such as Gelon of Syracuse, law-givers such as Lykourgos of Sparta,[70] and even representatives of poetic genius from Homer down to Aeschylus and Sophokles,[71] no less than the most famous victors in the contests of bodily skill and strength. One of the Olympic victors, Philippos of Kroton, was reputed to be the most beautiful man in Greece of his time. Over his grave the people of Egesta, so Herodotos (v, 47) tells us, erected a Hero’s temple and paid honour to him with sacrifice as to a Hero merely on account of his great personal beauty.
Still, religious or superstitious motives were not always absent. They were particularly to the fore in the numerous cases where the extent and importance of the world of Heroes were added to on the recommendation of the Delphic oracle. Ever since the Delphic priesthood had risen from its obscure beginnings to a recognized position as the supreme authority in all questions of spiritual right, the opinion of the oracle had been sought on all occurrences that seemed to have any connexion with the unseen world. Especially in the case of prolonged drought or infertility of the soil, or when pestilential sicknesses had attacked a part of the country, was the oracle [129] requested to state the origin of the misfortune. In many cases the answer of the oracle would be that the origin of the evil lay in the anger of a Hero who was to be placated by sacrifice and the foundation of a permanent worship; or it would command that the plague should be averted by the recovery of the bones of a Hero from a foreign land, which should then be preserved at home and be the object of an official cult.[72] Innumerable cults had their origin in this way, nor do the examples all belong to a half-legendary past. When pestilence and dearth broke out in the island of Cyprus after the death of Kimon, the oracle bade the inhabitants of Kition “not to slight” Kimon, but to regard him as a “higher” being, i.e. do him honour as a Hero.[73] So, too, when some one possessed by special religious scruples inquired the cause of a strange vision that he had had, or of the remarkable appearance of the body of one lately dead,[74] the oracle would often trace the matter to the action of a Hero who must forthwith be given an official cult. When a serious undertaking lay before a state, whether it was the invasion of a foreign land or a decisive battle in war, the oracle would bid the inquirers first placate the Heroes of the country that was to be attacked or where the battle was to be fought.[75] Sometimes the oracle of its own accord, without being applied to, commanded the honours of a Hero to be paid to a dead man.[76]
A peculiar case is that of Kleomedes of Astypalaia. This man had at the 71st Olympic festival (486) killed his opponent in the boxing match. He was disqualified by the Hellanodikai from taking his crown and returned home to Astypalaia full of indignation. There he tore down the pillar which supported the roof of a boys’ school, and on the destruction of the boys fled to Athene’s temple where he hid himself in a chest. His pursuers vainly sought to open the lid of the chest and at last the chest itself had to be broken into by main force. But Kleomedes was not found inside, either alive or dead. The envoys sent to inquire of the oracle were informed that Kleomedes had become a Hero, and that he must be honoured with sacrifice since he was no longer a mortal.[77] And so the inhabitants of Astypalaia paid honour to Kleomedes as a Hero. In this case the simple conception of a Hero as one raised to divine power after his death is united with the ancient belief, which had never quite died out since the great days of the epic, in the translation of individual mortals who without dying disappear from sight to enter immortal life with body and soul complete. Such a miracle seemed to have occurred once again in the case of Kleomedes. He had “disappeared” and [130] been “carried away”.[78] He could, however, only be called a “Hero” because there was no common name to describe the effect of translation which made men no longer mortals nor yet gods. The oracle called Kleomedes “the last of the Heroes”; indeed, it might well appear time to close at last the already over-lengthy list of “Heroes”. The Delphic oracle[79] had itself contributed largely to their increase, and with full intent; nor did it observe for long its own decision to make an end now.[80]
It is easy to understand the reasons for the universal acceptance among the Greeks of the unquestioned authority of the oracle in all matters connected with the Heroes. The god does not invent new Heroes or add to the number of local divinities at his own caprice or by the exercise of his own authority. He merely sees them where human eyes are not clear-sighted enough. He, the all-seeing, recognizes them as one spirit does another, and is able to see them at work when men only feel the results of their activity. Thus, he enables inquirers to be rid of their difficulties, to understand supernatural occurrences by the recognition and worship of invisible powers. For the believer he is in this, as in all other directions of religious life, “the true Expositor”.[81] He only points out what already exists; he does not invent anything new, though the information that he gives may be something quite new to men. We, indeed, may be permitted to inquire what motive the shrewd Delphic priesthood may have had in the creation or renewal of so many Hero-cults. There is very evident method in their promotion of the belief in Heroes, as there is in all the activities of the oracle in religious and political matters. Was it ecclesiastical policy that made the priests of Delphi, in this as so many other cases, search out and multiply to the greatest possible extent the objects of belief and cult? The more widespread and the more deeply ingrained was the uneasy dread of an invisible all-powerful spirit-world, the greater became the authority of the oracle that alone could give guidance in this confused turmoil of ghostly activities. Superstition had achieved a power that the Homeric age never knew, and it cannot be denied that the oracle encouraged this deisidaimonia and did its best to increase it. Still, the priests of the oracle themselves were undoubtedly subject to the beliefs of their age; at any rate, they shared the belief in Heroes. They would think it quite natural, when faced by anxious inquiries as to the cause of disease or dearth, to confirm the half-expressed attribution of the evil to the action of an angry Hero. They had rather [131] to give their sanction to what was already anticipated than invent something new. They only applied to the particular case (with free scope in the invention of details) what the popular belief of the times had already settled in principle. But what it all meant was that the oracle took under its protection everything that could promote and strengthen the cult of souls: and in so far as it is possible to speak of a “Theology of Delphi”, the popular belief in the survival of the soul after death and the cult of the disembodied soul formed two of the most important articles in its creed. We shall have more to say on this subject [hereafter]. In any case, if the priests lived in the atmosphere of such ideas, it was natural for them in times of need and stress, when strange things happened, to regard as the author of the disturbance some dead legendary Hero’s ghost or even a powerful spirit of more recent times, and to direct the faithful accordingly. Thus, the Delphic god became the patron of the cult of Heroes, just as he was a patron of the Heroes themselves, and invited them every year at the Theoxenia to a meal in his own temple.[82]