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]
§ 9
Thus encouraged on all sides, Hero-worship began to multiply the objects of the cult beyond all counting. The great wars of freedom against the Persians had aroused the deepest and most religious feelings of the Greeks, and it did not seem too much when whole companies of those who had fallen for freedom were raised to the rank of Hero. Thus, even into a very late period, the solemn procession every year to honour the Greeks who had been left on the field of Plataea was never omitted; and at the sacrifice the archon of the city called upon the “brave men who had laid down their lives for Greece” and invited them to a meal and satisfaction of blood.[83] At Marathon, also, those who had once fallen in battle and been buried there were worshipped as Heroes.[84]
Out of the enormous multitude of those who had thus become Heroes an aristocracy of Heroes of a higher rank came to be formed, chiefly composed of those who had been honoured in legend and poetry from the earliest times and had acquired fame all over Greece. Examples of these are those whom Pindar[85] in one place names together: the descendants of Oineus in Aetolia, Iolaos in Thebes, Perseus in Argos, the Dioscuri in Sparta, the many-branched heroic family of the Aiakidai in Aegina, Salamis, and many other places. Indeed, a brighter lustre seemed to illumine some of the greater Heroes [132] and to distinguish them almost in kind from the rest of their fellows. Thus, Herakles was now elevated to the gods, though Homer did not even know him as a “Hero” in the later sense, and though in many places he was still worshipped as a Hero.[86] Asklepios is sometimes a Hero and sometimes a god, as he had been originally.[87] Then many other Heroes began to receive sacrifice as gods,[88] not without the assistance of the Delphic oracle, which in the case of Lykourgos, at least, seems itself to have given the lead in the elevation of that Hero.[89] The boundary line between the Hero and the god seems to become more and more uncertain; sometimes a Hero of the narrowest local observance is called a “god”,[90] without our having any reason for thinking of a formal elevation to divine honour in his case or any corresponding alteration of ritual. The title of Hero seemed already to have lost some of its value, though the time had not yet come when to name a dead man as Hero hardly distinguished him at all from all the other dead.
§ 10
However much the meaning attached to the name of Hero may have widened or even deteriorated, the belief in the Heroes lost none of its significance and long retained its hold on the people. The belief in such a class of spirits stood almost on a par with the belief in gods. If the circle of influence possessed by some particular local-Hero was narrow and restricted, that only made him seem all the nearer to his worshippers. The spirits of their ancestors, their own and the country’s peculiar possession and shared with no one else, seemed more intimately theirs than other invisible powers even of higher rank. Permanent as the gods themselves, such Heroes were honoured as hardly second to the gods, “though they cannot equal them in might.”[91] “Not equal”—for their efficacy was confined within bounds; it did not reach beyond the limits of their home and the little band of their worshippers. They were bound to the soil as the Olympian gods no longer were—(a Hero who breaks free from local limitations soon achieves divinity). In particular those Heroes who send up, from beneath the earth where they dwell, relief in sickness or prevision of the future are certainly bound to one spot. Only at their graves can such assistance be expected, for that is their dwelling-place. In their case the relationship between the belief in Heroes and the belief in those subterranean deities, of whom something was said in the previous [chapter], is peculiarly plain. Indeed, in so far as their influence is limited [133] to a single locality and their powers concerned especially with iatromantic manifestations, these two classes of spirits essentially coincide.
Such relief in sickness was expected, not only from Asklepios himself, but from the Asklepiadai, Machaon—who had a grave and temple at Gerenia on the coast of Laconia—and Podaleirios. The latter was buried in Apulia, near Mount Garganus. In his heroön those who sought his aid laid themselves down to sleep on the skin of the ram that had been previously sacrificed. In sleep they received other revelations from the Hero besides remedies for the ailments of man and beast.[92] Machaon’s son, too, Polemokrates, healed sicknesses in his temple of Eua in Argolis.[93] In Attica there was a Heros Iatros in the city whose efficacy in curing disease was witnessed to by innumerable silver ex voto facsimiles of various parts of the body restored to health by him.[94] Another Hero Iatros, whose name is given as Aristomachos, had an oracle of healing at Marathon.[95] Healing of disease was rarely attributed to any other than these Asklepiad Heroes. Dream-revelations of other kinds, however, were vouchsafed from their graves especially by those Heroes who had been seers also in their lifetime, such as Mopsos and Amphilochos at Mallos in Cilicia, Amphilochos, again, in Akarnania, Teiresias at Orchomenos, Kalchas in Apulia near the just-mentioned heroön of Podaleirios.[96] Besides these Odysseus, too, had a dream-oracle among the Eurytanes in Aetolia,[97] Protesilaos one at his grave-monument at Elaious in the Thracian Chersonnese,[98] Sarpedon in Cilicia and another (alleged) in the Troad,[99] Menestheus, the Athenian leader, far away in Spain,[100] Autolykos in Sinope,[101] and perhaps also Anios in Delos.[102] A Heroine called Hemithea had a dream-oracle, from which she dispensed cures in sickness, at Kastabos in Karia;[103] Pasiphaë gave prophecies in dreams at Thalamai on the Laconian coast.[104] Since from none of these Heroes did the epic tradition give any particular grounds in legend for expecting a display of mantic powers, we must suppose that knowledge of the future and communication of such knowledge to the living was regarded as belonging naturally to the spiritual nature of the glorified souls of Heroes. The notices which have come down to us allow us to hear of a few regular and permanently established Hero-oracles, but there may have been numbers of them of which we know nothing, and isolated and occasional manifestations of oracular powers by other Heroes may not have been entirely out of the question.[105] [134]
§ 11
The oracular Heroes are regularly confined to the neighbourhood of their graves. In addition, what we know of the legends that were told of the appearances or the unseen activities of these Heroes shows that, like the spirits that haunt ancient castles or caverns in our own popular mythology, they were confined within the boundaries of their native country, the neighbourhood of their graves or the site of their cult. They are, as a rule, artless stories of the anger displayed by a Hero whose rights have been infringed or whose cult neglected. At Tanagra[106] there was a Hero Eunostos, who, having been deprived of his life through the machinations of a woman, would tolerate no woman in his grove or near his grave.[107] If any of the hated sex intruded there was danger of an earthquake or drought, or else the Hero was seen going down to the sea (which washes away all pollutions) to cleanse himself. In Orchomenos there was a spirit who went about “with a stone” devastating the neighbourhood. This was Aktaion, whose earthly remains were therefore buried with much ceremony on the command of an oracle. A bronze statue of him was also set up and fastened with chains to a rock, and honoured every year in a feast of the dead.[108] Herodotos solemnly tells us of the wrath of Minos with the Cretans, who had not avenged his own violent end, whereas they had gone to the aid of Menelaos.[109] There is a deeper sense in the legend, also related by Herodotos, of Talthybios who was enraged not for any private grievance but because of a violation of the moral law and order. He himself as the protector of heralds and messengers punished the Spartans for their murder of the Persian envoys.[110] But the most awe-inspiring legend of the revenge of a Hero was told of a local-Hero of the Athenian parish of Anagyros. A countryman had cut down the Hero’s sacred grove.[111] The Hero first caused the death of the man’s wife and then inspired the second wife with a guilty passion for his son, her stepson. The latter opposed her wishes and when she denounced him to her husband was blinded by him and banished to a desert island. The father, having become an object of loathing to all men, hanged himself; the stepmother threw herself into a well.[112] This story is remarkable for the fact that in it the Hero, like the gods themselves, is regarded as able to affect men’s consciousness, their feelings, and their resolves. Many of the details may have been improved upon by a taste accustomed to poetry of a higher style.[113] But as a rule the legends of Heroes bear a [135] thoroughly popular stamp. They are a kind of vulgar mythology, which still put forth fresh shoots in this way now that the myths of ancient gods and champions have become merely traditional and have been given over to the never-ending operations of the poets. Such myths were no longer thrown off naturally by the creative instinct of the people. The gods seemed too far removed, their visible influence in the affairs of men seemed only credible in the legends of a far-distant past. The spirits of Heroes hovered nearer to men; in good fortune and bad men traced their handiwork. In the myths and legends of the people arising out of the events of the immediate present they now constitute the supernatural element without which neither life nor stories would offer any attraction or meaning to the simple-minded.