Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides

by Jane Ellen Harrison

Fig. 30.

If after leaving the precinct of Dionysos in-the-Marshes we follow the main road for about 35 metres, we come on a precinct ([Fig. 30]) of much smaller size and of quadrangular shape, which abuts on the road and along the North side of which a narrow foot-path leads up to the Acropolis. The precinct-walls are of hard blue calcareous stone from the Acropolis and neighbouring hills, and the masonry is good polygonal. The entrance-gate (A), which has been rebuilt in Roman times, is at the North-West corner. A little to the East of the middle of the precinct, and manifestly of great importance, is a well (B). The natural supply of this well was reinforced by a conduit-pipe, which leads direct into it from the great water-course of Peisistratos, which will later ([p. 119]) be described. Near the well are remains of a small hero-chapel, and within this was found the lower part of a marble sacrificial table (C), decorated with two snakes. The masonry of the precinct wall, the well, and the shrine all point to a date at the time of Peisistratos. Even before the limits of this precinct were fairly made out the excavators came upon a number of fragments of votive offerings of a familiar type. Such are reliefs representing parts of the human body, breasts and the like, votive snakes, and reliefs representing worshippers approaching a god of the usual Asklepios type. Conspicuous among these was a fine well-preserved relief ([Fig. 31]), depicting a man holding a huge leg, very clearly marked with a varicose vein, exactly where, doctors say, a varicose vein should be. The inscription[232] above the figure is unfortunately so effaced that no facts emerge save that the dedicator, the man who holds the leg, was the son of a certain Lysimachos, and was of the deme Acharnae. The style of the letters and of the sculpture dates the monument as of about the first half of the 4th century B.C. It was clear enough that the excavators had come on the precinct of a god of healing, and a few decades ago the precinct would have been labelled without more ado as ‘sacred to Asklepios.’ We should then have been left with the curious problem, Why had Asklepios two precincts, one on the South, one on the West? We know that Asklepios made his triumphant entry into the great precinct on the South slope in 421 B.C.; if he had had a precinct on the West slope since the days of Peisistratos, why did he leave it?

Fig. 31.

Fig. 32.

But now-a-days in the matter of ascription we proceed more cautiously. We know that votive-reliefs of the ‘Asklepios’ type are offered to almost any local hero, that local heroes anywhere and everywhere are hero-healers[233]. Hence local hero-healers were gradually absorbed and effaced by the most successful of their number, Asklepios. In literature we hear little of the hero-cult of an Amphiaraos, but his local shrine went on down to late days at Oropus. Fortunately in our precinct we have inscriptions that leave us no doubt. On a stele[234] ([Fig. 32]) found there we have an inscription as follows: ‘Mnesiptolemè on behalf of Dikaiophanes dedicated (this) to Asklepios Amynos.’

At first we seem no further; we have the familiar Asklepios worshipped under the title of Amynos, Protector, Defender. A second inscription[235], however, makes it certain that Amynos is not merely an adjective attached to Asklepios, but the cultus title of a person separate from Asklepios. This inscription, of the latter half of the 4th century B.C., is in honour of certain persons who had been benefactors of the thiasos (ὀργεῶνες) of Amynos and of Asklepios and of Dexion. We know who Dexion was; he was Sophocles, heroized, and he, the mortal, came last on the list. Sophocles had a shrine apart, or it may be a separate shrine within the larger one. The same inscription[236] goes on to order that the honorary decree was to be ‘engraved on two stone stelae, and these to be set up, the one in the sanctuary of Dexion, the other in that of Amynos and Asklepios.’

Sophocles[237] though, to us, he is first in remembrance, comes last in ritual precedence; Amynos is first. The history of the little shrine is instructive. Not later than Peisistratos, and how much earlier we do not know, the worship was set up of a local hero with the title Protector, Amynos. At some time or other, perhaps shortly after the pestilence at Athens, which the local Protector had been powerless to avert, it was thought well to call in a greater Healer-Hero, Asklepios, who meanwhile had attained in the Peloponnesos to enormous prestige. The experiment was tried carefully and quietly in the little precinct. Amynos kept his own precedence. No one’s feelings are hurt; the snake of the Peloponnesos is merely affiliated to the local Athenian hero-snake, the same offerings are due to both, the pelanoi, the votive limbs. But the new-comer is too strong; Asklepios waxes, Amynos wanes—into an adjective. Asklepios outgrows the little precinct and betakes himself to a new and grander sanctuary on the South slope.

The precinct and worship of Amynos, though it has no mention in literature, is preserved to us perhaps through its association with the dominant worship of Asklepios; but Amynos was probably only one among many heroes who had their chapels and their family worships scattered along the main road of the city where countless little buildings remain unidentified ([Fig. 35]). If the supposition suggested above ([p. 99]) be correct these local heroes must have had choral dances about their tombs, those choral dances affiliated by the late-comer Dionysos, and ultimately leading to the development of the drama. At the festival of the Anthesteria these local ghosts would be summoned from their tombs on the day of the Pithoigia; on the day of the Chytroi they would be fed and their descendants would hold a wake with revels and dancings.