Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides

by Jane Ellen Harrison

The Sanctuary of the Semnae Theai or Venerable Goddesses. The site of this sanctuary is practically certain. Euripides[238] in the Electra makes the Erinyes, when they are about to become Semnae, descend into a chasm of the earth near to the Areopagos. Near to the Areopagos there is one chasm and one only, that is the deep fissure on the North-East side, the spot where tradition has long placed the cave of the Semnae[239]. A cave they needed, for they were under-world goddesses. Their ritual I have discussed in detail elsewhere[240]; here it need only be noted that it was of great antiquity and had all the characteristic marks of a chthonic cult. As under-world goddesses the Venerable Ones bore the title also of Arai, Imprecations; they were for cursing as well as blessing; the hill it is now generally acknowledged took its name from them rather than from the war-god Ares. Orestes it will be remembered[241] came to the Areopagos to be purified from his mother’s blood, and he found the people celebrating the Choes; he found them, if our topography be correct, close by, in the precinct of Dionysos-in-the-Marshes.

The Sanctuary of Aphrodite Pandemos. Harpocration[242] in explaining the title Pandemos tells us that Apollodorus in the sixth book of his treatise About the Gods said that this was ‘the name given at Athens to the goddess whose worship had been established somewhere near the ancient agora.’ His conjecture that the goddess was called Pandemos because all the people collected in the agora need not detain us, but the topographical statement coming from an author who knew his subject like Apollodorus, is important. We have to seek the sanctuary of Pandemos somewhere on or close to the West slope of the Acropolis, somewhere near the great square which as we shall see ([p. 131]) stood in front of the ancient well-house and formed the ancient agora.

Pausanias[243] mentions the worship of Aphrodite Pandemos in a sentence of the most tantalizing vagueness. After leaving the Asklepieion he notes a temple of Themis and in front of it a monument to Hippolytus. He then tells at length the story of Phaedra and next goes on ‘When Theseus united the various Athenian demes into one people he introduced the worship of Aphrodite Pandemos and Peitho. The old images were not there in my time, but those I saw were the work of no obscure artists.’ Immediately after he passes to the sanctuary of Ge Kourotrophos and Demeter Chloe and then straight to the citadel.

Of the actual sanctuary of Aphrodite Pandemos not a trace has been found. From the account of Pausanias coupled with that of Harpocration we should expect it to be somewhere below the sanctuary of Ge and above the fountain Enneakrounos, near which was the ancient agora, and of course outside the Pelargikon. When the West slope of the Acropolis was excavated[244] in the upper layers of earth about 40 statuettes of Aphrodite were found, and these must have belonged to the sanctuary. Inscriptions[245] relating to her worship were found built into a mediaeval fortification wall near Beule’s Gate. These, as not being in situ, cannot be used as topographical evidence, but they give us important information as to the character of the worship of Pandemos.

The first[246] of these inscriptions ([Fig. 33]) dates about the beginning of the fifth century B.C. ‘[...]dorus dedicated me to Aphrodite a gift of first fruits, Lady do thou grant him abundance of good things. But they who unrighteously say false things and....’ Unfortunately here the inscription breaks off so the scandal will remain for ever a secret. Aphrodite, it is to be noted, is prayed to as a giver of increase. She does not seem yet to have got her title of Pandemos, but as this occurs in the two other inscriptions found with this one, and they probably all three came from the same sanctuary, this Aphrodite is almost certainly she who became Pandemos.

Fig. 33.

Fig. 34.

The second inscription ([Fig. 34]), dating about the middle of the 4th century B.C., is carved on an architrave adorned with a frieze of doves carrying a fillet. The architrave is broken midway. Only the left-hand half is represented in the figure. This inscription[247] again is partly metrical, forming an elegiac couplet.