Primitive Athens as described by Thucydides

by Jane Ellen Harrison

When my Diomean Feast would next be due.’

The same curious duplication of sanctuaries meets us in the accounts of the initiation of Herakles. The scholiast on the Frogs[305] says, ‘Herakles was initiated in the Lesser Mysteries in Melite, a deme of Attica,’ but by common consent[306] these Lesser Mysteries are held to have taken place at Agrae on the Ilissos, and it is there, according to Stephen[307] of Byzantium, that Herakles obtained initiation. In Melite on or close to the Pnyx hill Pausanias[308] saw beyond the spring ‘temples, one built for Demeter and Kore, the other containing an image of Triptolemos.’ Did the emigrants from Melite carry their cult down with them to the mystic banks of the Ilissos[309], to Agrae ‘where,’ according to Eustathius[310], they say ‘the Lesser Mysteries of Demeter which they call “those in Agrae” are celebrated’?

Tradition, then, as to the initiation of Herakles was two-fold; he was initiated in Melite, he was initiated on the banks of the Ilissos at Agrae in Diomeia. We naturally ask, ‘Why was he initiated at all, and why did his initiation attract so much attention?’ If he was a god it was superfluous, if a pious mortal merely normal. The answer to this question may give a clue to the cause of the shift of population from Melite to Diomeia.

Herakles was initiated because he was an immigrant stranger. We have seen (pp. 27 and 65) that in the 6th century B.C. he was at home on the Acropolis itself; he appears on archaic pediments contending with Triton and the Hydra and on vase-paintings his popularity precedes that of his rival Theseus. Yet, none the less, he is a stranger, and his formal reception as a guest was at various places in Attica matter of old world tradition. In the Lysis Ktesippos complains that the boys’ lovers make for him the weary old boast, that to an ancestor of his belonged the honour of the ‘reception of Herakles[311].’ Lysis belonged to Aixone, a deme near Phalerum; and by way of the sea in all probability Herakles had come to Athens. Orators, specially religious orators, are less contemptuous. The initiation of Herakles was a telling argument in the mouth of the cosmopolitan peace-loving politician. The Torch-bearer, Kallias[312], in his speech to the Lacedaemonian allies urges the familiar precedent. ‘It was right,’ he says, ‘for us not to bear arms against each other since tradition says, your leader Herakles, and your citizens, the Dioscuri, were the first strangers to whom our ancestor Triptolemos showed the unutterable rites of Demeter and Kore.’ Plutarch[313], again, in his Life of Theseus tells how the Tyndaridae supported their claim to initiation by citing the analogous case of Herakles. In order to be initiated, Herakles, as a stranger, had to be adopted by a citizen called Pylios; the Tyndaridae, whose exploits were supposed to have taken place at Aphidna, were adopted by Aphidnus. The scene of the initiation of Herakles and the Dioscuri occurs on more than one late red-figured vase[314].

The emphasis laid on the initiation of Herakles and the tradition that he was admitted at the Lesser Mysteries mark the fact that he was a stranger. It is possible to go a step further. Herakles was not merely no true-born Athenian citizen, but an actual foreigner, an Oriental. It is therefore no surprise to us to learn from the best of authorities on Athenian ritual, Apollodorus[315], that ‘sacrifice was offered to Herakles Alexikakos at Athens after a special and peculiar manner.’ It would be out of place here to enter upon any detailed examination of the Oriental elements in the worship of Herakles generally, but as regards his worship at Athens, and especially in Melite[316], some points must be noted.

Melite, all authorities seem to agree, is Malta[317], the place of refuge. Diodorus[318] gives us a full description of the original Melite-Malta and emphasizes, if emphasis were needed, its harbourage and generally its maritime convenience, its wealth in arts and crafts and manufactures. ‘This island is a colony of the Phenicians, it lay in mid-ocean and had good harbour, hence when they extended their trade to the western Ocean it served them as a refuge.’ Of another island of refuge called Melite Strabo[319] tells us ‘the Korybantes removed to Samothrace which was formerly called Melite.’ This Samothrace, according to Diodorus[320], was called in ancient days Saonnesos, Safe-island, which of course is merely a translation of its Semitic name. In this Saonnesos-Melite the inhabitants down to the time of Diodorus still in their sacrificial ceremonies used many words of a dialect peculiar to them and, according to tradition, the island got its name in connection with the story—always a Semitic note—of the Flood. The inhabitants set up all round the island boundary stones ‘of salvation.’

In the light of Melite, ‘Refuge,’ we begin to understand why Herakles was worshipped there under the special cultus title of Alexikakos, ‘Preserver-from-Evil[321].’ He is Alexikakos, not merely as the hero of the Labours but by divine right; as a god even if an immigrant. Diodorus[322] records that while the Thebans and others did honour to Herakles as a hero ‘the Athenians were the first to offer sacrifices to him as a god’; their pious example influenced, he says, first the rest of Greece and afterwards the whole habitable world. Strabo[323] hits the mark when he says ‘as in other matters the Athenians were hospitable in what concerned the gods.’

Herakles in Melite was then in all probability a stranger; as to Herakles in Diomeia there is no shadow of doubt. Plutarch[324] begins his life of Themistocles with a story that shows in striking fashion the limits of the hospitality extended to Herakles as the typical stranger. ‘The origin of Themistokles was too obscure to be a source of distinction.’ On his father’s side he was an Athenian, but on his mother’s some said a Thracian, but Phanias stated that she was a Karian, and Neanthes that she belonged to Halikarnassos. Anyhow he was what the Athenians accounted base-born (νόθος). ‘The base-born youths subscribed to the “Kynosarges,” the gymnasium of Herakles, outside the city gates, for Herakles, too, was not a true-born god but was introduced by adoption inasmuch as his mother was a mortal. Accordingly, Themistocles persuaded certain of the true-born youths to go to Kynosarges and exercise there with him.’ Kynosarges, haunt of the base-born, outside the gates; there could be no better evidence that its patron, Herakles, was a foreigner[325].

Themistocles has yet more evidence to yield us, and that of a curious character. Themistocles, it will be remembered ([p. 144]), had a home in Melite close to the barathron. Near to his home he founded a sanctuary of Artemis ‘to whom he gave the title of Aristoboule[326].’ This was among the many ways in which he annoyed the Athenians. The cause of the annoyance, Plutarch thinks, was that he gave the title to commemorate his good advice before the battle of Salamis. But was this the real reason? Surely the dedication gave all glory to the goddess, not to himself? It is a curious and, I think, significant fact that we know of another Aristoboule, and she is a manifestly Semitic goddess. Porphyry, in enumerating instances of human sacrifice, says[327] that in Rhodes on the 6th day of the month Metageitnion, a man used to be sacrificed to Kronos. The custom, which had obtained for a long time, had been modified. A condemned criminal was kept alive till the feast of Kronos, and at the time of the feast they led the man outside the city gates opposite the image of Aristoboule, gave him wine to drink and slew him. If Themistocles was trying ‘craftily,’ as Plutarch[328] says, to affiliate a base-born to a true-born divinity, an Aristoboule to an Artemis, small wonder if the Athenians were annoyed. Perhaps the ‘Karian’ mother counted for something in the attempt.

The festival of Aristoboule in Rhodes, the grim Semitic Kronia, fell—and the fact is surely significant—in the month Metageitnion. Certain Herakleia, probably, though not quite certainly[329], the Herakleia in Kynosarges, fell in the same month; and of course the actual ceremonial of the Metageitnia mentioned by Plutarch. To this Metageitnia we now return. We have seen that the population of Melite, the worshippers of Herakles[330], were probably foreigners, and that at one time there was a shift of these Herakles worshippers from Melite to Diomeia. Is it not possible that the two facts are connected? Plutarch leaves us in mid-air as to the time and cause of the metastasis, but be it observed the shift is from Melite, a district outside the old burgh, to Diomeia, a district, at least in part, outside the new. May it not have been felt when the new circuit-wall of Themistocles was complete that it comprised too many foreigners? If the shift took place soon after the building of the new fortifications the event would still be remembered at the performance (406 B.C.) of the Frogs.