Hero-cults in the age of Homer

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Hellenic Studies. This content downloaded from 86.25.108.15 on Mon, 17 Nov 2014 12:07:33 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HERO-CULTS IN THE AGE OF HOMER'MUCH hero-cult was directly engendered by the powerful influence of Homeric and other epics.... We so often hear how saga reflects cult that we are in danger of ignoring the reverse truth that cult may reflect saga; for cult was often mimetic of past events, and the memory of these was preserved mainly by saga-poetry.' Thus L. R. Farnell, in 1921.1 He was doing his best to create order out of chaos, writing at a time when it had been fashionable to explain away almost all heroes as faded deities. His method was to sort out the various categories of hero: the genuine faded deities, the vegetation spirits, the epic heroes, the ancestors, the eponymous figures, and finally the heroes who lived in historical times. Greek hero-worship has always been a rather untidy subject, where any general statement is apt to provoke suspicion; yet no one has since shown any good reason for rejecting Farnell's groundwork.2 This in itself is a tribute to the clarity and thoroughness with which he presented the literary evidence in the first place. Nevertheless, if a new edition of his book were contemplated today, it would need some substantial archaeological footnotes; indeed, during the last fifty years, every type of hero-cult has been illumined in some measure by the results of excavation-especially the cults of epic heroes, to which most of this paper is devoted; for the interval since 1921 includes most of the digging careers of Blegen, Wace, and Marinatos-to name the three archaeologists whose fieldwork has supplied in greatest measure the most abundant kind of evidence that we are looking for: that is, the evidence of veneration shown by later Greeks for the tombs of their Mycenaean predecessors.It is fitting that we should begin with these tomb cults, as it was in his tomb that a hero's strength was supposed to be concentrated; thus the aged Oedipus is made to prophesy aid for his Athenian hosts, and harm for his Theban fellow-countrymen, when in a later age their armies were to meet and fight a battle round his tomb.3 To check the conclusion of Farnell, that these cults came into being through the diffusion of epic poetry, we should pay special attention to the votives deposited in Mycenaean tombs, and belonging to what may be called the 'Age of Homer': i.e. within the approximate limits of 750 and 650 B.C3. If Farnell was right, none of the votives should be earlier than this period.In his...

Basileus, tyrannosand polis. The Dynamics of Monarchy in Early Greece

“…30 On the tomb and hero cults (the distinction made by Antonaccio [1993]; id. [1995] 6 and pas sim) see Coldstream (1976); Snodgrass (1980) 38-40;Morris (1988);id. (2000) 267-273; Whitley (1988); Antonaccio (1993);id.…”

Fonctions spatio‑temporelles d’une généalogie homérique (Iliade, XX, 213‑241)

“…Vernant, 1962, p. 23 ;Finley, 1970, p. 62 ;Di Donato, 1999b, p. 93-99. 45 Coldstream, 1976, Antonaccio, 1995, Di Donato, 2006. Pour le cas spécifique de Troie, on verra Antonaccio, 1995, p. 202-203 et Basedow, 2006, p. 19-20.…”

The ‘Temple House’ at Lato Reconsidered

“…It could thus explain why few human remains were left in Room B at Lato, and why a SM/PG flask was, perhaps deliberately, left behind, while the burial pithos may have been removed to the entrance of the tomb, either during the LG/EO period or during the HL period. The reopening of Mycenaean tombs and the offering of votives during the LG–EO period are hence not only a common phenomenon on the Greek mainland (Alcock 1991; Antonaccio 1995; Bérard 1982; Coldstream 1976; Crielaard 1998; Morris 1988; Whitley 1988; 1991, 39–45), but were also a common Cretan practice. Lefèvre‐Novaro (2004) recently listed a number of examples illustrating a similar practice in the Messara and eastern Crete, especially at Aghia Photia, Achladia, Phourni‐Arkades, Haghia Triada and Kamilari.…”