The burial of Herodes Atticus: élite identity, urban society, and public memory in Roman Greece

Abstract

This paper discusses the burial of Herodes Atticus as a well-attested case of élite identification through mortuary practices. It gives a close reading of Philostratus' account of Herodes' end in c. 179 (VS 2.1.15) alongside the evidence of architecture, inscriptions, sculpture, and topography at Marathon, Cephisia and Athens. The intended burial of Herodes and the actual burials of his family on the Attic estates expressed wealth and territorial control, while his preference for Marathon fused personal history with civic history. The Athenian intervention in Herodes' private funeral, which led to his magnificent interment at the Panathenaic Stadium, served as a public reception for a leading citizen and benefactor. Herodes' tomb should be identified with a long foundation on the stadium's east hill that might have formed an eccentric altar-tomb, while an elegant klinê sarcophagus found nearby might have been his coffin. His epitaph was a traditional distich that stressed through language and poetic allusion his deep ties to Marathon and Rhamnous, his euergetism and his celebrity. Also found here was an altar dedicated to Herodes 'the Marathonian hero' with archaizing features (IG II 2 6791). The first and last lines of the text were erased in a deliberate effort to remove his name and probably the name of a relative. A cemetery of ordinary graves developed around Herodes' burial site, but by the 250s these had been disturbed, along with the altar and the sarcophagus. This new synthesis of textual and material sources for the burial of Herodes contributes to a richer understanding of status and antiquarianism in Greek urban society under the Empire. It also examines how the public memory of élites was composite and mutable, shifting through separate phases of activity -funeral, hero-cult, defacement, biography -to generate different images of the dead.Herodes Atticus is one of those figures who repays study not only as a luminous personality with his own history but also as a mirror to larger historical developments in the world around him. In comparison to other Greek aristocrats of the Roman Empire, we know a great amount about him not only from the substantial biography by Philostratus (VS 2.1) but also from the rich epigraphic and archaeological evidence for his life and family. L. Vibullius Hipparchus Ti. Claudius Atticus Herodes (c. 103-179), 1 who was born to a wealthy family with deep Athenian roots, became a celebrated orator and teacher, an aristocrat and politician with broad connections at home and abroad, and a peerless benefactor. Like other prominent men of his day, he was dogged by cruel controversy and popular resentment. While he was an outstanding individual and many of his accomplishments were sui generis, Herodes embodied the social and cultural values of his age, and he employed common modes of self-presentation, even if on a grander scale than his contemporaries.One fascinating chapter in his distinguished career is the final one in c. 179, as recorded by Philostratus (VS 2.1.15):Although h...

The King of Athens: Philostratus’ Portrait of Herodes Atticus

“…69 The presence of the altar does not indicate Herodes was definitively buried 66. Rife 2008, 113. Matthews (1996 argues τάδε πάντα in Antimachus means "everything here on earth," but cites Wyss (1936), who felt it referred to a specific region.…”