Die Bedeutung der Perserkriege für den Aufstieg Athens (German Edition)
Punktuelles Ereignis oder langwieriger Prozess? Between Poverty and the Pyre: Moments in the History of. Among Poverty and the Pyre examines the background of the event of widowhood throughout varied cultures. It brings jointly a suite of essays through historians, anthropologists and philologists.
The e-book exhibits how tricky it truly is to outline the 'typical' widow, because the studies of those girls have differed so greatly, now not just because in their diverse time classes and destinations, but additionally becuase in their various felony and non secular prestige and financial stipulations. Pausanias further records a yearly pro- cession connecting Eleusinion with Helos, which couples well with the traditions of the Lemnian involvement in the war against the helots.
On the initiatory significance of the wolf-like separation, and it possible connection with the Spartan institution of krypteia, see, for example, Jeanmaire , —; Sourvinou-Inwood Hiller von Gaertringen , 61, 63, 68 has noted the importance of the cult of Demeter Eleusinia on the island Thera, which again can point to the connection between the Lakeadimonian Therai and the island. Sanctuaries and traditions in Ancient Sparta 43 thian cult and probably transmitted in this context,91 just like the tradition of the Dorian invasion is likely to have been linked particularly to the cult of Apollo Karneios, and the stories of the fighting against the Argives for Thyrea were transmitted in the framework of the Gymnopaidian festival.
An essential part of the traditions of the Spartan early conquests was thus attached to these three cults of Apollo, all of which were of great political importance and connected to the process of educating the citizens. The traditions tied to Karneia and the Hyakinthia concerned the very foundation of statehood — the Dorian conquest of Sparta and the submission of Amyklai, and thus the acquisition of the two set- tlements, the inhabitants of which formed the Spartan citizen body in the histori- cal period.
In the case of Amyklai the tradition also involved the enslavement of the Lakonian helots, thus the establishment of the fundamentals of social hierar- chy in Sparta. The traditions describing the formation of the state through the conquest were thus connected to the prominent stately cults responsible for the reproduction of the new soldiers-citizens through the system of education and the related rituals, and this ritual practice in turn left clear traces in the ostensi- bly historical accounts. Orthia, Lykurgos and the foundation of the internal order The Spartan internal order was, according to the almost unanimous belief of the ancients, established by the great lawgiver Lykurgos who saved his city from a terrible chaos kakonomia and created the wonderful order eunomia for which Sparta was famous in the Greek world.
The relevant account states that the deity was worshipped by the inhabitants of the four Spar- tan villages Limnai, Pitane, Mesoa and Kynosura — see figure 1 , which suggests that the Lykurgan establishment was seen as uniting these constitutional parts into the joint Spartan State. The story, apparently the cult legend of Orthia, is told by the perieget Pausanias writing in the second century AD.
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This sacrilege caused disease that was divinely prescribed to be expunged by staining the altar with human blood. The Spartans therefore began to sacrifice people selected by lot. Lykourgos averted the custom of human sacrifice, establishing the practice of scourging the male youths at the altar and staining it with human blood in that way.
The ritual supposedly established by him is known to us from historical times.
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Xeno- phon and Plato in the fourth century related that it was a ritual fight, in the course of which a group of epheboi adolescents tried to steal cheese from the altar see figure 2 while others repelled them by using whips. Both authors viewed this as a test for the endurance of pain. The story obviously suits the ritual mentioned by Xenophon and Plato: The ascription of the custom to the lawgiver becomes apparent from a.
On the whole ritual see especially Nilsson , —; Brelich , —; Ducat , — see also Paradiso suggesting that the item robbed from the altar was wheat not cheese. See Kennell , 70—78 and the full evidence collected in — On the ritual and its significance for Spartan upbringing see Nilsson , —; Brelich , —; Jeanmaire , —; Calame , —; Kennell , 70— Plutarch explains the name of the procession with a story of how the Spartan commander Pausanias had, before the Battle of Plataia during the Persian War, whipped back the Lydians trying to rob sacred objects from a sacrificial altar.
Fox is gener- ally known as a cunning and flexible animal, and as a superb thief. Alopekos is therefore highly suitable for exemplifying a ritual theft in the course of a struggle where swiftness, flexibility, and perhaps some cunning, played a crucial part. Astabakos also must have had his place in the ritual. He had a heroon near the Orthian sanctuary, and we are told that the bucolic choirs performed in honour of Artemis at Karyai in northern Lakonika included songs called As- trabika, demonstrating that Astrabakos was connected to the cult of the god- dess.
Therefore, I cannot agree with the scholars who have recently suggested that the story was a late invention, created as the aetion of the ritual during the Roman period Bonnechere , 15—18; Kennell , 79—82; Ducat , — Nor is it possible that the true aetiology of the ritual of the Classical period was given by the story of the Lydians previous note , because all the ancients ascribed the ritual to Lykurgos and therefore could not have believed that it was established to commemorate an incident during the Persian War.
The story given by Pausanias contains even more elements deriving from the early ritual, as will be shortly demonstrated. See Vernant , ; Kennell , ; Ogden , ; Ducat , , — We know from Xen. See Ducat , — For various interpretations of the story see Burkert who completely disregards the phallic and grotesque nature of Astrabakos, for which see below and Seeberg , 62— Mules indeed were imagined as phallic creatures having, according to Aristotle, exceptionally large penises, and were depicted so on vases, usually in carrying Hephaistos amidst the sexually excited silens figures 7—8.
Moreover, he fits perfectly into the con- text of the early Orthian cult, where we have various pieces of evidence suggest- ing that it had grotesque and sexual aspects.
The archaeology has revealed the images severe winged goddess, terrifying and grotesque masks, the terracotta and lead figurines of satyr-like men, often ithyphallic, and of padded dancers evoking Dionysian revelry figures 9— The fullface type also represents a man, or more probably a satyr, with beard and whiskers. Sosibios and Pollux report the Lakonian comic dances imitating persons stealing fruits an ill-placed allusion to the Orthian theft ritual? Among them there is a central couple, depicted in an act of copulation. The gen- der of the penetrated person may be debatable, but as the whole company seems to be male, and nothing positively indicates the female sex of this person, the natural conclusion would be that we have a scene of male homosexuality.
This interpretation is supported by the five parallel strips on the back of the penetrated person, which could be un- derstood as the marks of whipping. We do not know what all this is about. The buttock-caps of the dancers and of the person approached by the satyr suggest that it could be a depiction of a ritual, and the satyr-like figure can be also viewed as a man wearing ritual costume, while the dedication of the cup to Orthia could indicate that the ritual took place in that sanctuary.
The depicted scene does not of course correspond to either the Classical or the Roman period ritual as described by our sources, and any more or less precise interpretation of it will be inevitably debated. Pipili , 65 has followed the long accepted concept of Orthia as a fertility goddess Rose ; Carter ; and speculated a fertility ritual, seeing the satyr with phallus as a fertility daemon.
The aspect of fertility and childbirth could well have been present in the cult but see Waugh , who seems to be rather sceptical about this , but there is no particular reason to view either the satyrs or the padded dancers as promoters of fertility see Lissarague , — Fatness, unmanliness, revelry and sexual humiliation present an almost complete inversion of the acceptable order for the warrior- citizens. At the same time, this inversion fits perfectly with the grotesque and sexual features of the archaic Orthian cult, and fits equally well with the figures of the cunning and phallic Alopekos and Astrabakos.
Such inversion must have been a natural part of the Orthian ritual during the early period from which this archaeological evidence derives.
Alopekos and Artrabakos represent this aspect in the corresponding aetiology. However, any state of inversion must be in the end averted and order re- stored, and we can be fairly sure that in the sanctuary of Orthia this restoration was enacted through the victory achieved, and the hierarchy established, in the course of the ritual contest involving the whipping at the altar, and through the following procession of the participants who had victoriously emerged from the fighting and suffering. There was a corresponding state of inversion in the story, including madness, fighting and sacrilegious killing by the altar, from which Lykurgos created order through establishing the scourging ritual.
Astrabakos and Alopekos launched the chaos in the story, and probably exemplified it in the ritual, while the solution enacted by Lykurgos obviously stands for the restora- tion of what was considered normal. Moreover, the creation of the ritual practice in the Orthian sanctuary parallels the creation of the general order in the whole of the Spartan State: The scourging of the youths on the altar can be seen as representing the harsh way of life that Lykurgos had imposed on the Spartans, including the Aelian. For an interpretation of the name Orthia see Calame , — Sanctuaries and traditions in Ancient Sparta 49 whipping of boys during their education.
No doubt, the Spartans had numerous localities connected to the traditional ac- counts, but we can reasonably believe that the more importance the people as- cribed to the places and the rituals enacted there, the more significant the tradi- tions were likely to have been linked to them. It is, therefore, natural to find the accounts of the creation of the state, both the conquest that brought the land under the Spartan control and the establishment of the political and social insti- tutions, attached to the prominent sanctuaries of Apollo and of Artemis Orthia.
The cults of Orthia on the verge of the Spartan town and Apollo Hyakinthios in Amyklai seem to have been particularly important in this respect, because they formed a ritual axis uniting the crucial settlements of the Spartan polis. The whole Lykurgan order was viewed as a prescription of Apollo in Delphi and thus protected by the god, which gives us every reason to suppose that the Lykurgan establishment was regularly evoked in Apollonian cult contexts.
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Besides, the boys were allegedly encouraged to steal, but scourged when caught in the act Xen. The Apollonic origin of the Spartan order was proclaimed by Tyrtaios fr. Lykourgos in fact ascribes the foundation of the festival to the lawgiver; the Cretan poet Thaletas, who also was reputed as the establisher of the festival [Plut. Apollo and Artemis, the deities honoured with these cults, were regarded by the Greeks as the paramount protectors of youth, and all these sanctuaries probably played an essential role in the process of educating and initiating the young Spartans into adulthood, and thus to the full citizenship.
Educating meant also introducing the youth into the traditional knowledge, including what was believed about the origins, which makes it natural that in Sparta, like in numerous cultures of the world, the rituals of initiation and the respective cults provided the framework for transmitting the traditional accounts.
The connection between the cult places and the quasi-historical accounts had obvious effects on the traditional stories. As the traditions were preserved and transmitted by integrating them into the ritual celebrations, and since they func- tioned as aetiologies for the cults, their structure was shaped according to the ritual logic, frequently according to the narrative model of the development from chaos and inversion to the establishment of order and hierarchy.
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This is indeed a widespread pattern of structuring myths and rituals, known from both Greece and adjacent cultures, which can be connected equally with the fertility rites and the rituals concerning initiation. It can be noted that Carter has postulated a strong eastern impact on the Orthian cult, which can be seen in the archaeological record Kopanias For comparable features in the initiation ritual see the literature in note We can reasonably suppose that the elements in the stories pointing to the marginality of the actors and the state of inversion preceding the final solu- tion are influenced by the rituals.
This pertains, for example, to the ambiguous and foreign descent of the groups supposedly involved in the conquest of Amyk- lai, their temporary acceptation and consequent expulsion from the land, as well as the initial madness and fighting around the altar of Orthia, and the figures of Astrabakos and Alopekos initiating this state of chaos. The cults had thus a double effect on the traditional accounts. On the one hand they provided the context and hence some stability for the transmission, while on the other hand shaped the stories according to the overall logic and even certain peculiarities of the rituals.
It is, however, difficult to pinpoint the exact interplay between the rituals and the narrative accounts. The cult practice shaped the stories, but to what extent could the rituals have been inspired by the real events of the past, and hence to have had their own effect on the ritual prac- tice, and to what extent could the traditions, despite their ritually induced pat- terning, have preserved some historical kernel? It is clear, on the one hand, that historical events have often given birth to commemorative ritual traditions, and on the other hand, that the model of order and success arising from initial chaos — the crisis followed by a solution — does not pertain only to the ritual practice and mythology, but can fairly adequately describe countless cases in the real history.
On the one hand, the early and half legendary setting of the stories transmitted by much later sources does not inspire confidence. On the other hand, there is almost no doubt that most of the relevant traditions were of comparatively early origin, dating from the Archaic period. The Dorian invasion was indeed an ac- cepted fact for Tyrtaios in the seventh century, and all the principal points of the complex account were familiar to the fifth century authors. In the case of the foundation of the Orthia ritual we have, unfortu- nately, no evidence prior to Pausanias and Plutarch, except for the supposed fact 12— For the interpretation of the meaning Karneia, particularly the rite of staphylodromoi, see the literature quoted in note 47 ; for Orthia as a fertility cult sees note For the interpretation of these cults and rites in the terms of initiation see notes 51, 84, There is no need to choose between the fertility and the initiatory practices, be- cause they could well have been combined.
I 61—66, V 69—76; Isthm. We have noted that, as far as the archaeological evidence suggests, the formation of the Spartan state embracing the villages of Sparta and Amyklai was marked by the emergence sanctuaries.
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These crucial events must have left memories behind, and these memories, concerning the very origins of the polis and the cults, must have been of great significance for the subsequent generations. This warrants the sug- gestion that the connection between the cults and the foundation traditions dates from this formative period. More specifically, we can trust that Karneia as an universal Dorian cult was very ancient in Sparta, although we have no archeo- logical evidence at this point, and its usual connection with the Dorian founda- tion stories suggests that it was tied to the account of the foundation of Dorian Sparta from an early period.
The origins of the Hyakinthia may or may not go back to the Bronze Age, but as the worship at Amyklaion was practiced through- out the history of Dorian Sparta, we need not doubt that whenever, and in whichever way, the Spartans established their control over the village they must have also taken over the cult. We can suppose that the memories concerning this event were tied to the cult from that time onwards. From the site of Orthia the archaeological record begins almost synchronically with the evidence from the Spartan Dark Age settlement, which suggests that the cult played a crucial part in the development of early Sparta and in the formation of the political union of the villages the people of which subsequently partici- pated in the worship.
All in all, as the formation of the Spartan polity went hand in hand with the rise of its principal sanctuaries, we can surmise that the memories of this devel- opment were instantly tied to the cults and thus transmitted in that context con- tinuously from the very emergence of the state. We can therefore believe that the traditions crystallized at an early period, probably from the eighth and seventh For the reasons of my disagreement with the contrary view see note 95 above.
Sanctuaries and traditions in Ancient Sparta 53 centuries which seem to have marked the emergence of the Spartan state, and preserved, despite all the ritually induced and other kind of modifications, their kernel throughout the following periods. The least we can say is that the organic link between the cults and the traditions reflects adequately the central role of these sanctuaries in the polis formation.
What else of the historical truth could have been preserved can be only guessed. Museum Helveticum 22, — Morpholo- gie, fonction religieuse et social. Lakonian Studies in Honour of Hector Catling. Proceedings of the 19th British Museum Classical Colloquium, 39— Ar- chaeological Reports 23, 24— London — New York. Malden—Oxford— Chichester, — Youth and Society in the Classical Period. Or, Cosmos and History. The Mystries of Birth and Rebirth. Developments through Changing Times. Bathycles al servizio del pote- re.
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