Just like the gods, heroes appealed to all levels of Greek society. Heroes and gods were of equal importance in the supernatural sphere and were invoked together in oaths and prayers to guard city and country (e. g., Demosthenes, On the Crown 184; Isocrates, Plataicus 60). The attraction of heroes and hero-cults in promoting identity both for a community and for a group of people derived from the fact that they were local and therefore more unique than the panhellenic gods.
The prominent role of heroes in state cult is evident in the epigraphical record of all Greek states. In Athens, heroes were a particularly important feature of official religion (Kearns 1989), a fact illustrated by the Cleisthenic reforms in the late sixth century, when the citizen body was divided into tribes, each named after a hero chosen by the Pythia at Delphi from a list of a hundred names (Herodotus 5.66; AthenaiOn Politeia 21.6; Kron 1976). The importance of a hero for the internal development of a city could be enhanced when needed, as was the case with Theseus, who rose to prominence in the classical period when credited with the synoecism of Attica. At the foundation of Messene in 370, as the capital of the new, free Messenia, the old heroes were called up again (Pausanias 4.27.6), an action underlining the idea of the heroes forming the core of the city. But the allocation of a hero to a particular site seems in many cases to have been rather arbitrary. An intimate and original connection with a particular hero was far from necessary. This multilocality of heroes and hero-cults, often with a clear political agenda, had the outspoken aim of strengthening one’s own position versus that of neighboring communities: the possessor of the hero and, most frequently, the hero’s bones would have the upper hand in a conflict.
When heroes were relocated their bones played an important role, and one reason for keeping a hero’s grave secret was to prevent such movements. Bone transferral seems to have been particularly motivated by politics and was used as propaganda, as in the case of the bones of Orestes acquired by the Spartans (Herodotus 1.66-8; Boedeker 1993; McCauley 1999) or that of Theseus’ bones, brought back from Scyrus to Athens in 476/5 by Cimon (Plutarch Theseus 36 and Cimon 8).
Mythic heroes could be moved from one location to another by the adoption or elaboration of different versions of a myth, and heroic mythology provided a means for constructing the past of the community. Agamemnon is placed by Homer at Mycenae and he had a hero-shrine at this site. Still, his cult was prominent at Sparta, where he had a sanctuary and was worshiped in the guise of Zeus-Agamemnon, together with his companion Alexandra-Cassandra. The Laconian link with the
Pelopid heroes became even more pronounced when the Spartans transferred the bones of Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, from Arcadia in order to secure success in their conflict with Tegea. The Spartan promotion of Agamemnon and his family supported their claims as leaders of the Peloponnese, supplanting Argos.
Expelling a hero with whom the political establishment was dissatisfied was also attempted. After his war with Argos, Cleisthenes of Sicyon tried to banish the hero Adrastus, an Argive (Herodotus 5.67). When discouraged by the Pythia, he invited the hero Melanippus from Thebes (with Theban consent), since he was the bitter enemy of Adrastus. Finally, Cleisthenes stripped Adrastus of his sacrifices and festivals and transferred them to Melanippus.
On a local level - deme, village, or region - the prominence of heroes is even more apparent and their connection to the land is fundamental. The sacrificial calendars of Attica illustrate the spectrum of different kinds of such local heroes, many closely linked to the topography. In the deme of Thorikos, the most expensive victims, bovines, were given to the eponymous hero of the deme, Thorikos, and to Cephalus, who was intimately connected with this deme in myth (SEG 33.147). Other local heroes lacked proper names and were simply identified as ‘‘The hero of... ’’, such as the Hero at the Salt-Works or the Hero at Pyrgilion (LSS19, 84-5). At the other end of the spectrum, we find a group of anonymous heroines, who only received trapezai, tables of offerings, at very low cost.
Hero-cult was also the prime focus for private cult associations, known primarily from the epigraphical record (Ferguson 1944). The members, orgeones, often owned the shrine and gathered there to sacrifice to their hero. The orgeOnes of Egretes, a hero known only from one inscription (LS 47), leased his hieron and other buildings to a private person for ten years, on the condition that the tenant would look after the precinct, including the trees growing there, and that the members would have access to the shrine for their annual celebration. This sacrifice ended with a meal in the sanctuary, which was equipped with a kitchen, a small stoa, couches, and tables.
The relationship between private individuals and heroes is harder to trace in detail; dedications in hero-shrines provide one way of spotting them. The small size of many cult-places for heroes also points to them being used primarily by small groups of people on a local or private level. The specialization of many heroes must have made them attractive on a personal basis, the most obvious case being the healing heroes (Verbanck-Pierard 2000). A small healing shrine, catering to local needs, has been found at Rhamnous, on the east coast of Attica: two simple rooms for incubation, an altar in an open courtyard where dedications were displayed, a sacred table, and a cistern. The hero was originally nameless, but identified with Amphiaraus when the sanctuary was renovated on local initiative in the late third century (IG ii2 1322).
In the hellenistic period, the concept of the hero and hero-cults were partly transformed and put to new uses by private individuals (Hughes 1999). Apart from tombstones carrying the word hOerOos, a development touched on above, there was an increase in the appearance, size, and location of funerary monuments for private individuals (Kader 1995). New evidence for these practices has come to light at Messene, in the form of a grave conjectured to be the hOroon of the artist Damophon and his sons near the temple of Asclepius and a series of hellenistic burial monuments for families at the gymnasium (Themelis 2000). Some of these monuments may have been the focus for some kind of ritual, though it is not evident that the deceased were called heroes. In this period, the term heroon used in a funerary context referred to a substantial monument for the departed person, rather than to a cult-place for a hero, and the same term could be applied to very ordinary tombs as well.
The most striking development of hero-cults of the hellenistic period is the foundation by private citizens of hero-cults for their family members, a practice previously reserved for the state. These institutions, beginning in the third century BC and best documented through the epigraphical record, aimed to promote the prominence of the family by declaring a member or members of it as heroes and laying down the guidelines for the cult, covering hereditary priesthoods, animal sacrifices and dining, often on a large scale, games, and the management of the cult-place, which was in some instances substantial. The private cult-foundations can be seen as an upgrading of the cult of the dead, through the adoption of the ritual practices and terminology of traditional hero-cults, but they are not to be considered typical of funerary cult in general of the same period.
The testament of Epicteta of Thera, dated to around 200 BC, provides for the completion of a Mouseion and the establishment of an annual three-day festival with sacrifices to the Muses, the heroes Phoenix (her late husband) and Epicteta herself, and their two dead sons, also called heroes (Laum 1914: vol. 2, no. 43). The sacrificial rituals are described in detail. The meat from the victims was to be divided between the members of the cult association and religious officials. At the end of the second century, the city of Aegale on Amorgus agreed to administer a donation made by Critolaus to provide for the heroization of his dead son, Aleximachus, and the yearly public feast (Laum 1914: vol. 2, no. 50). This event included a procession, in which officials of the city participated, the sacrifice of an ox eaten at a public banquet at the gymnasium, and games at which a ram, boiled in a cauldron and set in front of Aleximachus’ statue, served as a prize.
None of these documents can be linked to any archaeological remains. A large building constructed in around 100 BC at Calydon to honor a private individual named Leon can give us an idea of the appearance of such shrines. A peristyle court with rooms on three sides could have been used for games, while one room equipped with couches was meant for dining for privileged participants in the cult. The central room focused on the cults of Zeus, Heracles, Eros, and Aphrodite, as well as of Leon himself, interred in a vaulted burial chamber below and now worshiped as the ‘‘New Heracles.’’
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