We cannot trace the history of personification in Greece before the advent of epic poetry in the late eighth century BC, but there is precedent for the phenomenon in
Figure 4.1 Maenad labelled EIRENE, between two satyrs, in the retinue of Dionysus (almost out of shot to the right). Attic red-figure kalyx-krater, 410-400 BC. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum 1024. Photo: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Earlier eastern Mediterranean cultures (Burkert 2005b; Duchemin 1980). Sumerian, Akkadian, and Hittite texts inform us of personifications of Order and Right, companions of the great sun-god Shamash; in Egypt, Order is daughter of the sun-god Ra; the major Indo-Iranian god Mithras is Treaty or Contract personified; Zarathustra, the high god of Zoroastrianism, is supported by six powers who personify Good Sense, Truth, Sovereignty, Order, Health, and Immortality. The many personifications which appear in Hesiod’s Theogony are, therefore, further witness to the eastern influences on the poem discussed earlier in this volume (cf. Chapter 1). Hesiod’s cosmogony gives a fundamental role to Eros, personification of the generative principle which drives the entire poem (cf. Chapter 20), and to Earth, who bears first Heaven and then, with him as consort, the first generation of gods. A whole host of elements of the natural world appear mixed in with the divine family, personified by their place in the genealogy: Hills, Ocean, two dozen named rivers, the Sun, the
Moon, Dawn, Night and Day, various winds and stars. A number of abstract qualities are also included: Destiny, Doom, Dreams, Blame, Woe, Indignation, Deceit, Affection, Old Age, and Strife; Suffering, Forgetfulness, Hunger, Pain, Combat, Battles, Murder, Manslaughter, Quarrels, Lies, Disputes, Lawlessness, Folly, and Oath; Persuasion, Fortune, Emulation, Victory, Strength, and Force. A few even play a slightly more substantial role as consorts to Zeus: Cunning thus becomes mother of Athene, and Memory mother of the Muses. Personifications also appear in Homer’s works, often in contexts where the poet can exploit the ambiguity between abstraction and personification, as when Terror, Fear, and Strife take to the battlefield {Iliad 4.440-3). That Homer is quite capable of inventing personifications for didactic purposes is clear from the allegory of Folly and Prayers {Iliad 9.502-12) which Phoenix uses in his attempt to persuade Achilles to be reconciled with Agamemnon {Yamagata 2005). In the Works and Days {11-24) Hesiod likewise can introduce the good Strife - something like ‘‘Competition’’ or ‘‘Ambition’’ - purely as a rhetorical device to support the argument that his brother Perses should work harder. It must often remain debatable, then, whether any one ofHomer’s or Hesiod’s personifications is a ‘‘proper’’ god or simply a literary device invented to fill a genealogical gap or to make a point.
A handful of personifications, however, are more fully realized within epic poetry and also appear in art. Archaic art lags a little behind literature in its portrayal of {recognizable) personifications because the practice of inscribing characters’ names does not become widespread until the late seventh century. The earliest personified figures to be identified in this way are those on the Chest of Cypselus, an extraordinarily ornate cedar-wood chest decorated with carving and inlaid ivory and gold which was made around 600 BC. This is preserved for us in Pausanias’ detailed description {5.17.5-19.10) and provides a directory of the most popular mythological characters of the time, which include a number of personifications. Night holds the children Sleep and Death, one white and one black, asleep in her arms; Justice is a beautiful woman throttling and beating the ugly Injustice; Strife, ‘‘most ugly in appearance,’’ stands between the dueling Hector and Ajax; Fear, ‘‘with a lion’s head,’’ appears on the shield of Agamemnon. All of these figures can also be seen in extant vase-painting of the later sixth century. Most frequently depicted are Sleep and his brother Death, in a scene inspired by their role in Iliad 16, where they are tasked to carry the hero Sarpedon’s body home to Lycia. The character of Sleep {Hypnos) is more fully developed in Iliad 14 {231-90, 352-62), when Hera visits him on Lemnos to seek his assistance in her plot to distract Zeus’ attention while she helps the Greeks: Sleep is initially reluctant, because he only narrowly avoided Zeus’ wrath when he helped on a previous occasion, but, though unmoved by Hera’s initial bribe of a golden throne, he is won over by her offer of marriage to one of the Graces. This highly personalized figure bears comparison with Hesiod’s Sleep, child of Night, who shares a dark home with his brother Death { Theogony 211-12, 755-66). The evidence for Sleep actually being worshiped is thinly scattered and mostly of hellenistic or later date {Stafford 2003), but the substantialness of the character established by Homer and Hesiod and reflected in art shows that he can already be conceived of as a fully personalized god in the archaic period.
Progression from a minor role in epic and archaic art to later cult status can be further demonstrated in the cases of Fear {Phobos) and of Youth {Hebe). We have already touched on Fear as a participant in battle, but elsewhere in the Iliad he very briefly takes on a more substantial character as ‘‘dear son’’ of Ares (13.299), whose chariot he and Terror yoke at the war-god’s command (15.119-20). The two brothers become Ares’ actual charioteers in the sixth-century poem the Shield of Heracles (463-5), when the god goes into battle against Heracles to avenge the death of his son Kyknos. Fear (alone) is identified by an inscription as Ares’ charioteer in this context on an Attic black-figure oinochoe of 540-530 BC attributed to Lydos (Berlin F1732), on analogy with which he can be recognized in half a dozen more versions of the scene from the last third of the sixth century. Fear completely vanishes from the visual arts after this, but is certainly attested as a figure of cult around 450 BC, when he is one of the gods thanked in an inscription from Selinous (IG xiv 268) for victory in battle, and sacrifices to Fear on the eve of a battle are mentioned, for example, by Plutarch (Theseus 27; Alexander 31). The same author attests a sanctuary of Fear at Sparta, commenting that the Spartans had established it ‘‘near to the ephors’ dining room, when they elevated this office nearly as high as a monarchy’’
( Cleomenes 9), which helps to date the cult as early as the mid-sixth century (Richer 2005a; cf. 1999a and 1998b).
A sixth-century date could also be suggested for the cult of Youth, though the evidence is not conclusive. Like Fear, she has Olympian parentage, as daughter of Zeus and Hera, and she plays a minor part in the Iliad, performing such menial tasks on Olympus as pouring nectar, preparing Hera’s chariot, and bathing the wounded Ares (Iliad4.2-3, 5.722, 5.905). She acquires a more significant role, however, when she becomes part of Heracles’ story as the wife with whom ‘‘he lives happily in the fine seat of snowy Olympus’’ after completing his labors (Homeric Hymn 15.7-8). There is some debate over the earliest literary attestations of the story, but the marriage is unambiguously depicted in art from ca. 600 BC, with examples from Paros and Samos, as well as the Peloponnese and Attica, demonstrating the wide dissemination of the story during the first half of the sixth century. There is later evidence for Youth’s presence in the cult of Heracles and his family in Attica: she had an altar in Heracles’ sanctuary at Cynosarges (Pausanias 1.19.3), while the main sanctuary of the deme of Aixone was dedicated to Youth, with a priest of the Children of Heracles, a priestess of Youth and Alcmene, and a sacrifice for Youth ‘‘and the other gods’’ (Jameson 2005:18-19). A good case can also be made for rituals celebrating Heracles’ and Youth’s hierosgamos (‘‘sacred marriage’’) at Thespiae in Boeotia and on the island of Kos, where the sanctuary they shared with Hera was used for human wedding celebrations (Stafford 2005a, 2005b). The one area where Youth appears independently of Heracles in cult is the Argolid. In the Argive Heraion, the chryselephantine statue of Hera by the fifth-century sculptor Polyclitus was accompanied by a statue of Youth by his pupil Naukydes, ‘‘this too of gold and ivory’’ (Pausanias 2.17.5); the costly materials involved suggest that Youth had an important role in the sanctuary. A cult of Youth alone, which certainly sounds ancient, is also attested for nearby Phlious. Pausanias (2.13.3-4) describes a grove of cypress trees on the acropolis, ‘‘and a very holy sanctuary of ancient date’’ belonging to a goddess whom ‘‘the most ancient people of Phlious’’ used to call Ganymeda but was later called Youth. The sanctuary functioned as a place of asylum, released prisoners dedicated their shackles by hanging them from the cypress trees, and there was an annual festival called ‘‘Ivy-Cutters’’ (Kissotomoi). Unfortunately Pausanias offers no account of this festival, nor does he expand on his obscure comment that ‘‘they keep no statue in secret, and there is no openly shown one either, though they do have a sacred story to explain this custom.’’
Two personifications worth special mention here are those who shared the sanctuary at Rhamnous on the northeast coast of Attica. It is quite exceptional for such a sanctuary to be dedicated to a personification with no major Olympian as associate, but both Nemesis and Themis have substantial mythological profiles in archaic literature and art to support their claim to cult status (Stafford 2000:45-96). The word nemesis is used in an abstract sense in Homer, denoting ‘‘righteous anger’’ or ‘‘indignation’’ aroused by injustice. She first appears personified in Hesiod, as a daughter of Night (Theogony 223-4) and abandoning the corrupt world at the end of the race of iron, in company with Shame (Works and Days 197-201). A similarly allegorical element can be seen in the account of her rape by Zeus, which makes her mother of Helen, as related in the sixth-century Epic Cycle poem the Cypria:. the reluctant Nemesis keeps changing shape as she flees by land and sea, ‘‘for shame and indignation [nemesis] distressed her heart’’ (fr. 9 Bernabe = fr. 7 Davies). Like nemesis, themis is hard to translate exactly, but means something like ‘‘divine law’’ or ‘‘the natural order of things,’’ a set of ideas articulated in the genealogy which makes her mother (by Zeus) of the Fates and the Seasons, the latter named by Hesiod as Lawfulness, Justice, and Peace (Theogony 901-6; see Rudhardt 1999). Homer presents Themis as a regular denizen of Olympus, described like many other female characters as ‘‘fair-cheeked’’; she offers wine and sympathy to Hera, who tells her to ‘‘rule over the gods in their house at the fairly divided feast’’ (Iliad 15.87-92), and she summons assemblies, both of the gods (Iliad 20.4-6) and of mortals (Odyssey 2.68-9). Later archaic poems make her Zeus’ advisor: at the beginning of the Cypria she plays a vital role by suggesting to Zeus that he punish man’s corruption and reduce the earth’s over-population by setting the Trojan War in train. This literary profile is further fleshed out by a few appearances in archaic art: Themis is amongst the deities (names inscribed) attending the wedding of Peleus and Thetis on the Attic black-figure dinos by Sophilos, ca. 580 BC (London 1971.11-11.1), which also features Youth; Pausanias mentions a statue of Themis in the temple of Hera at Olympia by a mid-sixth-century sculptor, which stood beside a seated group of the Seasons (5.17.1); and around 525 BC Themis, her name again inscribed, takes part in the Gigantomachy portrayed on the north frieze of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi.
The rape of Nemesis is localized by later sources at Rhamnous, where she was clearly the principal of the two deities. Extensive archaeological exploration (Petrakos 2000) has demonstrated that the sanctuary was already in use in the archaic period: there are remains of an early sixth-century building which was probably the first temple of Nemesis, replaced towards the end of the century by another; a third building erected shortly after 500 BC may have been added to provide an independent location for worship of the sanctuary’s second deity, Themis. The sanctuary probably suffered damage during the Persian Wars, and underwent significant refurbishment and expansion in the middle of the fifth century, culminating with the erection ca. 430 BC of the temple the remains of which can still be seen today. Inscriptions recording the sanctuary’s financial affairs support the picture of rapid expansion, with just a few hundred drachmas being paid to the sanctuary’s administrators at the beginning of the fifth century, while in the years ca. 450-440 the sanctuary is in a position to make loans totaling up to 56,000 drachmas (IG i3 248). This increase in the sanctuary’s wealth was almost certainly due to a perception that Nemesis had been instrumental in the defeat of the Persians, an idea much alluded to in connection with the cult statue made by Phidias’ pupil Agorakritos and installed ca. 430-420 BC. Pausanias (1.33.2-3) records a tradition that the statue was made out of a block of stone which the Persians had brought with them for making a trophy when they landed at Marathon in 490 BC, ‘‘thinking contemptuously that nothing could stop them from taking Athens.’’ However unreliable this tale may be, fragments of the actual statue show that the scene on its base alluded to the destruction of Troy, a mythological theme employed elsewhere to symbolize the Greeks’ historical victory over the Persians. The sanctuary’s fifth-century association with Nemesis, then, is well documented, and inscriptions from the late fourth and third centuries attest a festival called the Great Nemesia celebrated on 19 Hecatombaeon (June/ July), which included athletic contests for the young men stationed at the fort at Rhamnous as part of their military training. Two dedications of the same period attest separate offices for priestesses of Nemesis and Themis, held on an annual basis; both inscriptions employ the phrase ‘‘in the priestesshood of [woman’s name],’’ which sounds like a dating formula, suggesting that the positions were highly regarded in the community.
A sixth-century date for Themis’ introduction to Rhamnous might be supported by the importance of the concept she embodies to late archaic Attic society, and by some evidence for her cult in archaic Athens. There is a small sanctuary on the south slope of the Acropolis which probably belonged to the Athenian Themis, and a priestess of Themis made a small dedication in the neighboring sanctuary of Asclepius around 250 BC (IG ii2 1534.252). The earliest attestation, however, is a line from Nicomachus’ calendar of sacrifices, set up in the Royal Stoa ca. 401 BC to record revisions of regulations established by Solon in the early sixth century (LSS 10). This specifies the expenditure of 12 drachmas on ‘‘a ewe for Themis’’ in the month Metageitnion (July-August), indicating a very modest sacrifice. We cannot be certain that the sacrifice to Themis was on Solon’s original list, but there is some support for a late archaic date in the form ofpersonal names derived from Themis, which begin to appear in Attica towards the end of the sixth century, the earliest example being the famous general Themistocles, born ca. 525 BC. As Parker (2000a) argues, such theophoric names are suggestive of the particular deity’s local significance, and we see Themis-related names again in epigraphic evidence from Thessaly, where the names Themistion, Themison, Themistocles, Themistogenes, and Pasithemis are attested. Themis does indeed seems to have an important place in the Thessalian pantheon, even replacing Hera as Zeus’ consort (Miller 1974). Evidence for her standing includes inscriptions attesting a local month name ‘‘Themistios’’ which, by analogy with what we know of the Athenian calendar (cf. Chapter 13), is likely to have been named after an ancient festival celebrated during that month in Themis’ honor.
World History
