Herakles

Herakles is unique among Greek heroes. He achieved Panhellenic status at such an early date that his origins can no longer be traced, but most likely they lie in the Argolid (his name, which means “glory of Hera,” also evokes Argos). The fact that a wide variety of non-Greek populations, from the Lydians to the Phoenicians and Etruscans, adopted this hero is the best evidence of his overwhelming popularity. Much of his story is familiar to Homer, and some scholars believe that he was a Mycenaean hero. In any event, the question of “origins” is perhaps moot for Herakles because the corpus of his myths, and his general character, are the result of a long process of accretion, with contributions from nearly all parts of the Greek world. While some of the myths appear to have Bronze Age and even Stone Age roots, evidence for cults is much more recent, dating from the seventh and sixth centuries or later.1

Like Hermes and Apollo, Herakles was a patron of the young men engaged in preparing their bodies for the challenges of campaign and battle. The foremost requirements for a Herakleion, which often did double duty as a gymnasium, were abundant open space, water, and accessibility; many sanctuaries lay just outside the city walls. These same features meant that Herakleia were often used as military encampments. For Pindar, who sang of athletic prowess, he represents the acme of masculine achievement (Isthm. 4.11-12): “by their manly deeds, unrivaled, they have set out from home and grasped the Pillars of Herakles.” His cults, as well as those of dependent “Herakleian” heroes (lolaos, Iphikles, and the sons of Herakles) are often found in initiatory and pederastic contexts.2

Pindar (Nem. 3.22) called Herakles her()s theos (hero-god), in recognition of his apotheosis and his unique status among the heroes. Unlike most heroic figures, Herakles was the exclusive possession of no single city or village. None dared to lay claim to his tomb in the normal manner of heroic cult, not even the residents around Mt. Oita where his fiery death was commemorated from the Archaic period with an annual sacrifice and bonfire. Scholars have long debated how his dual nature was handled at the cultic level, citing

Ancient sources (e. g. Hdt. 2.44 on Thasos or Paus. 2.10.1 on Sikyon) that indicate a “mixed” or dual cult. It is not surprising that some communities enacted Herakles’ dual status as god and hero in ritual, but this approach, based in theological speculation, was probably not the norm. A sacrifice more closely approximating the “Olympian” type, with its focus on shared meals and meat consumption, is the mark of Herakles’ cults, while the renunciatory mode associated with offerings to the dead, heroes, and chthonian deities seems to be relatively rare.3

In antiquity it was generally agreed that Herakles’ birthplace was Thebes, though his parents had come from Tiryns. Boiotia’s numerous cults focus almost exclusively on a young Herakles, and he often assumes the cultic role of military champion and guardian of city gates. At Thebes, fifth-century coins show the youthful Herakles strangling the snakes sent by Hera, presaging his role as a protector against evils. Our earliest written source for his cult is Pindar (Isthm. 4.61-72), who describes a “feast” (dais) for Herakles and annual burnt sacrifices for the Alkaidai, warrior sons of Herakles with his Theban wife Megara. This was just one part of the festival, which featured athletic competitions held in the attached gymnasium and stadium. Paus-anias (9.11.1-6) gives a more detailed account of the cult complex outside the gate, including the tomb of the warriors, the “house of Amphitryon,” and the temple of Herakles. The tomb of lolaos, an old Theban hero who came to be known as Herakles’ nephew, was probably also located here.4

In spite of the paucity of Athenian myths about Herakles, his Attic cults were deeply rooted and numerous, arguably benefiting further from the patronage of the Peisistratid tyrants. The Athenian victory over the Persian invaders in 490 only increased his popularity, for one of his oldest Attic shrines was located at Marathon. The Athenians organized their military camp in his sanctuary, which possessed athletic facilities and probably hosted games at the local level. After the battle, the hero-god was credited with aiding the Athenians, and the games quickly developed a following outside of Attica, as we learn from Pindar (e. g. Ol. 9.89-90, Pyth. 8.79). Vanderpool located the Herakleion in the southern part of the plain of Marathon on the strength of a stele or marker dating just after 490 (IG I3 2-3), which carried instructions on the organization of the games.5

According to Herodotus (6.116), the Athenians rushed back from Marathon to engage the Persian fleet and encamped at Kynosarges, another important sanctuary of Herakles. Located on the Ilissos river in the suburb of Diomeia, Kynosarges had a gymnasium frequented by nothoi, youths who were illegitimate or had only one citizen parent. It was also a hothouse of intellectual activity, attracting men like Themistokles and Sokrates. A most unusual feature of this ancient cult was that the nothoi were its officiants, and participated as “parasites” in the feasts for the god Herakles; elsewhere such activities were the privilege of full citizens. Pausanias (1.19.3) says that the sanctuary included altars for Herakles and his divine bride Hebe (Youth), as well as one for Alkmene and lolaos, a combination that suggests Theban influence.6

Within the city walls, Herakles’ most important shrine was south of the agora, in the deme of Melite. Here, as in several other cities, he had the title of Alexikakos (Warder-Off of Evils), and the Athenians relied on him to repel plagues.7 As a protector of youths, he received libations from Athenian boys preparing to embark on military training. This ceremony, known as the oinisteria, may have taken place at Melite or in the type of neighborhood shrine illustrated on Attic vase paintings and in votive reliefs: four columns stand on a base supporting an unroofed rectangle of beams. Such shrines were probably used often for private sacrifices to Herakles; inscriptions demonstrate that his cult was most frequently observed at the sub-state level. There is abundant fifth - and fourth-century evidence of small cult associations (thiasoi), which met regularly to share a banquet in his honor, appointing their own priests and making their own rules.8

One of Herakles’ oldest known cults belongs to Thasos, an island colonized by Greeks from Paros in the seventh century. A Thasian hymn to Herakles styling him Kallinikos (of Beautiful Victory) was attributed to Archilochus (fr. 324 West IE2). Herakles and Dionysos were designated “guardians of the city” in an Archaic inscription on the southern city wall (IG XII 8.356), where a relief sculpture depicted Herakles kneeling and taking aim with his bow. According to Herodotus (2.44), it was the Phoenicians who introduced the cult of Herakles - not the Greek hero, but a god of Egyptian origin who was far older. While no evidence from the sanctuary itself supports this idea, the Phoenicians certainly occupied Thasos before the Greeks. Their god Melqart was widely identified with Herakles in the historical period, and the Phoenician background may account for the unusual civic prominence of Herakles on Thasos.9

Entering the city from the south, visitors soon encountered the Herakleion, which initially consisted of a space cleared around a rock outcropping, enclosed with stone slabs, which served as an altar. Along its eastern side was a row of pits hewn into the rock, of unknown function (often interpreted as receptacles for offerings, but possibly post-holes for a wooden structure). A small building containing a hearth (the “polygonal oikos”) was soon added for the purpose of ritual dining; during the fifth century, it was incorporated into a bank of dining rooms. Meanwhile the first identifiable temple was constructed to the north of the altar on a fresh site. A gallery, well, and propylon (entrance) were also added during the fifth century.

As a civic deity, Herakles was worshiped in the Thasian agora. A Classical inscription (IG XII Suppl. 414) from the marble-walled “Passage of the Theoroi,” a special area in the northeast part of the agora where ritual laws were displayed, announces that it is not permitted to sacrifice goat or pig to Herakles Thasios, nor for a woman to partake of the meat, nor for “a ninth” (a tithe) to be given, nor for gera (perquisites) to be cut from the meat, nor for contests to be held (i. e., for prizes of honor to be cut from the meat). These restrictions seem to focus on saving the animal’s meat all for one purpose, whether for a holocaust sacrifice in chthonian style, or (more likely) some strictly equal division of meat among a group of privileged men. Other inscriptions mention Thasian festivals of Herakles, including one occasion when athletic competitions were held and the sons of dead soldiers were presented with arms as state compensation for their loss. On the whole, the evidence from Thasos gives us a picture of a warlike Herakles concerned above all with male bonding and commensality.10

In spite of (or perhaps because of) his ancient roots in the Peloponnese, the Dorian peoples who settled there appropriated Herakles as an ancestor in order to legitimize their claims to the land. Herakles himself was denied the kingship of Argos, but according to myth, his descendants returned and conquered the land by right. Stories of his exploits overseas similarly served to justify Dorian colonization (first in Rhodes and Kos, later in the West). Thus many an elite family and tribe, including the kings of Sparta, traced their ancestry to him. There is evidence of an Archaic cult at Tiryns, including the report of a statue of Herakles by the sixth-century sculptors Dipoinos and Skyllis.11 Old Dorian cults of Herakles are not as numerous as we would expect, were he in origin a Dorian hero, and are all but absent in Krete. In fact, Herakles figures far more often as a cult founder than a cult recipient. A surprising number of Spartan monuments and cults are tied to a minor myth, Herakles’ feud with the renegade king Hippokoon, who usurped the throne from Tyndareos. Herakles slaughtered Hippokoon and his huge brood of sons, placing Tyndareos in his debt and filling the landscape with tombs, trophies, and sanctuaries thanking the gods for his victory. In the service of the Herakleid ideology, these myths and cults placed Herakles on an equal footing with the native heroes and putative sons of Tyndareos, the Dioskouroi.12

The Spartan Herakles was less the club wielding, skin-clad figure familiar from Attic vases, and more an idealized warrior. Spartan youths on the cusp of manhood offered sacrifices to Herakles at the Dromos (course for footraces) and fought ritual battles at “the Planes,” a sacred grove of plane trees where Herakles and Lykourgos were the resident powers. As a tutelary deity of the kings, Herakles often played a role in battle. The Spartan generals’ preference for sanctuaries of Herakles as encampments surely owed something to piety as well as expedience. Attacking Mantineia in 418, Agis settled his men at the Herakleion, just as Archidamos III arrayed his men for battle near the Herakleion at Eutresis, interpreting the lightning that flashed over the sanctuary as a good omen.13

For the Greeks of the western colonies, Herakles was a trailblazer who traveled to the ends of the earth, a founder of cities and cults, and an apostle of Hellenism. His journey through the western Mediterranean with the cattle of Geryon, celebrated by the Sicilian poet Stesichorus, helped to justify Greek possession of colonized lands. His prominence in the sphere of Phoenician influence was in part a function of his identification with the god Melqart, but this cannot explain the popularity of Italian Hercules, whose cult was ubiquitous. Diodorus Siculus (4.23-25), our main informant for the beliefs of the Sicilian Greeks, says that Herakles made a circuit of the island, battling the indigenes and leaving “imperishable memorials of his presence” in the landscape itself. As elsewhere, he was particularly associated with hot springs, which were known as “Herakleian baths.” In Diodorus’ native city, Argyrion, Herakles seems to have been a major deity, honored with festivals and splendid sacrifices “on equal terms with the Olympian gods.” Youths grew their hair in honor of Iolaos and dedicated it in his precinct when they reached manhood. These offerings were made in connection with annual gymnastic and horse racing contests, and the celebration was extended to slaves, who were allowed to hold their own banquets in Herakles’ honor. A private dedication from Selinous shows that Herakles was worshiped in Sicily by the sixth century, while the great temple inscription (IG XIV 268, c. 450) from the same city names Herakles with major gods such as (Demeter) Malophoros and Zeus.14

Pindar repeatedly (Ol. 2.1-4, 3.11-38, etc.) credits Herakles with the founding of the sanctuary at Olympia and the establishment of rules for the Olympic games. In later accounts, however, and most conspicuously in Pausanias’ (5.7.6-9, 5.14.7) description of the sanctuary, we hear that there was more than one Herakles, and the founding of Olympia is attributed to Idaian Herakles, one of the Daktyls of Kretan Ida who aided Rhea in the upbringing of Zeus. The Daktyls (Fingers) were dwarfish magicians, guardians of mysteries, and experts in metallurgy who would seem to have little in common with the hero-god Herakles. The theory of multiple “Herakleis” goes back to Herodotus’ distinction between the god Herakles, of exotic origin, and the Greek hero, son of Alkmene. At Olympia, the custodians of sacred legends exploited the theory in order to bolster the sanctuary’s existing connections with Krete, usually acknowledged as the birthplace of Zeus, and to portray the sanctuary as an alternative Ida, where the young Zeus was nurtured. All this is not to say that Idaian Herakles was a complete fabrication. Although there is no sign of him in Krete, it is possible that Herakles the Daktyl has his origin in Bes, the Egypto-Phoenician dwarf god who protected the young. Syncretization of Herakles, Bes, and Melqart, whose kourotrophic and apotropaic functions are similar, has been documented in Cyprus and elsewhere.15