Because most heroes were closely identified with specific cities, lineages and/ or ethnic groups, Archaic poleis made extensive use of heroic cult as a symbolic system to convey messages about political relationships. The Athenian tribal epfOnumoi illustrate how heroes functioned as symbols of group identity, and the extent to which Athens both valued and manipulated heroic cult. Around 500, Kleisthenes reformed the tribal system by restructuring the four old Ionian tribes as ten new units, each containing a balance of citizens from different parts of Attica. The new tribes were political constructs with no kinship bonds to unify them, yet each was assigned a hero as its “founder” and each tribe was named for its hero. In the new democracy, it was by tribe that the Athenians voted, filled public offices, mustered for military service, and commemorated their war dead. With the assistance of Delphi, Kleis-thenes selected a group of Attic heroes that heavily favored legendary kings (Kekrops, Pandion, Aigeus, Erechtheus). Others in the list had special connections with places important to Athens, such as Salamis (Ajax), Eleusis (Hippothoon), and Thrace (Akamas). All had preexisting cults and shrines, which were supplemented by a monument in the agora, a narrow base topped by ten bronze statues of the heroes. On the wall around the base were posted notices of lawsuits, pending legislation, muster rolls, and other information of public interest. In the 460s, statues of the eponymous heroes fashioned by Pheidias were financed by Persian spoils from the battle of Marathon and dedicated at Delphi.9
From the sixth century on, there was a widespread belief in the talismanic powers of heroic remains, diligently fostered by the Delphic oracle. The presence of certain heroes and heroines brought prosperity and protected a city from its enemies, just as the Palladion, a famous statue of Athena, once protected Troy until Odysseus penetrated the city’s defenses to steal it. Bones served as physical confirmation of a hero’s presence, so heroes could be discovered, lost, transferred, and stolen via this medium. (Therefore the exact location of some heroic tombs, like those of Dirke in Thebes or Oedipus in Kolonos, was kept secret.) Around 550, the Spartans became embroiled in a war with Tegea. Consulting Delphi about what ritual actions they should take in order to bring about a victory, they were told to “bring in the bones of Orestes” and given a set of riddling directions for finding his grave inside enemy territory (Hdt. 1.67). Spartan propaganda had it that their subsequent hegemony in the Peloponnese was due to the discovery of bones belonging to a ten-foot giant, clearly those of a hero, and the installation of these remains in the Spartan agora. In spite of the Spartans’ Dorian ethnicity, they took pains to establish ties with their Achaian, heroic predecessors through cultivation of the Pelopid heroes: Agamemnon, Menelaos, and Orestes. The Spartan hunger to control the legacy of the Pelopids, and win their favor, even extended to Orestes’ son Teisamenos, whose relics were brought from Achaia to Sparta in response to yet another oracle from Delphi.10
Heroines too were of interest to the collectors of relics. A Theban tradition held that the body of Herakles’ mother Alkmene was miraculously replaced by a stone, which the citizens piously installed in her shrine. At Haliartos in Boiotia, a second purported tomb of Alkmene was opened by Agesilaos (c. 379), who planned to move her remains to Sparta. The Spartans were disappointed in the modest contents of the tomb: a stone, a bronze bracelet, two amphoras filled with what appeared to be hardened earth, and a bronze tablet inscribed with strange characters. They went so far as to send the tablet to Egypt for “translation.” Disasters and portents followed the violation of the tomb, and attempts were made to propitiate its angry occupant and her husband Aleus, whom the Haliartans identified with the underworld judge Rhadamanthys.11 The story shows that the fourth-century Spartans maintained the interest in relics shown by their forefathers, and that they were eager to possess remains associated with Herakleid ancestry.
World History
