Giacobbe Giusti, Paestum, Lucanie

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Paestum, Lucanie

Vue des ruines de Paestum

Giacobbe Giusti, Paestum, Lucanie

Vestiges de Metaponto

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Paestum, Lucanie

 

Nomos du royaume de Lucanie frappé à Métaponte vers 530-510 av. J.-C.

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Paestum, Lucanie

Cavalier lucanien sur une fresque d’une tombe de Paestum.

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Paestum, Lucanie

A mounted Lucani warrior, fresco from a tomb of Paestum, Italy, c. 360 BC

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Paestum, Lucanie

A Lucani man riding a chariot, from a tomb in Paestum, Italy, 4th century BC

La Lucanie (en latin : Lucania, en grec : Λευκανία, Leukania) était un ancien district d’Italie du Sud pendant l’Antiquité, elle correspond à la partie septentrionale de la Regio III d’Auguste, Lucania et Bruttium

La Lucanie s’étendait de la mer Tyrrhénienne au golfe de Tarente. Selon Strabon, elle débute à l’ouest avec l’embouchure du fleuve Silaris, le Sele actuel, et s’achève au niveau du fleuve Lao, et de la cité éponyme Laos. Au nord, elle jouxtait la Campania, le Samnium et les Pouilles (dans sa partie daunienne), et au sud, elle était séparée du Bruttium à l’époque républicaine, auquel elle est jointe lors de la création des régions augustéennes de l’Italie. Le territoire recouvrait ainsi presque toute la région actuelle de la Basilicate, avec la plus grande partie de la province de Salerne (Cilento) et de Cosenzaactuelles. Les limites précises étaient déterminées sur la côte nord-ouest par la rivière Sélé, qui la séparait de la Campanie et sur le nord-est par le Bradano, qui se jette dans le golfe de Tarente ; à l’ouest et l’est les deux petits cours d’eau Lao (it) et Crati, coulant de la crête des Apennins jusqu’à la mer ont marqué la limite avec le Bruttium.

La Lucanie tire son nom du peuple des Lucaniens, qui fait son apparition dans la littérature antique à la fin du iv^e siècle av. J.-C., s’illustrant notamment par la conquête de Paestum, la prise de Laos, et plusieurs batailles menées contre des colonies de Grande Grèce (Thourioi en 389 av. J.-C., Tarente). Les Lucaniens sont un peuple qui, toujours selon les sources anciennes, serait issu de la souche samnite, qui lors d’une migration sacrée, un ver sacrum, aurait décidé de fonder ce nouvel ethnos. Les Lucaniens auraient ainsi pris la place des populations archaïques de la région : Oenôtres, Peucétiens, Chônes, Opiques, Serdaioi, et fondé une nouvelle confédération de peuples, parlant l’osque.

Bibliographie

• (it) A. Pontrandolfo Greco, I Lucani, vol. 5, Milan, coll. « Biblioteca di Archeologia », 1982
• Agnes Henning (dir.), « Les Lucaniens », Pour la Science, n^o 443,‎ septembre 2014, p. 46-52
• (it) Azienda di Promozione Turistica Regionale, Basilicata – Atlante Turistico delle aree prodotto e sistemi turistici locali, Novare, DeAgostini, 2005
• (it) T. Pedìo, Cartulario della Basilicata, Venosa, Appia 2 Editrice, 1998
• (it) G. Antonini, La Lucania, Discorsi, Naples, F. Tromberli, 1745
• (it) Domenico Musti, Strabone e la Magna Grecia: Città e popoli dell’Italia antica, Esedra, 1988
• (it) Lucilla De Lachenal, Da Leukania a Lucania: la Lucania centro-orientale fra Pirro e i Giulio-Claudii, Istituto poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Libreria dello Stato, 1993
• (it) Istituto di studi romani, Italia romana, Istituto di studi romani, 1948
• (it) Adele Cilento, Bisanzio in Sicilia e nel sud dell’Italia, Udine, Magnus Edizioni SpA, 2005 (ISBN 88-7057-196-3)
• Olivier de Cazanove, Civita di Tricarico I Le quartier de la maison du monolithe et l’enceinte intermédiaire, Rome, École française de Rome, 2008
• (it) Olivier de Cazanove, Civita di Tricarico nell’età della romanizzazione, in Modalità insediative e strutture agrarie nell’Italia meridionale in età romana a cura di Elio Lo Cascio et Alfredina Storchi Marino, Bari, Edipuglia, 2001

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucanie_(r%C3%A9gion_historique)

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Rampin Rider, Acropolis Museum

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Rampin Rider, Acropolis Museum

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Rampin Rider, Acropolis Museum

Rampin rider Louvre

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Rampin Rider, Acropolis Museum

Rampin Rider at the Acropolis Museum

The Rampin Rider or Rampin Horseman (c. 550 BC) is an equestrian statuefrom the Archaic Period of Ancient Greece. The statue was masterfully made of marble and has traces of red and black paint.

The head of the rider was found on the Acropolis of Athens in 1877 and donated to the Louvre. Parts of the body of the rider and horse were found ten years earlier in a ditch filled with statues broken during the 480 BC Persian sack of Athens. The head was not associated with the rest of the statue until 1936. The statue is displayed with a plaster cast of the head at the Acropolis Museum while the head remains at the Louvre where it is displayed with a cast of the rest of the statue.

The rider has many of the features typical of an Archaic kouros, but has several asymmetrical features that break with the period’s conventions.

Interpretations

The statue was originally thought to be a part of a set of statues, perhaps paired with another as a mounted presentation of Castor and Pollux common on vases from this period. According to another theory, the statue represents the winner of a race. This theory is supported by the crown of lovage, given to winners of the Nemean Games and the Isthmian Games, on the statue.

References

• Page at the Louvre (English): Head of a horseman, known as the « Rampin Horseman »

• Gisela M. A. Richter, L’arte greca, Torino, Einaudi, 1969.
• Jean Charbonneaux, Roland Martin; François Villard, La Grecia arcaica : (620-480 a.C.), Milano, Rizzoli, 1978. ISBN non esistente
• Humfry Payne, Paolo Enrico Arias, La scultura arcaica in marmo dell’Acropoli, Roma, L’Erma di Bretschneider, 1981, ISBN 88-7062-500-1.
• Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Enrico Paribeni, L’arte dell’antichità classica. Grecia, Torino, UTET Libreria, 1986, ISBN 88-7750-183-9..
• Pierluigi De Vecchi ed Elda Cerchiari, I tempi dell’arte, volume 1, Bompiani, Milano 1999. ISBN 88-451-7107-8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampin_Rider

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Classical Greece

Giacobbe Giusti, Classical Greece

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Classical Greece

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Classical Greece

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Classical Greece

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Classical Greece

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Classical Greece

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Classical Greece

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Classical Greece

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Classical Greece

The Parthenon, in Athens, a temple to Athena

Classical Greece was a period of around 200 years (5th and 4th centuries BCE) in Greek culture.

^[1]This Classicalperiod saw the annexation of much of modern-day Greece by the Persian Empire^[2]and its subsequent independence. Classical Greece had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and on the foundations of western civilization. Much of modern Western politics, artistic thought (architecture, sculpture), scientific thought, theatre, literature, and philosophy derives from this period of Greek history. In the context of the art, architecture, and culture of Ancient Greece, the Classical period^[3] corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries BCE (the most common dates being the fall of the last Athenian tyrant in 510 BCE and the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE). The Classical period in this sense follows the Archaic period and is in turn succeeded by the Hellenistic period.

5th century BC

Greece in 5th century BC

 Archaic Greece

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This century is essentially studied from the Athenian outlook because Athens has left us more narratives, plays, and other written works than the other ancient Greek states. From the perspective of Athenian culture in Classical Greece, the period generally referred to as the 5th century BCE extends slightly into the 4th century BCE. In this context, one might consider that the first significant event of this century occurs in 508 BCE, with the fall of the last Athenian tyrant and Cleisthenes’ reforms. However, a broader view of the whole Greek world might place its beginning at the Ionian Revoltof 500 BCE, the event that provoked the Persian invasion of 492 BCE.The Persians were defeated in 490 BCE. A second Persian attempt, in 481–479 BCE, failed as well, despite having overrun much of modern-day Greece (north of the Isthmus of Corinth) at a crucial point during the war following the Battle of Thermopylae and the Battle of Artemisium.^[2][4] The Delian League then formed, under Athenian hegemony and as Athens’ instrument. Athens’ excesses caused several revolts among the allied cities, all of which were put down by force, but Athenian dynamism finally awoke Sparta and brought about the Peloponnesian War in 431 BCE. After both forces were spent, a brief peace came about; then the war resumed to Sparta’s advantage. Athens was definitively defeated in 404 BCE, and internal Athenian agitations mark the end of the 5th century BCE in Greece.

Since its beginning, Sparta had been ruled by a diarchy. This meant that Sparta had two kings ruling concurrently throughout its entire history. The two kingships were both hereditary, vested in the Agiad dynasty and the Eurypontid dynasty. According to legend, the respective hereditary lines of these two dynasties sprang from Eurysthenes and Procles, twin descendants of Hercules. They were said to have conquered Sparta two generations after the Trojan War.

Athens under Cleisthenes

Main article: Cleisthenes

In 510 BC, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow their king, the tyrant Hippias, son of Peisistratos. Cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy headed by Isagoras. But his rival Cleisthenes, with the support of the middle class and aided by democrats, took over. Cleomenes intervened in 508 and 506 BC, but could not stop Cleisthenes, now supported by the Athenians. Through Cleisthenes’ reforms, the people endowed their city with isonomicinstitutions — equal rights for all citizens (though only men were citizens)—and established ostracism.

The isonomic and isegoric (equal freedom of speech)^[5] democracy was first organized into about 130 demes, which became the basic civic element. The 10,000 citizens exercised their power as members of the assembly (ἐκκλησία, ekklesia), headed by a council of 500 citizens chosen at random.

The city’s administrative geography was reworked, in order to create mixed political groups: not federated by local interests linked to the sea, to the city, or to farming, whose decisions (e.g. a declaration of war) would depend on their geographical position. The territory of the city was also divided into thirty trittyes as follows:

• ten trittyes in the coastal region (παρᾰλία, paralia)
• ten trittyes in the ἄστυ (astu), the urban centre
• ten trittyes in the rural interior, (μεσογεία, mesogia).

A tribe consisted of three trittyes, selected at random, one from each of the three groups. Each tribe therefore always acted in the interest of all three sectors.

It was this corpus of reforms that allowed the emergence of a wider democracy in the 460s and 450s BC.

The Persian wars

Main article: Greco-Persian Wars

In Ionia (the modern Aegean coast of Turkey), the Greek cities, which included great centres such as Miletus and Halicarnassus, were unable to maintain their independence and came under the rule of the Persian Empire in the mid-6th century BC. In 499 BC that region’s Greeks rose in the Ionian Revolt, and Athens and some other Greek cities sent aid, but were quickly forced to back down after defeat in 494 BC at the Battle of Lade. Asia Minor returned to Persian control.

In 492 BC, the Persian general Mardonius led a campaign through Thrace and Macedonia. He was victorious and again subjugated the former and conquered the latter,^[6] but he was wounded and forced to retreat back into Asia Minor. In addition, a fleet of around 1,200 ships that accompanied Mardonius on the expedition was wrecked by a storm off the coast of Mount Athos. Later, the generals Artaphernesand Datis led a successful naval expedition against the Aegean islands.

In 490 BC, Darius the Great, having suppressed the Ionian cities, sent a Persian fleet to punish the Greeks. (Historians are uncertain about their number of men; accounts vary from 18,000 to 100,000.) They landed in Attica intending to take Athens, but were defeated at the Battle of Marathon by a Greek army of 9,000 Athenian hoplites and 1,000 Plataeans led by the Athenian general Miltiades. The Persian fleet continued to Athens but, seeing it garrisoned, decided not to attempt an assault.

In 480 BC, Darius’ successor Xerxes I sent a much more powerful force of 300,000 by land, with 1,207 ships in support, across a double pontoon bridge over the Hellespont. This army took Thrace, before descending on Thessaly and Boeotia, whilst the Persian navy skirted the coast and resupplied the ground troops. The Greek fleet, meanwhile, dashed to block Cape Artemision. After being delayed by Leonidas I, the Spartan king of the Agiad Dynasty, at the Battle of Thermopylae (a battle made famous by the 300 Spartans who faced the entire Persian army), Xerxes advanced into Attica, and captured and burned Athens. The subsequent Battle of Artemisium resulted in the capture of Euboea, bringing most of mainland Greece north of the Isthmus of Corinth under Persian control.^[2][4] However, the Athenians had evacuated the city of Athens by sea before Thermopylae, and under the command of Themistocles, they defeated the Persian fleet at the Battle of Salamis.

Map of the first phases of the Greco-Persian Wars (500–479 BC)

In 483 BC, during the period of peace between the two Persian invasions, a vein of silver ore had been discovered in the Laurion (a small mountain range near Athens), and the hundreds of talents mined there were used to build 200 warships to combat Aeginetan piracy. A year later, the Greeks, under the Spartan Pausanias, defeated the Persian army at Plataea. The Persians then began to withdraw from Greece, and never attempted an invasion again.

The Athenian fleet then turned to chasing the Persians from the Aegean Sea, defeating their fleet decisively in the Battle of Mycale; then in 478 BC the fleet captured Byzantium. At that time Athens enrolled all the island states and some mainland ones into an alliance called the Delian League, so named because its treasury was kept on the sacred island of Delos. The Spartans, although they had taken part in the war, withdrew into isolation afterwards, allowing Athens to establish unchallenged naval and commercial power.

The Peloponnesian war

Peloponnesian War

Cities at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War

In 431 BC war broke out between Athens and Sparta. The war was a struggle not merely between two city-states but rather between two coalitions, or leagues of city-states:^[7] the Delian League, led by Athens, and the Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta.

Delian league

The Delian League grew out of the need to present a unified front of all Greek city-states against Persian aggression. In 481 BC, Greek city-states, including Sparta, met in the first of a series of « congresses » that strove to unify all the Greek city-states against the danger of another Persian invasion.^[8] The coalition that emerged from the first congress was named the « Hellenic League » and included Sparta. Persia, under Xerxes, invaded Greece in September 481 BC, but the Athenian navy defeated the Persian navy. The Persian land forces were delayed in 480 BC by a much smaller force of 300 Spartans, 400 Thebans and 700 men from Boeotian Thespiae at the Battle of Thermopylae.^[9] The Persians left Greece in 479 BC after their defeat at Plataea.^[10]

Plataea was the final battle of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece. After this, the Persians never again tried to invade Greece. With the disappearance of this external threat, cracks appeared in the united front of the Hellenic League.^[11] In 477, Athens became the recognised leader of a coalition of city-states that did not include Sparta. This coalition met and formalized their relationship at the holy city of Delos.^[12] Thus, the League took the name « Delian League ». Its formal purpose was to liberate Greek cities still under Persian control.^[13]However, it became increasingly apparent that the Delian League was really a front for Athenian hegemony throughout the Aegean.^[14]

Peloponnesian (or Spartan) league

A competing coalition of Greek city-states centred around Sparta arose, and became more important as the external Persian threat subsided. This coalition is known as the Peloponnesian League. However, unlike the Hellenic League and the Delian League, this league was not a response to any external threat, Persian or otherwise: it was unabashedly an instrument of Spartan policy aimed at Sparta’s security and Spartan dominance over the Peloponnesepeninsula.^[15] The term « Peloponnesian League » is a misnomer. It was not really a « league » at all. Nor was it really « Peloponnesian ».^[15] There was no equality at all between the members, as might be implied by the term « league ». Furthermore, most of its members were located outside the Peloponnese Peninsula.^[15] The terms « Spartan League » and « Peloponnesian League » are modern terms. Contemporaries instead referred to « Lacedaemonians and their Allies » to describe the « league ».^[15]

The league had its origins in Sparta’s conflict with Argos, another city on the Peloponnese Peninsula. In the 7th century BC, Argos dominated the peninsula. Even in the early 6th century, the Argives attempted to control the northeastern part of the peninsula. The rise of Sparta in the 6th century brought Sparta into conflict with Argos. However, with the conquest of the Peloponnesian city-state of Tegea in 550 BC and the defeat of the Argives in 546 BC, the Spartans’ control began to reach well beyond the borders of Laconia.

The thirty years peace

Athenian empire.

As the two coalitions grew, their separate interests kept coming into conflict. Under the influence of King Archidamus II (the Eurypontid king of Sparta from 476 BC through 427 BC), Sparta, in the late summer or early autumn of 446 BC, concluded the Thirty Years Peace with Athens. This treaty took effect the next winter in 445 BC^[16] Under the terms of this treaty, Greece was formally divided into two large power zones.^[17] Sparta and Athens agreed to stay within their own power zone and not to interfere in the other’s. Despite the Thirty Years Peace, it was clear that war was inevitable.^[18] As noted above, at all times during its history down to 221 BC, Sparta was a « diarchy » with two kings ruling the city-state concurrently. One line of hereditary kings was from the Eurypontid Dynasty while the other king was from the Agiad Dynasty. With the signing of the Thirty Years Peace treaty Archidamus II felt he had successfully prevented Sparta from entering into a war with its neighbours.^[19] However, the strong war party in Sparta soon won out and in 431 BC Archidamus was forced to go to war with the Delian League. However, in 427 BC, Archidamus II died and his son, Agis II succeeded to the Eurypontid throne of Sparta.^[20]

Causes of the Peloponnesian war

The immediate causes of the Peloponnesian War vary from account to account. However three causes are fairly consistent among the ancient historians, namely Thucydides and Plutarch. Prior to the war, Corinth and one of its colonies, Corcyra (modern-day Corfu), went to war in 435 BC over the new Corcyran colony of Epidamnus.^[21] Sparta refused to become involved in the conflict and urged an arbitrated settlement of the struggle.^[22] In 433 BC, Corcyra sought Athenian assistance in the war. Corinth was known to be a traditional enemy of Athens. However, to further encourage Athens to enter the conflict, Corcyra pointed out how useful a friendly relationship with Corcyra would be, given the strategic locations of Corcyra itself and the colony of Epidamnus on the east shore of the Adriatic Sea.^[23] Furthermore, Corcyra promised that Athens would have the use of Corcyra’s navy, the third-largest in Greece. This was too good of an offer for Athens to refuse. Accordingly, Athens signed a defensive alliance with Corcyra.

The next year, in 432 BC, Corinth and Athens argued over control of Potidaea (near modern-day Nea Potidaia), eventually leading to an Athenian siege of Potidaea.^[24] In 434–433 BC Athens issued the « Megarian Decrees« , a series of decrees that placed economic sanctions on the Megarian people.^[25] The Peloponnesian League accused Athens of violating the Thirty Years Peace through all of the aforementioned actions, and, accordingly, Sparta formally declared war on Athens.

Many historians consider these to be merely the immediate causes of the war. They would argue that the underlying cause was the growing resentment on the part of Sparta and its allies at the dominance of Athens over Greek affairs. The war lasted 27 years, partly because Athens (a naval power) and Sparta (a land-based military power) found it difficult to come to grips with each other.

The Peloponnesian war: Opening stages (431–421 BCE)

Sparta’s initial strategy was to invade Attica, but the Athenians were able to retreat behind their walls. An outbreak of plague in the city during the siege caused many deaths, including that of Pericles. At the same time the Athenian fleet landed troops in the Peloponnesus, winning battles at Naupactus (429) and Pylos (425). However, these tactics could bring neither side a decisive victory. After several years of inconclusive campaigning, the moderate Athenian leader Niciasconcluded the Peace of Nicias (421).

A soldier’s helmet on black-figure pottery

The Peloponnesian war: Second phase (418–404 BCE)

In 418 BC, however, conflict between Sparta and the Athenian ally Argos led to a resumption of hostilities. Alcibiades was one of the most influential voices in persuading the Athenians to ally with Argos against the Spartans.^[26] At the MantineaSparta defeated the combined armies of Athens and her allies. Accordingly, Argos and the rest of the Peloponnesus was brought back under the control of Sparta.^[26] The return of peace allowed Athens to be diverted from meddling in the affairs of the Peloponnesus and to concentrate on building up the empire and putting their finances in order. Soon trade recovered and tribute began, once again, rolling into Athens.^[26] A strong « peace party » arose, which promoted avoidance of war and continued concentration on the economic growth of the Athenian Empire. Concentration on the Athenian Empire, however, brought Athens into conflict with another Greek state.

The Melian expedition (416 BCE)[edit]

Ever since the formation of the Delian League in 477 BC, the island of Melos had refused to join. By refusing to join the League, however, Melos reaped the benefits of the League without bearing any of the burdens.^[27] In 425 BC, an Athenian army under Cleon attacked Melos to force the island to join the Delian League. However, Melos fought off the attack and was able to maintain its neutrality.^[27] Further conflict was inevitable and in the spring of 416 BC the mood of the people in Athens was inclined toward military adventure. The island of Melos provided an outlet for this energy and frustration for the military party. Furthermore, there appeared to be no real opposition to this military expedition from the peace party. Enforcement of the economic obligations of the Delian League upon rebellious city-states and islands was a means by which continuing trade and prosperity of Athens could be assured. Melos alone among all the Cycladic Islands located in the south-west Aegean Sea had resisted joining the Delian League.^[27] This continued rebellion provided a bad example to the rest of the members of the Delian League.

The debate between Athens and Melos over the issue of joining the Delian League is presented by Thucydides in his Melian Dialogue.^[28]The debate did not in the end resolve any of the differences between Melos and Athens and Melos was invaded in 416 BC, and soon occupied by Athens. This success on the part of Athens whetted the appetite of the people of Athens for further expansion of the Athenian Empire.^[29] Accordingly, the people of Athens were ready for military action and tended to support the military party, led by Alcibiades.

The Sicilian expedition (415–413 BCE)

The greek theater in Taormina

Thus, in 415 BC, Alcibiades found support within the Athenian Assembly for his position when he urged that Athens launch a major expedition against Syracuse, a Peloponnesian ally in Sicily.^[30] Segesta, a town in Sicily, had requested Athenian assistance in their war with another Sicilian town — the town of Selinus. Although Nicias was a sceptic about the Sicilian Expedition, he was appointed along with Alcibiades to lead the expedition.^[31]

Artemision Bronze, thought to be either Poseidon or Zeus, c. 460 BCE, National Archaeological Museum, Athens. Found by fishermen off the coast of Cape Artemisium in 1928. The figure is more than 2 m in height.

However, unlike the expedition against Melos, the citizens of Athens were deeply divided over Alcibiades’ proposal for an expedition to far-off Sicily. In June 415 BC, on the very eve of the departure of the Athenian fleet for Sicily, a band of vandals in Athens defaced the many statues of the god Hermes that were scattered throughout the city of Athens.^[32] This action was blamed on Alcibiades and was seen as a bad omen for the coming campaign.^[33] In all likelihood, the coordinated action against the statues of Hermes was the action of the peace party.^[34] Having lost the debate on the issue, the peace party was desperate to weaken Alcibiades’ hold on the people of Athens. Successfully blaming Alcibiades for the action of the vandals would have weakened Alcibiades and the war party in Athens. Furthermore, it is unlikely that Alcibiades would have deliberately defaced the statues of Hermes on the very eve of his departure with the fleet. Such defacement could only have been interpreted as a bad omen for the expedition that he had long advocated.

Even before the fleet reached Sicily, word arrived to the fleet that Alcibiades was to be arrested and charged with sacrilege of the statues of Hermes, prompting Alcibiades to flee to Sparta.^[35] When the fleet later landed in Sicily and the battle was joined, the expedition was a complete disaster. The entire expeditionary force was lost and Nicias was captured and executed. This was one of the most crushing defeats in the history of Athens.

Alcibiades in Sparta

Meanwhile, Alcibiades betrayed Athens and became a chief advisor to the Spartans and began to counsel them on the best way to defeat his native land. Alcibiades persuaded the Spartans to begin building a real navy for the first time — large enough to challenge the Athenian superiority at sea. Additionally, Alcibiades persuaded the Spartans to ally themselves with their traditional foes — the Persians. As noted below, Alcibiades soon found himself in controversy in Sparta when he was accused of having seduced Timaea, the wife of Agis II, the Eurypontid king of Sparta.^[20] Accordingly, Alcibiades was required to flee from Sparta and seek the protection of the Persian Court.

Persia intervenes

In the Persian court, Alcibiades now betrayed both^{[clarification needed]} by helping Sparta build a navy commensurate with the Athenian navy. Alcibiades advised that a victory of Sparta over Athens was not in the best interest of the Persian Empire. Rather, long and continuous warfare between Sparta and Athens would weaken both city-states and allow the Persians to dominate the Greek peninsula.

Among the war party in Athens, a belief arose that the catastrophic defeat of the military expedition to Sicily in 415–413 could have been avoided if Alcibiades had been allowed to lead the expedition. Thus, despite his treacherous flight to Sparta and his collaboration with Sparta and later with the Persian court, there arose a demand among the war party that Alcibiades be allowed to return to Athens without being arrested. Alcibiades negotiated with his supporters on the Athenian-controlled island of Samos. Alcibiades felt that « radical democracy » was his worst enemy. Accordingly, he asked his supporters to initiate a coup to establish an oligarchy in Athens. If the coup were successful Alcibiades promised to return to Athens In 411, a successful oligarchic coup was mounted in Athens, by a group which became known as « the 400 ». However, a parallel attempt by the 400 to overthrow democracy in Samos failed. Alcibiades was immediately made an admiral (navarch) in the Athenian navy. Later, due to democratic pressures, the 400 were replaced by a broader oligarchy called « the 5000 ». Alcibiades did not immediately return to Athens. In early 410, Alcibiades led an Athenian fleet of 18 triremes against the Persian-financed Spartan fleet at Abydos near the Hellespont. The Battle of Abydos had actually begun before the arrival of Alcibiades, and had been inclining slightly toward the Athenians. However, with the arrival of Alcibiades, the Athenian victory over the Spartans became a rout. Only the approach of nightfall and the movement of Persian troops to the coast where the Spartans had beached their ships saved the Spartan navy from total destruction.

Following Alcibiades’ advice, the Persian Empire had been playing Sparta and Athens off against each other. However, as weak as the Spartan navy was after the Battle of Abydos, the Persian navy directly assisted the Spartans. Alcibiades then pursued and met the combined Spartan and Persian fleets at the Battle of Cyzicus later in the spring of 410, achieving a significant victory.

Lysander and the end of the war

Sparta then built a fleet, with the financial help of the Persians, to challenge Athenian naval supremacy, and found a new military leader in Lysander, who attacked Abydos and seized the strategic initiative by occupying the Hellespont, the source^{[clarification needed]} of Athens’ grain imports.^[36] Threatened with starvation, Athens sent its last remaining fleet to confront Lysander, but he decisively defeated it at Aegospotami(405 BC). The loss of her fleet threatened Athens with bankruptcy. In 404 BC Athens sued for peace, and Sparta dictated a predictably stern settlement: Athens lost her city walls, her fleet, and all of her overseas possessions. Lysander abolished the democracy and appointed in its place an oligarchy called the « Thirty Tyrants » to govern Athens.

Meanwhile, in Sparta, Timaea gave birth to a child. The child was given the name Leotychidas, after the great grandfather of Agis II — King Leotychidas of Sparta. However, because of Timaea’s alleged affair with Alcibiades, it was widely rumoured that the young Leotychidas was fathered by Alcibiades.^[20] Indeed, Agis II refused to acknowledge Leotychidas as his son until he relented, in front of witnesses, on his deathbed in 400 BC.^[37]

Upon the death of Agis II, Leotychidas attempted to claim the Eurypontid throne for himself, but this was met with an outcry, led by Lysander, who was at the height of his influence in Sparta.^[37]Lysander argued that Leotychidas was a bastard and could not inherit the Eurypontid throne;^[37] instead he backed the hereditary claim of Agesilaus, son of Agis by another wife. With Lysander’s support, Agesilaus became the Eurypontid king as Agesilaus II, expelled Leotychidas from the country, and took over all of Agis’ estates and property.

4th century BC

 Spartan hegemony and Theban hegemony

Grave relief of Thraseas and Euandria from Athens, 375–350 BC, Pergamon Museum (Berlin)

The end of the Peloponnesian War left Spartathe master of Greece, but the narrow outlook of the Spartan warrior elite did not suit them to this role.^[38]Within a few years the democratic party regained power in Athens and in other cities. In 395 BC the Spartan rulers removed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost her naval supremacy. Athens, Argos, Thebes, and Corinth, the latter two former Spartan allies, challenged Sparta’s dominance in the Corinthian War, which ended inconclusively in 387 BC. That same year Sparta shocked the Greeks by concluding the Treaty of Antalcidas with Persia. The agreement turned over the Greek cities of Ionia and Cyprus, reversing a hundred years of Greek victories against Persia. Sparta then tried to further weaken the power of Thebes, which led to a war in which Thebes allied with its old enemy Athens.

Then the Theban generals Epaminondas and Pelopidas won a decisive victory at Leuctra (371 BC). The result of this battle was the end of Spartan supremacy and the establishment of Theban dominance, but Athens herself recovered much of her former power because the supremacy of Thebes was short-lived. With the death of Epaminondas at Mantinea (362 BC) the city lost its greatest leader and his successors blundered into an ineffectual ten-year war with Phocis. In 346 BC the Thebans appealed to Philip II of Macedon to help them against the Phocians, thus drawing Macedon into Greek affairs for the first time.^[39]

The Peloponnesian War was a radical turning point for the Greek world. Before 403 BC, the situation was more defined, with Athens and its allies (a zone of domination and stability, with a number of island cities benefiting from Athens’ maritime protection), and other states outside this Athenian Empire. The sources denounce this Athenian supremacy (or hegemony) as smothering and disadvantageous.^[40]

After 403 BC, things became more complicated, with a number of cities trying to create similar empires over others, all of which proved short-lived. The first of these turnarounds was managed by Athens as early as 390 BC, allowing it to re-establish itself as a major power without regaining its former glory.

The fall of Sparta

This empire was powerful but short-lived. In 405 BC, the Spartans were masters of all – of Athens’ allies and of Athens itself – and their power was undivided. By the end of the century, they could not even defend their own city. As noted above, in 400 BC, Agesilaus became king of Sparta.^[41]

Foundation of a Spartan empire

The subject of how to reorganize the Athenian Empire as part of the Spartan Empire provoked much heated debate among Sparta’s full citizens. The admiral Lysander felt that the Spartans should rebuild the Athenian empire in such a way that Sparta profited from it. Lysander tended to be too proud to take advice from others.^[42] Prior to this, Spartan law forbade the use of all precious metals by private citizens, with transactions being carried out with cumbersome iron ingots (which generally discouraged their accumulation) and all precious metals obtained by the city becoming state property. Without the Spartans’ support, Lysander’s innovations came into effect and brought a great deal of profit for him – on Samos, for example, festivals known as Lysandreia were organized in his honour. He was recalled to Sparta, and once there did not attend to any important matters.

A Kylix (drinking cup) from Attica showing a goddess performing a libation, 470 BC, white ground technique pottery

Sparta refused to see Lysander or his successors dominate. Not wanting to establish a hegemony, they decided after 403 BC not to support the directives that he had made.

Agesilaus came to power by accident at the start of the 4th century BC. This accidental accession meant that, unlike the other Spartan kings, he had the advantage of a Spartan education. The Spartans at this date discovered a conspiracy against the laws of the city conducted by Cinadon and as a result concluded there were too many dangerous worldly elements at work in the Spartan state.

Agesilaus employed a political dynamic that played on a feeling of pan-Hellenic sentiment and launched a successful campaign against the Persian empire.^[43] Once again, the Persian empire played both sides against each other. The Persian Court supported Sparta in the rebuilding of their navy while simultaneously funding the Athenians, who used Persian subsidies to rebuild their long walls (destroyed in 404 BC) as well as to reconstruct their fleet and win a number of victories.

For most of the first years of his reign, Agesilaus had been engaged in a war against Persia in the Aegean Sea and in Asia Minor.^[44] In 394 BC, the Spartan authorities ordered Agesilaus to return to mainland Greece. While Agesilaus had a large part of the Spartan Army in Asia Minor, the Spartan forces protecting the homeland had been attacked by a coalition of forces led by Corinth.^[45] At the Battle of Haliartus the Spartans had been defeated by the Theban forces. Worse yet, Lysander, Sparta’s chief military leader, had been killed during the battle.^[46] This was the start of what became known as the « Corinthian War » (395 BCE – 387 BCE).^[43] Upon hearing of the Spartan loss at Haliartus and of the death of Lysander, Agesilaus headed out of Asia Minor, back across the Hellespont, across Thrace and back towards Greece. At the Battle of Coronea, Agesilaus and his Spartan Army defeated a Theban force. During the war, Corinth drew support from a coalition of traditional Spartan enemies — Argos, Athens and Thebes.^[47] However, when the war descended into guerilla tactics, Sparta decided that it could not fight on two fronts and so chose to ally with Persia.^[47] The long Corinthian War finally ended with the Peace of Antalcidas or the King’s Peace, in which the « Great King » of Persia, Artaxerxes II, pronounced a « treaty » of peace between the various city-states of Greece which broke up all « leagues » of city-states on Greek mainland and in the islands of the Aegean Sea. Although this was looked upon as « independence » for some city-states, the effect of the unilateral « treaty » was highly favourable to the interests of the Persian Empire.

The Corinthian War revealed a significant dynamic that was occurring in Greece. While Athens and Sparta fought each other to exhaustion, Thebes was rising to a position of dominance among the various Greek city-states.

The peace of Antalcidas

In 387 BC, an edict was promulgated by the Persian king, preserving the Greek cities of Asia Minor and Cyprus as well as the independence of the Greek Aegean cities, except for Lymnos, Imbros and Skyros, which were given over to Athens.^[48] It dissolved existing alliances and federations and forbade the formation of new ones. This is an ultimatum that benefited Athens only to the extent that Athens held onto three islands. While the « Great King, » Artaxerxes, was the guarantor of the peace, Sparta was to act as Persia’s agent in enforcing the Peace.^[49] To the Persians this document is known as the « King’s Peace. » To the Greeks, this document is known as the Peace of Antalcidas, after the Antalcidas who was sent to Persia as negotiator. Sparta had been worried about the developing closer ties between Athens and Persia. Accordingly, Antalcidas was directed to get whatever agreement he could from the « Great King ». Accordingly, the « Peace of Antalcidas » is not a negotiated peace at all. Rather it is a surrender to the interests of Persia, drafted entirely for its benefit.^[49]

Spartan interventionism

On the other hand, this peace had unexpected consequences. In accordance with it, the Boeotian League, or Boeotian confederacy, was dissolved in 386 BC.^[50] This confederacy was dominated by Thebes, a city hostile to the Spartan hegemony. Sparta carried out large-scale operations and peripheral interventions in Epirus and in the north of Greece, resulting in the capture of the fortress of Thebes, the Cadmea, after an expedition in the Chalcidice and the capture of Olynthos. It was a Theban politician who suggested to the Spartan general Phoibidas that Sparta should seize Thebes itself. This act was sharply condemned, though Sparta eagerly ratified this unilateral move by Phoibidas. The Spartan attack was successful and Thebes was placed under Spartan control.^[51]

Clash with Thebes

In 378 BC, the reaction to Spartan control over Thebes was broken by a popular uprising within Thebes. Elsewhere in Greece, the reaction against Spartan hegemony began when Sphodrias, another Spartan general, tried to carry out a surprise attack on Piraeus.^[52] Although the gates of Piraeus were no longer fortified, Sphodrias was driven off before Piraeus. Back in Sparta, Sphodrias was put on trial for the failed attack, but was acquitted by the Spartan court. Nonetheless, the attempted attack triggered an alliance between Athens and Thebes.^[52]Sparta would now have to fight them both together. Athens was trying to recover from its defeat in the Peloponnesian War at the hands of Sparta’s « navarch » Lysander in the disaster of 404 BC. The rising spirit of rebellion against Sparta also fueled Thebes’ attempt to restore the former Boeotian confederacy.^[53] In Boeotia, the Theban leaders Pelopidas and Epaminondas reorganized the Theban army and began to free the towns of Boeotia from their Spartan garrisons, one by one, and incorporated these towns into the revived Boeotian League.^[49]Pelopidas won a great victory for Thebes over a much larger Spartan force in the Battle of Tegyra in 375 BC.^[54]

Theban authority grew so spectacularly in such a short time that Athens came to mistrust the growing Theban power. Athens began to consolidate its position again through the formation of a second Athenian League.^[55] Attention was drawn to growing power of Thebes when it began interfering in the political affairs of its neighbor, Phocis, and, particularly, after Thebes razed the city of Plataea, a long-standing ally of Athens, in 375 BC.^[56] The destruction of Plataea caused Athens to negotiate an alliance with Sparta against Thebes, in that same year.^[56] In 371, the Theban army, led by Epaminondas, inflicted a bloody defeat on Spartan forces at Battle of Leuctra. Sparta lost a large part of its army and 400 of its 2,000 citizen-troops. The Battle of Leuctra was a watershed in Greek history.^[56] Epaminondas’ victory ended a long history of Spartan military prestige and dominance over Greece and the period of Spartan hegemony was over. However, Spartan hegemony was not replaced by Theban, but rather by Athenian hegemony.

The rise of Athens

The Temple of Hephaestus at the Agora of Athens, built 449–415 BC

Financing the league

It was important to erase the bad memories of the former league. Its financial system was not adopted, with no tribute being paid. Instead, syntaxeis were used, irregular contributions as and when Athens and its allies needed troops, collected for a precise reason and spent as quickly as possible. These contributions were not taken to Athens — unlike the 5th century BC system, there was no central exchequer for the league — but to the Athenian generals themselves.

The Athenians had to make their own contribution to the alliance, the eisphora. They reformed how this tax was paid, creating a system in advance, the Proseiphora, in which the richest individuals had to pay the whole sum of the tax then be reimbursed by other contributors. This system was quickly assimilated into a liturgy.

Athenian hegemony halted

This league responded to a real and present need. On the ground, however, the situation within the league proved to have changed little from that of the 5th century BC, with Athenian generals doing what they wanted and able to extort funds from the league. Alliance with Athens again looked unattractive and the allies complained.

The main reasons for the eventual failure were structural. This alliance was only valued out of fear of Sparta, which evaporated after Sparta’s fall in 371 BC, losing the alliance its sole ‘raison d’etre’. The Athenians no longer had the means to fulfill their ambitions, and found it difficult merely to finance their own navy, let alone that of an entire alliance, and so could not properly defend their allies. Thus, the tyrant of Pherae was able to destroy a number of cities with impunity. From 360 BC, Athens lost its reputation for invincibility and a number of allies (such as Byzantium and Naxos in 364 BC) decided to secede.

In 357 BC the revolt against the league spread, and between 357 BC and 355 BC, Athens had to face war against its allies—a war whose issue was marked by a decisive intervention by the king of Persia in the form of an ultimatum to Athens, demanding that Athens recognise its allies’ independence under threat of Persia’s sending 200 triremesagainst Athens. Athens had to renounce the war and leave the confederacy, thereby weakening itself more and more, and signaling the end of Athenian hegemony.

Theban hegemony – tentative and with no future

5th century BC Boeotian confederacy (447–386 BCE)

This was not Thebes’ first attempt at hegemony. It had been the most important city of Boeotia and the centre of the previous Boeotian confederacy of 447, resurrected since 386.

The 5th-century confederacy is well known to us from a papyrus found at Oxyrhynchus and known as « the Anonyme of Thebes ». Thebes headed it and set up a system under which charges were divided up between the different cities of the confederacy. Citizenship was defined according to wealth, and Thebes counted 11,000 active citizens.

The confederacy was divided up into 11 districts, each providing a federal magistrate called a « boeotarch », a certain number of council members, 1,000 hoplites and 100 horsemen. From the 5th century BC the alliance could field an infantry force of 11,000 men, in addition to an elite corps and a light infantry numbering 10,000; but its real power derived from its cavalry force of 1,100, commanded by a federal magistrate independent of local commanders. It also had a small fleet that played a part in the Peloponnesian War by providing 25 triremes for the Spartans. At the end of the conflict, the fleet consisted of 50 triremes and was commanded by a « navarch ».

All this constituted a significant enough force that the Spartans were happy to see the Boeotian confederacy dissolved by the king’s peace. This dissolution, however, did not last, and in the 370s there was nothing to stop the Thebans (who had lost the Cadmea to Sparta in 382 BC) from reforming this confederacy.

Theban reconstruction

Pelopidas and Epaminondas endowed Thebes with democratic institutions similar to those of Athens, the Thebans revived the title of « Boeotarch » lost in the Persian King’s Peace and – with victory at Leuctra and the destruction of Spartan power – the pair achieved their stated objective of renewing the confederacy. Epaminondas rid the Peloponnesus of pro-Spartan oligarchies, replacing them with pro-Theban democracies, constructed cities, and rebuilt a number of those destroyed by Sparta. He equally supported the reconstruction of the city of Messene thanks to an invasion of Laconia that also allowed him to liberate the helots and give them Messene as a capital.

He decided in the end to constitute small confederacies all round the Peloponnessus, forming an Arcadian confederacy (the King’s Peace had destroyed a previous Arcadian confederacy and put Messene under Spartan control).

Confrontation between Athens and Thebes

The strength of the Boeotian League explains Athens’ problems with her allies in the second Athenian League. Epaminondas succeeded in convincing his countrymen to build a fleet of 100 triremes to pressure cities into leaving the Athenian league and joining a Boeotian maritime league. Epaminondas and Pelopidas also reformed the army of Thebes to introduce new and more effective means of fighting. Thus, the Theban army was able to carry the day against the coalition of other Greek states at the battle of Leuctra in 371 BC and the battle of Mantinea in 362 BC.

Sparta also remained an important power in the face of Theban strength. However, some of the cities allied with Sparta turned against her, because of Thebes. In 367 BC, both Sparta and Athens sent delegates to Artaxerxes II, the Great King of Persia. These delegates sought to have the Artaxerxes, once again, declare Greek independence and a unilateral common peace, just as he had done in twenty years earlier in 387 BC. As noted above, this had meant the destruction of the Boeotian League in 387 BC. Sparta and Athens now hoped the same thing would happen with a new declaration of a similar « Kings Peace ». Thebes sent Pelopidas to argue against them.^[57] The Great King was convinced by Pelopidas and the Theban diplomats that Thebes and the Boeotian League would be the best agents of Persian interests in Greece, and, accordingly, did not issue a new « King’s Peace. »^[50] Thus, to deal with Thebes, Athens and Sparta were thrown back on their own resources. Thebes, meanwhile, expanded its influence beyond the bounds of Boeotia. In 364 BC, Pelopidas defeated the Alexander of Pherae in the Battle of Cynoscephalae, located in south-eastern Thessaly in northern Greece. However, during the battle, Pelopides was killed.^[58]

The confederational framework of Sparta’s relationship with her allies was really an artificial one, since it attempted to bring together cities that had never been able to agree on much at all in the past. Such was the case with the cities of Tegea and Mantinea, which re-allied in the Arcadian confederacy. The Mantineans received the support of the Athenians, and the Tegeans that of the Thebans. In 362 BC, Epaminondas led a Theban army against a coalition of Athenian, Spartan, Elisian, Mantinean and Achean forces. Battle was joined at Mantinea.^[50] The Thebans prevailed, but this triumph was short-lived, for Epaminondas died in the battle, stating that « I bequeath to Thebes two daughters, the victory of Leuctra and the victory at Mantinea ».

Despite the victory at Mantinea, in the end, the Thebans abandoned their policy of intervention in the Peloponnesus. This event is looked upon as a watershed in Greek history. Thus, Xenophon concludes his history of the Greek world at this point, in 362 BC. The end of this period was even more confused than its beginning. Greece had failed and, according to Xenophon, the history of the Greek world was no longer intelligible.

The idea of hegemony disappeared. From 362 BC onward, there was no longer a single city that could exert hegemonic power in Greece. The Spartans were greatly weakened; the Athenians were in no condition to operate their navy, and after 365 no longer had any allies; Thebes could only exert an ephemeral dominance, and had the means to defeat Sparta and Athens but not to be a major power in Asia Minor.

Other forces also intervened, such as the Persian king, who appointed himself arbitrator among the Greek cities, with their tacit agreement. This situation reinforced the conflicts and there was a proliferation of civil wars, with the confederal framework a repeated trigger for them. One war led to another, each longer and more bloody than the last, and the cycle could not be broken. Hostilities even took place during winter for the first time, with the invasion of Laconia in 370 BC.

Rise of Macedon

Rise of Macedon

Thessalian cavalryman on the Alexander Sarcophagus, late 4th century BC (Istanbul Archaeological Museum)

A wall mural of a charioteerfrom the Macedonian royal tombs at Vergina, late 6th century BC

Thebes sought to maintain its position until finally eclipsed by the rising power of Macedon in 346 BC. The energetic leadership within Macedon began in 359 BC when Philip of Macedon was made regent for his nephew, Amyntas. Within a short time, Philip was acclaimed king as Philip II of Macedonia in his own right, with succession of the throne established on his own heirs.^[59] During his lifetime, Philip II consolidated his rule over Macedonia. This was done by 359 BC and Philip began to look toward expanding Macedonia’s influence abroad. The dream of restoring Greece to its grandeur by liberating all Greek lands from Persian dominion was alive even in this early stage. This dream even included conquering Persia itself.^[60]

Under Philip II, (359–336 BC), Macedon expanded into the territory of the Paeonians, Thracians, and Illyrians.^[61] In 358 BC, Philip allied with Epirus in its campaign against Illyria. In 357 BC, Philip came into direct conflict with Athens when he conquered the Thracian port city of Amphipolis, a city located at the mouth of the Strymon River to the east of Macedonia, and a major Athenian trading port. Conquering this city allowed Philip to subjugate all of Thrace. A year later in 356 BC, the Macedonians attacked and conquered the Athenian-controlled port city of Pydna. This brought the Macedonian threat to Athens closer to home to the Athenians. With the start of the Phocian War in 356 BC, the great Athenian orator and political leader of the « war party », Demosthenes, became increasingly active in encouraging Athens to fight vigorously against Philip’s expansionist aims.^[62] In 352 BC, Demosthenes gave many speeches against the Macedonian threat, declaring Philip II Athens’ greatest enemy. The leader of the Athenian « peace party » was Phocion, who wished to avoid a confrontation that, Phocion felt, would be catastrophic for Athens. Despite Phocion’s attempts to restrain the war party, Athens remained at war with Macedonia for years following the original declaration of war.^[63] Negotiations between Athens and Philip II started only in 346 BC.^[64] The Athenians successfully halted Philip’s invasion of Attica at Thermopylae that same year in 352 BC. However, Philip defeated the Phocians at the Battle of the Crocus Field. The conflict between Macedonia and all the city-states of Greece came to a head in 338 BC,^[65] at the Battle of Chaeronea.

The Macedonians became more politically involved with the south-central city-states of Greece, but also retained more archaic aspects harking back to the palace culture, first at Aegae (modern Vergina) then at Pella, resembling Mycenaean culture more than that of the Classical city-states. Militarily, Philip recognized the new phalanx style of fighting that had been employed by Epaminondas and Phielopidas in Thebes. Accordingly, he incorporated this new system into the Macedonian army. Philip II also brought a Theban military tutor to Macedon to instruct the future Alexander the Great in the Theban method of fighting.^[66]

Philip’s son Alexander the Great was born in Pella, Macedonia (356–323 BC). Philip II brought Aristotle to Pella to teach the young Alexander.^[67] Besides Alexander’s mother, Olympias, Philip took another wife by the name of Cleopatra Eurydice.^[68] Cleopatra had a daughter, Europa, and a son, Caranus. Caranus posed a threat to the succession of Alexander.^[69] Cleopatra Eurydice was a Macedonian and, thus, Caranus was all Macedonian in blood. Olympias, on the other hand, was from Epicurus and, thus, Alexander was regarded as being only half-Macedonian (Cleopatra Eurydice should not be confused with Cleopatra of Macedon, who was Alexander’s full-sister and thus daughter of Philip and Olympias).

Philip II was assassinated at the wedding of his daughter Cleopatra of Macedon with King Alexander I of Epirus in 336 BC.^[70] Philip’s son, the future Alexander the Great, immediately claimed the throne of Macedonia by eliminating all the other claimants to the throne, including Caranus and his cousin Amytas.^[71] Alexander was only twenty (20) years of age when he assumed the throne.^[72]

Thereafter, Alexander continued his father’s plans to conquer all of Greece. He did this by both military might and persuasion. After his victory over Thebes, Alexander traveled to Athens to meet the public directly. Despite Demosthenes‘ speeches against the Macedonian threat on behalf of the war party of Athens, the public in Athens was still very much divided between the « peace party » and Demosthenes’ « war party. » However, the arrival of Alexander charmed the Athenian public.^[73] The peace party was strengthened and then a peace between Athens and Macedonia was agreed.^[74] This allowed Alexander to move on his and the Greeks’ long-held dream of conquest in the east, with a unified and secure Greek state at his back.

In 334 BC, Alexander with about 30,000 infantry soldiers and 5,000 cavalry crossed the Hellespont into Asia. He never returned.^[75]Alexander managed to briefly extend Macedonian power not only over the central Greek city-states, but also to the Persian empire, including Egypt and lands as far east as the fringes of India.^[61] He managed to spread Greek culture throughout the known world.^[76] Alexander the Great died in 323 BC in Babylon during his Asian campaign of conquest.^[77]

The Classical period conventionally ends at the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the fragmentation of his empire, divided among the Diadochi,^[78] which, in the minds of most scholars, marks the beginning of the Hellenistic period.

Legacy of classical Greece

The legacy of Greece was strongly felt by post-Renaissance European elite, who saw themselves as the spiritual heirs of Greece. Will Durantwrote in 1939 that « excepting machinery, there is hardly anything secular in our culture that does not come from Greece, » and conversely « there is nothing in Greek civilization that doesn’t illuminate our own ».^[79] Noted commentator Marianna de Marzi has also observed the extent to which Classical Greek thought has influenced the progression of Western civilization, writing: « The profundity of the knowledge gained through this period in history; in art, mathematics, music and more, is incomparable to almost any other chapter in human inquiry. »

• Classical antiquity
• Classics
• Art in ancient Greece

References

1. Jump up^ The « Classical Age » is « the modern designation of the period from about 500 B.C. to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. » (Thomas R. Martin, Ancient Greece, Yale University Press, 1996, p. 94).
2. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Brian Todd Carey, Joshua Allfree, John Cairns. Warfare in the Ancient World Pen and Sword, 19 jan. 2006 ISBN 1848846304
3. Jump up^ AA.VV., Art: Perception and Appreciation, University of the East, p. 169.
4. ^ Jump up to:^a b Aeschylus,; Peter Burian; Alan Shapiro (17 February 2009). The Complete Aeschylus: Volume II: Persians and Other Plays. Oxford University Press. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-19-045183-7.
5. Jump up^ isegoria: equal freedom of speech
6. Jump up^ Joseph Roisman,Ian Worthington. « A companion to Ancient Macedonia » John Wiley & Sons, 2011. ISBN 144435163X pp 135–138
7. Jump up^ Donald Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, New York, 1969) p. 9.
8. Jump up^ Donald Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, p. 31.
9. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times (Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1966) pp. 244–248.
10. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 249.
11. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 254.
12. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 256.
13. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 255.
14. Jump up^ Donald Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, p. 44.
15. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Donald Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, p. 10.
16. Jump up^ Donald Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, p. 128.
17. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 261.
18. Jump up^ Donald Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, pp. 2–3.
19. Jump up^ Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives (Penguin Books: New York, 1980) p. 25.
20. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives, p. 26.
21. Jump up^ Donald Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, pp. 206–216.
22. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 278.
23. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, p. 278.
24. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, pp. 278–279.
25. Jump up^ Donald Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, pp.252.
26. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times (Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1966) p. 287.
27. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Donald Kagan, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian ExpeditionCornell University Press: New York, 1981) p. 148.
28. Jump up^ Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War: Book 5 (Penguin Books: New York, 1980) pp. 400–408.
29. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times p. 288.
30. Jump up^ Donald Kagan, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, p. 171.
31. Jump up^ Donald Kagan, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicialian Expedition, p. 169.
32. Jump up^ Donald Kagan,The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, pp. 193–194.
33. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The world of Ancient Times, pp. 288–289.
34. Jump up^ Donald Kagan, The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition, pp. 207–209.
35. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 289.
36. Jump up^ Donald Kagan, The Fall of the Athenian Empire (Cornell University Press: New York, 1987) p. 385.
37. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives, p. 27.
38. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 305.
39. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, pp. 319–320
40. Jump up^ These sources include Xenophon’s continuation of Thucydides’ work in his Hellenica, which provided a continuous narrative of Greek history up to 362 BC but has defects, such as bias towards Sparta, with whose king Agesilas Xenophon lived for a while. We also have Plutarch, a 2nd-century Boeotian, whose Life of Pelopidas gives a Theban version of events and Diodorus Siculus. This is also the era where the epigraphic evidence develops, a source of the highest importance for this period, both for Athens and for a number of continental Greek cities that also issued decrees.
41. Jump up^ Plutarch, The Age of Alexander, p. 28.
42. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times (Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1966) p. 305.
43. ^ Jump up to:^a b Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 306.
44. Jump up^ Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives, pp. 33 to 38.
45. Jump up^ Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives, p. 39.
46. Jump up^ Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives, p. 45.
47. ^ Jump up to:^a b Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 307.
48. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, pp. 307–308.
49. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 308.
50. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 311.
51. Jump up^ Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives, p. 81.
52. ^ Jump up to:^a b Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives, p. 82.
53. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, pp. 308–309.
54. Jump up^ Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives, p. 83.
55. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 309.
56. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 310.
57. Jump up^ Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives, p. 97.
58. Jump up^ Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives, p. 99.
59. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times (Charles Scribner’s Sons: New York, 1966) p. 317.
60. Jump up^ Harold Lamb, Alexander of Macedon, p. 76.
61. ^ Jump up to:^a b Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 317.
62. Jump up^ Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives, p. 198.
63. Jump up^ Plutarch, The Age of Alexander: Nine Greek Lives, p. 231.
64. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 319.
65. Jump up^ Harold Lamb, Alexander of Macedon, p. 65.
66. Jump up^ Harold Lamb, Alexander of Macedon (Pinnacle Books: New York, 1946) p. 9.
67. Jump up^ Harold Lamb, Alexander of Macedon, p. 30.
68. Jump up^ Harold Lamb, Alexander of Macedon, p. 55.
69. Jump up^ Harold Lamb, Alexander of Macedon, p. 83.
70. Jump up^ Harold Lamb, Alexander of Macedon, p. 82.
71. Jump up^ Harold Lamb, Alexander of Macedon, p. 86.
72. Jump up^ Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander (Penguin books: New York, 1979) pp. 41–42.
73. Jump up^ Harold Lamb, Alexander of Macedon, p. 96.
74. Jump up^ Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander, p. 64.
75. Jump up^ Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander, p. 65.
76. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 349.
77. Jump up^ Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander, p. 395.
78. Jump up^ Carl Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times, p. 362.
79. Jump up^ Will Durant, The Life of Greece (The Story of Civilization, Part II) (New York: Simon & Schuster) 1939: Introduction, pp. vii and viii.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Greece

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Giacobbe Giusti, Platonic Academy, Athens, Greece

Giacobbe Giusti, Platonic Academy, Athens, Greece

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Platonic Academy, Athens, Greece

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Platonic Academy, Athens, Greece

Plato’s Academy Archaeological Site in Akadimia Platonos subdivision of Athens, Greece.

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Platonic Academy, Athens, Greece

Plato’s Academy mosaic — from the Villa of T. Siminius Stephanusin Pompeii.

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The Academy (Ancient Greek: Ἀκαδημία) was founded by Plato(428/427 BC – 348/347 BC) in ca. 387 BC in Athens. Aristotle (384–322 BC) studied there for twenty years (367–347 BC) before founding his own school, the Lyceum. The Academy persisted throughout the Hellenistic period as a skeptical school, until coming to an end after the death of Philo of Larissa in 83 BC. The Platonic Academy was destroyed most likely by the Roman dictator Sulla in 86 BC.^[1] Many centuries later, in 410 AD, a sort of « revived » Academy, which had no institutional continuity with Plato’s school, was established as a center for Neoplatonism and mysticism, persisting until 529 AD when it was finally closed by Justinian I. Other schools in Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria, which were the centres of Justinian’s empire, continued.

Site

Giacobbe Giusti, Platonic Academy, Athens, Greece

Ancient road to the Academy.

Map of Ancient Athens. The Academy is north of Athens.

The Akademia was a school outside the city walls of ancient Athens. It was located in or beside a grove of olive trees dedicated to the goddess Athena^[2], which was on the site even before Cimonenclosed the precincts with a wall.^[3] The archaic name for the site was Ἑκαδήμεια(Hekademia), which by classical times evolved into Ἀκαδημία (Akademia)] which was explained, at least as early as the beginning of the 6th century BC, by linking it to “Akademos”, a legendary Athenian hero.

The site of the Academy was sacred to Athena; it had sheltered her religious cult since the Bronze Age. The site was perhaps also associated with the twin hero-gods Castor and Polydeuces (the Dioscuri), since the hero Akademos associated with the site was credited with revealing to the brothers where the abductorTheseus had hidden their sister Helen. Out of respect for its long tradition and its association with the Dioscuri – who were patron godsof Sparta – the Spartan army would not ravage these original ‘groves of Academe’ when they invaded Attica.^[4] Their piety was not shared by the Roman Sulla, who axed the sacred olive trees of Athena in 86 BC to build siege engines.

Among the religious observances that took place at the Akademeia was a torchlit night race from altars within the city to Prometheus’ altar in the Akademeia. The road to Akademeia was lined with the gravestones of Athenians, and funeral games also took place in the area as well as a Dionysiac procession from Athens to the Hekademeia and then back to the city.^[5][6]

The site of the Academy^[7] is located near Colonus, approximately, 1.5 km north of Athens’ Dipylon gates.^[8]

Today

The site was rediscovered in the 20th century, in modern Akadimia Platonos neighbourhood; considerable excavation has been accomplished and visiting the site is free.^[9]

Visitors today can visit the archaeological site of the Academy located on either side of the Cratylus street in the area of Colonos and Plato’s Academy (Postal Code GR 10442). Either side of the Cratylus street are important monuments, like the Sacred House Geometric Era, the Gymnasium (1st century BC – 1st century AD), the Proto-Helladic Vaulted House and the Peristyle Building (4th century BC), which is perhaps the only major building that belonged to the actual Academy of Plato.

History

What was later to be known as Plato’s school probably originated around the time Plato inherited the property at the age of thirty, with informal gatherings which included Theaetetus of Sunium, Archytas of Tarentum, Leodamas of Thasos, and Neoclides.^[10] According to Debra Nails, Speusippus « joined the group in about 390 BC ». She claims, « It is not until Eudoxus of Cnidos arrives in the mid-380s BC that Eudemus recognizes a formal Academy. » There is no historical record of the exact time the school was officially founded, but modern scholars generally agree that the time was the mid-380s, probably sometime after 387 BC, when Plato is thought to have returned from his first visit to Italy and Sicily.^[11] Originally, the location of the meetings was on Plato’s property as often as it was the nearby Academy gymnasium; this remained so throughout the fourth century.^[12]

Though the Academic club was exclusive, not open to the public,^[13] it did not, during at least Plato’s time, charge fees for membership.^[14]Therefore, there was probably not at that time a « school » in the sense of a clear distinction between teachers and students, or even a formal curriculum.^[15] There was, however, a distinction between senior and junior members.^[16] Two women are known to have studied with Plato at the Academy, Axiothea of Phlius and Lasthenia of Mantinea.^[17]

In at least Plato’s time, the school did not have any particular doctrine to teach; rather, Plato (and probably other associates of his) posed problems to be studied and solved by the others.^[18] There is evidence of lectures given, most notably Plato’s lecture « On the Good »; but probably the use of dialectic was more common.^[19] According to an unverifiable story, dated of some 700 years after the founding of the school, above the entrance to the Academy was inscribed the phrase « Let None But Geometers Enter Here. »^[20]

Many have imagined that the Academic curriculum would have closely resembled the one canvassed in Plato’s Republic.^[21] Others, however, have argued that such a picture ignores the obvious peculiar arrangements of the ideal society envisioned in that dialogue.^[22] The subjects of study almost certainly included mathematics as well as the philosophical topics with which the Platonic dialogues deal, but there is little reliable evidence.^[23] There is some evidence for what today would be considered strictly scientific research: Simplicius reports that Plato had instructed the other members to discover the simplest explanation of the observable, irregular motion of heavenly bodies: « by hypothesizing what uniform and ordered motions is it possible to save the appearances relating to planetary motions. »^[24] (According to Simplicius, Plato’s colleague Eudoxus was the first to have worked on this problem.)

Plato’s Academy is often said to have been a school for would-be politicians in the ancient world, and to have had many illustrious alumni.^[25] In a recent survey of the evidence, Malcolm Schofield, however, has argued that it is difficult to know to what extent the Academy was interested in practical (i.e., non-theoretical) politics since much of our evidence « reflects ancient polemic for or against Plato. »^[26]

The three Platonic eras

Giacobbe Giusti, Platonic Academy, Athens, Greece

The School of Athens by Raphael (1509–1510), fresco at the Apostolic Palace, Vatican City.

Diogenes Laërtius divided the history of the Academy into three: the Old, the Middle, and the New. At the head of the Old he put Plato, at the head of the Middle Academy, Arcesilaus, and of the New, Lacydes. Sextus Empiricus enumerated five divisions of the followers of Plato. He made Plato founder of the first Academy; Arcesilaus of the second; Carneades of the third; Philo and Charmadas of the fourth; Antiochusof the fifth. Cicero recognised only two Academies, the Old and New, and made the latter commence with Arcesilaus.^[27]

Old Academy

« Old Academy » redirects here. For the building in Munich, see Old Academy (Munich).

Plato’s immediate successors as « Scholarch » of the Academy were Speusippus (347–339 BC), Xenocrates (339–314 BC), Polemo (314–269 BC), and Crates (c. 269–266 BC). Other notable members of the Academy include Aristotle, Heraclides, Eudoxus, Philip of Opus, and Crantor.

Middle Academy

Around 266 BC Arcesilaus became Scholarch. Under Arcesilaus (c. 266–241 BC), the Academy strongly emphasized a version of Academic skepticism closely similar to Pyrrhonism.^[28] Arcesilaus was followed by Lacydes of Cyrene (241–215 BC), Evander and Telecles(jointly) (205 – c. 165 BC), and Hegesinus (c. 160 BC).

New Academy

The New or Third Academy begins with Carneades, in 155 BC, the fourth Scholarch in succession from Arcesilaus. It was still largely skeptical, denying the possibility of knowing an absolute truth. Carneades was followed by Clitomachus (129 – c. 110 BC) and Philo of Larissa (« the last undisputed head of the Academy, » c. 110–84 BC).^[29][30] According to Jonathan Barnes, « It seems likely that Philo was the last Platonist geographically connected to the Academy. »^[31]

Around 90 BC, Philo’s student Antiochus of Ascalon began teaching his own rival version of Platonism rejecting Skepticism and advocating Stoicism, which began a new phase known as Middle Platonism.

Destruction of the Academy

The archaeological site of Plato‘s academy.

When the First Mithridatic Warbegan in 88 BC, Philo of Larissa left Athens and took refuge in Rome, where he seems to have remained until his death.^[32] In 86 BC, Lucius Cornelius Sulla laid siege to Athens and conquered the city, causing much destruction. It was during the siege that he laid waste to the Academy, for « he laid hands upon the sacred groves and ravaged the Academy, which was the most wooded of the city’s suburbs, as well as the Lyceum. »^[33]

The destruction of the Academy seems to have been so severe as to make the reconstruction and re-opening of the Academy impossible.^[34] When Antiochus returned to Athens from Alexandria, c. 84 BC, he resumed his teaching but not in the Academy. Cicero, who studied under him in 79/8 BC, refers to Antiochus teaching in a gymnasium called Ptolemy. Cicero describes a visit to the site of the Academy one afternoon, which was « quiet and deserted at that hour of the day ».^[35]

Neoplatonic Academy

Further information: Decline of Greco-Roman polytheism

Philosophers continued to teach Platonism in Athens during the Roman era, but it was not until the early 5th century (c. 410) that a revived Academy was established by some leading Neoplatonists.^[36]The origins of Neoplatonist teaching in Athens are uncertain, but when Proclus arrived in Athens in the early 430s, he found Plutarch of Athens and his colleague Syrianus teaching in an Academy there. The Neoplatonists in Athens called themselves « successors » (diadochoi, but of Plato) and presented themselves as an uninterrupted tradition reaching back to Plato, but there cannot have actually been any geographical, institutional, economic or personal continuity with the original Academy.^[37] The school seems to have been a private foundation, conducted in a large house which Proclus eventually inherited from Plutarch and Syrianus.^[38] The heads of the Neoplatonic Academy were Plutarch of Athens, Syrianus, Proclus, Marinus, Isidore, and finally Damascius. The Neoplatonic Academy reached its apex under Proclus (died 485).

Emperor Justinian I.

The last « Greek » philosophers of the revived Academy in the 6th century were drawn from various parts of the Hellenistic cultural world and suggest the broad syncretism of the common culture (see koine): Five of the seven Academy philosophers mentioned by Agathiaswere Syriac in their cultural origin: Hermias and Diogenes (both from Phoenicia), Isidorus of Gaza, Damascius of Syria, Iamblichus of Coele-Syria and perhaps even Simplicius of Cilicia.^[37]

At a date often cited as the end of Antiquity, the emperor Justinianclosed the school in 529. The last Scholarch of the Academy was Damascius (d. 540). According to Agathias, its remaining members looked for protection under the rule of Sassanid king Khosrau I in his capital at Ctesiphon, carrying with them precious scrolls of literature and philosophy, and to a lesser degree of science. After a peace treaty between the Persian and the Byzantine empire in 532, their personal security (an early document in the history of freedom of religion) was guaranteed.

It has been speculated that the Academy did not altogether disappear.^[37][39] After his exile, Simplicius (and perhaps some others) may have travelled to Harran, near Edessa. From there, the students of an Academy-in-exile could have survived into the 9th century, long enough to facilitate an Arabic revival of the Neoplatonist commentary tradition in Baghdad,^[39] beginning with the foundation of the House of Wisdom in 832; one of the major centers of learning in the intervening period (6th to 8th centuries) was the Academy of Gundishapur in Sassanid Persia.^{[clarification needed]}

• Academy of Athens (modern)
• Cyrenaics
• Agora
• Hellenistic philosophy
• Plato’s Academy mosaic
• Platonic Academy (Florence)
• Platonism
• Peripatetic school
• Stoicism
• Epicureanism

Notes

1. Jump up^ Lindberg, David C. (2007). The Beginnings of Western Science. University of Chicago Press. p. 70. ISBN 9780226482057.
2. Jump up^ Thucydides. ii:34.
3. Jump up^ Plutarch. Life of Cimon, xiii:7.
4. Jump up^ Plutarch. Life of Theseus, xxxii.
5. Jump up^ Pausanias. Description of Greece, i, 29.2, 30.2
6. Jump up^ Plutarch. Life of Solon, i, 7.
7. Jump up^ Herbert Ernest Cushma. (1910). A Beginner’s History of Philosophy, Volume 1, pg 219. Houghton Mifflin.
8. Jump up^ Ainian, A.M. & Alexandridou, A. (2007). The “sacred house” of the Academy revisited. Acts of an International Symposium in Memory of William D.E. Coulson. Volos, Greece: University of Thessaly.
9. Jump up^ greeceathensaegeaninfo.com Plato academy, at GreeceAthensAegeanInfo.com^{[unreliable source?]}
10. Jump up^ pp. 5–6, D. Nails, « The Life of Plato of Athens », in H. Benson (ed.), A Companion to Plato, Blackwell Publishing 2006.
11. Jump up^ pp. 19–20, W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 4, Cambridge University Press 1975; p. 1, R. Dancy, « Academy », in D. Zeyl (ed.), Encyclopedia of Classical Philosophy, Greenwood Press 1997. I. Mueller gives a much broader time frame – « …some time between the early 380s and the middle 360s… » – perhaps reflecting our real lack of evidence about the specific date (p. 170, « Mathematical Method & Philosophical Truth », in R. Kraut (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato, Cambridge University Press 1992).
12. Jump up^ D. Sedley, « Academy », in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed.; p. 4, J. Barnes, « Life and Work », in The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle, Cambridge University Press 1995; J. Barnes, « Academy », E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge 1998, accessed 13 Sept 2008, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A001.
13. Jump up^ p. 31, J. Barnes, Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press 2000.
14. Jump up^ p. 170, Mueller, « Mathematical Method & Philosophical Truth »; p. 249, D. Nails, The People of Plato, Hackett 2002.
15. Jump up^ pp. 170–171, Mueller, « Mathematical Method & Philosophical Truth »; p. 248, Nails, The People of Plato.
16. Jump up^ Barnes, « Academy ».
17. Jump up^ http://www.hackettpublishing.com/philosophy/women-in-the-academy
18. Jump up^ p. 2, Dancy, « Academy ».
19. Jump up^ p. 2, Dancy, « Academy »; p. 21, Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 4; p. 34–36, Barnes, Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction.
20. Jump up^ p. 67, V. Katz, History of Mathematics
21. Jump up^ p. 22, Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 4.
22. Jump up^ pp. 170–71, Mueller, « Mathematical Method & Philosophical Truth ».
23. Jump up^ M. Schofield, « Plato », in E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge 1998/2002, retrieved 13 Sept 2008, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A088 ; p. 32, Barnes, Aristotle: A Very Short Introduction.
24. Jump up^ Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s « On the Heavens » 488.7–24, quoted on p. 174, Mueller, « Mathematical Method & Philosophical Truth ».
25. Jump up^ p. 23, Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 4; G. Field, « Academy », in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 2nd ed.
26. Jump up^ p. 293, « Plato & Practical Politics », in Schofield & C. Rowe (eds.), Greek & Roman Political Thought, Cambridge University Press 2000.
27. Jump up^ Charles Anthon, (1855), A Classical Dictionary, page 6
28. Jump up^ Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Book 1, Chapter 33, Section 232
29. Jump up^ Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996), s.v. « Philon of Larissa. »
30. Jump up^ See the table in The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy(Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 53–54.
31. Jump up^ « Academy », E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Routledge 1998, accessed 14 Sept 2008, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/A001.
32. Jump up^ Giovanni Reale, John R. Catan, 1990, A History of Ancient Philosophy: The schools of the Imperial Age, page 207. SUNY Press
33. Jump up^ Plutarch, Sulla 12; cf. Appian, Roman History xii, 5.30
34. Jump up^ Giovanni Reale, John R. Catan, 1990, A History of Ancient Philosophy: The schools of the Imperial Age, page 208. SUNY Press
35. Jump up^ Cicero, De Finibus, book 5
36. Jump up^ Alan Cameron, « The last days of the Academy at Athens, » in Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society vol 195 (n.s. 15), 1969, pp 7–29.
37. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Gerald Bechtle, Bryn Mawr Classical Review of Rainer Thiel,Simplikios und das Ende der neuplatonischen Schule in Athen. Stuttgart, 1999 (in English).
38. Jump up^ The Cambridge Ancient History, (1970), Volume XIV, page 837. Cambridge University Press.
39. ^ Jump up to:^a b Richard Sorabji, (2005), The Philosophy of the Commentators, 200–600 AD: Psychology (with Ethics and Religion), page 11. Cornell University Press

Library resources about Platonic Academy

Online books Resources in your library Resources in other libraries

References

• Baltes, M. 1993. « Plato’s School, the Academy. » Hermathena, (155): 5-26.
• Brunt, P. A. 1993. « Plato’s Academy and Politics. » In Studies in Greek History and Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Cherniss, H. 1945. The Riddle of the Early Academy. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• Dancy, R. M. 1991. Two Studies in the Early Academy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• Dillon, J. M. 1979. « The Academy in the Middle Platonic Period. » Dionysius, 3: 63-77.
• Dillon, J. 2003. The Heirs of Plato. A Study of the Old Academy, 347–274 BC. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Dorandi, T. 1999. « Chronology: The Academy. » In The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy. Edited by Keimpe Algra, Jonathan Barnes, Jaap Mansfeld, and Malcolm Schofield, 31–35. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
• Glucker, J. 1978. Antiochus and the Late Academy. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
• Lynch, J. P. 1972. Aristotle’s School: A Study of a Greek Educational Institution. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Murray, J. S. 2006. « Searching for Plato’s Academy, 1929-1940. » Mouseion: Journal of the Classical Association of Canada, 6 (2): 219-56
• Russell, J. H. 2012. « When Philosophers Rule: The Platonic Academy and Statesmanship. » History of Political Thought, 33 (2): 209-230.
• Wallach, J. R. 2002. « The Platonic Academy and Democracy. » Polis (Exeter), 19 (1-2): 7-27
• Watts, E. 2007. « Creating the Academy: Historical Discourse and the Shape of Community in the Old Academy. » The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 127: 106–122.
• Wycherley, R. 1961. « Peripatos: The Athenian Philosophical Scene–I. » Greece & Rome, 8(2), 152-163.
• Wycherley, R. 1962. Peripatos: The Athenian Philosophical Scene–II. Greece & Rome, 9(1), 2-21.
• Zhmud, Leonid. 2006. « Science in the Platonic Academy.: In The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity. By Leonid Zhmud, 82–116. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Platonic Academy.

Platonic Academy.

•  « Academy« . Collier’s New Encyclopedia. 1921.
• The Academy, entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Directions to the archaeological site of Plato’s Academy, other useful information, and some photos

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_Academy

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Giacobbe Giusti, Persée

Giacobbe Giusti, Persée

Giacobbe Giusti, Persée

Giacobbe Giusti, Persée

Statua di Perseo di Benvenuto Cellini, alla Loggia dei Lanzi, Firenze

Giacobbe Giusti, Persée
Persée tenant la tête de Méduse, par Antonio Canova, 1801 (Musées du Vatican).
Sexe	Masculin
Espèce	Demi-dieu
Activité	Roi de Tirynthe
Caractéristique	Talaria, Kunée, Kalos kagathos
Arme favorite	Harpè (épée-serpe), tête de la Gorgone
Famille	Zeus (père) Danaé (mère) Andromède (femme) Persès, Alcée, Sthénélos, Héléos, Mestor, Electryon et Cynouros1 (fils) Gorgophoné (fille)
Ennemi de	Méduse Céto Phinée Abaris Athis Polydecte

Persée (en grec ancien Περσεύς / Perseús), roi d’Argos, est un héros de la mythologie grecque.

Persée est le fils de Danaé, fille du roi d’Argos, Acrisios². Ce dernier, averti par un oracle que son petit-fils le tuera, enferme sa fille dans une tour d’airain, ce qui n’empêche pas Zeus de la séduire sous la forme d’une pluie d’or³. Persée naît ainsi dans le secret. Révélé à son grand-père par ses cris, il est enfermé dans un coffre avec sa mère et jeté dans les flots, qui les portent jusqu’à l’île de Sériphos. Tous deux sont recueillis par un pêcheur nommé Dictys, qui élève le garçon comme son fils. Devenu adulte, Persée se voit confier par Polydecte, le roi de l’île, la mission de tuer la Gorgone Méduse, dont le regard pétrifie ceux qu’il atteint. Vainqueur grâce aux armes magiques remises par Hermès et Athéna, il passe sur le chemin du retour par l’Éthiopie où il rencontre la princesse Andromède, qui doit être livrée à un monstre marin en punition des paroles imprudentes de sa mère Cassiopée. Persée la délivre et l’épouse. De retour à Sériphos, il se venge de Polydecte, qui a tenté de violer sa mère Danaé. Il rejoint ensuite sa patrie, Argos, qu’Acrisios a fui par peur de l’oracle pour se réfugier à Larissa. Or le roi de cette cité organise des jeux funéraires auxquels Persée prend part. En lançant le disque, il tue accidentellement Acrisios, qui assiste aux épreuves comme spectateur. Par égard pour son défunt grand-père, Persée échange sa royauté d’Argos contre celle de Tirynthe et donne l’île de Sériphos au pêcheur.

La légende de Persée a connu une grande fortune après l’Antiquité, en particulier les épisodes de Méduse et d’Andromède. Il est probable qu’elle ait influencé les légendes chrétiennes des saints pourfendeurs de dragon, comme celle de saint Georges⁴. Nombre des épisodes de la légende se retrouvent, plus ou moins déformés, dans les contes traditionnels du folklore international, et ses motifs ont fait l’objet d’une codification par Stith Thompson.

Étymologie

Selon Pierre Chantraine, le nom de Persée est d’origine obscure⁵. Les auteurs antiques le rapprochent de πέρθω / pérthô, « détruire, mettre à sac, piller ». Selon Thalia Feldman, le radical perth- serait issu de l’indo-européen *bher-, « couper »⁶.

Mythe

Naissance

Danaé et la pluie d’or. Cratèrebéotien, vers -425–-420 Musée du Louvre.

Persée est déjà mentionné chez Homère, qui le nomme le fils de Zeus et de Danaé, sans autre précision⁷. Le Catalogue des femmes ajoute que Danaé est jetée à la mer dans un coffre^8,9, mais il faut attendre Phérécyde d’Athènes, au v^e siècle av. J.-C., pour que le récit soit complet : Acrisios, roi d’Argos, et son épouse Eurydiceengendrent une fille, Danaé. L’oracle de Delphes, interrogé, lui annonce qu’il n’aura pas de fils, mais que le petit-fils que lui donnera Danaé le tuera¹⁰. De retour chez lui, Acrisios fait bâtir une chambre de bronze souterraine où il enferme Danaé et sa nourrice. Zeus aperçoit pourtant la jeune fille et la séduit après s’être transformé en pluie d’or². Danaé donne naissance à Persée et l’élève en secret, jusqu’à ce que les cris du jeune enfant, âgé de trois ou quatre ans, trahissent son existence. Acrisios fait exécuter la nourrice et exige de savoir qui est le père de Persée. Refusant de croire les déclarations de Danaé, il la fait jeter à la mer dans un coffre, avec son fils. Le coffre est emporté par les flots jusqu’à l’île de Sériphos, où Danaé et Persée sont secourus par un pêcheur généreux, Dictys (« filet »), qui élève le garçon comme son fils.

Une scholie de l’Iliade fait de Proétos, frère d’Acrisios, le véritable père de Persée, ce qui aurait été le motif de la querelle entre les deux frères¹¹. Cette variante, que le scholiaste attribue à Pindare, est également citée par le pseudo-Apollodore¹². Pindare mentionne pourtant l’histoire de la pluie d’or par ailleurs¹³. Il est possible que dans la source du scholiaste et d’Apollodore, Danaé ait été séduite par Proétos et emprisonnée par son père en punition, laissant ainsi le champ libre à Zeus¹⁴. La variante suivant laquelle Danaé est enfermée dans une tour plutôt que dans une chambre souterraine remonte à Horace¹⁵, suivi par Ovide¹⁶.

À Sériphos

Toujours selon Phérécyde, Dictys est le frère du roi de l’île, Polydecte¹⁷. Alors que Persée a atteint l’âge adulte, Polydecte aperçoit Danaé et s’éprend d’elle. Il organise un eranos, c’est-à-dire un banquet où chacun apporte sa contribution, auquel il convie le jeune homme. Polydecte feint d’avoir besoin de présents pour les noces d’Hippodamie, fille d’Œnomaos. À la demande de Persée, Polydecte précise qu’il veut des chevaux ; le jeune homme répond alors qu’il apportera la tête de la Gorgone – pour fanfaronner, précise Apollodore¹⁸. Polydecte le prend au mot et quand Persée apporte un cheval le lendemain, il refuse et insiste pour obtenir la tête de la Gorgone, menaçant de s’emparer de Danaé si le jeune homme ne s’exécute pas.

Le récit de Phérécyde n’est pas très clair : on ne comprend pas bien quelle était l’intention initiale de Polydecte en organisant le banquet, car il ne pouvait pas prévoir que Persée évoquerait Méduse. Des auteurs modernes expliquent que Polydecte réclame un cheval à Persée en sachant très bien que celui-ci n’en possède pas¹⁹, mais cet élément ne se retrouve dans aucune source ancienne²⁰.

Méduse

Persée détourne le regard pendant qu’il tue Méduse (représentée ici comme un centaure femelle). Col d’un pithos orientalisant à reliefs, vers 660 av. J.-C. Musée du Louvre (CA 795).

La décapitation de Méduse par Persée ne figure pas chez Homère, mais elle apparaît dès la Théogonie d’Hésiode : Méduse, fille de Céto et Phorcys, est la seule des trois Gorgones à être mortelle et à être séduite par Poséidon ; elle est décapitée par Persée sur les bords d’Océan, et de son sang naissent le cheval ailé Pégase et le géant Chrysaor à l’épée d’or²¹. Le Bouclier d’Héraclès montre Persée équipé du casque d’Hadès, poursuivi par les Gorgones après avoir décapité Méduse, dont la tête est enfermée dans un sac à franges d’or qu’il porte sur son dos²².

Un récit plus complet se trouve chez Phérécyde. Persée, à qui Polydecte, roi amoureux de sa mère, a réclamé la tête de Méduse afin de l’éloigner, se retire pour se lamenter. Hermès lui apparaît et, après avoir appris la cause de son chagrin, le mène chez les Grées, en compagnie d’Athéna. Sur les conseils divins, Persée vole l’unique œil et l’unique dent dont les trois sœurs sont pourvues, et qu’elles se passent de l’une à l’autre. Les Grées sont contraintes d’aider Persée pour récupérer leur bien et lui indiquent l’endroit où il pourra trouver les nymphes qui détiennent trois objets magiques : la kunée ou casque d’Hadès, qui rend invisible son porteur, une paire de sandales ailées qui permet de voler dans les airs et une besace (en grec ancien, kibisis) destinée à recueillir la tête de Méduse. Persée leur rend alors œil et dent et part trouver les nymphes pour obtenir les trois objets. Grâce aux sandales, Persée gagne les bords d’Océan où résident les Gorgones, toujours accompagné par Hermès et Athéna qui lui recommandent de ne pas rencontrer le regard de Méduse. Persée coiffé du casque d’Hadès s’approche des Gorgones endormies, tranche la tête de Méduse²³, qu’il met dans la besace et s’enfuit, talonné par les deux autres Gorgones réveillées, qui suivent son odeur.

Le récit est simplifié chez Eschyle, qui ne mentionne pas les nymphes : Persée y reçoit une épée d’Héphaïstos²⁴ et Hermès fournit lui-même les sandales ailées et le casque d’Hadès. Les Grées y sont les gardiennes des Gorgones, ce qui pousse Persée à jeter leur œil dans le lac Triton, pour les empêcher de prévenir leurs sœurs de son approche²⁵. Apollodore ajoute au récit de Phérécyde quelques détails : Hermès donne à Persée une épée courbe et Athéna aide Persée à décapiter Méduse en tendant un bouclier poli comme un miroir¹⁸, idée qu’on trouve pour la première fois chez Ovide²⁶.

Dans la version d’Ovide²⁷, Persée revient en Grèce en passant par le pays d’Atlas. Celui-ci apprend que Persée est un fils de Zeus et tente de l’éloigner par la force, car Thémis lui a prédit qu’un fils de Zeus volerait un jour les pommes d’or du jardin des Hespérides. Persée, en colère, pétrifie Atlas en lui montrant la tête de Méduse, et le transforme en une chaîne de montagnes sur laquelle repose le ciel. Cette légende, probablement assez tardive²⁸, s’oppose à la version plus connue de la quête des pommes d’or entreprise par Héraclès dans laquelle Atlas est toujours vivant après plusieurs générations.

Isabelle Turcan²⁹ interprète la légende de Persée, victorieux de la gorgone Méduse comme un mythe cosmologique, celui d’un génie solaire vainqueur du règne de l’hiver. Les Grées comme les Gorgones sont liées au monde noir d’Ouranos, respectivement les premières sont du pays de la nuit et les Gorgones résident à l’extrême occident là où chaque jour disparaît le soleil. Le pouvoir pétrifiant du regard de Méduse est celui du gel.

Andromède

Persée, Andromède et le monstre marin. Vase corinthien. Altes Museumde Berlin (PM F1652).

Persée et Andromède. Fresque de Pompei (Musée archéologique de Naples)

Le Catalogue des femmes mentionne le mariage de Persée et d’Andromède⁸ et l’épisode d’Andromède apparaît pour la première fois sur un vase corinthien à figures noires de 575–570 av. J.-C. environ, c’est-à-dire avant les premières traces de l’histoire de Méduse³⁰. Le premier récit développé semble être celui de Phérécyde, préservé chez Apollodore, puis Sophocle et Euripide consacrent à la légende des tragédies intitulées Andromède, dont il ne subsiste plus que des fragments.

Cassiopée, mère d’Andromède, s’est vantée d’être aussi belle que les Néréides. En punition, Poséidon envoie un monstre marin qui ravage le pays. Après avoir interrogé l’oracle d’Ammon, Céphée, roi d’Éthiopie et mari de Cassiopée, doit offrir sa fille en sacrifice. Persée arrive et, après avoir débattu avec Céphée, libère la jeune fille. Des amphores corinthiennes du vi^e siècle av. J.-C.montrent Persée tenant Andromède par la main et repoussant le monstre marin à coups de pierre. Chez Ovide et les peintres sur vase postérieurs, Persée le tue à coup d’épée³¹. Le recours à la tête de Méduse pour pétrifier le monstre n’apparaît pas avant Lucien de Samosate^32,33(ii^e siècle).

Persée épouse Andromède bien qu’elle ait été promise à Phinée, le frère de Céphée. Une querelle éclate lors des noces entre les deux hommes et Persée change Phinée en pierre grâce à la tête de la Gorgone³⁴. Chez Hygin, Agénor et non Phinée est le prétendant malheureux d’Andromède ; il est difficile de déterminer s’il s’agit d’une véritable variante ou d’une confusion de l’auteur³¹. Andromède donne à Persée plusieurs enfants. Homère³⁵ et le Catalogue des femmes⁸ citent seulement Sthénélos. La tradition ultérieure, notamment Apollodore, nomment également Persès, que Persée confie à Céphée³⁵, Alcée, Héléos, Mestor, Électryon, et une fille, Gorgophoné (« la tueuse de Gorgone »)³⁶.

Le retour

À Sériphos, il délivra sa mère de Polydecte en se servant de nouveau de la tête de Méduse, changeant ainsi en pierre le roi et ses partisans. Persée laissa à Dictys le pouvoir sur Sériphos et se rendit avec Andromède à Argos, royaume d’Acrisios. Celui-ci, apprenant la venue de son petit-fils, s’enfuit à Larissa en Thessalie, par crainte que la prophétie ne se réalise. De retour en Grèce, Persée participa à des jeux funèbres que le roi thessalien Teutamidès donnait en l’honneur de son père et auxquels assistait Acrisios. Dépassant sa cible au lancer du disque, il frappa et tua accidentellement le vieillard, accomplissant ainsi la prophétie.

Ovide rapporte que revenant à Argos, Persée découvrit que Proétos, le frère jumeau d’Acrisios, et selon certains, le père véritable de Persée, avait usurpé le trône de son frère. Le héros le tua en le transformant en rocher et monta sur le trône de la ville. Mais il préféra ne pas régner sur Argos, ayant tué le roi précédent. Il échangea donc son royaume contre celui de Tirynthe dont le roi était Mégapenthès et il y fonda les villes de Mycènes et de Midée.

Comme la tâche de Persée était accomplie, Athéna lui recommanda de remettre les objets magiques à Hermès, qui les rendrait à leurs propriétaires respectifs. Selon certaines traditions, Athéna conserva le bouclier sur lequel elle plaça la tête de la Gorgone. Persée se rendit en Asie, où son fils Persès devint le fondateur légendaire de l’empire des Perses, à qui il donna son nom ; Platon dit que les Perses descendent de lui^37,38et Xénophon rapporte dans sa Cyropédie³⁹ que Cyrus II descend de lui.

Hygin donne toutefois une version très différente de ces événements mythiques. Pour lui, Polydecte fut un roi paisible qui épousa Danaé et mit Persée au service d’Athéna. D’autre part, Acrisios fut tué accidentellement par le jeune homme à Sériphos, pendant les jeux funèbres en l’honneur de Polydecte. Hygin indiqua aussi, rejoignant la version d’Ovide, que Persée fut tué par Mégapenthès, qui vengeait la mort de son père Proétos.

On raconte que Persée se querella avec les suivantes de Dionysos, dont le culte fut introduit en Argolide à la même époque. Persée a également lancé une statue dans le lac de Lerne et a livré combat contre une certaine « Femme de la Mer ». Athéna place Andromède et Céphée au nombre des constellations du ciel et Zeus fait de même avec Persée et le monstre marin^40,41.

Représentations littéraires

Portrait de l’acteur grec Euiaon jouant Persée, muni d’un chapeau ailé et de bottes, identifié par une inscription sur le vase. Cratère à calice attique à fond blanc, autour de 430 av. J.-C.

Si le mythe de Persée n’est attesté dans des textes conservés qu’à partir du v^e siècle av. J.-C., il est probablement plus ancien. Au iv^e siècle av. J.-C., un personnage de la Samienne de Ménandres’exclame ainsi : « N’as-tu pas entendu ce qu’ils racontent, ça, dis-moi, Nicératos, les poètes tragiques, comment, après s’être changé en or, Zeus s’est laissé couler à travers un toit jusqu’à une recluse, toute jeunette, pour la séduire ? »⁴²

Persée est en effet un sujet très fréquent à l’époque classique. Simonide de Céos chante dans l’un de ses poèmes la lamentation de Danaé, enfermée dans le coffre, et son appel à Zeus⁴³. Eschyle consacre à Danaé et Persée une trilogie complète. On ne connaît des tragédiesque deux titres, Les Phorcydes et Polydecte, et quelques fragments¹⁴. Le drame satyrique qui complétait la trilogie est mieux conservé ; intitulé Les Satyres tireurs de filets, il évoque le sauvetage de Danaé et Persée par Dictys. Sophocle compose également un Acrisios, une Danaé et Les Gens de Larisa, qui forment probablement une trilogie et qui ne survivent qu’à l’état de fragments. Les deux premières pièces portent probablement sur la décision respectivement d’enfermer Danaé puis de tuer Persée, tandis que la dernière évoque la mort d’Acrisios, tué involontairement par Persée. LaDanaé d’Euripide raconte la séduction de la jeune fille par Zeus et sa punition.^{[réf. nécessaire]}

Légende et folklore international

Dans The Folktale (voir Bibliographie), Stith Thompson signale une étude de Hartland⁴⁴ sur la légende de Persée, dans laquelle l’auteur compare des contes traditionnels du monde entier sur ce thème ; il met notamment la légende en relation avec les contes-types du Tueur de dragons (AT 300) et des Deux Frères (AT 303), même s’il n’est pas possible de garantir que ces contes dérivent directement de la légende. Thompson mentionne divers motifs que l’on retrouve aussi bien dans la légende grecque que dans de nombreux contes populaires, ainsi : T511 (naissance surnaturelle du héros), S301 (le héros persécuté et abandonné en compagnie de sa mère)⁴⁵, K333.2 (l’œil unique dérobé aux Phorcydes), D581 (la victoire sur Méduse au regard pétrifiant), T68.1 (la libération de l’héroïne livrée au monstre marin). Des motifs tels que la jeune fille enfermée dans la tour, les sandales ailées ou le casque d’invisibilité trouvent également écho dans les contes.

Peinture

Félix Vallotton, Persée tuant le dragon (1910), Musée d’art et d’histoire de Genève

Les diverses aventures de Persée ont fourni des sujets à la peinture et à la sculpture de la Renaissance au néo-classisisme et même jusqu’à l’époque contemporaine. Parmi les principaux artistes qui lui ont consacré des ouvrages, il faut citer :

• Piero di Cosimo, Persée délivrant Andromède(1515), Galerie des Offices, Florence ;
• Giorgio Vasari, Perseo e Andromeda (1570-1572), huile sur toile, Florence, Palazzo Vecchio ;
• Joachim Wtewael, Persée délivrant Andromède (1611), peinture, Musée du Louvre, Paris ;
• Pierre-Paul Rubens a peint Persée délivrant Andromède (1622)
• Luca Giordano, Persée change en pierre Phinée et sa troupe (v.1680), National Gallery, Londres ;
• Frederic Leighton, Persée et Andromède(1891), Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
• Félix Vallotton, Persée tuant le dragon (1910), Musée d’art et d’histoire de Genève

À ces noms s’ajoutent ceux de Pierre Puget, Pablo Picasso et Salvador Dalí.

Sculpture

Persée et Andromède, bas-relief de Julius Troschel (1840-1850) à la Nouvelle Pinacothèque de Munich.

Dans le domaine de la sculpture, Benvenuto Cellini a réalisé un bronze, Persée tenant la tête de Méduse (de 1545 à 1554). Florence, loggia del Lanzi. Pierre Puget a donné un marbre Persée et Andromède (1684) (Musée du Louvre). Antonio Canova a fait une sculpture appelée Persée tenant la tête de Méduse en 1801 et qui se trouve au Musée Pio-Clementino au Vatican. Persée et la Gorgoneest le titre d’une sculpture de Camille Claudel datée de 1902. C’est aussi celui d’une sculpture de Laurent Marquesteréalisée en 1890.

Le thème de Persée combattant le monstre marin et délivrant Andromède se distingue de légendes similaires par des accessoires évoquant les autres aventures du héros: tête de Méduse, sandales d’Hermès, casque de Hadès. Dans certains cas, Persée est monté sur le cheval ailé Pégase, né de la mort de Méduse. Bien qu’Andromède soit éthiopienne, elle est presque toujours représentée extrêmement blanche de teint.^{[réf. nécessaire]}

Théâtre et musique

Sur scène, le mythe a inspiré de nombreuses pièces antiques (voir ci-dessus). Jean-Baptiste Lully a composé en 1682 une tragédie lyriqueintitulée Persée.

Cinéma

Au cinéma, les aventures de Persée ont été adaptées librement par plusieurs péplums. En 1963, Persée l’invincible (Perseo l’invincibile), film italo-espagnol de Alberto De Martino, montre Persée affrontant Acrisios et son acolyte Galeron ainsi qu’une Méduse aux allures de plante à tentacules dotée d’un œil unique, qui peut animer et contrôler les hommes qu’elle a changées en statues ; Persée affronte aussi un monstrueux dragon. Un péplum américain inspiré de l’histoire de Persée est Le Choc des Titans, réalisé en 1981. Le Choc des titans donne lieu à un remake américain dirigé par Louis Leterrier et portant le même titre. Ce remake donne lieu à son tour à une suite, La Colère des Titans, réalisée par Jonathan Liebesman et sortie en 2012.

Les premiers tomes de la série américaine de romans Percy Jackson de Rick Riordan, parue dans les années 2000, donnent lieu à des adaptations au cinéma dont la première est Percy Jackson : Le Voleur de foudre réalisé par Chris Columbus en 2010, suivi du second: Percy Jackson : La mer des monstres réalisé en 2013 par Thor Freudenthal⁴⁶. Dans ces fictions, Percy tient son nom de Persée car, selon sa mère, c’est le seul héros à avoir eu une fin heureuse. Le troisième film n’est pas sorti.

Jeux vidéo

Persée est le héros du jeu d’aventure en mode texte Perseus and Andromeda développé en 1983 par Digital Fantasia, qui est une adaptation du mythe grec illustrée par des images composées de lettres et de lignes et qui est diffusé sur la plupart des ordinateurs personnels disponibles à l’époque (ZX Spectrum, Atari 8-bit, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, Commodore 16 et Oric-1).

Dans le jeu vidéo God of War II, un jeu vidéo américain d’action-aventure sorti sur consoles en 2007 et qui s’inspire très librement de la mythologie grecque, Persée est l’un des « boss » que Kratos, le héros du jeu, doit affronter. Persée est armé d’une épée, un bouclier, une fronde et un casque lui permettant de devenir invisible.

Notes

1. ↑Pausanias, Description de la Grèce[détail des éditions][lire en ligne [archive]], III, 2, 2.
2. ↑ ^a et bLucien de Samosate 2015, p. 261.
3. ↑Lucien de Samosate 2015, p. 271.
4. ↑Ogden 2008, p. 1, 10, 136-138.
5. ↑Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, Paris, Klincksieck, 1999 (édition mise à jour), 1447 p.(ISBN978-2-25203-277-0) à l’article « Περσεύς ».
6. ↑(en) Thalia Feldman, « Gorgo and the origins of Fear », dans Arion, vol. 4, n^o 3, Autumn 1965, p. 492.
7. ↑Homère, Iliade[détail des éditions][lire en ligne [archive]], XIV, 319-320.
8. ↑ ^a, b et cCatalogue des femmes[détail des éditions], frag. 135 MW.
9. ↑Gantz 1993, p. 300.
10. ↑Phérécyde, FGrH 3 F 10.
11. ↑ΣAb Il. XIV, 319 = Pindare, frag. 284 SM.
12. ↑Apollodore, Bibliothèque[détail des éditions][lire en ligne [archive]], II, 4, 1.
13. ↑Pindare, Odes[détail des éditions][lire en ligne [archive]], Néméenne, XII, 17-18. Voir aussi la Dixième Néméenne, 45, où Persée est explicitement le fils de Zeus.
14. ↑ ^a et bGantz 1993, p. 301.
15. ↑Horace, Odes, III, 16, 1-4.
16. ↑Notamment Ovide, Art d’aimer[détail des éditions][lire en ligne [archive]], III, 415-415.
17. ↑Phérécyde, FGrH 3 F 4 et 3 F 11.
18. ↑ ^a et bApollodore, Bibliothèque, II, 4, 2.
19. ↑Pierre Grimal, p. 360. ^[Où ?]
20. ↑Gantz 1993, p. 304.
21. ↑Hésiode, Théogonie[détail des éditions][lire en ligne [archive]], 276-281.
22. ↑Pseudo-Hésiode, Bouclier d’Héraclès[détail des éditions][lire en ligne [archive]], 216-237.
23. ↑Bonnafé 1993, p. 81
24. ↑Pseudo-Ératosthène, Catastérismes, 22 [lire en ligne [archive]].
25. ↑Eschyle, Phorcydes, fr. 262 I-V Radt. Pindare, Pythiques, XII, 13, y fait peut-être allusion.
26. ↑Ovide, Métamorphoses[détail des éditions][lire en ligne [archive]], IV, 782-783.
27. ↑Ovide, Métamorphoses, 631-632.
28. ↑Gantz 1993, p. 307.
29. ↑Isabelle Turcan, « Persée, vainqueur de la « nuit hivernale » ou le meurtre de Méduse et la naissance des jumeaux solaires Chrysaor et Pégase », Études Indo-européennes, 1989.
30. ↑Ogden 2008, p. 67.
31. ↑ ^a et bGantz 1993, p. 308.
32. ↑Lucien de Samosate 2015, p. 1134.
33. ↑Lucien de Samosate, Dialogues marins, 14 [lire en ligne [archive]].
34. ↑Ovide, Métamorphoses, V, 1-235.
35. ↑ ^a et bHomère, Iliade[détail des éditions][lire en ligne [archive]], Chant XIX, 116-124
36. ↑Apollodore, Bibliothèque, II, 4, 3.
37. ↑Alcibiade majeur (120d)
38. ↑Brisson 2008, p. 23
39. ↑Xénophon, Cyropédie[lire en ligne [archive]], Chapitre 2
40. ↑Catastérismes, I, 17 et le scholiaste des Phénomènes d’Aratos de Germanicus^[Lequel ?].
41. ↑Ogden 2008, p. 71.
42. ↑Ménandre, La Samienne (761-763). Traduction d’Alain Blanchard^[Lequel ?].
43. ↑Simonide, 543 PMG.
44. ↑Edwin Sidney Harland, The Legend of Perseus, 1894-1896. Rééd. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012 (ISBN978-1481035736).
45. ↑Ce motif a été repris par Pouchkine de contes traditionnels russes pour son conte en vers, Le Conte du Tsar Saltan.
46. ↑AlloCine, « Thor Freudenthal » [archive], sur AlloCiné(consulté le 30 janvier 2017)

Sources

• Hésiode, Théogonie [détail des éditions] [lire en ligne [archive]] (279-280)
• Homère, Iliade [détail des éditions] [lire en ligne [archive]] (XIV, 320)
• Apollonios de Rhodes, Argonautiques [détail des éditions] [lire en ligne [archive]] (IV).
• Diodore de Sicile, Bibliothèque historique[détail des éditions] [lire en ligne [archive]] (IV, 9, 1).
• Hygin, Fables [détail des éditions] [(la)lire en ligne [archive]] (CCXLIV).
• Pausanias, Description de la Grèce [détail des éditions] [lire en ligne [archive]] (II, 19, 3 ; III, 2, 2 ; III, 20, 6).
• Hérodote, Histoires [détail des éditions] [lire en ligne [archive]] (I, 125; II, 91; VI, 53, 54; VII, 61, 150).

Bibliographie

 : document utilisé comme source pour la rédaction de cet article.

• Émile Chambry, Émeline Marquis, Alain Billault et Dominique Goust (trad. Émile Chambry), Lucien de Samosate : Œuvres complètes, Éditions Robert Laffont, coll. « Bouquins », 2015, 1248 p.(ISBN9782221109021).
• Pierre Chambry (dir.), Xénophon. Œuvres complètes : Les Helléniques. L’Apologie de Socrate. Les Mémorables, t. III, Garnier-Flammarion, 1967 (1^reéd. 1967).
• Hésiode (trad. Annie Bonnafé, préf.Jean-Pierre Vernant), Théogonie, Paris, Payot & Rivages, coll. « La Petite Bibliothèque », 1993, 184 p.(ISBN978-2743621384).
• Xénophon (trad. Pierre Chambry), La Cyropédie : Xénophon, Œuvres complètes, Flammarion, 1967.
• Iliade (trad. du français par Robert Flacelière), Éditions Gallimard, 1993 (1^reéd. 1956) (ISBN2-07-010261-0).
• Edith Hamilton (trad. Abeth de Beughem), La Mythologie, éd. Marabout, 1978(ISBN9782501002646).
• (en) Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth. A Guide to Literature and Artistic Sources, vol. I, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993(ISBN0-8018-5360-5), p. 299-311.
• Pierre Grimal, Dictionnaire de la mythologie grecque et romaine, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, coll. « Grands dictionnaires », 1999 (1^reéd. 1951) (ISBN2-13-050359-4), p. 361-363.
• (en) Daniel Ogden, Perseus, Londres et New York, Routledge, 2008(ISBN978-0-415-42725-8).
• (en) Stith Thompson, The Folktale, University of California Press, 1977, 510 p.(ISBN0-520-03359-0).

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pers%C3%A9e

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Stoa of Attalos

Giacobbe Giusti, Stoa of Attalos, Greece

View of Athens (Attica, Greece) from Acropolis hill – Church of the Holy Apostles, Museum of Ancient Agora

The Stoa of Attalos (also spelled Attalus)

Giacobbe Giusti, Stoa of Attalos

The reconstructed Stoa of Attalos
Location	Agora of Athens, Greece

The Stoa of Attalos (also spelled Attalus) was a stoa (covered walkway or portico) in the Agora of Athens, Greece.^[1] It was built by and named after King Attalos II of Pergamon, who ruled between 159 BC and 138 BC. The current building was reconstructed in 1952–1956 by American architects along with the Greek architect Ioannis Travlos and the Greek Civil Engineer Yeoryios Biris.

Description

Giacobbe Giusti, Stoa of Attalos

Facade of the building

Typical of the Hellenistic age, the stoa was more elaborate and larger than the earlier buildings of ancient Athens. The stoa’s dimensions are 115 by 20 metres (377 by 66 ft) and it is made of Pentelicmarble and limestone. The building skillfully makes use of different architectural orders. The Doric order was used for the exterior colonnade on the ground floor with Ionic for the interior colonnade. This combination had been used in stoas since the Classical period and was by Hellenistic times quite common. On the first floor of the building, the exterior colonnade was Ionic and the interior Pergamene. Each story had two aisles and twenty-one rooms lining the western wall. The rooms of both stories were lighted and vented through doorways and small windows located on the back wall. There were stairways leading up to the second story at each end of the stoa. The building is similar in its basic design to the Stoa that Attalos’ brother, and predecessor as king, Eumenes II had erected on the south slope of the Acropolis next to the theatre of Dionysus. The main difference is that Attalos’ stoa had a row of rooms at the rear on the ground floor that have been interpreted as shops.

History

Giacobbe Giusti, Stoa of Attalos

Inside the Stoa of Attalos

The stoa is identified as a gift to the city of Athens for the education that Attalos received there. A dedicatory inscription engraved on the architrave states that it was built by Attalos II, who was ruler of Pergamon from 159 BC to 138 BC.

Giacobbe Giusti, Stoa of Attalos

Stoa of Attalos at night

The stoa was in frequent use until it was destroyed by the Heruli in 267. The ruins became part of a fortification wall, which made it easily seen in modern times. In 1952-1956, the stoa was fully reconstructed and the Ancient Agora Museum was created by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens,^[2] with funding donated by the Rockefeller family. The reconstruction is particularly important in the study of ancient monuments because it is a faithful replica of the original building, to the degree possible within the limits of archaeological knowledge.^{[citation needed]}

The ceremony of the signing of the 2003 Treaty of Accession of 10 countries – Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia – to the European Union was conducted in the Stoa of Attalos on 16 April 2003.

Museum of the Ancient Agora

The Stoa of Attalos houses the Museum of the Ancient Agora. Its exhibits are mostly connected with the Athenian democracy. The collection of the museum includes clay, bronze and glass objects, sculptures, coins and inscriptions from the 7th to the 5th century BC, as well as pottery of the Byzantine period and the Turkish conquest.

Gallery

• 

  Amphora with bird procession. Geometric period, 750-725 BC

• 

  Casserole and brazier (6th/4th century BC)

• 

  Woman kneeling before an altar. Attic red-figure kylix, 5th BC

• 

  Statue of a goddess, probably Aphrodite (early 4th century BC)

• 

  Acroterial statue of Winged Nike, flying to the right (4th BC)

• 

  The Kleroterion was used for the jury selection system in Athens

• 

  Ostracon bearing the name of Cimon

• 

  Theatre mask, dating from the 4th/3rd century BC

• 

  Statuette of a satyr

• 

  Statuette of Farnese Hercules

• 

  Bust of Herodotus (2nd century AD)

• 

  Bust of the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius

• 

  Byzantine plate (12th century)

Notes

1. Jump up^ « The Stoa of Attalos ». agathe.gr.
2. Jump up^ The Museum

Stoa of Attalus.

• fotopedia.com, Selected photos of the Stoa of Attalus
• Ministry of Culture: The Museum
• The Museum
• Stoa of Attalos photos

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoa_of_Attalos

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Mycenaean Greece

Giacobbe Giusti, Mycenaean Greece

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Mycenaean Greece

Giacobbe Giusti, Mycenaean Greece

Giacobbe Giusti, Mycenaean Greece

Period	Bronze Age
Dates	c. 1600 – c. 1100 BC
Preceded by	Minoan civilization
Followed by	Greek Dark Ages

Part of a series on the
History of Greece
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v t e

Mycenaean Greece (or Mycenaean civilization) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1600–1100 BC. It represents the first advanced civilization in mainland Greece, with its palatial states, urban organization, works of art and writing system.^[1] Among the centers of power that emerged, the most notable were those of Pylos, Tiryns, Midea in the Peloponnese, Orchomenos, Thebes, Athens in Central Greece and Iolcos in Thessaly. The most prominent site was Mycenae, in Argolid, after which the culture of this era is named. Mycenaean and Mycenaean-influenced settlements also appeared in Epirus,^[2][3]Macedonia,^[4][5] on islands in the Aegean Sea, on the coast of Asia Minor, the Levant,^[6] Cyprus^[7] and Italy.^[8]

The Mycenaean Greeks introduced several innovations in the fields of engineering, architecture and military infrastructure, while trade over vast areas of the Mediterranean was essential for the Mycenaean economy. Their syllabic script, the Linear B, offers the first written records of the Greek language and their religion already included several deities that can also be found in the Olympic Pantheon. Mycenaean Greece was dominated by a warrior elite society and consisted of a network of palace states that developed rigid hierarchical, political, social and economic systems. At the head of this society was the king, known as wanax.

Mycenaean Greece perished with the collapse of Bronze Age culturein the eastern Mediterranean, to be followed by the so-called Greek Dark Ages, a recordless transitional period leading to Archaic Greecewhere significant shifts occurred from palace-centralized to de-centralized forms of socio-economic organization (including the extensive use of iron).^[9] Various theories have been proposed for the end of this civilization, among them the Dorian invasion or activities connected to the « Sea Peoples« . Additional theories such as natural disasters and climatic changes have been also suggested. The Mycenaean period became the historical setting of much ancient Greek literature and mythology, including the Trojan Epic Cycle.^[10]

Chronology

Giacobbe Giusti, Mycenaean Greece

The Lion Gate, the main entrance of the citadel of Mycenae, 13th century BC

Main article: Helladic period

The Bronze Age in mainland Greece is generally termed as the « Helladic period » by modern archaeologists, after Hellas, the Greek name for Greece. This period is divided into three subperiods: The Early Helladic (EH) period (c. 2900–2000 BC) was a time of prosperity with the use of metals and a growth in technology, economy and social organization. The Middle Helladic (MH) period (ca. 2000–1650 BC) faced a slower pace of development, as well as the evolution of megaron-type dwellings and cist grave burials.^[1] Finally, the Late Helladic (LH) period (c. 1650–1050 BC) roughly coincides with Mycenaean Greece.^[1]

The Late Helladic period is further divided into LHI and LHII, both of which coincide with the early period of Mycenaean Greece (c. 1650–1425 BC), and LHIII (c. 1425–1050 BC), the period of expansion, decline and collapse of the Mycenaean civilization.^[1] The transition period from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in Greece is known as Sub-Mycenaean (c. 1050–1000 BC).^[1]

Two Mycenaean chariot warriors on a fresco from Pylos(about 1350 BC; left) and two female charioteers from Tiryns (1200 BC; right)

See also: Names of the Greeksand Achaeans (Homer)

The decipherment of the Mycenaean Linear B script, a writing system adapted for the use of the Greek language of the Late Bronze Age,^[11] demonstrated the continuity of Greek speech from the second millennium BC into the eighth century BC when a new script emerged. Moreover, it revealed that the bearers of Mycenaean culture were ethnically connected with the populations that resided in the Greek peninsula after the end of this cultural period.^[12] Various collective terms for the inhabitants of Mycenaean Greece were used by Homer in his 8th century BC epic, the Iliad, in reference to the Trojan War. The latter was supposed to have happened in the late 13th – early 12th century BC, when a coalition of small Greek states under the king of Mycenae, besieged the walled city of Troy. Homer used the ethnonyms Achaeans, Danaans and Argives, to refer to the besiegers.^[13]These names appear to have passed down from the time they were in use to the time when Homer applied them as collective terms in his Iliad.^[14] There is an isolated reference to a-ka-wi-ja-de in the Linear B records in Knossos, Crete dated to c. 1400 BC, which most probably refers to a Mycenaean (Achaean) state on the Greek mainland.^[15]

Egyptian records mention a T(D)-n-jor Danaya (Tanaju) land for the first time in circa 1437 BC, during the reign of Pharaoh Thutmoses III (r. 1479–1425 BC). This land is geographically defined in an inscription from the reign of Amenhotep III (r. circa 1390–1352 BC), where a number of Danaya cities are mentioned, which cover the largest part of southern mainland Greece.^[16] Among them, cities such as Mycenae, Nauplion and Thebes have been identified with certainty. Danaya has been equated with the ethnonym Danaoi(Greek: Δαναοί), the name of the mythical dynasty that ruled in the region of Argos, also used as an ethnonym for the Greek people by Homer.^[16][17]

In the official records of another Bronze Age empire, that of the Hittites in Anatolia, various references from c. 1400 BC to 1220 BC mention a country named Ahhiyawa.^[18][19] Recent scholarship, based on textual evidence, new interpretations of the Hittite inscriptions, as well as on recent surveys of archaeological evidence about Mycenaean-Anatolian contacts during this period, concludes that the term Ahhiyawa must have been used in reference to the Mycenaean world (land of the Achaeans), or at least to a part of it.^[20][21] This term may have also had broader connotations in some texts, possibly referring to all regions settled by Mycenaeans or regions under direct Mycenaean political control.^[18] Another similar ethnonym Ekwesh in twelfth century BC Egyptian inscriptions, has been commonly identified with the Ahhiyawans. These Ekwesh were mentioned as a group of the Sea People.^[22]

History

Shaft grave era (c. 1600–1450 BC)

Giacobbe Giusti, Mycenaean Greece

Death mask, known as the Mask of Agamemnon, Grave Circle A, Mycenae, 16th century BC, probably the most famous artifact of Mycenaean Greece.^[23]

Mycenaean civilization originated and evolved from the society and culture of the Early and Middle Helladic period in mainland Greece under influences from Minoan Crete.^[24] Towards the end of the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600 BC) a significant increase in the population and the number of settlements occurred.^[25] A number of centers of power emerged in southern mainland Greece dominated by a warrior elite society,^[1][24] while the typical dwellings of that era were an early type of megaron buildings. Some more complex structures are classified as forerunners of the later palaces. In a number of sites, defensive walls were also erected.^[26]

Meanwhile, new types of burials and more imposing ones have been unearthed, which display a great variety of luxurious objects.^[25][27]Among the various burial types, the shaft grave became the most common form of elite burial, a feature that gave the name to the early period of Mycenaean Greece.^[25] Among the Mycenaean elite, deceased men were usually laid to rest in gold masks and funerary armor, and women in gold crowns and clothes gleaming with gold ornaments.^[28] The royal shaft graves next to the acropolis of Mycenae, in particular the Grave Circles A and B signified the elevation of a native Greek-speaking royal dynasty whose economic power depended on long-distance sea trade.^[29]

During this period, the Mycenaean centers witnessed increased contacts with the outside world and especially with the Cyclades and the Minoan centers in the island of Crete.^[1][25] Mycenaean presence appears to be also depicted in a fresco at Akrotiri, on Thera island, which possibly displays many warriors in Boar’s tusk helmets, a feature typical of Mycenaean warfare.^[30] In the early 15th century, commerce intensified with Mycenaean pottery reaching the western coast of Asia Minor, including Miletus and Troy, Cyprus, Lebanon, Palestine and Egypt.^[31]

At the end of the Shaft Grave era, a new and more imposing type of elite burial emerged, the Tholos: large circular burial chambers with high vaulted roofs and a straight entry passage lined with stone.^[32]

Koine era (c. 1450 BC–1250 BC)

Giacobbe Giusti, Mycenaean Greece

Fresco depicting a female figure in the acropolis of Mycenae, 13th century BC

The eruption of Thera, which according to archaeological data occurred in c. 1500 BC, resulted in the decline of the Minoan civilization of Crete.^[33] This turn of events gave the opportunity to the Mycenaeans to spread their influence throughout the Aegean. Around c. 1450 BC, they were in control of Crete itself, including Knossos, and colonized several other Aegean islands, reaching as far as Rhodes.^[34][35]Thus the Mycenaeans became the dominant power of the region, marking the beginning of the Mycenaean ‘Koine’ era (from Greek: Κοινή, common), a highly uniform culture that spread in mainland Greece and the Aegean.^[36]

From the early 14th century BC, Mycenaean trade began to take advantage of the new trading opportunities in the Mediterranean after the Minoan collapse.^[35] The trade routes were expanded further, reaching Cyprus, Amman in the Near East, Apulia in Italy and Spain.^[35] From that time period (c. 1400 BC), the palace of Knossos has yielded the earliest records of the Greek Linear B script, based on the previous Linear A of the Minoans. The use of the new script spread in mainland Greece and offers valuable insight into the administrative network of the palatial centers. However, the unearthed records are too fragmentary for a political reconstruction of Bronze Age Greece.^[37]

Mycenaean panoply, found in Dendra, Argolid, c.1400 BC

Excavations at Miletus, southwest Asia Minor, indicate the existence of a Mycenaean settlement there already from c. 1450 BC, replacing the previous Minoan installations.^[38] This site became a sizable and prosperous Mycenaean center until the 12th century BC.^[39] Apart from the archaeological evidence, this is also attested in Hittite records, which indicate that Miletos (Milawata in Hittite) was the most important base for Mycenaean activity in Asia Minor.^[40] Mycenaean presence also reached the adjacent sites of Iasusand Ephesus.^[41]

Meanwhile, imposing palaces were built in the main Mycenaean centers of the mainland. The earliest palace structures were megaron-type buildings, such as the Menelaion in Sparta, Lakonia.^[42] Palaces proper are datable from c. 1400 BC, when Cyclopean fortifications were erected at Mycenae and nearby Tiryns.^[1] Additional palaces were built in Midea and Pylos in Peloponnese, Athens, Eleusis, Thebes and Orchomenos in Central Greece and Iolcos, in Thessaly, the latter being the northernmost Mycenaean center. Knossos in Crete also became a Mycenaean center, where the former Minoan complex underwent a number of adjustments, including the addition of a throne room.^[43] These centers were based on a rigid network of bureaucracy where administrative competencies were classified into various sections and offices according to specialization of work and trades. At the head of this society was the king, known as wanax (Linear B: wa-na-ka) in Mycenaean Greek terms. All powers were vested in him, as the main landlord and spiritual and military leader. At the same time he was an entrepreneur and trader and was aided by a network of high officials.^[44]

Involvement in Asia Minor[edit]

The presence of Ahhiyawa in western Anatolia is mentioned in various Hittite accounts from c. 1400 to c. 1220 BC.^[40] Ahhiyawa is generally accepted as a Hittite translation of Mycenaean Greece (Achaeans in Homeric Greek), but a precise geographical definition of the term cannot be drawn from the texts.^[45] During this time, the kings of Ahhiyawa were evidently capable of dealing with their Hittite counterparts both on a diplomatic and military level.^[46] Moreover, Ahhiyawan activity was to interfere in Anatolian affairs, with the support of anti-Hittite uprisings or through local vassal rulers, which the Ahhiyawan king used as agents for the extension of his influence.^[47]

Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East during the 14th century BC; Mycenaean Greece in purple

In c. 1400 BC, Hittite records mention the military activities of an Ahhiyawan warlord, Attarsiya, a possible Hittite way of writing the Greek name Atreus, who attacked Hittite vassals in western Anatolia.^[48] Later, in c. 1315 BC, an anti-Hittite rebellion headed by Arzawa, a Hittite vassal state, received support from Ahhiyawa.^[49]Meanwhile, Ahhiyawa appears to be in control of a number of islands in the Aegean, an impression also supported by archaeological evidence.^[50] During the reign of the Hittite king Hattusili III (c. 1267–1237 BC), the king of Ahhiyawa is recognized as a « Great King » and of equal status with the other contemporary great Bronze Age rulers: the kings of Egypt, Babyloniaand Assyria.^[51] At that time, another anti-Hittite movement, led by Piyama-Radu, broke out and was supported by the king of Ahhiyawa.^[52] Piyama-Radu caused major unrest in the region of Wilusaand later invaded the island of Lesbos, which then passed into Ahhiyawan control.^[53]

The Hittite-Ahhiyawan confrontation in Wilusa, the Hittite name for Troy, may provide the historical foundation for the Trojan Wartradition.^[54] As a result of this instability, the Hittite king initiated correspondence in order to convince his Ahhiyawan counterpart to restore peace in the region. The Hittite record mentions a certain Tawagalawa, a possible Hittite translation for Greek Eteocles, as brother of the king of Ahhiyawa.^[53][55]

Collapse (c. 1250–1100 BC)

Initial decline and revival

Giacobbe Giusti, Mycenaean Greece

Marching soldiers observed by a female figure, in a krater of c. 1200 BC in Mycenae

In c. 1250 BC, the first wave of destruction apparently occurred in various centers of mainland Greece for reasons that cannot be identified by archaeologists. In Boeotia, Thebes was burned to the ground, around that year or slightly later. Nearby Orchomenos shared the same fate, while the Boeotian fortifications of Gla were deserted.^[56] In the Peloponnese, a number of buildings surrounding the citadel of Mycenae were attacked and burned.^[57]

These incidents appear to have prompted the massive strengthening and expansion of the fortifications in various sites. In some cases, arrangements were also made for the creation of subterranean passages which led to underground cisterns. Tiryns, Midea and Athens expanded their defences with new cyclopean-style walls.^[58] The extension program in Mycenae almost doubled the fortified area of the citadel. To this phase of extension belongs the impressive Lion Gate, the main entrance into the Mycenaean acropolis.^[58]

It appears that after this first wave of destruction a short-lived revival of Mycenaean culture followed.^[59]Mycenaean Greece continues to be mentioned in international affairs, particularly in Hittite records. In c. 1220 BC, the king of Ahhiyawa is again reported to have been involved in an anti-Hittite uprising in western Anatolia.^[60] Another contemporary Hittite account reports that Ahhiyawan ships should avoid Assyrian-controlled harbors, as part of a trade embargo imposed on Assyria.^[61] In general, in the second half of 13th century BC, trade was in decline in the Eastern Mediterranean, most probably due to the unstable political environment there.^[62]

Final collapse

None of the defence measures appear to have prevented the final destruction and collapse of the Mycenaean states. A second destruction struck Mycenae in ca. 1190 BC or shortly thereafter. This event marked the end of Mycenae as a major power. The site was then reoccupied, but on a smaller scale.^[57] The palace of Pylos, in the southwestern Peloponnese, was destroyed in c. 1180 BC.^[63][64] The Linear B archives found there, preserved by the heat of the fire that destroyed the palace, mention hasty defence preparations due to an imminent attack without giving any detail about the attacking force.^[59]

As a result of this turmoil, specific regions in mainland Greece witnessed a dramatic population decrease, especially Boeotia, Argolis and Messenia.^[59]Mycenaean refugees migrated to Cyprus and the Levantine coast.^[64]Nevertheless, other regions on the edge of the Mycenaean world prospered, such as the Ionian islands, the northwestern Peloponnese, parts of Attica and a number of Aegean islands.^[59] The acropolis of Athens, oddly, appears to have avoided destruction.^[59]

Hypotheses for the collapse

 Bronze Age collapseand Dorian Invasion

Invasions, destructions and possible population movements during the collapse of the Bronze Age, ca. 1200 BC

The reasons for the end of the Mycenaean culture have been hotly debated among scholars. At present, there is no satisfactory explanation for the collapse of the Mycenaean palace systems. The two most common theories are population movement and internal conflict. The first attributes the destruction of Mycenaean sites to invaders.^[65]

The hypothesis of a Dorian invasion, known as such in Ancient Greek tradition, that led to the end of Mycenaean Greece, is supported by sporadic archaeological evidence such as new types of burials, in particular cist graves, and the use of a new dialect of Greek, the Doricone. It appears that the Dorians moved southward gradually over a number of years and devastated the territory, until they managed to establish themselves in the Mycenaean centers.^[66] A new type of ceramic also appeared, called « Barbarian Ware » because it was attributed to invaders from the north.^[59] On the other hand, the collapse of Mycenaean Greece coincides with the activity of the Sea Peoples in the Eastern Mediterranean. They caused widespread destruction in Anatolia and the Levant and were finally defeated by Pharaoh Ramesses IIIin c. 1175 BC. One of the ethnic groups that comprised these people were the Eqwesh, a name that appears to be linked with the Ahhiyawa of the Hittite inscriptions.^[67]

Alternative scenarios propose that the fall of Mycenaean Greece was a result of internal disturbances which led to internecine warfare among the Mycenaean states or civil unrest in a number of states, as a result of the strict hierarchical social system and the ideology of the wanax.^[68] In general, due to the obscure archaeological picture in 12th-11th century BC Greece, there is a continuing controversy among scholars over whether the impoverished societies that succeeded the Mycenaean palatial states were newcomers or populations that already resided in Mycenaean Greece. Recent archaeological findings tend to favor the latter scenario.^[59] Additional theories, concerning natural factors, such as climate change, droughts or earthquakes have also been proposed.^[68] The period following the end of Mycenaean Greece, c. 1100-800 BC, is generally termed the « Greek Dark Ages« .^[69]

Political organization

Reconstruction of the political landscape in c. 1400-1250 BC mainland southern Greece

Mycenaean palatial states, or centrally organized palace-operating polities, are recorded in ancient Greek literature and mythology (e.g., Iliad, Catalogue of Ships) and confirmed by discoveries made by modern archaeologists such as Heinrich Schliemann. Each Mycenaean kingdom was governed from the palace, which exercised control over most, if not all, industries within its realm. The palatial territory was divided into several sub-regions, each headed by its provincial center.^[70] Each province was further divided in smaller districts, the da-mo.^[70] A number of palaces and fortifications appear to be part of a wider kingdom. For instance, Gla, located in the region of Boeotia, belonged to the state of nearby Orchomenos.^[56]Moreover, the palace of Mycenae appeared to have ruled over a territory two to three times the size of the other palatial states in Bronze Age Greece. Its territory would have also included adjacent centers, including Tiryns and Nauplion, which could plausibly be ruled by a member of Mycenae’s ruling dynasty.^[71]

The unearthed Linear B texts are too fragmentary for the reconstruction of the political landscape in Mycenaean Greece and they do not support the existence of a larger Mycenaean state.^[45][72] On the other hand, contemporary Hittite and Egyptian records suggest the presence of a single state under a « Great King ».^[73]Alternatively, based on archaeological data, some sort of confederation among a number of palatial states appears to be possible.^[45] If some kind of united political entity existed, the dominant center was probably located in Thebes or in Mycenae, with the latter state being the most probable center of power.^[74]

Society and administration

The Neolithic agrarian village (6000 BC) constituted the foundation of Bronze Age political culture in Greece.^[75] The vast majority of the preserved Linear B records deal with administrative issues and give the impression that Mycenaean palatial administration was highly uniform with the use of the same language, terminology, system of taxation and distribution.^[37][70] Considering this sense of uniformity, the Pylosarchive, which is the best preserved one in the Mycenaean world, is generally taken as a representative one.^[37]

The state was ruled by a king, the wanax (ϝάναξ), whose role was religious and perhaps also military and judicial.^[76] The wanax oversaw virtually all aspects of palatial life, from religious feasting and offerings to the distribution of goods, craftsmen and troops.^[77] Under him was the lāwāgetas (« the leader of the people »), whose role appears mainly religious. His activities possibly overlap with the wanax and is usually seen as the second-in-command.^[77] Both wanax and lāwāgetas were at the head of a military aristocracy known as the eqeta (« companions » or « followers »).^[76][78] The land possessed by the wanax is usually the témenos (te-me-no). There is also at least one instance of a person, Enkhelyawon, at Pylos, who appears titleless in the written record but whom modern scholars regard as probably a king.^[79]

A number of local officials positioned by the wanax appear to be in charge of the districts, such as ko-re-te(koreter, ‘ »governor »), po-ro-ko-re-te(prokoreter, « deputy ») and the da-mo-ko-ro (damokoros, « one who takes care of a damos »), the latter probably being appointed to take charge of the commune. A council of elders was chaired, the ke-ro-si-ja(cf. γερουσία, gerousía). The basileus, who in latter Greek society was the name of the king, refers to communal officials.^[76]

In general, Mycenaean society appears to have been divided into two groups of free men: the king’s entourage, who conducted administrative duties at the palace, and the people, da-mo^[80] These last were watched over by royal agents and were obliged to perform duties for and pay taxes to the palace.^[76]Among those who could be found in the palace were well-to-do high officials, who probably lived in the vast residences found in proximity to Mycenaean palaces, but also others, tied by their work to the palace and not necessarily better off than the members of the da-mo, such as craftsmen, farmers, and perhaps merchants. Occupying a lower rung of the social ladder were the slaves, do-e-ro, (cf. δοῦλος, doúlos).^[81] These are recorded in the texts as working either for the palace or for specific deities.^[76]

Economy

Mycenaean palace amphora, found in the Argolid

Mycenaean stirrup vase found in the acropolis of Ugarit, Eastern Mediterranean (c. 1400–1300 BC)

The Mycenaean economy, given its pre-monetary nature, was focused on the redistribution of goods, commodities and labor by a central administration. The preserved Linear B records in Pylos and Knossos indicate that the palaces were closely monitoring a variety of industries and commodities, the organization of land management and the rations given to the dependent personnel.^[82][83] The Mycenaean palaces maintained extensive control of the nondomestic areas of production through careful control and acquisition and distribution in the palace industries, and the tallying of produced goods.^[84][85] For instance, the Knossos tablets record c. 80,000-100,000 sheep grazing in central Crete, and the quantity of the expected wool from these sheep and their offspring, as well as how this wool was allocated.^[85] The archives of Pylos display a specialized workforce, where each worker belonged to a precise category and was assigned to a specific task in the stages of production, notably in textiles.^[86]

Nevertheless, palatial control over resources appears to have been highly selective in spatial terms and in terms of how different industries were managed.^[87] Thus, sectors like the production of perfumed oil and bronze materials were directly monitored from the palace, but the production of ceramics was only indirectly monitored.^[88] Regional transactions between the palaces are also recorded on a few occasions.^[89]

Large-scale infrastructure

The palatial centers organized their workforce and resources for the construction of large scale projects in the fields of agriculture and industry.^[83] The magnitude of some projects indicates that this was the result of combined efforts from multiple palatial centers. Most notable of them are the drainage system of the Kopais basin in Boeotia, the building of a large dam outside Tiryns, and the drainage of the swamp in the Nemea valley.^[90]Also noticeable is the construction of harbors, such as the harbor of Pylos, that were capable of accommodating large Bronze Age era vessels like the one found at Uluburun.^[90] The Mycenaean economy also featured large-scale manufacturing as testified by the extent of workshop complexes that have been discovered, the largest known to date being the recent ceramic and hydraulic installations found in Euonymeia, next to Athens, that produced tableware, textiles, sails, and ropes for export and shipbuilding.^[91]

The most famous project of the Mycenaean era was the network of roads in the Peloponnese.^[90] This appears to have facilitated the speedy deployment of troops—for example, the remnants of a Mycenaean road, along with what appears to have been a Mycenaean defensive wall on the Isthmus of Corinth. The Mycenaean era saw the zenith of infrastructure engineering in Greece, and this appears not to have been limited to the Argive plain.^[92]

Trade

Gold earring, ca. 1600 BC, Louvre Museum

Reconstruction of a Mycenaean ship

Trade over vast areas of the Mediterranean was essential for the economy of Mycenaean Greece.^[83]The Mycenaean palaces imported raw materials, such as metals, ivory and glass, and exported processed commodities and objects made from these materials, in addition to local products: oil, perfume, wine, wool and pottery.^[83] International trade of that time was not only conducted by palatial emissaries but also by independent merchants.^[93]

Based on archaeological findings in the Middle East, in particular physical artifacts, textual references, inscriptions and wall paintings, it appears that Mycenaean Greeks achieved strong commercial and cultural interaction with most of the Bronze Age people living in this region: Canaanites, Kassites, Mitanni, Assyrians, and Egyptians.^[93][94][95] The 14th century Uluburun shipwreck, off the coast of southern Anatolia, displays the established trade routes that supplied the Mycenaeans with all the raw materials and items that the economy of Mycenaean Greece needed, such as copper and tin for the production of bronze products.^[96] A chief export of the Mycenaeans was olive oil, which was a multi-purpose product.^[97]

Cyprus appears to be the principal intermediary station between Mycenaean Greece and the Middle East, based on the considerable greater quantities of Mycenaean goods found there.^[98] On the other hand, trade with the Hittite lands in central Anatolia appears to have been limited.^[93][99] Trade with Troyis also well attested, while Mycenaean trade routes expanded further to the Bosphorus and the shores of the Black Sea.^[100]Mycenaean swords have been found as far away as Georgia in the eastern Black Sea coast.^[101]

Commercial interaction was also intense with the Italian peninsula and the western Mediterranean. Mycenaean products, especially pottery, were exported to southern Italy, Sicily and the Aeolian islands. Mycenaean products also penetrated further into Sardinia,^[102][103] as well as southern Spain.^[104]

Sporadic objects of Mycenaean manufacture were found in various distant locations, like in Central Europe,^[105] such as in Bavaria, Germany, where an amber object inscribed with Linear B symbols has been unearthed.^[106] Mycenaean bronze double axes and other objects dating from the 13th century BC have been found in Ireland and in Wessex and Cornwall in England.^[107][108]

Religion

 Mycenaean religionand List of Mycenaean gods

The Lady of Phylakopi; wheel-made pottery figurine of a goddess or priestess from the West Shrine in Phylakopi; late Helladic III A period, 14th century BC, Archaeological Museum of Milos

Temples and shrines are strangely rare in the Mycenaean archaeological sites. Monumental cultic structures are absent at all the palatial centers, with the exception of Mycenae. However, the cultic center of Mycenae seems to have been a later (13th century BC) development.^[109] Small shrines have been identified in Asine, Berbati, Malthi and Pylos,^[110] while a number of sacred enclosures have been located near Mycenae, Delphiand Amyklae.^[111] Linear B records mention a number of sanctuaries dedicated to a variety of deities, at least in Pylos and Knossos. They also indicate that there were various religious festivities including offerings.^[112] Written Mycenaean records mention various priests and priestesses who were responsible for specific shrines and temples.^[113]The latter were prominent figures in society, and the role of Mycenaean women in religious festivities was also important, just as in MinoanCrete.^[114]

The Mycenaean pantheon already included many divinities that were subsequently encountered in Classical Greece,^[115] although it is difficult to determine whether these deities had the characteristics and responsibilities that would be attributed to them in later periods.^[116] In general, the same divinities were worshipped throughout the Mycenaean palatial world. There may be some indications for local deities at various sites, in particular in Crete. The uniformity of Mycenaean religion is also reflected in archaeological evidence with the phi- and psi-figurines that have been found all over Late Bronze Age Greece.^[109]

Poseidon (Linear B: Po-se-da-o) seems to have occupied a place of privilege. He was a chthonic deity, connected with earthquakes (E-ne-si-da-o-ne: Earth-shaker), but it seems that he also represented the river spirit of the underworld.^[117]Paean (Pa-ja-wo) is probably the precursor of the Greek physician of the gods in Homer’s Iliad. He was the personification of the magic-song which was supposed to « heal » the patient.^[118] A number of divinities have been identified in the Mycenaean scripts only by their epithets used during later antiquity. For example, Qo-wi-ja (« cow-eyed ») is a standard Homeric ephithet of Hera.^[119] Ares appeared under the name Enyalios (assuming that Enyalios is not a separate god).^[120]Additional divinities that can be also found in later periods include Hephaestus, Erinya, Artemis (a-te-mi-to and a-ti-mi-te) and Dionysos(Di-wo-nu-so).^{[121][122][123][124]} Zeusalso appears in the Mycenaean pantheon, but he was certainly not the chief deity.^[116]

A collection of « ladies » or « mistresses », Po-ti-ni-ja (Potnia) are named in the Mycenaean scripts. As such, Athena (A-ta-na) appears in an inscription at Knossos as mistress Athena, similar to a later Homeric expression, but in the Pylos tablets she is mentioned without any accompanying word.^[125] Si-to po-ti-ni-ja appears to be an agricultural goddess, possibly related to Demeter of later antiquity,^[119] while in Knossos there is the « mistress of the Labyrinth ».^[126] The « two queens and the king » (wa-na-ssoi, wa-na-ka-te) are mentioned in Pylos.^[127][128]Goddess Pe-re-swa mentioned may be related to Persephone.^[119][125] A number of Mycenaean divinities seem to have no later equivalents, such as Marineus, Diwia and Komawenteia.^[116]

Architecture

Palaces

Tiryns, map of the palace and the surrounding fortifications

The palatial structures at Mycenae, Tiryns and Pylos were erected on the summits of hills or rocky outcrops, dominating the immediate surroundings.^[129] The best preserved are found in Pylos and Tiryns, while Mycenae and the Menelaion are only partially preserved. In Central Greece, Thebes and Orchomenos have been only partially exposed. On the other hand, the palace built at the acropolis of Athens has been almost completely destroyed. A substantial building at Dimini in Thessaly, possibly ancient Iolcos,^[130] is believed by a number of archaeologists to be a palace.^[129] A Mycenaean palace has been also unearthed in Laconia, near the modern village of Xirokambi.^[131]

The hearth of the megaron of Pylos

The palatial structures of mainland Greece share a number of common features.^[132] The focal point of the socio-political aspect of a Mycenaean palace was the megaron, the throne room.^[129] It was laid out around a circular hearth surrounded by four columns. The throne was generally found on the right-hand side upon entering the room, while the interior of the megaron was lavishly decorated, flaunting images designed intentionally to demonstrate the political and religious power of the ruler.^[133] Access to the megaron was provided through a court, which was reached from a propylon.^[132]The iconography of the palatial chambers is remarkably uniform throughout Greece. For instance, in Pylos and Tiryns the paintings are focused on marine motifs, providing depictions of octopi, fish and dolphins.^[134] Around the megaron a group of courtyards each opened upon several rooms of different dimensions, such as storerooms and workshops, as well as reception halls and living quarters.^[132] In general Mycenaean palaces have yielded a wealth of artifacts and fragmentary frescoes.^[132]

Additional common features are shared by the palaces of Pylos, Mycenae and Tiryns;^[132] a large court with colonnades lies directly in front of the central megaron,^[135]while a second, but smaller, megaron is also found inside these structures.^[132] The staircases in the palace of Pylos indicate that the palaces had two stories.^[136] The private quarters of the members of the royal family were presumably located on the second floor.^[137]

Fortifications

Cyclopean masonry in the southern walls of Mycenae

The construction of defensive structures was closely linked to the establishment of the palaces in mainland Greece. The principal Mycenaean centers were well-fortified and usually situated on an elevated terrain, like on the acropolis of Athens, Tiryns and Mycenae or on coastal plains, in the case of Gla.^[138] Mycenaean Greeks in general appreciated the symbolism of war as expressed in defensive architecture, reflected by the visual impressiveness of their fortifications.^[138]

Giacobbe Giusti, Mycenaean Greece

Part of the galleries within the walls of Tiryns

Cyclopean is the term normally applied to the masonry characteristics of Mycenaean fortification systems and describes walls built of large, unworked boulders more than 8 m (26 ft) thick and weighing several metric tonnes.^[139] They were roughly fitted together without the use of mortar or clay to bind them, though smaller hunks of limestone fill the interstices. Their placement formed a polygonal pattern giving the curtain wall an irregular but imposing appearance.^[140] At the top it would have been wide enough for a walkway with a narrow protective parapet on the outer edge and with hoop-like crenellations.^[140] The term Cyclopean was derived by the latter Greeks of the Classical era who believed that only the mythical giants, the Cyclopes, could have constructed such megalithic structures.^[138] On the other hand, cut stone masonry is used only in and around gateways.^[140] Another typical feature of Mycenaean megalithic construction was the use of a relieving triangle above a lintel block—an opening, often triangular, designed to reduce the weight over the lintel. The space was filled with some lighter stone.^[140]

Cyclopean fortifications were typical of Mycenaean walls, especially at the citadels of Mycenae, Tiryns, Argos, Crisa and Athens, while smaller boulders are found in Mideaand large limestone slabs are found at Gla.^[140] In the Mycenaean settlements found in Epirus and Cyprus, Cyclopean-style walls are also present,^[141][142] as well as in western Anatolia.^[143] Besides the citadels, isolated forts were also erected on various strategic locations. The fortification systems also incorporated technical refinements such as secret cisterns, galleries, sally ports and projecting bastions for the protection of gateways.^[138] On the other hand, the palace of Pylos, although a major center of power, paradoxically appears to have been left without any defensive walls.^[144]

Other architectural features

Mycenaean domestic architecture originates mainly from earlier Middle Helladic traditions (c. 2000–1650 BC) both in shape, as well as in location of settlement. The observed uniformity in domestic architecture came probably as a result of a shared past among the communities of the Greek mainland rather than as a consequence of cultural expansion of the Mycenaean Koine.^[42] Moreover, varying sizes of mudbricks were used in the construction of buildings.^[132]

Contrary to popular belief, some Mycenaean representative buildings already featured roofs made of fired tiles, as in Gla and Midea.^[145]

Warfare

Main article: Military of Mycenaean Greece

The military nature of the Mycenaean Greeks is evident from the numerous weapons unearthed, the use of warrior and combat representations in contemporary art, and the preserved Greek Linear Brecords.^[146][147] The Mycenaeans invested in the development of military infrastructure, with military production and logistics being supervised directly from the palatial centers.^[147][148] According to the Linear B records in the palace of Pylos, every rural community (the damos) was obliged to supply a certain number of men who had to serve in the army. Similar service was also performed by the aristocracy.^[149]

Replicas of Mycenaean swords and cups

Mycenaean armies were initially based on heavy infantry, equipped with spears, large shields and in some occasion armor.^[150] Later in the 13th century BC, Mycenaean warfare underwent major changes both in tactics and weaponry and armed units became more uniform and flexible, while weapons became smaller and lighter.^[147] The spear remained the main weapon among Mycenaean warriors, while the sword played a secondary role in combat.^[151] Other offensive weapons used were bows, maces, axes, slings and javelins.^[151][152]The precise role and contribution of chariots on the battlefield is a matter of dispute due to the lack of sufficient evidence.^[153] It appears that chariots were initially used as fighting vehicles during the 16th to 14th centuries BC, while later, in the 13th century BC, their role was limited to battlefield transport.^[154]

The boar’s tusk helmet was the most identifiable piece of Mycenaean armor in use from the beginning to the collapse of Mycenaean culture. It is also known from several depictions in contemporary art in Greece and the Mediterranean.^[155][156] A representative piece of Mycenaean armor is the Dendra panoply (c. 1450–1400 BC) which consisted of a cuirass of a complete set of armor made up of several elements of bronze.^[157] In general, most features of the later hoplite panoplyof classical Greek antiquity, were already known to Mycenaean Greece.^[158] « Figure-of-eight » shields were the most common type of Mycenaean shields.^[159] During the Late Mycenaean period, smaller types of shields were adopted, either of completely circular shape, or almost circular with a part cut out from their lower edge.^[160]

Art and craftwork

Vessels

 Mycenaean pottery

Silver repoussé rhyton with gold horns, from Grave Circle A at Mycenae, 16th century BC (Archaeological Museum, Athens)

During the Late Mycenaean period (1400–1200 BC), Mycenaean vessels/pottery exhibited similarities spanning a significant area of the Eastern Mediterranean (i.e., from the Levant to Sicily) and possibly reflecting a form of economic and political union centered at Mycenae.^[161] However, the pottery of Crete during this time remained distinct indicating a degree of autonomy on the island.^[161] The Mycenaean Greeks produced in large quantities a variety of diversely-styled vessels such as stirrup jars, large bowls, alabastron, krater and stemmed cups (or kylikes) resembling champagne glasses.^[161]

Stirrup jars (Linear B: ka-ra-re-u, khlareus; « oil vessel »), specifically, were first invented on the island of Crete during the 16th century BC and used widely by the Mycenaeans from 1400 BC onward for transporting and storing wine and oil; the jars were usually pear-shaped or globular.^[161] As for stemmed cups (or kylikes), they evolved from Ephyraean goblets and a large quantity was discovered at a site called the « Potter’s Shop » located in Zygouries.^[161]Mycenaean drinking vessels such as the stemmed cups contained single decorative motifs such as a shell, an octopus or a flower painted on the side facing away from the drinker.^[161] The Mycenaean Greeks also painted entire scenes (called « Pictorial Style ») on their vessels depicting warriors, chariots, horses and deities reminiscent of events described in Homer’s Iliad.^[162]Other items developed by the Mycenaeans include clay lamps,^[163]as well as metallic vessels such as bronze tripod cauldrons (or basins).^[164] A few examples of vessels in faience and ivory are also known.^[165]

Figures and figurines

The Mycenaean period has not yielded sculpture of any great size. The statuary of the period consists for the most part of small terracotta figurines found at almost every Mycenaean site in mainland Greece—in tombs, in settlement debris, and occasionally in cult contexts (Tiryns, Agios Konstantinos on Methana). The majority of these figurines are female and anthropomorphic or zoomorphic. The female figurines can be subdivided into three groups which were popular at different periods: the earliest are the Phi-type, which look like the Greek letter phi and their arms give the upper body of the figurine a rounded shape. The Psi-type looks like the letter Greek psi: these have outstretched upraised arms. The latest (12th century BC) are the Tau-type: these figurines look like the Greek letter tau with folded(?) arms at right angles to the body. Most figurines wear a large ‘polos’ hat.^[166] They are painted with stripes or zigzags in the same manner as the contemporary pottery and presumably made by the same potters. Their purpose is uncertain, but they may have served as both votive objects and toys: some are found in children’s graves but the vast majority of fragments are from domestic rubbish deposits.^[167] The presence of many of these figurines on sites where worship took place in the Archaic and Classical periods (approximately 200 below the sanctuary of Athena at Delphi, others at the temple of Aphaea on Aegina, at the sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas above Epidauros and at Amyklae near Sparta), suggests both that many were indeed religious in nature, perhaps as votives, but also that later places of worship may well have first been used in the Mycenaean period.^[168]

Larger male, female or bovine terracotta wheelmade figures are much rarer. An important group was found in the Temple at Mycenae together with coiled clay snakes,^[169]while others have been found at Tiryns and in the East and West Shrines at Phylakopi on the island of Melos.^[170]

Frescoes

Fresco of a Mycenaean woman

The painting of the Mycenaean age was much influenced by that of the Minoan age. Fragments of wall paintings have been found in or around the palaces (Pylos, Mycenae, Tiryns) and in domestic contexts (Zygouries).^[171] The largest complete wall painting depicting three female figures, probably goddesses, was found in the so-called « cult center » at Mycenae.^[172] Various themes are represented: hunting, bull leaping(tauromachy), battle scenes, processions, etc. Some scenes may be part of mythological narratives, but if so their meaning eludes us. Other frescoes include geometric or stylised motifs, also used on painted pottery (see above).

Burial practices

The usual form of burial during this period was inhumation.^[173] The earliest Mycenaean burials were mostly in individual graves in the form of a pit or a stone-lined cist and offerings were limited to pottery and occasional items of jewellery.^[174]Groups of pit or cist graves containing elite members of the community were sometimes covered by a tumulus (mound) in the manner established since the Middle Helladic.^[175] It has been argued that this form dates back to the Kurgan culture;^[176] however, Mycenaean burials are in actuality an indigenous development of mainland Greece with the Shaft Graves housing native rulers.^[177] Pit and cist graves remained in use for single burials throughout the Mycenaean period alongside more elaborate family graves.^[178] The shaft graves at Mycenae within Grave Circles A and B belonging to the same period represent an alternative manner of grouping elite burials. Next to the deceased were found full sets of weapons, ornate staffs as well as gold and silver cups and other valuable objects which point to their social rank.^[179]

Treasury of Atreus, 13th century BC royal tholos tomb near Mycenae: exterior (left) and interior (right) view.

Beginning also in the Late Helladic period are to be seen communal tombs of rectangular form. Nevertheless, it is difficult to establish whether the different forms of burial represent a social hierarchization, as was formerly thought, with the « tholos » being the tombs of the elite rulers, the individual tombs those of the leisure class, and the communal tombs those of the people. Cremations increased in number over the course of the period, becoming quite numerous in the last phase of the Mycenaean era.^[180] The tholos was introduced during the early 15th century as the new and more imposing form of elite burial.^[181] The most impressive tombs of the Mycenaean era are the monumental royal tombs of Mycenae, undoubtedly intended for the royal family of the city. The most famous is the Treasury of Atreus, a tholos. A total of nine of such tholos tombs are found in the region of Mycenae, while six of them belong to a single period (Late Helladic IIa, c. 1400-1300 BC).^[182] It has been argued that different dynasties or factions may have competed through conspicuous burial.^[183]

Writing

Linear B

Linear B tablets (Mycenaean Greek)

In circa 1600 BC, the Mycenaean Greeks borrowed from the Minoan civilization its syllabic writing system (i.e., Linear A) and developed their own syllabic script known as Linear B.^[184] The Linear B script was utilized by the Mycenaean palaces in Greece for administrative purposes where economic transactions were recorded on clay tablets and some pottery in the Mycenaean dialect of the Greek language.^[184] The Linear B tablets were first discovered in Crete by English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans c. 1900 and later deciphered by English architect and cryptographer Michael Ventris in 1952.^[185][186] Ventris’s discovery of an archaic Greek dialect in the Linear B tablets demonstrated that Mycenaean Greek was « the oldest known Greek dialect, elements of which survived in Homer’s language as a result of a long oral tradition of epic poetry. »^[184]

Legacy

In the 8th century BC, after the end of the so-called Greek Dark Ages, Greece emerged with a network of myths and legends, the greatest of all being that of the Trojan Epic Cycle.^[187] In general, the Greeks of classical antiquity idealized the Mycenaean period as a glorious period of heroes, closeness of the gods and material wealth.^[188] The legends of Homer‘s Epics were especially and generally accepted as part of the Greek past and it was not until the 19th century that scholars began to question Homer’s historicity.^[187] At this time, German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemannundertook the first modern archaeological excavations in Greece at the site of Mycenae in 1876.^[189] Thus, Schliemann set out to prove the historical accuracy of the Iliad by identifying the places described by Homer.^[187]

As part of the Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of later antiquity.^[190] Moreover, the language of the Mycenaeans offers the first written evidence of Greek,^[191] while a significant part of the Mycenaean vocabulary can also be found in modern English.^[192]

The Mycenaean Greeks were also pioneers in the field of engineering, launching large-scale projects unmatched in Europe until the Roman period, such as fortifications, bridges, culverts, aqueducts, dams and roads suitable for wheeled traffic. They also made several architectural innovations, such as the relieving triangle.^[193] They were also responsible for transmitting a wide range of arts and crafts, especially of Minoan origin. The Mycenaean civilization was in general more advanced compared to the Late Bronze Age cultures of the rest of Europe.^[194] Several Mycenaean attributes and achievements were borrowed or held in high regard in later periods; so, it would be no exaggeration to consider Mycenaean Greece as a cradle of civilization.^[193]

• Archaeological Museum of Chora
• Mycenaean language
• Aegean civilizations

References

Citations

1. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f g h} Fields 2004, pp. 10–11.
2. Jump up^ Hammond 1976, p. 139: « Moreover, in this area a small tholos-tomb with Mycenaean pottery of III B style and a Mycenaean acropolis have been reported at Kiperi near Parga, and another Mycenaean acropolis lay above the Oracle of the Dead on the hill called Xylokastro. »
3. Jump up^ Tandy 2001, p. xii (Fig. 1); p. 2: « The strongest evidence for Mycenaean presence in Epirus is found in the coastal zone of the lower Acheron River, which in antiquity emptied into a bay on the Ionian coast known from ancient sources as Glykys Limin(Figure 2-A). »
4. Jump up^ Borza 1992, p. 64: « The existence of a Late Bronze Age Mycenaean settlement in the Petra not only confirms its importance as a route from an early period, but also extends the limits of Mycenaean settlement to the Macedonian frontier. »
5. Jump up^ Aegeo-Balkan Prehistory – Mycenaean Sites
6. Jump up^ van Wijngaarden 2002, Part II: The Levant, pp. 31–124; Bietak & Czerny 2007, Sigrid Deger-Jalkotzy, « Mycenaeans and Philistines in the Levant », pp. 501–629.
7. Jump up^ van Wijngaarden 2002, Part III: Cyprus, pp. 125–202.
8. Jump up^ Peruzzi 1980; van Wijngaarden 2002, Part IV: The Central Mediterranean, pp. 203–260.
9. Jump up^ Morris 1996, « Greece: Dark Age Greece », pp. 253–256.
10. Jump up^ The extent to which Homer attempted to or succeeded in recreating a « Mycenaean » setting is examined in Moses I. FinleyThe World of Odysseus, 1954.
11. Jump up^ Chadwick 1976, p. 617.
12. Jump up^ Latacz 2004, pp. 159, 165.
13. Jump up^ Latacz 2004, p. 120.
14. Jump up^ Latacz 2004, p. 138.
15. Jump up^ Hajnal & Posch 2009, pp. 1–2.
16. ^ Jump up to:^a b Kelder 2010, pp. 46–47.
17. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, pp. 37–38; Latacz 2004, p. 159.
18. ^ Jump up to:^a b Beckman, Bryce & Cline 2012, p. 4.
19. Jump up^ Latacz 2004, p. 123.
20. Jump up^ Bryce 2005, p. 58.
21. Jump up^ Latacz 2004, p. 122.
22. Jump up^ Bryce 2005, p. 357.
23. Jump up^ Burns 2010, p. 92: « The most famous object from Shaft Grave V, if not all of Mycenaean Greece, is the gold mask popularly known as the « mask of Agamemnon ». »
24. ^ Jump up to:^a b Dickinson 1977, pp. 32, 53, 107–108; Dickinson 1999, pp. 97–107.
25. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Schofield 2006, p. 31.
26. Jump up^ Schofield 2006, p. 51.
27. Jump up^ Schofield 2006, p. 48.
28. Jump up^ Schofield 2006, p. 32.
29. Jump up^ Dickinson 1977, pp. 53, 107.
30. Jump up^ Schofield 2006, p. 67.
31. Jump up^ Schofield 2006, pp. 64–68.
32. Jump up^ Castleden 2005, p. 97; Schofield 2006, p. 55.
33. Jump up^ Chadwick 1976, p. 12.
34. Jump up^ Tartaron 2013, p. 28.
35. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Schofield 2006, pp. 71–72.
36. Jump up^ Schofield 2006, p. 75.
37. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Kelder 2010, p. 8.
38. Jump up^ Tartaron 2013, p. 21.
39. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, pp. 50, 52.
40. ^ Jump up to:^a b Bryce 2005, p. 361.
41. Jump up^ Castleden 2005, p. 194: « The Mycenaean colonies in Anatolia were emphatically confined to a narrow coastal strip in the west. There were community-colonies at Ephesus, Iasos and Miletus, but they had little effect on the interior… »
42. ^ Jump up to:^a b Kelder 2010, p. 107.
43. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, pp. 108–109.
44. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, p. 11; Fields 2004, p. 53.
45. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Beckman, Bryce & Cline 2012, p. 6.
46. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, pp. 119–120.
47. Jump up^ Bryce 2005, p. 59; Kelder 2010, p. 23.
48. Jump up^ Bryce 2005, pp. 129, 368.
49. Jump up^ Bryce 2005, p. 193.
50. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, p. 26.
51. Jump up^ Bryce 2005, p. 58; Kelder 2010, pp. 119–120.
52. Jump up^ Bryce 2005, p. 224.
53. ^ Jump up to:^a b Kelder 2010, p. 27.
54. Jump up^ Bryce 2005, pp. 361, 364.
55. Jump up^ Bryce 2005, p. 290.
56. ^ Jump up to:^a b Kelder 2010, p. 34.
57. ^ Jump up to:^a b Cline 2014, p. 130.
58. ^ Jump up to:^a b Castleden 2005, p. 219.
59. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f g} Freeman 2014, p. 126.
60. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, p. 33.
61. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, p. 32.
62. Jump up^ Tartaron 2013, p. 20.
63. Jump up^ Cline 2014, p. 129.
64. ^ Jump up to:^a b Tartaron 2013, p. 18.
65. Jump up^ Mylonas 1966, pp. 227–228.
66. Jump up^ Mylonas 1966, pp. 231–232.
67. Jump up^ Drews 1993, p. 49.
68. ^ Jump up to:^a b Tartaron 2013, p. 19.
69. Jump up^ Freeman 2014, p. 127.
70. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Kelder 2010, p. 9.
71. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, p. 97.
72. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, pp. 8–9.
73. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, pp. 45, 86, 107.
74. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, pp. 86–87.
75. Jump up^ Thomas 1995, p. 350.
76. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e} Chadwick 1976, Chapter 5: Social Structure and Administrative System, pp. 69–83.
77. ^ Jump up to:^a b Kelder 2010, p. 11.
78. Jump up^ Fields 2004, p. 57
79. Jump up^ Chadwick 1976, pp. 71–72.
80. Jump up^ δῆμος. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; An Intermediate Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project.
81. Jump up^ δοῦλος. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project
82. Jump up^ Olsen 2014, p. 7.
83. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Cline 2012, p. 145.
84. Jump up^ Cline 2012, p. 242.
85. ^ Jump up to:^a b Budin 2009, p. 94.
86. Jump up^ Chadwick 1976, p. 152.
87. Jump up^ Olsen 2014, p. 6.
88. Jump up^ Budin 2009, p. 96.
89. Jump up^ Tartaron 2013, p. 24.
90. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Kelder 2010, p. 116.
91. Jump up^ Gilstrap, William; Day, Peter; Kaza, Konstantina; Kardamaki, Elina (9 May 2013). Pottery Production at the Late Mycenaean site of Alimos, Attica. Materials and Industries in the Mycenaean World: Current Approaches to the Study of Materials and Industries in Prehistoric Greece, University of Nottingham, 9–10 May 2013(PDF). Nottingham, UK. pp. 13–14.
92. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, p. 117.
93. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Cline 2007, p. 200.
94. Jump up^ Stubbings 1951, IV: Mycenaean II Pottery in Syria and Palestine; V: Mycenaean III Pottery in Syria and Palestine.
95. Jump up^ Petrie 1894.
96. Jump up^ Cline 2012, pp. 300, 387, 787.
97. Jump up^ Castleden 2005, p. 107: « Huge quantities of olive oil were produced and it must have been a major source of wealth. The simple fact that southern Greece is far more suitable climatically for olive production may explain why the Mycenaean civilization made far greater advances in the south than in the north. The oil had a variety of uses, in cooking, as a dressing, as soap, as lamp oil, and as a base for manufacturing unguents. »
98. Jump up^ Tartaron 2013, p. 29; Kling 1989; Nikolaou 1973; International Archaeological Symposium 1973.
99. Jump up^ Cline 2007, p. 197.
100. Jump up^ Cline 2007, p. 196.
101. Jump up^ Boston University – The Historical Society.
102. Jump up^ Tartaron 2013, p. 22; Feuer 2004, pp. 155–157; Balmuth & Tykot 1998, « The Mycenaeans in Sardinia », p. 400; Runnels & Murray 2001, p. 15.
103. Jump up^ Ridgway 1992, p. 4; Taylour 1958; Fisher 1998; Runnels & Murray 2001, p. 15; Vianello 2005, « Eastern Sicily and the Aeolian Islands », p. 51; Feuer 2004, pp. 155–157; van Wijngaarden 2002, Part IV: The Central Mediterranean, pp. 203-260.
104. Jump up^ de la Cruz 1988, pp. 77–92; Ridgway 1992, p. 3; Runnels & Murray 2001, p. 15.
105. Jump up^ Castleden 2005.
106. Jump up^ « Amber object bearing Linear B symbols » (in German). Freising. 1999. Archived from the original on August 30, 2016. Retrieved February 9, 2018.
107. Jump up^ Budin 2009, p. 53: « One of the most extraordinary examples of the extent of Mycenaean influence was the Pelynt Dagger, a fragment of a Late Helladic III sword, which has come to light in the tomb of a Wessex chieftain in southern England! »
108. Jump up^ Feuer 2004, p. 259.
109. ^ Jump up to:^a b Kelder 2010, p. 115.
110. Jump up^ Castleden 2005, p. 146.
111. Jump up^ Castleden 2005, p. 157.
112. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, p. 114.
113. Jump up^ Castleden 2005, p. 144.
114. Jump up^ Castleden 2005, p. 160.
115. Jump up^ Paul, Adams John (10 January 2010). « Mycenaean Divinities ». Northridge, CA: California State University. Retrieved 25 September 2013.
116. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Castleden 2005, p. 143.
117. Jump up^ Nilsson 1940.
118. Jump up^ Nilsson 1967, Volume I, pp. 500–504; Chadwick 1976, p. 88: « Pa-ja-wo suggested Homeric Paieon, which earlier would have been Paiawon, later Paidn, an alternative name of Apollo, if not again a separate god. »
119. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Chadwick 1976, p. 95
120. Jump up^ Chadwick 1976, pp. 95, 99.
121. Jump up^ Nilsson 1967, Volume I, pp. 565–568.
122. Jump up^ Chadwick 1976, p. 99.
123. Jump up^ Chadwick & Baumbach 1963, p. 176f.
124. Jump up^ Kn V 52 (text 208 in Ventris and Chadwick); Chadwick 1976, p. 88.
125. ^ Jump up to:^a b Mylonas 1966, p. 159.
126. Jump up^ Chadwick 1976, pp. 92–93.
127. Jump up^ Mylonas 1966, p. 159: « Wa-na-ssoi, wa-na-ka-te, (to the two queens and the king). Wanax is best suited to Poseidon, the special divinity of Pylos. The identity of the two divinities addressed as wanassoi, is uncertain. »
128. Jump up^ Chadwick 1976, p. 76.
129. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Fields 2004, p. 19
130. Jump up^ Cline 2012, p. 485
131. Jump up^ Ταράντου, Σοφία (28 April 2009). « Βρήκαν μυκηναϊκό ανάκτορο ». Ethnos.gr. Retrieved 25 September 2013.
132. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f g} Kelder 2010, p. 109
133. Jump up^ Fields 2004, p. 21
134. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, p. 110
135. Jump up^ Fields 2004, p. 20.
136. Jump up^ Fields 2004, p. 45
137. Jump up^ Fields 2004, p. 46
138. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Fields 2004, p. 10.
139. Jump up^ Schofield 2006, p. 78.
140. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e} Fields 2004, p. 11.
141. Jump up^ Tandy 2001, p. 20: « In LH IBBB (ca. 1310-1190), Mycenaean material culture spread widely throughout coastal and inland Epirus; in this period Mycenaean engagement in Epirus was strongest, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Though the Kiperi tholos may have gone out of use early in LH IIIB, the Cyclopean wall found there, as well as those at Ephyra, Kastriza, and Ayia Eleni, cannot have been built (and probably after) LH IIIB. »
142. Jump up^ Iacovou 2013, p. 610. Iacovou quotes Vassos Karageorghis who states that « The introduction of ‘Cyclopean’-type walls at the very beginning of the LC IIIA period at Enkomi, Kition, Sinda and Maa-Palaeokastron was due to the arrival of Mycenaean settlers in Cyprus. »
143. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, p. 127.
144. Jump up^ Fields 2004, p. 44.
145. Jump up^ Wikander 1990, p. 288; Shear 2000, p. 134.
146. Jump up^ Cline 2012, p. 305.
147. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Cline 2012, p. 313.
148. Jump up^ Palaima 1999, pp. 367–368.
149. Jump up^ D’Amato & Salimbeti 2011, p. 10.
150. Jump up^ Howard 2011, p. 7.
151. ^ Jump up to:^a b Howard 2011, p. 50.
152. Jump up^ Schofield 2006, p. 306; D’Amato & Salimbeti 2011, p. 13.
153. Jump up^ Howard 2011, p. 63.
154. Jump up^ Fields 2004, p. 22.
155. Jump up^ Schofield 2006, p. 119.
156. Jump up^ D’Amato & Salimbeti 2011, p. 23.
157. Jump up^ D’Amato & Salimbeti 2011, p. 27.
158. Jump up^ Kagan & Viggiano 2013, p. 36: « In fact, most of the essential items of the « hoplite panoply » were known to Mycenaean Greece, including the metallic helmet and the single thrusting spear. »
159. Jump up^ D’Amato & Salimbeti 2011, p. 20.
160. Jump up^ Cline 2012, p. 312; Schofield 2006, p. 123.
161. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f} Castleden 2005, p. 135.
162. Jump up^ Castleden 2005, pp. 135–137: « Large kraters decorated in Pictorial Style are found almost exclusively in Cyprus, and for a long time it was naturally assumed that they were manufactured there, but a few examples have been found on the Greek mainland, mostly near Mycenae, and it has now been established that they were all manufactured at workshops close to Mycenae, probably at Berbati just to the east of the city, where there are the right clay sources. The ware was probably specifically made for export to Cyprus, where they were used as centerpieces for drinking ceremonies. The decoration appears to have been painted on at high speed and the effect is sometimes crude; Reynold Higgins calls it ‘barbarous’, which is a fair description, but the scenes showing warriors, horses and chariots can still tell us much about everyday life in Mycenaean Greece, and as much again about Mycenaean religious beliefs and mythology. One krater from Enkomi in Cyprus shows a charioteer with his groom riding along, perhaps into battle, while a long-robed god, Zeus perhaps, stands in his way holding the scales of destiny that will decide his fate. It is an archetypal scene reminiscent of several in the Iliad, where the gods are shown intervening in battle and deciding the outcome. »
163. Jump up^ Furumark 1941, p. 78: « There are two types of Mycenaean lamps. One of these (type 321) has a broad horizontal lip with two opposite depressions for wicks. This type is the clay version of a Minoan stone lamp, known in many examples both from Crete and from the Mainland. The other (type 321 a) has one wick-spout and a handle at the opposite side. »
164. Jump up^ Castleden 2005, pp. 56, 166.
165. Jump up^ Schofield 2006, p. 107.
166. Jump up^ French 1971, pp. 101–187
167. Jump up^ See account of their use in K.A. and Diana Wardle « The Child’s Cache at Assiros, Macedonia », in Sally Crawford and Gillian Shepherd (eds): Children, Childhood and Society: Institute for Archaeology and Antiquity Interdisciplinary Studies (Volume I) Oxford: Archaeopress, 2007.
168. Jump up^ Hägg & Marinatos 1981, Robin Hägg, « Official and Popular Cults in Mycenaean Greece », pp. 35–39
169. Jump up^ Moore, Taylour & French 1999
170. Jump up^ Renfrew, Mountjoy & Macfarlane 1985
171. Jump up^ Immerwahr 1990.
172. Jump up^ Taylour 1969, pp. 91–97; Taylour 1970, pp. 270–280.
173. Jump up^ Cavanagh & Mee 1998.
174. Jump up^ Taylour, French & Wardle 2007; Alden 2000.
175. Jump up^ Pelon 1976.
176. Jump up^ Hammond 1967, p. 90.
177. Jump up^ Dickinson 1977, pp. 33–34, 53, 59–60.
178. Jump up^ Lewartowski 2000.
179. Jump up^ Dickinson 1977, pp. 53, 107; Anthony 2007, p. 48.
180. Jump up^ Papadimitriou 2001.
181. Jump up^ Castleden 2005, p. 97.
182. Jump up^ Kelder 2010, p. 95.
183. Jump up^ Graziado 1991, pp. 403–440.
184. ^ Jump up to:^a b c « Linear A and Linear B ». Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 3 March 2016.
185. Jump up^ « Sir Arthur Evans ». Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 3 March 2016.
186. Jump up^ « Michael Ventris ». Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved 3 March 2016.
187. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Castleden 2005, p. 2.
188. Jump up^ Hansen 2004, p. 7.
189. Jump up^ Sansone 2004, « Greece in the Bronze Age », pp. 7–8.
190. Jump up^ Castleden 2005, p. 235.
191. Jump up^ Castleden 2005, p. 228.
192. Jump up^ Vallance, Richard (2015). « Did you Know you Speak Mycenaean Greek? You do! ». academia.edu. Retrieved 30 March 2016. Whether we realize it or not, not only are tens of thousands of English words direct derivatives of ancient Greek, but some are derived even from Mycenaean Greek, which makes them very ancient indeed!
193. ^ Jump up to:^a b Castleden 2005, p. 231
194. Jump up^ Castleden 2005, p. 230.

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• Fisher, Elizabeth A. (1998). The Mycenaeans and Apulia. An Examination of Aegean Bronze Age Contacts with Apulia in Eastern Magna Grecia. Jonsered, Sweden: Astrom.
• Freeman, Charles (2014). Egypt, Greece and Rome: Civilizations of the Ancient Mediterranean (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199651924.
• Furumark, Arne (1941). The Mycenaean Pottery: Analysis and Classification. Stockholm: Victor Pettersons Bokindustriaktiebolag.
• Graziado, Giampaolo (July 1991). « The Process of Social Stratification at Mycenae in the Shaft Grave Period: A Comparative Examination of the Evidence ». American Journal of Archaeology. Archaeological Institute of America. 95 (3): 403–440.
• Hägg, Robin; Marinatos, Nannó (1981). Sanctuaries and Cults in the Aegean Bronze Age: Proceedings of the First International Symposium at the Swedish Institute in Athens, 12-13 May, 1980. Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Athen. ISBN 978-9-18-508643-6.
• Hajnal, Ivo; Posch, Claudia (2009). « Graeco-Anatolian Contacts in the Mycenaean Period ». Sprachwissenschaft Innsbruck Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen. Retrieved 4 April 2015.
• Hammond, Nicholas G.L. (1967). « Tumulus Burial in Albania, the Grave Circles of Mycenae, and the Indo-Europeans ». Annual of the British School at Athens. 62.
• Hammond, Nicholas G.L. (1976). Migrations and Invasions in Greece and Adjacent Areas. Park Ridge, NJ: Noyes Press. ISBN 978-0-8155-5047-1.
• Hansen, William F. (2004). Handbook of Classical Mythology. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-57-607226-4.
• Howard, Dan (2011). Bronze Age Military Equipment. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military. ISBN 9781848842939.
• Iacovou, Maria (2013). « Chapter Twenty-Two Aegean-Style Material Culture in Late Cypriot III: Minimal Evidence, Maximum Interpretation ». In Killebrew, Ann E.; Lehmann, Gunnar. The Philistines and other « Sea Peoples » in Text and Archaeology. Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature. pp. 585–618. ISBN 978-1-58-983721-8.
• Immerwahr, Sara A. (1990). Aegean Painting in the Bronze Age. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-27-100628-4.
• Kagan, Donald; Viggiano, Gregory F. (2013). Men of Bronze: Hoplite Warfare in Ancient Greece. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9781400846306.
• Kelder, Jorrit M. (2010). « The Kingdom of Mycenae: A Great Kingdom in the Late Bronze Age Aegean ». http://www.academia.edu. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press. Retrieved 18 March 2015.
• Kling, Barbara (1989). Mycenaean IIIC:1b and Related Pottery in Cyprus. Lund: P. Aströms Förlag. ISBN 978-9-18-609893-3.
• Latacz, Joachim (2004). Troy and Homer: Towards a Solution of an Old Mystery. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199263080.
• Lewartowski, Kazimierz (2000). Late Helladic Simple Graves: A Study of Mycenaean Burial Customs (BAR International Series 878). Oxford: Archaeopress. ISBN 978-1-84-171079-2.
• Moore, A.D.; Taylour, W.D.; French, Elizabeth Bayard (1999). Well Built Mycenae (Volume 10): The Temple Complex. Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips. ISBN 978-1-84-217000-7.
• Morris, Ian (1996). « Greece: Dark Age Greece ». In Fagan, Brian M. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 253–256. ISBN 9780195076189.
• Mylonas, George Emmanuel (1961). Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Mylonas, George Emmanuel (1966). Mycenae and the Mycenaean Age. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Nikolaou, Kyriakos (1973). The First Myceneans in Cyprus. Nicosia: Department of Antiquities, Cyprus.
• Nilsson, Martin Persson (1940). Greek Popular Religion. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Nilsson, Martin Persson (1967). Geschichte der Griechischen Religion (3rd ed.). Munich: C.H. Beck Verlag.
• Olsen, Barbara A. (2014). Women in Mycenaean Greece: The Linear B Tablets from Pylos and Knossos. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-1-31-774795-6.
• Palaima, Tom (1999). « Mycenaean Militarism from a Textual Perspective » (PDF). Polemos: Warfare in the Aegean Bronze Age (Aegaeum). 19: 367–378. Retrieved 14 October 2015.
• Papadimitriou, Nikolas (2001). Built Chamber Tombs of Middle and Late Bronze Age Date in Mainland Greece and the Islands (BAR International Series 925). Oxford: John and Erica Hedges Ltd. and Archaeopress. ISBN 978-1-84-171170-6.
• Pelon, Olivier (1976). Tholoi, Tumuli et Cercles Funéraires. Paris: Diffusion de Boccard.
• Peruzzi, Emilio (1980). Mycenaeans in Early Latium. Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo & Bizzarri.
• Petrie, Sir William Matthew Flinders (1894). Tell el-Amarna. London: Methuen & Co.
• Renfrew, Colin; Mountjoy, Penelope A.; Macfarlane, Callum (1985). The Archaeology of Cult: The Sanctuary at Phylakopi. London: British School of Archaeology at Athens. ISBN 978-0-50-096021-9.
• Ridgway, David (1992). The First Western Greeks. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-52-142164-5.
• Runnels, Curtis Neil; Murray, Priscilla (2001). Greece before History: An Archaeological Companion and Guide. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-4050-0.
• Sansone, David (2004). Ancient Greek Civilization. Malden (Massachusetts), Oxford (United Kingdom), Carlton (Victoria, Australia): Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ISBN 0-631-23236-2.
• Shear, Ione Mylonas (January 2000). « Excavations on the Acropolis of Midea: Results of the Greek–Swedish Excavations under the Direction of Katie Demakopoulou and Paul Åström ». American Journal of Archaeology. 104 (1): 133–134.
• Schofield, Louise (2006). The Mycenaeans. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum. ISBN 9780892368679.
• Stubbings, Frank H. (1951). Mycenaean Pottery from the Levant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Tandy, David W. (2001). Prehistory and History: Ethnicity, Class and Political Economy. Montréal, Québec, Canada: Black Rose Books Limited. ISBN 1-55164-188-7.
• Tartaron, Thomas F. (2013). Maritime Networks in the Mycenaean World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781107067134.
• Taylour, Lord William; French, Elizabeth Bayard; Wardle, K.A. (2007). Well Built Mycenae (Volume 13): The Helleno-British Excavations within the Citadel at Mycenae 1959-1969. Warminster, England: Aris & Phillips. ISBN 978-1-84-217295-7.
• Taylour, Lord William (1969). « Mycenae, 1968 ». Antiquity. 43: 91–97.
• Taylour, Lord William (1970). « New Light on Mycenaean Religion ». Antiquity. 44: 270–280.
• Taylour, Lord William (1958). Mycenaean Pottery in Italy and Adjacent Areas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Thomas, Carol G. (1995). « The Components of Political Identity in Mycenaean Greece » (PDF). Aegaeum. 12: 349–354. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 September 2013.
• van Wijngaarden, Geert Jan (2002). Use and Appreciation of Mycenaean Pottery in the Levant, Cyprus and Italy (1600–1200 BC). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. ISBN 978-9-05-356482-0.
• Vianello, Andrea (2005). Late Bronze Age Mycenaean and Italic Products in the West Mediterranean: A Social and Economic Analysis. Oxford: Archaeopress. ISBN 978-1-84-171875-0.
• Wardle, K.A.; Wardle, Diana (1997). Cities of Legend: The Mycenaean World. London: Bristol Classical Press. ISBN 978-1-85-399355-8.
• Wikander, Örjan (January–March 1990). « Archaic Roof Tiles the First Generations ». Hesperia. 59 (1): 285–290. doi:10.2307/148143.

Further reading

• Anthony, David W. (2007). The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-05887-3.
• Barlow, Jane Atwood; Bolger, Diane L.; Kling, Barbara (1991). Cypriot Ceramics: Reading the Prehistoric Record. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. ISBN 978-0-92-417110-9.
• Burkert, Walter (1987) [1985]. Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical. Oxford and Malden: Blackwell Publishing Limited. ISBN 978-1-11-872499-6.
• Doumas, Christos (1980). Thera and the Aegean World II: Papers Presented at the Second International Scientific Congress, Santorini, Greece, August 1978. London: Thera and the Aegean World. ISBN 978-0-95-061332-1.
• French, Elizabeth Bayard (2002). Mycenae: Agamemnon’s Capital. Stroud: Tempus. ISBN 0-7524-1951-X.
• Gitin, Seymour; Mazar, Amihay; Stern, Ephraim; Dothan, Trude Krakauer (1998). Mediterranean Peoples in Transition: Thirteenth to Early Tenth Centuries BCE. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society. ISBN 978-9-65-221036-4.
• Güterbock, Hans G. (April 1983). « The Hittites and the Aegean World: Part 1. The Ahhiyawa Problem Reconsidered ». American Journal of Archaeology. 87 (2): 133–138. doi:10.2307/504928.
• Güterbock, Hans G. (June 1984). « Hittites and Akhaeans: A New Look ». Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 128(2): 114–122.
• Hagg, Robin; Wells, Berit (1978). Opuscula Atheniensia XII. Lund: Paul Astroms Forlag. ISBN 978-9-18-508612-2.
• Hänsel, B. (ed.); Podzuweit, Christian (1982). « Die mykenische Welt und Troja ». Südosteuropa zwischen 1600 und 1000 V. Chr (in German). Berlin: Moreland Editions. pp. 65–88.
• Higgins, Reynold Alleyne (1997). Minoan and Mycenaean Art. London and New York: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-50-020303-3.
• Hooker, J.T. (1976). Mycenaean Greece. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Huxley, G.L. (1960). Achaeans and Greeks. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
• Mellink, Machteld J. (April 1983). « The Hittites and the Aegean World: Part 2. Archaeological Comments on Ahhiyawa-Achaians in Western Anatolia ». American Journal of Archaeology. 87 (2): 138–141. doi:10.2307/504929.
• Mountjoy, Penelope A. (1986). Mycenaean Decorated Pottery: A Guide to Identification (Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology 73). Göteborg: Paul Aströms Forlag. ISBN 978-9-18-609832-2.
• Nur, Amos; Cline, Eric (2000). « Poseidon’s Horses: Plate Tectonics and Earthquake Storms in the Late Bronze Age Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean » (PDF). Journal of Archaeological Science. 27(1): 43–63. doi:10.1006/jasc.1999.0431. Archived from the original(PDF) on 21 September 2006.
• Preziosi, Donald; Hitchcock, Louise A. (1999). Aegean Art and Architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-284208-4.
• Robertson, Martin (1959). Les Grands siècles de la peinture: La peinture Grecque. Genève-Paris: Skira.
• Skeat, T.C. (1934). The Dorians in Archaeology. London: de la More Press.
• Taylour, Lord William (1990) [1964]. The Mycenaeans. London: Thames & Hudson Limited. ISBN 978-0-50-027586-3.
• Vermeule, Emily; Karageorghis, Vassos (1982). Mycenaean Pictorial Vase Painting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-67-459650-4.
• Vermeule, Emily Townsend (March 1960). « The Fall of the Mycenaean Empire ». Archaeology. Archaeological Institute of America. 13(1): 66–76. doi:10.2307/41663738.
• Weiss, Barry (June 1982). « The Decline of Late Bronze Age Civilization as a Possible Response to Climatic Change ». Climatic Change. 4 (2): 173–198. doi:10.1007/bf00140587. ISSN 0165-0009.

External links

• Godart, Louis (2013) [January 1997]. « Les citadelles mycéniennes » (in French). Clio.
• Hemingway, Seán; Hemingway, Colette (2000–2013). « Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History: Mycenaean Civilization ». The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Horejs, Barbara; Pavúk, Peter, eds. (2007). « The Aegeo-Balkan Prehistory Project ». The Aegeo-Balkan Prehistory Team.
• Rutter, Jeremy B. « Prehistoric Archeology of the Aegean ». Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College.
• Salimbetti, Andrea (September 2015). « The Greek Age of Bronze ».
• « The Mycenaeans and Italy: The Archaeological and Archaeometric Ceramic Evidence ». University of Glasgow School of Humanities.
• Wright, James C. (2002). « The Nemea Valley Archaeological Project: Internet Edition ». Bryn Mawr College Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greece

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Demeter

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Demeter

A marble statue of Demeter, National Roman Museum

Giacobbe Giusti, Demeter

Demeter drives her horse-drawn chariot containing her daughter Persephone-Kore at Selinunte, Sicily, 6th century BC.

Demeter
Goddess of agriculture, harvest, fertility and sacred law. Giacobbe Giusti, Demeter
A marble statue of Demeter, National Roman Museum
Other names	Sito, Thesmophoros
Abode	Mount Olympus
Symbol	Cornucopia, wheat, torch, bread
Festivals	Thesmophoria
Personal information
Consort	Iasion, Zeus, Oceanus, Karmanor, Poseidon and Triptolemus
Children	Persephone, Despoina, Arion, Plutus, Philomelus, Eubuleus, Chrysothemis, and Amphitheus I
Parents	Cronus and Rhea
Siblings	Hestia, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, Zeus, Chiron
Roman equivalent	Ceres

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In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Demeter(/dɪˈmiːtər/; Attic: Δημήτηρ Dēmḗtēr, pronounced [dɛːmɛ́ːtɛːr]; Doric: Δαμάτηρ Dāmā́tēr) is the goddess of the harvest and agriculture, who presided over grains and the fertility of the earth. Her cult titles include Sito (Σιτώ), « she of the Grain »,^[1] as the giver of food or grain,^[2] and Thesmophoros (θεσμός, thesmos: divine order, unwritten law; φόρος, phoros: bringer, bearer), « Law-Bringer », as a mark of the civilized existence of agricultural society.^[3]

Though Demeter is often described simply as the goddess of the harvest, she presided also over the sacred law, and the cycle of life and death. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries that predated the Olympian pantheon. In the Linear BMycenean Greek tablets of c. 1400–1200 BC found at Pylos, the « two queens and the king » may be related with Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon.^[4][5]

Her Roman equivalent is Ceres.^[6]

Etymology

It is possible that Demeter appears in Linear A as da-ma-te on three documents (AR Zf 1 and 2, and KY Za 2), all three apparently dedicated in religious situations and all three bearing just the name (i-da-ma-te on AR Zf 1 and 2).^[7] It is unlikely that Demeter appears as da-ma-te in a Linear B (Mycenean Greek) inscription (PY En 609); the word 𐀅𐀔𐀳, da-ma-te, probably refers to « households ».^[8][9] On the other hand, 𐀯𐀵𐀡𐀴𐀛𐀊, si-to-po-ti-ni-ja, « Potnia of the Grain », is regarded as referring to her Bronze Age predecessor or to one of her epithets.^[10]

Demeter’s character as mother-goddess is identified in the second element of her name meter (μήτηρ) derived from Proto-Indo-European*méh₂tēr (mother).^[11] In antiquity, different explanations were already proffered for the first element of her name. It is possible that Da(Δᾶ),^[12] a word which corresponds to Ge (Γῆ) in Attic, is the Doric form of De (Δῆ), « earth », the old name of the chthonic earth-goddess, and that Demeter is « Mother-Earth ».^[13] This root also appears in the Linear B inscription E-ne-si-da-o-ne, « earth-shaker », as an aspect of the god Poseidon.^[14][15] However, the dā element in the name of Demeter is not so simply equated with « earth » according to John Chadwick.^[16][17]

The element De– may be connected with Deo, an epithet of Demeter^[18] probably derived from the Cretan word dea (δηά), Ionic zeia (ζειά)—variously identified with emmer, spelt, rye, or other grains by modern scholars—so that she is the Mother and the giver of food generally.^[19][20]Wanax (wa-na-ka) was her male companion (Greek: Πάρεδρος, Paredros) in Mycenaean cult.^[21] The Arcadian cult links her to the god Poseidon, who probably substituted the male companion of the Great Goddess ; Demeter may therefore be related to a Minoan Great Goddess(Cybele).^[22]

An alternative Proto-Indo-European etymology comes through Potnia and Despoina, where Des-represents a derivative of PIE *dem (house, dome), and Demeter is « mother of the house » (from PIE *dems-méh₂tēr).^[23]

Agricultural deity

Didrachme from Paros island, struck at the Cyclades and representing Demeter

A Greek fresco depicting the goddess Demeter, from Panticapaeumin the ancient Bosporan Kingdom (a client state of the Roman Empire), 1st century AD, Crimea.

According to the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates, Demeter’s greatest gifts to humankind were agriculture, particularly of cereals, and the Mysteries which give the initiate higher hopes in this life and the afterlife.^[24] These two gifts were intimately connected in Demeter’s myths and mystery cults. In Homer’s Odyssey she is the blond-haired goddess who separates the chaff from the grain.^[25] In Hesiod, prayers to Zeus-Chthonios (chthonic Zeus) and Demeter help the crops grow full and strong.^[26] Demeter’s emblem is the poppy, a bright red flower that grows among the barley.^[27]

In Hesiod‘s Theogony, Demeter is the daughter of Cronus and Rhea. At the marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia, Demeter lured Iasion away from the other revelers. They had intercourse in a ploughed furrow in Crete, and she gave birth to a son, Ploutos.^[28] Her daughter by Zeus was Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.^[29]

Festivals and cults

Main articles: Eleusinian Mysteries and Thesmophoria

Demeter’s two major festivals were sacred mysteries. Her Thesmophoria festival (11–13 October) was women-only.^[30] Her Eleusinian mysteries were open to initiates of any gender or social class. At the heart of both festivals were myths concerning Demeter as Mother and Persephone as her daughter.

Mythology

Demeter and Persephone

Giacobbe Giusti, Demeter

Demeter drives her horse-drawn chariot containing her daughter Persephone-Kore at Selinunte, Sicily, 6th century BC.

Demeter rejoiced, for her daughter was by her side.

Demeter’s virgin daughter Persephone was abducted to the underworld by Hades. Demeter searched for her ceaselessly, preoccupied with her loss and her grief. The seasons halted; living things ceased their growth, then began to die.^[31]Faced with the extinction of all life on earth, Zeussent his messenger Hermes to the underworld to bring Persephone back. Hades agreed to release her if she had eaten nothing while in his realm; but Persephone had eaten a small number of pomegranate seeds. This bound her to Hades and the underworld for certain months of every year, either the dry Mediterranean summer, when plant life is threatened by drought,^[32] or the autumn and winter.^[33] There are several variations on the basic myth. In the Homeric hymn to Demeter, Hecate assists in the search and later becomes Persephone’s underworld attendant.^[34] In another, Persephone willingly and secretly eats the pomegranate seeds, thinking to deceive Hades, but is discovered and made to stay. Contrary to popular perception, Persephone’s time in the underworld does not correspond with the unfruitful seasons of the ancient Greek calendar, nor her return to the upper world with springtime.^[35] Demeter’s descent to retrieve Persephone from the underworld is connected to the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Demeter and her daughter Persephone were usually called:^[36]

• The goddesses, often distinguished as « the older » and « the younger » in Eleusis.
• Demeters, in Rhodes and Sparta
• The thesmophoroi, « the legislators » in the Thesmophoria.
• The Great Goddesses, in Arcadia.
• The mistresses in Arcadia.^[37]

In Mycenaean Pylos, Demeter and Persephone were probably called « queens » (wa-na-ssoi).^[5]

The myth of the capture of Persephone seems to be pre-Greek. In the Greek version, Ploutos (πλούτος, wealth) represents the wealth of the corn that was stored in underground silos or ceramic jars (pithoi). Similar subterranean pithoiwere used in ancient times for funerary practices. At the beginning of the autumn, when the corn of the old crop is laid on the fields, she ascends and is reunited with her mother Demeter, for at this time the old crop and the new meet each other.^[38]

According to the personal mythology of Robert Graves,^[39] Persephone is not only the younger self of Demeter,^[40] she is in turn also one of three guises of the Triple Goddess – Kore (the youngest, the maiden, signifying green young grain), Persephone (in the middle, the nymph, signifying the ripe grain waiting to be harvested), and Hecate (the eldest of the three, the crone, the harvested grain), which to a certain extent reduces the name and role of Demeter to that of group name. Before her abduction, she is called Kore; and once taken she becomes Persephone (‘she who brings destruction’).^[41]

Demeter at Eleusis

Giacobbe Giusti, Demeter

Eleusinian trio: Persephone, Triptolemos, and Demeter, on a marble bas-relief from Eleusis, 440–430 BC

Demeter’s search for her daughter Persephone took her to the palace of Celeus, the King of Eleusis in Attica. She assumed the form of an old woman, and asked him for shelter. He took her in, to nurse Demophon and Triptolemus, his sons by Metanira. To reward his kindness, she planned to make Demophon immortal; she secretly anointed the boy with ambrosia and laid him in the flames of the hearth, to gradually burn away his mortal self. But Metanira walked in, saw her son in the fire and screamed in fright. Demeter abandoned the attempt. Instead, she taught Triptolemus the secrets of agriculture, and he in turn taught them to any who wished to learn them. Thus, humanity learned how to plant, grow and harvest grain. The myth has several versions; some are linked to figures such as Eleusis, Rarusand Trochilus. The Demophon element may be based on an earlier folk tale.^[42]

Demeter and Poseidon

Giacobbe Giusti, Demeter

Roman copy after a Greek original from the 4th century BC, from the National Roman Museum

Demeter and Poseidon‘s names appear in the earliest scratched notes in Linear B found at Mycenae and Mycenaean Pylos; e-ne-si-da-o-ne (earth-shaker) for Poseidon, and si-to-po-ti-ni-ja, who is probably related with Demeter.^[43] Poseidon carries frequently the title wa-na-ka (wanax) in Linear Binscriptions, as king of the underworld, and his title E-ne-si-da-o-ne indicates his chthonic nature. In the cave of Amnisos (Crete) Enesidaon is related with the cult of Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth.^[44] She was related with the annual birth of the divine child.^[45] During the Bronze Age, a goddess of nature, dominated both in Minoan and Mycenean cult, and Wanax (wa-na-ka) was her male companion (paredros) in Mycenean cult.^[44]She and her paredros survived in the Eleusinian cult, where the following words were uttered :  » Mighty Potnia bore a strong son »^[46] However, there is no evidence that originally the name of Potnia was Demeter.

Tablets from Pylos record sacrificial goods destined for « the Two Queens and Poseidon » (« to the Two Queens and the King » :wa-na-ssoi, wa-na-ka-te). The « Two Queens » may be related with Demeter and Persephone, or their precursors, goddesses who were not associated with Poseidon in later periods.^[5] An exception is the myth of isolated Arcadia in southern Greece. Despoina, is daughter of Demeter and PoseidonHippios, Horse-Poseidon. These myths seem to be connected with the first Greek-speaking people who came from the north during the Bronze age. Poseidon represents the river spirit of the underworld and he appears as a horse as it often happens in northern-European folklore. He pursues the mare-Demeter and she bears one daughter who obviously originally had the form or the shape of a mare too. Demeter and Despoina were closely connected with springs and animals, related to Poseidon as a God of waters and especially with Artemis, the mistress of the animals and the goddess of, among others, the Hunt.

Demeter as mare-goddess was pursued by Poseidon, and hid from him among the horses of King Onkios, but could not conceal her divinity. In the form of a stallion, Poseidon caught and covered her. Demeter was furious (erinys) at Poseidon’s assault; in this furious form, she is known as Demeter Erinys. But she washed away her anger in the River Ladon, becoming Demeter Lousia, the « bathed Demeter ».^[47] « In her alliance with Poseidon, » Karl Kerenyi noted,^[48] « she was Earth, who bears plants and beasts, and could therefore assume the shape of an ear of grain or a mare. » She bore a daughter Despoina (Δέσποινα: the « Mistress »), whose name should not be uttered outside the Arcadian Mysteries,^[49] and a horse named Arion, with a black mane and tail.

In Arcadia, Demeter’s mare-form was worshiped into historical times. Her xoanon of Phigaleia shows how the local cult interpreted her: a Medusa type with a horse’s head with snaky hair, holding a dove and a dolphin, probably representing her power over air and water.^[50]

The second mountain, Mt. Elaios, is about 30 stades from Phigaleia, and has a cave sacred to Demeter Melaine [« Black »]… the Phigalians say, they accounted the cave sacred to Demeter, and set up a wooden image in it. The image was made in the following fashion: it was seated on a rock, and was like a woman in all respects save the head. She had the head and hair of a horse, and serpents and other beasts grew out of her head. Her chiton reached right to her feet, and she held a dolphin in one hand, a dove in the other. Why they made the xoanon like this should be clear to any intelligent man who is versed in tradition. They say they named her Black because the goddess wore black clothing. However, they cannot remember who made this xoanon or how it caught fire; but when it was destroyed the Phigalians gave no new image to the goddess and largely neglected her festivals and sacrifices, until finally barrenness fell upon the land.

— Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.42.1ff.

Titles and functions

Giacobbe Giusti, Demeter

Demeter, enthroned and extending her hand in a benediction toward the kneeling Metaneira, who offers the triune wheat (c. 340 BC)

Demeter’s epithets show her many religious functions. She was the « Corn-Mother » who blesses the harvesters. Some cults interpreted her as « Mother-Earth ». Demeter may be linked to goddess-cults of Minoan Crete, and embody aspects of a pre-Hellenic Mother Goddess.^[51] It is possible that the title « Mistress of the labyrinth », which appears in a Linear B inscription, belonged originally to Sito (« [she] of the grain »), the Great Mother Demeter and that in the Eleusinian mysteries this title was kept by her daughter Persephone (Kore or Despoina).^[52] However, there is no evidence that the name of Potnia in Eleusis was originally Demeter. Her other epithets include:

Giacobbe Giusti, Demeter

Triptolemus, Demeter and Persephone by the Triptolemos-painter, c. 470 BC, Louvre

• Aganippe(« the Mare who destroys mercifully », « Night-Mare »)
• Potnia (« mistress ») in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Hera especially, but also Artemisand Athena, are addressed as « potnia » as well.
• Despoina (« mistress of the house »), a Greek word similar to the Mycenean potnia. This title was also applied to Persephone, Aphroditeand Hecate.
• Thesmophoros (« giver of customs » or even « legislator »), a role that links her to the even more ancient goddess Themis,^[3] derived from thesmos, the unwritten law.^[53] This title was connected with the Thesmophoria, a festival of secret women-only rituals in Athens connected with marriage customs.
• Erinys (« implacable »),^[54] with a function similar with the function of the avenging Dike(Justice), goddess of moral justice based on custom rules who represents the divine retribution,^[55] and the Erinyes, female ancient chthonic deities of vengeance and implacable agents of retribution.
• Chloe (« the green shoot »),^[56] that invokes her powers of ever-returning fertility, as does Chthonia.
• Chthonia (« in the ground »), chthonic Demeter in Sparta.^[57]
• Anesidora (« sending up gifts from the earth ») applied to Demeter in Pausanias 1.31.4, also appears inscribed on an Attic ceramic a name for Pandora on her jar. There was a temple of Demeter under this name in Phlius in Attica.^[58][59][60]
• Europa (« broad face or eyes ») at Livadeia of Boeotia. She was the nurse of Trophonios to whom a chthonic cult and oracle was dedicated.^[61]
• Kidaria in the mysteries of Pheneos in Arcadia^[62] where the priest put on the mask of Demeter kept in a secret place. It seems that the cult was connected with the underworld and with an agrarian magic.^[63]

Demeter might also be invoked in the guises of:

• Malophoros (« apple-bearer » or « sheep-bearer », Pausanias 1.44.3)
• Lusia (« bathing », Pausanias 8.25.8)
• Thermasia (« warmth », Pausanias 2.34.6)
• Achaea, the name by which she was worshipped at Athens by the Gephyraeans who had emigrated from Boeotia.^[64][65]

• Poppy goddess:

Theocritus, wrote of an earlier role of Demeter as a poppy goddess:

For the Greeks Demeter was still a poppy goddess

Bearing sheaves and poppies in both hands.— Idyll vii.157

In a clay statuette from Gazi (Heraklion Museum, Kereny 1976 fig 15), the Minoan poppy goddess wears the seed capsules, sources of nourishment and narcosis, in her diadem. « It seems probable that the Great Mother Goddess, who bore the names Rhea and Demeter, brought the poppy with her from her Cretan cult to Eleusis, and it is certain that in the Cretan cult sphere, opium was prepared from poppies » (Kerenyi 1976, p 24).

Cult places

Giacobbe Giusti, Demeter

Azes coin in India, with Demeter and Hermes.

Major cults to Demeter are known at Eleusis in Attica, Hermion (in Crete), Megara, Celeae, Lerna, Aegila, Munychia, Corinth, Delos, Priene, Akragas, Iasos, Pergamon, Selinus, Tegea, Thoricus, Dion (in Macedonia)^[66] Lykosoura, Mesembria, Enna(Sicily), and Samothrace.

An ancient Amphictyony, probably the earliest centred on the cult of Demeter at Anthele(Ἀνθήλη), which lay on the coast of Malis south of Thessaly. This was the locality of Thermopylae.^[67][68]

After the « First Sacred War », the Anthelan body was known thenceforth as the Delphic Amphictyony^[67]

Demeter of Mysia had a seven-day festival at Pellené in Arcadia.^[69] Pausanias passed the shrine to Demeter at Mysia on the road from Mycenae to Argos but all he could draw out to explain the archaic name was a myth of an eponymous Mysius who venerated Demeter.^{[citation needed]}

Genealogy

[hide]Demeter’s family tree [70]
Uranus Gaia Uranus’ genitals Cronus Rhea Zeus Hera Poseidon Hades DEMETER Hestia     a [71]      b [72] Ares Hephaestus Metis Athena [73] Leto Apollo Artemis Maia Hermes Semele Dionysus Dione     a [74]      b [75] Aphrodite

Consorts and children

1. Zeus
   1. Persephone
2. Poseidon
   1. Despoina
   2. Arion
3. Iasion
   1. Plutus
   2. Philomelus
4. Karmanor
   1. Eubuleus
   2. Chrysothemis
5. Triptolemus
   1. Amphitheus I
6. Oceanus
   1. Dmia^[76]

Portrayals

• Demeter was frequently associated with images of the harvest, including flowers, fruit, and grain. She was also sometimes pictured with her daughter Persephone.
• The Black Demeter, a sculpture made by Onatas.
• Demeter is not generally portrayed with a consort: the exception is Iasion, the youth of Crete who lay with Demeter in a thrice-ploughed field, and was sacrificed afterwards by a jealous Zeus with a thunderbolt.
• Demeter is assigned the zodiac constellation Virgo the Virgin by Marcus Manilius in his 1st century Roman work Astronomicon. In art, constellation Virgo holds Spica, a sheaf of wheat in her hand and sits beside constellation Leo the Lion.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Greek mythology portal
• Hellenismos portal

• Eleusinian Mysteries
• 1108 Demeter, a main beltasteroid 26 km in diameter, which was discovered in 1929 by Karl Wilhelm Reinmuthat Heidelberg.
• Despoina
• Greek mythology in popular culture
• Isis and Osiris
• Poppy goddess
• Potnia
• Hades
• Law of Demeter, a software design guideline named in honor of Demeter.
• Ningishzida, an earlier Mesopotamian deity connected with vegetation and the underworld

Notes

1. Jump up^ Σιτώ. Cf. σῖτος. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project.
2. Jump up^ Eustathius of Thessalonica, scholia on Homer, 265.
3. ^ Jump up to:^a b Themis was an ancient Greek goddess, embodiment of divine order, law. She was the organizer of the communal affairs and she evoked the social order: Finley, The World of Odysseus, rev. ed. Viking Press. (1978:78 note 82)
4. Jump up^ John Chadwick, The Mycenean World. Cambridge University Press, 1976.
5. ^ Jump up to:^a b c « Wa-na-ssoi, wa-na-ka-te, (to the two queens and the king). Wanax is best suited to Poseidon, the special divinity of Pylos. The identity of the two divinities addressed as wanassoi, is uncertain « : George Mylonas (1966) Mycenae and the Mycenean age » p.159 :Princeton University Press
6. Jump up^ Larousse Desk Reference Encyclopedia, The Book People, Haydock, 1995, p. 215.
7. Jump up^ Y. Duhoux, « LA > B da-ma-te = Déméter? Sur la langue du linéaire A, » Minos 29/30 (1994-1995): 289–294.
8. Jump up^ Y. Duhoux and A. Morpurgo-Davies, Companion to Linear B, vol. 2 (2011), p. 26. But see Ventris/Chadwick,Documents in Mycenean Greek p.242: B.Dietriech (2004):The origins of the Greek religion Bristol Phoenix Press. p.172
9. Jump up^ « da-ma-te ». Deaditerranean. Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B. « PY 609 En (1) ». DĀMOS: Database of Mycenaean at Oslo. University of Oslo.
10. Jump up^ Inscription MY Oi 701. « si-to-po-ti-ni-ja ». Deaditerranean. Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B. « The Linear B word si-to ». Palaeolexicon. Word study tool of Ancient languages. « MY 701 Oi (63) ». DĀMOS: Database of Mycenaean at Oslo. University of Oslo. Cf. σῖτος, Σιτώ.
11. Jump up^ Online Etymology Dictionary « mother »
12. Jump up^ Δᾶ in Liddell and Scott.
13. Jump up^ Online Etymology Dictionary « Demeter »
14. Jump up^ Adams, John Paul, Mycenean divinities – List of handouts for California State University Classics 315. Retrieved 7 March 2011.
15. Jump up^ R. S. P. Beekes. Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Brill, 2009, p. 324.
16. Jump up^ Chadwick, The Mycenaean World, Cambridge University Press, 1976, p. 87) « Every Greek was aware of the maternal functions of Demeter; if her name bore the slightest resemblance to the Greek word for ‘mother’, it would inevitably have been deformed to emphasize that resemblance. […] How did it escape transformation into *Gāmātēr, a name transparent to any Greek speaker? » Compare the Latin transformation Iuppiter and Diespiter vis-a-vis *Deus pater.
17. Jump up^ Δημήτηρ. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; An Intermediate Greek–English Lexiconat the Perseus Project.
18. Jump up^ Orphic Hymn 40 to Demeter (translated by Thomas Taylor: « O universal mother Deo famed, august, the source of wealth and various names ».
19. Jump up^ Compare sanskr. yava, lit. yavai, Δά is probably derived from δέFα :Martin Nilsson, Geschichte der Griechischen Religion, vol. I (Verlag C.H.Beck) pp 461-462.
20. Jump up^ Harisson ,Prolegomena, p.272
21. Jump up^ Dietrich, p.181
22. Jump up^ Nilsson, 1967:444
23. Jump up^ Frisk, Griechisches Etymological Woerterbuch. Entry 1271
24. Jump up^ Isocrates, Panegyricus 4.28: « When Demeter came to our land, in her wandering after the rape of Kore, and, being moved to kindness towards our ancestors by services which may not be told save to her initiates, gave these two gifts, the greatest in the world — the fruits of the earth, which have enabled us to rise above the life of the beasts, and the holy rite, which inspires in those who partake of it sweeter hopes regarding both the end of life and all eternity ».
25. Jump up^ Odyssey 5.499
26. Jump up^ Hesiod Works and Days, 465
27. Jump up^ Graves, Robert (1960). Greek Gods and Heroes. Dell Laurel-Leaf.
28. Jump up^ Odyssey 5.125; Theogony 969 ff.
29. Jump up^ Hesiod, Theogony 912; Homeric Hymn to Demeter (2); Pausnias, Description of Greece8.37.9
30. Jump up^ Benko, Stephen, The virgin goddess: studies in the pagan and Christian roots of mariology,BRILL, 2004, note 111 on pp. 63 – 4, and p. 175.
31. Jump up^ Karl Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951, pp.232 – 41 and notes 784 – 98.
32. Jump up^ As in Burkert, Greek Religion (Harvard, 1985) p. 160.
33. Jump up^ As in Porphyry
34. Jump up^ Homer Hymn to Demeter, trans. Gregory Nagy, lines 50 – 60, 438 – 440.
35. Jump up^ Graf, « Demeter » in Brill’s New Pauly
36. Jump up^ Martin Nilsson (1967) Die Geschichte der Griechische Religion pp.463, 477
37. Jump up^ Pausanias.Description of Greece 5.15.4, 5, 6
38. Jump up^ gpr Martin Nilsson, Greek Popular Religion.pp 48-50
39. Jump up^ Graves’ work on Greek myth was often criticized; see The White Goddess#Criticism and The Greek Myths.
40. Jump up^ The idea that Kore (the maiden) is not Demeter’s daughter, but Demeter’s own younger self, was discussed much earlier than Graves, in Lewis Richard Farnell (1896), The Cults of the Greek States, volume 3, p.121.
41. Jump up^ Graves, Robert. The Greek Myths. Penguin, 1990. ISBN 0-14-001026-2. 24. pp.94–95.
42. Jump up^ Nilsson (1940), p. 50: « The Demophon story in Eleusis is based on an older folk-tale motif which has nothing to do with the Eleusinian Cult. It is introduced in order to let Demeter reveal herself in her divine shape ».
43. Jump up^ George Mylonas (1966), « Mycenae and the Mycenean world « . p.159. Princeton University Press
44. ^ Jump up to:^a b Dietrich pp. 181-185
45. Jump up^ Dietrich pp. 141
46. Jump up^ Dietrich:166-167
47. Jump up^ Other ritually bathed goddesses were Argive Hera and Cybele; Aphrodite renewed her own powers bathing herself in the sea.
48. Jump up^ Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951:185.
49. Jump up^ « In Arcadia she was also a second goddess in the Mysteries of her daughter, the unnameable, who was invoked only as ‘Despoina’, the ‘Mistress' » (Karl Kerenyi, Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter(Princeton University Press) 1967:31f, instancing Pausanias, viii.37.9.
50. Jump up^ L. H. Jeffery (1976). Archaic Greece: The Greek city states c. 800-500 B.C. (Ernest Benn Limited) p 23 ISBN 0-510-03271-0
51. Jump up^ A Linear A inscription can tentatively be read as DA-MA-TE (KY Za 2), which is possibly the name of the Mother Goddess. [1]
52. Jump up^ R.Wunderlich (1975),The secret of Creta.Souvenir Press Ltd.London p 319
53. Jump up^ L. H. Jeffery (1976). Archaic Greece: The Greek city states c. 800-500 B.C. (Ernest Benn Limited) p. 42 ISBN 0-510-03271-0
54. Jump up^ Pausanias 8.25.50
55. Jump up^ C.M. Bowra (1957), The Greek Experience(1957:87, 169).
56. Jump up^ Pausanias 1.22.3.
57. Jump up^ Pausanias 3.14.5
58. Jump up^ Anesidora: inscribed against her figure on a white-ground kylix in the British Museum, B.M. 1881,0528.1, from Nola, painted by the Tarquinia painter, ca 470–460 BC (British Museum on-line catalogue entry)
59. Jump up^ Hesychius of Alexandria s.v.
60. Jump up^ Scholiast, On Theocritus ii. 12.
61. Jump up^ Pausanias.Guide to Greece.9.39.2-5
62. Jump up^ Pausanias 8.13.13
63. Jump up^ Martin Nilsson (1967).Die Geschichte der Griechiesche Religion Vol. I pp 477-478.
64. Jump up^ Herodotus, v. 61; Plutarch Isis et Osiris p. 378, d
65. Jump up^ Smith, William (1867). « Achaea (1) ». In Rachel, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. 1. Boston. p. 8.
66. Jump up^ Cohen, A, Art in the Era of Alexander the Great: Paradigms of Manhood and Their Cultural Traditions, Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 213. Googlebook preview
67. ^ Jump up to:^a b L. H. Jeffery (1976) Archaic Greece: The City States c. 700–500 BC. Ernest Benn Ltd., London & Tonbridge pp. 72, 73, 78 ISBN 0-510-03271-0
68. Jump up^ The Parian marble. Entry No 5: « When Amphictyon son of Hellen became king of Thermopylae brought together those living round the temple and named them Amphictyones; [2]
69. Jump up^ Pausanias, 7. 27, 9.
70. Jump up^ This chart is based upon Hesiod‘s Theogony, unless otherwise noted.
71. Jump up^ According to Homer, Iliad 1.570–579, 14.338, Odyssey 8.312, Hephaestus was apparently the son of Hera and Zeus, see Gantz, p. 74.
72. Jump up^ According to Hesiod, Theogony 927–929, Hephaestus was produced by Hera alone, with no father, see Gantz, p. 74.
73. Jump up^ According to Hesiod, Theogony 886–890, of Zeus’ children by his seven wives, Athena was the first to be conceived, but the last to be born; Zeus impregnated Metis then swallowed her, later Zeus himself gave birth to Athena « from his head », see Gantz, pp. 51–52, 83–84.
74. Jump up^ According to Hesiod, Theogony 183–200, Aphrodite was born from Uranus’ severed genitals, see Gantz, pp. 99–100.
75. Jump up^ According to Homer, Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus (Iliad 3.374, 20.105; Odyssey 8.308, 320) and Dione (Iliad5.370–71), see Gantz, pp. 99–100.
76. Jump up^ Hesychius of Alexandria, s. v.

References

• Walter Burkert (1985) Greek Religion, Harvard University Press, 1985.
• Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire, D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths, 1962. An illustrated book of Greek myths retold for children.
• Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, Two volumes: ISBN 978-0-8018-5360-9 (Vol. 1), ISBN 978-0-8018-5362-3 (Vol. 2).
• Jane Ellen Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 1903
• Hesiod, Theogony, in The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Homer, The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Homer; The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
• Karl Kerenyi, Eleusis: archetypal image of mother and daughter, 1967.
• Karl Kerenyi, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976
• Martin P. Nilsson, Greek Popular Religion, 1940. Sacred-texts.com
• Pausanias, Pausanias Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918.
• Carl Ruck and Danny Staples, The World of Classical Myth, 1994.
• Graf, Fritz. « Demeter, » Brill’s New Pauly, Ed. Hubert Cancik and et al. Brill Reference Online. Web. 27 September 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demeter

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Pythia

Giacobbe Giusti, Pythia

Modern photograph of the ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi

Giacobbe Giusti, Pythia

Paestan red-figure bell-kraterdepicting the Delphic oracle sitting atop her tripod, circa 330 BC

 Python (mythology)

Giacobbe Giusti, Pythia

Lycurgus Consulting the Pythia (1835/1845), as imagined by Eugène Delacroix

.

The Pythia (/ˈpɪθiə/,^[1] Ancient Greek: Πῡθίᾱ [pyːˈtʰi.aː]) was the name of the High Priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi who also served as the oracle, commonly known as the Oracle of Delphi.

The name Pythia is derived from Pytho, which in myth was the original name of Delphi. In etymology, the Greeks derived this place name from the verb, πύθειν (púthein) « to rot », which refers to the sickly sweet smell of the decomposition of the body of the monstrous Python after she was slain by Apollo.^[2] Pythia was the House of Snakes.

The Pythia was established at the latest in the 8th century BC,^[3] and was widely credited for her prophecies inspired by being filled by the spirit of the god (or enthusiasmos), in this case Apollo. The Pythian priestess emerged pre-eminent by the end of 7th century BC and would continue to be consulted until the 4th century AD.^[4] During this period the Delphic Oracle was the most prestigious and authoritative oracle among the Greeks, and she was without doubt the most powerful woman of the classical world. The oracle is one of the best-documented religious institutions of the classical Greeks. Authors who mention the oracle include Aeschylus, Aristotle, Clement of Alexandria, Diodorus, Diogenes, Euripides, Herodotus, Julian, Justin, Livy, Lucan, Nepos, Ovid, Pausanias, Pindar, Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles, Strabo, Thucydides and Xenophon.

Nevertheless, details of how the Pythia operated are missing as authors from the classical period (6th to 4th centuries BC) treat the process as common knowledge with no need to explain. Those who discussed the oracle in any detail are from 1st century BC to 4th century AD and give conflicting stories.^[5] One of the main stories claimed that the Pythia delivered oracles in a frenzied state induced by vapours rising from a chasm in the rock, and that she spoke gibberish which priests interpreted as the enigmatic prophecies and turned them into poetic dactylic hexameters preserved in Greek literature.^[6] This idea, however, has been challenged by scholars such as Joseph Fontenrose and Lisa Maurizio, who argue that the ancient sources uniformly represent the Pythia speaking intelligibly, and giving prophecies in her own voice.^[7] Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC describes the Pythia speaking in dactylic hexameters.^[8][9]

Origins of the Oracle

The Delphic oracle may have been present in some form in Late Mycenaean times^[10] from 1400 BC, and there is evidence that Apollo took over the shrine with the arrival of priests from Delos in the 8th century, from an earlier dedication to Gaia.^[11]

The 8th-century reformulation of the Oracle at Delphi as a shrine to Apollo seems associated with the rise in importance of the city of Corinthand the importance of sites in the Corinthian Gulf.^[12]

The earliest account of the origin of the Delphic oracle is provided in the Homeric Hymn to Delphic Apollo, which recent scholarship dates within a narrow range, c. 580–570 BC.^[13] It describes in detail how Apollo chose his first priests, whom he selected in their « swift ship »; they were « Cretansfrom Minos’ city of Knossos » who were voyaging to sandy Pylos. But Apollo, who had Delphinios as one of his cult epithets,^[14] leapt into the ship in the form of a dolphin (delphys », gen. « delphinos). Dolphin-Apollo revealed himself to the terrified Cretans, and bade them follow him up to the « place where you will have rich offerings ». The Cretans « danced in time and followed, singing Iē Paiēon, like the paeans of the Cretans in whose breasts the divine Muse has placed « honey-voiced singing ».^[14] « Paean » seems to have been the name by which Apollo was known in Mycenaean times.

The omphalos in the museum of Delphi

G.L. Huxley observes, « If the hymn to (Delphic) Apollo conveys a historical message, it is above all that there were once Cretan priests at Delphi. »^[15] Robin Lane Fox notes that Cretan bronzes are found at Delphi from the eighth century onwards, and Cretan sculptures are dedicated as late as ca 620–600 BC: «  »Dedications at the site cannot establish the identity of its priesthood, » he observes, « but for once we have an explicit text to set beside the archaeological evidence. »^[16] An early visitor to these « dells of Parnassus », at the end of the eighth century, was Hesiod, who was shown the omphalos.

There are also many later stories of the origins of the Delphic Oracle. One late explanation, which is first related by the 1st century BC writer, Diodorus Siculus, tells of a goat herder named Coretas, who noticed one day that one of his goats, who fell into a crack in the earth, was behaving strangely. On entering the chasm, he found himself filled with a divine presence and could see outside of the present into the past and the future. Excited by his discovery he shared it with nearby villagers. Many started visiting the site to experience the convulsions and inspirational trances, though some were said to disappear into the cleft due to their frenzied state.^[17] A shrine was erected at the site, where people began worshiping in the late Bronze Age, by 1600 BC. After the deaths of a number of men, the villagers chose a single young woman as the liaison for the divine inspirations. Eventually she spoke on behalf of gods.^[18]

According to earlier myths,^[19] the office of the oracle was initially possessed by the goddesses Themis and Phoebe, and the site was initially sacred to Gaia. Subsequently, it was believed to be sacred to Poseidon, the « Earth-shaker » god of earthquakes. During the Greek Dark Age, from the 11th to the 9th century BC,^[20] a new god of prophecy, Apollo, allegedly seized the temple and expelled the twin guardian serpents of Gaia, whose bodies he wrapped around the caduceus. Later myths stated that Phoebe or Themis had « given » the site to Apollo, rationalizing its seizure by priests of the new god, but presumably, having to retain the priestesses of the original oracle because of the long tradition. Apparently Poseidon was mollified by the gift of a new site in Troizen.

Diodorus also explained how, initially, the Pythia was an appropriately clad young virgin, for great emphasis was placed on the Oracle’s chastity and purity to be reserved for union with the god Apollo.^[21] But he reports one story as follows:^[22]

Echecrates the Thessalian, having arrived at the shrine and beheld the virgin who uttered the oracle, became enamoured of her because of her beauty, carried her away and violated her; and that the Delphians because of this deplorable occurrence passed a law that in the future a virgin should no longer prophesy but that an elderly woman of fifty would declare the Oracles and that she would be dressed in the costume of a virgin, as a sort of reminder of the prophetess of olden times.

The scholar Martin Litchfield West writes that the Pythia shows many traits of shamanistic practices, likely inherited or influenced from Central Asian practices, although there is no evidence of any Central Asian association at this time. He cites the Pythia sitting in a cauldron on a tripod, while making her prophecies in an ecstatic trance state, like shamans, and her unintelligible utterings.^[23]

The tripod was perforated with holes; and as she inhaled the vapors, her figure would seem to enlarge, her hair stood on end, her complexion changed, her heart panted, her bosom swelled and her voice became seemingly more than human.^[24] Examining the records, it has been suggested that the seizures associated with oracular utterances was an exhausting process and may have shortened the life of the woman chosen to be the oracle.

Organization of the Oracle

The priestess

Paestan red-figure bell-kraterdepicting the Delphic oracle sitting atop her tripod, circa 330 BC

Since the first operation of the oracle of Delphi Temple, it was believed that the god lived within a laurel (his holy plant) and gave oracles for the future with the rustling of the leaves. It was also said that the art of divination had been taught to the god by the three winged sisters of Parnassus, the Thriae, at the time when Apollo was grazing his cattle there. The Thriae used to have a Kliromanteion (oracle by lot) in that area in the past and it is possible that such was the first oracle of Delphi, i.e. using the lot (throwing lots in a container and pulling a lot, the color and shape of which were of particular importance). Three oracles had successively operated in Delphi – the chthonion using egkoimisi (procedure that involved sleeping in the Holy place, so as to see a revealing dream), the Kliromanteion and finally the Apollonian, with the laurel. But ever since the introduction of the cult of Dionysus at Delphi, the god that brought his followers into ecstasy and madness, the Delphic god gave oracles through Pythia, who also fell into a trance under the influence of vapors and fumes coming from the opening, the inner sanctum of the Oracle. Pythia sat on top of a tall gilded tripod that stood above the opening. In the old days, Pythia was a virgin, young girl, but ever since Echecrates from Thessaly fell in love, kidnapped and violated a young and beautiful Pythia, a woman older than fifty years old was chosen, who dressed and wore jewelry to resemble a young maiden girl. According to tradition, Phemonoe was the first Pythia.^[25][26]

Though little is known of how the priestess was chosen, the Pythia was probably selected, at the death of her predecessor, from amongst a guild of priestesses of the temple. These women were all natives of Delphi and were required to have had a sober life and be of good character.^[27][28]Although some were married, upon assuming their role as the Pythia, the priestesses ceased all family responsibilities, marital relations, and individual identity. In the heyday of the oracle, the Pythia may have been a woman chosen from an influential family, well educated in geography, politics, history, philosophy, and the arts. During later periods, however, uneducated peasant women were chosen for the role, which may explain why the poetic pentameter or hexameterprophecies of the early period, later were made only in prose. Often the priestess’s answers to questions would be put into hexameter by a priest. ^[29] The archaeologist John Hale reports that:

the Pythia was (on occasion) a noble of aristocratic family, sometimes a peasant, sometimes rich, sometimes poor, sometimes old, sometimes young, sometimes a very lettered and educated woman to whom somebody like the high priest and the philosopher Plutarch would dedicate essays, other times who could not write her own name. So it seems to have been aptitude rather than any ascribed status that made these women eligible to be Pythias and speak for the god.^[30]

The job of a priestess, especially the Pythia, was a respectable career for Greek women. Priestesses enjoyed many liberties and rewards for their social position, such as freedom from taxation, the right to own property and attend public events, a salary and housing provided by the state, a wide range of duties depending on their affiliation, and often gold crowns.^[31]

During the main period of the oracle’s popularity, as many as three women served as Pythia, another vestige of the triad, with two taking turns in giving prophecy and another kept in reserve.^[32]Only one day of the month could the priestess be consulted.^[29]

Plutarch said^[33] that the Pythia’s life was shortened through the service of Apollo. The sessions were said to be exhausting. At the end of each period the Pythia would be like a runner after a race or a dancer after an ecstatic dance, which may have had a physical effect on the health of the Pythia.

Other officiants

Several other officiants served the oracle in addition to the Pythia.^[34] After 200 BC at any given time there were two priests of Apollo, who were in charge of the entire sanctuary; Plutarch, who served as a priest during the late first century and early second century CE, gives us the most information about the organization of the oracle at that time. Before 200 BC, while the temple was dedicated to Apollo, there was probably only one priest of Apollo. Priests were chosen from among the main citizens of Delphi, and were appointed for life. In addition to overseeing the oracle, priests would also conduct sacrifices at other festivals of Apollo, and had charge of the Pythian games. Earlier arrangements, before the temple became dedicated to Apollo, are not documented.

The other officiants associated with the oracle are less well known. These are the hosioi (« ὅσιοι », « holy ones ») and the prophētai (« προφῆται », singular prophētēs). Prophētēs is the origin of the English word « prophet », but a better translation of the Greek word might be « one who speaks on behalf of another person. » The prophetai are referred to in literary sources, but their function is unclear; it has been suggested that they interpreted the Pythia’s prophecies, or even reformatted her utterances into verse, but it has also been argued that the term prophētēs is a generic reference to any cult officials of the sanctuary, including the Pythia.^[35] There were five hosioi, whose responsibilities are unknown, but may have been involved in some manner with the operation of the oracle.

Oracular procedure

In the traditions associated with Apollo, the oracle only gave prophecies during the nine warmest months of each year. During winter months, Apollo was said to have deserted his temple, his place being taken by his divine half-brother Dionysus, whose tomb was also within the temple. It is not known whether the Oracle participated with the Dionysian rites of the Maenads or Thyades in the Korykion cave on Mount Parnassos, although Plutarch^[36] informs us that his friend Clea was both a Priestess to Apollo and to the secret rites of Dionysus. The male priests seem to have had their own ceremonies to the dying and resurrecting god. Apollo was said to return at the beginning of spring, on the 7th day of the month of Bysios, his birthday. This would reiterate the absences of the great goddess Demeter in winter also, which would have been a part of the earliest traditions.

Once a month, thereafter, the oracle would undergo purification rites, including fasting, to ceremonially prepare the Pythia for communications with the divine. On the seventh day of each month, she would be led by two attended oracular priests, with her face veiled in purple.^[37] A priest would then declaim:

« Servant of the Delphian Apollo

Go to the Castallian Spring

Wash in its silvery eddies,

And return cleansed to the temple.

Guard your lips from offence

To those who ask for oracles.

Let the God’s answer come

Pure from all private fault ».

The Pythia would then bathe naked in the Castalian Spring then would drink the holier waters of the Cassotis, which flowed closer to the temple, where a naiad possessing magical powers was said to live. Euripides described this ritual purification ceremony, starting first with the priest Ion dancing on the highest point of Mount Parnassus, going about his duties within the temple, and sprinkling the temple floor with holy water. The purification ceremonies always were performed on the seventh day of the month, which was sacred to and associated with the god Apollo.^[38] Then escorted by the Hosioi, an aristocratic council of five, with a crowd of oracular servants, they would arrive at the temple. Consultants, carrying laurel branches sacred to Apollo, approached the temple along the winding upward course of the Sacred Way, bringing a young goat kid for sacrifice in the forecourt of the temple, and a monetary fee.

Carved into the entrance of the temple were two phrases, which seem to have played an important part in the later temple ritual: γνῶθι σεαυτόν (gnōthi seautón = « know thyself ») and μηδὲν ἄγαν (mēdén ágan = « nothing in excess »), and an enigmatic « E ». According to Plutarch’s essay on the meaning of the « E at Delphi »—the only literary source for the inscription, there have been various interpretations of this letter.^[39] It has been interpreted as the first letter of ἐγγύα πάρα δ’ἄτα (eggýa pára d’ata) = « make a pledge and mischief is nigh »,^[40] In ancient times, the origin of these phrases was attributed to one or more of the Seven Sages of Greece.^[41]

Pythia would then remove her purple veil. She would wear a short plain white dress. At the temple fire to Hestia, a live goat kid would be set in front of the Altar and sprinkled with water. If the kid trembled from the hooves upward it was considered a good omen for the oracle, but if it didn’t, the enquirer was considered to have been rejected by the god and the consultation was terminated.^[42] The goat was then slaughtered and upon sacrifice, the animal’s organs, particularly its liver, were examined to ensure the signs were favourable, and then burned outside on the altar of Chios. The rising smoke was a signal that the oracle was open. The Oracle then descended into the adyton (Greek for « inaccessible ») and mounted her tripod seat, holding laurel leaves and a dish of Kassotis spring water into which she gazed. Nearby was the omphalos (Greek for « navel »), which was flanked by two solid gold eagles representing the authority of Zeus, and the cleft from which emerged the sacred pneuma.

Petitioners drew lots to determine the order of admission, but representatives of a city-state or those who brought larger donations to Apollo were secured a higher place in line. Each person approaching the oracle was accompanied with a proxenos specific to the state of the petitioner, whose job was to identify the citizen of their polis. This service too was paid for.^{[citation needed]}

Plutarch describes the events of one session in which the omens were ill-favored, but the Oracle was consulted nonetheless. The priests proceeded to receive the prophecy, but the result was a hysterical uncontrollable reaction from the priestess that resulted in her death a few days later.

At times when the Pythia was not available, consultants could obtain guidance by asking simple Yes-or-No questions to the priests. A response was returned through the tossing of colored beans, one color designating « yes, » another « no. » Little else is known of this practice.^[43]

Between 535 and 615 of the Oracles (statements) of Delphi are known to have survived since classical times, of which over half are said to be accurate historically (see the article Famous Oracular Statements from Delphi for some examples).^[44]

Cicero noted no expedition was undertaken, no colony sent out, and no affair of any distinguished individuals went on without the sanction of the oracle. The early fathers of the Christian church could think of no explanation for the oracles but that demons were allowed to assist them to spread idolatry; so that the need for a savior would be more evident. ^[45]

The experience of supplicants

View of Delphi with Sacrificial Procession by Claude Lorrain.

In antiquity, the people who went to the Oracle to ask for advice were known as “consultants,” literally, “those who seek counsel.”.^[46] It would appear that the supplicant to the oracle would undergo a four-stage process, typical of shamanicjourneys.

• Step 1: Journey to Delphi — Supplicants were motivated by some need to undertake the long and sometimes arduous journey to come to Delphi in order to consult the oracle. This journey was motivated by an awareness of the existence of the oracle, the growing motivation on the part of the individual or group to undertake the journey, and the gathering of information about the oracle as providing answers to important questions.
• Step 2: Preparation of the Supplicant — Supplicants were interviewed in preparation of their presentation to the Oracle, by the priests in attendance. The genuine cases were sorted and the supplicant had to go through rituals involving the framing of their questions, the presentation of gifts to the Oracle and a procession along the Sacred Way carrying laurel leaves to visit the temple, symbolic of the journey they had made.
• Step 3: Visit to the Oracle — The supplicant would then be led into the temple to visit the adyton, put his question to the Pythia, receive his answer and depart. The degree of preparation already undergone would mean that the supplicant was already in a very aroused and meditative state, similar to the shamanic journey elaborated on in the article.
• Step 4: Return Home — Oracles were meant to give advice to shape future action, that was meant to be implemented by the supplicant, or by those that had sponsored the supplicant to visit the Oracle. The validity of the Oracular utterance was confirmed by the consequences of the application of the oracle to the lives of those people who sought Oracular guidance.^[47]

Temple of Apollo

Modern photograph of the ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi

The ruins of the Temple of Delphi visible today date from the 4th century BC, and are of a peripteral Doric building. It was erected on the remains of an earlier temple, dated to the 6th century BC which itself was erected on the site of a 7th-century BC construction attributed to the architects Trophonios and Agamedes.^[48]

The 6th-century BC temple was named the « Temple of Alcmaeonidae » in tribute to the Athenian family who funded its reconstruction following a fire, which had destroyed the original structure. The new building was a Doric hexastyletemple of 6 by 15 columns. This temple was destroyed in 375 BC by an earthquake. The pediment sculptures are a tribute to Praxias and Androsthenes of Athens. Of a similar proportion to the second temple it retained the 6 by 15 column pattern around the stylobate.^[48] Inside was the adyton, the centre of the Delphic oracle and seat of Pythia. The temple had the statement « Know thyself« , one of the Delphic maxims, carved into it (and some modern Greek writers say the rest were carved into it), and the maxims were attributed to Apollo and given through the oracle and/or the Seven Sages of Greece (« know thyself » perhaps also being attributed to other famous philosophers). The monument was partly restored during 1938(?)–1300.

The temple survived until AD 390, when the Roman emperor Theodosius I silenced the oracle by destroying the temple and most of the statues and works of art to remove all traces of Paganism.^[49]

Scientific explanations

Fumes and vapors

Priestess of Delphi (1891) by John Collier, showing the Pythia sitting on a tripod with vapor rising from a crack in the earth beneath her

There have been many attempts to find a scientificexplanation for the Pythia’s inspiration. However, most commonly,^[50] these refer to an observation made by Plutarch, who presided as high priest at Delphi for several years, who stated that her oracular powers appeared to be associated with vapors from the Kerna spring waters that flowed under the temple. It has often been suggested that these vapors may have been hallucinogenicgases.

Recent geological investigations have shown that gas emissions from a geologic chasm in the earth could have inspired the Delphic Oracle to « connect with the divine. » Some researchers suggest the possibility that ethylene gas caused the Pythia’s state of inspiration. Traces of ethylene have been found in the waters of the Castallian spring, which is now largely diverted for the town water supply of the town of modern Delphi. However, Lehoux argues^[51] that ethylene is « impossible » and benzene is « crucially underdetermined. » Others argue instead that methane might have been the gas emitted from the chasm, or CO₂ and H₂S, arguing that the chasm itself might have been a seismic ground rupture.^[52][53]

An alternative theory based on review of contemporary toxicological literature indicates that it is oleander that causes symptoms similar to those of the Pythia. Pythia used oleander as a complement during the oracular procedure, chewing its leaves and inhaling their smoke. The toxic substances of oleander resulted in symptoms similar to those of epilepsy, the “sacred disease,” which amounted to the possession of the Pythia by the spirit of Apollo, an event that made the Pythia his spokesperson, and subsequently, his prophetess. The oleander fumes (the « spirit of Apollo ») could have originated in a brazier located in an underground chamber (the antron) and have escaped through an opening (the « chasm ») in the temple’s floor. This hypothesis perfectly fits the findings of the archaeological excavations that revealed an underground space under the temple. This explanation sheds light on the alleged spirit and chasm of Delphi, that have been the subject of intense debate and interdisciplinary research for the last hundred years.^[54]

Excavations

Beginning during 1892, a team of French archaeologists directed by Théophile Homolle of the Collège de France excavated the site at Delphi. Contrary to ancient literature, they found no fissure and no possible means for the production of fumes.

Adolphe Paul Oppé published an influential article^[55] in 1904, which made three crucial claims: No chasm or vapor ever existed; no natural gas could create prophetic visions; and the recorded incidents of a priestess undergoing violent and often deadly reactions was inconsistent with the more customary reports. Oppé explained away all the ancient testimony as being reports of gullible travelers fooled by wily local guides who, Oppé believed, invented the details of a chasm and a vapor in the first place.^[56]

In accordance with this definitive statement, such scholars as Frederick Poulson, E.R. Dodds, Joseph Fontenrose, and Saul Levin all stated that there were no vapors and no chasm. For the decades to follow, scientists and scholars believed the ancient descriptions of a sacred, inspiring pneuma to be fallacious. During 1950, the French hellenist Pierre Amandry, who had worked at Delphi and later directed the French excavations there, concurred with Oppé’s pronouncements, claiming that gaseous emissions were not even possible in a volcanic zone such as Delphi. Neither Oppé nor Amandry were geologists, though, and no geologists had been involved in the debate up to that point.^[55]

Subsequent re-examination of the French excavations, however, has shown that this consensus may have been mistaken. Broad (2007) demonstrates that a French photograph of the excavated interior of the temple clearly depicts a springlike pool as well as a number of small vertical fissures, indicating numerous pathways by which vapors could enter the base of the temple.^[57]

During the 1980s, the interdisciplinary team of geologist Jelle Zeilinga de Boer,^[58] archaeologist John R. Hale,^[59] forensic chemist Jeffrey P. Chanton,^[60] and toxicologist Henry R. Spiller^[61]investigated the site at Delphi using this photograph and other sources as evidence, as part of a United Nations survey of all active faultsin Greece.^[56]

Jelle Zeilinga de Boer saw evidence of a fault line in Delphi that lay under the ruined temple. During several expeditions, they discovered two major fault lines, one lying north-south, the Kerna fault, and the other lying east-west, the Delphic fault, which parallels the shore of the Corinthian Gulf. The rift of the Gulf of Corinth is one of the most geologically active sites on Earth; shifts there impose immense strains on nearby fault lines, such as those below Delphi. The two faults cross one another, and they intersect right below where the adyton was probably located. (The actual, original oracle chamber had been destroyed by the moving faults, but there is strong structural evidence that indicates where it was most likely located.)^[62]

They also found evidence for underground passages and chambers, and drains for spring water. Additionally, they discovered at the site formations of travertine, a form of calcite created when water flows through limestone and dissolves calcium carbonate, which is later redeposited. Further investigation revealed that deep beneath the Delphi region lies bituminous deposit, rich in hydrocarbons and full of pitch, that has a petrochemical content as high as 20%. Friction created by earthquakes heat the bituminous layers resulting in vaporization of the hydrocarbons which rise to the surface through small fissures in the rock.^[62]

Illusions in the adyton

It has been disputed as to how the adyton was organized, but it appears clear that this temple was unlike any other in ancient Greece. The small chamber was located below the general floor of the temple and offset to one side, perhaps constructed specifically over the crossing faults.^[63] The intimate chamber allowed the escaping vapors to be contained in quarters close enough to provoke intoxicating effects. Plutarch reports that the temple was filled with a sweet smell when the « deity » was present:

Not often nor regularly, but occasionally and fortuitously, the room in which they seat the god’s consultants is filled with a fragrance and breeze, as if the adyton were sending forth the essences of the sweetest and most expensive perfumes from a spring (PlutarchMoralia 437c).

De Boer’s research caused him to speculate ethylene as a gas known to possess this sweet odor.^[64] Toxicologist Henry R. Spiller specified that inhalation of even a small amount of ethylene can cause both benign trances and euphoric psychedelic experiences. Other effects include physical detachment, loss of inhibitions, the relieving of pain, and rapidly changing moods without dulling consciousness. He also noted that excessive doses can cause confusion, agitation, delirium, and loss of muscle coordination.^[65]

Anesthesiologist Isabella Herb found that a dose of 20% ethylene gas administered to a subject was a threshold. A dosage higher than 20% caused unconsciousness. With less than 20% a trance was induced where the subject could sit up, hear questions and answer them logically, although the tone of their voice might be altered, their speech pattern could be changed, and they may have lost some awareness of their hands and feet (with some it was possible to have poked a pin or pricked them with a knife and they would not feel it). When patients were removed from the area where the gas accumulated they had no recollection of what had happened, or what they had said. With a dosage of more than 20% the patient lost control over the movement of their limbs and may thrash wildly, groaning in strange voices, losing balance and frequently repeatedly falling. All of these symptoms match the experience of the Pythia in action, as related by Plutarch, who witnessed many prophecies.^[66]

During 2001, water samples from the nearby springs yielded evidence of the presence of the hallucinogenic hydrocarbon. The Kerna spring, originating uphill from the temple, yielded 0.3 parts per million of ethylene.^[67] Presently, the waters of the Kerma spring are diverted from the temple for use by the nearby modern town of Delphi. It is unknown the degree to which ethylene or other gases would be detected at the temple should these waters still flow freely, as they did in the ancient world.^[68]

Chunks of travertine, calcareous rock formed of mineral spring deposits, were also extracted from the temple and tested, but no traces of ethylene were identified. The nature of the hydrocarbon accounts for this. Ethylene is extremely light and volatile, having a highly reactive nature, and therefore could have presumably escaped the rock long ago. By testing the samples from the spring water, the team was at least able to identify the substance’s current presence at the site, giving them insight that a presumably larger quantity existed in the waters thousands of years earlier.^[69]

Frequent earthquakes produced by the fact that Greece lies at the intersection of three separate tectonic plates seem to have been responsible for the observed cracking of the limestone, and the opening up of new channels by which hydrocarbons enter the flowing waters of the Kassotis. This would cause the amounts of ethylene emitted to fluctuate, increasing or decreasing the potency of the drug released, over time. It has been suggested that the decrease of importance of the Oracle after the era of Roman Emperor Hadrian was due in part to the fact that there had not been an earthquake in the area for a significant time.

Venom

Another interpretation, by art historian Merlin Stone, suggests the use of venom rather than ethylene. She indicates that when people, after having been immunized against snake-bite, are bitten by a venomous snake, particularly by a krait, cobra, or another elapid, they experience an emotional and mental state that has been compared to the effects of hallucinogenic substances.^[70]

These explanations are not mutually exclusive and each may have occurred at different times.

• Delphic maxims
• List of oracular statements from Delphi
• Theia mania, Pythia’s divine inspiration in Plato’s Phaedrus.
• The Apollonian and Dionysian, concept of human dichotomy.
• Delphi method, a structured communication technique, unrelated to the Oracle of Delphi.

Notes

1. Jump up^ «  »Pythia » main entry Random House Dictionary (American), further down Collins Dictionary (British) ». Dictionary.com.
2. Jump up^ Homeric Hymn to Apollo 363–369.
3. Jump up^ Athletes and Oracles: The Transformation of Olympia and Delphi in the Eighth Century BC; Morgan C. 1990, p. 148.
4. Jump up^ Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World; Michael Scott, Princeton University Press, p. 30
5. Jump up^ Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World; Michael Scott, Princeton University Press, p.11
6. Jump up^ For an example, see Lewis Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, 1907, vol. IV, p.189. « But all this came to be merely considered as an accessory, leading up to the great moment when the Pythoness ascended into the tripod, and, filled with the divine afflatus which at least the latter ages believed to ascend in vapour from a fissure in the ground, burst forth into wild utterance, which was probably some kind of articulate speech, and which the Ὅσιοι [Osioi], ‘the holy ones’, who, with the prophet, sat around the tripod, knew well how to interpret. … What was essential to Delphic divination, then, was the frenzy of the Pythoness and the sounds which she uttered in this state which were interpreted by the Ὅσιοι [Osioi] and the ‘prophet’ according to some conventional code of their own. »
7. Jump up^ Fontenrose 1978, pp. 196–227; Maurizio 2001, pp. 38–54.
8. Jump up^ Mikalson, Jon D. Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars. Univ of North Carolina Press, 2003. ISBN 9780807827987. page 55
9. Jump up^ Herodotus. The Histories. Godley, A. D., translator. Harvard University Press. 1920. Book one, chapter 65. (1922)
10. Jump up^ see discussion in Deitrich, Bernard C. (1992), « Divine Madness and Conflict at Delphi » (Kernos 5) PDF at https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Mycenaean+Delphi&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=
11. Jump up^ Fortenrose. J. (1959) « Python. A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins, (Berkeley)
12. Jump up^ Forrest, W.G. (1957), « Colonisation and the Rise of Delphi » (Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte Bd. 6, H. 2 (Apr., 1957), pp. 160–175)
13. Jump up^ Martin L. West, Homeric Hymns, pp 9–12, gives a summary for this dating, at or soon after the inauguration of chariot-racing at the Pythian Games, 582 BC; M. Chappell, « Delphi and the Homeric Hymn to Apollo« , Classical Quarterly 56(2006:331-48)
14. ^ Jump up to:^a b As Robin Lane Fox observes in discussing this origin of the Delphic priesthood, in Travelling Heroes in the Epic Age of Homer, 2008:341ff.
15. Jump up^ Huxley, « Cretan Paiawones« . Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 16 (1975:119-24) p. 122, noted by Fox 2008:343.
16. Jump up^ Fox 2008:342.
17. Jump up^ Diodorus Siculus 16.26.1–4.
18. Jump up^ Broad, W. J. (2007), p.21. It was also said that the young woman was given a tripod on which to be seated, which acted on behalf of her own safety during her frenzied states.
19. Jump up^ Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology notes on this point Ovid, Metamorphoses i. 321, iv. 642; Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica iv. 800; Servius, commentary on the Aeneid iv. 246; pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheke i. 4. § 1 ; Pausanias x. 5. § 3; Aeschylus, The Eumenides opening lines; see excerpts in translation at Theoi Project: Themis.
20. Jump up^ D. S. Robertson, « The Delphian Succession in the Opening of the Eumenides » The Classical Review 55. 2 (September 1941, pp. 69–70) p. 69, reasoning that in the three great allotments of oracular powers at Delphi, corresponding to the three generations of the gods, « Ouranos, as was fitting, gave the oracle to his wife Gaia and Kronos appropriately allotted it to his sister Themis. » In Zeus’ turn to make the gift, however, Aeschylus could not report that the oracle was given directly to Apollo, who had not yet been born, Robertson notes, and thus Phoebe was interposed. However, the usual modern reconstruction of the sacred site’s pre-Olympian history does not indicate dedications to these earlier gods.
21. Jump up^ Broad, W. J. (2007), p.30-31
22. Jump up^ Diod. Sic. 16.26.6
23. Jump up^ Martin Litchfield West, The Orphic Poems, p.147. « The Pythia resembles a shamaness at least to the extent that she communicates with her [deity] while in a state of trance, and conveys as much to those present by uttering unintelligible words. [cf. Spirit Language, Mircea Eliade]. It is particularly striking that she sits on a cauldron supported by a tripod, reiterating the triad of the great goddess. This eccentric perch can hardly be explained except as a symbolic boiling, and, as such, it looks very much like a reminiscence of the initiatory boiling of the shaman translated from hallucinatory experience into concrete visual terms. It was in this same cauldron, probably, that the Titans boiled Dionysus in the version of the story known to Callimachus and Euphorion, and his remains were interred close by ».
24. Jump up^ William Godwin (1876). « Lives of the Necromancers ». p. 11.
25. Jump up^ Πάνος Βαλαβάνης, Ιερά και Αγώνες στην Αρχαία Ελλάδα. Ολυμπία – Δελφοί – Ίσθμια – Νέμεα – Αθήνα, Αθήνα, 2004, 176.
26. Jump up^ Γιάννης Λάμψας, Λεξικό του Αρχαίου Κόσμου, τ. Α’, Αθήνα, εκδόσεις Δομή, 1984, 758.
27. Jump up^ Broad, W. J. (2007), p.31-32
28. Jump up^ Herbert W Parke, History of the Delphic Oracle and H.W. Parke and D.E.W. Wormell The Delphic oracle, 1956 Volume 1: The history attempt the complicated reconstruction of the oracle’s institutions; a recent comparison of the process of select at Delphi with Near Eastern oracles is part of Herbert B. Huffman, « The Oracular Process: Delphi and the Near East » Vetus Testamentum 57.4, (2007:449–60).
29. ^ Jump up to:^a b Godwin 1876, p. 11.
30. Jump up^ quoted in an interview on the radio program « The Ark », transcript available.
31. Jump up^ Broad, W. J. (2007), p.32
32. Jump up^ Plutarch Moralia 414b.
33. Jump up^ « Plutarch • On the Failure of Oracles ». Penelope.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2012-03-19.
34. Jump up^ On the temple personnel, see Roux 1976, pp. 54–63.
35. Jump up^ Bowden 2005, pp. 15–16; see also Herodotus8.36, Euripides Ion 413–416.
36. Jump up^ Plutarch, op cit
37. Jump up^ Vandenberg, Phillip, (2007) « Mysteries of the Oracles (Tauris Parke Publications)
38. Jump up^ Broad, W. J. (2007), p.34-36.
39. Jump up^ Hodge, A. Trevor. « The Mystery of Apollo’s E at Delphi, » American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 85, No. 1. (Jan., 1981), pp. 83–84.
40. Jump up^ Plato, Charmides 164d–165a.
41. Jump up^ Plato, Protagoras 343a–b.
42. Jump up^ Jon D. (2011). Ancient Greek Religion. John Wiley & Sons. p. 99. ISBN 978-1-4443-5819-3.
43. Jump up^ Broad, W. J. (2007), p.38-40
44. Jump up^ Fontenrose, op cit
45. Jump up^ Godwin 1876, p. 12.
46. Jump up^ « Archived copy ». Archived from the original on 2013-12-26. Retrieved 2013-05-14.sighted 14/5/2013
47. Jump up^ Fontenrose, Joseph (1981), « Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations ». (Uni of Calif. Press)
48. ^ Jump up to:^a b Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Ancient-Greece.org
49. Jump up^ Trudy Ring, Robert M. Salkin, Sharon La Bod, International Dictionary of Historic Places: Southern Europe; Page 185; [1]
50. Jump up^ J.Z. De Boer, and J. R. Hale. “The Geological Origins of the Oracle of Delphi, Greece,” in W.G. McGuire, D.R. Griffiths, P Hancock, and I.S. Stewart, eds. The Archaeology of Geological Catastrophes. (Geological Society of London) 2000. Popular accounts in A&E Television Networks. History Channel documentary Oracle at Delphi, Secrets Revealed, 2003, and in William J. Broad, The Oracle: The Lost Secrets and Hidden Message of Ancient Delphi. (New York: Penguin) 2006.
51. Jump up^ Lehoux, 2007 The delphic oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis. Retrieved 4 December 2017.
52. Jump up^ Piccardi, 2000; Spiller et al., 2000; de Boer, et al., 2001; Hale et al. 2003; Etiope et al., 2006; Piccardi et al., 2008.
53. Jump up^ Mason, Betsy. The Prophet of Gases in ScienceNow Daily News 2 October 2006. Retrieved 11 October 2006.
54. Jump up^ Harissis 2015
55. ^ Jump up to:^a b Delphi, the Oracle of Apollo from Adventures in Archaeology
56. ^ Jump up to:^a b The Oracle at Delphi Medb hErren
57. Jump up^ Broad W.J. (2007), pp. 146–7: « [A] French photo of the temple’s interior showed not only a spring-like pool but fissures… in the bedrock, suggesting a specific pathway by which intoxicating gases could have risen into the oracle’s sanctum… What delighted de Boer so much was not the verification of the spring-like pool at the heart of the chasm, as the revelation of the bedrock’s composition… there right above the waterline, the photograph clearly showed vertical fissures running through the bedrock. No denial could hide that fact, no scholarly disclaimer could deny the reality…. [The] cracks …[showed] evidence of tectonic jolts and protracted flows of mineralized water. »
58. Jump up^ Jelle Zeilinga de Boer Archived 2006-05-06 at the Wayback Machine. – Retrieved on 2006-10-01.
59. Jump up^ John R. Hale – Retrieved on 2006-10-01.
60. Jump up^ Jeffrey P. Chanton – Retrieved on 2006-10-01.
61. Jump up^ Henry R. Spiller – Retrieved on 2006-10-01.
62. ^ Jump up to:^a b Broad (2007), p. 155-7
63. Jump up^ In the French excavation report on the temple, Fernand Courby shows that the adyton was unlike those found in other temples as it was not central, but on the southwestern side, interrupting the normal symmetry of the Doric temple. It was divided into two areas, one small area 9 by 16 feet for the oracle, one for the supplicant. Modern research reported by Broad (p. 37) suggests that both the supplicant and the Pythia descended a flight of five steps into a small room within the temple with its own low ceiling. Walter Miller has argued that the stone block of 3.5–4 feet, that Courby described as being part of the floor, was in fact the site where the oracle sat. It showed a square 6 inch hole, that widened to 9 inches, immediately under the triangular grooves for the tripod. Strange channels, possibly to carry water from the spring, surrounded the tripodal grooves. That these had in fact carried waters for long periods was confirmed by the layers of travertine that encrusted it. Nothing like this has been found at any other Greek temple. Holland (1933) argues that these channels and the hollow nature of the omphalos found by the French would channel the vapors of intoxicant gases.
64. Jump up^ Broad (2007), p. 172
65. Jump up^ Broad (2007), p.212-4
66. Jump up^ Interview with John R. Hale on the Delphic Oracle, ABC News, Australia – (Retrieved on 2006-04-20)
67. Jump up^ Broad (2007), p. 198. Methane (15.3 parts per million) and ethane (0.2 ppm) were also detected in the Kerna sample. However, the intoxicating effects of ethylene are more powerful than those of methane or ethane.
68. Jump up^ « the Kerna Spring, once alive but now vanished since Greek engineers had re-routed its waters to supply the town of Delphi » Tests from a number of nearby sites showed the concentration of Ethylene at Kerna was ten times that of other nearby springs. In an interview reported in Broad (2006, p. 152), de Boer stated that « the Kerna sample, because of the spring’s rerouting, had to be drawn from a city’s holding tank… letting some of the gas escape as it sat… and lessened the water concentrations. If so the actual levels of the methane, ethane and ethylene that came out of the ground would have been higher ».
69. Jump up^ Broad (2007), p. 194-5
70. Jump up^ Stone, Merlin When God was a Woman, Mariner Books, 1978

Ancient sources

• Herodotus, The Histories, at the Perseus Project
• Homeric Hymn to Apollo, at the Perseus Project
• Pausanias, Description of Greece, (ed. and translated with commentary by Sir James Frazer), 1913 edition. Cf. v.5
• Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum (« On the Decline of Oracles ») and De Pythiae Oraculis(« On the Oracles of the Pythia »), in Moralia, vol. 5 (Loeb Library, Harvard University Press)

Modern sources[edit]

• de Boer, Jelle Zeilinga, John Rigby Hale & Henry A. Spiller, « The Delphic Oracle: A Multidisciplinary Defense of the Gaseous Vent Theory. » Clinical Toxicology 40.2 189–196 (2000)
• de Boer, Jelle Zeilinga, Jeffrey P. Chandon & John Rigby Hale, « New Evidence for the Geological Origins of the Ancient Delphic Oracle, » Geology 29.8, 707–711 (2001)
• de Boer, Jelle Zeilinga, Jeffrey P. Chandon, John Rigby Hale & Henry A. Spiller, « Questioning the Delphic Oracle« , Scientific American (August 2003)
• Bouché-Leclercq, Auguste, Histoire de la divination dans l’Antiquité, volumes I-IV, Paris (1879–1882)
• Bowden, Hugh (2005). Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle: Divination and Democracy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-53081-4.
• Broad, William J. The Oracle: Ancient Delphi and the Science Behind Its Lost Secrets, New York, Penguin Press, ISBN 978-0-14-303859-7 (2007); hardcover edition The Oracle: the lost secrets and hidden message of ancient Delphi, Penguin Press, ISBN 1-59420-081-5(2006)
• Burkert, Walter Greek Religion, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-36280-2 (1985); Orig. in German (1977)
• Connelly, Joan Breton Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece, Princeton University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-691-12746-8
• Courby, Fernand, Feuilles de Delphi: Tome 2, Topographie et Architecture, La Terrace du Temple (1927)
• Dempsey, T., Reverend, The Delphic oracle, its early history, influence and fall, Oxford, B.H. Blackwell (1918)
• Dodds, E. R. The Greeks and the Irrational, Berkeley, University of California Press (1963)
• Etiope, G., D. Christodoulou, M. Geraga, P. Favali, & G. Papatheodorou, « The geological links of the ancient Delphic Oracle (Greece): a reappraisal of natural gas occurrence and origin », Geology, 34, 821–824 (2006)
• Farnell, Lewis Richard, The Cults of the Greek States, Volumes I-V, Clarendon Press, (1896–1909); cf. especially, volume IV on the Pythoness and Delphi
• Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy, Python; a study of Delphic myth and its origins, New York, Biblio & Tannen, ISBN 0-8196-0285-X (1959; 1974)
• Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy, The Delphic oracle, its responses and operations, with a catalogue of responses, Berkeley : University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-03360-4 (1978)
• Foster J., Lehoux D.R., « The Delphic Oracle and the ethylene-intoxication hypothesis », Clinical Toxicology, 45, 85–89 (2007)
• Golding, William, The Double Tongue, London, Faber (1995). Posthumous, fictional novel by the Nobel prize winner about a Pythia in the 1st century BCE.
• Goodrich, Norma Lorre, Priestesses, New York : F. Watts, ISBN 0-531-15113-1 (1989); Harper Collins, Perennial, ISBN 0-06-097316-1 (1990)
• Guthrie, William Keith Chambers, The Greeks and their Gods (1950)
• Hall, Manly Palmer, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Cf Chapter 14, (1928)
• Harissis H.V. 2015. “A Bittersweet Story: The True Nature of the Laurel of the Oracle of Delphi” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. Volume 57, Number 3, Summer 2014, pp. 295-298.
• Holland, Leicester B., « The Mantic Mechanism at Delphi, » American Journal of Archaeology37 pp. 201–214 (1933)
• Lehoux D.R., « Drugs and the Delphic Oracle », Classical World, 101, 1, 41–56 (2007)
• Maass, E., De Sibyllarum Indicibus, Berlin (1879)
• Maurizio, Lisa, « The Voice at the Centre of the World: The Pythia’s Ambiguity and Authority » pp. 46–50 in editors Andre Lardinois and Laura McClure Making Silence Speak: Women’s Voices in Greek Literature and Society, Princeton University Press (2001)
• Mikalson, Jon D. Ancient Greek Religion. Blackwell Ancient Religions. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2005.
• Miller, Water, Daedalus and Thespis Vol 1, (1929)
• Mitford, William, The History of Greece (1784); Cf. v.1, Chapter III, Section 2, p. 177, « Origin and Progress of the Oracles »
• Morgan, Catherine. Athletes and Oracles, Cambridge (1990)
• Nilsson, Martin P. (Martin Persson). Cults, Myths, Oracles, and Politics in Ancient Greece. With Two Appendices: The Ionian Phylae, the Phratries. New York, Cooper Square Publishers, 1972.
• Parke, Herbert William, A History of the Delphic Oracle, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, ASINB002NZWT0Y (1939)
• Parke, Herbert William, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy in Classical Antiquity, Routledge, London, ISBN 978-0-415-07638-8 (reprinted 1992)
• Piccardi, Luigi, « Active faulting at Delphi: seismotectonic remarks and a hypothesis for the geological environment of a myth », Geology, 28, 651–654 (2000)
• Piccardi L., C. Monti, F. Tassi O. Vaselli, D. Papanastassiou & K. Gaki-Papanastassiou, « Scent of a myth: tectonics, geochemistry and geomythology at Delphi (Greece) », Journal of the Geological Society, London, 165, 5–18 (2008)
• Potter, David Stone, Prophecy and history in the crisis of the Roman Empire: a historical commentary on the Thirteenth Sibylline Oracle, Cf. Chapter 3 (1990)
• Poulson, Frederick. Dephi Gleydenhall, London (1920)
• Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, trans. from the 8th edn. by W. B. Hillis, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, (1925); reprinted by Routledge (2000); full text in English
• West, Martin Litchfield, The Orphic Poems, Oxford: Clarendon Press ISBN 0-19-814854-2(1983)

External links

Pythia.

• « Delphic Oracle’s Lips May Have Been Loosened by Gas Vapors » National Geographic August 14, 2001

	Entrances to the underworld Rivers Acheron Cocytus Eridanos Lethe Phlegethon Styx Lakes/ Swamps Acherusia Avernus Lake Lerna Lake Caves Cave at Cape Matapan Cave Charonium Cave at Lake Avernus Cave at Heraclea Pontica Ploutonion Pluto’s Gate Places Elysium Erebus Fields of Asphodel Fields of Punishment Isles of the Blessed Tartarus Judges of the underworld Aeacus Minos Rhadamanthus Guards Cerberus Ferryman Charon Charon’s obol Symbols-Objects Bident Cap of invisibility Animals-Daemons/Spirits Ascalaphus Ceuthonymus Eurynomos Hade’s cattle
Mythological wars	Amazonomachy Attic War Centauromachy Gigantomachy Cranes-Pygmies war Theomachy Titanomachy Trojan War
Mythological and religious objects	Adamant Aegis Ambrosia Apple of Discord Ara Baetylus Caduceus Cornucopia Dragon’s teeth Diipetes Galatea Golden apple Golden Fleece Gorgoneion Greek terracotta figurines Harpe Ichor Lotus tree Minoan sealstone Moly Necklace of Harmonia Omphalos Orichalcum Palladium Panacea Pandora’s box Petasos (Winged helmet) Philosopher’s stone Ring of Gyges Rod of Asclepius Sacrificial tripod Sceptre Shield of Achilles Shirt of Nessus Sword of Damocles Talaria Thunderbolt Thymiaterion Thyrsus Trident Trojan Horse Winnowing Oar Wheel of Fortune Wheel of fire Xoanon
Symbols	Arkalochori Axe Labrys Ouroboros Owl of Athena
Mythological powers	Anthropomorphism Divination Eternal youth Evocation Fortune-telling Immortality Language of the birds Nympholepsy Magic Ornithomancy Shamanism Shapeshifting Weather modification
Storage containers/ Cups	Amphora Chalice Ciborium Cotyla Hydria Hydriske Kalathos Kalpis Kylix Kantharos Lebes Lekythos Loutrophoros Oenochoe Pelike Pithos Skyphos Stamnos
Musical Instruments	Aulos Barbiton Chelys Cithara Cochilia Crotalum (Castanets) Epigonion Kollops Lyre Pan flute Pandura Phorminx Psaltery Salpinx Sistrum Tambourine Trigonon Tympanum Water organ
Games	Panhellenic Games Olympic Games Pythian Games Nemean Games Isthmian Games Agon Panathenaic Games Rhieia
Festivals/Feasts	Actia Adonia Agrionia Amphidromia Anthesteria Apellai Apaturia Aphrodisia Arrhephoria Ascolia Bendidia Boedromia Brauronia Buphonia Chalceia Diasia Delphinia Dionysia Ecdysia Elaphebolia Gamelia Haloa Heracleia Hermaea Hieromenia Iolaia Kronia Lenaia Lykaia Metageitnia Munichia Oschophoria Pamboeotia Pandia Plynteria Pyanopsia Skira Synoikia Soteria Tauropolia Thargelia Theseia Thesmophoria
Vessels	Argo Phaeacian ships
Modern offshoot religions	Discordianism Gaianism Hellenismos Decline of Greco-Roman polytheism
Modern popular culture	Greek mythology in popular culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythia#frb-inline

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

Discobolus-Kunsthistorisches Museum

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

Castelporziano Discobolus. Marble, Roman artwork, reign of Hadrian (117–138 CE).

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

Roman bronze reduction of Myron’s Discobolus, 2nd century AD (Glyptothek, Munich)

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

Dorieo e un altro autore – Opera propria

Discobolo. Marmo, copia romana da un originale in bronzo del V sec. a.C. da Mirone. Da Villa Adriana presso Tivoli

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

The Townley Discobolus at the British Museum, Roman copy with incorrectly restored head.

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

Discobole Lancellotti. Marbre, H. 1,55 m., copie romaine, vers 120 ap. J.-C., original : avant – 450, palais Massimo alle Terme

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

Copia romana del British Museum, con la cabeza orientada de modo incorrecto.

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

Bronze copy of Myron of Eleutherae’s « Discobolus » (discus thrower) in the University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

Discobole Lancellotti. Marbre, H. 1,55 m., copie romaine, vers 120 ap. J.-C., original : avant – 450, palais Massimo alle Terme

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

Discobole au repos, Athlète au disque dit « le Discophore », Musée des beaux-arts de Lyon.

Le Discobole est l’une des plus célèbres statues de l’Antiquité. Généralement attribuée à Myron, sculpteur athénien du v^e siècle av. J.-C., elle représente un athlète en train de lancer le disque. Myron, représentant du premier classicisme, était célèbre pour ses représentations d’athlètes, ce qui explique l’attribution. De plus, elle est mentionnée par Pline l’Ancien dans les Histoires Naturelles, où l’auteur livre la liste des œuvres réalisées par Myron.

Description

La statue originale représente un athlète nu, imberbe, figé alors qu’il prépare le lancer de son disque. La tête est tournée sur le côté. Le mouvement se déploie sur le côté, donnant une composition bidimensionnelle (ce qui est caractéristique du pré-classicisme). La composition est géométrisée, théorique. En effet, le bord des pectoraux est net, la musculature est faite de formes plastiques et théoriques qui se répondent. Le personnage, alors qu’en plein effort, est impassible, le regard serein et sans expression. Les paupières sont lourdes, le nez droit, la bouche charnue et légèrement entrouverte, la mâchoire épaisse, le menton fort. On idéalise son visage pour que son image gagne un aspect intemporel.

Découverte

L’original en bronze a été perdu. Seules demeurent des copies en marbre d’époque impériale. La plus célèbre d’entre elles est le Discobole Lancellotti, considérée comme la reproduction la plus fidèle de l’original. L’œuvre fut découverte sur le mont Esquilin au xviii^e siècleet vendue à la famille Massimo, devenue ensuite Massimo Lancelotti. Réalisée au ii^e siècle sous les Antonins, elle figure actuellement dans les collections du palais Massimo alle Terme, branche du Musée national romain, à Rome. Une autre copie connue, exposée dans le même musée, est le Discobole Castelporziano, découverte mutilée (la tête est perdue) dans le village homonyme en 1906, parmi les ruines d’une villa d’époque impériale. Cette copie est plus réaliste dans son traitement des volumes et témoigne des évolutions techniques survenues depuis entre le classicisme grec et la sculpture romaine impériale.

Représentation dans la culture grecque

Le mot discobole vient du grec ancienδισκοβόλος / diskobolos, « lanceur de disque ». Le disque grec était un palet de pierre ou de bronze d’environ 20 cm de diamètre. Il pesait plus de 5 kg. Parallèlement au type du discobole, on peut citer celui du discophore : un athlète au repos, tenant simplement le disque à la main.

La statue du discobole figure sur la pièce commémorative de 2 € frappée par la Grèce à l’occasion des Jeux olympiques d’Athènes de 2004. Le Discobole était l’une des plus grandes œuvres de Myron Éleuthères.

Bibliographie

• Bernard Holzmann, La sculpture grecque, Librairie générale française, coll. « Le livre de poche », 2010, 447 p.(ISBN 978-2253905998), p. 214-215
• Jean Charbonneau, La sculpture grecque classique, t. 1, Paris, Éditions de Cluny, 1945, 131 p., p. 22-28

Discobolus

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

Roman bronze reduction of Myron’s Discobolus, 2nd century AD (Glyptothek, Munich)

The Discobolus of Myron (« discus thrower« , Greek: Δισκοβόλος, Diskobólos) is a Greek sculpture that was completed toward the end of the Severe period, circa 460–450 BC. The original Greek bronze is lost but the work is known through numerous Roman copies, both full-scale ones in marble, which was cheaper than bronze,^[1] such as the first to be recovered, the Palombara Discobolus, and smaller scaled versions in bronze.

A discus thrower is depicted about to release his throw: « by sheer intelligence », Kenneth Clarkobserved in The Nude, « Myron has created the enduring pattern of athletic energy. He has taken a moment of action so transitory that students of athletics still debate if it is feasible, and he has given it the completeness of a cameo. »^[2] The moment thus captured in the statue is an example of rhythmos, harmony and balance. Myron is often credited with being the first sculptor to master this style. Naturally, as always in Greek athletics, the Discobolus is completely nude. His pose is said to be unnatural to a human, and today considered a rather inefficient way to throw the discus.^[3] Also there is very little emotion shown in the discus thrower’s face, and « to a modern eye, it may seem that Myron’s desire for perfection has made him suppress too rigorously the sense of strain in the individual muscles, »^[2] Clark observes. The other trademark of Myron embodied in this sculpture is how well the body is proportioned, the symmetria.

The potential energy expressed in this sculpture’s tightly wound pose, expressing the moment of stasis just before the release, is an example of the advancement of Classical sculpture from Archaic. The torso shows no muscular strain, however, even though the limbs are outflung.

Reputation in the past

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

The discobolus motif on an Atticred-figured cup, ca. 490 BC, is static by comparison.

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

Roman discus thrower from Stabiae, Villa Arianna, 1st century AD

Myron‘s Discobolus was long known from descriptions, such as the dialogue in Lucian of Samosata‘s work Philopseudes:

« When you came into the hall, » he said, « didn’t you notice a totally gorgeous statue up there, by Demetrios the portraitist? » « Surely you don’t mean the discus-thrower, » said I, « the one bent over into the throwing-position, with his head turned back to the hand that holds the discus, and the opposite knee slightly flexed, like one who will spring up again after the throw? »

« Not that one, » he said, « that’s one of Myron‘s works, that Diskobolos you speak of… »

— Lucian of Samosata, Philopseudes c. 18^[4]

Discobolus and Discophorus

Prior to this statue’s discovery the term Discobolus had been applied in the 17th and 18th centuries to a standing figure holding a discus, a Discophoros, which Ennio Quirino Viscontiidentified as the Discobolus of Naukydes of Argos, mentioned by Pliny (Haskell and Penny 1981:200).

Discobolus Palombara or Lancellotti

The Discobolus Palombara, the first copy of this famous sculpture to have been discovered, was found in 1781. It is a 1st-century AD copy of Myron‘s original bronze. Following its discovery at a Roman property of the Massimo family, the Villa Palombara on the Esquiline Hill, it was initially restored by Giuseppe Angelini; the Massimi installed it initially in their Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne and then at Palazzo Lancellotti. The Italian archaeologist Giovanni Battista Viscontiidentified the sculpture as a copy from the original of Myron. It was instantly famous, though the Massimo jealously guarded access to it (Haskell and Penny 1981:200).

In 1937 Adolf Hitler negotiated to buy it, and eventually succeeded in 1938, when Galeazzo Ciano, Minister of Foreign Affairs, sold it to him for five million lire, over the protests of Giuseppe Bottai, Minister of Education, and the scholarly community. It was shipped by rail to Munich and displayed in the Glyptothek; it was returned in 1948. It is now in the National Museum of Rome, displayed at the Palazzo Massimo.

Townley Discobolus

Giacobbe Giusti, Discobolus

The Townley Discobolus at the British Museum, Roman copy with incorrectly restored head.

After the discovery of the Discobolus Palombara a second notable Discobolus was excavated, at Hadrian’s Villa in 1790, and was purchased by the English antiquary and art dealer established in Rome, Thomas Jenkins, at public auction in 1792. (Another example, also found at Tivoli at this date, was acquired by the Vatican Museums.) The English connoisseur Charles Townley paid Jenkins £400 for the statue, which arrived at the semi-public gallery Townley commissioned in Park Street, London, in 1794. The head was wrongly restored, as Richard Payne Knight soon pointed out, but Townley was convinced his was the original and better copy.

It was bought for the British Museum, with the rest of Townley’s marbles, in July 1805.^[5]

Other copies

Other Roman copies in marble have been recovered, and torsos that were already known in the 17th century but that had been wrongly restored and completed, have since been identified as further repetitions after Myron’s model. For one such example, in the early 18th century Pierre-Étienne Monnot restored a torso that is now recognized as an example of Myron’s Discobolus as a Wounded Gladiator who supports himself on his arm as he sinks to the ground; the completed sculpture was donated before 1734 by Pope Clement XII to the Capitoline Museums, where it remains.^[6]

Yet another copy was discovered in 1906 in the ruins of a Roman villa at Tor Paterno in the former royal estate of Castel Porziano, now also conserved in the Museo Nazionale Romano.^[7]

In the 19th century plaster copies of the Discobolos could be found in many large academic collections, now mostly dispersed.

• Athletes and athletics in ancient Greek art

Notes and references

1. Jump up^ Woodford, Susan. (1982) The Art of Greece and Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 16. ISBN 0521298733
2. ^ Jump up to:^a b Clark, Kenneth. (2010) The Nude: A study in ideal form. New edition. London: The Folio Society, pp. 134–135.
3. Jump up^ An explanation for his inefficient discus throwing could be that the ancient Olympic sportsmen had a set rotation of three quarters before the discus was thrown. This rotation could well have been a deliberate handicap to make the sport more difficult.
4. Jump up^ The Lucian reference and Quintillian, ii.13.xviii-x, are noted by Haskell & Penny 1981, p. 200.
5. Jump up^ Tony Kitto, « The celebrated connoisseur: Charles Townley, 1737-1805 » Minerva MagazineMay/June 2005, in connection with a British Museum exhibition celebrating the bicentennial of the Townley purchase. [1]^{[permanent dead link]}
6. Jump up^ Haskell, Francis & Penny, Nicholas (1981), Taste and the Antique: the Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 200 & 227., ISBN 0-300-02641-2
7. Jump up^ Kenneth Clark illustrated it in the 1956 edition of The Nude, fig. 130, p.241, as « after Myron« .

External links

Discobolus.

• Myron’s Discobolus A discussion about the sculpture between Dr. Beth Harris & Dr. Steven Zucker on video at Khan Academy/Smarthistory
• British Museum collection record, GR 1805.7-3.43 (Sculpture 250).
• Skulpturhalle, Basel collection record(German), 69-30/SH 948
• Capitoline Museum collection record, MC0241

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discobole

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com