Greek Myth and Religion

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Article

Amymone  

Herbert Jennings Rose

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion

Amymone (Ἀμυμώνη), in mythology, daughter of *Danaus. While at *Argos (1) she went for water, was rescued from a satyr, and seduced by *Poseidon, who created the spring Amymone in commemoration (Apollod. 2. 14; Hyg. Fab. 169, 169a).

Article

Amyzon  

Simon Hornblower

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Material Culture
  2. Greek Myth and Religion
Amyzon, remote but important *sanctuary in *Caria, north of *Mylasa. Greek inscriptions have been found there dating from the time of the 4th-cent. bce Hecatomnid *satrap*Idrieus, also of *Philip (2) Arrhidaeus (in which Iranians are honoured, showing their social survival after the end of the *Achaemenid empire), and of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid periods of control in the 3rd century, esp.

Article

Anakes  

Robert Parker

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Anakes (Ἄνακες), old by-form of ἄνακτες, ‘lords’, ‘kings’ (the latter being the meaning of anax in Linear B). This is the surprising title under which the *Dioscuri were invariably worshipped in Attica (as sometimes in *Argos (1)), often in the dual form Ἄνακε; an inscription has recently confirmed that these Anake/Dioscuri could be associated in cult with *Helen (SEG 33.

Article

Ancaeus  

Richard Hunter

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Ancaeus, in mythology, (1) son of Lycurgus from *Tegea in Arcadia. *Pausanias (3) identifies him with the father of *Agapenor who led the Arcadians at Troy (8. 4. 10). He joined the *Argonautic expedition, and was the strongest after *Heracles. His traditional weapon was the axe (πέλεκυς). He was killed during the Calydonian boar-hunt (Bacchyl. 5. 117; Pherec. FGrH 3 F 36, etc. ; see meleager (1)), and his death was depicted on a famous pediment by *Scopas on the temple of Athena at Tegea (Paus. 8. 45. 5–7). (2) Another Argonaut, son of *Poseidon and Astypalaea, who took over the job of steersman after the death of Tiphys (Ap. Rhod. 2. 894). The two namesakes are often confused, and the same story explaining the proverb ‘many a slip between cup and lip’ is told of both (Arist. fr. 589 Gigon; Lycoph. Alex.

Article

Andania  

Emily Kearns

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion

Andania, a town in *Messenia, ruined in the time of *Pausanias (4. 33. 4–6), with which was associated a celebration of *mysteries which the travel writer ranked second in holiness to the Eleusinian. Andania was said to have been the birthplace of the semi-mythical Messenian freedom-fighter *Aristomenes, and the mysteries, though believed to date back to a time before then, were thought in local tradition to have been revived with Messenian independence after the battle of Leuctra in 371 bce. It is unclear, however, for how long they had existed before their reorganization in 92/1 (or, as Themelis suggests, ce 24), from which year dates a long inscription (IG V.1 1390) giving much detail on the financial arrangements and conduct of the festival. The rites took place in the Karnasian grove between Oichalia and Andania; the gods mentioned in the inscription are Demeter, Hermes, the Great Gods, Apollo Karneios and Hagna. Pausanias identifies Hagne/a with Kore, and speaks of the mysteries as dedicated to the Great Goddesses. It is likely that the ritual represents a convergence of at least two different cults.

Article

Androgeos  

Emily Kearns

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Androgeos (Ἀνδρόγεως), son of *Minos, who died an untimely death in Attica, either treacherously killed by his defeated rivals in the Panathenaic Games (see panathenaea), or sent by *Aegeus against the Marathonian bull and killed by it. To avenge him Minos besieged Athens, and was only appeased by an annual tribute of seven youths and seven maidens to be thrown to the Minotaur (see theseus).

Article

androgyny  

Luc Brisson

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
27 February 2017
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies
  2. Greek Myth and Religion
  3. Roman Myth and Religion
In the modern use, “bisexuality” refers to sexual object choice, whereas “androgyny” refers to sexual identity. In ancient Greece and Rome, however, these terms sometimes refer to human beings born with characteristics of both sexes, and more frequently to an adult male who plays the role of a woman, or to a woman who has the appearance of a man, both physically and morally. In mythology, having both sexes simultaneously or successively characterises, on the one hand, the first human beings, animals, or even plants from which arose male and female, and on the other, mediators between human beings and gods, the living and the dead, men and women, past and future, and human generations. Thus androgyny and bisexuality were used as a tools to cope with one’s biological, social, and even fictitious environment.The term “androgyne” comes from the Greek andrógunos,1 a compound formed from the terms an.

Article

Andromache  

Jenny March

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Andromache, daughter of *Eëtion king of Thebe in the Troad (see troas), and wife of *Hector (Il. 6. 395 ff.). Her father and seven brothers were killed by *Achilles, and her mother ransomed for a large sum (6. 414 ff.). After the fall of Troy her son *Astyanax was killed by the Greeks and she herself became *Neoptolemus (1)'s slave and concubine (Little Iliad, fr. 20 Davies; Iliu Persis). She bore him three sons, Pergamus, Pielus, and Molossus, eponym of the Molossi (Paus. 1. 11. 1 f.). According to Euripides' Andromache, she was threatened with death by Neoptolemus' wife *Hermione during the visit to Delphi in which he was killed, but was protected by *Peleus, Neoptolemus' aged grandfather. After Neoptolemus' death (Eur.) or on his marriage (Verg. Aen. 3. 327–9) she was handed over to Hector's brother *Helenus, lived with him in Epirus, and bore him a son, Cestrinus.

Article

Andromeda  

Herbert Jennings Rose and Jenny March

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Andromeda, in mythology, the daughter of *Cepheus, king of the Ethiopians, and his wife Cassiepeia or Cassiope. The following, founded on Apollod. 2. 4. 3–5, is the usual legend. Cassiepeia boasted that she was more beautiful than the Nereids (see nereus); they complained to *Poseidon, who flooded the land and sent a sea-monster to ravage it. On consulting *Ammon, Cepheus learned that the only cure was to offer up Andromeda to the monster, and she was accordingly fastened to a rock on the sea-shore. At this point *Perseus (1) came by on his way from taking the head of *Medusa. He fell in love with Andromeda, and got her and her father's consent to marry her if he could kill the sea-beast. This he did; but Cepheus' brother Phineus, who had been betrothed to Andromeda, plotted against him (or attacked him by open force, Ov. Met.

Article

angels  

Sam Eitrem and Antony Spawforth

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Angels, (ἄγγελοι), ‘messengers’. *Hermes was considered the messenger of Zeus, and named Angelos (once Euangelos). *Iris was ascribed the same function; for *Plato (1) (Cra. 407e, 408b) the two are the divine angeloi. *Hecate was an ‘angel’ because she had contact with the lower world and the dead (Sophron in schol. Theoc. 2. 12); in the early empire Hermes is once named the ‘messenger of *Persephone’ (Epigr. Gr. 575. 1, 1st–2nd cent. ce). By the 3rd cent. ce, with angels playing a large part in contemporary Judaism and *Christianity, they became important too for paganism as intermediaries (along with lesser gods and demons) of the true God, not just in *Gnosticism and *Neoplatonism but also in ‘mainstream’ belief: thus an oracle from *Claros inscribed at *Oenoanda (c.ce 200?) represents even Apollo as an angelic ‘small part’ of God. In the 2nd–3rd cents. ce abstract divinities called angels were worshipped in Egypt and Asia Minor (Lydia, Caria, and Phrygia) under such cult-titles as the Angelic Divine (Θεῖον Ἀγγελικόν) and Good Angel (Ἀγαθὸς Ἄγγελος).

Article

animals in cult  

Emily Kearns

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Numerous features of Greek religion attest links between animals and gods, usually between one animal or group of animals and one divinity. Thus *Athena is associated with various birds (in Athens especially the owl); *Dionysus is called ‘bull’ in an Elean hymn (Plut. Mor. 299b; see elis) and seen as a bull by *Pentheus (Eur. Bacch. 920–2). There are traces, too, of a closer identification, in which gods (and/or their worshippers) appear in animal or part-animal form. *Arcadia was in historical times the special home of theriomorphic deities (see arcadian cults and myths); here we find a myth of *Poseidon's rape of *Demeter in equine form (see arion (1) and despoina) along with Pausanias' reference (8. 42. 4) to a horse-headed statue of Demeter, and the animal-headed figures decorating the robes of the cult-statues of Lycosura seem also to be related. But rituals involving the imitation of animals are found in other parts of the Greek world, the best-known example being probably the arkteia of *Brauron, where little girls played the part of bears in a ceremony for *Artemis.

Article

Anius  

Herbert Jennings Rose, B. C. Dietrich, and Alan A. D. Peatfield

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion

Anius, son of Apollo and king of *Delos. He prophesied that the Trojan War would last ten years. His mother Rhoeo (Pomegranate) was descended from *Dionysus through her father Staphylus (‘Grape’). Anius married Dorippa and had three daughters, the Oenotrophoi (‘Rearers of Wine’): Oeno (‘Wine’), Spermo (‘Seed’), and Elaïs (‘Olive-tree’) who supplied Agamemnon's army before Troy. According to the myth (first in Cyclic Epic), he received *Aeneas (Aen. 3. 80; Ov. Met. 13. 633; Lycoph. 570 and schol.). A votive marble relief (2nd/1st cent. bce) with a dedication to Anius and with a typical funerary banqueting-scene was found near the hero's sanctuary on Delos (Delos Mus. 3201).

Article

Antaeus  

Herbert Jennings Rose

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Antaeus (Ἀνταῖος), in mythology, a giant, son of *Poseidon and Earth (*Gaia), living in Libya; he compelled all comers to wrestle with him and killed them when overcome (Pind. Isthm. 4. 56 ff. and schol. Plato, Tht 169b). He was defeated and killed by *Heracles.

Article

Antenor(1)  

Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Antenor (1), in mythology, an elderly and upright counsellor in Troy during the siege, who advised the return of *Helen to the Greeks, and in return for this (or, according to much later accounts, for betraying the city) was spared by the victors. Pindar says his descendants held *Cyrene; but in the story current in Roman times he took with him the Eneti from Paphlagonia (who had lost their king at Troy) and, settling in Venetia at the head of the Adriatic, founded *Patavium.

Article

Anthesteria  

Robert Parker

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Anthesteria, a festival of *Dionysus which despite its name (suggesting anthos, flower) was associated particularly with the new wine. It was celebrated in most Ionian communities, but details are known almost exclusively from Athens, where it was of an importance comparable perhaps to modern Christmas. It was celebrated in the correspondingly named month Anthesterion, roughly late February. On the evening of the first day, ‘Jar-opening’ (Pithoigia), pithoi of the previous autumn's vintage were taken to the sanctuary of Dionysus in the Marshes, opened, offered to the god, and sampled. On the following day, drinking-parties of an abnormal type were held: participants sat at separate tables and competed, in silence, at draining a chous or five-litre (nine-pint) measure (whence the day's name Choes); slaves too had a share. Miniature choes were also given as toys to children, and ‘first Choes’ was a landmark. The third day was called Chytroi, ‘Pots’, from pots of seed and vegetable bran (panspermia) that were offered, it seems, to the dead.

Article

anthropology  

J. T. Vallance

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
22 December 2015
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
  2. Science, Technology, and Medicine
  3. Roman Myth and Religion
It is probably misleading, though not entirely inappropriate, to use this word to describe the ancient study of man and society. Misleading, because anthropology did not really exist as the kind of discrete discipline it is today (see anthropology and the classics). What follows here is a very brief summary of some central anthropological themes from antiquity, gathered from a variety of sources and contexts, ethical, scientific, and literary.The Greeks and Romans developed a range of ideas about their own identity and the identity of others; about the nature of human societies, their history, and organization. It is well known that many Greeks designated non-Greek speakers ‘*barbarian’,—after the Greek verb for ‘babble’—and language of course remained an important index of racial and cultural difference. (*Herodotus (1)'s History introduced many Greeks to foreigners and their customs for the first time: Hdt. 4. 183 notes that the Egyptian *Trogodytae ‘squeak like bats’; elsewhere, e.

Article

anthropology and the classics  

Helen King

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 July 2015
Subjects:
  1. Gender Studies
  2. Greek Myth and Religion
  3. Reception

Anthropology and the classics currently enjoy a fairly good relationship, but one which has never been stable. In the 19th cent. the interest of evolutionary anthropology in a ‘savage’ period through which all societies must pass meant that studies of contemporary simple societies began to be used to illuminate the classical past. After the First World War, classicists reacted against what were perceived as the excesses of the work of Jane Harrison and the Cambridge school, in which it was claimed that knowledge of ‘things primitive’ gave a better understanding of the Greeks. Meanwhile, in social anthropology, the rise of the static structural-functional paradigm and an insistence on an identity as ‘the science of fieldwork’ combined to cause a rejection of history. In the last 50 years, the divorce between the subjects has been eroded from both sides, with comparative studies increasingly valued as enabling us to escape from our intellectual heritage and the specific—though, to us, self-evident—ways it has formulated questions and sought answers.

Article

Anticlea  

Nicholas J. Richardson

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Anticlea, daughter of *Autolycus (1), wife of Laertes, and mother of *Odysseus and Ctimene. Her ghost tells Odysseus how she died of longing for him (Od. 11. 84–5, 152–224; cf. 15. 353–65). She appeared in *Polygnotus' picture of the Underworld at Delphi (Paus. 10. 29. 8). *Sisyphus is often said to have been Odysseus' father by her (Aesch.

Article

Antigone (1)  

Andrew Brown

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Literature
  2. Greek Myth and Religion

Antigone (1), daughter of *Oedipus and Iocasta, sister of *Eteocles, Polynices and Ismene.

*Sophocles (1)'s Antigone deals with events after the Theban War, in which Eteocles and Polynices killed one another (see seven against thebes). Antigone's uncle *Creon (1), the new king of Thebes (1), has issued an edict forbidding anyone to bury the body of the traitor Polynices. Antigone, despite efforts at dissuasion by Ismene, insists on defying the edict. She is arrested and brought before Creon, and proudly defends her action. He decrees that she should be imprisoned in a tomb and left to die, although she is engaged to his son *Haemon (3). Creon is left unmoved by Haemon's arguments against such punishment, but is finally made to change his mind by the prophet *Tiresias, who reveals that the gods are angry at the exposure of Polynices and the burial of Antigone. He buries Polynices but arrives at Antigone's tomb too late: she has hanged herself, and Haemon, who has broken into the tomb, kills himself in front of his father. Creon's wife Eurydice also commits suicide, leaving Creon a broken man.

Article

Antilochus  

Herbert Jennings Rose

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
07 March 2016
Subjects:
  1. Greek Myth and Religion
Antilochus, in mythology, son of *Nestor, mentioned several times in the Iliad as a brave warrior and a fine runner (e.g. 15. 569–70). He brings *Achilles the news of *Patroclus' death (18. 2 ff.), drives cleverly in the chariot-race (23. 402 ff.), and courteously cedes the second prize to *Menelaus (1) (596).