Contesting the Past: Hero Cult, Tomb Cult, and Epic in Early Greece

Author(s): Carla M. Antonaccio

Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 98, No. 3 (Jul., 1994), pp. 389-410
Published by: Archaeological Institute of America
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 Contesting the Past: Hero Cult, Tomb Cult,
and Epic in Early Greece
CARLA M. ANTONACCIO
Abstract
Greek hero cult has been extensively discussed by
both archaeologists and philologists. This paper con-
siders two current hypotheses: one links the develop-
ment of hero cult in the eighth century B.C. with the
circulation of Homeric poetry; the other views hero
cult as a transformation of ancestral veneration in the
context of the emergent polis. A review of the archae-
ological evidence for the Iron Age and Early Archaic
period suggests that the earliest hero cult in the ar-
chaeological record emerged at Sparta during the
eighth century. The small number of early hero cults,
and their location and distribution, do not lend sup-
port to the theory of Homeric influence. Venerationof
ancestors, on the other hand, was practiced widely in
the Greek world throughout the Iron Age; it did not
disappear with the emergence of the polis and hero
cult.
Rather than a single, unified concept, ancestral and
hero cult articulated different versions of the past.
Conflicting or competing concepts, both ritual and
epic, serve to debate the past within and between com-
munities. In Greece, as elsewhere, the debate helps to
mediate social change within a frameworkof culturally
determined rules.*
Over a century ago, when Erwin Rohde pub-
lished Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortal-
ity among the Greeks,' Homer was the chief authority
* This
paper originated in the panel "Immortal Mor-
tals," coorganized by Deborah Lyons and myself at the
1990 Annual Meeting of the American Philological Asso-
ciation, and from the first and last chapters of my doctoral
dissertation, The Archaeologyof Early Greek "HeroCult"
(Princeton Univ. 1987). My thanks to the panel partici-
pants (Deborah Boedeker, Alan Shapiro, and Rebecca Si-
nos) and audience on that occasion, and to Elizabeth
Bobrick, Douglas Charles, Joseph Day, Susan Downey,
Marilyn Katz, Ian Morris, Gregory Nagy, Susan Sherratt,
and an anonymous AJAreviewer.
The following abbreviationsare used below:
Antonaccio C. Antonaccio, "The Archaeology of
1993 Ancestors," in C. Dougherty and L.
Kurke eds., CulturalPoeticsin Archaic
Greece(Cambridge 1993) 46-70.
Antonaccio C. Antonaccio, An Archaeologyof An-
1994 cestors,Tomband Hero Cult in Early
Greece(Lanham, Md. 1994).
Farnell L. Farnell, GreekHero-Cultsand Ideasof
Immortality (Oxford 1921).
389
AmericanJournal of Archaeology98 (1994) 389-410
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for early Greek attitudes and practices. Archaeology
offered only limited evidence for long-term pat-
terns in Greek burial or cult. Since Rohde, most
accounts of hero cult have attempted to reconcile
literary pictures of cult in different periods, and,
especially recently, to draw upon archaeology for
ritual practice and the history of its development.
The past few decades have witnessed a focus of ar-
chaeological research on the Greek Iron Age (or
"Dark Age," from the end of the Mycenaean period
in the 12th century to the late eighth century B.C.),
a crucial, formative period for later Greek society.
The place of epic poetry has changed; although epic
poetry purports to describe the second millennium
B.C., it is necessary to contextualize the poems in
the Iron Age, the period in which they attained most
of their final form. The pace of this work has inten-
sified in the last decade, but even with the develop-
ment of new approaches to Greek pre- and
protohistory, virtually all attempts to describe Iron
Age Greek society use epic poetry to explicate ar-
chaeological data and to provide detail for cross-cul-
tural comparisons.2 Moreover, archaeologists and
philologists have continued to find it difficult to har-
monize the literary views of heroes and hero cult,
Hagg and R. Higg and G.C. Nordquist eds.,
Nordquist Celebrationsof Deathand Divinityin the
Bronze Age Argolid (SkrAth4, 40,
Stockholm 1990).
Morris I. Morris, "TombCult and the 'Greek
Renaissance': The Past in the Pres-
ent in the 8th Century B.C.," An-
tiquity62 (1988) 750-61.
Nagy G. Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans:
Conceptsof the Hero in ArchaicGreek
Poetry(Baltimore 1979).
Rohde E. Rohde, Psyche:The Cultof Soulsand
Belief in Immortality
amongtheGreeks,8
trans. W.B. Hillis (New York 1925).
1 Originally published as Psyche:Seelencultund Unster-
derGriechen(Freiburg 1898).
blichkeitsglaube
2 Recent examples include I. Morris, "The Use and
Abuse of Homer," ClAnt 5 (1986) 82-138; Morris, "Gift
and Commodity in Archaic Greece,"Man 21 (1986) 1-17;
and J. Whitley,"SocialDiversityin DarkAge Greece,"BSA
86 (1991) 341-65.
390 CARLAM. ANTONACCIO
and the sometimesdivergentevidenceprovidedby
archaeology.3
Whileepic praise(Kk•og)is deliberatelytimeless,4
actual practice operates within a frameworkof
space, time, and action,some of whichat least ar-
chaeologycan detect.Still,if we acceptthatthereis
an oral traditionthat has roots in the BronzeAge,
and that epic poetry is Panhellenicin its sig-
nificance,Homer and his criticsare the place to
begin any discussionof hero cult and a considera-
tion of Greek attitudes toward the past. Both
Homer and Hesiod already speak of past, more
powerfulgenerationsof men, of honoring heroes
and the importance of their tombs. Of course,
Homer's heroes are living men in the poems,
PacotXig, the rulersand warriors,divinelydescend-
ed but not themselvesdivinenor yet immortal.The
referencesin the poemsto the heroes'honor
(TL•tl),
whichin cult is expressedas ritualaction,embrace
theirprerogativesand possessions(see infra).Aside
fromepic, the earliestwrittenreferenceto a cult of
heroesostensiblydatesto the laterseventhcentury
B.C., when the Athenian lawgiver Drakon pre-
scribedthat gods and local heroes should be hon-
ored together according to ancestral custom.
Referenceto customindicateswell-established prac-
tice,and the specificationof localheroesa multiplic-
ity of them already,though we do not know how
earlythiswasthe case.5
As founders(evenif mythical)of laterGreekfami-
lies, and of communitiesthatin turn identifiedhe-
roic tombsand veneratedheroic relics,heroes are
also ancestors.The writtensourcesemphasizethe
importanceof heroictombsand otherrelics,and an
3 A. Snodgrass, The Dark Age of Greece (Edinburgh
1971), followed by V. Desborough, The GreekDark Ages
(London 1972) and N. Coldstream, Geometric Greece(Lon-
don 1977). American excavations at Nichoria in Messenia
produced a major study (W McDonald et al., NichoriaIII:
DarkAgeand ByzantineOccupation(Minneapolis 1983), and
a spate of work followed, with R. Hagg et al. eds., TheGreek
Renaissanceof the8th CenturyB.C.: Traditionand Innovation
(Stockholm 1983); A. Snodgrass, An Archaeology of Greece:
ThePresentStateand FutureScopeof a Discipline(Sather Clas-
sical Lectures 53, Berkeley 1987); I. Morris, Burial and
AncientSociety:The Rise of the GreekCity-State(Cambridge
1987); R. Hagg et al. eds., EarlyGreekCultPractice(Stock-
holm 1988); C. Morgan, Athletesand Oracles:The Transfor-
mation of Olympiaand Delphi in the Eighth CenturyB.C.
(Cambridge 1990); and J. Whitley,Styleand Societyin Dark
Age Greece(Cambridge 1991). New research continues to
appear.
4 Nagy 117, 119, passim.
5 Porph. Abst.4.2: Ooi~gTLtivaKLLIpwCg it mpLX0)LoVg i~v
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[AJA98
essentialconservatismand emphasison continuity
generally govern scholarshipon Greek religion.
Thus, the well-knownemphasison the importance
of a hero'stomb and of his bones and other relics
wasprojectedintothe BronzeAgeand the protohis-
torical period, and the origins of hero cult have
been identifiedin BronzeAge burialpractices.For
example, at Mycenae'sGrave Circle A Nilsson
claimedcontinuityof worship,or atleastof memory,
from Late Helladic to the historicalperiod. The
concept of the hero as a semidivineor divinized
figurewasextended to Mycenaeanrulers,both for
theirown timeand after.6
Rohdeheld thathero cultand a beliefin an effec-
tive afterlifeare both absentfrom Homer,and that
this omissionstands isolatedfrom the indigenous
ancient beliefs of the Greeks originatingin the
Bronze Age. He thought that the attitudetoward
the afterlifein Homericpoetryrepresentedthe be-
liefs of the Ionian Greeks,and not the "popular
beliefs"of allthe Greeks.Forhim,thisexplainedthe
Homericconceptionof the dead as "withoutclear
self-consciousness" so that it "neitherdesires nor
wills anything. It has no influence on the upper
world, and consequentlyno longer receives any
shareof the worshipof the living."'ForRohde,the
greatimportanceof heroesand heroworshipin the
historicalperiodswasa revivaland amplificationof
ancientand nativeancestorworship,not lateinven-
tions.8A hero'spowerrestedin his bones and their
burialspot, and worshipwas maintainedafter the
Mycenaeanperiod"perhapsfor a long timeonlyby
a few,in those placeswhere there remaineda cult
attachedto a grave."9Withthe rise of the polis, the
Kotvl6 irO'ivotgv6Cgotg 'a
L Kat& 61'vacLtL,Wv
iOpaPiotg
eJi'tUi~a KL TPXaIg
KaPJT•g v i~ETeLoVg. Cf. R.
TEXkdOVog
Garland, Introducing New Gods:ThePolitics Athenian
of Re-
ligion (Ithaca 1992) 45-46; ur a'd pLt might specify any
practice with origins predating the 460s. See Nagy passim
for the literary development.
6 MMR2 584-614, GGR3378-81, contra G. Mylonas,
"Homeric and Mycenaean Burial Customs," AJA 52
(1948) 56-81; Mylonas, "The Cult of the Dead in Helladic
Times," in G. Mylonas and D. Raymond eds., StudiesPre-
sentedto DavidM. Robinson1 (St. Louis 1951) 64-105; My-
lonas, "BurialCustoms,"in A. Wace et al., A Companion to
Homer(London 1962) 478-88; see the papers in Hagg and
Nordquist.
7 Rohde 24 and in general ch. 1.
8 Rohde 25: "the cult of Heroes everywhere has the
same features as the cult of ancestors . .. the remains of a
true cult of ancestors provided the model and were the
real starting-pointfor the later belief and cult of Heroes."
9 Rohde 121, 123; emphasis in original.
 1994] CONTESTING THE PAST
ancestral worship of noble families broadened into
hero worship. If original ancestral identities had
been lost, heroes' names were fabricated, or their
cults simply died out.1'
Rohde's reconstruction of hero cult and its origin
in ancestor cult depended on the importance of he-
roes' bones in literary sources. Although cult is ab-
sent, epic attitudes to burial and the stress on the
hero's body ultimately culminated in a vigorous
commerce in heroic bones and assorted other relics
carried on by some Archaic and Classical poleis, as
well as hero cults at Panhellenic sanctuaries." With
Fustel de Coulanges, Rohde assumed the impor-
tance of ancestral graves to the Greeks based on a
pastiche of written references and notions of ances-
tor cult derived from comparative anthropology.
These ideas have been influential in the interpreta-
tion or use of excavated evidence as it became avail-
able over the past century.12
In 1921, Lewis Farnell criticized Rohde for what
he termed "the chief defect" in his work: "he does
not distinguish clearly between 'tendance' and cul-
tus."'3To distinguish ancestral cult, he preferred the
term tendance over worship for this behavior. Farnell
agreed with Rohde that ancestors overlap with he-
roes, but he identified ancestors as purely local,
while heroes could be located in more than one
place. The actual worship of the dead, Farnell be-
lieved, can be evidenced from the eighth century
B.C. onward; therefore, the festivals and observa-
tions that reflect "affection" and not awe were traces
of a pre-Homeric attitude and mentality. Pointing
out that hero cults are often not found in a hero's
home territory, he inferred that they were not an-
cestral in origin. Although he allowed the possibility
that some epic heroes received local cult before they
were taken up by epic, his general view was that
"much hero cult was directly engendered by the
powerful influence of the Homeric and other epics
... one may discern that the old epic poetry not
only suggested many a name to forgotten graves,
[but] occasionally also imposed laws on the ritual."'4
10 Rohde 121, 123.
" E Pfister,Der im AltertumI-II. Religions-
Reliquienkult
geschichtliche Versucheund Vorarbeiten
5 (GieBen 1909-1912)
is still standard; see also E.T Thompson, TheRelicsof the
Heroesin AncientGreece(Diss. Univ. of Washington 1985)
and Antonaccio 1994; E. Vandiver, Heroes in Herodotus
(Leiden 1991) 34-38 with references on Orestes' relics.
12 Cf. Antonaccio 1993.
13 Farnell2; cf. 343 and 6. Rohde and Farnellwere both
especially concerned to refute the prevalent theory of the
day, that heroes were faded or decayed gods who had
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391
Farnell's category of heroes encompassed seven
groups, covered in individual chapters and an ap-
pendix of ancient written sources.'5 The figures
ranged from Herakles, both god and hero, to Titus
Quinctus Flamininus, at the end of historical Greek
autonomy.
Criticism of Rohde continued with R.K. Hack,
who took up the influence of epic in hero cult in an
article published in 1929. Drawing upon Nilsson's
work on Minoan and Mycenaean religion, he af-
firmed not only a Mycenaean worship of the dead
but its continuation into hero worship in a later pe-
riod.16 The only apparent exception to this devel-
opment from Mycenaean to historic times, the
attitude of Homer, Hack found not to stand outside
the mainstream at all. Hack pointed out the various
exceptions to Rohde's rule that Homer knew of no
worship of the dead or of heroes. He detailed ances-
tor and hero cult among the Ionians, the existence
of which for him precluded the notion that Homer's
background could be responsible for the omission
of any references to cult. He found instead internal
reasons for the lack of hero worship. Since Homer
is recounting the ideal, heroic past, as indicated by
his use of various archaisms, hero cult is suppressed,
because the heroes are shown as contemporaries
and equals, and cult between them would be inap-
propriate. Hack concluded that hero cults are not
Bronze Age survivals, but part of a continuous tra-
dition to which the poems of Homer contributed.
Meanwhile, more evidence for the Iron Age had
become available. T.H. Price continued this line of
argument, differing with Rohde in identifying evi-
dence for cult within Homer: the sacrifice made by
Odysseus in the underworld; references to the con-
tinued life and honor held by the Dioskouroi under
the earth; the treatment of Erechtheus in the Iliad;
and the topographical importance of ancient tombs
in Homer. Price found fault with the assumption
that hero cult is a Mycenaean tradition that some-
how continued uninterrupted." She also recog-
nized that purportedly earlier hero cults, those of
degraded to the status of elevated humans. Rohde 117
n. 7 and Farnellch. 11.
14 Farnell 283-84.
15 Farnell 403-26.
16 R.K. Hack, "Homer and the Cult of Heroes," TAPA
60 (1929) 57-74, 59.
17 T.H. Price, "Hero-Cult and Homer," Historia 22
(1973) 129-44: "There is no evidence of continuity,and no
such cult was instituted inside a Mycenaean tomb before
the 8th century B.C., according to the available archae-
ological evidence" (emphasis in original).
392 CARLAM. ANTONACCIO
Fig. 1. Prosymna. Finds from tombs VIII and IX. (Photo courtesy American School of Classical
Studies at Athens)
Pelops and Odysseus, for example, are not con-
nected with Mycenaean tombs.'8 In her critique,
she identified several points of confusion in termi-
nology and concept in previous scholarship: hero
cult and the cult of the dead were confounded, and
the practice of hero cult not distinguished from a
mere belief in heroes. She defined cult of the dead
as "the burial rites and ceremonies after it" while
hero cult is "a continuously repeated ritual over a
long period of time."'9 Her own criterion for a hero
cult, however, would seem to be compromised in
regarding tomb cult as hero cult.20
The first thorough consideration of archaeologi-
cal evidence for post-Bronze Age cult in Mycenaean
tombs was Carl Blegen's 1937 study of Late Helladic
tombs at Prosymna, site of the Argive Heraion.2'
Nearly a third of the chamber tombs excavated un-
18 See Price
(supra n. 17) 131 and Cook's work, infra
n. 22. The same observation about the citing of hero
shrines is made by A. Snodgrass, "Poet and Painter in
Eighth-Century Greece,"PCPS 204 (1979) 118-30, 123-
24, without reference to Price'sarticle.
19Price (supra n. 17) 129.
20 Price (supra n. 17) 143. On Erechtheus:II. 2.546-51;
Dioskouroi: Od. 11.298ff., where they live on under the
earth, but cf. 11. 2.243, where both are dead and there is
no mention of continued life anywhere. Tombs as land-
marks, e.g., 11. 2.604 (Aipytos), 2.793 (Aisyetes), 10.414,
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[AJA98
der his direction contained Late Geometric and Ar-
chaic pottery, and bronzes including phialai, bowls,
and pins (figs. 1-2). Blegen interpreted this mate-
rial as votive offerings to heroic ancestors, possibly
by actual descendants of the Mycenaean families
who had built the tombs. In support of continuity,
which was unattested by an unbroken sequence of
burials or of offerings, Blegen had to appeal to Pro-
togeometric finds in Mycenaean tombs at Dendra
and Thebes. Blegen's view followed that of Rohde,
Farnell, and Nilsson: the Mycenaeans must have
been Homer's epic heroes, and therefore Myce-
naean graves were centers of heroic power.
John Cook followed Blegen's work in the Argolid
with his publication of a shrine founded in the
eighth century at Mycenae, which he assigned to
Agamemnon (fig. 3).22 Prior to this two other hero
11.371, 20.232 (Ilos); but cf. that of Myrine, an Amazon,
not a hero. Discussion in Price (supra n. 17) 137-40 and
Antonaccio 1994, ch. 3.
21 C. Blegen, "Post-MycenaeanDeposits in Chamber-
Tombs,"ArchEph1937, 377-90.
22 J.M. Cook, "The Agamemnoneion," BSA 48 (1953)
30-68; Cook, "The Cult of Agamemnon at Mycenae,"in
FUpa Avroviov Kepaqy6sroAAov (Athens 1953) 112-18; A.
Foley, The Argolid800-600 B.C. An Archaeological Survey
(SIMA80, Goteborg 1988) 151-53; and infra n. 51.
1994] CONTESTING THE PAST 393

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Fig. 2. Prosymna. Finds from tomb IX (nos. 1203-1205) and tomb XLII (nos. 911-12). (Photo courtesy
American School of ClassicalStudies at Athens)

shrines had been archaeologicallyinvestigated: one rized that this and other hero cults were the direct
for Odysseus on Ithaca, and another for Menelaos result of the circulationof the Homeric poems, since
at Sparta (figs. 4-5).23 Two points emerged: the the shrine was founded in the eighth century B.C.
shrine at Mycenae (like the other two) was situated He did not, therefore, feel obliged to argue continu-
well away from the chamber and tholos tombs, con- ous memory; in fact, the opposite. Homer's descrip-
trary to Pausanias's testimony that the graves of tion of Agamemnon's murder outside the walls
Agamemnon and his followers were shown inside provided an explanation for the location of the
the walls.24 Second, Cook, following Farnell, theo- shrine. To Cook's mind, the cults were begun "by

Fig. 3. Mycenae. Shrine of Agamemnon. (Photo C. Antonaccio)

23 See infra n. 50. 24 PaUS. 2.16.3-7.

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394 CARLAM. ANTONACCIO [AJA98

Fig. 4. Ithaca. Polis Bay. (Photo C. Antonaccio)

people who preserved no continuity of memory--
and little enough of blood-some centuries after the
occupants had passed into oblivion."'25
Nicolas Coldstream'sJHS article in 1976 also em-
phasized the influence of epic in the development
of hero cult as proposed by Farnell in 1921, and
combined it with the most comprehensive collection
of excavated evidence to date.26 Coldstream col-
lected the votives deposited in Mycenaean tombs all
over Greece during what he defined as the "Age of
Homer" (750-650 B.C.) (fig. 6).27 For Coldstream,
hero cult was being practiced if two conditions ap-
plied: a significant hiatus existed between the last
use of the tomb and a votive deposit, and deposited
objects were not associated with a later structure or
grave.28 Furthermore, in areas where tholoi or
chamber tombs remained a tradition after the
Bronze Age (as in Thessaly and Crete), Coldstream

Fig. 5. Sparta. Menelaion. (Photo Deutsches Archiologisches Institut, Athens, neg. Sparta 195)

25 Cook, in Frpag (supra n. 22) 115. offerings anywhere-to my knowledge-are earlier than
26 N. Coldstream, "Hero-cults in the Age of Homer," the third quarterof the eighth century."
JHS 96 (1976) 8-17. 28 Coldstream (supra n. 26) 9.
27 Coldstream (supra n. 26) 10: "it remains true that no

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
1994] CONTESTING THE PAST 395

pt

B 4
.4
e

Fig. 6. Distribution of hero cults, 750-650 B.C., according to N. Coldstream. (After N. Coldstream, JHS 96 [1976] 12,
fig. 1)

found no later votives in the Mycenaean tombs dur-
ing the century under consideration. For the areas
where votives do occur in Mycenaean tombs, Cold-
stream pointed to the change in burial from multi-
ple-use chamber and tholos tombs to single graves.
Only burials that employed unfamiliar practices
would prompt any show of respect, but not until
Homer had primed interest.29 Coldstream believed
the currency of epic would account for the occur-
rence of votives in Dorian areas, where an alien,
immigrant population might otherwise be expected
to show no particular reverence for Mycenaean
predecessors.
While Coldstream believed that tomb cults were
honors of private and ordinary Greeks to uniden-
tified heroes, he saw in the shrines of Menelaos at
Sparta and Agamemnon at Mycenae early Dorian
attempts to co-opt epic heroes."0 In support of this
view he cited "heroic burials" that he believed
showed Homer's influence, such as that of Amphi-
damas of Chalkis (Hes. Op. 654-59), and the early
seventh-century B.C. West Gate burials at Eretria,
warrior cremations in bronze urns, accompanied by
weapons.31 Finally, he proposed that hero cults that
he believed preceded his "Age of Homer," such as
those of Erechtheus and Akademos at Athens and
Odysseus on Ithaca, depended on racial continuity.
In response to Coldstream, Price broadened her
earlier work, identifying 10 cults that antedate
Homer (dating Homer to 750 B.C.).32 Price looked
to the Indo-Europeans for the ultimate origin of
ancestral veneration, and identified saga and the

29 Coldstream (supra n. 26) 14.
30 Coldstream (supra n. 26) 15-16.
31 On the West Gate burials, C. Berard, Eretria III:
L'Hir6ona' la Portede l'Ouest(Bern 1970); and Berard,
"R6cupererla mort du prince: heroisation et formation de
la cite," in G. Gnoli and J.-P Vernant eds., La mort:lesmorts
dans les socitics anciennes (Cambridge 1982) 89-105; cf.
Price (supra n. 17) 143 concerning "heroicburials":"Most
probably certain elements went both ways: from common
burial practices to hero-cult and from hero-cult to special
important burials."Cf. Antonaccio 1994, ch. 5.
32 TH. Price, "Hero Cult in the 'Age of Homer' and
Earlier,"in G. Bowersock et al. eds., Arktouros:Hellenic
StudiesPresentedto B. Knox(Berlin 1979) 219-28.

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396 CARLAM. ANTONACCIO [AJA98

LIV

"CID

i.4

Fig. 7. Distribution of tomb cult at Bronze Age tombs, 1050-600 B.C. (C. Antonaccio)

desire to define identity as incentives for hero cult.33
Price criticized Coldstream for using too low a lower
limit for his evidence, for conflating hero cult and
the tomb cults, and for including propitiation and
accidental intrusion into Mycenaean tombs. She ob-
served that these cults, ostensibly engendered by
epic, did not seem to be directed to epic heroes.34
Bronze Age tombs are locations where hero cults
could be expected to develop, given the written evi-
dence, and since Coldstream's summary, it has
widely been accepted that the later material found
at them consists of votive offerings to heroes. In the
last few years the tomb evidence has been the sub-
ject of continual comment, and the term tomb cult
often employed to differentiate it from hero cult at
formal shrines. Tomb cult is used of family vis-
its to graves in the Classical period by Humphreys;
Farnell called this tendance.35In general, the later
material in and around Mycenaean tombs includes
offerings of pottery and occasionally small bronzes
and figurines, evidence of activities that took place
at the tombs, including ritual eating and drinking
(fig. 7; see infra). Snodgrass, Whitley, and Morris
have all discussed this phenomenon in recent years,
deemphasizing Homer's influence on these prac-
tices and appealing more to regional historical and
social factors (infra).36 Yet the objects of tomb cult
are still often assumed to be heroes. In fact, the
canonical concept of the rise of hero cult during the
eighth century is due to the later material in Myce-
naean tombs, rather than the founding of hero
shrines per se.

33 Price (supra n. 32) 228: "The exact time of intersec-
tion between mythology and actual practice or worship is
still to be discovered." Snodgrass also responded to Cold-
stream: A. Snodgrass, Archaeology and the Rise of the Greek
State(Cambridge 1977) esp. 30-31.
34 Price (supra n. 32) 220.
35 S. Humphreys, "FamilyTombsand Tomb Cult in An-
cient Athens: Tradition or Traditionalism?"JHS 100
(1980) 96-126; and R. Garland, The GreekWayof Death
(London 1985); see also Antonaccio 1994. Morrisuses the
term, as does S. Alcock, "TombCult and the Post-Classical
Polis,"AJA95 (1991) 447-67.
36 Supra n. 35. Snodgrass (infra n. 40).
J. Whitley,
"Early States and Hero Cults: A Re-appraisal,"JHS 108
(1988) 173-82 does not make a clear distinction between
hero cult and tomb cult.

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 1994] CONTESTING THE PAST
Although archaeologists were now focused on the
Iron Age and on new data and approaches, epic
remained crucial. Both Snodgrass and Morris have
drawn on the work of Gregory Nagy, who has ar-
gued that hero cult was not a feature of later Greek
religion instigated by epic, but "a highly evolved
transformation of the worship of ancestors within
the social context of the city-state.'"3 This transfor-
mation in practice mirrors one in poetry, which
moved from stories about ancestors to the epic cele-
bration of heroes; while hero cults are local, epic
is Panhellenic.38Drawing in turn on the work
K•kog
of Snodgrass, Nagy emphasized the emergence of
epic in the eighth century along with the polis and
Panhellenism.39The apparent absence of explicit
hero cult in the Homeric poems remarked upon by
Rohde is, then, due to the importance of heroes
beyond their home locale, and does not imply that
the ideology underlying the cults is also absent. In
this model, the local and Panhellenic aspects of he-
roes gradually fuse, so that epic heroes, too, eventu-
ally receive cult as local figures.40
Nagy suggested that celebration of heroes may be
framed in terms of ckXog, the glory or reknown con-
ferred by epic poetry, and uTqi, honoring heroes
with cult. Epic K~ktogand cultic TLrtiare two comple-
37 Nagy 115, building on Rohde.
38 See also Rohde, and Nagy 166-67, 284, etc., makes
epic a determining influence on practice. The erroneous
notion of a primitive and continuous ancestral cult for the
Greeks, on which the transmission of property was based,
goes back to N. Fustel de Coulanges, TheAncientCity(Bal-
timore 1980), originally published in 1865 (see S. Hum-
phreys' and A. Momigliano's introduction to the 1980
edition).
39 Nagy 166-67 citing Snodgrass; see also Rohde, ch. 1.
On Panhellenism,see below.
40 Referred to in turn
by Morris 752-54 and A.
Snodgrass, "The Archaeology of the Hero," Aion. Annali
del seminariodi studidel mondoclassico,sezionedi archeologiae
storiaantica 10 (1988) 19-26, esp. 20-21.
41 Nagy 118 ?1 n. 2 and 148-50 in general on also
Ty!il;
Nagy, GreekMythologyand Poetics(Ithaca 1990) 132-38.
Kkog as recompense for death: Nagy 119; cf. C. Segal,
"Kleosand Its Ironies in the Odyssey," AntCl52 (1983) 24-
47. Odysseus refers, exceptionally,to his own Hom.
K:xog: and
Od. 9.19-20; Penelope to hers, 19.127. On Penelope
see now M. Katz, Penelope'sRenown,Meaningand
K:xog, in theOdyssey(Princeton 1991). K)Xogis used
Indeterminacy
by Pindar of the living athlete: Nagy 1990 (infra n. 53)
150-51, but TLI"iis regularly translated as "honor."See in
general 146-98, but cf. L. Kurke, TheTrafficin Praise(Ith-
aca 1991) 16-19 and passim. The physical counterpart of
KXEog,rather than cult, is the oflta: see M. Lynn-George,
Epos:Word,Narrativeand theIliad (AtlanticHighlands, N.J.
1988), esp. 153-229, and Nagy, GreekMythology and Poetics
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397
mentary aspects of the hero's due. KXkog,not gen-
erally used of present time in epic, requires memory
(the oral tradition) while TLuLitis the communal ac-
knowledgment of a hero's status.41The fjltog or
3t6ktg, observer-participants, offers this recognition,
and sacrifice and feasting play a key role in this
semantic field. In the context of ritual feasting,
t•Lti
is expressed by the yipag, an "honorific portion" of
the sacrifice.42 At the end of the eighth century,
therefore, a simultaneous celebration of heroes in
epic and cult emerges, at the time both Homer and
archaeologically visible hero cult are now generally
placed. This elegant formulation is, however, not
exclusive to heroes and hero cult.43 By a wider
definition, It[ti within the poems refers to the com-
munal recognition offered to individuals ascribed a
given level of status, and yicpag refers to the exact
measure of this recognition.44
So far, the two main theories on the origins of
hero cult and the role of Homer can be summarized
as follows: 1) Homer's omission of hero cult and his
attitudes toward the dead are anomalous; there is
continuity between a native ancestor cult and the
hero cult that develops from it over time; 2) Homer
inspires hero cult among mainland Greeks (Dori-
ans), who have no connection with the Mycenaeans
(supra) 202-22. Heroic stature expands in the Odyssey. A
bard like Demodokos is also called a hero; Odysseus, how-
ever, promises Nausikaa 0C 6g ~; eXeoC0t41iv and she is
not a "heroine"(Od.8.467). Historically,founders of cities
may become heroes, though few are warriors. See Nagy
149, and GreekMythologyand Poetics133, noticing where
heroes get TtLil 1gOE6vwhen they function as "priest"or
"king";on founders, see I. Malkin,GreekReligionand Colo-
nization(Leiden 1987).
42 Nagy 132, though see W. Burkert, GreekReligion
(Cambridge, Mass. 1985) 199-203 on chthonic cults.
43 E.g., also describes Briseis, the prize captive in
II. book 1;y'pag
cremation is the ypca'
pBav6vTwv; to command
is for Nestor the yFpcCgyep6vorvy (Il. 4.323), all part of a
whole system of heroic prerogatives. See especially on the
ypctg OCtv6vTwvR. Garland, "Gerasthanonton:An Investi-
gation into the Claims of the Homeric Dead," BICS 29
(1982) 69-80; and Nagy 132 on Briseis as a Simi-
are varied in nature and kind. ygpag.
As James
larly,
McGlew TCt•i
has recently pointed out, TCL[iwithin epic is the
prerogative of the living; he stresses that connected "with
material objects of value, its quantity is naturally limited.
One man's gain of T[Uil implies another's loss" ("Royal
Power and the AchaeanAssemblyat Iliad 2.84-393," ClAnt
8 [1989] 283-95, esp. 286-87, ns. 7-8).
44 Nagy 1990 (supra n. 41) 137. As Nagy points out to
me, however, characters sometimes speak from the audi-
ence's viewpoint, which is exemplified by the speech of
Sarpedon to Glaukos in Il. 12.310-21.
398 CARLAM. ANTONACCIO
and very different burial practices;this leads to both
the tomb cults and hero cult, the latter an attempt
to co-opt the heroes of epic. The mutual reliance of
archaeologists and philologists on each other's data,
however, whether using Homer to determine hero
cult or archaeology to explicate Homer, leads to cir-
cularity.A contextual approach to the Iron Age pro-
duces two results: first, a diachronic perspective that
indicates change, tension, and different patterns in
space and time; and second, a context within which
to locate symbols and consider how their meanings
change.45The term cult identifies a pattern of ritual
behavior in connection with specific objects, within
a framework of spatial and temporal coordinates.
Ritual behavior would include (but not necessarily
be restricted to) prayer, sacrifice, votive offerings,
competitions, processions, and construction of
monuments. Some degree both of recurrence in
place and repetition over time of ritual action is nec-
essary for cult to be enacted, to be practiced.46Such
factors distinguish a cult of a god or hero from oc-
casional rituals, such as apotropaic gestures. Of
course, the location and even specific object of ritual
may vary and yet a cult may be spoken of: multiple
cults of the gods in different aspects and locations,
and heroes in multiple locations. It is in this sense
that cult is used in the term hero cult.47Ritual action
45Archaeological theory has moved beyond New (or
Processual) Archaeology and is currently struggling to
bring history back into archaeology: for a critique, see T.
Patterson, "History and the Post-Processual Archaeolo-
gies,"Man 24 (1989) 555-66, and recently I. Hodder, "In-
terpretive Archaeology and Its Role," AmerAnt56 (1991)
7-18 with references, for a "contextual"approach, and a
similar emphasis on hermeneutics for classical archaeol-
ogy by G. Gibbon, "ClassicalArchaeology and Anthropo-
logical Archaeology: A Coming Rapprochement?" in N.
Wilkie and W.Coulson eds., Contributions toAegeanArchae-
ology(Minneapolis 1985) 283-94.
46 On ritual in burial practices, see the remarks of I.
Morris,Death-Ritualand SocialStructurein ClassicalAntiquity
(Cambridge 1992) 8-15, and cf. C. Bell, Ritual Theory,Rit-
ual Practice(Oxford 1992).
47 See Antonaccio 1993 and cf. Price (supra n. 32) 220:
in tomb cults, "many deposits contain vases of one period,
therefore how can one talk about instituted continuous
cult?"
48 On this see, e.g., C. Renfrew, TheArchaeology of Cult:
The Sanctuaryat Phylakopi(BSA Suppl. 18, London 1985)
for the Aegean.
49 Morris(supra n. 46) 7-9, esp. 6: "The social structure
we are born into and socialised within is a set of assump-
tions about what we should say, do, and even think in
given situations, but it does not determine our behaviour.
Everything we do is informed by learned social structure,
but the structure itself is only transmitted through time
and space by real people as they repeat what they them-
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[AJA98
and cult as so defined are in part at least archae-
ologically visible;the practiceof ancestor or hero cult
leaves a recoverable trace.48A complete archaeologi-
cal record has not been and cannot be recovered,
however, nor do all activities (much less ideologies)
leave a recoverable trace.
Archaeology is critical for pre- and protohistory.
Arguing backward from the practices of the Classi-
cal period leads to unwarranted conclusions about
these periods, and the written record is biased and
incomplete, even for the period that produced it.
When dealing with the written record in particular,
we should keep in mind what Morriscalls the "Nuer
paradox," in which a society says one thing and does
another.49Hero cult is a prime example of a case in
which the written evidence and ritual behavior as
recovered by archaeology positively collide. First,
despite the prominence of heroes in the written rec-
ord, securely identified early (eighth century) hero
shrines are few in number and peculiar in pattern.
Shrines to Helen and Menelaos, and perhaps one to
Agamemnon together with Kassandra or Alexan-
dra, are both located in Laconia. At Mycenae, the
shrine of Agamemnon has already been mentioned;
on Ithaca, a shrine for Odysseus has been claimed
in the cave at Polis Bay.50Only Laconia, however, has
epigraphical evidence from the Archaic period as-
selves have learned, or react against it." It should be said
that Farnelldid admit change over time in the category of
the hero.
50 For the Menelaion, shrine of Helen and Menelaios,
at Sparta, see Droop et al., "I Laconia: I. Excavationsat
Sparta, 1909. ?6. The Menelaion," BSA 15 (1908-1909)
108-57; H. Catling, "Excavationsat the Menelaion, 1973-
1975," LakonikaiSpoudai2 (1975) 258-69; "New Excava-
tions at the Menelaion, Sparta," in U. Jantzen ed., Neue
Forschungenin griechischerHeiligtiimern(Tuibingen 1976)
77-90; "Excavationsat the Menelaion 1976-1977," La-
konikaiSpoudai3 (1977) 408-15; "Excavationsat the Me-
nelaion, Sparta, 1973-76," AR 1977, 24-42; "Study at the
Menelaion 1982-1983," LakonikaiSpoudai7 (1983) 23-30;
"Sparta:A Mycenaean Palace and a Shrine to Menelaus
and Helen," CurrentArchaeology130 (1992) 429-31; H.
Catling and H. Cavanagh, "Two Inscribed Bronzes from
the Menelaion, Sparta," Kadmos 15 (1976) 145-57; W.
Cavanagh and R.R. Laxton, "Lead Figurines from the
Menelaion and Seriation," BSA 79 (1984) 23-36; R.
Catling, "Excavationsat the Menelaion: 1985," Lakonikai
Spoudai10 (1986) 205-16; R. Catling, "AVotiveDeposit of
Seventh-Century Pottery from the Menelaion," and R.
Tomlinson, "The Menelaion and Spartan Architecture,"
in J. Sanders ed., $IAOAAK?2N. LakonianStudiesin Hon-
our of Hector Catling(London 1992) 57-75 and 247-56,
respectively. For Amyklai, see G. Salapata, "Lakonian
Plaques and Their Relation to the Stone Reliefs,"in Akten
des XIII internazionalenKongressfiir klassischeArchdologie
1988 (Mainz 1990) 525; Salapata, "Pausanias3.19.6: The
1994] CONTESTING THE PAST
signing its shrines to their respective heroes. The
dedication of the shrine at Mycenae to Agamemnon
during the Iron Age has been strongly challenged:
though the offerings begin at the end of the eighth
century, the two graffiti naming Agamemnon as the
recipient are at least fourth century in date, and an
early fifth-century destruction of the shrine took
place in between.51 The location of the Ithacan cave
and its offerings of bronze tripods and cauldrons fit
the epic tradition very well, but this shrine provides
no evidence for an Iron Age dedication to Odys-
seus.52 Although their foundations date from the
Iron Age, then, two of these shrines are not securely
connected with heroes from their inception. Nor
are they founded by leading poleis, although the
archaeological record for this type of sanctuary is
very lacunar: little is known of arrangements for
cults of Erechtheus at Athens, for example.53 Even
more important, however, this handful of shrines is
not located at Mycenaean tombs, as to be expected
from accounts that emphasize the importance of
physical relics in hero cult, especially their bones,
Sanctuary of Alexandra at Amyklai,"AJA95 (1991) 331;
and the reports in Ergon 1956, 100-104; 1957, 12-13;
1957, 548-51; 1960, 167-73. Mycenae: Cook (supra n. 22)
and see infra n. 51. Ithaca: S. Benton, "Excavationsin
Ithaca, III. The Cave at Polis, I," BSA 35 (1934-1935)
45-73; Benton, "AVotive Offering to Odysseus,"Antiquity
10 (1936) 350; Benton, "Excavationsin Ithaca, III. The
Cave at Polis, II," BSA 39 (1938-1939) 1-51; on the pot-
tery, see W. Coulson, "The 'Protogeometric' from Polis
Reconsidered,"BSA 86 (1991) 42-64.
51 C. Morgan and T Whitelaw, "Pots and Politics: Ce-
ramic Evidence for the Rise of the Greek State,"AJA95
(1991) 79-108, esp. 89 challenge the dedication to
Agamemnon in the Archaicperiod as I did in my disserta-
tion in 1987 (see also C. Antonaccio, "Tombs, Terraces,
and the EarlyArgive Heraion," Hesperia61 [1992] 85-105
with references). E de Polignac'sdoubts in La naissancede
la citegrecque(Paris 1984) 130-31, n. 12 are based on the
presence of female terracottas among the finds, but these
do not provide an identification or contradict one.
52 Hom. Od.book 13 describes the cave where Odysseus
hides his Phaiakian treasures, which include 13 tripods,
with Athena's help; the entire case rests on a single graffito
from the Hellenistic period, whereas there is other earlier
epigraphical evidence for Athena, Hera, and the Nymphs;
see Antonaccio 1993.
53 Nagy 7, with notes; Nagy 1990 (supra n. 41) 36-82;
Nagy, Pindar'sHomer (Baltimore 1990) 52-115; see also
Antonaccio 1993, 61-62. Panhellenism as evidenced by
interregional sanctuaries like Olympia will now have to be
considered in light of Morgan (supra n. 3) and Morgan,
"The Origins of Pan-Hellenism" in N. Marinatos and R.
Higg eds., Greek Sanctuaries,New Approaches(London
1993) 18-44, who challenges the early (i.e., eighth cen-
tury) importance of these centers far beyond their regions.
On the other hand, her work makes clear that elite inter-
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399
which locate the hero in a particular place or
places.54 The early evidence for hero cult at sanctu-
aries of Olympian deities is not at all clear, either,
though Greek athletic contests are said to originate
in funeral games for heroes. For example, Alfred
Mallwitz has shown that cult at the Pelopeion in
Olympia belongs to the Archaic period, and heroes
at other Panhellenic sanctuaries have proven to be
similarly absent in the Iron Age.55
The preceding evaluation is made on a narrow
criterion for hero cult: its identification by inscrip-
tion or other written source. Types of offerings
alone cannot securely identify any cult, Olympian
or other, nor can location; as we have already seen,
early hero shrines are not located at tombs, though
our written sources lead us to expect this. It will
seem contradictory to downplay the testimony of
written sources, and then rely on them for such in-
formation, but we will never break out of circularity
if we assume that any later activity at a Mycenaean
tomb must be hero cult. If a cult was founded in the
Iron Age and attracted inscribed dedications in the
action and competition took place long before the rise of
the polis.
54 Snodgrass (supra n. 18) 124 (also that hero cult could
proliferate to several locations). See my article, "Marking
Time: The Bronze Age in the Cultic Topography of Early
Greece," in S. Alcock and R. Osborne eds., Placing the
Gods: GreekSanctuariesin Space (Oxford, forthcoming),
though the earlier work ofA. Nock, "The Cult of Heroes,"
HThR 37 (1944) 141-74 and W. Fergusson, "The Attic
Orgeones," HThR 37 (1944) 61-130 indicated that hero
cult did not necessarily require a tomb.
55 See Nagy (supra n. 53) 119-29 on Panhellenic
games, especially the Olympics. On Pelops see A. Mallwitz,
OlympiaundseineBauten(Munich 1972) 133-37; and Mall-
witz, "Cult and Competition Locations in Olympia,"in W.
Raschkeed., TheArchaeology of theOlympics(Madison 1988)
79-109, as well as H.-V.Hermann, "Pelopsin Olympia,"in
Zrg&e:T6o! Et N. (Athens 1980)
Mvlv?) KovroA•ovro; that a
59-74. Recent excavation demonstrating prehis-
toric tumulus did in fact reside beneath the Classical
shrine does not alter this conclusion: see H. Catling, AR
1987-1988, 24; E. French, AR 1989-1990, 30, and AR
1990-1991, 24; and H. Kyrieleis,"Neue Ausgrabungen in
Olympia,"in H. Kyrieleisand W Coulson eds., Symposium
on theOlympic Games(Athens 1992) 19-24. Palaimon/Melik-
ertes at Isthmia: E. Gebhard, "The Evolution of a Pan-hel-
lenic Sanctuary:FromArchaeology to History at Isthmia,"
in Marinatosand Higg (supra n. 53) 154-77, esp. 170-72;
Archemoros at Nemea: S. Miller et al., Nemea.A Guideto
the Museumand Site (Berkeley 1990); Neoptolemos/Pyr-
rhos at Delphi: J. Pouilloux, FdD II: Topographie et architec-
ture. La regionnord du sanctuaire(Paris 1960) 49-60; J.
Fontenrose, "The Cult and Myth of Pyrrhos at Delphi,"
CSCA4 (1960) 191-261; and E Stihler, "Die Lesche der
Knidier--ein Heroon des Neoptolemos?"Boreas12 (1989)
15-16.
400 CARLAM. ANTONACCIO [AJA98

00

OF

t2tcA

co
.0Colo
?~a
?~P ..,: ,, ?c

Fig. 8. Reuse of Bronze Age tombs, 1050-600 B.C. (C. Antonaccio)

Archaic period, as at the Menelaion, then its attribu-
tion to a particular hero from the beginning is prob-
ably acceptable. Otherwise we overlook the fact that
Greek ritual was a dynamic, changing category,
which underwent important periods of active gen-
eration and which in turn created change.
The recipients of tomb cult are anonymous; if
they were named by participants, whether as ge-
neric hero or specific character, there is no record in
any instance. Descriptions of heroic relics and their
recovery are very different (see infra), and so the
practice, interestingly, does not appear in the writ-
ten sources on cult. The locations of the few bonafide
hero shrines away from tombs, the anonymity of
tomb cults, and their lack of continuity and regular-
ity indicate a different and separate phenomenon
from hero cult. Another factor in tomb cult is that
Bronze Age tombs also receive new burials in the
Iron Age and later. Such burials occur throughout
the Argolid and at other sites across Greece (fig. 8).56
This is especially significant because it suggests a
connection with funerary practice, and calls into
question the interpretation of the votive deposits as
offerings to heroes. Tomb cult is a type of ancestor
cult, which, however, in returning to Bronze Age
tombs creates ancestors by the adoption of ancient
dead unrelated by linear descent and unacknowl-
edged for centuries.57
Although the Greeks did speak of ancestors using
a variety of terms, there is less written evidence for
a cult of ancestors than for hero cult.58In the histori-
cal period, the Greeks practiced what Humphreys

56 See Antonaccio 1993 and 1994, passim for the Ar-
golid, Attica,and Laconia. Some of the burials were noted
by Snodgrass and Coldstream but their significance was
not brought out; cf. Snodgrass 1971 and Coldstream (su-
pra n. 3) 14.
57 For archaeological visibility,Morris (supra n. 3) 97-
109; Morris, "The Archaeology of Ancestors: The
Saxe/Goldstein Hypothesis Revisited," CambridgeArchae-
ologicalJournal 1 (1991) 147-69; and Antonaccio 1993. I
am indebted to Ian Morris for sharing his manuscript
before its appearance in print. I hope to address else-
where the issues he raises there.
58 Terms include yovig, jTp6yovot, urpon;d~opEg, upt-
ToMdropEg, GPLTuorTcvpELg;see Antonaccio 1993. A festival
called Genesia, an annual celebration of the dead at Ath-
ens (and possibly elsewhere), was perhaps connected with
the genos:see E Jacoby,"FENEIIA:A Forgotten Festivalof
the Dead," CQ 36-39 (1944) 65-75; and D. Kurtz and J.
Boardman, Greek Burial Customs (London 1971) 147-48
with references.

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1994] CONTESTINGTHE PAST
calls "memorialism"rather than ancestor worship;
they were motivated (at least when they write down
their thoughts on the subject in the Archaic period
and after) by a desire to be remembered by family
and passersby. The Greeks of historical periods,
however, did not routinely immortalize or divinize
their family dead. Moreover, for most Greeks gene-
alogies did not articulate the generations of the
dead or structure the relations of the living.59Yet, as
discussed already, several scholars have proposed
that ancestors were local and familial, the founders
of a clan, for example, and that their descendants
maintained a cult at their graves. Famous figures
could receive worship as both ancestors (family)and
heroes (community), either in the same or different
places. Ancestor cult was suggested as the original
model; when some ancestors became heroes, the
practice became more general, or some originally
unheroic ancestors were elevated to heroic status
after the cult of heroes had taken hold.60 Heroes,
then, could be considered as ancestors, especially
when claimed by members of an elite; Nagy, too,
observed that heroes could be the completely unhis-
torical ancestors of a kinship group, like a genos,and
he proposed that hero cult grew from worship of
ancestors; hero cult was a "revival of a continuous
heritage."61For Farnell, the earliest clear-cut evi-
dence for ancestor cult was only sixth century in
date, and he denied that the Greeks generally wor-
shipped the dead.62Since the early work of Rohde,
Farnell, and others, ancestors all but dropped out of
the discussion until the last 10 years. For this the
extension of hero cult to Mycenaean tombs with the
increase of archaeological evidence is largely re-
sponsible.
Testing the practice of hero cult and the assump-
tion that hero cult is based on ancestor cult depends
59 S. Humphreys,"DeathandTime,"in S. Humphreys
and H. King eds., Mortalityand Immortality:
TheAnthropol-
ogy and Archaeologyof Death (London 1981) 261-83, esp.
269-70 referring to M. Friedman's work. See also An-
tonaccio 1993, 47-48.
60 Farnell 343-44.
61
See Nagy 115-16, and esp. E Bourriot, Recherches sur
la naturedugenos.Etuded'histoire socialeathenienne-periodes
archaiqueet classique(Diss. Universite de Paris 1976) and D.
Roussel, Tribuet cite (Annaleslittirairesde l'Universitede Be-
sangon193, Paris 1976); add now E. Kearns, TheHeroesof
Attica(BICSSuppl. 57, London 1989).
62 Farnell 355.
Although Farnell devoted a chapter to
"The Cults of Ancestors," he drew most of his evidence
from later Athenian practicesand by conflating sources on
other Greek communities from all periods. For example,
the will of one Epikteta, which specifies sacrifices at a
hero6n to the family's"heroicspirits,"is called "one of our
chief documents concerning the Greek worship of the
dead" but it comes from the island of Thera and dates only
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401
on archaeology. The locations, use, and reuse of
graves, and the ritualsconnected with them provide
the archaeologically visible data for the acknowl-
edgment of ancestors. Obviously, archaeology can-
not recover oral (and many written) accounts of
kinship or genealogy, nor such practices as prayer,
or some types of offerings and sacrifices that leave
few or no detectable traces. It can, however, recover
burial patterns and the frequency and intensity of
some ritual behavior. The Bronze Age Greeks
mostly practiced group burial in chamber and
tholos tombs and in tumuli, perhaps based on the
extended family. The procedures that were fol-
lowed in reopening a tomb for multiple use during
the Bronze Age long ago led George Mylonas to
conclude that there was no contemporary hero or
ancestor cult; he pointed out that the remains of
earlier burials were often accorded no respect at all
when the tomb was reused, and tombs were regu-
larly robbed as well.63What Mylonas and others saw
as disrespect and evidence for looting, however, is at
least in part due to the practice of secondary burial,
where the remains of earlier interments were col-
lected and placed in pits in the floor of the tomb, or
swept aside.64 The Mycenaeans, though, also
showed respect for the locations of earlier burials: a
familiar example is the incorporation of Grave Cir-
cle A within the fortificationsof Mycenae, and much
earlier tombs were also reused, even by the Myce-
naeans. It is becoming clearer that such treatment
of monuments in the Bronze Age, too, was an at-
tempt to legitimate the present using the past.65
From the Bronze Age onward, engagement with
dead kin is limited, in burial custom and memory
both, ordinarily not extending back beyond the
third generation. In burial practices as known from
several areas of the Greek world, this generally
to 200 B.C. (Farnell 353).
63 Mylonas (supra n. 6) argued forcefully against either
ancestor or hero cult among the Mycenaeans;see now, on
Bronze Age burial practices, Higg and Nordquist. On the
familial basis for the use of chamber tombs, see W.
Cavanagh, "Citiesand Synoecism,"in J. Rich and A. Wal-
lace-Hadrilleds., Cityand Countryin theAncientWorld(Lon-
don 1991) 97-118; C. Mee and W Cavanagh,"The Spatial
Distribution of Mycenaean Tombs,"BSA 85 (1990) 225-
43.
64 B. Wells, "Death at Dendra: On Mortuary Practices
in a Mycenaean Community," in HFigg and Nordquist
125-40.
65 Antonaccio 1994, ch. 2; Mee and Cavanagh (supra
n. 63) 242; and also E. Protonotariou-Deilaki, "Burial
Customs and FuneraryRites in the PrehistoricArgolid,"in
Higg and Nordquist 69-83; E. French, "'Dynamis'in the
Archaeological Record at Mycenae,"in M. Mackenzieand
C. Roueme eds., ImagesofAuthority(PCPS Suppl. 16, 1989)
122-30.
402 CARLAM. ANTONACCIO
means that a chamber tomb or group of graves is
used seriatim for just a few generations. Although a
single cemetery might see centuries of use, graves
and tombs are continually covered over or cut
through.66 In memory, too, descent usually does not
extend beyond the father's father. This is apparent
in the long term as well: there is little if any trace of
regular, long-term veneration at tombs from the
Bronze Age to the Classical period.67 This excludes
for the moment mythic, epic, or civic ideologies of
descent. There were, of course, families (yevfl) in the
historical period that did use ancestors as defining
points in genealogies, and who claimed descent
from heroes. The point is that this is not true of all
Greeks, only a few families.68 Yet, all Greeks had
ancestors, in the acknowledged ties with past mem-
bers of their oikos.
To be fully understood, the tomb cult data should
be coordinated with patterns of burial practice. Re-
gional differences should be considered in detail, to
bring out local patterns or distinguish widespread
trends. Space prohibits such discussion here; the
data are available elsewhere, and some conclusions
can be drawn.69 Tomb cult is a sporadic, though re-
curring, feature, and therefore we confront again
the terminology of cult. No single grave, or even
single cemetery, is continuously venerated or main-
tained from the Bronze Age throughout the Iron
66 See
Humphreys (supra n. 35).
67This is a highly
simplified summary of the evidence:
see Morris (supra n. 3) 90-91; Bourriot (supra n. 61)
1,178; Roussel (supra n. 61); and Humphreys (supra
n. 35); see also W. Cavanagh and C. Mee, "The Location
of Mycenaean Chamber Tombs in the Argolid,"in Higg
and Nordquist 55-64; Cavanagh (supra n. 63) for the
Bronze Age. Extensive genealogies do exist in the Greek
world for certain gene in the historical record and in epic,
but they are exceptional; see Bourriot (supra n. 61) for
discussion.
68 This is the crucial result of Bourriot's work (supra
n. 61). I cannot agree with Nagy's insistence (supra n. 53)
152-58 on early Greece as a "tribal"society,"detribalized"
by the polis. As he puts it, "inherited ideologies and prac-
tices concerning ancestors-a key determinant of aristo-
cratic individuality-were drastically curtailed. For one,
the inherited ideologies about ancestors as encoded in
genealogical traditions became differentiated into mytho-
logical genealogies of heroes and historical genealogies of
immediate ancestors .., with this differentiation of inher-
ited ideologies came a parallel differentiation of inherited
practices: the institutional worship of ancestors became
differentiated into two separate but related practices, the
worship of heroes and the cult of immediate ancestors"
(153; cf. 144). This assumes a continuity and uniformity in
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[AJA98
Age. In tomb cult, most often visits are made just
once, perhaps twice.70 Such excursions are very dif-
ferent from hero cult, which once established con-
tinues to be practiced for long periods of time. The
few more durable instances may mean that these
particular tomb cults qualify for cult in the sense of
an established practice, rather than an occasional
ritual, or they may be an instance where hero cult is
in fact located at a Bronze Age tomb. In view of the
permanent anonymity and lack of monumentaliza-
tion, it is more likely that duration is a regional char-
acteristic in these cases, though exceptions occur. It
is important to emphasize that tomb cult is not
confined to the later eighth century; it occurs at least
as early as the 10th, and continues beyond the emer-
gence of the polis.71 Furthermore, tomb cult in the
Iron Age is part of the regional complexes of con-
temporary funerary rituals. This can be illustrated
with an example from Mycenae: a chamber tomb
built at the edge of Grave Circle B, outside the cita-
del, contained a circular structure built of field-
stones and used for offerings (and possibly grave-
side meals). Very similar structures are also known
from chamber tombs at Prosymna and Argos, but
chiefly from Iron Age cemeteries in Naxos and
Asine, in the Protogeometric and Late Geometric
periods. Although the platforms known are from
the Protogeometric and Late Geometric periods,
Greek society, while current work on the Iron Age has
brought out the ruptures and instabilityof the period, see
esp. Morris (supra n. 3) and Whitley (supra ns. 2 and 3).
The development of ancestor cult and of hero cult are
important precisely because the Greeks' traditions con-
cerning ancestors are created and recreated throughout
their history.
69 See Antonaccio 1994.
70 Only at the Menidhi tholos and tomb 1 at Thorikos
in Attica do cults that begin in the late Iron Age continue
over a long period of time. Menidhi: P Wolters,"Vasenaus
Menidi II,"JdI 14 (1899) 103-35; and R. Hdigg,"Giftsto
the Heroes in Geometric and Archaic Greece," in T. Lin-
ders et al. eds., Giftsto the Gods(Boreas15, Uppsala 1987)
93-99; Thorikos: M. Devillers,An Archaicand EarlyClassi-
cal Depositfrom a MycenaeanTombat Thorikos(Miscellanea
Graeca8, Ghent 1988). There are other cases of long-term
reuse (e.g., Medon in Phokis) but these are not certainly
cult. See Antonaccio 1994, ch. 2 for details, as well as An-
tonaccio 1993.
71 Morris 750 acknowledges earlier cases of tomb cult,
but emphasizes the eighth century.On the other hand, the
earlier cults (shown on 759: table 1 and discussed on 753)
are not the tomb cults discussed here, but very question-
able cases and not at Mycenaean tombs.
1994] CONTESTING THE PAST
burials can be found throughout the Iron Age, and
even earlier.72
The veneration of ancestors in the Iron Age and
Early Archaic period, with graveside meals at the
circular platforms and offerings of pottery and
small terracottas and bronzes, takes place in areas
that also see the reuse of tombs, both Bronze Age
and contemporary.7" The reuse of Bronze Age
tombs for burials and tomb cult both, however, may
not be the exclusive preserve of the elite. Placing of
both elaborate and simple burials (including those
of children) and the very modest types of offerings
in most instances do not point to worship of noble
ancestors by those of lower status.74 Mycenaean
graves, resting places of the ancestors of the people
later burying in the same area, may have been
adopted by more than one group within a commu-
nity in competing or complementary strategies in
which they sought status by claiming priority and a
connection with the past. The distribution of reused
tombs and circular platforms is most extensive
among the communities of the Argolid, but such
features are also known in Iron Age Messenia,
Euboia, and Naxos. By contrast, Attica provides
relatively few instances of Iron Age reuse of Bronze
Age tombs, rather more deposits and no circular
platforms.75 The oscillation between reuse and visits
from the end of the Bronze Age, the range of offer-
ings and burials, and regional variations all point to
72 Mycenae: G. Mylonas, O rat4oLKgKKAdog B"' yov
(Athens 1972-1973) 18, pl. 5a-b; I. Papade-
Mvwrv0yv
metriou, "AvaoxUa@lEvM vYLg," Prakt 1955, 218-23
for the circular structure (also•lKillustrated in Antonaccio
1993, fig. 4). The circular structure might have a Bronze
Age precedent in the circular "altar"over Grave IV in
Grave Circle A, and an apparently similar structure re-
ported in a tumulus at Argos: Protonotariou-Deilaki(su-
pra n. 65) 82, figs. 29-30.
73 On the Argolid, see, e.g., R. Higg, "FuneraryMeals
in the Geometric Necropolis at Asine?"in R. Higg et al.
1983 (supra n. 3) 189-94. Instances of contemporary
reuse are clear at Lefkandi and Argos, for example. Cf. R.
Higg, Die Graberder Argolis 1: Lage und Formder Graber
(Boreas 7.1, Uppsala 1974) esp. 157-59. At Lefkandi
(Toumba necropolis) and Nichoria (settlement), circular
platforms are found in different contexts. For Nichoria,
see McDonald et al. (supra n. 3) and recently K. Fager-
str6m, "Finds, Function, and Plan: A Contribution to the
Interpretation of Iron Age Nichoria in Messenia," OpAth
17 (1988) 33-70 with references; on the PG Lefkandi
building, see now M. Popham et al., Lefkandi11.2:TheBur-
ial Buildingat Toumba (London 1993) with references to the
Toumba cemetery, and my article "Homer and Lefkandi,"
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403
a range of users and practitioners, and contesting
claims to the past. Moreover, the distribution of such
practices among early Greek communities, like arti-
fact styles and other cultural practices, indicates the
use of these rituals in a widespread network of com-
munication, though local meanings must not be ig-
nored (see infra).
Although a continuous concern with the earlier
dead emerges, a continuous tradition, first of ances-
tors and then of heroes, or an unbroken veneration
of heroic tombs does not, nor does tomb cult come
to an end with the establishment of the polis, and
the rise of hero cult at separate shrines.76 The modu-
lation and small-scale contrast with the cults of epic
heroes, from whom Iron Age and Archaic elites
claimed descent as part of an ideology confirming
social or political realities, are stable and long-term.
Distinctly local, hero cult also defines community
identity, while at the same time it participates in both
ritual and poetry, which come to be Panhellenic.77
The lack of shrines constructed by later Greeks at
Mycenaean tombs is consistent with a familiarity
with these monumental relics of the past and a local
meaning apart from hero cult. Such meanings were
unstable and variable: Mycenaean tombs were
reused as tombs, transformed into furnaces and
mills, trash pits, and shelters, and tomb cult is not
necessarily the rule for Bronze Age remains in later
periods. Even as late as the Roman period, a tholos
in 0. Anderson and M. Dickie eds., Homer'sWorld:Fact,
Fictionand Tradition(forthcoming).
74 E.g., a rich MG burial at Berbati: G. Sdiflund,Excava-
tionsat Berbati1936-1937 (Uppsala 1965) 35-37, 81-90,
figs. 17-18, 55-75; cf. Antonaccio 1993, fig. 2. A seventh-
century burial in T 533 at Mycenae: A. Wace, Chamber
Tombs at Mycenae(Archaeologia 82, London 1932) 114, 117
figs. 47-49, pl. 56.
75 Naxos: V. Lambrinoudakis,"Venerationof Ancestors
in Geometric Naxos," in R. Higg et al. 1988 (supra n. 3)
235-46; see Antonaccio 1993 and supra n. 73.
76 Cf. even Farnell 344: "the facts of modern
anthropo-
logical study convince us that the question of priority in
regard to these two motives of cult [hero and ancestor] is
an ideal one; both are found operative simultaneously in
early and late periods." On later tomb cult: Alcock (supra
n. 35).
77 Explored by S. Sherratt, "'Reading the Texts': Ar-
chaeology and the Homeric Question,"Antiquity64 (1990)
807-24. If anything, local cults like that of Helen and
Menelaos in Laconia led the way for hero cult at Panhel-
lenic sanctuaries, whose origins would have been as re-
gional centers of communication and competition.
404 CARLAM. ANTONACCIO
Fig. 9. Tiryns. Roman oil press in Mycenaean tholos
tomb. (Photo C. Antonaccio)
tomb might serve as a mill or become a shrine with
the addition of an imperial monument (figs. 9-10).78
This cannot be ascribed to the Greeks' ignorance of
their ancestors' stories, which is the assumption be-
hind the hypothesis of Homeric influence, or unfa-
miliarity with the past, implied by the concept of an
eighth-century "Greek renaissance." Rather, the
monuments were not always significant to later
Greeks in ways that we would predict from written
sources alone.
We may now consider the relationship of tomb
cult to written accounts in which the bones or other
relics of heroes figure. The bones in particular con-
fer a military or political advantage on the polis or
sanctuary that possesses them, and on those who
78 See Antonaccio 1994 and supra n. 51, contra Morris
758. A striking instance of continuities with the present:
AR 1991-1992, 16 reports that intact chamber tombs
south of Mycenae have been recently used as dwellings by
migrant fruit pickers, and collapsed tombs as trash pits.
For Orchomenos, see A. Schachten, Cults of Boiotia 1:
Acheloosto Hera (BICSSuppl. 381, London 1981) 208 with
references.
79 On this see esp. Pfister (supra n. 11) 196-211, 425-
28, 507-508; and Antonaccio 1993 for references; and
Vandiver (supra n. 11) 36 n. I with reference to G. Hux-
ley, "Bones for Orestes,"GRBS20 (1979) 145-48 (and cf.
H. Parke, "The Bones of Pelops and the Siege of Troy,"
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[AJA98
recover them. The interest in relics does not seem
to be the rationale behind tomb cult. I have sug-
gested elsewhere that such bodily relics were often
actually fossils. The findspots of relics, when re-
corded, do not include actual Bronze Age tombs.79
As seen above, it is difficult to find evidence for the
early identification of Mycenaean graves specifically
with any sort of hero, and hero cults are not
founded at actual graves of any kind.80 The cult of
heroes as depicted in written sources involves only
purported graves, which do not seem to be the ones
involved in tomb cult. The accounts of tombs from
which relics were collected do not describe tholos
and chamber tombs; furthermore, Mycenaean
tombs visited in tomb cult had frequently collapsed,
sealing off Bronze Age levels.
Tomb cult, therefore, did not supply these relics,
nor is tomb cult another name for relic cult, al-
though the practice of tomb cult demonstrates that
authentic Bronze Age remains clearly were known
and available. Similarly, hero cult was not predi-
cated on actual tombs, although the practice of tomb
cult makes plain that Mycenaean tombs were known
in this period. Yet hero cult, the cult of relics, and
genealogies that traced members of the Greek elites
to mythical forebears all fabricated links with the
past. While tomb cult used remains of the Bronze
Age, hero cult and the cult of relics compete with
tomb cult, or complement it, providing another as-
pect to the uses of the past. The traffic in relics re-
quires the interstate arena to provide a space in
which to enact it.81
In addition to the competition for the past re-
vealed in the archaeological record for ritual, epic
constructions of time suggest additional tensions,
among epic traditions and between ritual and epic.
Susan Sherratt suggests that in the wake of the
Bronze Age collapse, the early Iron Age saw the
most active creation of epic, in which cremation, for
example, became the heroic burial idiom (whereas
inhumation had been standard Late Bronze Age
Hermathena 48 [1933] 153-62).
80 As
pointed out by A. Snodgrass, "Les origines du
culte des h6ros dans la Grace antique,"in Gnoli and Ver-
nant (supra n. 31) 107-19, 115-16. Snodgrass 1987 (supra
n. 3) 160-61, however,argues that the institutionof "hero
cult"at chamber tombs "positivelyexcludesfamiliaritywith
Homer-or, at least, identificationof the object of the cult
with a 'Homeric hero'." See also 164: "'Homeric' cults
seem never to be located at genuine graves of the heroic
age." See Sherratt (supra n. 77) on cremation in epic as
opposed to inhumation in the Bronze Age.
81 See Antonaccio 1993.
1994]
CONTESTING
:7 'IF'....
:
ii2i
:) :
•;
.... ....
:~~ ~
k':::?
: ::: 1
Fig. 10. Orchomenos(Boiotia).Romanmonumentbasein Mycenaeantholostomb.(PhotoC. Antonaccio)
practice).82 The final phase in the eighth century saw
the integration of episodes and the end of composi-
tion, giving way to recitation. Sherratt only men-
tions Hesiod briefly, though his poetry uses epic
language and form. While Hesiod would seem to
belong in Sherratt's final phase of consolidation,
with the Five Ages in Worksand Days(lines 106-201)
he is still contributingto the constructionof the past,
and providing a detailed frameworkfor it unique in
the Greek epic tradition.83This passage has been the
subject of numerous interpretations, but none has
reallyaccounted for the lack of unity in Greek poetic
traditions.
Hesiod says that a Gold generation was the first
created by the gods of mortal men (tpEp6oCWv
avOpCdCrw). They lived like the gods under Kronos,
and disappeared when the earth covered them
(KaT& yakLI after which they became bali-
K•EX1Uv•v),
82 But cf. Nagy (supra n. 41) 85-87.
83 Vernantconstructsa systemof ages with complemen-
tary concepts of hubrisand dike:J.-P Vernant, Mythand
Thoughtamong the Greeks(London 1983). Other recent
considerations: C. Querbach, "Hesiod's Myth of the Four
Races,"CJ 81 (1985) 1-12; J. Rudhardt,"Le mythe hesio-
dique des races et celui de Promethderecherche des struc-
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THE PAST
405
7
M77
[toveg;oOe0ol, by the will of Zeus. The
E'LXO6vLoL,
Silver generation that followed was much worse;
they were covered by Zeus who became angry be-
cause they ignored the gods. Yet they, too, are <j3-
XEKEg Jd'EKapeg,
OVTIT(]vAvOpd•9nwV,OUOX6OVLOL
second after the Gold generation but still deserving
of Each of these generations appears to fit
ttl."84
into conceptions of divinity that, rather than He-
siod's invention, the Greeks may already have had
in his time.
Hesiod's violent and dark third generation was of
Bronze. Its members went down to Hades anony-
mous, and unlike the other races, without a continu-
ing existence and explicitly without TLtil. This is
because they failed, according to Nagy, in their at-
tempts to win KXEog,and so are ignored in epic. We
know their names from myth, but they are not cele-
brated in epic because their deeds did not merit it.85
tures et des significations,"Revue europdennedes sciences
sociales19 (1981) 245-81. M.-C. Leclerc, "Le mythe des
races une fiction aux sentiers qui bifurquent,"Kernos6
(1993) 207-24 appeared too late for consideration here.
84 "Second"may refer to temporal place, not hierarchy.
85
Cf. Farnell 157 ?9.4.
406 CARLAM. ANTONACCIO
Immediately after this generation, Zeus created the
fourth, which is specified by no particular metal: it
falls between the third of Bronze and the fifth of
Iron, which Hesiod specifies as his own. This fourth
generation is the OELovyEvog, the divine or godly
generation of heroes, called i~lL0eot, the previous
race on the earth, as Hesiod says. He states explicitly
that this generation fought at Thebes and Troy, so
they are the figures of epic poetry as well. While
they perished in war, the fate of at least some was to
live without cares in the Blessed Isles as fortunate,
happy heroes (6XPLtot •poeg).86
As often observed, this fourth generation appears
as an intrusion into the metallic sequence, which
declines with each step except for the heroic inter-
lude. Fontenrose suggested that the Bronze genera-
tion did not really end and the Iron generation is
actually a part of it. Although the language is differ-
ent for the introduction of the Iron generation, it
will not, however, allow the two to be merged. He-
siod clearly states that war destroyed the heroes,
some at Thebes, some at Troy (lines 161-63). The
language used concerning the fate of those without
an afterlife echoes that used of the other genera-
tions. The tattered lines between this and the intro-
duction of the final Iron generation make certainty
about this section impossible, but Hesiod does call
the Iron generation the fifth genos (lines 174-75).87
West suggests that "Greek traditions about men of
the past were almost wholly concerned with those
who fought at Thebes and Troy and with people
linked to them by a network of genealogies. They
had to be accommodated in any survey of man's
86 There is no
space here to thrash out all the possible
dimensions of the word i]pwg; on the term "hero," see
supra, and Rohde 615 s.v. Farnell 15-16; cf. J.
pipwg;
O'Brien, The Transformationof Hera (Lanham, Md. 1993).
Nagy (supra n. 41) 15 on West's point that hemitheoirefers
to parentage, rather than to divinity; M.L. West, Hesiod's
Worksand Days (Oxford 1978) 191, on line 160, but see W
Verdenius, A Commentary
on Hesiod,Worksand Days,vv. 1-
382 (Mnemosyne Suppl. 86, Leiden 1985) 99, who points
out that heroes in the epic tradition are often not of divine
descent: "The original meaning of the word seems to be
'almost gods' (cf. LtOvL#g). . . apart from the immortality
of the gods there was not a sharp dividing-line between
gods and men, but only a gradual difference . . . Just as
the gods in their actions and feelings may sink to the hu-
man level, prominent men may conversely rise to the level
of the gods. . . . The anthropomorphism of the gods is
complemented by the theomorphism of the heroes."
eetov perhaps refers, in this case, to their being like the
gods, in the way that the first race lived like gods.
87 J. Fontenrose, "Work, Justice, and Hesiod's Five
Ages," CP 69 (1974) 1-16, esp. 8 against decline; 10 on the
Heroic to Iron transition. See also J. Gwyn Griffiths, "Ar-
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[AJA98
past. The position they occupy in Hesiod follows
from the view that they were the people who pre-
ceded us ([line] 160), coupled with an unwillingness
to identify them with the Bronze race-perhaps be-
cause the epics showed them as users of iron." 88He
goes on to note that the Bronze, Heroic, and Iron
races fairly accurately follow Greek concepts of his-
tory, whereas the Gold and Silver races seem alien
to Greek tradition. Although the East provides par-
allels, West acknowledges that Hesiod is earlier than
any of the Eastern texts he cites. West concludes that
Hesiod's view stands apart from the usual one,
which did not isolate the Age of Heroes from the
rest of the past, or the present.89
Nagy remarks that generations one and four, the
Golden and the Heroic, mirror each other in theme
and diction, and points out that the cycle of ages
comes full circle through the fifth, the present.90
Hesiod interrupted his narrative to wish that either
he had died or not come into being until a later
time, rather than live in the fifth age in which a total
breakdown of social conventions takes place. This
amounts to a desire for a Golden Age, for an end of
cyclical (rather than linear) time.91 For Hesiod's own
generation, the present "incorporates all the oppo-
sitions of the past and the hereafter." This is part of
Nagy's larger analysis of the myth, in which he ar-
gues that Hesiod's diction provides evidence that
the first and second generations depict the ritual,
cultic aspect of heroes, while the third and fourth
are the epic aspect.92
Archaeologists have tried to find a place for tomb
cult in this structure. It is interesting to note that
chaeology and Hesiod's Five Ages,"Journal of the History of
Ideas 17 (1956) 109-19, 113 with references.
88 West (supra n. 86) 174; to this he contrasts the Cata-
logue of Women, where the Heroic is like the Gold Age.
See also Griffiths (supra n. 87) 116 summarizing the East-
ern comparanda. He concludes that Hesiod must have
had access to folklore traditions of human origins, prob-
ably dispersed from Egypt and Mesopotamia.
89 West (supra n. 86) 176. See also J. Gwyn Griffiths,
"Did Hesiod Invent the 'Golden Age'?" Journal of the His-
tory of Ideas 19 (1958) 92-93.
90 Nagy 169 with note ?30 n. 1.
91 Nagy 169, emphasis his. Cf. Fontenrose (supra n. 87)
10.
92 Nagy 155. Nagy and Vernant (supra n. 83) both
mention the cyclical character of the ages, but Vernant's
emphasis is on the four metallic phases with the heroes
intervening to complete the conceptualization of hubris
and dike as constructed in pairs of metallic ages. Querbach
(supra n. 83) pairs Gold and Silver, Heroic and Bronze,
with regard to their creation and fate after death. He ad-
mits, however, that the Bronze race is nameless.
1994] CONTESTING THE PAST
Hesiod's five ages received much attention in the
earlier work of archaeologists. Griffiths, for exam-
ple, discusses the archaeological basis of the Hesio-
dic scheme: "That the magical and religious
associations of gold have played an important part
in the idea of the Golden Age is quite clear; but it
seems highly probable that the first meaning was a
more literal one, and that Hesiod's scheme purports
to show the ages of man in relation to the metals
discovered by him. The order of his scheme is
chronological. What is more, the sequence gold, sil-
ver, bronze and iron is one which the archaeological
record attests in many areas."93He admits that of the
four metals, Hesiod mentions the use of only bronze
and iron (lines 150-51), but for Griffiths, if the
choice of metals had only symbolized progressive
decline, he would not have accurately mentioned
the actual use of bronze and iron in the correct his-
torical order. He then cites archaeological evidence
for the use of gold and silver without knowledge of
smelting and before bronze and iron. Griffiths in-
cludes copper, missing from Hesiod but important
in the development of metallurgy, under the Greek
word Xchic6g. He concludes that Hesiod's sequence
blends myth and history, leaving the latter visible.94
Snodgrass has suggested that tomb cult was di-
rected to the Silver generation, the 3no;X06vtoL, who
are second after the Golden generation, but also
deserving of Z1Lti. This suggestion seems due to
their location "under the earth"; similarly, West
thought Hesiod specified the Golden race as nJtL-
X06vtoL because they were concerned with man-
kind, and could expect veneration in return. He,
too, suggested that the Silver race as a{(OX06vtoL was
3 Griffiths(supra n. 87) 112.
94 Griffiths(supra n. 87) 119. Cf. Griffiths(supra n. 89)
for further discussion.
95 West (supra n. 86) 181; Snodgrass (supra n. 3) 165.
See also Griffiths (supra n. 87) 111; burials of the men of
the Silver Age who did not worship the gods were re-
garded as the blessed dead, "as though the term origi-
nated from the discovery of richly equipped interments
not associated with recognizable symbols of religion, nor
sites of temples in the Greek fashion, nor any abiding
memories."
96 West
(supra n. 86) 186; cf. Farnell 12-13; Rohde 67-
79.
97 West (supra n. 86) 182; see also Verdenius (supra
n. 86) 86, 92-93; he identifies JoTox66vtotwith "local he-
roes" who do not go to Hades like the Bronze men but
"stay just under the surface of the earth. They are one
stage further away from the gods than the golden race,
which stays on the surface of the earth ([line] 123)
Hesiod does not call the silver race ipmwegbecause he....re-
serves this term for the fourth race ([line] 159). The latter
could not be identified with the silver race because of their
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407
identified with specific graves. The failure of He-
siod's system to achieve the same status as Homer's
would apparently explain why this view was short-
lived and limited.95 Although both Snodgrass and
West explain in;TLXOOVLO and ToX6(0vtoL as, respec-
who range the earth and
tively, past generations
those who are buried and fixed in space,96elsewhere
West cites Rohde's remark that the term jTyLXOoVLot
only serves to distinguish the Golden generation
from the njTovpavtoL, or gods themselves; in Homer
it designates the generation of men, not some origi-
nal race. 'YjToXOovtotare then a further refinement
in this scale of distinctions.97
The nonmetallic, fourth generation of epic he-
roes in Hesiod's system is situated between the
anonymous and unreachable Gold, Silver, and
Bronze generations of the cycle and the fifth, the
present Iron. Each of these had been covered up,
and succeeding generations were not descended
from them. If located in terms of absolute chronol-
ogy, the heroes lived at the cusp of the historical
Iron Age: the Bronze race, Hesiod's anonymous,
dark, and violent generation, did not know iron,
nor did they eat bread, or have an afterlife, but were
destined for Hades without a transformed exis-
tence. The absence of ironworking places these
figures in the Late Helladic period, the historical
Mycenaeans. In a diachronic reading of Hesiod's
system, the heroes of epic were separated from this
Bronze Age. If so, the Late Helladic period is
anonymous, though it leads into the final phase of
war and imminent catastrophe, that which is cele-
brated in song.98
warlike spirit, but the local heroes could, because many of
them were anonymous. . . . The fact that Hesiod leaves
their function undefined shows that he simply included
the local heroes in his scheme [line 141]." As Querbach
states (supra n. 83) 3, the Silver race is honored but not
divine, but he also says they do not have any continuing
existence, which seems contradicted by their function as
~iXaCKECg OVlTOiVJTXovUTo 6OTat (Hes. Op. 121).
98 See Farnell 13, and Rohde 75. The old notion of H.
Chadwick, The Heroic Age (Cambridge 1912), that con-
struction and celebration of a heroic age springs up dur-
ing an ensuing dark period, may thus be of use here; see
Antonaccio 1994 ch. 5 and Sherratt (supra n. 77) 814.
Fontenrose (supra n. 87) 9 says that the heroic age is the
Bronze Age "from another point of view, romanticized
and glorified. As Heriod's bronze age preserves a genuine,
if not entirely accurate, memory of the later historical
Bronze Age, roughly 1400-1000 B.C., so the age of heroes
carries the legendary and epic tradition of that time. He-
siod did not realize that the two genea were really two
representations of a single period."
408 CARLA M. ANTONACCIO
Sherratt characterizes this latter phase as one of
"social and political fluidity and change when new
family or social groups emerge jostling for power
and eager to establish their credentials, and when
legitimation and self-propaganda of individuals or
small groups become particularly crucial issues."99
As for the offerings at chamber tombs, she thinks
that "the growth of local 'hero' (or ancestor)
cult, focussed on tombs of the evidently distant
past, marks a transition away from legitimation
grounded in the present. Heroes in general were
settling into the past. From now on their value to the
interests of family, community and wider groupings
lay in possession and conservation of the heritage of
tradition they already provided. The scene was set
for the spontaneous transubstantiation of kleos (epic
glory) into a ready-formed body of polydynamic
myth."'"00Aswe have seen, the identification of tomb
cult with hero cult is not secure, and if anything the
eighth century represents an intensification of the
competition over the past, though its significance as
contested ground may have been agreed (infra).
While it is not legitimate to seek a completely con-
sistent historical consciousness within this myth,
there is a faded memory behind the description of
the Heroic Age that is preserved in epic. The tombs
of the Mycenaeans that are the object of tomb cult
beginning in the early Iron Age lie just beyond
epic's reach, and seem to belong to Hesiod's Bronze
VWVUVLot, hidden by Zeus. As Rohde noted, "imme-
diately after the disappearance of the Heroes the
poet begins the age in which he himself must live.
Where the reach of poetry ends, there is an end of
all further tradition; there follows a blank, and to all
appearances the present age immediately begins.
That explains why the Heroic Age is the last before
the fifth, to which the poet himself belongs, and why
it does not, for example, precede the (undated)
Bronze Age."'o' By contrast, the epic heroes, for all
their identification with Late Helladic places and
features of material culture, function in a Dark Age
matrix: the ideology of epic poetry is current al-
though the setting of the Heroic Age is in the past.
The poems do not present a fossilized society, but
they embody one that evolved gradually and did not
99 Sherratt
(supra n. 77) 815. On the contested topic of
the end of composition, see G. Nagy, "Homeric Ques-
tions," TAPA 122 (1992) 17-60 with references.
100Sherratt
(supra n. 77) 816 with references.
101Rohde 75.
102 Cf. Querbach
(supra n. 83); on Lefkandi, supra
n. 73.
103 A. Appadurai, "The Past as a Scarce Resource," Man
16 (1981) 201-19, esp. 201, contra M. Bloch, "The Past
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[AJA 98
arise without undergoing long gestation. Hesiod's
wish to belong to another time expresses the ten-
sions inherent in the process; the heroes immedi-
ately prior are the pivot, and the early historical
Iron Age now appears to fit this very well, as recent
finds at Lefkandi and elsewhere suggest.102
The stresses in these competing versions of the
past, mythic as well as ritual, are illuminated by the
work of Arjun Appadurai. The past is a "scarce re-
source," not mere grist for contemporary ideologi-
cal mills (whether a genos's heroic genealogy or polis
cult). Instead, cultures have rules that govern the
past's debatability.'03 There are four dimensions to
these norms: first, authority, or communal agree-
ment on credibility; second, continuity, or agree-
ment about the connection with the source of
authority; third, depth, the differing valuation
given to depth of time in the past; and finally, inter-
dependence, the degree to which competing ver-
sions of the past are minimally credible.104 A shared
past may exist (Panhellenic, say), but different
groups in a community may each hold a separate
past, or place a different emphasis upon some as-
pect of the shared past. The rules within which the
past is debated also mediate change, as occurs at the
beginning and end of the Iron Age in particular (cf.
civic kinship and ideologies of descent in the po-
lis).'05Whereas Ernest Bloch identified a pragmatic
past, within which originate challenges to the un-
changing ritual past dominating the present, Ap-
padurai suggests a past that negotiates between
ritual eternity and the present (cf. KXEog and uLtL'):
"the past is an intrinsically alternative mode of dis-
course to those other cultural modes of communica-
tion which can, and often do, assume an eternal
present. Such norms, therefore, constitute an aspect
of culture in which concessions to change are built
in, and division and debate are recognised. As a
result, such norms permit new forms of action, at
the same time as they allow cultures to regulate so-
cial change."'06 The norms that seem to be reflected
in our written sources especially do not necessarily
determine action; ritual behavior actually generates
symbolism. Morris makes a similar observation: "So-
cial structure, as a set of internalised but constantly
and the Present in the Present," Man 12 (1977) 278-92
(and see also Morris).
104 Appadurai (supra n. 103) 203.
105Appadurai (supra n. 103) 216-17.
106 Appadurai
(supra n. 103) 218. Note, however, that
Bloch's main point is to link the appearance of the past in
discourse about the present as a correlate of hierarchy, not
problematic for Indian society but of interest for the
Greek Iron Age as it advances and develops.
 1994] CONTESTING THE PAST
renegotiated roles and rules, is an artefact of this
knowledge."'07
It is Appadurai's emphasis on cultural norms or
rules that is useful for the Greek case. Morris has
argued that tomb cult had several meanings to dif-
ferent actors in different regions, as well as within a
single community or region: "Each cult probably
had its own associations and special significance"in
which he sees the "conflict of ideologies in the 8th
c."'18In the end, though, he is unable to account for
both the widespread distribution of tomb cult and
its local variations, or to integrate it with literary
constructions of the past: Hesiod's, which he explic-
itly cites. Instead, Morris glosses apparent contra-
dictions in the preserved epic system(s) of the past,
which he sees as contemporary with the late eighth-
century developments attending the emergence of
the polis, by claiming that our own understanding
is at fault: we underestimate "the subtlety of early
Greek poetic thought." This solution consists in sim-
ply denying the contradictions generated by differ-
ent versions of the past. Yet it is true that we cannot
"arbitrarilyexclude the tomb cults as being 'archae-
ological' rather than 'literary"'and Morris is right
to point to the eighth century as a time of crisis and
change, when tomb cults became particularly im-
portant and their frequency peaked.'10The focus on
the Mycenaeans fulfills Appadurai's criterion of
authority, but the present is the key; epic and cult
therefore function for contemporary purposes.
Tombs, rather than avenues to supernatural relics,
allowed direct access to this authority,but by way of
an active creation of ancestors."10
The focus on Bronze Age tombs begins with the
very close of the Bronze Age, and intensifies in the
eighth century, when hero cult is also instituted,
connected to habitation sites as well: it should be
noted that some Dark Age cemeteries were also lo-
cated in former habitation areas."' Appadurai's
107Morris(supran. 46) 7-9 withreferences.
10sMorris 758.
109Morris754-55, referringto Vernant(supran. 83)
64;he alsoseemsto havein mindRudhardt's introductory
remarks(supran. 83). Cf.alsoQuerbach(supran. 83) 6,
on Hesiod'spoetictradition:"Acertainamountof anom-
aly,bothin structureand content,canbe attributedto the
immediateneedsof a particularsituation."
110Morris 750-51; cf. 758: "WhetherHeroes or a Silver
race,theirbonesbecamea sourceof powerand an arena
for conflict."
"' See my forthcoming article (supra n. 54).
112B. Qviller, "The Dynamics of the Homeric
Society,"
SymOslo56 (1981) 109-55; R. Drews, Basileus:TheEvidence
for Kingshipin GeometricGreece(New Haven 1983), and
esp. E. van der Vliet, "'Big-Man', Tyrant, Chief: The
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409
model applied to the Iron Age choice of Late Hel-
ladic tombs and other remains acknowledges their
authority, their connection with actors in the pres-
ent, values their place in time, and accepts limits for
the range of variabilityin accounts of the past. We
can acknowledge tensions within a community and
begin to deal with what we can see in the archae-
ological record: not a uniform or continuous evolu-
tion but a dynamic and variable process of rupture,
appropriation, and conflict both synchronicallyand
diachronically. The cusp of pre- and protohistory
provides a communally acknowledged source of
authority for emergent Greek communities. If He-
siod's adaptation of a metallic sequence is from an
Eastern source, the status of Eastern cultures in the
Bronze and Iron Ages as sources of prestige with
their goods, motifs, and forms may help to account
for the choice of this framework for the past in Works
and Days.
By providing us with authority,continuity,depth,
and interdependence as a cross-culturalframework
for using the past, Appadurai's work also helps to
explain an apparent anomaly in Greek systems of
thought and practice. Genealogy dominated Greek
thought in the Archaic period, but this is contra-
dicted by the archaeological record for sporadic ten-
dance of tombs, which as already discussed shows a
limited concern in practice. In Greece, changing
structures of authority, from basileia("kingship")to
tyranny and aristocracy, are for the most part
achieved statuses, rather than inherited. These
figures of authority are all "big men," persons
whose position depends on the abilityto attractand
keep followers through personal talent, feasting,
and gift-giving, right through the historical pe-
riod."2 The status of "big man," which rather than
"king"or even "chief" best fits the basileusof early
Greece, is what emerged after the end of Bronze
Age power structures based on the palaces."3Since
Anomalous StartingPoint of the State in ClassicalGreece,"
in M.A. van Bakel et al. eds., PrivatePolitics:A Multi-Disci-
plinaryApproachto 'Big-Man'Systems(Leiden 1986) 117-26;
cf. Y. Ferguson, "Chiefdomsto City-States:The Greek Ex-
perience," in T. Earle ed., Chiefdoms:
PowerEconomy,and
Ideology(Cambridge 1991) 169-92.
113 See Antonaccio 1993 contra J.-P Vernant, The Ori-
gins of GreekThought(London 1982) 38-48. Whitley (supra
n. 3) 184-86, and (supra n. 2) 352 has contested the ap-
propriateness of the "big man" model for all of Greece in
the Iron Age, and sees it as a phenomenon of the early
Iron Age only. His argument seems to me too determined
by the specific case of Melanesia and its settlement pat-
terns, and he is not aware of van der Vliet's work (supra
n. 112), which points out the commonalities of Greek
authority through time.
410 CONTESTINGTHE PAST
C.M.ANTONACCIO,
birth alone does not secure position, and competi-
tion for authority is the rule, tomb cult, the cult of
ancestors, may constitute a legitimating device for
the elite that allowed leaders to claim links with the
past that did not exist in real kinship, descent, or
other continuity. In fact, Appadurai's allowance for
a mediating past makes it possible for various
groups among the Mycenaeans' successors, on the
cusp of new social realities at the end of both the
Mycenaean period and the Iron Age, to appropriate
them as their ancestors in a period of change. In the
polis, hero cult creates a civic kinship that may serve
individuals or the needs of the state to foster a new
group identity.114But tomb cult, distinct from hero
cult, was practiced at different locations, using dif-
ferent forms, and established other links with the
past. When hero cult emerges, perhaps first at
Sparta in the late eighth century, heroes indeed
114 In
Athens, e.g.: E. Kearns, "Change and Continuity
in Religious Structures after Cleisthenes," in P Cartledge
and ED. Harvey eds., Crux: Essays Presented to G.E.M. de
Ste. Croix(Exeter 1985) 188-207 and supra n. 61.
15 There is no room here to pursue several other is-
sues: hero and tomb cult in ethnjor the Classicaland Hel-
lenistic periods, the connection of tombs with possession
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were settling into the past, as Morris and Sherratt
suggest.
The richness and variety of the evidence for the
Greeks' concern with their own past make many
readings possible. No single version should be
sought; ritual and text, archaeology and philology,
reveal differences that should be acknowledged, not
reconciled. The ambiguities and multiple stories of
the Greeks are keys to understanding how the past
functioned for them: a source of authority,a fertile
field for the ever-shifting definitions of power, iden-
tity, and authenticity.115
DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICAL STUDIES
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY
MIDDLETOWN, CONNECTICUT 06459
INTERNET CANTONACCIO@EAGLE.WESLEYAN.EDU
of land, or the cults of heroic city-founders, especially in
the West. See Whitley (supra n. 36) and de Polignac(supra
n. 51) on activities at Mycenaean tombs in Attica and the
Argolid and their possible relation to the possession of
territory, as well as Morris (supra n. 57); Alcock (supra
n. 35) on post-Classical tomb cult; and Malkin (supra
n. 41) on founders.