Herakles, Herodotos and the Persian Wars

In the course of his description of Scythia, Herodotos sums up its tourist potential

rather briefly:
Yvµãsia d¢ ≤ x≈rh aÏth oÈk ¶xei, xvr‹w µ ˜ti potaµoÊw te poll«

µeg€stouw ka‹ ériyµÚn ple€stouw. tÚ d¢ époyvµasai êjion ka‹

pãrej t«n potaµ«n ka‹ toË µegãyeow toË ped€ou par°xetai,

efirÆsetai. ‡xnow ÑHrakl°ow fa€nousi §n p°tr˙ §neÒn, to ¶oike µ¢n

bƵati éndrÒw, ¶sti d¢ tÚ µ°gayow d€phxu, parå tÚn TÊrhn

potaµÒn.

This country has no marvels, except that the rivers are by far the largest and

most numerous anywhere. I will mention the one thing worth seeing apart

from the rivers and the size of the plain: the people will show you a footprint

of Herakles in the rock. It looks like the footprint of a man, but it is two cubits

long, and is by the river Tyras.

(4.82)

This footprint may be taken as a metaphor for the role of Herakles in Herodotos’

History as a whole, and perhaps in the understanding of many of Herodotos’

contemporaries. He is seldom directly visible, but leaves his mark on the landscape,

and his intervention in human affairs is a subject for discussion and commemoration.

In this essay I will explore the way in which Herakles, like a number of other gods,

was understood to intervene in human affairs, and in particular in the battles between

the Greeks and the Persians.

Herakles is a subject of particular interest to Herodotos, as is clear from a passage

from Book Two of the History, where the author is following up the idea that

Herakles was one of the twelve Egyptian Gods who came into being in the middle of

the eighteenth millennium BC:

ka‹ y°lvn d¢ toÊtvn p°ri saf°w ti efid°nai §j œn oÂÒn te ∑n, ¶pleusa

ka‹ §w TÊron t∞w Foin€khw, punyanÒµenow aÈtÒyi e‰nai flrÚn ÑHrakl°ow

ëgion. ka‹ e‰don plous€vw kateskeuasµ°non êllois€ te pollo›si

énayƵasi, ka‹ §n aÈt“ ∑san st∞lai dÊo, ∂ µ¢n xrusoË ép°fyou, ∂

d¢ sµarãgdou l€you lãµpontow tåw nÊktaw µ°gayow. §w lÒgouw d¢

§ly∆n to›si flreËsi toË yeoË efirÒµhn ıkÒsow xrÒnow e‡h §j o sfi tÚ

flrÚn ·drutai. eron d¢ oÈd¢ toÊtouw to›si ÜEllhsi suµferoµ°nouw:

¶fasan går ëµa TÊrƒ ofikizoµ°n˙ ka‹ tÚ flrÚn toË yeoË fldruy∞nai,

e‰nai d¢ ¶tea ép' o TÊron ofik°ousi trihkÒsia ka‹ disx€lia. e‰don d¢

§n tª TÊrƒ ka‹ êllo flrÚn ÑHrakl°ow §pvnuµ€hn ¶xontow Yas€ou

e‰nai: épikÒµhn d¢ ka‹ §w Yãson, §n tª eron flrÚn ÑHrakl°ow ÍpÚ

Foin€kvn fldruµ°non, o„ kat' EÈr≈phw zÆthsin §kpl≈santew Yãson

¶ktisan: ka‹ taËta ka‹ p°nte geneªsi éndr«n prÒtera §st‹ µ tÚn

ÉAµfitrÊvnow ÑHrakl°a §n tª

ÑEllãdi gen°syai. tå µ°n nun flstorhµ°na dhlo› saf°vw palaiÚn yeÚn

ÑHrakl°a §Ònta, ka‹ dok°ousi d° µoi otoi ÙryÒtata ÑEllÆnvn

poi°ein, o„ dijå ÑHrãkleia fldrusãµenoi ¶kthntai, ka‹ t“ µ¢n …w

éyanãtƒ ÉOluµp€ƒ d¢ §pvnuµ€hn yÊousi, t“ d¢ •t°rƒ …w ¥rvi

§nag€zousi.

In order to get the best information I could on these matters, I made a voyage

to Tyre in Phoenicia, hearing there was a temple of Herakles at that place,

very highly venerated. I visited the temple, and found it richly adorned with a

number of offerings, among which were two pillars, one of pure gold, the

other of emerald, shining with great brilliancy at night. In a conversation

which I held with the priests, I inquired how long their temple had been built,
 and found by their answer that they too differed from the Greeks. They said

that the temple was built at the same time that the foundation of the city took

place 2,300 years ago. In Tyre I remarked another temple where the same god

was worshipped as the Thasian Herakles. So I went on to Thasos, where I

found a temple of Herakles which had been built by the Phoenicians who

colonized that island when they sailed in search of Europa. Even this was five

generations earlier than the time when Herakles, son of Amphitryon, was born

in Greece. These researches show plainly that Herakles is an ancient god; and

my opinion is, that those Greeks act most wisely who build and maintain two

temples to Herakles, in one of which the Herakles worshipped is known by the

name Olympian, and has sacrifice offered to him as an immortal, while in the

other the honours paid are such as are due to a hero.

(Hdt. 2.44)

This passage is interesting for a number of reasons. It comes in one of two extended

discussions about the nature and age of Herakles, in which Herodotos ultimately

argues that Herakles, son of Amphitryon, was named after the Egyptian god Herakles.

He also, more tentatively, offers the same suggestion about two other ‘late-comers’ to

the Greek pantheon, Dionysos and Pan. In his discussion of these issues Herodotos is
prepared to claim that ‘the Greeks’ tell stories about Herakles énepisk°ptvw

(‘without consideration’), and to point out their ignorance about the gods they

worship.

In the course of the History Herodotos distinguishes between the plausible and

implausible stories about the hero Herakles. He appears to accept that Herakles was

the ancestor of the Heraklid kings who ruled Lydia for 505 years before the accession

of Gyges. He also traces back to him the genealogy of the Spartan royal houses. He

tells the story of how Herakles came to be the ancestor of the Skythian royal house

after meeting a mixoparthenos, half-snake and half-woman, while he was driving the

cattle of Geryon across Europe, but this more fantastical story he offers as one of
three alternative accounts, and indicates that he prefers one of the others. He also

rejects a story about Herakles escaping from an Egyptian attempt to sacrifice him,

both on the grounds that Egyptians would never engage in human sacrifice, and
because he was ßna §Ònta... ka‹ ¶ti ênyrvpon (‘alone and still a man’). Other

traditions about Herakles are reported by Herodotos, but only as tales told by others:

Antikhares of Eleion tells Dorieus that Herakles had conquered Western Sicily; at
Aphetai in Euboia ‘it is said’ (l°getai) that Herakles was left behind by his fellow

Argonauts, and the river Dyras ‘the story goes’ (lÒgow §st‹) sprang up to cool him

when he was being burned by Nessos’ shirt.

For Herodotos therefore, accounts which are consistent with the notion of Herakles as

an ordinary, albeit well-travelled and sexually promiscuous, mortal, living perhaps

about 900 years before the author’s time, can be accepted, while those which portray

him as having superhuman powers, or associate him with more fanciful beings or

events, are offered as stories, which the author considers himself under no obligation

to believe. This ‘demythologizing’ of the tales of the Greek heroes is a feature of

Herodotos’ narrative from the very start. The first few chapters of the History, which

supposedly offer the explanations for the conflict between Greeks and barbaroi
provided by the ‘learned men’ or ‘chroniclers’ (ofl lÒgioi) of the Persians and by the

Phoenicians, are in fact the stories of Europa, Io and Helen transferred to an

inglorious, possibly more contemporary, setting. Thucydides similarly appears to be

drawing more on myths than on any real knowledge of earlier periods when he

describes the state of Greece in the distant past. However, it does not follow from this

apparent preference for a very human Herakles that Herodotos rejects the notion of

paying cult to him. The passage quoted above ends with approval for those who

worship Herakles both as god and as hero. Even if ‘Herakles the son of Amphitryon’
was an ordinary mortal in his lifetime, after his death he was entitled to honours …w

¥rvi (‘as a hero’).

Herodotos reports a number of stories about the influence that dead heroes can have

on events. The bones of Orestes, once brought from Tegea to Sparta, guarantee Sparta

victory over Tegea for ever afterwards; Xerxes’ Persians are driven back from Delphi

by two heroes, Phylakos and Autonoos, who were buried nearby; the tyrant

Kleisthenes attempts to drive the (dead and buried) hero Adrastos out of Sikyon, and,

when he is prevented, transfers the honours once given to him to Melanippos, whose

bones Kleisthenes has brought from Thebes; the Aiginetans send the Aiakidai (either

their bones or their statues) to the Thebans when requested, to help in their war with

Athens, although in this case the heroes turn out to be of little help. The idea of dead

heroes helping the community in which their bodies lie is not unique to Herodotos. In

Sophokles’ Oedipus Coloneus, Oidipous is given refuge and a burial place in Attika,

and promises in return to aid the Athenians against the Thebans for ever after.

Herakles had no tomb on earth, a fact that caused no problem for those Greeks who

believed that it was the son of Amphitryon who had become a god, and one which

Herodotos ignores. Nonetheless Herakles appears to influence events in the Persian

War, and it is this phenomenon that I wish now to investigate.

In book 7 Herodotos makes a remark about who was responsible for the Greek

victory against the Persians:

§nyaËta énagka€˙ §j°rgoµai gn≈µhn épod°jasyai §p€fyonon µ¢n

prÚw t«n pleÒnvn ényr≈pvn, ˜µvw d¢ tª g° µoi fa€netai e‰nai

élhy¢w oÈk §pisxÆsv... •lÒµenoi d¢ tØn ÑEllãda perie›nai §leuy°rhn,

toËto tÚ ÑEllhnikÚn pçn tÚ loipÒn, ˜son µØ §µÆdise, aÈto‹ otoi

∑san ofl §pege€rantew ka‹ basil°a µetã ge yeoÁw énvsãµenoi.

At this point I find myself compelled to put forward an opinion which will be

distasteful to most people, but which, since it seems to me to be true, I will not

suppress... Choosing that Greece should remain free it was [the Athenians]
 who roused up that portion of the Greek people that had not Medised and, at

any rate next after the gods, drove back the Persian king.

(Hdt. 7.139.1, 5)
The three words µetã ge yeoÁw (‘at any rate next after the gods’) are sometimes

thought of as a ‘pious convention’—something that the god-fearing historian felt he

ought to include. As we will see, this is not necessarily the right approach. Two of the

battles between the Greeks and the Persians are particularly worth investigating,

Marathon and Thermopylai: in the first Herakles is in company, in the second alone.

The clearest indication that any particular god was considered to have influenced the

outcome of an event such as a battle or a war is the existence of a cult related to that

event, and the battle of Marathon provides a number of examples. At some point,

probably in the 460s BC, a marble monument was erected on the site of the battle, a

column with what we generally call a battlefield trophy on top. Here sacrifices were

offered annually to Zeus Tropaios, ‘Zeus who turns’, by Athenian ephebes. This was a

new cult - there is no evidence for any cult of Zeus Tropaios before this date - and it

was an influential one. Indeed the word for a battlefield trophy, tropaion, comes into

use only after the erection of the Marathon monument, first among the tragedians, and

then in Thucydides - Herodotos, a non-Athenian, never uses the word. It appears that

the long-established practice of the victors hanging pieces of armour on a post on the

battlefield was reinterpreted after Marathon, no longer simply symbolising possession

of the field, but bearing witness to the power of Zeus Tropaios. The victory at

Marathon also led to the inclusion in the Athenian festival calendar of the cult of Pan,

introduced in Athens sometime after the battle, according to Herodotos’ account of

Pheidippides’ meeting with Pan and his message to the Athenians during his famous

run (6.105). Herodotos’ story is supported by the evidence both of depictions of torch

races on pottery and of dedications under the acropolis. In addition there is evidence

of cult of Pan at Marathon itself.

We can also see recognition of the role played by gods in the battle by the dedications

made to them from the spoils, and here two gods are most clearly honoured, Pythian

Apollo and Athene. The Athenians dedicated a set of bronze statues at Delphi,

including, according to Pausanias (10.10.1), Athene, Apollo, Miltiades, some or all of

the eponymous heroes, Kodros, Neleus and Theseus. Apollo is thus associated with a

collection of figures who can be taken to represent the ten tribes of Athenian citizens

who fought at Marathon, along with their most important kings and the city’s

patroness. Pausanias claims that the Athenian treasury at Delphi was also constructed

with the spoils of Marathon (10.11.4), something too much disputed by archaeologists

for me to want to discuss here. There were some other dedications there as well. In

Athens Pausanias mentions the temple of Eukleia and above all (literally) the giant

bronze statue of Athene Promakhos on the Acropolis, both funded from the spoils of

Marathon, and it is probable that the so-called proto-Parthenon, started not long

before Xerxes’ invasion, was funded from the same source.

For Marathon we have one further important indication of who the Athenians thought

had helped them; the depiction of the battle in a painting in the Stoa Poikile in the

Agora, which is described by Pausanias (1.15.4). The Stoa was constructed in the

second quarter of the fifth century, and presumably the paintings were done at the

same time. Along with Kallimakhos and Miltiades the painting showed a number of

supernatural figures, and it is notable that, apart from Athene, none of the gods I have

mentioned so far are included: instead, Athene is accompanied by four heroes,

Marathon himself, Ekhetlaios, Theseus and Herakles. Of these, only Ekhetlaios is

actually involved in the fighting. Although the Stoa Poikile was a public building, it

should not be thought that the depiction of these heroes represents some exclusive

official list of divine assistants, deliberately ignoring the gods I have discussed so far:

rather it concentrates on those gods or heroes who had cults at Marathon, or were

reported as visible in the battle. Marathon was the eponymous hero of the deme, and

according to one local tradition, Herakles’ father. Ekhetlaios was a figure who
appeared in the battle, dressed as a farmer and wielding a ploughshare: cult to him

was established at Marathon after the battle, in response to an oracle. Theseus does

not appear to have had a cult-site near Marathon, since, according to a tradition, he

gave up his cult-sites to Herakles, but according to Plutarch he was seen by many of

the Athenian soldiers in the battle leading the charge against the Persians. Athene had

a temple at Pallenis, near to Marathon. Herakles fits well into this company: the cult

of Herakles at Marathon developed in the sixth century and Pausanias comments that

the Marathonians were the first Greeks to worship Herakles as a god. In addition to

his appearance on the picture in the Stoa Poikile we have epigraphic evidence

suggesting that the profile of his cult there rose after the battle, with the introduction

or reorganization of games in honour of Herakles Empylios in the early fifth century,

a development which is assumed to recognize his role in the battle. Pindar mentions

the games in a number of his victory odes.

How much of this divine intervention is reflected in Herodotos’ account of the battle

itself? At first sight very little. Herodotos tells the story of Pheidippides’ meeting with

Pan, and Pan’s promise to aid the Athenians, but there is no hint of his involvement in

the description of the battle - the Persians were apparently bemused by the Athenian

tactics (6.112), but not panicked by them. Indeed the only supernatural event

Herodotos mentions is the blinding of an Athenian soldier called Epizelos when he is

passed by a giant bearded figure - but that apparition was fighting against the

Athenians (6.117) - otherwise the narrative concentrates entirely on the mortal

combatants. Unusually Herodotos does not even describe the dedication of booty after

the battle. However, one element in his description does suggest that he recognized a

special role for Herakles: he mentions that the Athenians were drawn up in a

sanctuary of Herakles at Marathon, and then after they ran back to Athens to prevent a

second Persian landing there he says: ‘as their camp at Marathon had been pitched in

a sanctuary of Herakles, so now they camped in another sanctuary of the god, at

Kynosarges’. This might be taken as nothing more than topographical detail if it were
not for a similar coincidence discussed in Book 9, when a rumour reached the forces

at Mykale of the Greek victory at Plataia. The text runs:

d∞la dØ pollo›si tekµhr€oisi §st‹ tå ye›a t«n prhgµãtvn, efi ka‹

tÒte, t∞w aÈt∞w ≤µ°rhw suµpiptoÊshw toË te §n Plataiªsi ka‹ toË

§n Mukãl˙ µ°llontow ¶sesyai tr≈µatow, fƵh to›si ÜEllhsi to›si

taÊt˙ §sap€keto, Àste yars∞sa€ te tØn stratiØn poll“ µçllon

ka‹ §y°lein proyuµÒteron kinduneÊein. ka‹ tÒde ßteron sun°pese

genÒµenon, DƵhtrow teµ°nea ÉEleusin€hw parå éµfot°raw tåw

suµbolåw e‰nai: ka‹ går dØ §n tª Platai€di par' aÈtÚ tÚ DhµÆtrion

§g€neto, …w ka‹ prÒterÒn µoi e‡rhtai, ≤ µãxh, ka‹ §n Mukãl˙ ¶µelle

…saÊtvw ¶sesyai.

Divine involvement in affairs is clear from many signs. How else, when the

battles of Mykale and Plataia were about to happen on the self same day,

should such a rumour have reached the Greeks in that region, greatly cheering

the whole army, and making them more eager than before to risk their lives?

And another thing turned out to be the case: a sanctuary of Demeter Eleusinia

stood next to the sites of both battles. For in the case of Plataia the battle took

place, as I have already described, by the sanctuary of Demeter, and at Mykale

it was to be the same.

(9.100.2-101.1)

It is hinted elsewhere that the Persian destruction of the Anaktoron at Eleusis was

resented by Demeter, so the reader or audience is left with the strong impression that

Demeter had a hand in the victories of 479.

Herodotos does not state in so many words in the Histories that Herakles assisted the

Athenians at Marathon, but we know from the evidence presented above that the

Athenians believed that he did assist them. It seems to me that in the account of

Marathon the author is showing awareness of this Athenian view and deliberately
drawing attention to the sanctuaries of Herakles in order to suggest that he did indeed

have a role to play.

There is plenty of evidence outside Herodotos’ account of Marathon which can be

used in explaining what is going on. When it comes to that other Herculean

achievement of the Greeks against the Persians, Thermopylai, there is much less.

Herodotos’ account of the events surrounding that battle makes repeated references to

Herakles. Once again the Greek force encamps by an altar of Herakles; while they are

there fifteen Persian ships put in at Pagasai, where, it is said, Herakles had been left

by the Argonauts; Xerxes on his approach to the pass goes by the river Dyras, which,

the story goes, sprang up originally to help Herakles when he was burning; when

Leonidas is introduced, Herodotos gives his complete genealogy back to Herakles,

the first time he gives such a Spartan genealogy, despite the detailed discussion of the

origins of the Spartan dyarchy in book 6. Leonidas is again described as being of the

Heraklid genos at 7.208.1, and then at 7.220.4 we are given the text of an oracle that

Herodotos claims was given to the Spartans at the outset of the war:
͵›n d', Œ Spãrthw ofikÆtorew eÈruxÒroio,

µ µ°ga êstu §rikud¢w Íp' éndrãsi Perse˝d˙si

p°ryetai, µ tÚ µ¢n oÈx€, éf' ÑHrakl°ouw d¢ gen°ylhw

penyÆsei basil∞ fy€µenon Lakeda€µonow oÔrow.

oÈ går tÚn taÊrvn sxÆsei µ°now oÈd¢ leÒntvn

éntib€hn: ZhnÚw går ¶xei µ°now: oÈd° • fhµ€

sxÆsesyai, pr‹n t«nd' ßteron diå pãnta dãshtai.

For you, o dwellers in Sparta of the wide spaces;

Either your famed, great town must be sacked by Perseus’ sons,

Or, if that is not to happen, the whole land of Lakedaimon

Shall mourn the death of a king from the house of Herakles.

For not the strength of bulls or of lions shall hold him,

 Strength against strength; for he has the power of Zeus; and I say

He will not be held till one of these two he has consumed.

As well as the naming of Herakles here, the reference to the strength of bulls and

lions might well be taken as alluding to Herakles’ deeds.

We are thus reminded of Herakles, and in particular of Herakles’ suffering, when we

read about Thermopylai. Here as with Marathon, Herodotos seems to be indicating

Herakles’ involvement in the battle, and perhaps showing awareness of such a belief

among the Greeks. It is more difficult than with the case of Marathon to be certain of

this, not least because we are not here concerned with Athenian views. What Spartans

thought is not as easy to establish, still less what the people of Trakhis believed. The

association of Herakles with the area around Thermopylai certainly predates the

battle. There was a cult of Herakles on Mt Oita which appears to date back at least to

the sixth century, and which appears to have been linked to the story of his funeral

pyre; Sophokles’ Trachiniae, written sometime between 457 and 420, draws

apparently on a lost epic called the Siege of Oikhalia, which probably placed

Herakles’ final days in Trakhis. Particular links between the actual battle and Herakles

might be seen in a story given by Plutarch which Herodotos passes over—out of spite

according to Plutarch: Leonidas, on the way to Thermopylai, asked and received

permission from the Thebans to sleep in the temple of Herakles, where he had a

dream. The dream itself was about Thebes, not the battle, and Plutarch interprets it as

referring to fourth-century events, but the story, whether true or not, may have fifth-

century origins. Further support, tenuous at best, might be drawn from painted

pottery: new depictions of Herakles’ death appear on pots in the decades immediately

after the battle, and Boardman has suggested that this reflects an elaboration of the

myth of Herakles’ final days in response to Leonidas’ death at Thermopylai.

Reconstructing Herakles’ exact role at Thermopylai is not easy, particularly because

Thermopylai is not normally considered to be a great Greek triumph. The oracle helps
here, however, because one of its functions is to turn the defeat into a victory, by

making Leonidas’ death necessary for Sparta’s survival, and thus for the defeat of the

Persians. On the question of the oracle’s historicity, it seems highly likely that the

Spartans had consulted Delphi at the start of the war, as, according to Herodotos,

many other poleis did. Exactly what they asked, and what the answer was, is

unknowable, but presumably they took it as encouragement to resist Xerxes. At some

point after the war the verse version of the Delphic response came into circulation,

composed, probably, at Delphi, and benefiting from hindsight; but it was accepted as

reflecting the true meaning of the original, probably brief and unremarkable, spoken

response of the Pythia. Whether the Heraklean references reflect the associations of

Thermopylai with Herakles, or merely the genealogy of the Spartan kings is difficult

to tell.

As Herodotos tells it, Leonidas knew about the oracle and sacrificed himself willingly

in the knowledge that he would thereby save Sparta. This has a particularly close

parallel with the story of Euripides’ Heraclidae - set of course at Marathon - where

one of Herakles’ daughters, named Makaria in later tradition, sacrificed herself in

response to an oracle in order to save the rest of the children of Herakles from

Eurystheus. It may be that we cannot separate out stories about the family of Herakles

from stories of Herakles himself, and so we may see Herakles as embodied at

Thermopylai by Leonidas.

One more piece of evidence does suggest that the Spartans saw Herakles as their ally

at Thermopylai - something that happened probably soon after Herodotos had written

his History. In 426 BC the Spartans sent a colony to Trakhis, to a site near

Thermopylai, and named it Herakleia, a name that indicates that a cult of Herakles

would be central to its institutional life. Many motives have been suggested for

establishing a colony in that place at that time, by authors from Thucydides to Simon

Hornblower—the authors concentrating on strategic interests above all—but

Diodoros suggests that the colony was sent to assist Trakhis because Herakles had

once lived there, and thus the Spartans were repaying an obligation. Now there is no

reason to suppose that all those in Sparta who supported the sending of the colony did

so for the same reason, so it is probably wrong to look for a single explanation, but,

faced with the decision to found a colony named after Herakles, and with oikists

significantly called Alkidas, which is another name for Herakles, and Leon, a name

with links both to Herakles’ lion-skin and to Leonidas, it is difficult to doubt that

some special debt to Herakles was being repaid.

The actions of a number of Greek cities in the fifth century in honouring Herakles can

be seen as showing their gratitude to the hero for his aid against the Persians. They

show that Herakles was recognized as a real influence on the events of the period, not

merely as a figure in old stories. Herodotos does not directly refer to stories about

Herakles’ interventions at Marathon and Thermopylai, but traditions about such

interventions can be seen to lie behind his narrative of the events. Herodotus was

perhaps unwilling to commit himself to accepting the truth of these traditions, and his

successors in writing the history of Greece, Thucydides and Xenophon, were even

less willing to discuss divine influence in their works. This should not lead us to

believe that their view was typical either of Greeks in general or even of educated

Greeks. It was the Stoa Poikile in Athens, the games at Marathon and the colony sent

by Sparta to Trakhis that represent the official attitude of Greek communities to

Herakles. In the case of the games and the colony these were a continuing significant

commitment, making it clear that Herakles was considered to have been a real

benefactor to Athens and Sparta in the fifth century BC.

Bibliography

Audiat, J.
 1933 Fouilles de Delphes II: le trésor des Athéniens, Paris.

Béquignon, Y.

1937 La vallée du Spercheios des origines aux IVe siècle: études

d’archéologie et de topographie, Paris.

Boardman, J.

1975 Athenian red-figure vases: the archaic period, London.

1986 ‘Herakles in extremis’ in Studien zur Mythologie und Vasenmalerei

Konrad Schauenburg zum 65. Geburtstag am 16 April 1986, Mainz,

127-131.

Borgeaud, P.

1988 The cult of Pan in ancient Greece, Chicago.

Bowden, H.

1991 ‘The chronology of Greek painted pottery: some observations’,

Hephaistos 10, 49-59.

2004 ‘Xenophon and the scientific study of religion’, in C. Tuplin ed.,

Xenophon and his world: Historia Einzelschriften 172, Stuttgart,

229-46).

2005 Classical Athens and the Delphic oracle: divination and democracy,

Cambridge.

Camp, J.M.

1986 The Athenian agora: excavations in the heart of classical Athens,

London.

Carpenter, R.

1929 The sculpture of the Nike temple parapet, Cambridge, Mass.

Croon, J.H.

1956 ‘Artemis Thermia and Apollo Thermios (with an excursus on the

Oetean Heracles-cult)’, Mnemosyne 4.9, 193-220.

Davies, M.

1991 Sophocles Trachiniae, Oxford.

Francis, E.D. and Vickers, M.

1985 ‘The Oenoe painting in the Stoa Poikile, and Herodotus’ account of

Marathon’, ABSA 80, 99-113

Gould, J.

1994 ‘Herodotus and religion’ in S. Hornblower ed., Greek historiography,

Oxford, 91-106.

Harrison, T.

2000 Divinity and history: the religion of Herodotus, Oxford.

Hornblower, S.

1992 ‘The religious dimension to the Peloponnesian War, or, what

Thucydides does not tell us’, HSCP 94, 169-197.

Hurwit, J.M.

1999 The Athenian acropolis: history, mythology, and archaeology from the

neolithic era to the present, Cambridge.

Kearns, E.

1989 Heroes of Attica. BICS supp. 57, London.

Laurens, A.-F.

1986 ‘Bousiris’, LIMC 3/1, 147-152.

Malkin, I.

1994 Myth and territory in the Spartan Mediterranean, Cambridge.

Marinatos, N.

1981 Thucydides and religion: Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 129,

Königstein.

Mikalson, J.D.

2003 Herodotus and religion in the Persian wars, Chapel Hill & London.

Koumanoudes, S.
1978 ‘Marayvni’, AAA 11, 232-244.
Oost, S.I.

1975 ‘Thucydides and the irrational: sundry passages’, CPh 70, 186-96.

Pearson, L.

1941 ‘Credulity and scepticism in Herodotus’, TAPA 72, 335-355.

1954 ‘Real and conventional personalities in Greek history’ JHI 15,

136-145.

Shapiro, H.A.

1983 ‘Hêrôs theos: the death and apotheosis of Herakles’, CW 77, 7-18

Simon, E.

1976 ‘Ein nordattischer Pan’ AK 19, 19-23.

Vanderpool, E.

1942 ‘Inscribed stele from Marathon’, Hesperia 11, 329-337.

West, W.C.

1969 ‘The trophies of the Persian wars’, CP 64, 7-19.